Death of an Artist (30 page)

In his apartment he hobbled to the bathroom and turned on the water in the tub. His robe was hanging on the back of the door.

Van listened outside the door. The water stopped running. She imagined that he was bending over the tub, easing his good leg over, making not a sound as he pulled his other leg in. She waited another minute or two, then walked into his living room and surveyed it with disapproval. There was no good place for him to sit. The couch was a futon, uncomfortable in both roles as bed and couch. One chair might be barely possible. The padding was thin but it was the best the apartment had to offer. The chairs on the balcony were webbed, not meant for comfortable relaxation.

She looked over his pots and pans in the kitchen, checked his refrigerator, then sat down to wait for him to come out, to get into bed. It was a long wait. He ran more water, and she knew he would stay in it until it cooled. She intended to do the same thing as soon as she got home.

Finally he emerged, very pink, in his robe and was surprised to see her still there. “Go home, Van. I don't need tucking in,” he said a bit sharply.

“I will. I'll be back later.”

He nodded and slowly made his way to the bedroom. She went to the bathroom and picked up the clothes he had left where they fell, then waited another ten minutes and looked in on him. He was asleep. She left and started the walk home. She thought it might have been the longest walk she had ever taken by the time she arrived at the rear house.

“Van, you have to get some rest,” Marnie said at the door. “You're exhausted.”

“I'll be in bed before Josh is tonight,” Van said. “Now a bath and get out of these stinky clothes. Marnie, we have to talk. After a bath, we have to talk.”

“I know. Do you need anything, any help?”

Van shook her head. “This might take a while,” she said, and went up the stairs.

*   *   *

T
ONY
WOKE
UP
and lay still, trying to make sense of the last twenty-four hours. It was three-thirty. He'd had a good nap, and he felt refreshed, with a functioning brain, but his actions, the events of the previous day, still didn't make sense. Finally he gave it up, and moving slowly, testing every motion, he got out of bed, stood by it holding on to the nightstand. Marginally better, he decided, and was grateful for the slight improvement. It would clear up in another day or two with more soaking baths, more rest. More codeine. It would clear up.

He dressed, decided slippers were good enough, and went into the bathroom to shave. Keeping his weight on his good leg, bracing himself with one hand, he shaved, and that was an improvement. He went to his kitchen, found coffee in the thermos, and looked for a place to sit and drink it. Everything he did seemed to take an eternity, but he was doing them, he thought in satisfaction.

Sitting in the one possible chair, he sipped his coffee and returned to the thoughts he'd had on awakening. Yesterday just didn't make sense. He had gone to the trail to kill Dale Oliver. He had made the decision, was resigned to it, accepted it, and instead he had given him a way out, a free pass. The one thing he had determined to accomplish and he had failed. And he didn't know why. He no longer knew if he could ever shoot someone, kill someone who needed killing. He had failed the ultimate test, had made it almost guaranteed that another killer would get away with murder. Not a faulty system, not a failed witness, a phony alibi, but his own weakness, his lack of courage, or whatever it would have taken, had made it all but inevitable that Dale Oliver would have gotten away with the murder of Stefany Markov if he had made it down to the village.

With every step Tony had taken on that winding trail, he thought bitterly, the odds had gone up that he would have stumbled, fallen, and the body the kids found would have been his, shot to death with his own gun. Will would have testified that Dale Oliver never left the motel.

Except for that one misstep, he thought bleakly, Dale Oliver would have gotten away with murder.

If he had followed the plan outlined to Will, they would have nabbed Dale for breaking and entering with a deadly weapon, and that would have brought a conviction. But they would not have been able to connect it to a murder already judged an accident, based on nothing more than suspicion and conjecture. He would have gotten away with it.

And bringing in Will had not made sense either. Tony had not needed Will to watch a car that Tony knew would not leave the parking lot. He rubbed his eyes. But Will had made the identification. He had prevented a wild-goose chase off to New Jersey, possibly a dead end when that didn't pan out. Without Will they might never have connected Daniel Olson to Dale Oliver, unless Tony had stepped forward, and that would have resulted in a demand from the sheriff to know who Tony's contact had been, who had alerted him to the fake IDs. Illegal entrance, illegal search, his testimony would have been tossed out, and with it his credibility and his theory about the murder of Stefany Markov. Will had been a necessary part and one that he had not thought of, had not considered. He simply had decided to go to Will's office and bring him in. He rubbed his eyes again.

Back up, he told himself. He had decided and then, accepting his decision, had spent the day working in the shop and had not thought of it again. Had not thought of anything. That's what seemed to have happened, his brain went dead while he worked with his hands. He shook his head. Brains don't go dead, he told himself. That other part, the part forever out of reach and unknowable, must have been active. He had read about meditation, Transcendental Meditation, trance states, altered-consciousness states, but he had never applied any of that to himself and those hours without conscious memory of any thought. His unconscious? He shook his head again.

Something had said no to murder, that was the fact, and he had not made that decision consciously. He had not given a thought to making Dale Oliver go into the creek, wade down, until he had ordered him to do so. What he had planned would have been murder. He knew that, had accepted that it was his conscious intention to commit murder. Something had said no, and he had acted on that, not his conscious decision, like a robot, an automaton.

And he had not thought of any possible outcome if that had worked out, if he had hauled him out of the water down on the beach. Another murderer getting away with it? Likely, he thought. Even a charge of breaking and entering would have been tossed. Dale Oliver had not broken and entered.

He had not thought about it in any recognizable way, but he had not committed murder.

He had finished his coffee but continued to hold the cup, not willing to bend over to put it on the floor. The secret was not to move if he didn't have to, keep as still as possible. He held the empty cup and considered what had happened to him when Dale Oliver got stuck in the creek.

His first impulse, a reflex, had been to go in, to get him moving again. He had started in, then stopped. Again, no conscious decision. He had just stopped and watched Dale Oliver die.

He couldn't have saved him, he knew now. He might have been able to raise his head, but he could not have freed him, he couldn't have done anything about what probably had been a fatal wound, he wouldn't have been able to keep his head above water long. But he had started to try and stopped. He would have fallen, too, in all likelihood and, wet and cold, dragged himself out of the water, only to die of hypothermia on the trail somewhere. He knew that. But he had not thought of it while he watched Dale Oliver die. He had not thought of anything. He had stood and watched a man die in the water and thought of nothing, just like insane people who did exactly what voices in their heads directed them to do. Except without the voices.

He was rationalizing his actions, making excuses, unheard voices, directions from God knew where, and he knew that was not what he was doing. He was telling himself something important even if he didn't know why it was important.

Later, he said under his breath, he would think through it all later, after his hip stopped hurting like hell, after he was fully himself again.

He looked quickly at the door, which was opening. Van entered, carrying two big grocery bags.

“Oh, I hoped you'd still be sleeping,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

“Better. What's all that?” He indicated the bags.

“Various things. A snack for now, a big pot from home to cook pasta, a chicken to roast, things to go with it. I'm going to make us dinner. I hope you like garlic. Garlic chicken, with rosemary. Things like that.”

He scowled at her. “I know you're a hell of a doctor, a one-woman rescue team, and you can cook. Too much.”

“Oh, that's just the beginning,” she said airily, going into the kitchen to put her bags down on the counter and start unloading them. He could still see her as she busied herself.

“I can sew and change a tire, change the oil in a car, make jam and jelly. Marnie grew up on a farm and was driving a tractor by the time she was twelve, and her mother saw to it that she had housewifely skills, ‘survival skills,' Marnie called them. Marnie took me in hand and did the same thing.” Van paused, then said fervently, “Thank God we don't have a cow. She would have made me learn to milk it.”

Tony laughed. He couldn't tell what she was doing, putting things in the refrigerator, doing something with a plate, a covered basket. After a minute or two, with her chatting all the time, she came to the chair where he was sitting, looked around, and saw an end table by the couch. She put a lamp on the floor and brought the table to within his reach and took the cup he was still holding.

“Will's been all over town extolling your genius,” she said, as she moved about. “He's telling people how you figured it all out, that you were waiting for Dale at the house and an act of God finished him off. He's saying you make Sherlock Holmes look like an amateur. I'm afraid you have a big fan. It could be hero worship. Town people will want to touch you, just to look at you. And Freddi called, a lot of people were calling and Marnie turned off the ringer, let the answering machine handle it. Freddi is in a frenzy. This changes everything, she said. A prominent businessman committing murder to control artwork, planning on more murders. The price of everything just went up exponentially. Marnie told her it isn't about money and never has been. Freddi will come out here in a couple of days.”

She didn't add that Marnie had also said that
Feathers and Ferns
was not for sale. She intended to give it to Tony. She had seen the way he looked at it, and it was to be his. That was hers to tell, Van thought, and came back to the end table with a plate.

“Cheese, ham, apple slices, and in the basket blueberry muffins. They're still warm. Marnie sent them. You need a little food to hold you over until dinner. I put on coffee, or do you want juice for now? If you haven't taken any more medicine since this morning, wine for dinner.”

He said he would wait for the coffee and picked up a piece of the rolled ham and found suddenly that he was hungry, ravenous. He buttered a muffin, and it was delicious. As were the cheese and the apples. Van nodded with approval as he ate.

She took coffee to him and kept her own at the counter, where she started to peel garlic. When he pushed the plate back, she removed it and returned with a glass of water and a pharmacy medicine container.

“I talked to Dr. Cranshaw,” she said. “He prescribed prednisone. You have a serious inflammation in that hip, we both agree, and the prednisone will control it and quiet it down. He sent a message to pass on to you. Anyone who needs a hip replacement and goes mountain hiking is a damn fool. Message delivered.” She shook out a tablet and held it out. After a second or two he took it and the water.

“Good,” she said when he swallowed the tablet. “Tony, you could have done serious damage to that hip. Only an MRI will determine that, a current one to compare to the last one you had in New York. As it is, it will take at least a week for the inflammation to quiet down, and another week or two to let the healing process proceed. We want to move you to the front house for that period, where we can help you with meals. You won't be in any shape to do much for a while.”

He shook his head. She returned to the kitchen and started on the garlic again. “The house is empty, already a problem, and it's on one level. You're going to be besieged with media people. I'm surprised they haven't found you already, and they will make life miserable until you decide to talk to them. You won't be able to go out on the balcony, and besides, you don't even have a decent place to sit in this apartment. Anyway, that's the first thing. In two or three weeks, we'll go to Portland, to OHSU, the university hospital where I was for the past four years. They have a top-notch orthopedics department. I know, I trained with them. They are extremely good. They'll have had time to get your medical records, the pictures of that hip, and be ready to assess it. They will want to schedule the replacement procedure, probably not until September. Too many people take off in August. After that, it will be a facility they have nearby for people from out of town. They treat people from all over the Northwest. A couple of weeks there, and then back to the front house. Marnie will be happy to help you for the next few months during your recovery. Physical therapy can be done in Newport, so that's not a problem—”

Tony's voice was as cold as ice when he cut into her long speech. “God damn it, Van, do you really think I'm going to let you and Marnie take over my life, make my decisions, run me? You're wrong. I'm more than ready to move on. After this little flare-up gets better, I'm out of here. So just forget it.”

“Yes, that's what I believe,” she said calmly, standing by the sink, looking at him. “We have to take over for now, temporarily, in this one area that you are so crappy about handling. If you don't get that hip replaced, you're going to end up in a wheelchair, and then probably assisted living or a home of some kind. That's your future if you keep doing nothing. I have no intention of letting that happen if it's possible in any way to prevent it. That procedure has a ninety-five percent approval rating from those who undergo it. They are able to walk, to run, to bend over without pain. They can hike a mountain if they choose to. We think that as soon as you take care of the hip, the stress on your knee will end and it will be okay.”