Framed and Burning (Dreamslippers Book 2) (22 page)

“Mick, how goes the search for a loft?” Ernesto inquired politely.

“If my real estate agent could grasp the concept that not everyone wants something new and within walking distance of South Beach, it would be going better,” Mick replied.

Ernesto nodded. “You like—what is the word? Vintage.”

“Well, most things are better with age,” quipped his sister.

“What about Hollywood?” Rose suggested, and Mick nodded. He did like the little town north of Miami and went up there every spring for their blues festival.

At that moment the doorbell rang, and Mick guessed it must be Sergeant Alvarez, which is how he greeted her at the door. “Well, if it isn’t Mick Travers,” she said. “The one who destroys perfectly good confessions.”

“Oh, we’ll have time to get into it after dinner,” said Pris, flocking to Alvarez as if she were an honored guest. “What’ll you have? My granddaughter here makes a mean margarita.”

“Oh, nothing for me,” Alvarez begged off.

Cat announced that dinner was ready. The guests ooh’d and ah’d at the food, and Mick was impressed that Cat and Pris had done such a good job of preparing it all: mango salsa with mangos from Ernesto’s cottage garden, yellow rice and black beans, and tostadas with either chicken or tofu.
 

“You said on the phone that this wasn’t a social call,” said Sergeant Alvarez. “I’m curious about what else you’ve got, now that your brother here blew the state’s case against Candace Shreveport.”

“Believe me, I didn’t want to do it,” Mick said. “But it turned out to be the right thing.” He felt even more certain about that now, thinking back on how desperate Candace had looked, how…innocent. He and Grace had already talked to Alvarez about getting her charge reduced to second-degree, but she would definitely face some jail time.

“We might have had trouble getting that first fire to stick, even with the confession,” Alvarez said. “The second fire was set using turpentine and some other art supplies you had at the scene, by the way. Which Candace would have known something about, being an artist. It doesn’t match the method of the first fire.”
 

Mick thought Alvarez looked gorgeous tonight, her curvaceousness no longer hidden by her uniform. Her hair was swept up, revealing lovely lines from her chin to her collarbones. It made him want to sketch her, and more, though he tried to squelch the thought, realizing she was probably a good twenty years his junior.

“So what’s this new development? It better be good, because we’ve got nothing on the first fire now. We’re checking on Norris some more, though. I still don’t like that guy.”

Pris glanced at Cat and Mick. “Oh, I suppose Rose and Ernesto won’t mind if we talk shop.”

“By all means,” said Ernesto.

Rose scooted her chair in. “Are you kidding? This is better than TV.”

At that, Pris told them what Cat found in New York, with Cat filling in any details she left out.

Alvarez listened intently, asking questions the whole way. Then she narrowed her eyes at Pris and said, “I’ll take that margarita after all.”

>>>

It’d been close to forty years since Mick had seen the smirking, bloated zeppelin that passed itself off as Chester Canon’s face. But the letter the man had apparently authored and sent to
Art in Our Time
was burned into Mick’s memory, and it popped into his head now as he gazed at the piehole from which Chester Canon spoke.

I actually had Edward Altair as a professor while earning a master’s in fine arts. He made my class study his Pastoral Series, and after that moment, I lost respect for him not only as a professor but also as an artist. His work is derivative, obscure, and plain. His technique is undeveloped and sloppy. His slight attempts at visual humor feel dull and forced. It is, quite frankly, an embarrassment as an artist that his works receive any gallery space at all. This magazine shouldn’t waste its ink on such a hack.

 
Signed,
 

Mick in Miami

Pris had pointed out to Mick the letter’s circular reasoning and badly constructed sentences, and since Canon was known as a skilled writer who often penned art criticism for academic journals, Mick realized he must have gone to great lengths to try to make the letter sound as if it had been written by Mick.
 

All of them—Cat, Pris, Alvarez, and Mick, along with Speck and Santiago—were standing in the foyer of Canon’s residence as Canon blustered about what an intrusion this was, who the hell cared about something that happened a lifetime ago, and what gave them the right to barge into his home in the middle of the afternoon?

Mick listened, but it was as if the sound of Canon’s voice was reverberating down a long tunnel. Forty years separated him from the moment that letter printed in
Art in Our Time
hit the newsstands. It was forty years in which he’d heard nothing from Edward Altair, nothing in response to Mick’s calls and letters attesting to the truth, swearing he did not write the letter. Altair never responded, and Mick never knew if he believed Mick had written the letter or not. It was maddening to Mick, even now. He had to stifle the urge to punch Canon in the face.

The women—without Mick’s input, he noted—had decided that since Canon was Cat’s suspect, she should lead the charge.

“Professor Canon,” Cat said, “we do have a warrant.”

At that, Sergeant Alvarez stepped forward, producing it. She was back in uniform again, the vision of her in a dress lingering in Mick’s head nonetheless. Because the professor had lied to Cat about the letter’s authorship with apparently nothing else to lose, the judge had granted the warrant to search his home for anything that would link him to the fire that killed Donnie.

At that, Alvarez signaled for Speck and Santiago to begin searching the premises. Mick noted that Canon seemed to be alone in the house.
 

“Is there somewhere we could go for a conversation?” Cat prompted him. The man shut his fat lip at the sight of the warrant and seemed to be in a daze.

“I have nothing to say without my lawyer present,” he said.

“We know you wrote the letter in
Art in Our Time
,” she told him.

“I have nothing to say without my lawyer present,” he said again.

Mick couldn’t take it anymore. “Why’d you do it? Do you really hate me that much?”

Canon glared at Mick as if struggling against whatever logic was telling him to keep his mouth zipped. “Hate you?” he finally said. “I barely remember you.”

Cat stepped in. “Then why’d you lie about writing it?”

“I didn’t write it.”

Mick butted in again. “Why can’t you admit the truth for once in your huge, phony life?”

Canon laughed. “My life’s phony? What about yours? Masquerading around as a genius. We shouldn’t even have granted you that degree. It wasn’t earned.”

Mick reached into his pocket and took out the Polaroid he’d been carrying around. Rose had snapped it with her retro camera one day when they were horsing around in the studio. It was Donnie, both thumbs up in the air, a goofy grin on his face. Mick shoved the photo in Canon’s face.

“This is Donnie Hines. The man you killed when you were trying to burn me down.”

Canon refused to take the photo in Mick’s outstretched hand.
 

“I did not set that fire.”

“Where were you the night of December eighth?” Cat asked.

“I’ll have to check my calendar.”

“Do that, please.”

“Look, my wife’s not here, and she handles our calendar.”

“Where is your wife?” Cat asked.

“In Jacksonville, visiting family.”

“Why aren’t you with her?”

“I wanted the time to paint. And, if you must know, I don’t care for my wife’s family.”

Mick was still having trouble not punching Canon in the face. And Mick realized he still had the photo of Donnie in his hands, that he’d been staring at it. He put it back in his pocket.

Pris had been uncharacteristically silent through the proceedings. She stood behind Cat and Alvarez, watching Canon’s every move, as if sizing him up. Mick caught her eye, and she gave him a sympathetic look.

“It must have been hard,” Pris suddenly said, directing her comment at Canon. “To deal with those students year after year. I’m betting you never wanted to be a teacher. But it paid the bills. How many sabbaticals did you get, over the course of your tenure?”

“Only four,” Canon said, without missing a beat.

“Four years in forty,” Pris said, clicking her tongue at the end to put a fine point on what a shame it was. “Well, you work a decade and get a year off. But I guess that’s better than most folks get.”

“Unless you’re a full-time artist,” Canon said. “Like Mick here.”

“Well, we can’t all be as lucky as Mick, now can we?” Pris agreed. “Did you get much painting done, during the school year? Or was it strictly a summertime occupation?”
“Oh, a dedicated artist manages. Spring break, summer, winter break. Long weekends.”

“It’s surprising that you’d waste one of those precious spring breaks on that letter to
Art in Our Time
,” Pris said.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Canon said. “It was a stupid prank. I was a relatively young teacher back then and hadn’t yet earned tenure.”

Mick could kiss his sister. She’d led Canon right down her rabbit hole.

Cat cleared her throat and added, “If you’d have been found out, you might not have been granted tenure.”

Canon put his hands in his pockets as if to convey his nonchalance. “Try to prosecute me for it if you like. I’m sure the statute of limitations on whatever crime it is to fake a letter to the editor has run out by now. And I’m a professor emeritus and for all intents and purposes retired. So you can’t hurt me there, either.”

“I think we’re more interested in how far you were willing to carry this lifelong obsession with Mick,” Cat countered.

“Lifelong obsession? That sniveling little hack irritated me when he was in graduate school, but that’s the end of the story. I wouldn’t call that a lifelong obsession.”

“Well, we’re standing here in the middle of the winter of 2013, discussing it,” Cat pointed out.

Mick was conscious of the deputies rifling through the rooms of the house while he and the others remained in the foyer. Canon had refused to invite them into the living room.

“I’d rather discuss any other topic under the sun,” Canon said with a sarcastic laugh.

“Sir,” Speck interrupted. “We need access to your garage.”

“Fine.” Canon pulled a set of jingling keys out of his pocket. “Follow me.”

The four remaining in the foyer were silent a moment before Alvarez looked at Cat and Pris and asked, “So do you two want him for this or not?”
“No,” said Cat.

“Yes,” said Pris.

Cat and Pris gave each other questioning looks.

Alvarez shot one at Mick, as if he could break the tie, and he shrugged. He honestly didn’t know if Canon was capable of arson. The man wasn’t exactly light on his feet. It was hard to imagine him setting a fire in a locked, occupied building. But it was an amateur arson job. Maybe Canon hired someone? A student? That would be ironic.

He wanted to hear what his sister and grand-niece thought, but Canon soon reappeared.
 

“Your flunkies are wrecking my garage,” Canon said, rolling his eyes. “Gee, I hope they find something useful back there. I can tell you one thing, though. There aren’t any donuts.”

Mick groaned inwardly. It was this sensibility that explained why Canon’s art wasn’t more successful, he thought.

“Well, have we run out of things to say?” Canon leaned against the table in the foyer and whistled, as if waiting for the bus. He checked his watch.

Mick regretted his decision to accompany the three women on this trip. At least he could stop off in Hollywood on the way back to check out an apartment building that looked promising, more his speed. He’d driven his Fiat up alone, and Cat and Pris were in the rental car.

Speck and Santiago returned with a couple of boxes of evidence total, from both the garage and the rest of the house. They would take it in for further analysis. Mick peeked inside one of the boxes as they loaded it into the police cruiser and saw a canister of Coleman fuel. He didn’t figure Canon as the camping type.

Chapter Sixteen

At first, Grace thought Mick moved too quickly on the fourplex he’d found in Hollywood. But then she realized it wasn’t the speed with which he purchased the building; it was that he’d done so entirely without her input. She’d hoped their recent closeness would mean he’d at least show the place to her—and Cat—before he agreed to buy it. But no.

And that hurt.

She nursed the wound as they moved into the place, which did turn out to be a great buy. It was a mid-sized apartment building housing four units that had been converted into live/work lofts. Built in 1957, the structure still retained its original character, with many of the features Mick had admired in the Brickell Lofts. So he’d bought the entire building outright directly from the seller, paying cash. He moved into one unit himself, rented another out to Rose de la Crem, reserved a third for Cat and Grace, and was looking for a tenant for the fourth. He’d purchased it from an elderly woman who could no longer adequately take care of it and was moving herself into a retirement home in Boca. She’d apparently given Mick a deal, and in exchange, he agreed to help her sell off what she didn’t need and move into her place in Boca.