Half in Love with Artful Death (3 page)

After Seepy had disabled three men, the fighting slowed considerably. Rhodes walked over and with Andy's help separated Lonnie and Collins, who were still going at it. Rhodes pulled Lonnie to his feet, and Andy did the same for Collins.

“I'm really sorry,” Lonnie said to Collins. “I didn't mean to fall on you.”

“Fall on me, my ass,” Collins said. “You were trying to kill me, you little—”

“Watch yourself,” Rhodes said. “You don't want to start anything again.”

“Me start something?” Collins was boiling. “It wasn't my fault. It was his.”

“He's apologized,” Rhodes said. “You and Lonnie go stand over there out of the way. I'll talk to you in a minute. And no fighting.” Without waiting for a response, Rhodes turned and looked at some of the crowd. “It would be a good idea for all of you to get back to what you were doing. We'll investigate here and find out what happened to the artwork. I'd appreciate it if you'd wait a while in the building until I can come talk to you. You can put those cameras away now, though. The excitement is over.”

He hoped his last statement was true, and maybe it was. Even if it wasn't, everyone seemed to accept it. The people who'd come out of the senior center started to return to their domino games and Pilates classes. Some of them looked at their videos as they walked, and Rhodes hoped that nobody would trip and fall. The artists, still muttering, went back inside the gallery and antiques building.

Seepy Benton stayed behind, because Jennifer Loam was still there with her camera. Rhodes had a feeling he knew who the next big video star was going to be, and no one would enjoy the attention more than Seepy.

Rhodes was glad that Seepy was the momentary center of attention, as it would give him time for other things. He motioned for Andy.

“I'm going to have a chat with Lonnie and Burt,” Rhodes told the deputy. “You go inside and see if you can get a better idea about the damage that Burt … or someone … did.”

Andy looked over at Jennifer Loam, who was now doing a video interview with Seepy Benton.

“Don't worry about Seepy,” Rhodes said. “You know he's dating Deputy Grady. He's not looking for a new romance.”

“You sure about that?” Andy asked. “He looks interested to me.”

“He just likes attention. Call Hack and have him send another deputy, and then check out that paint can and anything else you can find.”

Andy did as he was told, but not without a couple of glances back in Seepy's direction.

Lonnie and Burt were already arguing again, so Rhodes went to calm them down. Or try to.

 

Chapter 3

Before Rhodes could get to the two men, Don McClaren came out of the building and joined them. He got in on the argument and shoved Burt Collins away from Lonnie.

“Hold on,” Rhodes said. “Let's not get that started again.”

“He's being offensive and insulting,” McClaren said. “I think somebody needs to teach him a lesson.”

The implication was clear that McClaren would like to be the one to do the teaching, but Rhodes wasn't going to let it happen. Not right then, anyway, even though he had an idea of what Collins might have said.

“It's over,” Rhodes said. “You go on back inside, Mr. McClaren.”

McClaren didn't argue. He started back toward the building, but halfway to the door, he stopped, turned, and appeared about to return.

“Just go on in,” Rhodes said.

McClaren glared at Collins, but that seemed to satisfy him for the moment. He nodded and went back inside.

“Now,” Rhodes said, looking at Collins, “let's get this all straight. Lonnie says he fell against you by accident. He's apologized. Seems to me that ought to settle it.”

“I'm really sorry,” Lonnie said.

“Bull corn,” Collins said. “You did it on purpose, and you aren't one bit sorry.”

Lonnie looked at Rhodes. “I don't know what else I can say.”

Rhodes didn't know, either. Collins had been taunting Lonnie, but that didn't mean that Lonnie had deliberately jumped him.

“Tell you what, Burt,” Rhodes said. “You go on home. If you want to file charges on Lonnie, you come to the jail tomorrow and do it. Right now, I have to investigate the vandalism of the paintings and see if I can figure out what happened and who did it.”

“Nobody hurt anything in there,” Collins said. “Improved it, if anything. You go look. You'll see.” He started to leave but stopped and turned. “You can expect me tomorrow. I'll be filing charges for assault and battery.”

“You really think he'll file on me?” Lonnie asked when Collins was out of earshot.

Rhodes shrugged. “Hard to say. He'll probably get over it.”

“I hope so,” Lonnie said. “I guess I'd better go and see what he did to the paintings.”

“He says he didn't do it.”

“Ha,” Lonnie said.

They started toward the door, but Jennifer Loam called out to Rhodes.

“Sheriff, could you just answer a couple of questions for me?”

Rhodes stopped. “If they're quick ones.”

Jennifer came over to him, followed by Seepy, who was looking quite pleased with himself.

“It's a little trick I learned when I was training with Professor Lansdale in Nacogdoches,” Seepy said. “It's all about pressure points. You don't have to use any fancy moves if you can just touch the pressure points. Not that I don't have some fancy moves. Would you like to have me demonstrate a few on camera?”

“Not right now,” Jennifer said. She turned the camera on Rhodes. “Sheriff, do you have any statement to make about what happened here today?”

Rhodes had learned a lot about the Internet in the last year or so. He hadn't realized how many people in Clearview, and the whole county for that matter, looked at their computers or their phones or their tablet devices every day to check on the latest news. Now he knew, and he knew he had to be very careful about what he said because it wasn't just the citizens who checked out Loam's Web site. It was the mayor and the city council and the county commissioners, too. Loam would have the video up on the site within minutes after leaving the scene, and the commissioners would be looking at it soon afterward. Rhodes suspected that they all told their administrative assistants to check it hourly, if not even more often.

“I haven't formed an opinion yet,” Rhodes said, feeling a little like a real politician. “I haven't looked over the whole scene to check out the possible vandalism.”

“What about the donnybrook we just witnessed? Will there be any charges filed?”

“It was more of a little scuffle,” Rhodes said, “and it's all settled now. I don't think it will go any further.”

“Mr. Collins didn't seem to feel that way.”

“I can't speak for him. I'll just have to wait and see.”

“Would you say that Dr. Benton saved the day here?”

Rhodes nodded. “He sure helped calm things down.”

“Thank you, Sheriff Rhodes,” Loam said. She turned off the camera. “You're getting more noncommittal every day, Sheriff.”

“I'm learning,” Rhodes said. “You'll have to excuse me now. I need to check on things inside.”

“I'll be right behind you,” Loam said.

Seepy Benton fell into step beside Rhodes and said, “I hope you're not going to blame me for the donnybrook.”

“More like a tussle,” Rhodes said, “and I don't blame you even if you did rush to judgment.”

“I hope your deputy bagged the paint can,” Benton said. “I'm sure Collins's fingerprints are on it.”

“Even if they are, he can just claim that he saw the can and picked it up out of curiosity. That won't convict him of anything.”

“It would help, wouldn't it?”

“Maybe,” Rhodes said.

They entered the store, which, although it wasn't air-conditioned, was cooler than the outside thanks to its high ceilings and the old electric fans with slow-turning wooden blades. The building had much better lighting than when it had been solely an antiques shop, but the old wooden floors were the same.

“Show me the damage,” Rhodes told Seepy.

Seepy pointed. “Right over there.”

Rhodes should have known. Everyone except for Andy Shelby was gathered along one side of the room, looking at two of the paintings. Andy, who had on a pair of nitrile rubber gloves, was poking around in a trash can, or what Rhodes supposed was a trash can. Given the surroundings, maybe it was some kind of art. Rhodes saw that Andy had already bagged the spray can and set it on a desk near the door, so he left him to his job.

Some of the art displayed on the walls and on little stands in various locations around the big room didn't look much like anything to Rhodes. He knew that art didn't need to be realistic and that his tastes, which ran more to Scrooge McDuck, were far from refined. Still, a blob was a blob. Or maybe not. Maybe if he looked at some of the tags, he'd learn differently.

He didn't get a chance, however, because Lonnie Wallace looked around and saw him. Lonnie walked over and said, “The damage is just terrible, but I can't stay to talk about it. I have to go back to the Beauty Shack. Mrs. Freeman's coming in about five minutes from now, and she's very picky. She won't let anybody do her hair but me. I'll be there if you need me. Just give me a call.”

“Sure,” Rhodes said. Lonnie hadn't been there when the paintings were vandalized, so he wouldn't be needed for a while. “I might need to see you later. In person.”

“Come on by,” Lonnie said. “You know where I'll be.”

He left, and Rhodes and Seepy went over to the damaged artwork. Loam was already there, documenting everything with her camera. The woman with the orange hair was pointing at a painting and talking.

“You can see that it's ruined,” she said.

She moved a little to the side so that Loam could get a closer shot. Rhodes saw that the painting, which had a lot of yellows and pinks and blues and greens and might have represented a field of flowers for all Rhodes knew, had a long diagonal gray line painted on it, from top right to bottom left.

“We might be able to clean it off,” Don McClaren said, “but it will never be the same. Now this is a little different. I can clean this easily.”

He showed Loam a sculpture of what appeared to Rhodes to be a small, twisted tree. The sculpture was mostly white with some green on the branches, if that was what they were. There was gray paint on the white.

“You can't clean this one,” Eric Stewart said, pointing to a painting of something that looked familiar to Rhodes. It took him a second or two, but then he remembered when he'd seen something similar. It had been in an English book in high school, and it illustrated a poem he'd had to read, something about a seashell. The picture in the book was a photograph, not a painting, and it didn't have a gray slash across it.

“That one's mine,” Seepy said. Loam turned her camera on him. “It's a cross-section of a chambered nautilus. All my artwork is based on the Golden Ratio.”

Rhodes had heard Seepy discourse on the Golden Ratio before, but not on its relation to his artwork. Then again, Rhodes hadn't heard Seepy discourse on his artwork. On his music, yes. On his detecting abilities, of course. On his teaching skills and his martial arts abilities, naturally. But not on his art.

“The Golden Ratio is 1.618,” Seepy said. “One plus the square root of five divided by two. That proportion occurs all through nature, just like in the chambered nautilus. Leonardo da Vinci used it often. The most famous example is in the sketch called the Vitruvian Man. Now, since my own field is nonabelian group theory—”

“Hold it,” Rhodes said. Art was one thing he was pretty sure he didn't understand. Nonabelian group theory was something he was positive he wouldn't understand. “Stop right there. Does that theory have anything to do with what happened here?”

“Not as far as I know,” Seepy said, “but I thought you might be interested in my art, since it's been defaced.”

“I'm more interested in catching the defacer,” Rhodes said. The best thing about Seepy's minilecture was that Jennifer Loam had moved away with her little camera and was taking video of some of the other pictures on display, the undamaged ones. Rhodes raised his voice and said, “Did anyone see who sprayed the paintings?”

The woman with the orange hair turned to Rhodes. Her hair, he decided, wasn't corkscrewed so much as tousled, but it was definitely orange. She wore no makeup, or didn't seem to, but then she didn't really need it. She was attractive enough without it, orange hair or not. She had large eyes, a wide mouth, and a husky voice. She wore jeans and a white shirt. There was a small tattoo of a butterfly on her neck.

“No, but one of mine is ruined,” she said, “and I did see that man coming out of the building as we were returning.”

“Returning from where?” Rhodes asked.

“We'd been at the college,” Don McClaren said. “The art students have a small exhibit there, and I wanted to show everyone what the kids had been working on. Most of us went on the college bus, but a few people had their own cars.”

“I was in my car,” the orange-haired woman said. “I got back a little before everyone else, and I saw that man leaving. I went in and saw what he'd done. It had to be him. No one else was inside.”

That didn't mean much. Collins could've sprayed the paintings, and Rhodes wouldn't have been surprised if that turned out to be the case, but the fact that he'd been in the building alone proved nothing.

“I didn't get your name,” Rhodes said.

“Marilyn Bradley.”

“You're not from around here, are you?”

“I'm from Derrick City. That's not far away.”

It was only about thirty miles. Rhodes had driven there not long ago when looking into another matter. He hadn't seen any orange-haired women while he was there.