Never Sleep With a Suspect on Gabriola Island (15 page)

Next came the lightweight tools in bizarre and intriguing shapes, for garden implements. Arthritic gardeners (like we all may one day be) should “flock” to these. Or should that be “phlox?”

Rose Gill's final invention (and her most interesting, in my own personal humble opinion, but I'm sure it will be the general consensus of all before long) is her Extendiarm. “It's like having your own personalized Canadarm. It opens, shuts, twists, grabs, rotates, holds, tilts and picks up, it will do anything you need to do but can't reach to do it,” Ms. Gill assured me. She demonstrated by picking up ONLY ONE blade of grass. The Extendiarm would be indispensable when you're recovering from your hip or knee replacement or when you've broken your leg. Short people (or should I say “height challenged”) would love it for reaching overhead cupboards.

I asked when her inventions would be on the market for ordinary folk and was told Soon, but she didn't know how much they'd cost.

Gabriola is a fortunate community indeed to have such a brilliant and dedicated inventor. After a companionable cup of tea in their elegant living room overlooking Northumberland Channel, we parted. Good luck, Rose Gill, with your Future Inventions!

• • •

The distance from Lucille Maple in person to the tone of her prose was impossible to fathom. Noel turned off the ringer of his phone, lay his watch on it and went to bed. Only when his head hit the pillow did he realize he'd eaten at a restaurant. Was he moving away from total bereavement?

LUCAS HERSCHEL FELT a disappointment he knew Kyra didn't share: she'd arrived too late for the concert. She loved him, but not his music. And he loved her too, but not her ever-present psychologizing, as if the pleasures and injustices of life could be explained by the workings of the human mind. As if one could ever discover more than a detail or two of these. As if history didn't exist. As if one could avoid politics, the evils of the right, the dangers of the left.

It was 9:30 am and Kyra still slept. He'd returned the living room to its usual state, couch under the window, Bösendorfer realigned with the wall—how well Brina had played last night, her fingers leaping through the
Trout Quintet
, he'd not heard a single false note. He stored the folding chairs away.

He squeezed some oranges. As he hoped, the old juicer's whirring woke Kyra. She came out of his study rubbing her eyes, wearing only a black T-shirt and her underpants. “Good morning, Little One.” A long time since she'd been small enough to deserve the name but for him she'd always be that.

She hugged him. “Morning, Dad.”

“Breakfast?”

She nodded. “A quick shower.” Her father, ever a skinny man, had put on some weight. His tennis tan showed how much his hair had receded. Lucas. She'd begun addressing her parents by their first names the summer she was fifteen. Sometime later Lucas had reminded her he was the only person in the world she could call Father.

The hot water woke her. Noel's study couch, her father's study couch—she looked forward to a real bed tonight, alone at home. She felt a little guilty about the concert, but missing it was a relief. Lucas' group was adequate at best and her father as violist the weakest of the five. The strongest player was Vera the cellist, an antique dealer like the others. Her keeping Lucas as part of her quintet had long made Kyra assume more than music was involved here. She didn't have much of an ear but she could hear timing and when Lucas came in a sixty-fourth of a beat late, it jarred. She dried, pulled on clean underwear and the new clothes she'd bought yesterday—her father liked to see her well-dressed. She sat down with him at the table. Through the window she noted that the vine maple was tinged with fall.

“Fresh coffee?”

“Yum.” And an omelet
aux fines herbes
, and toast. Pretty good compensation for the lumpy couch. And she knew how pleased he was that she didn't step outside for a cigarette any more. She took a bite of omelet. “Yum.”

“Thank you.”

“Love you, love your omelet.”

Lucas patted her hand. “And how's Noel? Still suffering?”

“Actually, he's pulling himself together.”

“I'm glad you spent the extra day there. Noel cares for you greatly.” And vice versa, he thought. Oh, what might have been . . .

“I know that!” She laughed a little as she heard her adolescent tone.

“And what happened with Mr. Marchand?” Lucas raised his eyebrows.

They were done with the case so she could tell Lucas, and did. “There's no motive for Marchand to be involved in any of this.”

Lucas smiled. “The man I met didn't seem capable of killing. But he's most able to find lost schools-of paintings.” Lucas poured them more coffee. “I've seen them, they're often fine work. Dealers who locate schools-of usually come up with pieces that should remain lost.”

“Why?”

“Nowhere close to the standards of the master.”

“And you want to know why Marchand's so successful.”

“I do.”

“It's his brother-in-law, Tam Gill, who goes to Europe. He talks about sniffing out the paintings.”

“How does Marchand hear about them? What are his methods? Why is he so successful?”

Kyra sipped her coffee. “Can't he be successful?”

“But why only he?” Lucas, long-time member of a small antique consortium, had left his tenured position in Political Science at Simon Fraser University fifteen years after he'd begun teaching there, furious at academic bureaucracy. He started his antique shop and became a happier man. Years ago he had explained to Kyra that his antiquarian friends and he helped one another. They were too old to compete. Now he said, “Marchand seems to have no help from anyone. Could he have a secret cache somewhere?”

“If he did, would he pull out one or two paintings at a time to keep the price high?”

“That'd make sense. If it's a cache, for example, he must have gained access to some old Nazi or Communist hoard.”

“Isn't that possible?”

“There'd have been rumors. We haven't heard the least rumble.”

How well connected was her father? “Could someone be forging them, selling them to him?”

“Extremely doubtful. The paintings Marchand's found have been well authenticated. Most of them by two of the best people in the field. I've seen them. They all come with their provenances.”

“Maybe stolen?”

“It's a mighty small world. Theft, even from obscure sources, gets whispered about.”

“Is there big money in these schools-of paintings?”

“There can be. In good condition, a School of Cranach or Ghirlandaio, with a few discernible brush strokes of the master, a metre by a metre-three,” Lucas shrugged, “half a million to a million? Way more than a few years ago. Size, condition, scarcity, recognition factor all play their part.”

Kyra sipped coffee. “Yep, big money. Who's buying them?”

“People with big money.”

“Do you go looking for schools-of?”

Lucas raised his eyebrows. “In the old days we didn't have to, the news would come to us. My friends and I share costs. We still have scouts across Europe. Since the late nineties, they've found very few. Two summers ago I wrote Marchand, asking him to talk to our small group. He wrote back saying he was far too busy. Last year I wrote again, but he never replied.”

“Why didn't you just phone?”

“In our world we're not quite so abrupt.”

“Did you write him with a fountain pen?'

“With a quill.” They smiled.

“What makes Marchand such a good hunter?”

“We'd like to know. Should we hire you?”

“We?”

“I believe the others would also be interested.”

She thought about it. “Chances are pretty good I won't be able to find out anything. If you and your friends who know the art world can't figure it out—”

“We don't know Marchand and Gill. You and Noel do.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Got a lot of money?”

“No. But a little.”

“Okay.” Ethical to investigate an ex-client?

• • •

Not till he'd finished breakfast did Noel notice the red light on his answering machine blinking. Maybe Kyra, trying to reach him? Damn those breather calls, blocking them cut out everything. He pressed the playback button. A moment of silence— Shit! The breathing again, then a raspy voice, “ . . . nice new tires . . .” He squeezed his eyes shut. A click, and the message ended.

“You fucker.” For minutes he didn't move. All coincidence had vanished. Someone has it in for you, Noel. Who, damn it? And why? Call Albert— No, try to figure this out by yourself.

When had the phone calls started? Five weeks ago. When he was already beaten down by Brendan's death. Someone who knew that, wanting to beat him down some more? Whoever was calling, and had slashed his tires, had succeeded in rekindling Noel's discomfort in being a visible person. Except there weren't any newspaper articles with his byline, let alone media interviews. His only public activity was this investigating, only since two days ago. And Kyra had it right, asking people questions is hardly a public act. So timing made any relationship between clearing Eaglenest Gallery and the breathing caller impossible.

Could it go back to that poor woman he'd maligned? But that had been years ago; why now? Anyway, since then he'd practically dropped from sight. Kyra was one of the few old friends he still saw. And he'd not accepted invitations from any of Brendan's friends.

Who the hell had it in for him?

Maybe the time had come. Up on a high shelf he found three packets containing the notes for his book on the Chung murder case and the file holding forty-six pages of printed-out manuscript. He piled it beside his computer, clicked from standby to active, pulled up the Chung directory, and opened the paper file beside him. He reached page seven without taking in a word.

He leaned back and stared at the ceiling. Couple of cobwebs up there. At least some spider was catching flies. The book needed a few active cobwebs. He could phone his editor. He had nothing to say to her. Too bad Kyra had gone. Call her? Tell her about the phone call too.

Or go back to Gabriola and check out the property Dempster was looking after? But Yardley had found nothing. Anyway, the investigation was over, they'd done what Marchand wanted. Just write the report. Could Roy's side job have had anything to do with the Gallery's reputation?

• • •

Question: What is worse than sitting in your car for an hour and a half, minutes from the border, on a sunny fall afternoon as the engine idles, breathing in poison from the exhaust of the ancient truck to the left, all for the privilege of crossing back to the US?

Answer: Knowing you chose the wrong lane. The car to the left and the van to the right had shot so far ahead they're likely already in Bellingham. That, and the dull hard pounding of too-heavy metal shaking the SUV coming up on the left, vibrating through your tires, deep into your buttock-bones.

Kyra turned on her CD player to drown out the sound, but the Bare Naked Ladies disk Noel had loaned her couldn't stave off the pulsations. And the other CDs were no better, Moxy Früvous, Nina Simone, Liz Phair. She took her foot off the brake. Her Tracker rolled one car length. The throbbing kept pace, her seat a-buzz with it. Good thing she'd prepared herself for this with extra weight, some flesh to keep the bone from grinding away inside her derrière skin.

Two lengths up, the thump-thump from the van softened; three. A car full of dogs now, German shepherds, three huge heads out the two side windows. She loathed dogs. A few weeks after she'd started investigating, Sam had begun pushing. Their conversations were versions of him saying: “Get a dog, when you're alone it's not safe.”

“A dog?”

“For your line of work.”

Sam could rarely bring himself to say the word
investigation
. Or
detection
. “Not safe in Bellingham, Washington, for shitsake? Nice-salt-of-the-earth town like Bellingham?”

“Sure.” Sam would shake his head, his show of weariness. “You're out alone all the time.”

“All the time? A couple of cases.”

“Gone all night—”

“It's called a stakeout. What're you saying?”

“I'm saying you're not here. With me. Next to me. In bed with me.”

She'd say, “Sam, you were the one who said it'd do me good, getting a job.” And he'd say, “But not this kind of job.” And she'd say, “I like this kind of job.” And the anger would build. “Sorry.”

“Think about getting a dog,” he'd say.

Dogs are so fucking dependent. Hours of that going for a walk thing. And they drooled. Saliva all over your sweater. Your crotch. Maybe not from a small dog, a poodle, but who in her right mind wanted a poodle. Anyway, when she was alone on a case, a dog would get in the way. Sam just didn't get her detective work.

The dogs had moved five cars up.

Sam never did buy her a dog. For safety's sake, he'd bought her the Chevy Tracker. Perfect for your work, he'd boasted. And gas, insurance, maintenance get to be business expenses. She'd hugged him. She'd stared out the window at the white box on wheels. This was absolutely not the car she wanted to be seen in. Why hadn't she sold it? Because Sam had given it to her?

She needed food. Why couldn't some enterprising lad with a hot dog cart decide to take on the border crunch? A big fat hamburger, heavy with relish, half-sour pickles, lightly fried onions, tomatoes, crisp lettuce—

Two lengths forward. She looked at her face in the rear-view mirror. Hair sticking out more than usual. Eyes bright and brown as ever. She squinted at her reflection. The new weight padded the curve of her cheekbones. When she was fourteen Noel had told her her cheekbones were her finest feature. She believed him instantly. Did she really want admiration for her cheekbones? Her three exhusbands had all raved about her lovely cheeks. With that much agreement, should she argue?