The Nightingale Before Christmas (24 page)

They exchanged a look.

“People will talk,” Mother said.

“Martha will talk,” Eustace said. “And she's not exactly an unbiased source. I assumed she was just spreading lies about Clay until I checked with a friend who runs a gallery in New York.”

“And he confirmed her story?” I asked.

“He told me the facts, which were a lot less damning than Martha made them out to be,” Eustace said. “To hear her talk, you'd think he was a serial killer who'd gotten off with a slap on the wrist.”

“Well, she had considerable provocation,” Mother said.

“To slander the guy?”

“Slander is a little strong, don't you think?” Mother murmured.

They went back to their rooms, still amicably debating whether Martha's dislike of Clay had motivated her to judge his past actions too harshly. I left them to it.

I pulled out my cell phone and called the chief about getting back into the house to borrow Clay's paintings.

“I have no objection,” he said. “But I think you should get permission from the estate first.”

“Do we even know who inherits?” I asked.

“A brother in Richmond,” the chief said. “Runs a used-car dealership there. I can give you his number.”

“Do you think it's okay to call so soon after Clay's death?” I asked.

“I didn't get the feeling he was too distraught,” the chief said. “They hadn't seen each other in five years.”

The brother was, at first, baffled by my request.

“Sure I can sell you the paintings,” he said. “If we can agree on a price. But not till we finish probating the estate, and who knows how long that will take.”

“I don't want to buy the paintings,” I said. “I want to borrow them. To display in the show house, in the room Clay decorated.”

“Show house?”

“The last project he did before his untimely death,” I said. “As a memorial to his life and work.”

I was laying it on a bit thick, but the brother didn't seem to be grasping the concept.

“I'm not sure we want to do that,” he said. “They could be worth something. Not my cup of tea, but for a while there he was getting a pretty high price for them.”

“Yes, but he's fallen off the radar in the last fifteen years,” I said. “An artist needs to keep producing new work to keep people interested, and I got the impression he hasn't been painting these last few years.”

“Not since he went off to prison,” the brother said. “He came and stayed with me when he got out. I thought maybe he'd start up painting again, but he never did. Just hung around moping until I told him he had to get a job or get out.”

“What happened then?” I asked.

“He managed to get a job working for a woman decorator,” he said. “Old girlfriend of his.”

“What was her name?” I asked.

“Martha something,” the brother said.

Interesting. Clay wasn't just Martha's hated rival. He was also her hated ex.

“He knew her from high school, I think. Moved out of my basement and into her fancy West End house. And the next thing I knew, he's a
decorator
himself.”

Heavy sarcasm on the word “decorator.” Was he implying that his brother wasn't much of a decorator? Or indicating that he didn't think much of decorating as a career choice?

“You didn't approve?” I asked aloud.

“More like he didn't approve of me. Didn't want to have anything to do with a used-car salesman. We weren't getting along when he left, and I haven't heard much from him since. I'm just hoping he hasn't left a whole bunch of debts for me to take care of.”

I saw my opening.

“Well, if he has left debts, selling the paintings could help out, couldn't it?” I said. “Assuming you can get his name out there again to raise the price. Displaying the paintings in the show house will help make him visible again. Hundreds and hundreds of affluent people will be going through that house, seeing the paintings in the best possible setting. And if anyone asks if they're for sale, we can steer them to you. When you combine that with the publicity that's bound to follow when the media find out his real name—well, I wouldn't be surprised if the price you can get for the paintings went up considerably.”

“Ah,” he said. “Well, that might be something we could think about doing.”

“And we'll post a cash bond for the appraised value of the paintings, to ensure their safe return, and give you credit in the program as a major sponsor.”

“You've got a deal.”

Okay, we had a deal, but it took a little while to hash out the terms. Program credit turned into an ad for the brother's car dealership, but he agreed to fax me permission to borrow as much of Clay's artwork as I wanted.

“Not just a former boss but a former girlfriend,” I muttered after I hung up. Should I tell the chief about this, or would he already know it? Of course, Martha had an alibi—unless the chief had found a problem with it. But what if one of Clay's more recent flames found out about their shared history and thought they were rekindling their old romance? I'd have thought they were more likely to rekindle the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, but who knows what crazy ideas someone who hadn't seen them together might get. Someone like Felicia Granger, for example.

I'd figure out how to share this with the chief later. Right now I had work to do. I called Randall to saddle him with the job of arranging for the appraisal and the bond. I called the program designer and told her to figure out a way to work the ad in before she delivered the program to the printer today. And then I called the chief to ask if he could let me into Clay's house.

“Can you meet Deputy Butler over there in fifteen minutes?” he asked.

“I'm already out the door,” I said. “By the way—Clay's brother seems to think that he and Martha were an item at one time.”

“Does he now?” the chief said. “Thanks.”

So much for finding out whether the chief already knew.

 

Chapter 20

While I was driving over to Clay's house, my phone rang. Michael's mother again. Probably more cooking questions.

Sure enough, when I pulled up in front of Clay's house, there was a voice mail.

“Meg? Are you there? Your brother told me there was a pie your family always likes to have at Christmas. Could you call to give me the recipe?”

“Later,” I muttered, as I scrambled up the walk to meet Aida Butler.

“Girl, are you okay?” she asked. “You look frazzled.”

“Gee, thanks,” I said. “I feel frazzled. I cannot wait till this show house is over.”

“And these paintings you're picking up are part of that?”

“A big part.”

She opened up the door and I followed her in.

“Stay here while I check the house,” she said. She didn't pull out her gun, but she was clearly not just going through the motions. I reflected that since Aida was even taller than me and entered Ironman competitions in her spare time, she was probably at least as good a bodyguard as anyone on the force.

I waited in the living room, trying to be alert for sounds around me. And studying Clay's paintings, trying to imagine how they'd look in the house.

“All clear,” she said, returning to the living room.

“Was that just standard procedure?” I asked. “Or do you have reason to worry that someone might be in here?”

“The killer's still on the loose,” she said. “And more to the point, this is a house known to be unoccupied. Open invitation to vandalism. These the paintings you want?”

I nodded.

“They're good,” Aida said. “But I'm not sure I'd want any of them on my wall. Looking at those things day-in day-out could make you slit your wrists.”

I could see that. They were dark and bleak and uncompromising. And as far as I could tell, very good. I wouldn't want them on my wall, either, but if they were in a museum I could see going back to visit them more than once. Why would anyone who could do something this good ever stop?

I could worry about that later. For the moment, the important thing was that, as I'd remembered, they were the right sizes for the blank spaces in Clay's room. And they were painted mostly in black and gray, with a few muted browns and greens and the occasional stark splash of white or red. They'd fit in perfectly with the décor in his room.

“Help me get this thing down,” I said, indicating the cityscape.

The canvas was huge, at least four by five feet, and heavier than we expected. As we were easing it down to the floor, Aida lost control of her end and it slammed down on her foot.

“Owwwww!” she shrieked, and began hopping around on her good foot. “Rainbows! Rainbows!”

“Are you okay?” I asked. Rainbows? Was she becoming delirious?

“No, I'm not okay,” she moaned. “That thing hurts like a son-of-a—rainbows! Rainbows! Dammit,
rainbows
!”

She pulled off her heavy shoe and her sock and we looked at her foot. Apparently the corner of the painting had landed on her big toe. The nail was turning black, and the whole toe looked bruised.

“Only time I've ever been grateful for these plug-ugly shoes they make us wear,” she muttered. “That thing could have taken my whole toe off.”

“You probably broke it,” I said. “Go down to the ER. And what's with the rainbows?”

“Trying to clean up my language,” she said. “You know our new civilian employee? That prissy little twerp who just started helping out at the front desk? He accused me of creating a hostile work environment, just 'cause I dropped the F-bomb a few times when I was ticked off about something. And the chief said he wouldn't discipline me, but could I please find something else to say.”

“And how can anyone object to the word ‘rainbows'?” I said, laughing.

“Well, it's starting to make the twerp really nervous whenever I say it,” Aida said. “But he hasn't complained, so that's something. Did we damage the painting?”

We hadn't. I suspected Aida was a little disappointed at that. She stared at it balefully while putting her sock and shoe back on.

“No way that thing's ever gonna fit in your car,” she said. She stood up and winced a little.

“You're right.” I pulled out my phone and punched one of my speed-dial numbers. “Randall,” I said. “Can you spare a truck?”

Aida and I wrestled all three paintings off the walls and into the foyer.

“Did you see any signs that he was still painting?” I asked while we were waiting for Randall.

“You mean like an easel?” she asked.

“Or unfinished canvases. Or paints.”

“No, but I wasn't looking for that. Let's take a look.”

It didn't take us long. Clay wasn't into clutter. In fact, he wasn't into much of anything that we could see.

“Likes to travel light,” Aida said. “I hear it happens sometimes with ex-cons.”

And no sign that he was painting.

We did find an unfinished painting in his attic—a nude study of a blond woman. Her voluptuous body was rendered in minute detail, but the head was sketchy, merely a flesh-colored patch on the canvas with the barest suggestion of features. From the amount of dust on it I deduced he hadn't abandoned it recently.

“Not bad,” Aida said. “But if you're thinking about putting that in the show house, I'd think again.”

She had a point, and not just because the painting was unfinished. It wasn't just sensual—it was lascivious. Provocative. Way too controversial for our small-town show house.

I took a couple of pictures of it with my phone, and then we put it back where we'd found it—shoved away in a corner of the attic—and went downstairs again.

“You're right,” I said. “Not a good idea to use that painting. But damn, it's good. I didn't like Clay, and I can't say I'll miss him all that much, but I'd like to have seen what else he'd have done if he'd started painting again.”

“Maybe he was planning to,” Aida said. “Isn't this a sketchbook?”

She picked up something sitting on the coffee table and handed it to me—an eight-and-a-half by eleven notebook bound in black faux leather. I opened it to the first page and found myself looking at a sketch of a nude woman. Recognizably Felicia, though a lot more voluptuous than I remembered her as being. Maybe Clay was trying to flatter her.

“Okay,” Aida said. “I see why Jerry Granger might be a bit put out if he caught sight of that.”

Just then we heard a heard a knock on the door.

“I'll get it,” Aida said. “Just in case it's not Randall.”

I flipped through a few more pages in the sketchbook. Several more flattering sketches of Felicia. A distinctly unflattering but highly recognizable one of Jerry Granger. Until I saw Clay's sketch, I hadn't quite realized how large Jerry's jaw was, or how Neanderthal it made him look.

On the next page was a sketch of Ivy. Ivy in the show house, hunched over in a corner of the hallway with a paintbrush in her hand, peering at the wall she was painting. He'd exaggerated the height of the walls looming over her, so she looked more like a mouse than a human. But unlike the one of Jerry, this sketch didn't feel unkind or mocking. More … bemused.

I kept turning the pages. Apparently this was a very recent sketchbook—all the denizens of the show house were there. I could tell he didn't like Mother—he'd sketched her looking at Ivy's Snow Queen mural, and made the Snow Queen look the warmer of the two. He didn't like Eustace either, but about the only unflattering thing he did was exaggerate Eustace's neat little paunch into a huge Santa-like belly.

He had a wicked take on Linda, showing her in her room, not only surrounded by chintz but even dressed in it, and when you looked at her feet you saw that she was gradually being sucked in, as if the chintz were quicksand and she its unwary prey. And of course he'd turned Vermillion into a stereotypical vampy figure reminiscent of Morticia Addams, which showed he hadn't looked too closely at her.