The Play of Light and Shadow & Writing (5 page)

Athletic trophies atop a low bookcase
indicated that the smaller room across the hall belonged to Carol
Prentice. Its decorations reflected her passion for art. Unframed
reproductions of famous paintings and posters advertising museum
exhibitions floated against the walls without apparent support. The
towel she’d used at poolside lay discarded on the bed.

We continued down the hall. Alexis Crowell
came out of the room next to her mother’s and stepfather’s. Despite
her apartment in the city, she evidently still maintained quarters
here, too. Holding a glass of champagne and moving with an
inebriate’s self-consciousness, she raised her glass in a mocking
salute. Champagne slopped over the rim.

“
No boogieman up here,” she needled
Darnell.

“
What about Derek?”

“
He’s
not a
boogieman.” She shook her head with exaggerated
emphasis.

“
Lexie, where is he?” I
asked.

“
Prob’ly taking pictures of the
scull’ry maid.” Her laugh was off-key, brittle, her eyes unfocused
and her voice thick with the effort to enunciate.

“
Lexie…”

“
Y’really a bartender now,
Alan?”

“
Yes. At Culhane’s. Come in sometime
and I’ll buy you a drink.”

“
Oh, you can’t afford what
I
drink.”

What she drank was disaffection, buried
anger, and self-loathing, a brew bitterer than any bartender could
concoct. I was glad of my impoverishment.

“
Ms. Crowell,” Darnell said sharply,
“where’s Derek?”

“
Ooh! Grilling me, Mr. Detective?” She
thrust out her hip, patted it, and made a loud kissing noise. “Just
what the hell
is
a scull’ry,
and why does it need a maid?”

“
Lexie, this is important,” I
said.

“
So
serious,
Alan!” She made a face. “Oh, all right. He went to get
lunch.”

We went back downstairs and retraced the path
we’d taken when we first entered the house, emerging onto the deck
near the pool. The sunlight was dazzling, the air thick with heat
and humidity. Guests filled their plates before sitting down at the
umbrella-shaded tables. Derek wasn’t among them. We continued
around the house, neither of us speaking, our footfalls on the deck
the only sound.

We found him not far from sliding glass doors
that led into Gaines’s office. His widened eyes stared at the sky
as though at another enticing shot, but he couldn’t see it. He lay
on his back, his face darkly congested with blood, his tongue
swollen between his lips. The camera strap was looped tightly
around his throat, the camera sitting on his chest like a huge
religious medallion. His accessory bag lay a few feet from his
body. Disks spilled onto the planking.

I looked away abruptly. For the second
time that day I felt an adrenaline chill. This time bile rose in my
throat. I heard Darnell say: “
Now
we’ll invite the cops.”

Shadow on a sun-bright day, the hour
following the arrival of the police was a plodding nightmare of
bureaucratic efficiency and formality. Darnell had phoned them from
Gaines’s office while I remained on the deck, looking out over the
rolling slopes of lawn, not looking at Derek. When Darnell
returned, he let me choose whether to tell the Gainses about the
death or to stay with the body while he told them. Hating both
choices, I concluded that dealing with the explosive aftermath of
the announcement was less appealing than staying where I was.

“
Cops’re on the way,” Darnell said.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

He went into the house while I stared out
across the lawn, my hands on the railing, breathing slowly and
deeply, and tried not to think about what lay on the deck a few
feet away. The day had metamorphosed into the cacodemonic snare
depicted in Riveau’s painting. Minutes moved like glaciers.
Eventually I heard cars pull into the driveway and stop, their
doors being slammed. Footsteps sounded on the deck, and a group of
men came around the corner of the house. Two were in plain clothes,
three others in uniform.

“
You Darnell?” one of the
plainclothesmen asked.

“
No, I’m—”

“
I’m Darnell” came from behind
me.

He emerged from the office followed by a
pallid Barton Gaines who stared at Derek’s body with transfixed
revulsion.

The plainclothesman showed Darnell his badge.
“Detective-Sergeant Mitch Warner.” Indicating the other man in
mufti, he said: “This is Jim Cochran.”

Warner was tall, slender, and dark-haired.
Cochran was an inch or two shorter, stockier, with crewcut
reddish-blond hair and a spray of freckles across a face set in a
permanent adolescent sneer. Both appeared to be in their late
thirties.

Cochran drew a pair of latex gloves from the
side pocket of his sports coat. He slipped them on and knelt beside
Derek’s body.

“
Let‘s hear it,” Warner said to
Darnell.

The endless hours of shadow had begun.

Police activity roiled around us while
Darnell explained the situation. A photographer took pictures of
Derek’s body from various angles, a grisly irony that made me
wonder if the deceased would have thought of himself as an
“enticing shot.” Cochran tagged and carefully put the camera,
disks, and accessory case into plastic bags. The medical examiner
performed his duties, then someone else chalked an outline of the
corpse on the deck. Next came the indignity of the body bag, that
final appalling ritual of mortal diminution. I observed all of this
with a haggard Barton Gaines standing alongside, both of us silent.
Other detectives and uniformed officers went into the house to take
statements from the guests.

“
My God, Alan,” Gaines whispered. “What
have I gotten us into? That painting is a curse.”

Warner and Cochran questioned Gaines and me,
taking each of us aside to do so, presumably to confirm what
Darnell had told them and to compare our versions of events. Toward
me Warner was polite, Cochran surly and suspicious. Interviewing
Gaines, Cochran suddenly became deferential. When the
interrogations were finished, Warner asked Gaines if he could use
the telephone.

Moving as unsteadily as a man who has just
gotten casts removed from both legs, Gaines led him into the
office. Warner picked up the phone on the desk, and Gaines vanished
from view.

Darnell lit a cigarette and asked: “Did you
happen to check the camera before you bagged it?”

Cochran looked at him narrowly. “For
what?”

“
Was there a disk in it?”

“
That don’t concern you
now.”

“
Was there a disk in it?”

He stepped in close to Darnell. “S’matter,
you don’t hear so good?”

Smoke drifted lazily from Darnell’s nostrils.
“We’re on the same side, Cochran, so here’s a tip for you. That
disk could contain vital evidence. If you don’t have it, you’d
better find it.”

“
Here’s a tip for
you
.” He poked Darnell in the chest. “You’re out
of it now. You’re done. No more gouging the rich folks for big
fees. It’s police business. I don’t need a P.I. telling me how it
works.”

“
He used to be a cop,” I
said.

Cochran flashed his sneer at me.
“
Used
to be.”

“
Ex-Philly homicide,” Warner said,
stepping onto the deck and sliding the doors closed. “Before we
left the station, I had someone run a check on you. I just called
to get the results. You had a good record. Why’d you
quit?”

“
Lots of reasons,” Darnell said. “Some
of them were cretins like your partner.”

“
He’s got no more business here,”
Cochran said. “It’s our case now.” His fists clenched at his sides.
“Don’t you realize who lives here?”

“
Cochran’s a gloryhound, Professor,”
Darnell said as if the detectives weren’t there. “He figures
cozying up to prominent citizens like the Gaineses will float his
career.”

“
Darnell’s involved,” Warner said
flatly. “He stays.”

“
He’s not a cop any more, Mitch; he’s a
damn P.I.”

“
He has more experience handling
homicides than both of us put together.
And
he’s willing to cooperate.” It was a
statement, but he looked at Darnell significantly.

“
You couldn’t get me out of here with a
catapult,” Darnell said.

Seething, Cochran kept silent.

Darnell ground out his cigarette on the
railing and dropped the butt into his coat pocket. He nodded toward
the house. “Get any useful information?“

Warner shook his head. “Nobody heard an
argument, nobody saw anything. Most of them didn‘t even know
Trevor.”

“
Julian Lakehurst did,” Cochran said.
“His card was in Trevor’s pocket.”

Darnell’s jaw tightened. “Nice of you to get
around to telling us.”

The stocky detective’s freckles gained
prominence against a reddening complexion. “I don’t have to
tell
you
squat.”

“
Knock it off,“ Warner said. He gave
his partner an annoyed look before asking Darnell: “The killing and
theft connected?”

”
No doubt.”

“
Anything to the Marchand
angle?”

“
I‘m not sure, but I‘d guess not.” He
jerked a thumb toward the house. “You have a number of possible
motives in there.”

“
I‘m listening.”

“
For openers, my client could be
working an insurance scam.”

“
Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “Are
you saying Bart stole the painting to collect the
insurance?”

“
It’s a possibility, Professor. He
might’ve set me up.

I’d be watching the gallery and could
corroborate his story about the great Paul Marchand miraculously
swiping the painting. Then he’d collect the insurance money
and
have his painting.”

“
It doesn‘t make sense,” I said.
“Marjorie owns a company worth billions and Bart’s not exactly
destitute. There’s no reason for him to commit fraud.”

“
How do you know he don’t have gambling
debts?” Cochran challenged. “Maybe he’s got a girlfriend who’s
draining his bank account. You think his wife would like payin’ off
loan sharks or footin’ the bill for his honey?”

For a man who had earlier shown courtesy
bordering on obsequiousness toward Gaines, Cochran had certainly
warmed to the idea of his guilt. But it might explain Gaines’s
uneasiness, even on Thursday night, if he’d been planning something
all along. The thought angered me because, if true, it would mean
I’d been duped as well. “So you think Bart acted in collusion with
Derek and then killed him?” I asked.

“
I’m just thinking out loud,” Darnell
said. “There’s no evidence to accuse anyone yet.”

“
Let’s hear the other motives,” Warner
said.

“
Possible
motives. Mrs. Gaines didn’t want me or any other detective
here today. She also doesn’t want to play second fiddle to the
artwork. She got flirty with Derek and posed for the photo session,
maybe to make Gaines jealous. If she stole the painting, it could
be she plans to later pretend the thief’s contacted her to sell it
back. Supposedly spending her own money for it would give her a
hold over her husband.

“
Maybe Gaines has something
extracurricular going on with Carol Prentice, the live-in
assistant. Like Cochran said, she might be an expensive date and
another reason for Mrs. Gaines to resent her husband. Alexis
Crowell’s just plain bitter; she’d steal it for some sort of
revenge. She was also pretty insecure about Derek‘s attentions, and
demanding of them. Julian Lakehurst told Gaines he has a buyer, and
he seems to be motivated strictly by profit. He suggested the party
in the first place, maybe to grab the painting and put the blame
Marchand.”

Darnell’s conjectures slid through my head,
inspiring one of my own: “Suppose Marchand were in league with
Lakehurst, to gain entry to the house. Perhaps Derek discovered
something incriminating and was killed because of it.“

“
It’s as possible as anything else at
this point.”

“
But how the devil did the painting
vanish from the gallery?”

Darnell scowled, gray-blue eyes darkening.
“When I can answer that one, Professor, you’ll be among the first
to know.”

“
Could someone have rigged the easel?”
Warner asked.

“
To take a painting off its stretcher
at a distance and make it disappear? Tell me how,” Darnell said. He
looked at Cochran pointedly. “The picture Derek shot from the
doorway could be very important. When you examined the camera, was
there a disk in it?”

Cochran stood motionless in sullen defiance.
Finally, after a noisy exhalation of disgust: “No, it was
empty.”

“
You think there’s something on the
disk that points to the killer?” Warner asked.

“
It needs checking.”

“
The camera’s digital. The killer
could’ve deleted the picture on the spot.”

“
No.” Cochran shook his head. “This
kill don’t look premeditated. They were servin’ lunch on the deck.
The perp took a hell of a chance wasting Trevor right around the
corner from a bunch of possible witnesses. The perp flipped out and
strangled him, grabbed the disk out of the camera, dropped the
camera on Trevor’s chest, and took off. He’d be crazy to sit there
goin’ through every picture on the disk till he found the one to
erase.”