The Witchfinder (21 page)

The door to the Talbot Gallery was locked. A sign on the glass said it was closed Sundays. Leaning against the glass with my hands cupped around my eyes I saw a shadow moving around inside. I rapped and went on rapping until the shadow came my way.

When Jean Sternhagen saw me she flashed her too-wide smile, pointed at the sign, and mouthed, “We’re closed.” She looked genuinely apologetic.

I mouthed something elaborate and unintelligible back. She shook her head, puzzle lines on her brow. I recited part of “Jabberwocky” and most of “Louie Louie” while she strained to read my lips. Finally she snapped back the lock and opened the door.

Works every time.

“I just need to talk to Miss Talbot,” I said. “Is she around?”

The smile that had started to come back faltered and fell off her face. When that happened the lower half of her beveled countenance collapsed. She was dressed for grunt work in faded jeans worn almost through at one knee and a man’s gray shirt with the tail out and the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. “She’s at home today. What happened to your head?”

“I was shot.”

She took in her breath. “Are you all right?”

“You believe I was shot?”

“Of course. Why would you make up a story like that?”

“Are you married?”

The smile flickered, then stayed on, supporting everything above it. Her mouth made sense then. It was the foundation of her face. “I’m living with someone.”

“How big is he?”

“I didn’t say it was a he.”

“Ah.”

“Don’t jump to conclusions. I’m staying with Miz Talbot until I find a place near work. The commute from Ann Arbor was killing me, especially in winter.”

“You must be pretty good friends.”

“Not really. I think she just takes in strays.” She reached up and patted her hair in back. She had it tied into a bun, but the corkscrew tendrils still framed her face. “Do you like Southern girls?”

“I was in love with Vivien Leigh.”

“She was English.”

“No kidding?”

She nodded, wrinkling her nose. “It’s still a scandal back home, them Hollywood fellers picking a foreigner over the flowers of the Confederacy. You have the brownest eyes.”

“Bambi’s were browner. Are you in charge of the gallery’s files?”

She stopped fiddling with her hair. “That’s a curious question.”

“They get curiouser. I wonder if I could get a look at the record of the Arsenault sale.”

“Oh! Did you hear? It was the weirdest coincidence, just after you asked about him—Oh,” she said again. Her face collapsed. “I forgot you’re a detective. Are you investigating the murder?”

I stroked the door frame. “Can we go inside? I feel like a Jehovah’s Witness.”

“I can’t show anyone the files without Miz Talbot’s permission.”

“Let’s go inside. You can call her.”

“Why don’t you come back tomorrow and ask her yourself?”

I leaned against the frame and looked pale. It wasn’t hard.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” That antebellum accent came on like Pickett’s Charge when she forgot herself.

“I just need a glass of water. Let’s go inside.”

“There’s a counter down the street.”

Pickett was back in the barn. I straightened. “I always heard you people were known for your hospitality.”

“Yes, and what did it get us? Atlanta burned to the ground and a Pizza Hut in Richmond.”

“Tomorrow’s too late. I have an impatient client. Can you give me Miss Talbot’s address?”

“I’m sure she wouldn’t want me to do that.” She tapped her fingers on the edge of the door. “She lives in Bloomfield Hills. Forty-four-fifty Bonnymeadow Drive.”

“Sounds cushy.”

“Better than what I had in Ann Arbor.”

“When are you there?”

She’d started to close the door. “Why? I don’t have any files you’d be interested in.”

“I don’t wear a shoulder holster all the time.”

She got another smile going on the other side of the plate glass.

Detroit keeps stacking rich suburbs on top of rich suburbs. A long time ago, before the Japanese stopped playing with plastic hula girls and started putting wheels on axles, there was just Grosse Pointe: built slab by marble slab out of materials imported from the same Old World that had spawned the Lelands, Fords, Chryslers, Dodges, and Durants who commissioned the work. When that gate slammed shut, the postwar money built Birmingham: low sprawling brick ranches on green felt lawns, less than five minutes by Mercedes from the nearest beauty parlor and power mower outlet. When the riots came along to drive the third generation farther north and west, Bloomfield Hills sprang up just like its name: bursts of aluminum-sided colonials and four-star restaurants and wallet-size shopping centers, spraying the rolling green country in tints of mauve, pink, ecru, and taupe, the anemic smothered spectrum of the landed gentry. Each new community is more understated than the one that preceded it, the materials and workmanship costlier but less elaborate. The next suburb to follow will be twice as wealthy and damn near invisible.

Lily Talbot’s house was modest by local standards, a single-story brickfront with a shallow roof peak and two cozy wings covered with stained cedar siding. Its one showy feature, an entryway made entirely of leaded glass, formed an arch from foundation to eaves with a red oak front door set into it like a ruby in a diamond horseshoe pin. You couldn’t admire it in direct sunlight without sacrificing both retinas.

The second time I rang the bell, the gallery owner’s voice drifted my way from somewhere behind the house.

“I’m on the deck.”

A flagstone path trod deep into the lawn led around back. I passed a bed of blue and red flowers growing in crushed limestone, descended a staircase made of railroad ties studded into a steep grassy slope, and stood at last on a plank platform twenty feet long by fifteen wide, with a twelve-foot fence erected around it for privacy. The construction was new and still smelled of sawn wood and the dope they treat it with to repel weather. Sunlight lay on the planks like a slice of gold warmed by hand.

“Did you bring the sketches?”

She was stretched on her back on a flowered chaise longue in a pale blue bikini bottom and nothing else. She had an athletic build but not masculine, not at all; the long muscles in her arms and legs were sheathed in smooth flesh not too deeply tanned, but not mottled like a redhead’s either. It was the first indication I’d had that her short hair had been colored. She had nice breasts: not large, but not so small she’d ever be mistaken for a boy. Her eyes were invisible behind white plastic goggles.

“I hope you won’t mind working out here,” she said. “It
is
Sunday, and I haven’t seen the sun in a week.”

“It’s the same color it’s always been.”

She jumped, snatched off the goggles, saw me, and hooked up a towel to cover her upper half. Her face flushed deeply under the tan.

“I thought you were an artist.”

“A friendly artist,” I said.

“They spend most of their time looking at nudes. They’re like doctors.”

“I knew I was in the wrong business.”

“Would you mind turning your back while I put something on?”

I turned. “Nice deck. Any planes ever land here looking for City Airport?”

“What did you expect, a garret?” Fabric rustled.

“I heard someone say recently the arts are in eclipse.”

“You’d be surprised what you can afford when you have no interests apart from work and home. Or rather what debts you’re willing to assume. You can turn around now.”

She had on a blue silk kimono tied with a sash and cork-soled sandals on her slim bare feet. The outfit didn’t make her any more repulsive. My opinion of Furlong’s taste kept going up.

“Jean told you where to find me, didn’t she?”

“Don’t be too hard on her. Whatever you told her before took. She stonewalled me at the gallery.”

“We didn’t discuss you at all.”

“Now I’m hurt.”

She glanced at her wrist, but she wasn’t wearing a watch. “I’m expecting a sculptor any minute. I’m commissioning a statue for the gallery’s tenth anniversary next year. He’s Croatian. Strangers make him suspicious.”

“We have that emotion in common.” I put my hands in my pockets.

“What do you want?”

“A vacation. A comfortable old age. Cable. Answers to some questions. Not necessarily in that order. I guess you heard about Arsenault.”

“Did you kill him? Is that how you got that?” She pointed at my bandaged head.

“I fell off my deck.” I tapped a Winston out of the pack and put it between my lips, but I didn’t light it. “Yeah, I killed him. I didn’t like his taste in paintings.”

“Neither did I. I’m sick to death of Lautrec and Turner and Monet and Manet.”

“I thought they were one guy,” I said. “The last two.”

“So do the jokers who buy them and hang them in their offices downtown. There are other movements besides Impressionism, but try telling that to our young urban professional bootlickers. Do the police know you’re interfering in a homicide investigation?”

“Am I?”

“You didn’t come here to cop a peek at my tits.”

The cigarette tasted like a tongue depressor. I poked it back into the pack. “I’m no Sherlock,” I said. “Neither was Holmes. Any reasonably honest police force can solve the murders that get solved, without help from the bleachers. But the system’s a crocodile, with a croc’s table manners. While it’s busy chewing up leads and alibis and witnesses and clues a lot of little details get stuck between its teeth. Think of me as one of those little birds that walk around inside the crocodile’s mouth and pick out the shreds.”

“Attractive image.”

“It keeps me off chimneys. Anyway, the shred I picked out this time is a question: Who put Arsenault up to his part in the frame?”

“What makes you think his murder has anything to do with that?”

“No reason, except he spent the eight years since it happened not murdered. Then I came along and wham.”

“If I knew who was behind that picture, I’d be living an idle existence as the wife of a millionaire architect. Soon to be a rich widow.”

“Looks like you’ve done okay without him.”

“It was a long hard haul, and I made it without any help from anybody. You know something? I’m glad it happened. I’d rather be who I am and unknown than world-famous as Mrs. Jay Bell Furlong.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

She had a tall glass on the low table next to the chaise. She picked it up, sipped, made a face, and put it back down. Whatever was in it, the ice cubes had melted and diluted it. “I told you at the gallery everything I know. I’m happy with the way things turned out, but I’m not grateful. If you think I’m shielding the person responsible, you must have me confused with Mother Teresa.”

“Not in that outfit. There are hundreds of art galleries listed in the Yellow Pages. When it came time to decorate his office, Arsenault chose yours. Why?”

“The Talbot has a reputation for quality and integrity.”

“So does General Motors. But only an idiot pays sticker prices.”

“Meaning?”

“Arsenault may have licked his way to the top of the boot, but he didn’t stay there by paying the full market amount for art that he could have saved a bundle on buying in bulk; and from someone with good reason to hate his guts, yet. What else did he get for his ten grand?”

She slugged me.

It took me by surprise. I’d braced myself for a good old-fashioned smack, but a full-scale punch to the button is a different movement altogether. I barely managed to turn my head in time to catch it on the ear. It was the side opposite the bandage or I’d have gone down. As it was, a black fishnet drew tight around my eyeballs and I had to rely on instinct over aim when I hooked a foot behind her ankle and pulled. She went down in a burst of blue silk and flashing legs. One sandal went flying. I spread my feet and waited for the worst.

She laughed.

Not a snicker. Not a pep-squad giggle. She rolled half over on her side, drew in her knees, and guffawed like a Teamster. I saw her fillings.

It wasn’t hysteria. It was infectious as hell. I caught up with her, leaning on the chaise, and kept up until it looked like we were both going to hurt ourselves. Then I said, “All right, all right,” and stuck out a hand.

She grasped it, got her feet under her, and sprang up. She moved so quickly I backpedaled in case she wanted to try for the other ear. But she took back her hand and fumbled for the tie to her kimono, breathing heavily. She looked around for her other sandal.

“It shot over the fence,” I said. “Do the Lions know about you?”

“You should’ve seen the look on your face. I bet you wet your pants.” She used a corner of the robe to wipe her eyes. “My father wanted a boy so badly he had the hockey equipment all bought. He showed me how to throw a left hook that kept me a virgin through high school.”

“You must’ve been as popular as Latin.”

She laughed again, a short gush, apropos nothing. “Oh, my side. I’ve been working eighty hours a week getting ready for an anniversary gala that’s eighteen months away. I’d hire more help, but the kids I can afford to employ part time all want to be Andy Warhol. They wouldn’t touch a broom if I tied a cheeseburger to it. It’s just me and Jean. Also I’m waiting for a bank decision on an expansion loan. It was either you or the branch manager. I need that loan.”

“You could mug someone.”

“Did I hurt your head?”

“Woman’s prerogative.” I stopped fooling with the bandage and went for that cigarette. “How’s your right cross?”

“Not as good as my uppercut, but I won’t throw that either. To answer your question, Arsenault wanted twenty prints: Five Lautrecs, three Gauguins, one Monet and one Manet, two Van Goghs—”

“I thought it was Van Gock.”

“Two Van Gos, four Turners, four Gruns. He didn’t ask for anything else and I didn’t offer it. I did offer him the standard break on volume. He didn’t want to hear about it.”

“Which fist did you offer it to him in?”

She took off the other sandal and tossed it after its mate. She was almost short in her bare feet. Standing next to Furlong she would have looked like a young girl. “I could have been more cordial. I wasn’t in a financial position to be nasty. And I suppose I had come to the conclusion by then that success on one’s own terms is worth more than a wedding spread in People. Anyway, my conscience was clear. It still is. Arsenault could have resold the prints the next day for a profit. By now their value has increased ten percent.”