1 Portrait of a Gossip (12 page)

“Good morning.”

“When you have a moment, may I speak to you?”

He was speaking to her, but she knew that raising his voice
annoyed him, and he wished to be more private. Since it was impossible for
Raphael to come to her, Juliet laid down her easel and hiked back down the
trail. She wondered if the sheriff had said something that troubled him. She
couldn’t imagine why else he wanted to speak to her.

“I’ve had a model cancel on me for this afternoon,” Raphael
said without preamble. “I was wondering if you could stand in. I’ve been
meaning to ask if you would sit for me anyway,” he added before she could
demure.

“Aren’t I a bit superannuated for a model?” she asked
uncomfortably. Most of Raphael’s portraits were allegorical nudes.
Tasteful, of course, but still naked.

“You look very uncomfortable, Miss Juliet. How will you feel
when I ask you to take your clothes off and slip on the handcuffs?”

“Incredulous?” Juliet laughed. “Okay, if not a nude, what
are you painting?”

“It’s for a triptych and it’s just preliminary sketches. I
actually need a matriarch for one of my Bible studies and some things are
better not drawn from imagination or they look like warmed-over da Vinci. You
know the kind of thing.
The aged women likewise, that they be in behavior as
becomes holiness, not false accusers, not given
to
much wine.
”

“Okay. I resemble that remark. But I can’t come until after
lunch. I’m seeing the sheriff at eleven forty-five,” she explained.

“That will be fine. Thank you,” he remembered to add before
turning away.

Juliet shook her head.
A
great painter
, she thought,
but short
on charm
. Though she supposed she should be flattered. Most women would
never have the chance to be immortalized by the great Raphael James.

*
 
*
 
*

“A smart killer, one who planned ahead, would have a
made-to-measure, hand-stitched and fitted alibi.”

“Which no one has?” Juliet asked, setting a plate in front
of the sheriff and a smaller dish on the floor for Marley.

“No. But failing a well-tailored alibi, a situation where
everyone in the neighborhood hated the victim and also didn’t have alibis isn’t
bad.”

“I take this to mean that you couldn’t collect any tobacco
samples and the body has failed to turn up any conclusive—or even inconclusive—DNA
evidence?”

“The rain pretty much took care of that. And though we have
a bullet we have nothing to match it to.”

“So, you’re thinking, with the lack of an arranged alibi,
the killer was just an opportunist?”

“It’s like you said that first day. I think the murderer
knew they wanted Harvey Allen dead. It wasn’t a fight that got out of hand. Whoever
went to his cottage that afternoon brought a gun with them. This is murder, not
manslaughter.”

Juliet agreed.

“But they weren’t fully prepared,” Garret went on. “And I
think the rainstorm messed up whatever plan they were inventing on the fly.”

“I don’t suppose anyone here admits to having a gun?”

“Guns are registered to Raphael James and Esteban Rodriguez,
but these are large-
caliber weapons—no ballistic matches
with what we pulled out of the body. I’m thinking the killer’s gun was probably
bought on the black market and went the way of the computer and the cellphone.”

“Sadly, I think you’re right. If we figure this case out, it
is going to be through understanding personalities and behavior, or maybe past
history, but not through forensic science.”

“I guess it’s good that you’re here then,” Garret said.
“By the way, excellent sandwich.”

The sandwich was good, but Juliet was not certain that her
presence was going to be much help. So far, intuition wasn’t talking.

“By the way—and I guess this makes me a gossip—I think Jake
Holmes may be having an affair with Carrie Simmons. If not that then—well,
something is wrong in
Chez
Holmes.”

“Hm.
I haven’t interviewed Jillian
Holmes yet. She and her husband alibi each other and I’ve been waiting to get
some records. There is no birth certificate for Jillian. She was born down in
Mexico.”

“How did she get a driver’s license?” Juliet asked.

“She doesn’t have one.”

“
Hm
—that’s odd.” Juliet took a
bite of her own sandwich and was pleased with the touch of horseradish she had
added to the mayonnaise. “You’re right. This is good.”

“You have plans for this afternoon?” Garret asked. He meant
investigatory plans.

“I’m modeling for Raphael James.”

“But….” Garret stopped. He’d seen Raphael’s portraits too.

“He needs a crone. I’ll be fully clothed.”

Garret snorted at her description.

“Good. I know
it’s
art and he’s a
genius but….”

“Yeah.
I hear you.”

*
 
*
 
*

Raphael sketched quickly and with assurance. Juliet was
pretty sure that the moment he took up his pencil he stopped seeing her as a
person—or at least a personality. She was just a face, a lean body, sturdy
ankles, moderate breasts which were located where breasts belonged and not
where surgeons put them.

“You may talk, if it would put you at ease,” he said
suddenly.

“I’m not ill at ease.” And she wasn’t, just thinking of
other things and feeling a little hot under the wool shawl he’d draped over her
head. “I don’t usually indulge in idle chatter, especially not for my own
entertainment. At the very least I need a cat to listen.”

He looked up and half-smiled.

“It needn’t be idle chatter.”

“Yet I hear no promise to listen. I think I’ll hold my
peace.”

This got a small, silent laugh.

“Come now! What worries you in the dark hours of the night?
Nuclear war?
Swine flu?
The dark
deeds of our ex-urbanites and late-life Bohemians here in the Wood?”

“Miniskirts.
I dread the trend.
Anyone over fifty does.
Especially if they have thick ankles.”

“So, no serious answers today?”

“Only to serious questions.
And
what makes you think I don’t lay awake nights worrying about hemlines? You know
nothing about me.”

“That is true, but I am finding that I would like to know
about you now that I have seen there is some humor under the
gravitas
.”

Juliet wasn’t sure if she was flattered or nervous to hear
this.

“Well, I was born in a one-room cabin. No, I really was. I
arrived prematurely while my parents were vacationing with friends in Minnesota.”

“See—I am riveted already.
A one-room
cabin—go on
.”

“Uh-huh. Well, my mother died when I was young and my
father, being a weak man, immediately married a very bossy woman who hated me
because I was smart and because my father loved me more than her. That this was
mostly because she
wasn’t particularly lovable never
crossed her mind.”

“It rarely does.”

Juliet debated whether to stop but decided that she could
add just a tiny bit more. It wouldn’t matter if her neighbor knew this much
about her.

“Things were touch and go for a while, and then just
go
. I went away to school—a private one
for children whose parents were not interested in their offspring learning athletics
or the arts. I had to paint on the sly. My father died while I was in college.
Fortunately I had a full-ride scholarship or my stepmother would have cut me
off without a penny. Dad forgot to mention me in his will.”

Raphael grunted.

“And then?”

“And then I went to work doing something practical that paid
well—” and because the recruiter at the NSA had been impossible to refuse when
he presented the job as her patriotic duty, and feeling very alone in the world
she had allowed herself to be inducted into the government family.

“This practical work made you unhappy though?”

She considered.

“Not in the beginning. I was very good at it, but it was
classified. That means a lot of lying for the greater good when I was with
friends. Not to my boss, of course. I always told him the complete truth
whether he liked it or not. But by the time the message got to the top and then
out to the public … well, the metamorphosis was amazing. And the longer I did
it, the tighter I had to hold my nose. Then something bad happened.”

“It always does,” he murmured.
“Especially
if one’s work is classified.”

“You worked for the government too?” she asked, genuinely
curious. She knew Raphael couldn’t really have been born in a Paris garret with
a paintbrush in hand, but it was hard to see him as anything other than an
artist.

“Briefly.
I was a soldier who had
talents that the
government felt were
better used
outside the trench.
Especially after I took a bullet in the
spine.”
There was no self-pity in his voice.

Juliet didn’t know what to say when obviously any expression
of sympathy would be unwelcome.

“Go on. Something bad happened. Were you blamed?”

“Not officially, but I blamed myself. Not too long after that
my boss retired—he had a heart attack from the stress—and I decided that I had
given over enough of my life to work that I could not talk about, or sometimes even
explain to myself, so I retired too and took up an old love. I’ll probably never
be great, but I am competent about my deadlines and happy with my modest amount
of talent which puts food on the table. And there is the added benefit that I
feel like I am doing something really rebellious and dirty each time I set up
an easel,” she added, hoping that she didn’t sound defensive because she really
was quite happy with her little career. And she figured that what she didn’t
have in inborn talent and training she could make up for with determination.

“Then you’re a professional and should be proud.” He glanced
at her again and then frowned. “It isn’t all about doing pure but impractical art.
It is about approaching what you do with respect, whether it is designing
bubblegum wrappers or building cathedrals for the worship of God—stop frowning.
I want stern, not constipated.”

Juliet blinked at his definition of an artist. She felt that
way herself but would never in a million years have expected Raphael James to
feel that way.

“Do you do your best every day?” he asked a little
impatiently when she didn’t answer. “Is there fulfillment in the work? Then you
are a professional artist who knows her market and have nothing to apologize
for. Beyond that, success or failure in the realm of fame is about public
tastes and artistic trends and things that one cannot control. Like hemlines.”

Juliet made her face relax.

“That’s the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

“Then I am very sad for you.” His tone was mild.

“I can see the tears from here.”

“Shut up. I can’t stand idle chatter.”

After that they were quiet in a companionable way until
Raphael was done.

“Will you sit for me tomorrow?” he asked. “Say around one?”

“Yes,” she agreed, thinking that she might even like it.

Her phone rang at six a.m. No matter that statistics said
that, being an election year, it was a
robo
-call or else
a wrong number, still it started her heart thudding. It was conditioning from
the old days when early morning calls meant a crisis out in the big, bad world.

Wrong number, nothing to worry about.
She really needed to stop living up to her gray hairs or she would end up with
a lot more of them.

“Coffee,” she muttered, being careful not to throw the
covers over Marley.

Juliet decided to set up her easel near Robbie’s cottage and
waited for people to forgather for their morning coffee and gossip. Robbie
raised a hand in greeting, but he looked as sober and pale as a pallbearer the
morning after a wake. She wondered why he had been drinking.

The hour being early, only a blue jay hoping for food was
willing to trail her as she chose her spot. Marley had not followed her. He made
it clear that before seven a.m., he found the whole painting thing to be too
utterly boring, especially since his early morning nap had been interrupted by
the phone.

Truthfully, Juliet was tired of painting inside the compound
too, but she hadn’t talked to Carrie or Rose or either of the
Holmeses
and this was the best shot since they would have
to pass her on their way to coffee or their cars. She just hoped that she could
find something worthy of her brush so the morning wouldn’t be a complete waste.
She was turning into a real artist and resenting time away from her craft.

There was the faint smell of smoke on the air, which made
Juliet a little uneasy. Fires were not unusual in the morning. Elizabeth Temple
often had one. Still, the scent was bothersome, a nagging worry. Everyone in
the mountains feared fire; living among the kindling, in cottages brittle with
age, caution was sensible. There had been recent rain, but much of the
underbrush was already dead and tinder dry.

“Good morning,” Rose Campion said softly, unable to pass
without saying something. Jillian Holmes who had been walking with her only nodded
and then went inside Robbie’s cottage. Juliet wondered if she were in dire need
of caffeine or if she simply didn’t want to talk to the neighbor who was having
lunch daily with the police.

“Good morning. I think we are going to see some heat today,”
Juliet answered, tossing her a slow pitch. Surely the weather couldn’t frighten
her.