A Dangerous Talent (An Alix London Mystery) (8 page)

Canyon Road. Eons ago, it had been a dusty Indian trail linking the pueblos of the Rio Grande and the Pecos. Later, each in their turn, came the armies of Spain, of Mexico, of the American Confederacy. Then, once the town had settled down, the road became an out-of-the-way burro trail into the low, piñon-studded hills, used by villagers on the hunt for firewood or game. In the eighteenth century modest adobes began to rise under the cottonwoods, to be followed two hundred years later by not-so-modest adobes.

Nowadays, where once the conquistador legions marched, darkly gleaming Mercedes and Porsches crept along at the pace of the old donkey carts, their richly purring engines barely above idle. To do otherwise would risk running down the ambling sightseers, camera straps slung over sunburnt necks, chattering away and unconscious of spilling into the roadway as they toured what has become one of Santa Fe’s prime attractions.

With scores of high-end galleries, many of them in refurbished two-hundred-year-old adobes, and all of them with high-end artwork and high-end prices, Canyon Road’s mile-long length was arguably the swankest Gallery Row in America (a distinction the Old Guard still held out for Manhattan’s West Fifty-seventh Street), and—inarguably—the prettiest. Oh, it was possible to find something cheesy to buy on the Row, but if that’s what you were looking for—a T-shirt with a picture of a coyote on it, a baby cactus in a thimble, a piece of gay cowboy erotica (yes, it existed)—you’d do better going downtown, to one of the storefronts on Palace Avenue or Old Santa Fe Trail.

On this particular pleasant October afternoon, the street was already blocked off from traffic for the famous Friday evening art walk, and those galleries with new exhibitions had put out their signs, but the crowds had yet to arrive. A few clumps of early birds were sauntering down the street, Alix London and Chris LeMay among them. They had walked briskly from the hotel and had arrived a full half hour before their four-thirty appointment at Liz’s Blue Coyote Gallery, so they stopped at a couple of the openings and wandered through a few of the attractive courtyards that flanked many of the galleries, with their lush, aromatic plantings, bronze sculpture gardens, and tinkling Moorish fountains. If anything, it was all lovelier than Alix had anticipated.

Liz’s gallery turned out to be in one of the more contemporary buildings, but the architecture blended handsomely with the centuries-old adobes nearby. Stepping into the main showroom, Alix liked the professional, unfussy way the art was displayed, but the variety—Western bronzes, contemporary European paintings, Japanese ceramics, Navajo sand paintings, nineteenth-century American trompe l’oeil—set off a tingle of unease. Nobody, let alone Liz Coane, could be truly knowledgeable about a range that broad. And Alix well knew that an eclectic selection like this was sometimes used by crooked dealers to mitigate potential inquiries into their roles in nefarious doings: How was I to know it was a fake? How was I to know it was stolen? How can you possibly expect me to be an expert in so many different art forms?

No, wait, she wasn’t being fair. She’d disliked Liz from the first, and what Chris had told her in the Cottonwood Bar had only strengthened the feeling. It had predisposed her to be suspicious of Liz, her gallery, and the O’Keeffe. Enough of that, she told herself sharply; she was fully capable of evaluating the painting on its own merits, and that’s what she would do.

One of the assistants, on learning they were there to see Liz, took them to a door near the rear of the gallery. A quick double-tap, and the door was flung open for them. The first thing that caught Alix’s eye was what had to be Chris’s O’Keeffe, propped on an easel at the side of the room. A few feet away, Liz was seated at her desk talking to a dark-haired man whose back was to them. There were two half-empty champagne glasses on the desk, one of them smeared with Liz’s lipstick.
My God
, thought Alix,
the woman must live on booze
.

Liz, who’d been leaning comfortably back in her brown leather chair when the door opened, sat up abruptly and stared. “What are
you
doing here?”

“It’s four thirty,” Chris answered. “You were going to give us a look at the painting, remember? But obviously, we’ve caught you at a bad time—”

“You’re kidding. Is it really four thirty already?” She stared confusedly, and a little blearily, at her watch. “Jesus, it is! I must have—I mean—jeez, I’m sorry…”

“It’s my fault, I fear.” The man gracefully unfolded himself from the chair. Alix’s instantaneous reaction was
clotheshorse
. The look was elegantly casual—studiedly so. This was not somebody who simply threw together what he was going to wear; he planned for it, probably took an hour deciding on whether the cuff links should be gold or sterling silver. And the haircut, now that Alix got a look at it, wasn’t something he’d gotten at the neighborhood Supercuts either. No, this was a guy who put in a lot of time making himself look good. A lot of money, too. For the second time in one day, Alix found herself disliking someone on sight, which was distinctly unusual for her. Maybe it was just her mood; coming within a few seconds of being blown to smithereens probably had some effect on how you tended to view the world for a while.

“I barged in on Ms. Coane without an appointment,” he went on, smoothly apologetic (but not really). “I know I should have made arrangements to return tomorrow, but the opportunity—”

While he was speaking, Liz had gotten up as well. “No, it’s my fault. The time just got away from me. This is Roland—”

“Rollie,” the man corrected.

“—Rollie de Beauvais, a prominent art dealer from Boston. He was hoping I might be able to help him find some things for his clients. As a matter of fact, he was quite interested in your O’Keeffe, Chris, but unfortunately for him—”

“
Your
O’Keeffe?” de Beauvais said to Chris with a visible quickening of interest. “So you’re the lucky lady who’s going to get it. Congratulations, it’s extraordinary.”

“Yes,” Chris said a little shyly, but with a touch of smugness she couldn’t hide. “I’m in town to look it over. Oh, sorry, I’m Chris LeMay.” She extended her hand. “From Seattle.”

“Is that right?” de Beauvais said with what Alix thought was a particularly oily smile as he took Chris’s hand. Chris, to Alix’s disgust, practically melted.

Oh-ho,
thought the FBI agent,
so you’re the mysterious buyer. Which means your friend here has to be the London woman.
Talk about serendipity. Things were getting more interesting by the minute.

His quick, practiced eye took in Alix in seconds, and he didn’t like what he saw. Well, he liked it in
that
sense—she was certainly attractive enough: light brown hair with auburn highlights, nicely cut to frame a pretty face; a trim, athletic figure; elegantly simple clothes, unfussy jewelry—but he didn’t like
her
. It wasn’t that she struck him as a bunco artist, which was what he’d expected, but quite the opposite. What she looked like was the girl next door—if next door was an eight-thousand-square-foot beachfront mansion in East Hampton. Arrogance, condescension, spoiledness, conceit…they all marked her as surely as if they’d been written on that smooth forehead. She’d grown up as a child of privilege—on Geoffrey London’s ill-gotten money—and it showed in everything about her: her posture, her looks, her palpable self-satisfaction.

Assuming that she was in on whatever knavery was going on, he looked forward to bringing her down. He smiled at her, turning his smooth, seductive, well-honed Roland de Beauvais charm on to its fullest and (to Alix, anyway) most repellent. “And what about you? Who would you be?”

“Alix London,” she said brusquely, barely giving him a glance. She turned her eyes toward the O’Keeffe.

Ted might be a professional, but he was also a male, and his masculine pride had just been punctured. A cold shoulder was something he didn’t like and wasn’t used to, either as Ted or as Rollie. In either case—either as a male or as a professional—he didn’t give up as easily as that.

“I was thinking—” he said, directing his speech to Chris.

A young man appeared in the doorway, looking harried. “Liz, Gregor’s here and he’s not happy.”

Liz blew out a boozy breath. “Dammit, now what’s his problem?”

“He doesn’t like the lighting—too soft, he says. He wants sharper shadows.”

“Well, it’s too late to do anything about that. He should have said something before.”

“And he says his Wet Dream Number 3 is hung upside down.”

Liz rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right, like anybody’s gonna know the difference? Okay, okay, I’ll deal with him. Sorry, Chris, looks like this really isn’t a good time. My bad. How about after the opening? Eight o’clock? You could see the show, do the art walk in the meantime, or get something to eat or something.”

“Fine,” Chris said. “Very nice meeting you, Mr. de Beauvais. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

“Thank you. Ah…I was thinking…if you ladies are at leisure and would care to join me for a drink and perhaps a bite to eat, I’d be delighted to have your company.”

“Why, that would—” Chris began.

“We’re busy,” Alix said curtly. “See you later, Liz.” And off she marched without a glance at Ted, giving Chris no choice but to follow.

“Now what in the world was that all about?” a bewildered Chris asked, managing to catch up as Alix strode down the hallway toward the temporary exhibit room. “What did the poor guy do to you?”

“Oh, he didn’t do anything to me,” Alix grumbled. “He just…I just…I don’t know, I just couldn’t stand him. Brr.”

“But why? I thought he was cool.”

“That was pretty obvious,” Alix said with a smile, then shrugged. “I don’t know exactly what it was about him that got to me, Chris.” They had stopped near the entrance to the room, standing to one side, out of the way of the people beginning to drift in. “Yes, I do. That smarmy manner, as if he thought we were going to drool all over him…conceited, arrogant, spoiled, self-centered…”

Chris was staring at her, laughing. “You got all that in about five seconds? The guy only said ten words.”

Alix smiled. “It’s that connoisseur’s eye,” she said, relaxing. “Chris, I’m sorry, I apologize for taking over like that. But to put it in a nutshell, he just reminded me too damn much of my ex-husband.”

Chris stared at her. “You’ve been married?”

“Yes, why is that so surprising?”

“I don’t know…I just thought…well, I don’t know, you never mentioned it. I guess I just assumed…”

“Well, you assumed wrong. Yes, indeed, I’ve been married. For all of ten days I was Mrs. Paynton Whipple-Pruitt.”

Chris’s eyes opened wider. “Are we talking about
the
Whipple-Pruitts here?”

Alix nodded. “Of Boston, Watch Hill, and Palm Beach. Benefactors of the arts, regulars on the society pages, taste-makers and trendsetters all.”

“Wow, no kidding.” Chris drew Alix aside, into a workroom filled with mailing and packing material. “Mrs. Paynton Whipple-Pruitt,” she repeated. “That’s really…wait a minute, did I hear you right? Did you say ten days?”

“Almost eleven, actually.”

“Oh, eleven. Well, that’s different.”

Alix could laugh about it now, but it’d been far from funny at the time. She’d been engaged to Paynton for two months when her father’s infamous and stunningly unexpected downfall had turned her world upside down. The truth of the matter was that she’d already begun to have serious doubts about her fiancé. The longer she knew him the more clearly she saw that he was very much a chip off the old Whipple-Pruitt block: priggish, snobbish, and condescending. And snooty. And not very bright. Still, when he’d offered to go ahead with the wedding despite the unconcealed displeasure of his family, she’d gratefully accepted. More than gratefully—it had been as if she’d been about to go down with the Titanic and he’d come up with a seat for her on his own private, well-equipped lifeboat.

No doubt she should have realized things were less than promising when his family insisted she sign a prenuptial agreement allowing her nothing in the event that the marriage lasted less than a year. But still in a state of shock over her father’s disgrace—and yes, to be honest, the financial calamity that had engulfed her—she’d plunged right in. It had taken her four days of wedded “bliss” for the truth to get past her defenses and sink in: the marriage was an unmitigated disaster.

The whole thing, it seemed, had been a misunderstanding. Poor Paynton’s offer to go ahead with the wedding had been prompted by a misguided sense of noblesse oblige; he had offered, yes, certainly, but he had fully expected her to do the decent thing, considering the altered circumstances, and turn him down. When she hadn’t, Paynton, now in his own state of shock, had taken what seemed to him the manly course: he’d girded his loins and gone through with it. Once this became clear to Alix, of course, it was impossible to continue. On the fifth day of their life as man and wife, they had formally separated. On the eleventh day they had filed for divorce. The collective sigh of relief from Paynton and his family could be heard all the way to western Connecticut.

But she wasn’t about to go into all that with Chris. Maybe sometime, but not now. “And it was a long eleven days,” was all she said.

“Aahh, I see. And Rollie de Beauvais reminds you of him. Although to tell you the truth,” she said with a tiny smile, “I think I could last a lot longer than eleven days with a guy that looked like de Beauvais and had the Whipple-Pruitt money.”

“Well, yes, but Paynton had this manner, this way of…of…” She shook her head. “It’s hard to explain. It was just—”

Chris gently held up her hand. “Alix, I’m sorry for being so damn nosy. Look, sometime, if you ever do feel like talking about it, you’ve got a sympathetic listener right here. Until then, let’s forget it. Okay?”

“Deal,” Alix said gratefully. “Listen, I shouldn’t have gotten up on my high horse the way I did in there. If I didn’t want to have a drink with him, I should have just said so, I certainly shouldn’t have ruled it out for you too. Why don’t we go back? If he’s still there, you can—”

“Uh-uh, not a chance. Now that I think about it, there was maybe something a little
too
cool about him. Or too oily. Or too something. Come on, let’s go look at the opening. Maybe I’ll find something else I’d like to buy. It’s always exciting to—” She stopped, blinking, as they entered the room. “Whoops, no, I don’t think so. Sheesh.”

Sheesh, indeed
, Alix thought. “The brilliant young Gregor Gorzynski’s” creations were prime examples of what her father contemptuously referred to as Euro art trash: absurdist, pretentious, pseudo-intellectual works, mostly by anarchistic young males who were more interested in hooking a wealthy patron—preferably a gullible, needy female of a certain age—than they were in pursuing their “art.” In the center of the room, Gorzynski himself, in a scuffed leather jacket and artfully torn jeans, was vigorously and histrionically expostulating in heavily accented English on the subtle merits of his creations—oversized, unframed canvases with ragged edges and irregular shapes, splattered with long, swirling globs of glue, string, and what were clearly M&M’s. Scattered around were several sculptures (using the term loosely) of two-by-fours jury-rigged together and decorated with string, Cheerios, and frayed rope. Draped over the strings, Dali-like, were limp-looking but stiffened strands of transparent rice noodles.

“Frankly,” Chris said, “I can’t imagine ever wanting to have anything like this in my house, even if the prices weren’t ridiculous. Or would my newly engaged art advisor care to advise me otherwise?”

“Your newly engaged art advisor would not,” Alix whispered. “Your newly engaged art advisor will instead give you a simple rule that should serve you well through the years: it is not recommended to hang anything biodegradable on your walls.”

“You mean M&M’s are biodegradable?” Chris said, laughing. “Who knew?”

Beside them, a youngish, blond-bearded man and a woman were peering thoughtfully at a composition of string, glue, and M&M’s on brightly painted blue particle board. “What I like,” the woman was saying, “is the way he left the little M’s right on them, as if to blur the distinction between reality and the thought of reality, as expressed in art.”

“Yes,” the man responded after an appreciative pause. “And you notice how he uses the field of blue as the one unifying element of rationality and order, so that not only the formal-structural aspects are brought out, but the symbolic implications as well?”

Chris and Alix looked at each other. “Do you think they really believe that bullshit,” Chris whispered out of the side of her mouth, “or are they just showing off?”

Alix smiled. “It reminds me of something my father used to say. He said that the reason there’s so much unintelligible drivel written and spoken about today’s so-called art is that without it, how could you tell it from garbage?”

“Smart guy, your father,” Chris said.

Whatever Alix was going to answer was cut off by Liz’s strident voice, practically in her right ear. “Cul-lyde! Come on in, Cul-lyde. Look around, have a glass of champagne.”

“No champagne for me, thank you,” was the prissy reply. “I’m here simply to pick up a couple of catalogs. As you should know by now, I don’t drink alcohol.”

The speaker was a balding, waspish man, the first man Alix had seen in Santa Fe in a suit and tie, and not only a tie, but a zebra-striped bow tie—the pre-tied kind that fastened with a clasp, but a bow tie nonetheless.

“Suit yourself,” Liz said. “Clyde, this is Chris LeMay, an old friend who’s just getting started as a collector—she’s the one who’s purchasing that O’Keeffe you were helping me with—and this is her consultant, Alix London. Ladies, meet my esteemed friend and associate Clyde Moody. Clyde’s the librarian at the Twentieth Century.”

The Twentieth Century, of course, would be the renowned Southwest Museum of Twentieth-Century American Art, a couple of blocks from Santa Fe’s central plaza.

“
Archivist
,” Moody amended with some asperity. “And among the many and varied responsibilities of that position,” he explained to Chris and Alix, “I am expected to keep copies of art exhibition catalogs from major New Mexican galleries, even when, in my humble opinion—” he cast a meaningful glance around the room, “—they have as much to do with art as
Garfield
has to do with the
Mona Lisa
.”

This brought gales of bleary laughter from Liz, which in turn brought angry stares, and fingers to lips, and even a
Shh!
or two from visitors who had no idea that the loud woman with the coarse laugh was their host and the provider of the goodies they were scarfing down. Liz didn’t notice any of it. She draped an arm over Moody’s narrow shoulders despite his obvious discomfort with the familiarity. “This guy only sounds like a wet blanket, guys. Underneath that gruff exterior there lies—”

“Yes, I know,” Moody said, trying without success to wriggle out from under her robust arm. “A heart of gold, pure and unalloyed. Elizabeth, if you please, all I’m here for is a catalog, so perhaps I could—”

“This guy,” Liz said with an affectionate squeeze of a captive shoulder, “this guy might not look like much, but in that pointy little head of his is the brain of a giant. The man is a walking encyclopedia. I don’t know what I’d do without him. It would amaze you what he can come up with from those musty old archives of his, just amaze you.” She threw him coy, conspiratorial look. “Why, I could tell you stories—”

But Moody had managed to squirm free at last and was scuttling toward the door. “Bye, Cul-lyde,” a laughing Liz called after him, then drifted off to stand adoringly next to Gorzynski, her arm entwined in his, and sharing in his glory.

“I’m ready to go if you are,” Alix said. “I’ve seen all of the show I want to see.”

“More than I want to see,” Chris agreed. “Let’s scram.”

With nearly three hours to go before they were due back to look at the O’Keeffe, Chris suggested that they find a restaurant, but Alix demurred. For one thing the aftereffects of the explosion on her nervous system had killed whatever appetite she might have had. For another, she’d been hearing for years about Santa Fe’s Canyon Road and its celebrated Friday art walk, and with only a brief taste of it on their stroll to the Blue Coyote, she was eager to experience more.

“Tell you what,” Chris said, as they strolled out. “There’s a restaurant up near the top, El Farol. Let’s stroll up that way, taking in the sights. Then you can drop me off there for a bite, keep ambling to your heart’s content, and swing by again at seven fifteen or so for a glass of wine, and then we’ll head back here from there. How’s that for a plan?”

“That’s perfect, but I’m not going to want any wine. Coffee, maybe. At most.”

On the brick patio at the front of the gallery they stopped for a moment to get their bearings. The sun was low in the sky, throwing long shadows from the cottonwoods onto the adobe-lined street, now filled with chatty, sauntering groups of varying sizes, moving down the street or entering and exiting the galleries. Alix was enchanted by it all: the exhilarating high desert air, the pretty, curving street (lane was more like it), the people, and the wonderful clarity of the light even at dusk.

With four gallery stops it took them over an hour to get up to El Farol. Eager to see still more, Alix left Chris at the restaurant and continued on her own as darkness came on and the street-lights lit up. As she was passing one of the contemporary galleries, she saw a middle-aged man and a pretty little girl of ten or eleven emerge from it, holding hands and prattling away. Both of them laughing merrily, they had eyes only for one another, the girl’s filled with adoration, the man’s with a pride and tenderness that took Alix’s breath away.

Literally. It was as if a fist had closed around her heart and squeezed. She stood stock-still, submerged in a sudden wave of emotions. How many times had she and Geoff come out of galleries or museums holding hands and laughing like that? Looking into each others’ faces with all that love?

The girl and her father passed her still form without seeing her. “That was
funny
, Daddy!” she heard the little girl say through her giggles. Geoff had had a wonderful ability to make Alix laugh too—the silly jokes, the riddles, the muddled-word fairytales. She could still remember how his hilarious take on Cinderella would double her up with laughter no matter how many times he wrote it down for her (“Center Alley worse jester pore ladle gull hoe lift wetter stop-mutter an too heft-sea stars…”). Even now, she could feel the giggles building up deep down in her throat—but along with something tight and constricted, and bitter as well.