An Illustrated Death (12 page)

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-
S
IX

I
WAS CURIOUS
to know what the police had found out, but Thursday morning I didn’t see anyone to ask. There were no unfamiliar cars in the circle, no activity that I could see around the pool. If it hadn’t been for Marselli’s observations about how he thought Gretchen had died, I would have concluded her death had been a tragic accident after all.

I was almost to the studio when Bianca burst out of her chalet. She didn’t even say hello. “I don’t know why I ever let you call that jerk. Those policewomen were in Gretchen’s room for
hours
, they claimed someone had ransacked it.
They
were the ones who tore everything up. Then the ambulance took Gretchen without even telling us. I’ve never seen such a lack of consideration. They should all be taken out and shot.” From the set of her head, I saw she would be happy to line them up and fire away.

I didn’t know what to say.

“Any policeman from around here would have seen Gretchen lying in the pool and known it was an accident. We’d already be planning her memorial service.”

“I doubt the police around here are
that
dumb.”

We glared at each other. “What are you saying? Out here they know the family! They know none of us would hurt Gretchen. The East Hampton police would never have taken our fingerprints—they even took Bessie’s. They would have taken yours too if you’d been here. I wish you had been.”

I smiled. The police had fingerprinted me in July after the murder in the bookshop.

“Anyway, I’ll see you later. For lunch.”

There was something ominous about the way she said lunch, but for Gretchen’s sake I had to go. I needed to watch these people. To listen. One of them had smothered Gretchen in her bed.

W
HEN
B
IANCA CAME
to get me she was still on edge.

“Whose turn is it to cook?” I asked.

“No one’s. I mean, someone from the outside. Bessie’s granddaughter, Jocasta.”

“Jocasta?”

We started up the hill. The blue hydrangeas had nearly faded to white.

“What—you think only a Harvard PhD can name a child after a Greek myth? That black people aren’t entitled?” She shook her head. “Talk about racial profiling!”

Jocasta, the mother of Oedipus, was actually a character in a play by Sophocles, but I wasn’t going to correct Bianca. Today she would have insisted the earth was made of pizza dough.

As usual, we were the last ones into the dining room. Bessie was standing against the wall behind Eve, a large presence with an anxious smile, her muscular arms pressed against her sides.

A beautiful, lighter-skinned young woman, her hair in a hundred skinny red-gold braids, wheeled a cart through the archway. When she efficiently transferred its contents to the sideboard, I could see fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, and cornbread.

“Fried chicken was my husband’s favorite,” Eve said to me, as if I were about to challenge the meal. “This young woman is schooled in the culinary arts.”

“It’s my favorite too.” Nobody did fried chicken better than KFC either, but today I was watching what I said.

It was time for the toast.

“To Pa,” Bianca said quickly, her glass raised.

“Never forgotten,” Claude intoned.

“And to Gretchen,” Lynn’s clear voice rang out. “May she never be forgotten either!”

If she was expecting a fight, she didn’t get one. The others murmured their agreement and lowered their eyes. I still didn’t know what to make of Lynn. Did she find living on the compound confining? Or did it free her up to follow her bliss?

“This is very good.” Lynn smiled over at Jocasta.

It was good, but I didn’t think this young woman had much to do with it. I identified the mashed potatoes as coming from Boston Market. Probably the chicken came from there too, along with the overstewed green beans. The cornbread tasted like my favorite Jiffy mix
.

“So what exactly is your relationship with this cop?” Claude demanded across the table. Everyone else stopped eating and looked alert.

“No ‘relationship.’ I got to know him when he was investigating the murders at a bookshop in Port Lewis, and I knew the people involved. I think he’s good at what he does.”

“
I
think he’s a pain in the ass. Did he catch anybody?”

“Yes.” With a few prompts and—okay, a few hindrances—from me.

“Are you wearing a wire?” It was Puck. Before his attack on Bianca the other day, I would have written it off as a joke.

“No wire. I’m as much a suspect as anyone else.”
Bad choice of words.
“I mean, he questioned me too.”

“Why? You didn’t know Gretchen.”

“Well—I’ve been out here a lot. I told him I didn’t know why anyone in the family would want to hurt your aunt.”

“Of course we wouldn’t,” said Lynn. “What we need is a better alarm system.”

Ah. “The alarm didn’t go off?”

“No, and it should have. Unless it went off when we were at the memorial. But no one came to investigate.”

“That we know of,” Claude corrected her. “They may have stopped by and found everything in order.”

“The police can check if anyone was notified,” I said. Except that Marselli had told me Gretchen had lain on her back for several hours before being moved. Few intruders would wait around to do that.

Jocasta entered then with dessert, a stack of unpeeled bananas and Entenmann’s chocolate chip cookies. Bessie jumped forward to help her clear the lunch plates.

“Oh, don’t do that,” Eve cried. “You do too much for me as it is.” It was the most affectionate thing anyone had said since we sat down at the table.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-
S
EVEN

T
HE AFTERNOON
PASSED
quickly in the studio. I had finished with Nate Erikson’s books and the association copies inscribed to him by other artists. Many of those were exhibition catalogs, published by art galleries. I suspected that some of the novels in the bookcases were autographed as well, but I was saving them for Monday. First I had to finish my spinach, the ordinary art books that could be sold as small lots. I reminded myself that I should be interested in Nate’s sources of inspiration—a well-thumbed
Gray’s Anatomy
, Kimon Nicolaides’s classic on drawing, and
The Science of Color
—but I kept thinking about what had happened to Gretchen instead.

I had explained to Bianca that I wouldn’t be out there tomorrow, Friday, because of a book auction I wanted to attend, so I decided to celebrate the end of the work week early. I would veer east and stop at one of the seasonal clam bars near Montauk Point before they closed for the winter. The farm stands were already displaying tiers of orange and yellow mums, and pumpkins had been spread on the ground for a week. Many homes had their wooden porch rails hidden behind papery cornstalks and their doors decorated with Indian corn.

I was envisioning a lobster roll, a glass of white wine, and finally settling into
Let the Great World Spin
, when I pulled out onto Cooper’s Farm Lane. Then I heard a car start up behind me. Damn! It had better not be Charles Tremaine. It was, of course, and I couldn’t ignore him. I had promised him updates in return for his backing away quietly from the Erikson books. But why did he have to choose tonight, when all I craved were a few creature comforts after a shocking week?

I beeped once to let him know I knew he was there.

We went back to Flaherty’s. Already the room seemed less crowded than the week before. The Hamptons’ season of packed restaurants and vacationers was falling off, and I wondered how many customers this bar attracted on a Thursday night in January. It seemed too upscale to be the neighborhood hangout, and too substantial to close down in winter like the clam bars.

“White wine?”

“Chardonnay. Thanks.” We returned to the same table we’d sat at before. Above my head the Dos Equis mirror reflected a warrior’s profile between two red Xs and I wondered how often people chose the same place they had sat at the last time. I was imagining other instances where that might be true—doctors’ waiting rooms, movie theaters, classrooms, church pews—when Charles came back carrying my wine and his scotch.

He slid his lanky frame into the chair. “I hear you had some excitement at the Farm.”

“Is that what people call it, the Farm?”

“Mostly people who remember the original owners, the McCarthys. It’s hard to believe, but residents were scandalized when Nate moved in and made all those changes. They were sure he was just another crazy artist come to destroy the area.”

“And then they found out how sane he was compared to Jackson Pollock.”

“They did. But it seemed sacrilegious that he was tearing down the old farmhouse and barn and putting up new buildings. Never mind that the old ones were falling-down wrecks.” He looked amused. “I’m on to you, missy. You’re cleverly steering me away from the topic of what happened yesterday.”

I took a sip of the wine. “Why do you think something happened?”

“Because there were Suffolk County police cars and an ambulance at the house? Because they took someone away covered by canvas? And no”—he held up a hand—“I wasn’t there watching. As you reminded me last time, I have a business to run.”

“How did people know?”

“Do you live in the twenty-first century or are you lost in a book somewhere? Cars go down that road. School buses go down that road. Cops talk to each other. I’m sure the Eriksons would like to think they live in a bubble, but in our electronic world that’s impossible.”

“So you already know what happened.”

Charles hesitated. His startling gray eyes looked away from me and then back. “It was a woman, from what I understand.”

“Which one?”

Now he smiled. “That’s what you’re going to tell me.”

I drank more wine.

“Just tell me one thing: Was it Eve?”

“No.”

“One of the
girls
?”

“If I tell you, you’ll tell everyone else.”

“No. I won’t. Cross my heart and hope to die,” he intoned. It was the first time I had seen a man in his sixties make that X across his chest. “I raise my right hand up to God,” he added whimsically, lifting his palm. Someone standing at the bar laughed.

I thought of something. “There was a painting of a young woman in the studio, with hair like mine.” The painting I had been terrified I had destroyed, the one that someone else had tried to destroy before I ever saw it.

“It was
her
?” The glass in his hand slipped a little.

“Who is she?”

“What do you mean who—she wasn’t the one who died?”

“No.”

“Then why did you mention her?”

“I’m curious who she was.”

“How should
I
know?”

But I knew he did.

“Trade,” I suggested.

“Okay. You first.”

I thought about what to say. As soon as the coroner released Gretchen’s body and the family planned the funeral, people would know anyway. I was surprised no journalists had found out. That would change. “It was Gretchen.”

“Gretchen.” His tone implied respectful surprise. “You know, she was someone I never ‘got.’ She looked like a German hausfrau celebrating Oktoberfest, she wore these blond braids coiled around her head, but she was what the kids call
hot.
She didn’t go light on the schnapps either.”

“Gretchen?” I didn’t doubt his comment was true, he had no reason to make up about stories about a dead woman. But it was a different Gretchen than I had seen. “Did she ever get serious with anyone?”

“Not that I know of. What happened to her?”

“She fell.”

“These household accidents are killers. That family has the worst luck.”

“Your turn.”

He smiled. “I told you, I don’t know anything.”

I put down my glass. “Yes, you do. Your face when I mentioned my hair.”

“They had a babysitter who kind of looked like you. Younger of course. Sonia. But I never knew her last name or what happened to her.”

Again I was sure he was lying about that.

Then I realized the significance of what he had said. He was the first to mention that Sonia, the au pair, had had hair like mine. Was she the girl in the slashed painting, the one that Eve had mistaken me for at lunch the first day? It seemed odd that she would be posing nude, especially since that was not Nate’s usual type of art. Had something been going on between them?

Charles was pressing on. “What’s happening with the books?”

“They’ll probably go to auction.” A childish way of getting back at him.

“So I don’t get any breaks for knowing Nate?” He took a final sip of scotch.

“Not unless you want to offer fifty thousand up front. When I give the family the true value, I’ll tell you. You can make them an offer.”

“But they’ll expect top dollar! I
never
pay that, I couldn’t afford to. Besides, it would mean I’d have to take all the books.”

“I thought you said the library shouldn’t be broken up.”

He grinned. “I did say that, didn’t I? But no library stays together forever, not even Thomas Jefferson’s. I mean, I’m sure Nate had some wonderful books, and others not so good. So why pay for ones I don’t want? I have a sophisticated clientele.”

“No reason you should have to,” I agreed.

“On the other hand, to be so close to those books all these years, then have to bid for them at auction like everyone else? It doesn’t seem fair.”

Poor baby.

“It’s not like the family needs money,” he argued.

“How do you know? Who doesn’t need money these days?”

“You think? Well, maybe. Taxes alone on that place have to be in the stratosphere. And who’s bringing in money now? Surely not those kids.” He made them sound like a bunch of layabouts, deadbeats with hayseed stalks between their teeth.

“They aren’t lazy,” I protested. “They all do some kind of art. They were raised to think that money isn’t that important.”

He laughed. “It will be if they ever run out.”

I changed the subject. “Are you going to the Phillips auction tomorrow?”

“Of course. Don’t tell me you are.”

“Why not?”

But he wouldn’t be lured into insulting me. “Because you have better things to do.”

“I’ve got to run,” I told him. “I’ll call you when I’m done at the Eriksons.”

“Sounds like a plan.” He stood up when I did, and extended his hand. I took it, surprised at the formal gesture. No doubt it was the way he treated his “sophisticated clientele.”

It was too late for a lobster roll and I didn’t want to drink any more wine. Instead I contented myself with a small strawberry shake and a cheeseburger from McDonald’s, tamping down my guilt with the thought that a Big Mac would have been even less healthy. Colin, of course, would be scandalized. His idea of fast food was a carefully arranged platter of sushi.