Murder in Pastel (5 page)

“Brett isn’t you. Brett doesn’t value anyone or anything. Not even himself.”

We brooded for a moment.

“Well, he’ll get his,” Jen said. “He’ll probably die of AIDS.”

“Jesus, Jen. Don’t say that. What a thing to wish on anybody.”

“I guess I’m learning some things about myself this summer. I guess I’m not a good sport about having my life ruined. Mine and Vince’s.”

“I’m sorry, Jen,” I said at last.

She started to cry again.

* * * * *

I almost skipped the annual beach party. Every year the colony kicks off summer with a barbecue in the cove. When I was a kid I looked forward to s’mores and ghost stories by the sea, but I would have given it a miss this year if Adam and Brett hadn’t walked over to fetch me.

“You’re not ready?” Adam asked as I opened the door.

“No, I—”

“Shake a leg, scout,” Brett said exuberantly. He raised his hands over his head, snapping his fingers and shaking his hips. “Time to par-tay!”

I finished polishing my glasses and slid them back on. Adam was frowning at me. In black denims and black turtleneck he looked like a French film star. A stern French film star. Though he had been Brett’s age when he moved to Steeple Hill, he had never seemed as young or free as Brett. Despite his sense of humor, Adam was a serious person. Serious and self-contained. I wondered what, besides sex, he and Brett had in common. Something had to hold them together for two years.

“I think he’s in a stupor,” Brett observed. “He definitely needs some fresh air.”

Brett wore artfully torn jeans and a baby-blue cashmere pullover that seemed a trifle overdone for beach blankets and weenies.

“I lost track of time,” I lied, rubbing my prickly jaw. “Go on ahead and I’ll meet you there.”

“We’ll wait,” Adam said.

“And don’t bother shaving,” Brett ordered. “Five o’clock shadow is sexy on
you
.”

Adam shot him a look. “Grab a jacket, Kyle,” he said to me. “It’s cold by the water.”

I wished to hell he would stop thinking of me as a sickly child. Neither he nor Brett wore jackets. I opened my mouth. They waited expectantly. I tried to think of a good excuse, but nothing came readily to mind. With a not very gracious mutter I ducked back inside, dragged a sweatshirt over my T-shirt, flicked a comb through my hair, splashed on some cologne and shoved my feet into tennis shoes.

Adam leaned against the porch post, staring out at the meadow as I rejoined them. Brett perched on the railing, twirling a red rose. Something in their silence struck me.

There’s a painting by Jacob Van Ruisdael called
The Jewish Graveyard
. Beautiful and somber, it captures the same ominous mood that I felt that evening observing them in the dying light.

“Ready?” Adam asked me brusquely as Brett got to his feet.

“As I’ll ever be.”

Brett slipped his arm around my waist and hugged me. “Mmm. You smell delicious. What is that?”

“Soap.”

“No. It’s sandalwood. It’s fabulous.”

Adam turned on heel, leaving Brett and me to trail along behind him. I watched him though I tried not to: his carriage erect and graceful, shoulders broad, back leanly muscled. He disappeared down the stairs leading to the beach.

Brett nipped my ear playfully—then chuckled at my scowling recoil. I pulled away from him, speeding up after Adam.

Down in the cove a bonfire shot red embers into the last cadmium ribbons of the sunset. We were the last of our crowd to arrive; I was surprised to see Jen and Vince already settled around the fire. They were never on time for anything. Vince was drinking a Dos Equis. At a glance it wasn’t his first. Jen and Micky wrapped cobs of corn in foil, talking quietly to each other.

“There you are,” Micky greeted us. “We were about to send out Search and Rescue.”

Vince raised his bottle in a toast and then completed the gesture, chugging down beer. As he lowered his arm, Brett moved over to him and took a swig from the bottle. Joel, sitting next to Vince, stared at his feet.

“We heard some terrible news,” Jen piped up. “The Nashes aren’t coming down this year. Mrs. Nash has had a stroke.”

“The last of the Old Guard,” Adam commented quietly.

The Nashes were our oldest residents, contemporaries of Drake Trent. Their passing would indeed signal the end of a chapter.

Micky said, “It’s the only summer I can remember that they haven’t come down. Not since…”

Not since Cosmo walked off into the sunset.

“So this is everybody who was there that summer?” Brett inquired. He planted himself between Joel and Vince on the fallen log. Joel rose and came over to join Adam and me. Again Brett took Vince’s beer bottle, this time draining it.

“When are you flying to Massachusetts?” I questioned Joel. “When is the exhibit?”

“What exhibit?” Adam inquired.

Joel replied, “The Addison is showing Cosmo’s work next month. I’m supposed to make a speech.” He shrugged as though this weren’t the kind of thing he lived for.

It was odd how everyone referred to Cosmo formally, impersonally. Even to me. Almost no one ever said “your father.” It was always “Cosmo.”

“Have you changed your mind about going?” Joel pressed me.

“I’m considering it.” That wasn’t exactly true, but I was increasingly aware that I could do with time away from our soap opera by the sea.

“Let me know what you decide,” Joel said. “We could travel together. I can make all the arrangements.”

I nodded noncommittally.

Adam rummaged in the metal tub of ice, uncapped a beer and handed it to me. Our fingers brushed. Yeah, I could definitely use time away when the touch of Adam’s hand had my nerves twitching as though magnetized.

“Hey, Kyle, what do you think about this rumor that Aaron Lipez is hiding a bunch of Cosmo’s paintings?” Jen inquired, apparently continuing an on-going discussion. “Could he have
Virgin in Pastel
?”

“Not much,” I answered. Not that I had any more insight into my grandfather’s actions than anyone else. “I don’t think he put a lot of value on Cosmo’s work.”

“Philistine,” Vince muttered. “They’re all philistines around here. The only good thing about the local yokels is they’re too cheap to toss anything. Look at old man Cruz finding that painting at the bottom of his chicken coop.”

Cruz’s chicken-coop coup was a local legend. Before my father had gone off to set the world on fire, he had spent years filling canvases with pictures nobody thought were suitable for anything but chicken coop flooring or white elephant sales. After he became famous, and art collectors started showing up, my father’s former neighbors started pillaging local thrift stores and attics in hopes of discovering a cache. Several found original Cosmos, which had immediately been snapped up for mucho bucks by East Coast buyers.

“What a find,” Micky agreed. “What did he get for it? A cool ten grand? And that was way back then.”

In the envious silence that followed, Jen said, “Suppose
Virgin in Pastel
is lying at the bottom of somebody’s chicken coop?”

“Why not?” said Brett. “It’s never turned up, has it?”

“There’s no proof it still existed at the time Cosmo disappeared,” Joel said. “Cos could have painted over it.”

“No way!” exclaimed Vince.

Joel laughed. “Oh, it’s possible all right. It’s just the kind of self-destructive thing Cosmo would do.”

I shivered. Adam glanced at me and put a companionable arm about my shoulders. “Warm enough?”

“Yep, fine,” I replied and moved away, hard though it was. I took a place on the log and said to Joel, “The
Virgin
is still around somewhere. I remember seeing it a few days before Cosmo disappeared.”

There was an astounded silence.

“You never said so before,” Joel said.

“You never questioned the painting’s existence before.” I glanced up. They were all staring at me.

“Kyle, you had been pretty ill. Maybe you’re confusing—”

“I’m not confusing anything. Cosmo had taken it down for the exhibition at the MOMA. It was propped in the dining room. I remember wondering about that because he had never shown it before.”

“I’d give anything to find that painting,” Vince said, breaking the moment. “I’d be set for life.”

Brett retorted, “Who cares about one missing painting? Where’s the painter? That’s what I want to know!”

Following this there was another of those uncanny silences.

Enjoying himself, Brett rose, a lithe shadow in the firelight. “Maybe it was Professor Plum in the conservatory with the wrench. Or maybe a wench! What do you think, Kyle?”

Joel said finally, “That’s not exactly in the best of taste, is it?”

“No?” Brett laughed. “Well, let’s talk about something else.”

“What would you like to talk about, Brett?” Micky asked dryly. “Yourself?”

Vince gazed up enraptured. “God, I’d love to paint you, just like that. The embodiment of the pagan spirit.”

Joel’s breath sucked in sharply. My eyes caught Jen’s. If looks could kill…

Brett laughed. A carefree kid’s laugh. “Bare ass naked? What do you think, Jenny Wren? You want me to model for you too?”

Deliberately Jen took a frankfurter and jabbed the end of a wire hanger into it. Brett laughed again.

“Brett,” Adam said quietly. That was all, but the air seemed to go out of Brett’s balloon. He made a face and headed for the space on the log between Joel and me.

“Adam thinks I’m a bad boy, Joel.” Then to me he confided, “Joel knows how bad a boy I can be. Joel used to get off on spanking me.”

Vince inhaled beer and began coughing.

Joel’s face turned livid in the firelight. He rose and stalked away on the pretext of gathering more driftwood.

“Jesus,” I muttered.

I thought that Joel’s pain didn’t stem from the embarrassment of having known Brett in his trade days, so much as the fact that he still cared for him—was eaten alive with lust and jealousy.

“You’re a little shit,” Micky informed Brett pleasantly.

Brett swung his sights her way. He chanted softly, “Oh Micky you’re so fine. You’re so fine, you blow my mind. Oh Micky!”

Micky smiled a smile I didn’t trust.

I drank my beer and wondered how soon I could decently leave.

Chapter Four

A
fter this everyone seemed very much preoccupied with handing out picnic plates and flatware. The discussion was restricted to Jell-O salad and how everyone wanted their hotdogs cooked.

“Come on, Kyle,” Brett said, openly bored. “Shall we see sea shells down by the seashore?” He linked his arm in mine and drew me to my feet. I glanced around the faces circling the fire. Only Adam watched us.

Brett tugged on my hand. I decided I’d do everyone a favor and I let him drag me off.

The water creamed inches from our feet as we walked along the shoreline. Brett didn’t seem to feel the cold. He nattered on cheerfully, maliciously, about Vince, about Joel, about everyone except the one person I would have liked to hear about.

We walked a ways till we rounded Smuggler’s Point, the rocks cutting us off from view of the others. Brett headed for the lichen-crusted boulders; I followed. We sat down and he took out a pack of cigarettes, offering them. I shook my head. He tapped one and lit it. He inhaled and blew a smoke ring. It floated delicately away on the night air.

“Smoke bother you?” he asked after a time.

“No.”

He blew another smoke ring. “You’re okay, Kylie,” he said at last. “I was prepared to hate your guts, but actually you’re the only one of these assholes that’s remotely human.”

“Wow. Thanks.”

He gave an odd laugh. Took another puff. “How bad’s your heart anyway?”

After an astonished moment I said, “Well, I washed out of NASA. I’m okay for normal living.”

“Whatever that is. Are you okay for normal fucking?” And he reached across and planted his hand on my crotch.

My own response to that warm insinuating weight took me by surprise—and I felt myself go rigid like a Victorian heroine. I grabbed his wrist. “I appreciate the gesture, but—”

He twisted his hand, and now it was his fingers grabbing my wrist. “Who are you kidding? You’re so tight I’m surprised you can walk.” He tugged me forward and I half sprawled into his lap. His free hand resumed massaging my swelling crotch through the stiff material of my Levi’s. He was stronger than he looked. And he knew what he was doing.

I closed my eyes for a moment. Gave in to the idea that this painful throbbing want could be satisfied quickly and secretly. No harm, no foul. We were both adults and this was just sex.

“Knock it off, Brett,” I said coldly—if belatedly. I pushed his hand off my aching crotch. With my free hand I felt for the crusty surface of the rock, bracing myself up and away. Hard to be dignified and defend your honor at the same time, but I tried.

“Why? We can both feel how bad you want this.” Brett tried to kiss me. I turned my face and he kissed the corner of my jaw.

It was kind of funny really, except for how it would look to Adam if he came walking up. The thought of Adam was terrifying and—unnervingly—even more arousing.

“Relax, Kylie,” Brett whispered, his hand sliding up under my sweatshirt. His cool fingers slid across my chest and found my nipple. Even to my own ears my protest didn’t sound nearly fierce enough. “Let go. I know what you want. Better than you do yourself.” We tussled some more, breathlessly; Brett was laughing softly, his hands everywhere, like Kali making her move.

“Don’t…” I caught a ragged breath as he pinched my nipple. “Brett, don’t.”

He said throatily, “It’s too late…” His nails scraped across the hard flat planes of my chest, found my other nipple. Scratched lightly, maddeningly across the tingling nub.

I felt a wave of relief. Too late. It was going to happen. All I had to do was lie back and let this wave take me out.

And that would make it pretty much unanimous. Brett would have fucked every guy in the colony—including me. And I didn’t even like him.

Finally I was mad. I pushed upright and shoved him so hard he fell off his perch.