The Art of Death (11 page)
Authors: Margarite St. John
Short, Unhappy Life
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Tuesday afternoon, Madeleine read aloud the
Journal Gazette
article about Kimberly Swartz’s death to her father in the alcove off his bedroom. It was unusual for her to visit her father at that time of day, but she knew he’d be interested in the news.
On Monday morning, at a little after eight o’clock, the body of a young woman was found at Highland Park Cemetery by a visitor tidying up a nearby grave. The visitor has asked not to be identified.
The victim has been identified as Kimberly Swartz, 34, an esthetician employed at Spa-La-La, advertising itself as a “salon de beauté.” It is believed she was shot once, possibly several hours before the discovery.
Ms. Swartz was one of two survivors of a tragic accident at the Indiana Dunes State Park on July 4, 1990.
According to a cemetery custodian, Miss Swartz was a frequent visitor to the grave of her grandmother, Harvena Swartz. The bicycle she rode was found propped against a tree. The cellphone, which her mother, Cleosia Swartz, said she was never without, has not been located, nor has any gun been found.
Police are seeking witnesses; as of this morning, no arrests have been made.
Madeleine put down the paper and looked out the window at the family cemetery. “Isn’t that terrible, Daddy? You remember Kimmie, I’m sure. Not very pretty with those buck teeth and those little eyes. The buck teeth got straightened, sort of, but nothing she could do about her eyes except apply too much eye shadow. She bought her clothes at Clothes Mentor.” Madeleine shuddered. “Wearing used clothes! Imagine! And then, of all things, she became an esthetician. Can you believe that? She was a walking ‘Before’ picture. Life is full of irony, isn’t it?”
Turning her gaze to her father, Madeleine continued. “Altogether, Kimmie had a short, unhappy life, that’s for sure. Her mother and father got a divorce when she was fourteen. She had to live with her mother and brother but didn’t get along with either one. She never made any money, never married or traveled anywhere. Oh, sure, she went to Indianapolis once, but that’s about it, poor thing. She lived in an apartment smaller than your bedroom. Her prize possession was a bicycle, for God’s sake, and her hobby was jigsaw puzzles. Imagine!” She turned to face her father. “I’m so glad I’m not her.”
Her father didn’t answer.
“I’ll miss her, though. I hate going to salons. Now I’ll have to try to find somebody else to come here.”
Silence.
“I had flowers delivered to her mother this morning, along with a note of condolence. And I’ll send a big wreath to the funeral home when her visitation is announced. I wish there was something else I could do.”
“You were always thoughtful.”
“So, Daddy, who do you suppose killed her? And why?”
Finally, Chester answered. “What about your doctor Beltrami? You said Kimmie was threatening him.”
Madeleine got to her feet. “Oh, Daddy, don’t be silly. He isn’t -- wasn’t -- worried about her. To Anthony, Kimmie was never a threat, more like a sweat bee buzzing his beer, easily swatted away.” She cocked her head and laughed. “What about you? You said you’d killed in the Korean war, you could kill again if you had the keys to the gun cabinet and the pickup.” She shook her finger playfully. “Did you slip out of this house while I was asleep?” She leaned down to kiss his forehead. “Just teasing. Of course, you didn’t. Your bark was always worse than your bite.”
Misfortune
Friday, May 31, 2013
One last time, Babette Fouré and her stylish assistant Arnaud studied one of Madeleine Harrod’s oil paintings before it was removed from the wall and readied for crating and shipping to a famous Hollywood director. Called “Amy Robsart’s Misfortune,” it showed a beautiful woman free-falling through the air, arms upraised in surrender, neck twisted as if it had been broken in mid-flight instead of on impact, the merest wispy hint of a balustrade above her head and a tile floor below her feet. She was the first wife of Lord Robert Dudley, Queen Elizabeth I’s favorite courtier. Her fall down a flight of stairs in 1560 at the age of 28 was thought to have been engineered so that the courtier was free to marry the queen, but the subsequent scandal quelled those prospects. Amy’s death was ruled a “misfortune.”
Babette knew the history of the unfortunate Tudor-era wife as well as Arnaud did but he couldn’t refrain from assuming the dramatic pose of Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker and giving him a high tenor voice. “That expression on Amy’s face! Is she startled, do we think? Or a bit smug, her suspicions about her ambitious husband being confirmed on her way to a broken neck?”
Babette laughed softly as she joined him on a black tufted leather viewing bench. “I think the answer lies with Madeleine, not with Amy.”
“Strange woman, Madeleine. She talks to herself.”
“She does?” Babette asked.
“That night of the big opening of her show?”
Babette nodded.
“I was busy with one of our best clients when I heard her behind me, talking in very low tones to someone.”
“Near the Nicole picture?” Babette interjected.
In an effort to remember, Arnaud looked at the spot where the picture once hung. “Maybe. Anyway, I turned around to see why she was whispering, but there was no one near her. She was muttering to herself and rubbing her wrist -- rubbing and rubbing like Lady Macbeth obsessively washing her hands. I asked her if she wanted to talk to one of our clients about a commission but she slipped away as if she hadn’t heard me. I don’t think she even saw me. I was sort of pissed off at first, like she was snubbing me, but then I thought, ‘No, Arnaud, don’t go there. She’s a tortured artist, you’re just a gallery assistant. She’s allowed to do strange things, you’re supposed to overlook them.’ So I let it go.”
Babette touched his arm. “At dinner that night, she said she’d been followed by a strange man in a yachting costume who scared her. He grabbed her wrist, she said, and she had the marks to prove it. I saw the red welts on her wrist.”
Both stared at the Amy Robsart painting again. Finally, Babette broke the silence. “So you didn’t see a strange man in a yachting costume.”
“No,
chéri
. Not sure what such a costume would look like. But then I’ve never been on a yacht, more’s the pity. I’m waiting for you to buy one.”
“Fat chance, Arnaud. But in August we’ll go back to Paris. I’ve been thinking about a river cruise, just for a week. What do you think of that?”
“
Parfait
!”
“Did we ever look at the security cameras to see if a man in a yachting costume came in for Madeleine’s opening? And what about the pictures we had our photographer take?”
“You’re serious,
chéri
?”
“I’m serious. I want to get to the bottom of it.”
“Why?”
“I feel responsible. If some
fou
slipped in and harassed one of my artists, I want to know who it is. I don’t want him coming back.”
“I’ll have Haru set up the security tape -- is it still tape or something else in the camera? Anyway, I’ll alert Haru and I’ll look through the still pictures myself.”
Babette got to her feet and stretched to loosen her shoulders. She never felt quite as relaxed as she looked.
Arnaud eyed her with concern. “Are we working out? You know, the way our doctor said to do?”
Babette pouted charmingly. “No,
we
aren’t. No time.”
“You mean,
we
aren’t disciplined.”
“To prove that fact, I’m stepping out for a Gauloises. Are you joining me?”
“Of course.”
“Are we going to be ready next Friday night for the crowds?”
“You mean the artful hordes?” Arnaud asked in a resigned voice. First Friday art strolls were a regular thing in the Indianapolis summer, drawing a motley crowd: tourists at loose ends, office workers eager for fresh air and free wine, and dateless romantics hoping to hook up. They moved like protoplasm on legs from one art gallery to the next, flowing up and down Mass Ave and around Fountain Square. Unfortunately, very few of the
bons vivants
were serious buyers.
Arnaud straightened Amy Robsart’s portrait, even though the canvas was about to be taken down, before following Babette to the back door of the gallery. “We will be,
chéri
. The art glass has already been delivered. Although how we’ll display it so it doesn’t get smashed I don’t know yet.”
Few Clues
Friday, May 31, 2013
In almost two weeks, Detective Dave Powers had made very little progress on the Kimberly Swartz murder. A search of the cemetery had turned up no clues with one possible exception: a couple of pieces of white plastic.
The Nishiki bicycle had no fingerprints other than the victim’s on it. The perpetrator seemed to have dropped nothing -- no cigarette butts, buttons, eyeglasses, coins, wads of gum, or receipts. The victim had not been sexually assaulted or manhandled, so no traces of the shooter’s DNA were found on the body.
The victim’s cellphone was not found near the body or in a later search of her apartment. Cleosia Swartz said that her daughter never left home without it. If the killer took the victim’s cellphone, then he must have disabled it by removing the SIM card and battery immediately because the phone no longer pinged. A ten-dollar bill was found in a waist wallet, together with an EpiPen and a valid driver’s license. A Timex watch was still on her wrist. Thus, robbery did not appear to be a motive. If the victim’s cellphone was taken, as seemed likely, the motive was not robbery but concealment of whatever messages were on it.
The woman who spotted the body and called 911 cooperated fully, with the proviso that her name not be made public. She had not known the victim and appeared to have nothing to do with the murder.
The coroner estimated the time of death as between 6 and 7 o’clock in the morning. If anyone else was in the cemetery just before or just after sunrise, that person had yet to be located.
The only objects the searchers had found were two white plastic pieces lying in the weedy field north of the cemetery. When fitted together, they made part of a gun, but the grip, hammer, and firing pin were missing. A .38 caliber bullet could be fitted into the muzzle. If the two pieces were really part of a gun, then the owner might be a criminal, even a terrorist, intent on slipping the plastic weapon through metal detectors at security. The perfectly placed shot, execution style, suggested just such a killer was involved. There was no proof, however, that the gun parts were connected to the homicide, though their condition suggested they hadn’t been in the field long.
Dave picked up the pieces, which had already been checked for fingerprints. Clean as a whistle. He turned them this way and that. Perhaps the pieces were the work of a killer who was also a hobbyist. The pieces resembled a weapon made by the serial killer, played by John Malkovich, in Clint Eastwood’s
In the Line of Fire
.
Kimberly Swartz had no known connections to terrorists or criminals. So far as Dave could determine, she had led the quietest, dullest of lives. She worked at a salon, she put jigsaw puzzles together, and she rode her bike. She had few friends and no boyfriend. So, was she meeting someone she knew at her grandmother’s grave? If so, who and why? Or was she taken by surprise, a random victim in the wrong place at the wrong time?
Lipstick
Friday, May 31, 2013
It was the end of a long workday and Steve Wright was tired. He left the construction trailer at the Appledorn farm to inspect the progress his crew had made on shoring up the footers of the old barn and marking the wood cladding that was rotten at the bottom. All the old windows and door frames had been removed. The cement ramp had not yet been jackhammered out. Materials to replace sections of the foundation were piled under a slightly mildewed canvas. Madeleine’s precious things that had been in the barn were being stored in a large trailer near the pine grove.
His crew, composed of his Amish second cousins and many of their family and friends, worked clean and fast but still the site must look a mess to anyone unfamiliar with construction. Mad Madeleine, for instance.
And, then, there she was, exiting the back of the house, looking fashionably casual in slim jeans and a leather jacket. She skipped down the porch stairs and strode purposefully in his direction. “So, how’s it going?” she asked, stopping inches from his side. She shielded her eyes against the sun. Steve noticed that though her eyes crinkled a little, her forehead didn’t move. Her pixie cut was shiny and damp, her bright red lipstick was fresh, and she smelled of that expensive perfume she’d always loved.
“So far, so good.”
“Have you locked up the trailer yet?”
“No, why?”
“I wonder if I could look at the drawings again. I’m thinking maybe I want a little bump-out on the north side so my studio’s big enough.”
Steve shook his head. “It’s your money and your schedule, but altering plans is -- .”
Madeleine cut him off. “Expensive. I know, I know, so don’t tell me again.” She touched his arm. “Did that sound harsh? I didn’t mean it that way. I just hate being reminded about how much I’m spending on this folly.”
“Folly?”
“Well, not a folly, but I could have made do, I suppose, with the barn the way it was.”
Steve looked doubtful. “It was in a lot worse shape than it looked to the untrained eye. You’re lucky the roof never fell in on you.”
Madeleine looked at her watch, the diamonds around the bezel flashing in the sunlight. “It’s almost six o’clock. Am I holding you up? Do you need to get somewhere?”
“In fact, I need to get on the road. Trent and Cricket’s rehearsal dinner is tonight at the Club. I’ve got to shower and change and see that things are going right, so how about leaving the drawings until Monday?”
She pouted prettily, in the expressive French way that Babette did. “One of these days, you’ve got to let me take you to dinner.”
Steve had no wish to dip his toe into those turbulent waters. “I’m going to lock up. Why don’t you use the next two days to decide whether you really need a bump-out.” Before he could start for the trailer, Madeleine impulsively stood on tiptoes and kissed his cheek.
Once in his pickup, Steve checked his cheek for lipstick remains and rubbed them away.