Текст книги "The Nightingale Before Christmas"

Автор книги: Donna Andrews

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“Not since he went off to prison,” the brother said. “He came and stayed with me when he got out. I thought maybe he’d start up painting again, but he never did. Just hung around moping until I told him he had to get a job or get out.”

“What happened then?” I asked.

“He managed to get a job working for a woman decorator,” he said. “Old girlfriend of his.”

“What was her name?” I asked.

“Martha something,” the brother said.

Interesting. Clay wasn’t just Martha’s hated rival. He was also her hated ex.

“He knew her from high school, I think. Moved out of my basement and into her fancy West End house. And the next thing I knew, he’s a decorator himself.”

Heavy sarcasm on the word “decorator.” Was he implying that his brother wasn’t much of a decorator? Or indicating that he didn’t think much of decorating as a career choice?

“You didn’t approve?” I asked aloud.

“More like he didn’t approve of me. Didn’t want to have anything to do with a used-car salesman. We weren’t getting along when he left, and I haven’t heard much from him since. I’m just hoping he hasn’t left a whole bunch of debts for me to take care of.”

I saw my opening.

“Well, if he has left debts, selling the paintings could help out, couldn’t it?” I said. “Assuming you can get his name out there again to raise the price. Displaying the paintings in the show house will help make him visible again. Hundreds and hundreds of affluent people will be going through that house, seeing the paintings in the best possible setting. And if anyone asks if they’re for sale, we can steer them to you. When you combine that with the publicity that’s bound to follow when the media find out his real name—well, I wouldn’t be surprised if the price you can get for the paintings went up considerably.”

“Ah,” he said. “Well, that might be something we could think about doing.”

“And we’ll post a cash bond for the appraised value of the paintings, to ensure their safe return, and give you credit in the program as a major sponsor.”

“You’ve got a deal.”

Okay, we had a deal, but it took a little while to hash out the terms. Program credit turned into an ad for the brother’s car dealership, but he agreed to fax me permission to borrow as much of Clay’s artwork as I wanted.

“Not just a former boss but a former girlfriend,” I muttered after I hung up. Should I tell the chief about this, or would he already know it? Of course, Martha had an alibi—unless the chief had found a problem with it. But what if one of Clay’s more recent flames found out about their shared history and thought they were rekindling their old romance? I’d have thought they were more likely to rekindle the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, but who knows what crazy ideas someone who hadn’t seen them together might get. Someone like Felicia Granger, for example.

I’d figure out how to share this with the chief later. Right now I had work to do. I called Randall to saddle him with the job of arranging for the appraisal and the bond. I called the program designer and told her to figure out a way to work the ad in before she delivered the program to the printer today. And then I called the chief to ask if he could let me into Clay’s house.

“Can you meet Deputy Butler over there in fifteen minutes?” he asked.

“I’m already out the door,” I said. “By the way—Clay’s brother seems to think that he and Martha were an item at one time.”

“Does he now?” the chief said. “Thanks.”

So much for finding out whether the chief already knew.

Chapter 20

While I was driving over to Clay’s house, my phone rang. Michael’s mother again. Probably more cooking questions.

Sure enough, when I pulled up in front of Clay’s house, there was a voice mail.

“Meg? Are you there? Your brother told me there was a pie your family always likes to have at Christmas. Could you call to give me the recipe?”

“Later,” I muttered, as I scrambled up the walk to meet Aida Butler.

“Girl, are you okay?” she asked. “You look frazzled.”

“Gee, thanks,” I said. “I feel frazzled. I cannot wait till this show house is over.”

“And these paintings you’re picking up are part of that?”

“A big part.”

She opened up the door and I followed her in.

“Stay here while I check the house,” she said. She didn’t pull out her gun, but she was clearly not just going through the motions. I reflected that since Aida was even taller than me and entered Ironman competitions in her spare time, she was probably at least as good a bodyguard as anyone on the force.

I waited in the living room, trying to be alert for sounds around me. And studying Clay’s paintings, trying to imagine how they’d look in the house.

“All clear,” she said, returning to the living room.

“Was that just standard procedure?” I asked. “Or do you have reason to worry that someone might be in here?”

“The killer’s still on the loose,” she said. “And more to the point, this is a house known to be unoccupied. Open invitation to vandalism. These the paintings you want?”

I nodded.

“They’re good,” Aida said. “But I’m not sure I’d want any of them on my wall. Looking at those things day-in day-out could make you slit your wrists.”

I could see that. They were dark and bleak and uncompromising. And as far as I could tell, very good. I wouldn’t want them on my wall, either, but if they were in a museum I could see going back to visit them more than once. Why would anyone who could do something this good ever stop?

I could worry about that later. For the moment, the important thing was that, as I’d remembered, they were the right sizes for the blank spaces in Clay’s room. And they were painted mostly in black and gray, with a few muted browns and greens and the occasional stark splash of white or red. They’d fit in perfectly with the décor in his room.

“Help me get this thing down,” I said, indicating the cityscape.

The canvas was huge, at least four by five feet, and heavier than we expected. As we were easing it down to the floor, Aida lost control of her end and it slammed down on her foot.

“Owwwww!” she shrieked, and began hopping around on her good foot. “Rainbows! Rainbows!”

“Are you okay?” I asked. Rainbows? Was she becoming delirious?

“No, I’m not okay,” she moaned. “That thing hurts like a son-of-a—rainbows! Rainbows! Dammit, rainbows!”

She pulled off her heavy shoe and her sock and we looked at her foot. Apparently the corner of the painting had landed on her big toe. The nail was turning black, and the whole toe looked bruised.

“Only time I’ve ever been grateful for these plug-ugly shoes they make us wear,” she muttered. “That thing could have taken my whole toe off.”

“You probably broke it,” I said. “Go down to the ER. And what’s with the rainbows?”

“Trying to clean up my language,” she said. “You know our new civilian employee? That prissy little twerp who just started helping out at the front desk? He accused me of creating a hostile work environment, just ’cause I dropped the F-bomb a few times when I was ticked off about something. And the chief said he wouldn’t discipline me, but could I please find something else to say.”

“And how can anyone object to the word ‘rainbows’?” I said, laughing.

“Well, it’s starting to make the twerp really nervous whenever I say it,” Aida said. “But he hasn’t complained, so that’s something. Did we damage the painting?”

We hadn’t. I suspected Aida was a little disappointed at that. She stared at it balefully while putting her sock and shoe back on.

“No way that thing’s ever gonna fit in your car,” she said. She stood up and winced a little.

“You’re right.” I pulled out my phone and punched one of my speed-dial numbers. “Randall,” I said. “Can you spare a truck?”

Aida and I wrestled all three paintings off the walls and into the foyer.

“Did you see any signs that he was still painting?” I asked while we were waiting for Randall.

“You mean like an easel?” she asked.

“Or unfinished canvases. Or paints.”

“No, but I wasn’t looking for that. Let’s take a look.”

It didn’t take us long. Clay wasn’t into clutter. In fact, he wasn’t into much of anything that we could see.

“Likes to travel light,” Aida said. “I hear it happens sometimes with ex-cons.”

And no sign that he was painting.

We did find an unfinished painting in his attic—a nude study of a blond woman. Her voluptuous body was rendered in minute detail, but the head was sketchy, merely a flesh-colored patch on the canvas with the barest suggestion of features. From the amount of dust on it I deduced he hadn’t abandoned it recently.

“Not bad,” Aida said. “But if you’re thinking about putting that in the show house, I’d think again.”

She had a point, and not just because the painting was unfinished. It wasn’t just sensual—it was lascivious. Provocative. Way too controversial for our small-town show house.

I took a couple of pictures of it with my phone, and then we put it back where we’d found it—shoved away in a corner of the attic—and went downstairs again.

“You’re right,” I said. “Not a good idea to use that painting. But damn, it’s good. I didn’t like Clay, and I can’t say I’ll miss him all that much, but I’d like to have seen what else he’d have done if he’d started painting again.”

“Maybe he was planning to,” Aida said. “Isn’t this a sketchbook?”

She picked up something sitting on the coffee table and handed it to me—an eight-and-a-half by eleven notebook bound in black faux leather. I opened it to the first page and found myself looking at a sketch of a nude woman. Recognizably Felicia, though a lot more voluptuous than I remembered her as being. Maybe Clay was trying to flatter her.

“Okay,” Aida said. “I see why Jerry Granger might be a bit put out if he caught sight of that.”

Just then we heard a heard a knock on the door.

“I’ll get it,” Aida said. “Just in case it’s not Randall.”

I flipped through a few more pages in the sketchbook. Several more flattering sketches of Felicia. A distinctly unflattering but highly recognizable one of Jerry Granger. Until I saw Clay’s sketch, I hadn’t quite realized how large Jerry’s jaw was, or how Neanderthal it made him look.

On the next page was a sketch of Ivy. Ivy in the show house, hunched over in a corner of the hallway with a paintbrush in her hand, peering at the wall she was painting. He’d exaggerated the height of the walls looming over her, so she looked more like a mouse than a human. But unlike the one of Jerry, this sketch didn’t feel unkind or mocking. More … bemused.

I kept turning the pages. Apparently this was a very recent sketchbook—all the denizens of the show house were there. I could tell he didn’t like Mother—he’d sketched her looking at Ivy’s Snow Queen mural, and made the Snow Queen look the warmer of the two. He didn’t like Eustace either, but about the only unflattering thing he did was exaggerate Eustace’s neat little paunch into a huge Santa-like belly.

He had a wicked take on Linda, showing her in her room, not only surrounded by chintz but even dressed in it, and when you looked at her feet you saw that she was gradually being sucked in, as if the chintz were quicksand and she its unwary prey. And of course he’d turned Vermillion into a stereotypical vampy figure reminiscent of Morticia Addams, which showed he hadn’t looked too closely at her.

I was surprised that the sketches he’d done of me were pretty accurate and made me look reasonably good. Violet and Sarah came off pretty well, too. And he had a sketch of Martha that was downright flattering. Flattering and noticeably younger than she was.

One sketch stopped me cold—a sketch of Clay himself. He’d been a handsome man. Not my type—too brooding and saturnine. But handsome. Probably a real heartbreaker when he was in his twenties, back in his New York art world days. Funny that I couldn’t remember noticing his good looks when I’d first met him, probably because he’d barged into the middle of a conversation I’d been having with Sarah, intent on bullying me into something or other, and after that it was all downhill. Looking at his sketch made me sad. It was accurate enough, but somehow not the least bit flattering. I hadn’t liked Clay, but I felt sorry for the man who’d drawn himself with such mockery, self-loathing, and pitiless honesty.

I couldn’t understand why anyone with Clay’s talent would give up his art. And I couldn’t decide who to be angrier with: Clay, for doing so, or the killer who’d removed any hope that he’d ever change his mind.

The sketch of Clay was the last one in the book. No, wait—I flipped past several blank pages and came across another one.

Martha. But not the flattering version that had appeared earlier in the sketchbook. This one was a nude that showed every blemish, bulge, and bit of sagging skin with cruel precision. And her face didn’t have the pleasant, almost dreamy look of the first sketch but a look of utter fury, as if he’d imagined how she’d react if he showed her the sketch. Imagined, or maybe seen?

And the pose—wasn’t it curiously similar to the one in the unfinished painting in the attic? I pulled out my phone to check. No, not just similar. Exactly the same pose. Only with fifteen or twenty years added—that, and a whole lot of anger.

“Meg?” Aida called. “You coming?”

“On my way.”

If this were my sketchbook, I’d have torn out that last drawing. No one deserved to see that kind of hateful picture of herself. But it wasn’t mine, so I tucked the sketchbook into my tote. If anyone challenged me on it, I could say that I was keeping my options open in case one of the paintings proved too big for its space. My permission form from the brother did say as much artwork as I needed, not just paintings. And in the meantime I could glance through it and learn more about Clay. And of course, I could always take it to the chief if I thought any of the sketches had any relevance to the murder case.

Out in the foyer, Randall was standing with his arms crossed, staring at the paintings.

“Someone wasn’t taking his Prozac.” He shook his head as if throwing off a baneful influence. “I brought some furniture pads to wrap them in.”

Randall and I hauled the paintings back to the show house, and he helped me hang them.

“Looks good,” Randall said. “Not that I like the paintings all that much, but they look better here in this room. The red walls sort of keep them from being such a downer.”

“They’re still a downer.”

Martha was standing in the doorway, glaring at us. She stepped into the room and did a quick survey. Was I only imagining it or did she relax just a little when she’d seen all three paintings. Did she know about the unfinished painting that was probably of her?

“Why’d you pick these paintings, anyway?” she asked.

“I didn’t exactly pick them,” I said. “These three were the only ones he had.” At least the only paintings that were complete, and framed. It wasn’t such a big lie.

“Seriously?” Martha asked.

I nodded.

“Damn,” she said. “I wonder what happened to the rest of them. He was prolific, once upon a time.” She made “prolific” sound like a put-down.

“Maybe he sold them all,” I suggested.

“No.” She shook her head. “Not a lot of his work is out in the market. Whoever owns these will make a mint on them, now that he’s dead.”

“His brother will be happy to hear that,” I said. “It seems he’s inherited these.”

“There could be others out there,” Martha said. “The chief should look into that. Follow the money. See if someone, like his dealer, has a stash of them ready to put on the market.”

“I thought Clay murdered his dealer,” I said.

She looked startled at that. Was she surprised that I knew? Or just surprised at my bluntness?

“True,” she said. “No use trying to contact his original dealer. But he could have gotten another one.”

“Unless he gave up painting entirely,” I suggested.

“Maybe he did.” She was staring at the cityscape now. “What a waste. All that talent gone.”

She didn’t look as if she were sad over the waste. She looked as if she couldn’t decide whether to feel envious of the talent or triumphant that its owner was dead.

“He was very talented,” I said.

“Yeah,” Martha said. “Always thought he was a cut above everyone else because he was an artist. And look at him now. He’s dead, and the used-car salesman gets his precious paintings.”

She said it with such venom that I was speechless.

“Well, life goes on,” she said after a few moments. “And my rooms aren’t going to finish themselves.”

She left.

“If you ask me,” Randall said, “she’s lucky her alibi checks out.”

“You’re sure it does?” I asked.

“The chief seems pretty focused on the Grangers right now,” Randall said. “And he’s checking out the possibility that the killer was someone blackmailing Clay over his prison history.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” I said.

“Does to me,” Randall said. “I’m not sure how all those rich clients of Clay’s would feel if they found out they were hiring an ex-con. And a convicted murderer, no less.”

“Yeah, but why would the blackmailer kill Clay?” I asked. “Clay killing the blackmailer, maybe. But why would the blackmailer kill the goose that’s laying golden eggs?”

“Clay had a temper,” Randall said. “Maybe they quarreled, and the blackmailer killed him in self-defense.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Anyway, not our problem. I hereby declare this room finished. And in the nick of time.”

“Today’s not the nick of time,” he said. “That would be tomorrow morning, when the photographer rings the doorbell.”

He picked up his tools and tarps and headed for the door.

“I bet you’ll be glad to work on something other than this house,” I said, as I followed him downstairs.

“Will I ever,” he said. “But that’s water under the bridge. If we can just keep from having any fresh disasters, maybe we can make us some money for the historical society.”

I noticed he tapped lightly on the woodwork as he said it.

“Assuming anyone wants to come to a show house where someone was murdered,” I said.

“Oh, they’ll come all right,” he said. “It’s the notoriety. Like having our shindig in Lizzie Borden’s old house.”

“Lizzie Borden’s a lot more famous than whoever killed Clay will ever be.”

“Yeah, but we’ve got recent and local on our side,” he said. “No, I’m not worried about people coming to the show house. Now, the bank’s a little worried about who’s going to buy the house. It’s one thing to visit a famous murder scene and another to live in it.”

“Fortunately, not our problem,” I said.

“Fortunately,” he agreed. “I expect someone will buy it sooner or later, given the housing shortage here in town. And I have to say, it’s been an interesting house to work on.”

“With all these different personalities, you mean?”

“And interesting in and of itself,” he said. “Didn’t I ever tell you about all the hidey-holes we found?”

“Hidey-holes?”

“Secret compartments all over the house. Like in the back of one of the kitchen cabinets there was a false panel you could slide up to find a little hollowed out place between the studs. And in the master bath, if you took the drawers out of the vanity you’d find a door to another hiding place under the eaves. And in the front bedroom, the one that now looks like Dracula’s castle, one on either side of the window seat. Someone had fun with it, making secret compartments every place where most houses would have little pockets of dead air and lost space. And there were a couple of places you could lift up floorboards to find secret compartments. All told, a couple dozen hidey-holes.”

“What was in them?”

“Nothing,” he said. “We’d get excited every time we found one. Me and the boys spent hours, poking and prodding to find every single secret hidey-hole. But not a single one of them had anything inside but dust.”

“Not by the time you got to them,” I said slowly. “But what if there was something in them at one time?”

“I’m sure there was, sometime or other,” he said. “I was thinking most likely a drug dealer built them to hide his stash.”

“Or a miser who didn’t trust banks,” I suggested. “Or a woman who wanted to keep her jewelry with her instead of putting it in a bank vault. Or maybe just someone who thought they were cool and would amuse the kids by hiding toys and candy in them.”

“That’s an idea,” he said, chuckling. “Make it sound all romantic. Maybe the bank will have an easier time selling the house if people think there’s gold and jewels hidden away inside it.”

“Maybe that’s the reason for all the vandalism that happened in the house this fall,” I said. “Maybe it wasn’t really vandalism—maybe someone suspected there might be secret compartments and broke into the house to look for them.”

“Well, they did find a couple of the compartments,” he said. “Looked like an accident to me, though. And a lot of the damage wasn’t to anything that could possibly have a secret compartment in it. Just pure meanness.”

“Maybe that’s what you were meant to think,” I said. “If I didn’t want anyone to know I was breaking down a wall to find a secret compartment in it, maybe I’d just do a lot of random damage all around.”

Randall looked thoughtful.

“They were pretty persistent,” he said. “Kept trying to break in even after Chief Burke put on extra patrols in the area. I suggested putting in a security system—the bank wasn’t too crazy about the expense, but I think they’d have gone for it eventually. Then the idea of the show house came up, and I figured whoever was doing it was scared off by all the activity—first me and my workmen, and then all the decorators.”

“Who used to live in the house?” I asked.

“Nobody,” he said. “Like I said, it’s been vacant—”

“For six years, yes,” I said. “But before that?”

“Family named Green,” he said. “Not from around here, and they moved away after the bank took their house. Why?”

“What if one of the Greens is trying to find something they left here?” I asked. “In one of those hidey-holes?”

“Something that’s still here after six years?”

“What if Clay wasn’t killed because anyone had a grudge against him but because he was unlucky enough to be here when the prowler broke in?”

He thought about it for a few moments.

“No crazier than some of the other stuff I’ve seen lately. Tell the chief, and maybe he can track down the Greens.”

“Randall?” It was Mother. “Could I borrow you for just a moment?”

“Later,” he said to me as he followed Mother.

I went upstairs and looked around the master bedroom. I brushed a few specks of dust off the glossy black dresser and plumped the pillows on the bed. I was starting to feel a little bit proprietary about the room.

What would I do if I walked in and found someone hacking at its walls with an ax? I liked to think I’d retreat to safety and call 9-1-1. But Clay had a hot temper.

“We need to find out more about the Greens,” I murmured.