Tonight, however, the joint was hopping. 241-B’s next-door neighbor, 241-C was hosting this evening’s Touch Tour.
The tours were created, in a brilliant stroke of outreach, to invite blind and visually impaired visitors in for the purpose of breaking the most sacred rule of museums everywhere: HANDS OFF THE ART!
A select number of works in the museum’s collection could stand up to respectful handling, and the participants, whose sensitive fingers were trained for skills most people’s eyes couldn’t match—reading braille, for example—got a chance to enjoy the dimension ordinary sighted museumgoers would not comprehend. Museum experts were present to narrate the fine points of the works and supply details about the history of the pieces and the artists.
With Tom to vouch for me, I’d tried it several times. Closed my eyes and felt my fingers looking at art. Even through thin, non-latex-y gloves, with my untutored touch, it was magical to put my hands on a stone sculpture more than three thousand years old and realize this was a boy I could have passed on the street without noticing, if he hadn’t been made of stone. Time is an illusion every which way.
This evening the magical tour was lively. Laughing, exclaiming, commenting, asking questions, talking to the docents and among themselves, the attendees made happy waves of sound that rose and fell throughout the big, airy spaces of the neighboring galleries.
Not peaceful, but heartwarming. I could deal. I sank down onto my bench and made eye contact with Amitāyus, the Buddha of Infinite Life. Centerpiece of the Asian Art collection of the museum.
Amitāyus was not the most user-friendly Buddha I’d ever seen. His expression always struck me as distant—and a tinge long-suffering. Eyebrows arched, eyelids drooping, the downward turn of his mouth suggesting possible disdain. All in all, he looked a little fed up, a little tired, a little like my mom.
Why was this Buddha my Buddha? I guess I felt a certain kinship with him. For one thing, he’d sat with his legs pretzeled up for centuries. His nose was busted and his hands had been destroyed somewhere along the way. Hard knocks. When I looked him up on Wikipedia, it said his most important enlightenment technique was “the visualization of the surrounding world as a paradise.” An order so tall it inspired me.
Sometimes when I sat down, shut up, and met my Buddha’s droopy eyes, the icy chunk of fear I’d locked inside would thaw. And a voice who lived in there too, would whisper, “I’m right here, Alice Jane. You’re fine.”
Who knew? Maybe I was fine. I reminded my ever-vigilant self it had been a full six months since anything halfway threatening had fallen into, risen out of, or wrapped itself hungrily around Tom’s jackpot of murder and mayhem. We lived in a different sort of house now. Drove different cars. Kept the security tuned up and our heads down, the way crazily, undeservingly, notoriously wealthy folk are supposed to do. Tonight’s minor run-in at the museum’s front door was the first seriously confrontational moment we’d experienced since July.
I checked my watch. 7:43. In another four hours and seventeen minutes it would be March. Perhaps I should go ahead and enjoy a deep breath.
I closed my eyes and let my shoulders cascade down from around my ears. Inhaled. Exhaled. Heard a footstep right next to me. And the light tap of a cane.
Yes.
A rush of relief. “Tom?” I opened my eyes—
A blind woman I’d never seen before was standing in the space between me and the Buddha. A sari of elaborately patterned gray fabric draped her thin body. A matching scarf concealed her hair. Her expression, masked by a pair of huge dark glasses, was indecipherable.
Alrighty. The creepy harbinger of impending death from a bunch of movies I now extra-regretted having seen was bending over me. Bringing her pale face disconcertingly close to mine. “You’re…Allie Harper?”
Maybe. Maybe not.
“Uh. Yes. But how—?”
She shrugged like a normal, non-harbinger human being. “I have a little sight. I have to be up close but—And I know all about Tom and you from, you know. Around. We’re a small community. Tom was signed up for tonight, but—A man gave me a message for him. For you, too, I hope.
“Tom never showed and I have to catch a bus to get home. The tour people told me you come here and sit. I thought if you weren’t here, I’d prop it up in this Buddha’s hands where someone was bound to see it and make sure he got it.” She turned to lean in closer to the stone. “Good thing you’re here, though. This Buddha doesn’t even have hands. Handicapped.” A harsh, mocking bark of a laugh.
“Somebody whacked him good. Got his nose too. Do you know when that happened?”
I shook my head and then, to be on the safe side, said, “No.”
She fished in the folds of her sari. “Here. This is all working out. I can give the note to you now. For Tom.”
Okay.
When she handed me the thick, cream-colored envelope with “Thomas Bennington III” written on it in calligraphy—like a wedding invitation—I was startled to see she was still wearing the special gloves. Being me, I couldn’t stop myself from asking. “You’re still wearing the—?”
“Museum’s gloves?” Her grimace made her look older than I’d first supposed. The corners of her mouth were bracketed by lines. Gouged deeper by the frown, they underscored the bitterness of her tone. “No. These are mine. As if it’s not enough being blind. I have severe skin allergies. I touch the wrong thing, it’s blisters all over the place. I thought I could do the tour in spite of it, but that was overly optimistic. Doesn’t matter. You have the envelope. Don’t forget to give it to Tom.”
With that, the woman turned and navigated out of the room, her cane leading the way.
At that moment, while my unnerved feet were standing me up to chase after her and find out who exactly gave the envelope to her for Tom, my phone went off in my purse. “The Heart of Rock & Roll.” Huey Lewis and the News. Nine thousand decibels, bouncing off the gallery walls. I jumped about a foot and fumbled in my purse to grab it and shut it up before Museum Etiquette could tackle me.
Huey Lewis meant Lisa Cole. Intrepid “Don’t-Call-Me-Girl-Reporter” from Channel 16, It’s News to You!!! The exact same Lisa Cole, who, summer before last, delivered Tom and his killer lottery ticket out of my fantasies and into my life by being a total out-of-control, jerk-journalist-on-the-hunt-for-a-story—a.k.a. HummerWoman. The one who honked at a blind man in a crosswalk. Froze him right there, where I could step on up and pick him off. Lisa was mostly forgiven now. Friend and sometimes fellow very-amateur-detective.
My answer was on the sharp side.
“Lisa. What’s up?”
“Allie. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. You just set Huey off full-blast in Gallery 241-B of the Cleveland Museum of Art.
“Oh. Sure. Hey.”
Usually Lisa was all perky banter when she called. Right now, her tone felt off. It flashed through my mind, as it did from time to time when I wasn’t fast enough to suppress it, that a woman who would honk at a blind man in the street, regardless of any extenuating circumstances, might not be entirely trustworthy. I suppressed the thought.
“Lisa? What’s wrong?”
I could hear her breathing and the wind scuffling with her phone. In the lull, my ears picked up on the distant sound of sirens from wherever Lisa was calling. Some sexy crime scene, I figured. Ye olde News to You!!! The wailing was seeping into my awareness from the background of her call. Rising and falling. Where was she? So many sirens. So many. So—
“Lisa. Has something terrible happened?”
“No. No. Well. Just—Allie, is Tom with you?”
“No, he’s not, Lisa. But where are you right now? With all those sirens?”
“I’m outside the art museum, Allie. On the sidewalk east of the lagoon. Severance side, close to the Euclid intersection. There’s been—a shooting.”
The sirens screame
d all the way into me now. Bleeding through marble walls, breaching wide expanses of glass. Soaking into tapestry and canvas, careening off polished stone, and penetrating all the suits of armor. Not loud yet, but undeniable.
“Allie,” she asked again. “Allie, where’s Tom?”
I clicked off my phone and looked at my watch.
It was 7:55 p.m. and the sirens were howling inside my chest.
Chapter Four
I needed a glass box.
The museum boasted two dazzling “glass box” galleries—one on either side of its second floor—striking showcases for special exhibits. The one on the east side of the building would give me a view of the walkways around the park, the lagoon, down toward Severance Hall, “home of the internationally renowned Cleveland Orchestra.” Lisa Cole’s call came from somewhere down there.
I had to see what was happening. I was afraid to look.
At that hour of a Wednesday night at the end of February, the museum wasn’t packed, but as I rushed through 241-A into the hall, people spilled out onto my walkway, hurrying along with me at a brisk but orderly pace. Murmuring their concerns. Clutching their phones. Frowning at their phones. I checked mine. No bars. The walkway overlooked the wide open space of the atrium and a growing, milling crowd.
I headed for my glass box as fast as I could without getting tackled by a guard. Speed-walking. Museum staff people shook their heads at me, but they could hear the sirens too. I kept repeating, “Sorry! Sorry! Emergency! Sorry!” Moving as slowly as my panicked heart would permit. Trying again to call Tom. No signal. Again and again. No signal. No signal.
A PA announcement droned instructions. Guests were to please move calmly to the atrium and please remain inside the building “for the next few minutes.” Move calmly as a word combo is not a confidence-enhancer. Someone had popped open an alarmed exit and now that door was screeching at us too. Terror buzzed in my throat. I clenched my jaw to trap it there and kept going.
The PA continued to drone. “Please move calmly—Please remain—”
Please, God.
The clear glass walls of the box strobed a rainbow. Police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks flared color onto white marble. The sirens were dying out as, one by one, the vehicles slotted themselves into place. Walkie-talkies and bullhorns were dominating now, and the revolving lights gave me my first look at what was happening outside.
Peering out and down over the bank, I could see the scope of the emergency. Cops in protective gear. Running. Heads down. Spotlights sweeping. The cycling of garish red and blue painting it all. I had a view of much too much, but nothing of what I most needed to see. I pressed my face against the cold expanse.
Whatever was happening out there was big.
Please, God. Not Tom.
I backed out of the box and found an outside door. It opened onto a balcony planted with stiff, frozen plants. Alarmed but not locked. One more shriek wouldn’t register in that din. I pressed through. Freezing wind and icy rain slapped my face and bare arms. Bad. Cold. Freezing. The memory of my coat, safely checked downstairs, skipped into my mind and back out again. Vaporized by the flaring terror of the night.
In the white glare of a streetlight, I saw a Cleveland cop running up over the frozen grass, making his own path toward the museum. Toward me? I hollered and waved. He saw me. Stopped, looking up, his expression blank.
Tony?
The first summer of jackpot disaster, Anthony Valerio was the officer of the Cleveland Police Department with a boatload of questions for me. By the end of last summer—with its own relentless string of calamities—he’d progressed to quasi-friend and quasi-consultant for our quasi-amateur detective agency.
More than anything on earth, I wanted Tony Valerio to not be coming up the hill to break some bad news.
Please, God.
He saw me now, too, both of us washed in dancing colors. I still couldn’t read his face. Or his lips. He was yelling but the roar of engines and the clamor of shouting drowned him out.
“What?” I screamed. “Tom? Otis?”
He stopped cold. Our eyes met. He shook his head in frustration and gestured to our right, along the side of the museum, in the direction of the Oval and the glass doors. I focused on his face. He shouted through cupped hands. I could read his lips and hear him now too. Loud and clear.
MEET ME…DOOR!
He turned away and ran, low to the ground, along the side of the building.
I screamed at him.
Tony! Tom?
He turned back, touched his ear, shook his head again. Ran away.
Chapter Five
Faltering feet. Rubber knees.
I shoved myself through the crush of people getting herded by security off the escalator into the atrium. Milling about. Checking their phones. In the middle of the space, a young woman, trim and professional, holding a microphone, was climbing onto a chair to address the crowd.
I didn’t want to hear what she had to say. Tony was bringing me my answer. Dead or alive? I needed to hear it from him.
I stopped apologizing for stepping on people. I stopped caring whether I was stepping on people. I bulldozed through the crowd. I could see Valerio, waiting for me by the front door.
Nothing on his face.
The words of the woman trailed after me. Bits and pieces, drifting from inside the open space under the arc of glass that sheltered the bamboo grove where Tom and Otis and I—I smothered the memory as her words broke through.
“—however, I have some hard news. At approximately 7:45 this evening, a man—who had been here at the museum earlier to attend our Touch Tour event for blind guests—was shot and killed, while walking on the path by the lagoon.”
A blind man walking by the lagoon.
The room echoed shock and dismay. I stopped walking.
A blind man. A blind man walking by the lagoon.
Tony heard her too. He read my face. I read his. His looked like mine felt. Frozen. He was shaking his head no. No? I walked, holding myself together, breathing Tom back into his life for a last handful of seconds until—Tony was standing right in front of me.
“Tony?”
“I’m sorry, Allie. I’m an idiot. I thought you’d know. I forgot the phones aren’t—Tom’s fine. He’s perfectly fine. Freezing his ass off but fine. Otis sent me to get you. He told me yesterday you guys were coming here tonight. So when I heard…hey!”
Relief will knock you over. The rush of gratitude to my head made sparkles in front of my eyes, and, for a long five seconds, I sagged against Tony and leaned on him. Breathing “Tom is fine” into my own paralyzed lungs. After a couple more seconds, I got a grip and straightened up. Lost the grip and hugged him some more. Didn’t bother to apologize.
He unhugged himself and frowned at me from under his signature unibrow in a way that made me want to hug him all over again.
“It was a totally different blind man, Allie. Although—he must have looked a lot like—hell. I should have stayed when I saw you standing out there and told you, but I thought—I’m an idiot. Are you crying? Don’t cry. Everything’s fine. Well, not fine, but you know—”
I used my entire stock of diminished mental capacity to stop myself from hugging him again.
“It’s okay, Tony. I’m fine. I’ll be totally fine in a minute. Everybody in here clearly thinks it was a terrorist attack.”
“No terrorist attack. Although causing people to wonder if something is a terrorist attack is a form of terrorism. Head game.”
He looked me over as if assessing my overall stability. Started pulling his coat off. He had an armored vest on under the coat and he pulled that off too. Dropped it over my head and started fastening it around me. It fell on me like lead but also kind of like a hug.
“Tony. You can’t give me your vest. What if you get shot?”
“Alice Jane Harper. I’d rather get shot about six times than explain to Otis L. Johnson I let you get shot. Holy shit. I’d have to shoot myself before I could tell Tom. Here. Put on my jacket and come on.”
“I have my coat checked right back in there. We could—”
“You don’t want to get in that line. It’ll be there until tomorrow morning.”
I glanced behind me. He was right. I shrugged into his coat and followed him out the door.
I’d watched three guys go out through that door this evening. I was pretty sure one of them would not be coming back.
Chapter Six
Here’s a thing I’d learned in the last couple of years.
Watching about a billion episodes of CSI: Wherever from the comfort of your own couch, in your own safe, warm, lakeside cottage, does zip to prepare you for an actual crime scene. Before tonight, I’d been up close to—even in the middle of—several of those. Trust me. A couch, a bowl of popcorn, and a wooly afghan your grandma knitted for you back in the day seriously dilutes the crime-scene experience.
Here and now, it was in my face.
The rain had slacked off and Tom and I were huddled together on one of a trio of benches up against a low stone wall. This bench was wet, cold, and well back from the perimeter staked out by yellow tape and the barrier surrounding that perimeter. A pop-up shelter hid the body I was 99.5 percent sure was Rudyard Kipling Wade. A guy walked by, carrying—among other things—a white cane folded into an evidence bag. The immediacy of Kip’s murder was rocketing all over me. I did not mention this to Tom.
When Valerio and I were close enough for me to pick out Tom and Otis, I’d run on ahead. By the time Valerio caught up, he’d resumed his customary stone-faced cop demeanor. He fled the emotional reunion as fast as he could. I tried to get control of my joy.
Otis, at least, submitted to a sensible amount of my sobbing and hugging before he went to join Tony—outside the perimeter but closer to the action. Tom and I had assured ourselves that we were both alive and unharmed with the kiss I’d believed would never happen again. After a bit, he said, “This is lovely. I never kissed a girl in a bulletproof vest before. Quite the obstacle to romance, huh?”
The Devil's Own Game Page 2