Not a Girl Detective

by Susan Kandel

  We stood there for a while not talking. Every snort of laughter and clinking ice cube echoed loudly, making conversation between us somehow redundant. The party had come with its own sound track.

  Finally, I said, “I think there’s some connection. We’re getting close. I can tell. It’s good we’re here. Very good. Except for Lael. That part’s very bad.”

  Bridget shook her head. “You don’t know the half of it. A girl who used to shop with me once went with him for a weekend to the Hamptons. He picked her up from the airport and when they got to the car he announced that she couldn’t put her bags in the trunk because there was something already in there. About an hour into the drive, she was feeling kind of cramped with her things on her lap. When she asked him what was so special in the trunk, he pulled over and told her the weekend was over. He left her standing by the side of the road.”

  “Omigod.”

  “He’s cold-blooded,” she said, “like a snake.”

  I scanned the room for them. They were nowhere in sight.

  “Why are we here again?” Bridget asked.

  “You were the one racing out of the car.”

  “I had no idea who lived here.”

  “I think Mitchell thinks we know something. Now I’m wondering if it was Mitchell and Asher Farrell who were the ones who let themselves into my house. What did they want?”

  “What do you mean, ‘now you’re wondering’? Who did you think it was before?”

  I didn’t answer her.

  “Since we’re here, let’s just see if anybody knows anything about anything.”

  Bridget put her hands on her hips. “It’s not like we can just ask around.”

  “I don’t see why not,” I said, turning on my heel. “Follow me.”

  We joined a couple standing in front of a fireplace in the dining room. They looked old and dignified.

  “So he fucked you over, too?” asked the white-haired matron.

  The grandfatherly type in gray flannel nodded. “He fucked me over, too.”

  “I gather we’re talking about Asher Farrell,” I said.

  “Run, young lady,” Grandpa said. “Run, don’t walk.”

  “Why are you here, then?”

  “I’m going to drink up all his scotch.” The woman banged her cane on the floor for emphasis.

  “The good stuff,” the man added.

  Bridget cut to the chase. “How did he really make all his money?”

  “Selling nudie pictures to the Japanese,” said the old man. “He’s got inventory like you wouldn’t believe. Tits and ass. That’s his bread and butter.”

  “He doesn’t pay his artists,” the woman noted.

  “He says, ‘It’s a Canadian bank holiday, so the check’s delayed.’”

  “He borrows your Rauschenberg for a show, then sells it to someone else.”

  “Or uses it as collateral for a loan, then defaults on the loan, and the bank gets it.”

  “He screws with your head.”

  “He doesn’t call you back.”

  “He’s morally dyslexic.”

  “He’s a mad monk, like Rasputin.”

  “But what an interesting mind.”

  They both nodded.

  “He loves art.”

  They nodded again.

  “To art,” the woman said.

  “And twelve-year-old single malt,” the man chortled.

  Bridget pulled me aside. “He ought to start a cult.”

  “Let’s get Lael and go.”

  “Fine.”

  Bridget went in one direction and I headed in another. I bumped into Farrell at the bottom of the stairs.

  “We’re going to be leaving now,” I said. “It was very kind of you to have us. Thank Mitchell for me, too.”

  “I will.” He smoothed back his already smooth hair. “Mitchell tells me you’re a scholar of mystery writers.”

  “Yes.”

  “And that you’re an expert on Nancy Drew.”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “Don’t be modest. Mitchell’s a fool about some things but smart about others.”

  “Can you tell me where Lael is?”

  “She’s in the powder room,” he replied, indicating a closed door behind us.

  We waited in silence.

  “I hear you like tasteful nudes,” I said finally.

  “I prefer tasty ones.”

  I banged on the powder-room door. “Lael, hurry up.”

  He rubbed his hands across his lips. “So who’s been talking to you about me, Ms. Caruso?”

  “No one.”

  “No one?”

  “Actually, it was Edgar.”

  “Too bad about Edgar. He was a wonderful man.”

  “Yes, he was.” Nudie pictures. That’s how Asher Farrell had gotten rich. Of course. He must’ve been the one who’d found the portrait of Grace Horton and sold it to Edgar. That put him smack in the middle of whatever it was that was going on.

  “Edgar showed me the painting you found for him.”

  “A beauty. I bid on it at auction.”

  He pondered my face as if it were a work of art he was considering. Then he said, “Edgar was proud of his things. He liked to show them off. Did you see the knives and fans?”

  I nodded.

  “He was generous, too. With his time. His money. He was always giving things away. Perhaps he gave you a small token?”

  “Nope. No token. No token I can think of.”

  Lael opened the door, looking flushed.

  “There you are,” I said. “We have to go. Early day tomorrow.”

  “You don’t have to worry,” she said. “Asher’s going to drive me home later.”

  He gave me a smile. “Good night. Sleep tight.” He smiled again, then steered Lael away from me.

  18

  He won’t be in until eleven,” explained the girl with the twitch seated at the front desk of Asher Farrell Fine Art.

  “I guess that gives me fifteen minutes to look around.”

  Oh, Lael.

  Last night I’d called her every hour on the hour until around three, when I’d given up and gone to bed. I’d tried her again this morning, after my shower. She still wasn’t picking up, but at least her machine had been turned on, which I was hoping meant she’d gotten home safely.

  “Do you have an appointment? I don’t remember seeing anything in the book….” The girl wrinkled her forehead, like it was something she’d recently learned. What to do when confronting an unexpected visitor. She opened an expensive leather folio.

  “Oh, I’m not in there,” I said with a smile. “Asher told me no appointments were necessary.”

  “Of course not,” she said quickly. One wouldn’t want to alienate the boss’s potential bedmates. “Please, have a look around. The show opened last night. It’s already sold out.”

  “Great.”

  She cleared her throat. “The artist is thrilled. First big solo show. Mr. Farrell’s discovery. He has such an eye.” Her chest was heaving with the effort.

  I glanced up at the name stenciled onto the wall by the door. Lari Uklanski. “I’m a big fan of Lari’s. Her work is amazing.”

  “His work.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Of course.” She smoothed down her black skirt. “Can I offer you a catalog?”

  “No, thank you. I’m dyslexic.”

  She blinked a few times, then returned to her seat.

  The gallery was large and cavernous, like Farrell’s house. But the art was more modest in scale: maybe two dozen black-and-white snapshots pushpinned to the wall.

  I wandered around, looking at the images. They showed models in various stages of undress—yanking up their panty hose, scooping their boobs into their bras, scratching their pointy knees. Lari Uklanski was really going out on a limb. Gorgeous girls in their underwear. Very daring.

  I stopped in front of a photograph of a girl of about sixteen applying false eyelashes. It h
ad been shot at an oblique angle so that she seemed to be falling out of her chair. I looked at her face more closely. She had the faintest trace of a black eye.

  “Posing is a profession,” said a voice behind me. “Sometimes the mask slips and the pose is revealed.”

  “You’re very cryptic this morning,” I said, turning around. Farrell’s hair was slick even in daylight. He had a cup of coffee in one hand and his briefcase in the other.

  “You keep surprising me, Ms. Caruso. To what do I owe this pleasure?”

  “I’m very interested in photography.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what do you think of the show?”

  “I think it’s exploitative.”

  “That’s not what the L.A. Times says.” I followed him over to the front desk. He put his things down and picked up the arts section. He riffled through the pages. “Ah. Here we go. It says, and I quote, ‘Uklanski offers a poetic rumination on the vampirism of the fashion industry.’”

  “Let me guess, a man wrote that.”

  “Actually, it was a woman.” He gave the newspaper back to the twitchy girl, who traded it for a stack of phone messages. It was like choreography. He flipped through the little pink pages. “I have a lot to take care of this morning.”

  “Maybe you should get up earlier.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  I pulled a manila envelope out of my purse. “I’ve started a photography collection. I’d like to show you my first acquisition. I need a professional opinion.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t do appraisals.”

  “It’s something Edgar gave me.” That earned me his undivided attention. “Turns out I’d forgotten all about it.”

  He stared at the envelope in my hand. He may have had an eye, but he didn’t have x-ray vision.

  “I’ve got a few minutes, I suppose. Why don’t we go into my office? It’s more private.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Will you be taking calls, Mr. Farrell?” the girl asked.

  “No.”

  We walked down a short hallway, past a large open space lined with wooden racks holding paintings of all sizes, tightly wrapped in plastic.

  “Bet you wouldn’t want to let a dirty old man in a mackintosh near that room,” I said.

  “I have everything in there from Roman dynastic busts to the first issue of Spider Man.”

  “I didn’t know your taste was so eclectic.”

  “I like what I like. But I have whatever you need.”

  He shut his office door behind me.

  The room had a glass desk in the middle, with a big leather swivel chair on his side and a small wooden chair on mine. That ploy was about as subtle as a whoopee cushion.

  He could barely contain himself. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  I pulled the black-and-white photograph out of the envelope and placed it on his desk.

  It was a strange picture, I saw that now. A dark-haired woman wearing a slim white dress was posed mid-stride. She didn’t look frightened, not exactly—watchful, perhaps. Her left hand reached beyond the edge of the picture; her right hand dissolved into a circle of white light. Behind her was a gray wall, with a chest of drawers pushed up against it, and toward the right-hand side of the frame, the barest hint of a painting hanging on the wall. The print itself was scratched and bent a little on the upper right side. On the back there was something written in black crayon: “L. Sands #3.”

  Farrell studied the photograph intently, turning it over several times.

  “She looks like you,” he said finally. “In some odd sixties incarnation.”

  “Maybe that’s why Edgar gave it to me.”

  “Did he say anything about it?”

  “Just that he was starting me on a collection. I’d told him I didn’t collect anything, which wasn’t exactly true. I do collect something.”

  He displayed not the slightest curiosity about what that might be.

  “This is worthless.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “It looks like a stock photograph. It was probably used in an advertisement. Or for some kind of commercial work.”

  “Who’s L. Sands? The photographer?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “It could be a her.”

  “Never heard of her.”

  “Maybe this woman’s not posing. Maybe somebody was following her.” And maybe Edgar was warning me about something.

  Farrell rolled his eyes. “You have an active imagination, Cece. She’s a model. She’s acting. Can’t you tell?”

  You can’t always tell. But someone like him wouldn’t want to hear that.

  He stood up. “Listen. Why don’t I keep it for a while, ask around, give you a more specific answer?”

  “I don’t think that’s necessary.” I took the photograph out of his hand, slipped it back into the envelope, and tucked it into my purse. It wasn’t what he’d expected, that much was obvious. But he wasn’t entirely satisfied that it was unimportant, and neither was I.

  He walked me back up to the front.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Farrell,” the girl said.

  “Yes?”

  “They called from Book Soup. The books you ordered are ready.”

  “That’s fine, Melinda,” he said sharply. “You can get them after lunch.”

  “My neighborhood bookstore,” I said.

  “I thought you were dyslexic,” Melinda said.

  “I buy cookbooks. I like the pictures. Fancy canapés. Ganaches.”

  “Please show Ms. Caruso out,” Farrell said, picking up his mail. With that, he was gone.

  “This must be a fun place to work,” I said.

  She blinked again.

  “So long, Melinda.”

  “Please, Ms. Caruso, won’t you take a catalog? You can give it to a friend.”

  “Okay. Sure.” I didn’t want to get her into trouble. God knows what he’d do to her if she were stuck with leftover catalogs at the end of the week.

  “I’ll get you a fresh one from the back.”

  She was gone only a minute or two, but that was enough time for me to go through her drawers. I had no idea what I was looking for, but, like I said before, if you want to find something, you usually will. Only this time I didn’t find much of anything—not in the drawers, at least. But right on top of the desk, near Melinda’s voluminous to-do list, was definitely something.

  It was a color postcard, announcing a one-night-only cabaret show on Sunday the eighteenth at a nightclub in Silver Lake. I picked it up. I wasn’t all that interested in cabaret, but I was extremely interested in the headliner. She had chopped-off red hair, thick black eyeliner, and green fingernails.

  Nancy Olsen.

  Another person with a talent for posing.

  And for turning up in the strangest places.

  I HAD TO GO to Book Soup anyway. What with the whole Andrew commotion last time I was there, I hadn’t had a chance to pick up my Chicago Manual of Style.

  It was less frenzied today. A different clerk was on duty. She went over to the C’s and pulled my book from the stack.

  “Would you mind checking the F’s? The name is Farrell. I’m picking up some stuff for my boss, too.”

  “Sure.”

  I looked away guiltily.

  She heaved a thick stack of books, wrapped in a white piece of paper, onto the counter.

  “Here you go.”

  “Great.”

  “These are going to cost your boss a pretty penny. Some were ordered from Europe. He speaks French?”

  “You wouldn’t believe what he’s capable of.”

  I unwrapped the white paper and took a look.

  La Double Vie de Salvador Dalí.

  Dalí in the Nude.

  Conversations with Dalí.

  The Unspeakable Confessions of Salvador Dalí.

  Salvador Dalí: A Panorama of His Art.

  Homage à Salva
dor Dalí.

  Six big fat books on Salvador Dalí. What was going on here?

  The clerk cracked open the one on top.

  “What a freak! Look at this!”

  It was a sculpture of the Venus de Milo as a chest of drawers. Her nipples were the drawer pulls, and she had eight of them. Underneath the sculpture was a small painting of a woman whose face was being consumed by ants. Freaky indeed. But I needed to get out of there if I didn’t want to cross paths with Melinda. I made a show of searching frantically through my purse.

  “Look at that. I must’ve forgotten my corporate credit card. I’ll have to come back for these tomorrow. But I’ll take my Chicago Manual.”

  “Sure. Have a nice day.”

  “You, too!”

  I paid for my book, then walked out to my car.

  A nice day.

  I didn’t think that was in the cards.

  There was way too much to think about.

  19

  I came home loaded down with supplies. Post-it notes in four sizes. A three-pack of index cards in pink, blue, and classic white. Yellow legal pads. A package of pointy No. 2 pencils, which can be used for self-defense in a pinch. A Pink Pearl eraser. And last but not least, a whiteboard—three by three feet, as unblemished as a baby’s bottom.

  I set up shop in the dining room.

  “Edgar is dead,” I wrote on the top of the whiteboard. I took a bite of a Milano cookie and chewed thoughtfully.

  Then I wrote “Who killed Edgar?” directly underneath.

  This was hard. But I’d spent so much money on supplies.

  There was Mitchell. I wrote “Mitchell” in red capitals, and drew an arrow from Edgar’s name to his. Why would Mitchell have killed Edgar? I ate another cookie, then went into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of milk. Horizon Organic. It didn’t taste as good, but the last thing I needed was more hormones. Back to Mitchell. There were many reasons he might’ve wanted to kill Edgar. Because he was jealous of Edgar’s relationship with Jake, for one thing. A crime of passion. Mitchell comes upon Edgar and Jake in flagrante delicto. He’s wild with rage. He can’t think straight. He storms into his bedroom and pulls out his twenty-two. Does he own a twenty-two? It doesn’t really matter. Someone who’s determined can get a gun, though that would rule out the crime-of-passion theory and point directly to premeditated murder.