Feint of Art:

by Hailey Lind

  At about eleven Mary trudged in, dressed in faded jeans and a torn concert T-shirt touting a group called Three Boring Ladies and One Pompous Ass. Unkempt and half asleep, she still looked cute. I stifled the urge to ask her whether or not she had slept last night, reminding myself that I was not her mother, and we set off to pick up Pete from the hospital, leaving Pedro to continue working his magic.

  “Do you mind if we make a quick stop?” I asked as we headed across town. I wanted to scope out Ernst’s place, and there was plenty of time before Pete was scheduled to be released.

  “We’re not going back to that Chinatown place, are we?” Mary asked. “ ’Cause you’re not gonna be able to run in those shoes.”

  “No—it’s not that place. And,” I added hopefully, “there won’t be any running involved. I learned yesterday that an old friend of mine from the Brock—Ernst Pettigrew—was found dead. The cops say it was suicide, but I don’t believe it. I don’t know what I’m looking for, I just want to go by his place in the Marina District. It’s not far from the hospital.”

  It was in fact quite a ways from the hospital, but for a bike rider like Mary, distance was relative.

  Twenty minutes later, we pulled up in front of Ernst’s condo, in a white stucco fourplex with a beautiful view of the bay and easy access to what passed for a beach in this part of the City. The building’s entry, which was filled with lush exotic plants and a tasteful koi pond, had two doors leading to the first-floor units, and a stairway leading to the upstairs units, both of which were fronted by balconies. Access from the street was cut off by the kind of barred security gate that always reminded me of a prison.

  I double-parked, flicked on the emergency blinkers, and we climbed out, peering through the bars into the courtyard. Since units A and B were visible on the ground floor, I was betting Ernst’s condo, C, was upstairs.

  Mary pressed the doorbell next to PETTIGREW on the entry panel.

  “He’s not home, Mary,” I said impatiently. “Remember? He’s dead.”

  “So maybe someone else is home.”

  “Yeah, well, the last time that happened things didn’t turn out so well. I can’t run in these shoes, you said so yourself.”

  “So why are we here?”

  She had me there.

  “You know, I’ll bet we could climb up to that balcony,” Mary mused.

  “Are you insane?” I said.

  “You’re the one who drove clear ’cross town to stand in front of a dead guy’s condo,” Mary pointed out with a shrug.

  She was right. Ernst was dead, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. “I’m sorry, Mare,” I said. “I just don’t know what’s going on.”

  “I’m starved. How about we grab some food and sit on the beach for a few?” Mary suggested, throwing a long arm around my shoulders and turning me away from Ernst’s place. “That way we can live up to the world’s stereotype of Californians having picnics by the ocean in February.”

  When in Doubt, Eat was a motto that had served generations of Kincaids and LeFleurs well, so who was I to argue? I moved the truck into a newly vacated space near the corner, then we grabbed sandwiches and sodas from the Safeway, crossed the boulevard, and sat on a faded wooden bench at Marina Green Park, the Golden Gate Bridge to our left and Alcatraz off to our right.

  “It blows that your friend died,” Mary said, her voice soft.

  Mouth full, I nodded. It did indeed blow. It was hard to avoid the thought that I was somehow connected to his death. His and Dupont’s and Joanne’s. And I didn’t know how. There was something missing, but I didn’t know what.

  “Hey, s’up? Spare change?”

  A skinny, sandy-haired adolescent approached, wearing an oversized Oakland Warriors sweatshirt and torn jeans so low on his hips that we were invited to inspect his red boxer shorts.

  “Go away, kid,” Mary said curtly. “How come you’re not in school?”

  “School sucks.”

  “So does your vocabulary,” Mary replied. “Scram.”

  “Give me some green and I go away.”

  “Go away or I kick your butt,” Mary said flatly. When she’d first arrived in San Francisco, penniless and jobless, Mary had lived on the streets for a few weeks. The experience had left its mark.

  “Okay, okay. Chill,” the little delinquent said, holding up his hands but standing his ground. “How ’bout if I tell you something, you give me some money. Straight trippin’.”

  I had to give him points for persistence.

  “Maybe. If it’s good.” Mary took a swig of her soda, her eyes never leaving the kid.

  “They found a dead body over there yesterday,” he said, pointing to the beach.

  I looked at my pastrami-on-rye distastefully. Talk of corpses just killed my appetite.

  “Sick,” Mary said, taking a big bite of her marinated tofu on whole wheat.

  “Yup. They said he prob’ly jumped off the Bay Bridge and drifted this way with the current. Trippin’. All white and bloated and shit.”

  “That’s really gross,” Mary said. She took another bite.

  “Then this crazy bitch? She comes runnin’ from over there”—the kid pointed at Ernst’s condominium—“says she knows the homey, and starts looking through his pockets.”

  “No way,” Mary interjected.

  “Straight up,” the kid insisted. “The cops had to drag her off, said she had to come to the station for his belongings and shit if she was a relative. That was one weird chick. I mean, the dude was covered in flies and . . .”

  I tuned him out. Was that Ernst he was talking about? My heart started pounding, and my lunch sat like a lump in my stomach.

  “Well, it’s been great chatting,” I said, wrapping up my mostly uneaten sandwich. “But we have to run.”

  “What about my money?”

  I pulled a crumpled dollar out of my purse and handed it to him.

  “That’s it?” he sneered.

  “See ya, kid,” Mary said menacingly, and he wandered down the beach, probably on the prowl for tourists to harass. I tossed the remnants of my lunch in the nearest trash can, and we hurried back to the truck.

  “Whaddaya make of that?” Mary asked as we belted ourselves in. “Do you think he was talking about your friend?”

  “It seems like it,” I conceded. “San Francisco isn’t the Barbary Coast anymore—it’s not like bodies are fished out of the bay every day.”

  But if it was Ernst, I thought to myself, then who had been looking through his pockets, and why? How long had he been dead? The kid said the body was white and bloated and crawling with flies . . . My artistic imagination generated a visual, and I fought to push it aside.

  “So, listen, about Pete,” Mary said, and I was glad to be distracted. As we drove to the hospital we worked out the Pete-sitting arrangements. The doctor had said Pete would be back on his feet in a few days. Until then Mary would stay with him, and I would spell her in the evening if she had a gig.

  Pete was delighted to see us. A little high from the painkillers, he insisted on lustily singing Bosnian folk songs all the way home. What he lacked in vocal skill he made up for in volume, a musical style that Mary could appreciate. Although to my certain knowledge she did not speak Bosnian, the two of them sang several rousing choruses of something that sounded like “Bucket Me Want Cracker Die.”

  It was a long trip.

  After Mary and I maneuvered Pete up to his apartment, I ran to the grocery store for food and to the pharmacy for his medications. When we left an hour later, he was happily settled in with painkillers, videos, and lots of food and drink.

  After a couple of hours of paperwork back at the studio, I ran the samples over to Linda’s office on Polk Street—saving that business contact was paramount—then took the harlequin and woodgrain sample boards to Irene Foster’s house in the Richmond District. Cross those two items off my To Do list.

  Driving back to the studio, I tried to keep my mind off of Ernst’s
death by thinking about Grandfather’s phone call. It was now late Wednesday afternoon and I had a million things to do before Saturday, including wangling the invitation to the Brock gala. It was madness to think I could fit in a trip to Chicago. I didn’t have the time, and I definitely didn’t have the money.

  I pulled into the studio parking lot at five thirty. Frank was just getting into his Jaguar but stopped when he saw me, and waited as I climbed out of the truck.

  “Is that for my benefit?” he said without preamble.

  “Is what for your benefit?” I asked, mincing toward him.

  He made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “The getup.”

  “It’s not a ‘getup,’ Frank,” I said, striking a subtle pose. “For your information, sometimes I dress for messy work, and sometimes I dress for clean work.”

  “Hmm,” he responded ambiguously.

  “What does ‘hmm’ mean?”

  “What do you think?”

  What the hell, I thought, go for broke. “I think it means you’ll take me to the Brock gala on Saturday.”

  “I knew it was for my benefit,” he said with an enigmatic smile. “Keep it up. I like it.”

  And with that he eased into his shiny car and took off.

  “ ‘Keep it up, I like it,’ ” I mimicked as I climbed the stairs. That did it. The warm feelings prompted by Frank’s heroics the other day were gone. He was officially back in the scumbag category.

  Why was I fixating on the man, anyway? I’d call Bryan. If anyone would know how to crash an elegant party, it would be my friend Bryan Boissevain.

  “Sorry, baby doll, but from what I hear, the Brocks are more uptight than an alligator at midnight,” he said. Bryan had grown up in a swamp in Louisiana, and although he cultivated his big-city persona, the bayou seeped out from time to time. “You couldn’t beat one of those invitations out of them with a stick. You know that better than I. Although you could hang around the employee entrance and try to sneak in.”

  “I have to get in like everyone else,” I persisted. “Otherwise I’ll be challenged, which will cause a scene and defeat the whole purpose. Are you sure you can’t think of anyone to take me?”

  “Honey pie, the gala’s in two days. Everyone who’s going has a date by now, believe you me. And think about this—” Bryan continued with a gasp. “If you do snag an invite, you won’t have anything to wear!”

  Working in San Francisco as I did, I knew a lot of gay people, both socially and professionally. Most were pretty much like straight people. Bryan’s partner, Ron, for example, was about as straight as men came, a total corporate yuppie in his pin-striped suit and shiny shoes. Bryan was not like that. Bryan was the type of gay man who loved show tunes, Barbra Streisand, redecorating and cooking and fretting about having only two days to find the right evening gown.

  “Tell you what, baby doll,” Bryan offered. “You get an invitation, and I’ll take care of the rest. I have this friend Paul who has absolutely the best salon for trannies.”

  “But I’m not a transvestite, Bryan,” I said, surprised that I needed to remind him. Maybe I should pay more attention to my wardrobe and makeup.

  “Honey pie, I know that, but the gala’s going to be a transvestite’s wet dream.”

  Point taken. I had no idea how to dress for a gala. I didn’t own a formal gown and didn’t fancy the idea of storming the mall on Friday night, trying on prom dresses elbow to elbow with seventeen-year-old high school seniors. I would doubtless purchase some kind of pastel chiffon concoction, overcompensate with dramatic hair and makeup, and wind up looking like a really sad, badly dressed transvestite.

  “Deal,” I said. “If I manage to scrounge up an invitation, we’ll go shopping.”

  I hung up and tried a few gallery owners I knew slightly, most of whom responded to my plea to be my escort with shocked silence. After the umpteenth call, my ego couldn’t take anymore. This was pathetic.

  Pedro had taken a fresh-air break and was back working on the computer. He looked up, concern in his eyes. “How about your friend the cop? Couldn’t she get you in?”

  Well, duh. What good was having a new buddy on the police force if I couldn’t exploit the hell out of the relationship? I tried Annette again. She answered on the third ring.

  “Inspector Crawford.”

  “Annette, it’s Annie.”

  “Annie, hi. Got your message. What have you got for me?”

  “I’ll tell you in a second. First, though, and we’re just speaking theoretically here, if you wanted to get a person into the gala at the Brock, could you do it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. So, and I’m not being at all theoretical here, will you get me in?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because this is a police matter, Annie. You have no business being there.”

  “Yeah, but . . .” I trailed off. What was I going to say? That I wanted her to use her influence to help me set up a possibly illegal business transaction?

  “What information do you have for me?” she asked.

  Maybe I’ll just keep that to myself, Inspector By-the-Book, I thought crankily. Then I reconsidered. Annette was just being responsible. Maybe I should try it sometime. “I think Harlan Coombs will be there.”

  “Oh?” Now I had her attention. “How do you know that?” she asked.

  Oops. Hadn’t seen that one coming. What was I going to tell her? That I overheard it when an international art thief and I had fraudulently gained access to a rich woman’s home and I was stashed in the kneehole of her desk?

  “I just heard it. You know. Around. And I think Coombs is behind the whole Magi thing.”

  “You heard it ‘around,’ huh? Okay, Annie. But just as a point of clarification, I want you to know I’m not buying that for a second. Anything else?”

  “Did you get those numbers I left on your voice mail?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you tell me what you found out?”

  “No.”

  I thought about that. “Will you tell me if I tell you something else?”

  There was a long pause.

  “Annie, this isn’t how our relationship works.”

  “Please?”

  There was a shorter pause. “The first call was to the residence of a Mr. and Mrs. Robert Culpepper in Belvedere,” she said. “The second was to the Gray Goose Inn in St. Helena.”

  “Oh?” I said. I knew about the Gray Goose, but the other was news. Camilla Culpepper was working with Edward as well as with Harlan Coombs? Interesting. I thanked Annette and prepared to say my good-byes.

  But Annette wasn’t the type to miss a trick.

  “I thought you had some more information for me,” she said.

  “Uh, yeah, right,” I stalled, wondering which of my many new acquaintances I should rat out. Ooo, how about Emily? Anyone who would kick a dog deserved a nice, long talk with my pals Homicide Inspectors Crawford and Wilson.

  “I thought you might want to know that Emily Caulfield, Camilla Culpepper’s personal assistant, is linked to Harlan Coombs in some way,” I said. “She’ll be at the gala, too, with Camilla. You know, the gala I should be going to as well.”

  “Uh-huh,” Annette replied, clearly unimpressed by this last-ditch attempt. “Okay, thanks.”

  “Wait!” I said. “Have you heard anything about who killed Ernst Pettigrew?”

  “The preliminary findings suggest suicide, but it’s still under investigation. Tell me anything you know.”

  “I know it wasn’t a suicide—Ernst wasn’t the type. Was there anything in his pockets when he was found?”

  “In his pockets?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why are you interested in the contents of Ernst Pettigrew’s pockets?”

  I didn’t even try to answer that one. “What about Stan Dupont? Was there anything in his personal effects, like a combination or a key?”

  “The man was a janitor. He had a million
keys.”

  “But no special little key in his pocket, or something?”

  “I think you should tell me what you’re after, Annie.”

  “I was just thinking that, you know, maybe one of them had something that someone was after. Something that had to do with why they were killed, with the fakes or something. Maybe a safe-deposit key? I don’t know. It’s just a hunch.”

  “I’ll check,” she said tersely and hung up.

  That evening I took Pedro to dinner at Fiori d’Italia in North Beach as a thank-you. He had managed to download several years’ worth of data from my hard drive to install on my new computer—when and if I got the insurance money. I vowed that one day, when I made it big, I’d surprise him with whatever it was that computer geeks coveted. Maybe more memory. I wish I could buy myself more memory. That would be cool.

  I didn’t sleep well that night, awakening at seven on Thursday morning with the remnants of a vivid dream involving a dwarf, a donkey, and the Miami Dolphins football team composed in part by Michael, Frank, Edward, Mr. Suave, the Hulk—and me as the quarterback.

  I spent the day continuing to organize the studio. Sam helped me move the furniture back, but the finer cleanup took several more hours of sorting and organizing. Afterward, I returned a few query calls, set up a meeting with a prospective client, and returned the call of a contractor prepping the wall for my mural in the St. Francis Wood neighborhood. Finally, Mary and I went to OfficeMax, where we filled a cart with supplies and a few essential non-essentials like coffee filters and M&M’s, then to the art wholesale outlet, where we stocked up on items that had been ruined, such as sketch paper, two rolls of canvas, and specialty paints. I was living on credit at this point and could only hope to have some way to pay the bills next month.

  That evening Samantha and Reggie prepared a huge dinner of Jamaican jerk chicken, red beans, and rice in honor of Pete’s recovery, and we took it over to his apartment, where we spent the evening eating our fill and celebrating our friendship. Pete had recovered sufficiently to be bored with his convalescence. With all his stitches, he looked like a grumpy Bosnian Frankenstein.

  The following day was Friday, and since I had to swing by a new interior designer’s office first thing in the morning to show her my portfolio, I didn’t get to the studio until nearly eleven. As I started for the stairs I saw Frank in his office, hunched over some blueprints. By now I was desperate.