by Sandi Scott
“Faster than you,” Georgie snapped as she pushed the door wide open, setting off a flashing strobe light and an ear-piercing alarm that whooped and echoed throughout the entire building. Without hesitation, both women skidded onto the black-and-white checkered floor, caught their balance, and pushed through the front door out onto the sidewalk.
After a few long strides, they crossed the street, turned on their heels and headed in the opposite direction before slipping down an alley that would spit them out on the next block.
“We should be ashamed of ourselves,” Aleta panted. “We could be delaying the fire department from making it to a real fire. Someone could die because of us. Pitiful is all I have to say.”
“Are you kidding? First of all, Stan is there.” Georgie jerked her thumb behind her in the direction of the Live-In-Artist-Studio. “He’ll do a thorough search and let the firemen know it was a false alarm. Second, don’t tell me that didn’t make you feel like a teenager again.”
“I hated being a teenager. Why would I want to feel that way again?”
Georgie looked at her sister with surprise.
“Well, whatever. I’m going back to the gallery. Want to come?”
“Absolutely not.” Aleta smoothed out her blouse. “I’ve had enough near calls for today. In fact, I’d like to get grounded again. I think I’m going to drop in and visit my daughter.”
“Please tell Emily I said hello. I need her to come to my house soon and help me thin out my closets.”
“You know she loves that. She certainly inherited your sense of style.” Aleta looked Georgie up and down. “Why are you going back to the gallery?”
“I just think the place needs another look around. You know how Stan is. The guy is a good cop. Maybe even one of the greats. But it is only because he goes over things so slowly. ‘Slow and steady wins the race,’ he always says. But I don’t want to wait for him to clean up this mess so that my pet portraits can hang on the walls with an annotation in the program reading: ‘In Memory of Georgie Kaye, who died waiting for this gallery to reopen.’”
“I think that’s flirting with danger.” Aleta shook her head.
“I wouldn’t call it flirting. It’s a booty call. Is that the right term? A booty call with danger? It’s gonna happen. No doubt about it. Yup. I’m going to sneak back into that building and into the gallery for a closer look around.”
“What if Stan or one of his guys is still there?”
“I’ll figure it out once I get there.”
“You got bail money?”
“No. But I know you do. I’ll call you if I need it.” Georgie kissed Aleta on the cheek and watched as her sister rounded the corner to her Mercedes and waved goodbye.
As Georgie walked along, the bright sun reflected up off the sidewalk. Peeking from beneath her cowboy hat, she didn’t see a squad car, marked or otherwise anywhere near the building. The second-floor gallery windows that faced the street were open and she didn’t see any sign of movement inside.
“Just a quick look around. Nothing serious. Georgie, you probably won’t find anything there. Nothing that will say so-and-so is the murderer. Here is the proof. Now go get all your pet portraits and a handful of nails and start putting them up.”
Georgie always felt better when she talked aloud to herself. Her plots and schemes sounded more like just fun and adventure instead of what Stan would call them. Tampering with a crime scene. Breaking and entering. Vandalism. He could be so negative at times.
Still, Georgie was glad he was on the case. Even though he moved at a glacial pace, she knew that no stone would go unturned. But as she neared the building, she realized getting back in might not be so easy.
For a few seconds, she paced back and forth thinking. “Fire alarm on the stairwell. Coppers possibly at the front door.” She could just wait it out, but if she did there was a chance they might lock up the building. There’d be no getting in then.
“I can’t think of anything else. A dead end already? Georgie, you’re losing your touch,” she mused. When she turned around to head toward the main street, feeling like a failure, she almost knocked over a short man with gray hair and a handlebar mustache.
“Pardon me.” He smiled slyly.
“I’m so sorry.” Georgie blushed. “I’m just too wrapped up in my own thoughts and not paying attention.”
“It’s quite all right, madam.” The grin beneath his silver handlebar mustache looked devious indeed. “I’m often consumed by my own thoughts.” Without another word, he used his cane with a silver curly-cue handle to pull down the fire escape ladder. “One too many people at the front door.” He winked.
“Oh yes,” Georgie concurred. “May I use your private elevator, too?”
Otto squinted at her, taking in every detail of her outfit, her shoes, the hat, of course, and her face.
“One too many ex-husbands at the front door,” she said.
Otto let out a loud guffaw, stepped aside and held the stairs down for Georgie to ascend first.
Her steps made an unnerving clang-clang-clang that echoed off the building and the alley below that was getting farther and farther away. When she got to the second floor, she turned to the silver-haired man. “This is my stop,” she said.
He nodded, but said nothing as he walked around Georgie and continued up the stairs. Georgie’s mind started wondering why he was really on the fire escape. Why would a tenant in the building have to avoid the police at the front door?
“You can analyze it all you want once you are on a solid surface. There’s no time to figure it out now. Just get going.” Georgie sometimes had to crack the whip with herself or she might stay stuck. This was one of those times.
Sidestepping slowly across the platform grate with her hands against the brick of the building, Georgie held her breath. She could see past her boots as she looked down to a couple of garbage dumpsters and the gravelly, grainy pavement. Her mustachioed friend was nowhere in sight. It was time to focus. Turning toward the building, Georgie faced two windows. She pressed her face against the window closest to her and looked into the gallery. She could see no shadows or movements far off to the right where the actual crime occurred.
“These have got to be locked. I’ll bet they are. Who would display art in a studio that could be accessed from the most rusted and rickety fire escape known to man?” She jerked at the first window. It didn’t budge.
“See? I knew it. Now I’m going to have to figure out a way down if this window doesn’t work. How’s that going to happen?” She gave the next window a good tug but it, too, was locked up tight.
“Just one more. I promise that if this window slides open, I will let Aleta drive her car to the next three events we go to together. No questions asked. We’ll just arrive in an ordinary, everyday vehicle with no style or character.” As if she had spoken some magic words, when Georgie gave the window a push, it slid up. Not all the way but certainly high enough for her to wriggle through if she didn’t mind getting a little dirty and landing on her face.
Before attempting entry, she scoped the place out. She recognized some of the art from the night before and saw a door at the other end of the loft space. “I’ve landed on worse things,” she muttered as she stooped down and angled her ear inside the open window. She suspected the police were on the other side of that door. She could hear the muffled sound of male voices but it was anybody’s guess what they were saying. She had to be careful they didn’t hear her.
With a deep breath, Georgie stuck her head and shoulders easily through the window. But gravity became a very harsh mistress when she tried to squeeze her hips into the narrow opening, pulling her to the floor before she could maneuver her feet to land quietly. Instead, she tumbled in like a sack of potatoes. Without thinking, she froze.
Her breath, her blinking, her bladder, everything stopped as her hearing became supersonic and she waited for the stomping feet of uniformed policemen to come charging in. There was nothing.
“Raspberry-glazed brownies,” she muttered, licking her lips as the memory of the sweet pastries came back to her while she carefully stepped heel-to-toe toward the open office door.
There was no one inside. Unlike the rest of the loft, the office had white walls, an old Persian rug in faded maroon and gold colors covering most of the hardwood floor and two very different desks facing each other. Carefully Georgie slipped inside and closed the door behind her.
The desk to the right was a sleek metal and mahogany creation that was spotless except for the nameplate reading ‘Jamal Landry.’
Finding nothing of interest on it, she inched her way closer to the rustic cherry wood writing desk on other side of the room. From the clutter, it seemed obvious to her this one must belong to Nate Stephenson. Unlike its modern neighbor, the writing desk was covered with stacks of paper, a white coffee mug filled with pencils, some perfectly drawn out doodles on a steno pad and dozens of letters wrapped tightly with a rubber-band, all made out to the gallery and all in the same script. The hot pink post-it note attached to the bundle read “Reminder: Broke people can’t afford expensive art.”
“Ouch,” Georgie whispered. “That’s pretty harsh to leave out there for anyone who might be snooping around.”
The other documents looked like the everyday correspondence that went along with running a successful art gallery. There were invoices, receipts of payments, and a calendar of events with almost every day filled up. From the looks of things, Wyland Art Gallery was doing fantastic business. Georgie didn’t mean to be morbid, but a murder might be just the thing to really give it that extra push into the spotlight. Not that she would recommend or endorse such a method.
With the envelopes still in her hand, Georgie continued to rummage through the paperwork, coming up with nothing of any real interest. The two thin drawers held normal desk things, like paperclips, rubber bands, stamps, post-its. She circled around to Jamal’s desk, opened the two drawers and found nothing but a stack of photocopied letters to the editor of the Chicago Sun-Times. But they weren’t just letters responding to a poorly written article or complaint about pothole season in the city getting longer and longer. It was a tirade against Laney Chung. Every letter was a page-long rant about her incompetence as an art critic.
“….Chung’s educational background is suspect, as her limited vocabulary and third-grade observational skills prove time and time again. But her crass behavior at almost every showing leads me to believe she is not only unqualified but incapable of rational thought and…”
“Yikes, Jamal,” Georgie whispered. “Tell us how you really feel.”
Before Georgie could read any further, there was the sound of heavy boots approaching. Quickly she closed Jamal’s drawer and still holding the stack of letters, she stuffed them in her baggy Lagenlook blouse. She took a seat at the front of the messy office, folded her hands, and when the door opened she smiled pleasantly.
Nate Stephenson nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw her sitting there.
“My goodness!” She put her hand to her chest. “I’m so sorry, Nate. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Nate looked behind him and then back to Georgie, his face screwed up into a question mark.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Georgie Kaye. You had sent me a letter about my pet portraits. We spoke at last night’s event and you said I should come in this morning. I even skipped my mid-morning tea to make sure I was here on time. Sometimes I have to be careful doing that or I’ll get a headache. Addicted to the caffeine, I guess.” She chuckled with both her eyes raised as if she were confessing to something particularly naughty.
“Oh yes. The pet portrait lady.” Nate slapped his head. As he looked at Georgie, his shoulders sagged. “Uh, how did you get in here?”
Georgie’s eyes widened as her brain quickly scrambled for a plausible answer. She couldn’t just say she came up the fire escape.
“I walked in?” It was better than nothing. “I noticed there were some people here looking at one of the particularly moving pieces from last night. I didn’t want to disturb them. They seemed to really be enjoying the piece. One fellow was looking at it from the ground. I know how sometimes a piece of artwork can draw you in so much you want to study it from every angle. So, I just walked in quietly and took a seat in here.” Georgie smiled naively.
“Oh, Ms. Kaye, is it? Yes. I remember we spoke last night. Your drawings were beautiful and I would like to discuss a showing of them, but I’m afraid we’ve had an accident here and the gallery is going to be temporarily closed until we get things shored up.”
“My goodness. That does sound serious.” Georgie stood up from the chair.
“I have your contact information and as I said, I am very interested in your work. But this will have to be shelved until…” He looked behind him“...until this mess is cleaned up. Thank you so much for stopping by, Mrs. Kaye. I will call you.”
“That’s fine.” Georgie slowly walked out of the office. “These things happen. I know when my sister, who you also met last night, well she was engaged to her husband, they had set the date and the next thing you know Uncle Sam sent poor William to Vietnam. They had to put everything on hold. You can imagine how devastating that was. But my sister and he married the minute he got back. They were together over forty years before the cancer took him. I blame that Agent Orange. What a mess…but you see how good things turned out after a little waiting? Ha ha.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Kaye. I’ll be in touch.” Nate motioned toward the door and Georgie smiled kindly, shuffling a little slower than normal, taking in all the details around the room. There was a sheet hanging across the area where the body had been lying. When she stepped out the door, she was surprised to see her mustachioed friend talking quietly with the police that were standing outside the door. He gave her a sly wink as she passed. The police didn’t pay any attention to her as she walked out and descended the stairs. Thankfully, she didn’t recognize the uniformed police or she might have had some explaining to do.
Finally, on the ground floor, she exited the building and was surprised to see a row of dark clouds creeping up over the tops of the buildings. The temperature had dropped a couple of degrees causing Georgie to fold her arms in front of her while walking. The crinkling of paper reminded her of the envelopes she had absconded with.
Feeling it was safe enough to just carry them, she withdrew the stack from her blouse unnoticed and began the journey back to her home.
5
It was a little after noon when Georgie made it back to her house. She loved to walk and after living in Chicago for so many years, she had learned nearly every inch of the north side of the city. So her excursion home included a quick pop-in to two thrift stores, one antique shop, a corner smoothie shop, one store front art gallery, and a convenience store where she picked up a box of her favorite devil’s food cake mix.
Before entering her own home, she used her key to open the door to her sister’s house. Bodhi, who had not moved from his spot on the couch with Freckles, popped up his wrinkly face and with the joy and fervor only expressed by a dog to its owner, charged toward Georgie to jump into her arms and lick her face.
“Did you miss me?” she asked hugging the dog. “Don’t get up, Freckles.” The cat looked over its shoulder at Georgie and Bodhi as if they were nothing more than a gust of errant wind. Georgie set Bodhi down, walked over and scratched the cat behind her ears.
“Let’s go, Bodhi.”
Freckles purred happily but pulled her face away, blinking wildly as Bodhi gave his usual snorting, sneezing kiss goodbye. The pair left the house, locking it up behind them.
Onc
e inside their own house, Bodhi ran to his bed to attack his toys that had obviously been misbehaving while no one was home. Therefore, he apparently thought they deserved to be tossed, dragged, whipped back and forth, and ultimately gnawed on mercilessly.
“Are you having fun, pretty doggie?” Georgie cooed as she quickly mixed the cake batter, adding a few extra ingredients like a couple tablespoons of butter, an extra teaspoon of almond extract and a handful of chocolate chips. Once the smooth batter was in the flat sheet cake pan, Georgie popped it in the oven and took a seat at her kitchen table.
Georgie’s kitchen was as wild as her wardrobe. With red walls, brightly colored hanging Tiffany lamps and mismatched backsplash tiles behind her oven and sink she’d bought on the cheap from a flooring store that was going out of business, she’d managed to fit in every color of her favorite palette. Vibrant throw rugs in front of the stove and the sink, and a large circular rug in the design of a giant sunflower underneath her round kitchen table added floral notes. Around the breakfast table were mismatched chairs that she mostly found out on the curb or in the alley.
“Let’s see what all this is about,” she muttered at the cache from the art gallery. She settled into her favorite chair, the one she had painted red with white trim and the almost perfect likeness of Bodhi on the back …
The first letter was your average form letter politely reminding Miss Iris Fitske that she was past due on her payment of . . .
“Whoa! $3800. Okay.” Georgie blinked. A hand-scribbled note written in red ink at the bottom read, So sorry for the oversight. Payment on its way, and signed in big letters, IRIS.
Georgie remembered speaking with Iris Fitske at the show last night. She was the conceited dame who looked as if she were itching for the opportunity to make a scene, but unfortunately, Ronan Wells beat her to it.
The second letter was sent the following month and included a slightly firmer reminder that a payment of $8600 was due.
“Holy cow!”