Painted Truth

by Lise McClendon

  What had happened to him? Where was he? The words Charlie Frye had dismissed me with only hardened my resolve. I would not quit. I would not fail.

  I would find Ray Tantro.

  I LEFT CARL to his own devices. He wanted me to beg off work today, but I was too charged up to relax. Besides, I had promised Paolo I would talk to Martin Ditolla about the paintings and hadn’t yet. So I gave Carl a street map, a Grand Teton National Park map, and directions to the canyon if he wanted to watch the kayakers do the white water. He was on his way to the shower when I made my way down the back stairs to the gallery.

  I put in a call to Rex Scanlon first. The fire investigator sounded tired again.

  “Rex, I’m not sure why I’m asking you this, but have you done an insurance check on the beneficiaries of Ray Tantro?” I asked, fiddling with a pencil.

  Rex sighed. “We put all that to bed. You have to know?”

  “If it’s not too much trouble.” I waited while he went through files and returned.

  “Yeah, it was done. Let’s see,” he said. “He had a life insurance policy. Beneficiary was the mother, Esther. Just the one.”

  “Did it pay?”

  “Hard to say. That’s not my bailiwick. Sometimes they don’t pay for suicide. But it had been more than six months since the policy was taken out. That’s usually the cutoff, if there is one.”

  “Was it a local insurer?”

  “Umm, let’s see. Looks like it was taken out in Cheyenne at the headquarters of Financial Life Insurance.”

  “Any other policies?”

  “Well, the two the gallery owner took. One on the building itself, and that special one on the art show.”

  “Those haven’t paid.”

  “From the looks of it, they probably won’t.”

  I paused, thinking of Eden upstairs. “So it definitely was arson.”

  “Incendiary liquids everywhere.”

  “Yeah. Thanks, Rex.”

  I hung up the phone. There was nothing unusual about Ray taking out a life insurance policy. I put in a call to Financial Life Insurance anyway and reached an agent named Kathy. I introduced myself as a creditor who was checking out Esther’s finances.

  “I understand Mrs. Tantro received a sizable payout on her son’s insurance policy after his death,” I said.

  Kathy was friendly but not forthcoming. She refused to discuss it. A few other angles failed miserably and I hung up. Then I called my friend Maggie Barlow, who owned a small insurance agency here in Jackson. I explained the situation and she said she’d see what she could find out.

  Next I began the herculean task of working through the messages that Paolo had scribbled on a pad of paper. His messages were notoriously cryptic, often requiring a Spanish translation. Phone numbers were the worst. I found the one from Carl, dated four days ago and barely legible, and tossed it. The rest went into two piles: readable, and Call Army Intelligence.

  The phone rang. I picked it up, its cackling jangling my caffeinated nerves.

  “Miss Thorssen, this is Sandy at High Country Vet. We talked about the yellow lab. Saffron?”

  I held my breath. “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry. She was picked up last night.”

  “She was? By who?” I heard the pointedness in my voice and coughed to cover it. “Ah … One of the relatives got her, then?”

  “What a sweet dog. We have some other ones down here, available for adoption. Do you want me to get the list?” Sandy said. A bell jangled in the vet’s busy office. A Wyomingite without a dog? Shoot him at sunrise.

  “I guess not. You don’t know who adopted her, do you? I might know them. Maybe I could, um, visit her sometime?”

  “It was just before closing last night. I guess I could find out from the kennel attendant.”

  “Would you?”

  Sandy set down the phone. A long minute later she was back. “Sorry, the girl’s new here. This is so embarrassing.” She laughed nervously, lowering her voice. “I hope she didn’t do the wrong thing. She said Mr. Tantro picked up the dog.”

  “Ray Tantro?” I held my breath.

  “That’s right. She must have gotten the name wrong. He’s dead, right? But the dog knew him, she said, licked him all over the face.”

  “Of course she did.” Ray Tantro was alive. He was here in Jackson. I stood up at my desk, my head light. I heard Carl talking to Paolo in the gallery behind me, far away. I knew it, I knew it. Ray is alive.

  “She’s new. She probably got the name wrong. Maybe it was his father or something? Gosh, I hope this doesn’t cause any trouble. People are so, you know, possessive about their pets.”

  “It’s all right, Sandy. Hey, thanks.” I hung up and spun around. I made myself walk slowly into the gallery. Carl and Paolo were drinking coffee and waiting for the late-morning lookie-loos to start nosing around. “Carl.” I motioned him over to the doorway. “I have to go out to the park. Did you call Pete?”

  “Yeah, we’ve got a date at the river at twelve-thirty,” Carl said. “I hope the fog burns off.”

  “Do you want to come with me? I—” My hands were shaking again, making my voice quiver. Calm down, girl. I took a breath, trying to relax. Damn caffeine.

  “What is it?” Carl frowned at me.

  “Ray Tantro is back,” I said. I felt foolish for an instant. Nobody cared about Tantro the way I did. But Paolo heard the name as he walked to his desk.

  “Tantro, you say?” Paolo sat down and put his boots on the desk, leaning back in the chair, lord-of-the-manor style. “What’s the story on that guy? First everybody wants to buy his stuff now that he’s dead. Then yesterday we got a whole big bunch of calls from people who are being offered paintings by Tantro. Some of our biggest customers, too.”

  I spun to face him. “Who? Who is being offered paintings?”

  Paolo glanced at Carl, hesitating.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “Carl’s not in the business. He doesn’t care who our customers are.”

  Paolo continued looking suspiciously at Carl, as if he were to blame for the turmoil around Ray Tantro. As if he would steal our customers and sell them paintings. Carl frowned at me, confused and a little hurt.

  Finally Paolo nodded, satisfied Carl wasn’t a spy. “Yeah, well, Janet Weinstein called from the City, Junior Orms in Milwaukee, Fred and Gayle from Palm Springs, Patsy Silvers. Even the Metropolitan Museum of Fucking Art!”

  “Wait a minute. The Met was offered Tantros? When was this?”

  “Yesterday. Day before. Something like that.”

  “Did they say who was offering them? Was it one gallery?”

  Paolo shook his head. “Not a gallery. A relative. Some guy named … let me see, I got it.” He put his feet down, shuffling scraps of paper on his desk. “Wallace Fortney. That’s it. In fact the Met wants you to go take a look at them, see if they’re for real. Did you see that message on your desk?” He threw up his hands. “Jeez, all a guy has to do is commit suicide to be popular.”

  My eyes met Carl’s. Exactly.

  THE LOW CLOUDS over town broke up as we drove to Moose, giving the sky the look of spangled pearls. Puddles of rainwater dotted the dirt road leading to the cabin, past a couple of pseudomansions made of logs that belonged to the president of a sportswear company and a television news personality. The caffeine had worn off, but a tight knot in my gut took its place.

  I parked the Saab Sister across the road from Tantro’s cabin, half in the ditch. A big white pickup truck, early seventies vintage, dented and rusty, was parked in the driveway. It had 22-county plates, Teton County. Carl gave me a warning look as we approached it. His questioning on the way out still rang in my ears.

  “The guy could be a relative, cleaning up Tantro’s stuff. Or a friend. Probably Tantro asked the guy to take care of his dog if anything happened to him. Either way they’re just doing what has to be done.”

  “Or it could be Ray Tantro. Come into town to pick up his dog and a few things and d
isappear,” I said.

  “Then he’s real stupid. Or real desperate.” Carl had turned in his seat to watch a herd of antelope in the foothills east of the road. “Either way he’s dangerous.”

  We paused now, near the front fender of the pickup, listening. Birds flocked high in the aspens, out of sight but noisy. Bees hummed in the sweet clover grown tall in the shade. The smell of damp earth and sage was on the breeze. The cabin was still half hidden around the bend in the drive, obscured by trees and the tall grasses. Carl reached through the open window and checked the visor. He pulled out a plastic registration case and examined it.

  “What is it?” I whispered. He handed it to me. Raymond Wayne Tantro, Little Snake Road, Moose, Wyoming, it said. Issued December, last year. My heart was in my throat. He was here. He’d come back.

  Carl put the registration back. As we walked toward the cabin, he kicked a few rocks, making noises to announce us. On cue, a dog began to bark. When Saffron didn’t make an appearance, I waved Carl on. At the front door I knocked loudly.

  The dog continued its yapping from the back of the house. I knocked again. Carl went to the window and cupped his hands around his eyes. I knocked with my whole fist.

  “Tantro? Ray?!” I hollered.

  Carl looked up. “I don’t think he’s home. Come on.” He went around the cabin to the kitchen window. “Nope. Gone.”

  “Maybe something happened to him. His dog’s here. And his truck.” I looked in the bedroom window with the dog stretched long on the chain behind me, barking to wake the dead. The room looked as lifeless as it had before. The bathroom and studio were also empty.

  We walked back down the driveway. I paused, looking back at the cabin. It looked softer now in the filtered light through the high clouds than yesterday in the heat. I tried to imagine green grass and zinnias and sunflowers, but all I could feel was a beaten-down spirit, an emptiness.

  The truck was a Chevy with wide, flat fenders. I opened the door on the passenger side. A loud metallic creak sounded. Carl put his hand on my arm. “Not a good idea.”

  “I just want to look,” I told him. “I’m not going to take anything.” Carl scowled at me, the dutiful policeman.

  “I’ve got an hour to be down at the river.”

  “Your stuffs in the car. You’ll get there.” I turned away, staring greedily at the glove box. For Carl’s sake I didn’t actually get in, just leaned over the seat and opened the compartment.

  A tumble of papers fell out, littering the floor. Carl bent to rescue a couple that made it to the ground.

  “What’s that?” I asked, pawing through gas receipts and worn-out road maps.

  “A rodeo program and a coupon for Wendy’s.” He handed them to me.

  “Eden told me she saw him at the rodeo,” I said. The program wasn’t for a Jackson rodeo but for Frontier Days in Cheyenne. July 22 through 27.

  “This is from last week.” I showed Carl the dates. “Do you think Ray went to Cheyenne?”

  In the distance the whine of an engine broke the stillness. The dog had stopped barking, finally. Carl frowned at the house, then at the dirt road. “Put that stuff away. Let’s get out of here.”

  A FEATHER BOA of vapor wrapped the Snake River Canyon. We’d driven the Saab Sister through the McDonald’s drive-thru window, something I swore on the honor of Thor I would never do but managed at least once a month. Satiated with grease we found the turnoff to the river full of buses, trailers, and vans. People were everywhere, chattering in the wet chill as they readied their life jackets for the white water.

  With his arms outstretched over his head, Pete Rotondi was carrying one of the purple kayaks to the river. His red wet suit, all six foot four of it, with paddle jacket and peeling Roman nose, had turned the heads of forty tourists waiting for a raft. Here was how it was really done, their slack jaws seemed to say. They stopped talking as he dropped the boat on the cement ramp next to an identical kayak.

  Pete saw me. “Alix, you coming too?”

  Carl was changing into his wet suit in the car. I shivered, glad I had worn jeans today instead of shorts. The river looked gray and fast. I wasn’t sure if it was the weather or my memories of my last run causing me to shiver.

  I rubbed my bare arms. “I’m sorry I stood you up.”

  He was putting on his helmet. “It was a great run. Lunch Counter was maxed out.”

  “No kidding.” Now I was sure the shiver was relief. “I’ve been busy with that artist who died in the fire. Ray Tantro.” Or whoever he was.

  Pete nodded. “Eden must be crazed about all that.”

  “Yeah, you should call her. She could use a shoulder right now. She’s staying with me.”

  Pete looked down the river, his face tanned and flat. “That fire was massive, all right.” He brightened and turned to me. “Say, my brother called from New York, said there was a mention about that artist in The Wall Street Journal. He said to try to find a painting for him.” He laughed derisively. “He doesn’t care what it looks like. He’s just into investment value.”

  The Wall Street Journal? No wonder we had all the calls.

  Pete pulled on his spray skirt, a rubber circle that fit around his waist and the kayak’s opening, unaware of the giggles it provoked in the crowd of onlookers. “I might be interested too. Got any?”

  I was startled for a moment, thinking about spray skirts. Pete buying art? He never had before. But he had money, it was just that I thought of him as a local, a ski bum. He never acted like a trust-funder. The word was he got a huge payout when he turned twenty-one, as a tobacco heir or something. Hadn’t worked a lick since, unless you count being a ski and kayak instructor when he was in the mood.

  “I’ll keep an eye out,” I said.

  Pete nodded, already into the gear at his feet. Carl arrived in a sleeveless, form-fitting black wet suit, his well-toned shoulders bulging like sausage from a casing. I couldn’t help smiling, seeing him for the first time in costume. He squinted at me self-consciously.

  “What?” He looked down at himself encased in neoprene.

  “Nothing.” I couldn’t stop smiling. I put my arms around his waist and kissed him lightly. “I’ve got to go.”

  Carl glanced at Pete, then whispered, “So that means I can’t throw you down on the gravel and ravish you?”

  “Afraid not.” I let him go. “Pete can give you a ride back. Maybe we can have a drink later or something,” I offered, then gave him a fanny pat, backed out the Saab Sister, and sprayed gravel.

  ON THE DRIVE south to Star Valley the fog made the going slow. An Airstream trailer pulled by a Suburban wound around the tight turns. The canyon was mystical in its shroud, the tops of lodgepole pines disappeared, cloaked in vapor. Wildflowers came and went mysteriously. I tried to put myself inside the mind of Ray Tantro. What would I do if I found out everyone thought I was dead? Would I make a big deal out of announcing that I was still alive? Or would I sneak off into the night?

  By Star Valley the ceiling lifted, creating a soft canopy of blue-purple stripes above the tiny collection of buildings. I followed the smell that permeated the town toward the square gray hulk of the cheese factory where Wallace Fortney worked. If Ray was dead, his paintings would be worth more. A lot more. If it was possible to be dead to the world and not in reality dead, an artist could have the best of both worlds.

  As I pulled into the gravel parking lot next to the cheese factory, I let a glimmer of hope shoot through me. Joe Crisp had died in Tantro’s place. Ray would keep painting, his prices would go through the roof, and he would be a wealthy man. He could start over with a new identity and paint whatever he wanted.

  I looked for flaws in the theory while crossing the parking lot to the small entrance in the concrete block wall marked in red letters. The gravel was coarse and sharp. The lot was full of pickup trucks not much different from Ray’s. There had to be flaws. Why would Ray show up at his own house after he was dead? Or had he? His truck and his dog had, but I s
till had yet to get a gander of Ray. And what part, if any, did Wallace Fortney have in the plan?

  10

  WITH A CLOUD of suspicion on her haggard but dutiful face, the receptionist in the factory front office went looking for Wally Fortney on the floor. To ease matters I had brought along The Suit, my official companion, a blue gabardine blazer and skirt that made me look like a Fed; it had never let me down. I straightened the white T-shirt under the jacket while I waited. Changing in the gas station had been hurried. I wanted to catch Fortney before the end of his shift.

  It took ten minutes for him to arrive. The receptionist came back, took up her station at a gray metal desk, and began typing. I sat in a black vinyl chair, staring at a calendar hung as sole decoration on the cement-block walls. In honor of cheese, a thin layer of green mold crept up from the floor. The smell of overgrown bacteria and sour milk hung in the air.

  Fortney came through the door, curious and cautious. A once-white uniform smeared with various liquids in shades of yellow and brown hung on thin shoulders. A sinewy neck held up a large, bony head with a thin layer of auburn hair. His face was pale, freckled, and rather dull. I stood and put on a professional smile.

  “Mr. Fortney,” I said, introducing myself. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has asked me to evaluate the paintings you are offering them. The Tantros?”

  The receptionist stopped typing and was doing a bad job of covering her eavesdropping. Fortney blinked three times and nodded. “Ah, sure. I … let’s see.” He twirled to survey the clock on the wall above the door he’d just come through. “I don’t get off till three, but the wife’s there.”

  As I hoped. “I could have access to the paintings now?”

  “Sure, no problem.” Fortney began to rub his hands together. I’ll call her, then as soon as I get off we can … ah, talk.”

  The receptionist was now staring at Fortney, her mouth agape. He turned to her and she started. “Can I use the phone, Beth?” He spoke tensely to his wife and hung up.

  “She’ll be expecting you. The paintings are out in the garage. Just have her take the tarp off ‘em.” He rubbed his forehead with long, thin fingers. “I forgot to tell her that.”