“I always made grilled cheese for Ray when he stayed up on the hill too long.” Her voice thinned and she stared out the window. “I miss the days when he was young, shooting gophers with his BB gun and building things. He loved to build things. And draw pictures, of course.”
“Was he your only child?” I asked, hoping not.
“The youngest. His brother and sister are ten and twelve years older. Doctor told me I couldn’t have no more kids, then Ray come along.” A weak smile on her old lips. “He was a blessing.”
“Forgive me—but did the cowboy come up with the idea about the paintings?”
“There was someone else Ray talked to, in the spring when he come home from the hospital. He was there almost six weeks. I spent as much time with him as I could.” She looked at her hands in her lap suddenly. I figured tears were next, but she looked up dry-eyed. “I only met this man twice, at night. Ray didn’t want me to know who he was. He said the secret would die with him then.”
“What did he look like, Esther? Did he have a name?”
She shook her head again. “Can’t tell you neither. It was dark and Ray kept him away from me. Never heard him say more than a howdy, ma’am. Ray said this was what he wanted. To help me after he died. It was what he wanted, so I did it.”
“The cowboy passed the physical for Ray, then? For the insurance?” She nodded, watching her hands pick on the wet shirt hem. “You never had a number to call, any way to contact the man?”
“The cowboy, yes, the one who was … Ray. In fact I was supposed to call. They gave me his number, said to call anytime. But I never did. What would I say? He wasn’t my son.”
Esther took my dishes to the sink, squirted in some liquid soap, and turned on the water. As she stared through the curtains at the raindrops rolling down the glass, I hoped her other son and her daughter visited her, brought their children. Something about Esther’s forlorn attitude, her calm despair, made me think they didn’t. Maybe Esther had favored Ray too much, alienated the other two. These errors in judgment are difficult to explain or understand. Only the regret, the pain remains. The bright spot in her life, her talented son the artist, was gone forever.
Whoever the forger was, he had covered his tracks admirably. Kept contact to a minimum. And above all, done away with all the major witnesses. The only one left who knew his identity was Wally. And he needed Wally to sell the paintings. Wally was his only link to the outside world, the legitimate world.
But Wally had been found out. As I wiped my mouth on a paper napkin I worried suddenly about Wally’s safety. If he told the forger that I knew the paintings were frauds, Wally’s life was in danger. There had been enough murders.
BY MIDDAY JACKSON exploded in tourist colors: pink halter tops, neon green shorts, black cowboy hats, brown fishing shirts, snow white legs. Mothers pulled crying toddlers into traffic, fathers carried infants in fancy backpacks, gray-heads wore matching walking shoes and ate matching ice cream cones. A row of motorcycles all tilted, parked, at the same angle. Inside an RV a party was under way. Jackson Hole in August: the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The thunderstorm had bypassed the Hole so far. The skies were still blue, sunny with clouds bunching on the Tetons. I parked the Saab in the alley and felt my damp clothes clinging to me as I climbed the stairs to my apartment. I made a pot of coffee before changing into jeans and a dry T-shirt. It had been a long day and night. My head was crammed with new information, plotting the edges of the forgery scam. I stood at the sink, watching the clouds move across the sky in dark clumps, and drank coffee.
The footsteps on the stairs leading to my door were fast and hard. I tensed. Did Wally call the forger? Did Esther tell Wally that I had figured out the scheme? When would the Feds tie up their lies and charge me with homicide? And, another thought: Was the motorcyclist who foot-tackled me the forger?
The knock was tense, quick. I set down my coffee cup silently and tiptoed toward the door. The knocking started again. Then the voice.
“Alix! Open up. It’s me.”
Sighing, I reached out for the filigreed brass knob from the brothel days and opened the door. Paolo looked distraught, running his hand through disheveled black hair. One blue silk shirttail hung from his pleated gray pants.
“You have to watch the shop. I got to go out,” he blurted, turning to go back down.
“Wait, I’ve got to—”
He turned, angry. “You owe me. I been working my butt off and where have you been? Running around all over the place, who knows where.”
“But, Paolo.”
“No buts. This thing came up.”
“What thing?”
He was halfway down the stairs. “Just get down here. The place is packed.” He jumped the last two steps, then paused before entering the gallery to compose himself. “I give you one minute,” he called without looking back.
One minute, my ass. I found my cowboy boots in the closet, pulled them on, and grabbed a navy blazer that my sister had worn to college. By the time I carried my coffee cup and hairbrush down the stairs with me, yanking out wet snarls, I was ready to snarl myself. I hated being tied to this gallery when something was happening outside. What’s more, I hated my partner ordering me around.
The instant Paolo saw me come through the back door, he left by the front one. No wave, no I’ll be back, no Here’s where you can reach me. I snarled at him through the plate-glass windows, watching him almost run down the boardwalks, bumping into people. He crossed the square and was lost in the crowd.
Twelve or fifteen people roamed the gallery, looking at paintings, picking up cards, and spinning sun-catchers in the window. The wood floor was tracked with mud. I threw my hairbrush on my desk in the back, grabbed my messages and coffee cup, and went to sit at Paolo’s desk in the front.
A message from my mother, one from my sister back east. I set them aside to remind me to call them. I took a swig of coffee and tried to ignore the customers.
“Miss? Oh, miss? Over here.” A middle-aged woman wearing a white canvas hat and a flowered shirt was waving at me from the back of the gallery. “Can you help me?” She was smiling and sunburned.
I hauled myself up. “Yes, ma’am?”
“Jesse and I are interested in one of these.” She waved toward three large weavings by a local artist. “But we flew out here from Chicago and there’s no way we could get something like that home in the bags.”
“We can ship it for you, if you’d like. You save the sales tax that way.”
“Oh, really? I see.” She turned her gaze back at the weavings, their mountain scenes in muted greens and browns. “I like this one with the cabin. But I’m not sure it’ll go in the living room. It seems kind of, you know, cabinish. Not that it’s not lovely. You know what I mean?”
I was picturing her living room now in yellow silk with plastic covers left on because the Pekingese sometimes jumped up on the sofa, a small, empty butler’s tray coffee table, and one fake plant.
A woman squealed near the front of the gallery.
“Jesus Christ, Freddie, that is the third cone you’ve done that to. No more for you.”
Freddie, who looked about seven, had curly blond hair and chubby cheeks and a big chocolate stripe down his shirt and shorts ending on his shoes, where the ice cream now lay melting. He stepped back, kicking the scoop off his tennies onto the floor.
“I’ll get a rag,” I said to the mother, who continued berating the abashed Freddie. He stared at his scoop of ice cream longingly. Within minutes I had cleaned up the mess, and Freddie and company slinked out.
During the melee the lady in the white hat had disappeared too. I sat back down at the desk. I can’t do this. I have to concentrate. There was something I was forgetting, overlooking. Most art forgers want to be found out, want to have the world recognize their incredible talent. This forger had to rely on the unreliables, people with an emotional stake in the outcome. Esther had already betrayed the plan; it was a matter of
time with Wally.
Paolo had taken down the fake Tantros. My small Memory of Winter lay on my desk. I retrieved it, sat back down, and cleaned it with spit and tissues. I would hang it in my apartment. I amused myself for several minutes, imagining it hanging in different places.
The front door tinkled. A rowdy crew of adolescents stumbled in, poking each other with elbows and making butt noises with their mouths. A real likely group of buyers. I surveyed the rest of my messages until my eye caught one. It was from my friend Willa in Santa Fe, who ran her father’s gallery.
Willa was in the gallery when I called.
“I was talking to somebody about Tantro. One of my friends back in Massachusetts. Runs a gallery in Amherst,” Willa said. “She said he used to come in there once in a while when he was in school at RISD. He was just a kid then, but cocky. Thought he had the world by the tail.”
In my mind I saw Esther then, and the aspen tree struggling against the wind, the new grass struggling on the mound of earth, the thunder rumbling and rolling. But we all are young once, and we all die. Ray Tantro just lived hard and died young.
“He’s dead, Willa.”
“I heard. Somebody shot him?”
“No, not really. It’s a long story. Was there anything else?”
The punks were getting into a scuffle back by the weavings, grabbing at each other, giggling, and punching. I stood up, ready to be playground director again.
“Did he have a wife or kids? Any family?” Willa asked.
“Big extended family. Listen, I have to go. Duty calls.”
I hung up, walking around the desk trying to figure out how to break up three two-hundred-pounders in surfing shorts and high-top basketball shoes. But their friends beat me to it, seeing trouble on the way. A few ‘Cool it, mans’ was all it took. But I had had it.
“Okay, everybody out. Closing time.”
All eleven customers looked at me, stunned.
“Sorry, closing up, here we go.” I herded them toward the door with my arms.
“But it’s only two-thirty,” one woman protested, as if she needed more time to gather her opinions and make her purchase.
“Family emergency, ma’am. Come back tomorrow.”
I ignored the dirty looks as the last of them shuffled out. I turned the sign on the door to Closed and locked up, just in time before a new group stepped up and rattled the handle. I pointed at the sign, made apologetic shrugs, and ran upstairs for my car keys. If Paolo could split, well, I damn sure could too.
DANNY B. WAS on my apartment line, telling me about the latest from the official side when the buzzer from the gallery front door sounded. I ignored it and kept talking. “So he never married?”
“Never that I found. Had a couple girlfriends, one in Massachusetts that nobody can find. The FBI and Frye have been doing a real rundown on him.”
“Did they find anything juicy?”
“They aren’t telling. I guess they’ve talked to Eden Chaffee. I’d like to talk to her too. She probably knew him best in Jackson. Guess they had quite a hot little thing going.”
I paused. Eden had left this item out of her story last night. She said once that she might have loved him—but lovers? And now she was burning Pete’s candle. Where did she find the energy?
“And Paolo too,” Danny continued. “I talked to him this morning. Warned him about the search warrant.”
“What—here again?”
“No, his house. Since you two are partners.”
“Don’t these guys have any real leads?”
“They’re being careful. They’ve got you at the scene, and your weapon. I hear the bullets match. But something is holding them back from the arrest. Something about the time of death is my guess. Dr. Miller has him dying at least four hours before you showed up.”
“I see.” The buzzer went off again, obnoxious. I stuck my finger in my free ear. “Danny. I have a scoop for you. The man shot in the cabin was not Ray Tantro. He was a cowboy posing as him.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Forgery scam. Somebody was painting Ray Tantro look-alikes. Then bingo, Tantro’s gone, and the prices skyrocket.”
“Is this fact or theory?”
“Tantro’s mother told me this morning that he died a year ago. He’s buried on her property in Star Valley. Paolo and I figured out the paintings were forgeries last night. The paint was not completely dry on pieces dated 1974.”
I could hear him scribbling. “Shit, this is hot, Alix. Anything else?”
“Lots, but—”
The buzzer went off again. Somebody was laying on it, insistent. It sounded like somebody who had buzzed before.
“—I have to go.” I hung up. I wondered if the Feds were watching the back. I scooped up my keys and backpack, locked my door, and slipped down the back stairs.
The alley was deserted. The Saab sat alone in the shadow from the building. Down by Deloney a UPS truck was parked with its lights flashing and motor running. The other end of the alley was open, revealing a bustling summer afternoon of foot traffic, bicycles, and heavily loaded station wagons.
I locked the alley door and hopped in the car. As I pulled out onto Broadway, watching more for darting children than unmarked cars, I saw a short-haired, sunglassed man standing at the corner by himself. He wasn’t on vacation. As I passed him I held my slouch hat between us as a shield. It was a weak ploy; the Saab was easily identifiable. But the stagecoach ride, complete with four-horse team, pulled in behind me, and we both made the light before it changed.
I headed west, turning toward Wilson at the new stoplight. I still thought of it as new, though it had been around at least five years. It represented progress, traffic, and the end of small-town Jackson to me.
The Teton Village road had lost its sun by the time I got there. Clouds from the mountains that towered just west of the valley looked threatening. The traffic wasn’t as heavy as during the winter when the skiers searched for fresh powder at the ski area.
Why had Eden left out the intimate detail of her affair with Ray Tantro? Or who she thought was Ray Tantro. Did she know he was an impostor? He had told her about his relatives in Star Valley but never taken her there. I believed that part.
Pete’s coupe sat in the drive, burdened by the two kayaks. As I walked up behind the car, a mockingbird dive-bombed me. I had to duck under the overhanging kayaks to avoid serious head injury.
As I crouched there, awaiting further attacks, Eden came out the front door. I stepped out into the afternoon sun, startling her.
“What were you doing hiding there?” She frowned at me, at least as wary as last night.
“Bird attacks,” I said, scanning the aspens for more.
“Oh, those mockingbirds.” She relaxed, moving around the car toward the trunk. She unlocked it and flipped it open, revealing wet suits, life jackets, and other gear. “Help me with this stuff, will you? Pete got a phone call and if you don’t get a little sun on this junk, it’ll still be wet in the morning.”
Eden looked refreshed, probably from a nice, leisurely nap. She wore jeans and hiking boots with a new plaid shirt. Her hair was shiny, curling down over her neck.
“Here, take this jacket.”
I took the blue paddle jacket and followed her to a redwood picnic table that did double duty as a drying rack because of its sunny spot in the lawn. As if on cue, the sun peaked through the gray cumulus vapor hanging on the peaks. Eden dumped a pile of neoprene on the ground and began to drape them over the table and its benches.
“I think I left a pair of booties in the trunk,” she said, tilting her head back toward the car.
“I’ll get them.”
The Mercedes’ trunk was small and dark, and now wet with river water. I leaned down, feeling around in the gloom for the neoprene booties. The front corners were empty. I reached way into the far corners. That was where I found it.
Coiled up and damp, the dog leash brightened as I brought it into the light.
I looked at it closely, picking a hair off it, a yellow hair. A worn red leash, just like the one hanging on Ray Tantro’s back door. I held the leash long, dangling. I found the cowboy that morning, the dog vanished from her chain. Was the leash gone too? I closed my eyes, trying to picture the back door again.
The screen door slammed. I stuffed the leash back into the trunk and searched frantically for the booties. I found them at last and stood up, composing myself, as Pete came around the car.
He was dressed in ripstop shorts and rafting sandals. A perpetually sunburned nose made the rest of his face seem plain. In his eyes there was a new sharpness. His lean, hairless chest had reddened in the sun.
“I can take those.” He held out his hand for the booties. I handed them over, probably too quickly. Suddenly my heart began to beat in my ears. God, I hated that.
“Eden asked me to help lay out the stuff. How was the river today?”
“Good. Damn good.”
I moved toward Eden. Pete stood in front of the trunk, bringing up both hands to slam it closed. I shut my eyes. That hesitation—he had seen the leash. Knew I had seen it. He slammed the trunk. I watched him, walking backwards, so I wouldn’t jump out of my skin at the sound of the trunk slamming. He turned to me and I smiled.
“I’m looking forward to my lesson on Wednesday,” I said. Pete nodded, walking across the lawn with me. “I don’t know why I chickened out so bad the last time. Nerves, I guess. Did you hear Carl went back to Missoula?”
“I thought he was here for two weeks.”
“Some stuff came up.”
“I thought he was hooked,” Pete said.
Eden fussed with the wet suits, spreading them out just so on the redwood table. No sooner had she finished than the sun went behind the cloud bank. She frowned up at it, curling her upper lip. “They’ll never get dry now, Pete. It’s going to rain.”
“Bring them in, then. Put them in the bathroom.” He grabbed two life jackets, and, with the booties, went into the house to hang them up.
Eden sighed, looking at her handiwork one last time before gathering things up into her arms.
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