The Scarlet Macaw

by S. P. Hozy

  Maris wanted to say, “No, it’s not okay,” but she didn’t — more for Dinah’s sake than for her own. She was more than willing to take on Angela, but the time and the place weren’t right. It was true, she knew, that people often behaved in uncharacteristic ways in the face of grief or shock, or the truly unexpected, like murder. There was something about a situation like this that brought out either the best or the worst in people.

  And this had to be murder. Peter wouldn’t poison his own Campari. There were easier ways to commit suicide. Besides, he’d only have to put it in his own glass, not the whole bottle. What if Maris had decided to have a glass with him? Would she be lying on a slab in the morgue along with him, with a Y-shaped incision in her chest badly stitched together with thick black twine?

  It was an ugly picture. She excused herself and went to the washroom to splash cold water on her face to try and expunge the mental image. When Peter’s lawyer had called to give them the results of the autopsy, they had been at the gallery trying to decide what to do. Should they re-open and conduct business as usual after a suitable period of mourning? Should they sell off the inventory and close up for good? What about relocating the gallery to Berlin where Angela spent most of her time when she wasn’t travelling? Maris and Dinah preferred the option of leaving the gallery open. Surprisingly, so did Angela. All three were amazed at how easy it had been to agree.

  “Of course,” said Angela, “it means I’ll have to take a greater part in the day-to-day operations. Peter was the one in charge of all of that.” The prospect was clearly distasteful to her. Angela preferred the role of globetrotting procurer. She liked the hunt; it suited her predatory personality. Angela had instincts, Peter used to say. He knew where to send her, but it was Angela who knocked on doors and shook hands with people, and then got whatever she wanted from them. She and Peter had been a good team where the business was concerned; but the marriage had failed after eight years. Neither had remarried in the seven years since the divorce and the business had benefited from their redirected passion. The gallery was their love child.

  “You know,” said Dinah tentatively, “I’ve been Peter’s right hand for the last five years. I know the customers. I know the books. I know how Peter liked things done.”

  Angela stood up and straightened her black silk skirt. Then she adjusted the matching black silk jacket. Maris thought, She’s built like a boning knife: all precision, balance and sharpness. Her highly polished, red-painted fingernails were perfectly manicured. Her blonde hair had just enough platinum highlights to catch the sun but not so many to make it look like a dye job. She was forty-five, Peter’s age, but looked thirty-five. Nothing drooped, nothing sagged. Give it another five years and she’d be getting the eye job and the Botox injections, probably in Bangkok where she could disappear while the swelling went down and the scars healed.

  Maris looked at her own hands, an artist’s hands with strong fingers and flat, spatulate fingertips. Paint thinner had left its mark on them, cracking them around the nails and roughing them up on the backs. No amount of Vaseline Intensive Care for Extra Dry Skin could undo the damage. She was almost forty and had been painting for half her life. I look forty, she thought, catching her reflection in the glass cabinet that held the gallery’s most precious pieces. I’m low-maintenance, she thought, glancing at Angela, and it shows. Her brown hair used to be shinier, used to be thicker. When did that happen? Her skin already had a web of fine lines around her eyes and her mouth. It was hard to avoid the sun in Singapore, and she’d been here nearly four years. Who cares? she thought. I’ll age gracefully. I will become an “original,” like my mother. I won’t cave in to the youth cult thing. I won’t turn myself into a Botox Barbie like Angela. Right, she thought. Blah, blah, blah.

  “I can’t pay you any more than Peter was paying you,” Angela told Dinah, thinking she would nip in the bud any plans Dinah might have to take advantage of the void Peter’s death had left. Maris saw Dinah flinch, ever so slightly, her head jerking back about a centimetre as if a mosquito had grazed her skin.

  “I think we should discuss finances another time,” said Maris. “We’re all a little raw right now.”

  “I have to go anyway,” said Angela. “I’m getting acupuncture treatments for these damn headaches.” Maris pictured Angela with a head full of long, thin needles, like a pincushion. It was perfect. She looked at Dinah, who was pursing her lips and staring off to the side. She knew that expression. It meant that Dinah was doing her detached thing so she wouldn’t laugh. Or cry.

  After Angela left, Maris said to Dinah, “Are you back?”

  Dinah nodded. “I just needed to zone out for a minute,” she said. “I was actually thinking about killing her.” Maris smiled. Dinah was probably the most gentle, least violent person she knew. The fact that she was small — maybe five feet tall — and slender — maybe ninety pounds — had nothing to do with it. Dinah was like a jasmine blossom. You walked by them every day without a second look. They were tiny and white and plain. But one day you might walk by when the wind was blowing a certain way and something would catch your attention. A subtle fragrance or a shiny leaf might get caught by the sun and you’d stop and take a second look. And you’d notice how beautiful it was, how essential. Because if all the jasmine disappeared from Asia, it would be a different place, bereft, less welcoming. And you’d be glad you stopped and took notice.

  “So now what?” said Maris.

  Dinah sighed. “I guess we try and pretend it’s business as usual.”

  “I’m not keen on Angela being in charge.”

  “Neither am I. But that’s the way it is. For now.” Dinah ran her fingers through her straight black hair. “I, for one, intend to….”

  “What?” said Maris.

  “I don’t know,” said Dinah. “I suddenly lost my train of thought.”

  “Ah,” said Maris.

  They had the funeral five days later. The police had released the body but said the case was still open. There were no clues other than the poisoned Campari and that wasn’t really a clue. It was just a fact. It didn’t lead anywhere. It would take a month to canvass all the pharmacies to find out who had purchased chloral hydrate in the past — what? Two weeks? Two months? — then it would take several weeks to track down and interview them all. The investigation was going to be long and slow. It would be about legwork rather than luck. Without any sworn enemies to step forward and confess, there wasn’t much to go on. A disgruntled client? They would check out the possibility, even though Dinah and Angela both denied such a person existed. But who knew? If they were dealing with a psychopath, it could be someone who was charming on the outside and seething with thoughts of revenge on the inside. Like Ted Bundy. And Peter’s clients were scattered all over the world. You didn’t have to live in Singapore to buy your art from Peter Stone Antiquities: You could go to Peter’s website and do your shopping online. It would be like trying to find a pedophile in cyberspace — a forty-year-old man masquerading as a teenager. It was just too easy to be invisible online.

  They tried to keep the funeral simple and elegant, the way Peter would have wanted it, but a lot of people showed up because of the publicity and because of their morbid fascination with the way Peter had died. People who barely knew him tried to pretend they’d lost a dear friend. The ones who had lost a dear friend were offended and upset by the curiosity seekers, who thought that to be at the funeral of a victim of murder had some kind of status attached to it. Something they could dine out on for months. “It was a closed casket,” they’d say. “He must have been hideous,” they could tell an enthralled audience. “All purple and bloated. He was poisoned, after all. So dreadful. And he was such a lovely man. So smart and sensitive. I feel as if I’ve lost my best friend. I miss him terribly.” Cut to a series of faces with downcast eyes, nodding sadly and sympathetically. Murmurings of “You poor thing,” “I know, I know,” and “I feel the same way.”

  Maris tried hard not t
o let anger interfere with her grief. Peter had been good to her, and had supported her and her art when she believed she had nothing to offer. She had come to Singapore when a gallery owner in Vancouver noticed that local Chinese people were buying her art. He recommended she contact Peter Stone in Singapore because he might be interested in carrying her work. She had emailed him some photographs of her paintings and he’d said, “Send me something. I’m interested.” She was thirty-five, single, with no real prospects in Canada. So she bought a plane ticket, packed a few of her paintings and a bunch of her drawings, and flew into her future.

  She and Peter had become friends, even though they were as different as coffee and coconuts. Peter was meticulous, discerning, careful, and successful. She was impulsive, intuitive, messy, and success was not even in her vocabulary. She was an artist. He was a businessman. But he knew art when he saw it, and she aspired to create art. Their relationship was symbiotic. Peter began showing her paintings in his gallery, and people started buying them. In a way, she owed him everything. It wasn’t just the money she was able to make that allowed her to continue painting; it was the fact that Peter believed in her. He told her she was an artist and so she started to believe in herself.

  Now what will I do? she thought. She knew what she wanted to do, but crawling into a hole and shutting out the world wouldn’t solve anything. Besides, it wasn’t fair to Dinah, who had lost much more than she had. Dinah had lost a brother — at least a half-brother — and her best friend. Maris felt as if she were starting all over again, only this time without Peter to pick her up when she fell down. She couldn’t imagine painting again. When she looked around, she felt tired rather than energized. Nothing inspired her. It’s temporary, she told herself. This is what grief can do. It fools you into thinking the world has ended, when it’s really just holding its breath for a while. Soon it will be time to exhale and start again.

  Chapter Four

  Maris hefted the old leather trunk onto the airport conveyer belt along with the suitcase that held her clothes, a few books, and some mementoes of her four years in Singapore. Her carry-on bag contained her brushes and sketch pad, the only things she would be upset about losing. The rest would follow in a month or two on the first available ship from Singapore to Vancouver.

  I’m going home, she thought. But it didn’t feel like going home. It felt like taking a giant step back into a life of failure and defeat. She hadn’t been able to paint a thing in the months following Peter’s death. Instead of the vivid colours she was used to seeing, Maris now saw things only in shades of grey. Not really, but it seemed like everything was grey. It was like looking at wet concrete through a misty rain.

  There had been no progress in the case of Peter’s murder. She had been the only witness, and the police had questioned her several times, asking the same questions and hearing the same answers.

  “What time did you arrive at Mr. Stone’s apartment?”

  “Just after six o’clock.”

  “Was the bottle of Campari open when you arrived?”

  “No. Peter uncorked it and poured himself a glass in front of me.”

  “Was it a new bottle?”

  “Yes. I noticed that it was full when he opened it.”

  “What made you notice?”

  “I don’t know. I guess it just registered. I probably would have noticed if it was half-full or almost empty, too. I just noticed.”

  “Was Mr. Stone in the habit of drinking Campari?”

  “Yes. He liked a glass before dinner.”

  “Why didn’t you drink the Campari?”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “What did you have to drink?”

  “A gin and tonic. Peter mixed it for me at the bar before he poured his Campari.”

  And on and on. They couldn’t link her to the bottle of Campari or to the poison that had been put into it. And she had no motive. Her life was better with Peter alive. He encouraged her work and he sold her paintings. Why would she kill him?

  There had been no suspects, although clients and customers had been questioned. No one seemed to bear a grudge against Peter, and they could connect no one with the poison. The bottle of Campari apparently was not a gift, but there was no way to be sure. Peter was in the habit of buying Campari for himself. It was his favourite.

  Finally after four months, during which she could not paint, could not even think, Maris decided to go back to Canada to see if a change of scene would snap her out of the funk she was in. She knew she had been fond of Peter, but his death was more than the loss of a friend. She had lost her way, her bearings. Her focus was gone, and her eyes no longer saw things that spoke to the painter in her. She saw neither beauty nor ugliness. She saw only drabness and mechanics. She saw people walking with their heads down just to get somewhere, unsmiling and faceless; traffic rolling through the streets of Singapore in the same way every day; grass growing and being trimmed; and flowers being planted and opening and dying on schedule.

  I’m looking at the world through a Plexiglas shield, she thought. Like watching planes take off from an airport lounge without the sound, the smell, or the vibration of the powerful engines: an endless loop of cogs meeting wheels, engaging the gears of nature, society, life, in a stupefying rhythm. She found herself sleeping more than usual, taking naps in the afternoon, and sleeping a dreamless sleep.

  “You’re depressed,” said Dinah. “Maybe you should talk to someone.”

  “Take Prozac,” said Angela. “Everybody does.” They were in the storeroom behind the gallery, unpacking a shipment that had arrived from Chiang Mai in northern Thailand.

  “I’m not taking Prozac,” Maris said, “and I’m not depressed. I’m just sad and tired. And aimless.”

  “That’s depression,” said Angela. “We’re all sad and tired. But you don’t see me or Dinah sleeping in the afternoon. We have too much to do. We’re running the gallery without Peter and it’s hard work. You need something to do. You need to work.”

  “Maris is an artist,” said Dinah. “You can’t just tell an artist to work and expect them to put their nose to the grindstone. Honestly, Angela, you’re in the art business. You should know that.”

  “Yes,” said Angela, “I’m in the art business. And that’s what it is: a business. If artists don’t make art, they starve. They have to eat. Just like everybody else.”

  Dinah rolled her eyes. “This conversation is clearly over,” she murmured to Maris as Angela left the room, muttering about some people never putting things back where they belong.

  “That was a conversation?” said Maris. “I thought it was a sermon. From the high priestess of the Church of Business.”

  “As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew I shouldn’t have said them,” said Dinah. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” said Maris. “Maybe I needed to hear it. I have to do something to stop this inertia. I’m not going to take Prozac, that’s for sure, but I have to make a change.” Dinah handed her a penknife and pointed to some boxes that needed opening. “Angela’s right in a way,” Maris continued. “Art is my work and without it I’ll starve. And not just from the lack of money. It sounds corny, but I’ve lost something, some part of my soul. Peter sort of re-invented me as an artist. He made me believe in myself. Before, I had only seen myself as a painter, someone who put colours and shapes on canvas. Peter made me think about art. I mean really think about it as a medium for ideas. He believed I had something to say.” She slid the knife across the tape sealing one of the boxes. “And now I’ll have to learn to live without that — whatever he gave me — and find it somewhere else. But what are the chances of finding another mentor like Peter?” She sighed, lifting the flaps on the box. “I guess I’ll have to create my own internal ego-booster. Can people do that?” She smiled at Dinah, but just thinking about it made her tired.

  “I think they can if they want to,” said Dinah. “You can’t go on waiting for someone or something to come along and do i
t for you. In my experience that doesn’t happen.” She started unpacking the opened box, stuffing Styrofoam popcorn into a plastic garbage bag. “But it’s easy for me to say,” she continued. “I’m not an artist. I don’t have to be inspired to work. I’m just the hired help. ‘No tickee, no washee,’ as my ancestors used to say.”

  They looked at each other and they both started to laugh. “I have no idea where that came from,” said Dinah, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. “What a stupid thing to say.”

  “Yes, but it was funny,” said Maris. “It’s probably because Angela makes you feel like a coolie. She makes you run around and do grunt work all the time. I’m sure if he could have, Peter would have left his half of the business to you. I don’t see why a half-sister should have fewer rights than an ex-wife.”

  “I know, but they had an ironclad agreement that if anything happened to either one of them, the other would own the business outright. Though I doubt that Peter envisioned anything like this happening. Still,” she said, looking into the box, “I’d rather be working for Angela than not working at the gallery at all. It’s what I love.”

  Maris sighed. “You know, art isn’t just about inspiration. It’s also about putting pencil to paper and brush to canvas. Even if the result is bad or mediocre, it keeps the juices flowing. It’s like practicing the scales if you’re a musician. You have to be doing whatever it is that you do. And I haven’t been doing anything, not even looking at other people’s art or doodling, for months. I think I have to do something drastic before it’s too late.”

  Dinah looked alarmed. “How drastic?” she asked.

  Maris laughed. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not going to jump off a bridge. I’ve been thinking about going back to Canada for a while. Maybe a change of scene will help. I could stay with my mother. She has a house north of Vancouver where she makes pottery. Pretty good pottery, actually. She’s been doing it for years.”