Private Eyes

by Jonathan Kellerman

  “Melissa doesn’t seem to share your feelings about him.”

  He started to reach for the door, gave a resigned look, and let his arm drop. “She used to like him. When she was just a customer, they’d talk and he’d bring her free Shirley Temples. She’s the one who fixed him up with her mom. The trouble started after it got serious. I kept wanting to tell her that he hadn’t changed— he was exactly the same person but she was just looking at him differently, but . . .”

  Weak smile.

  “But what?”

  “You just don’t tell Melissa things like that. She gets an idea in her head and she just won’t shake it— not that it’s a terrible fault. Too many kids are wishy-washy, don’t care about ideals. She sticks to her principles, doesn’t care about conforming or getting into stuff just because everyone else is. Like with drugs— I always knew how bad they were because I . . . because of all I’ve read. But someone like Melissa, you’d think she might be . . . susceptible. Being popular and good-looking and having plenty of money. But she never did. She stood her ground.”

  “Popular?” I said. “She’s never mentioned any friends other than you. And I haven’t seen any come around.”

  “She’s picky. But everyone liked her. She could have been a cheerleader, joined the best service clubs if she’d wanted, but she had other things on her mind.”

  “Like what?”

  “Her studies, mostly.”

  “What else?”

  He hesitated, then said, “Her mom— it was as if being a daughter was her main job in life. She once told me she felt she’d always have to take care of her mom. I tried to convince her that wasn’t right but she really got steamed. Told me I didn’t know what it was like. I didn’t argue with her. All that would’ve done was get her madder, and I really don’t like it when she gets mad.”

  He walked away before I could respond. I watched him lift the chain to the parking lot, get in the Toyota, and drive off.

  Two hands on the wheel.

  This boy will go far.

  Courteous, reverent, industrious, almost excruciatingly earnest.

  In some ways, Melissa’s male counterpart— her spiritual sibling. I could understand the rapport.

  Did that get in the way of her thinking of him the way he wanted?

  A good kid.

  Too good to be true?

  My talk with him had twanged my therapist’s antennae, though I wasn’t sure why.

  Or maybe I was just filling my head with supposition in order to avoid reality. The topic we’d barely touched upon.

  Blue skies, black water.

  Something white, floating . . .

  I started the Seville, pulled forward, coasted across the San Labrador city line.

  • • •

  Melissa was awake, but not talking. She lay on her back, head propped on three pillows, hair braided atop her head, eyelids swollen. Noel sat by her side, in the rocker Madeleine had filled an hour ago. Holding her hand, looking alternately content and edgy.

  Back in her uniform, Madeleine moved through the room like a harbor barge, docking at pieces of furniture, dusting, straightening, opening and closing drawers. On the nightstand was a bowl of oatmeal that had congealed to mortar. The drapes were drawn, warding off the harshness of midday summer light.

  I leaned under the canopy and said hello. Melissa acknowledged me with a feeble smile. I squeezed the hand Noel hadn’t claimed. Asked her if there was anything I could do for her.

  Head shake. She looked nine years old again.

  I stuck around anyway. Madeleine swiped a bit more with her dustrag, then said, “I go downstairs, ma petite choute? Something to eat?”

  Melissa shook her head.

  Madeleine picked up the bowl of oatmeal and walked halfway to the door. “Something to eat for you, monsieur doctor?”

  The invitation and the “doctor” meant I must have done something right.

  I realized I was hungry. But even if I hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have turned her down.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Something light would be fine.”

  “A steak?” she said. “Or some nice lamb chops— I have the double-cuts.”

  “A small chop would be great.”

  She nodded, stuffed her dustrag in a pocket, and left.

  Alone with Noel and Melissa, I felt like an unwanted chaperon. They seemed so comfortable with each other that three was definitely a crowd.

  Soon her eyes had closed again. I stepped out into the hallway, found myself drifting past closed doors. Drifting toward the back of the house— the rear spiral staircase that Gina Ramp had descended that first day, looking for Melissa. Stairs that ascended as well, tunneling upward through the gloom of the hallway.

  I began climbing. At the top was a hundred square feet of bare space marked by cedar double doors.

  Old-fashioned iron key in the lock. I turned it, stepped into darkness, groped for a light switch, and flicked. Found myself in an enormous, loftlike room. Over a hundred feet long, at least half that amount in width, with dusty pine-plank floors, cedar walls, unfinished beam ceiling, bare bulbs joined to unshielded electrical conduits that ran the length of the beams. Dormer windows on both ends, shaded with oilcloth.

  The right portion of the room was filled: furniture, lamps, steamer trunks and leather suitcases that brought to mind the age of rail travel. Groups of objects assembled with loose but noticeable organization: Here a collection of statuary, there a foundry’s worth of bronze sculptures. Inkstands, clocks, stuffed birds, ivory carvings, inlaid boxes. A jumble of staghorns, some of them on mounting boards, others bound together with leather thongs. Rolled rugs, animal skins, elephant-foot ashtrays, glass shades that could have been Tiffany. A standing polar bear, glass-eyed, yellowed, snarling, one paw waving, the other clutching a taxidermic salmon.

  The left side was nearly empty. Two levels of vertically slotted storage racks ran along the wall. An easel and artist’s flat file sat in the center. Canvases and framed pictures filled the slots. A blank canvas was clamped to the easel— not quite blank; I made out faint pencil lines. The wooden frame had warped; the canvas billowed and puckered.

  A pine paint box sat atop the flat file. The latch was rusted but I pried it open using my fingernails. Inside were a dozen or so sable brushes, their shanks paint-stained, their bristles stiffened to uselessness, a rusty palette knife, and paint tubes dried solid. Lining the bottom of the case were several pieces of paper. I slid them out. Pages cut out of magazines: Life, National Geographic, American Heritage. Dates from the ’50s and ’60s. Landscapes and seascapes, mostly. Inspirational images, I supposed. A photo between two of the pages. Writing on the back. Black ink, a beautiful, flowing hand:

  March 5, 1971

  Restoration?

  Color photograph— good quality, satin finish.

  Two people— a man and a woman— standing in front of paneled doors. The Chaucer doors. Peach-colored stucco around the wood.

  The woman was Gina Dickinson’s size and shape. Model-slim figure, except for a hard, high swell of belly. She had on a white silk dress and white shoes that stood out nicely against the dark wood. On her head was a wide-brimmed white straw sun hat. Wisps of blond hair fuzzed her slender neck. The face below the hat was encased in a mummy-wrap of bandages, the eyeholes flat and black as raisins in a snowman.

  One of her hands clutched a bouquet of white roses. The other rested on the shoulder of the man.

  Tiny man. Coming midway to Gina’s shoulder, making him four seven or eight, tops. Sixtyish. Frail. Head too big for his body. Arms disproportionately long. Stumpy legs. Goatish features under frizzy gray hair.

  A man whose ugliness was so beyond aesthetic repair that it seemed almost noble.

  He wore a dark three-piece suit that was probably well cut, but tailoring couldn’t compensate for Nature’s faulty draftsmanship.

  I remembered something Anger, the banker, had said:

  Art was his only extravagan
ce. He would have bought his clothes off the rack if he could.

  No portraits in the house . . .

  The aesthete . . .

  He was posed formally, one hand in his waistcoat, the other around his bride. But his eyes had wandered off to one side. Uneasy. Knowing that the camera would be cruel even on special days, but that special days cried out for preservation nonetheless.

  He’d kept the picture at the bottom of a box.

  Like the magazine photos, inspiration?

  I took a closer look at the canvas on the easel. The pencil lines assembled themselves as coherent form: two ovals. Faces. Faces on an equal level. Cheek to cheek. Below, what would have been the sketchy beginnings of torsos. Normal size. The one on the right flat-tummied.

  Art as revisionism. Arthur Dickinson’s attempt at mastery.

  March 5, 1971.

  Melissa had been born in June of that year. Arthur Dickinson had missed the unveiling of his most prized work by weeks.

  Something else about the picture struck me: older, shorter, homely man. Taller, younger, beautiful woman.

  The Gabneys. The way Leo had tried, unsuccessfully, to embrace his wife’s shoulders.

  He was of normal height, the disparity less dramatic, but the parallel remained striking.

  Maybe it was because the Gabneys had stood in that same spot this morning.

  Maybe I wasn’t the only one to have noticed it.

  Identification between therapist and patient.

  Similar taste in men.

  Similar taste in interior decorating.

  Who’d influenced whom?

  Chicken-egg riddles, which had come to me as I sat in Ursula’s office, returned with brain-pecking vengeance.

  I went over to the vertical rack. Handwritten labels under each slot listed artist, title, descriptive data, dates of execution and purchase.

  Hundreds of partitions, but Arthur Dickinson had been an organized man; the collection was alphabetized.

  Cassatt, between Casale and Corot.

  Eight slots.

  Two of them empty.

  I read the labels.

  Cassatt, M. Mother’s Kiss, c. 1891. Aquatint with drypoint and soft-ground. Catal: Breeskin 149, 13 5/8 × 8 15/16 in.

  Cassatt, M. Maternal Caress, c. 1891. Aquatint with drypoint and soft-ground. Catal: Breeskin 150, 14 1/2 × 10 9/16 in.

  The rest of the six accounted for, framed and glassed. I pulled them out carefully. All black-and-white, no mother and child scenes.

  The two best prints gone.

  One for the patient’s gray room, one for the doctor’s.

  I recalled the way the Gabneys had behaved this morning.

  Leo trying to project sympathy. But making sure to tell me that Chickering’s suicide theory was nonsense.

  Damage control.

  Ursula operating on a whole other level.

  Touching the Chaucer doors as if they led to a shrine.

  Or a treasure trove.

  I thought of Gina’s unaccounted “petty cash.” Two million . . .

  Had the gifts gone beyond art?

  Therapeutic transference as a pathway to riches?

  Dependency and terror could create a cancer of the soul. Those with the cure could name their price.

  I thought of gifts I’d been offered. Mostly handmade creations of little children— potholders, popsicle-stick picture frames, drawings, clay sculptures. My office at home was full of them.

  In the case of adult offerings, I had a policy of accepting only tokens— flowers, candy. A yellow-wrapped basket of fruit. I turned down anything of significant and lasting value. Doing it graciously was sometimes an ordeal.

  No one had ever shoved a piece of rare art in my hands. Still, I liked to think I would have turned that down, too.

  Not that accepting gifts was indictable; ethically, it lay somewhere in the fuzzy area between felony and bad judgment. And I was certainly no saint, immune to the pleasures of a bargain.

  But I’d gone to school to learn how to do a certain job, and most responsible therapists agreed that any sizable gift, in either direction, reduced the chances of doing the job correctly. Shaking the therapeutic balance by immutably altering the relationship that forms the core of change.

  Apparently the Gabneys disagreed.

  Perhaps a treatment that involved house calls and open-ended sessions lent itself to a relaxation of the rules; I thought of how much time I’d spent in this house.

  Foraging in the attic.

  But my intentions were noble.

  As opposed to?

  Melissa had reacted to the bond between her mother and Ursula with growing suspicion.

  She’s cold. I feel she wants to shut me out.

  Reactions discounted by everyone, including me, because Melissa was a high-strung kid, dealing with dependency and separation and threatened by anyone who got close to her mother.

  Little girl who cried wolf?

  Was any of it relevant to Gina’s fate?

  Another visit to the clinic seemed in order, though I wasn’t sure how I’d approach the Gabneys.

  Picking up Gina’s chart— saving them the price of postage?

  In the neighborhood, decided to stop by . . .

  And then what?

  God only knew.

  Today was Sunday. It would have to wait.

  Meanwhile, there were lamb chops to deal with. A meal I was willing to bet would be first-rate. Too bad my appetite had waned.

  I restored Arthur Dickinson’s hideaway to its original condition and went downstairs.

  27

  I ate by myself in the big dark dining room, feeling more like hired help than lord of the manor. When I left the house at one-fifty, Melissa and Noel were still up in the bedroom, talking in low, earnest tones.

  I intended to head for home but found myself driving past the Gabney Clinic. A gunmetal-gray Lincoln and a wood-sided Mercury station wagon were parked in front. Ursula’s Saab sat at the mouth of the driveway.

  Gina’s therapy group, one day early? Emergency session to deal with her death? Or another group led by the dedicated doctor?

  Two o’clock. If the one-to-three schedule was adhered to, the session would be over in an hour. I decided to keep an eye on the building, call Milo while I was waiting.

  I looked for a phone. Directly across the street were houses. Farther to the south, the neighborhood was completely residential. But cater-cornered a block north stood a row of storefronts: a prewar golden brick building with limestone insets and domed brown awnings over each shop. I cruised past slowly. The first establishment was a restaurant. Then a real estate office, a candy shop, and an antique gallery with hall trees and odd tables out on the sidewalk. Beyond that, another couple of commercial blocks, then apartments.

  The restaurant was my best bet. I turned around, pulled up in front of it.

  Cute little bistro affair. LA MYSTIQUE in frosted script on the windows. Art nouveau letters surrounded by a garland. Peppermint and white petunias in a box under the window. A banner over the flowers announced Brunch.

  Inside were eight tables covered with blue-and-white checkered cloths, sprigs of daisies and lavender in blue glass vases, white chairs and walls, European travel posters, an open kitchen behind a low Plexiglas partition in which a Hispanic man wearing a chef’s toque labored. Two of the tables were occupied, both by pairs of conservatively dressed middle-aged women. What was on their plates tended toward the green and leafy. They paused to look up as I entered, then resumed playing with their food.

  A conspicuously busty, fair-haired woman of around thirty came forward, holding a menu. She had a full, friendly face not quite brightened by a nervous smile. Her hair was tied in a bun and bound with a black ribbon, and she wore a knee-length black knit dress that emphasized her chest but failed, otherwise, to flatter. As she came toward me I could see an undertow of anxiety tugging at the smile.

  Brand-new-business anxiety?

  Still-in-the-
red anxiety?

  She said, “Hello. Please sit anywhere you’d like.”

  I looked around, noticed that the two window tables offered an oblique but clear view of the clinic.