by Box Set
“Spoken like a man who never worried about money. You don’t get it, Jimme. The only people not concerned about money are the ones who have it.” Carpenter’s usually jovial face wasn’t just panicked, as Al expected, but also a little angry.
Noting the expression, and deciding to delve a little deeper into it when he got back home, Al shrugged. “And I have it. Later, man.”
Without another word, Al headed out. Nothing mattered but making it to Stone’s side in time…
He couldn’t bear the idea of his truest friend being alone at the end. Nothing else mattered.
***
“Look, Mr. Brainburger, you can’t—”
“Braunberger,” the small elderly man corrected. He stomped his foot, a move that might have been a bit more effective if he wasn’t wearing leopard-print bedroom slippers. “I’ve told you probably a hundred times—my name is Leo Braunberger, Jude. Are you even giving me your full attention?”
Jude sighed. Was she giving a four-foot tall man, dressed in a pink fuzzy bathrobe and women’s slippers who clearly hadn’t washed his butt-length salt and pepper hair in at least a month her full attention? Surprisingly, no. Although she tried to be nice to him as a general rule, the biggest show of the year—and likely her commission for the quarter—would be later that night and she simply didn’t have the normal level of patience for an uninvited artist she might usually manage to fake.
“Mr. Braunburger, I believe I’ve explained to you before that we’re not on a first name basis. Although the Cove is thrilled you’d like to have a showing, based on the pieces you brought in from your portfolio, we’re just not interested at this time.” Wiping her hands, sweaty from lack of coffee and her impending caffeine headache, along the crease of her knee-length, pinstriped skirt, Jude faced off with the artist.
Although a lot of artists were characters—like her mother, for instance—Braunberger had the quirkiness down, but none of the talent. Especially when compared to the other pieces currently featured in the gallery…
Thinking of the pieces, she glanced down the hallway. She’d hoped to have one more sculpture come in, but she hadn’t heard back from the shipping company and needed to call them again to recite her tracking number and verify it would be delivered before eight pm instead of talking to Braunberger. “A lot of artists struggle, Mr. Brainburger, but—”
“Braunberger.”
“That’s what I said.”
“No, it isn’t. You said Brainburger again. Braun, like the color brown.”
Rubbing her temples, she nodded. “Yes, Braunberger. As I was saying—”
“And I’m not struggling. I told you, I’m very rich, Jude.” He moved closer to her, the scent of him flooding her nostrils with a blend of sweat and possibly urine… or other things she didn’t want to consider. “And if you give me a showing, I promise, I can take you away from all this. You won’t have to work for that asshole, Schneider, anymore.”
Biting her lip, she managed to barely hold back the bark of laughter that threatened to escape. Although her boss was, indeed, an asshole, she doubted Braunberger was in a position to take anyone away to any place they’d like to go. “I understand you want to have a showing, Mr. Braunberger.”
She pronounced his name slowly, to ensure she got it right. The sooner she got him gone, the sooner she could hide in her office with a cup of coffee and her laptop. “That said, unfortunately, we’re not looking for a new artist at this time. Also, we’d truly appreciate it if you didn’t sneak in tonight to hand out your pamphlets or business cards. We had you escorted out last time. I can’t promise Mr. Schneider won’t involve the authorities this time.”
Braunberger straightened the lapels of his housecoat. “Are you suggesting you’d report me to the police for sharing my work with interested parties? If they’re here for an art show, they appreciate art and would likely be very interested in my work.”
Nodding slowly, Jude glanced over his shoulder at her reflection in a nearby statue of polished pewter. At least she couldn’t see the signs of her tiredness and headache in the somewhat distorted image—hair neatly pulled back into a sedate bun, cosmetics flawless—the perfect image of a calm businesswoman.
While inside, she kind of wanted to cry, curl up with a good book in the bathtub, and drink a gallon or two of wine.
“I’m suggesting that you can do whatever you want, as per your constitutional rights you’re so happy to remind me of every time we talk, so long as you are on public property. The gallery, however, is private property and, as the owner, Mr. Schneider would be within his rights to have you removed.”
The old man shook his head. “Jude, I thought better of you than this.”
She sighed, patience snapping, and asked him, “Really? And why is that, Mr. Braunberger?”
“Why, because you understand artists. Because of your mother, of course.”
Shaking her head, she spun away from him. Let him loiter; let someone else deal with it. I’m done.
She didn’t slam the door to her office. No, she had more control than that. She wasn’t a passionate artistic type, prone to fits of anger at the slightest upset. She was a dignified woman. She had things under control.
Syncing her phone to Bluetooth, she activated her office speakers to play Mozart via an app on the cell. In seconds, a relaxing blend of flute and harp flooded the office with gentle music. Still seething, she sat at the desk and opened her laptop.
And saw she had an email from her mother.
Opening it, since she was already upset, she read the letter quickly.
Cyan blue.
A couple new acrylic brushes: 1”, ¾” and a round 0—I prefer Loew Cornell Soft Comfort.
At least a dozen canvases—no smaller than eight by eleven, please.
Are you still seeing that boy? xoxo Mom
Her eye twitched. It literally twitched. Of course, her mother started off the email with a grocery list of art supplies, tossed in a nugget of somewhat personal inquiry, and then acted as if the whole matter was perfectly normal. It was not normal to send your child a list of supplies and expect her to gather them, nor was it normal for her mother to think she was still seeing “that boy” when she’d told her she broke up him with three months ago.
None of it was normal, which was the big problem with dealing with artistic types of any kind. They didn’t revel in normalcy, in order…
Or in their children.
Stomping her foot, Jude reached into the cut lead glass dish on her desk and grabbed a handful of candies before spinning away to face the window. She felt like a sullen child, but everyone assumed that because her mother was Agatha Cramer, renowned artist, she was somehow in tune with the weird that creative types seemed to exhale on every breath. It attracted people like Braunberger to her side—because she’d get them—and kept everyone normal further away.
Whatever. Three candies in, she shoved the rest of the handful into her mouth and began to pull up the tracking numbers for the show. If she had to blink back a few tears of frustration while she looked, so be it.
She’d built a normal life for herself, dammit. That mattered. And she could keep it together, Agathas and Brainburgers of the world be damned.
Chapter 2
People milled about, whispering softly and otherwise behaving in the overly civilized way Jude came to expect from those who attended a gallery showing. Some sipped complimentary champagne. Others munched happily on the hors d'oeuvres she’d carefully selected from the menu offered by the caterers. All in all, it was a good turnout, and she’d already sold two pieces—one of which she hadn’t been sure would ever sell.
As per her usual, she tried to be a part of the crowd while standing back and taking it all in. Art sales weren’t high pressured or otherwise forced. She made far more from the organic buyer allowed to stand back and consider a piece and how it might fit in their lives than she did by following around potential buyers and rattling off a list of what she knew about eac
h piece.
Yes, all was going exactly according to her plans, which meant—if she had any other boss than Schneider—she might expect a kudos or otherwise some reward for her efforts. Instead, her boss was nowhere in sight—typical. Then again, he owned the place, so who said he had to put any damn effort into the biggest show of the year?
Do you want some fries with that salty? Before she could stew much more, she spotted him. Braunberger.
“And I specifically asked him not to come hand out his crap tonight. Typical. So damned typical.” Straightening her shoulders, she planned to ask security to quietly escort him off the property before he either disturbed the patrons or Schneider noticed his presence. She didn’t want the old codger hauled off to jail for loitering if she could help it and, regardless of his claims of wealth, she didn’t buy it. Before she could do a thing, however, he vanished into a shift in the crowd.
Heading his direction, she couldn’t find him. Just lots of black and white—little black dresses, men in suits… no man in a bathrobe anywhere. Wandering farther down one of the more isolated hallways and up a couple ramps, she heard voices in the distance. Which was odd, really, since no one usually headed this way during a show.
The hallway opened up, becoming a balcony over the back end of the gallery so she could see the dimly lit room below. Since they’d corded off the area with velvet ropes, she really didn’t expect to see anyone down there.
And yet two people were removing a painting from its frame, rolling it up. Racking her brain, she tried to remember if she’d scheduled a cleaning or a restoration, but quickly discarded the idea—even if she had, she wouldn’t have booked a pick up on the night of the show.
Or would she? She’d been rather frazzled and overworked recently, after all.
And then Braunberger entered from a lower hallway, right behind the two rolling up the painting. Opening her mouth to call out to him, she never managed to utter a sound.
One of the men noticed Braunberger—probably because he gasped in startlement when he came upon them. The man didn’t hesitate, pulling something shiny out of his coat and pointing it at the old man.
Two puffs of air—nothing more—and Braunberger fell with a short cry. The men grabbed up the painting and turned toward the back door, before she could do more than cover her mouth in shock. Had they shot him? The impossibility of the idea…
She raced toward his side, losing sight of him and the men when she turned a corner as she clunked her way awkwardly in her too-high heels. It seemed to take an age to get to Braunberger’s side, and when she did, he wasn’t moving. Her hand, when she placed it on his chest, came away with blood.
Then she screamed.
***
Security had police swarming and cordoning off the place in no time. Still shocked, her hands were ice cold and she couldn’t seem to stop shaking as an ambulance came to take Braunberger. The police kept asking her questions, so she told them the truth.
“I don’t know what happened.”
She garbled her statement and, when they took her to the station for more questions, she couldn’t tell them much. She had seen little more than silhouettes of masculine figures—not enough to be of use—and no one would tell her if Braunberger was okay or not.
It took a while for their questions to really click and for her to realize she herself must seem like a suspect.
“Miss Cramer, you say you can’t identify either of the men, yet we really need some kind of description. How tall were they?” The older male officer asked her.
“I don’t know. I was looking at them from above,” she answered.
“But when they found you and Mr. Braunberger, you were with the victim,” said the woman officer. She stared Jude down in a way that made her decidedly uncomfortable.
“Yes, I ran to his side when I thought he might have been hurt.”
The woman nodded. “I see. Yet you didn’t make a sound or call the police or 911 at that point?”
Shaking her head, Jude twirled her ring. It was a nervous twitch—one her mother would’ve noticed immediately and called out, if she’d been there. “No, because I wasn’t sure what I saw.”
“I see,” said the woman, jotting something down. Another officer entered the room—this one in plain clothes, and whispered something to the male officer. His expression became sad, but he accepted the laptop the other officer passed him.
“Miss Cramer, is it true that you exchanged heated words with Mr. Braunberger earlier today?” he asked.
Spinning the laptop to face her, he played back the security footage of her and Braunberger talking earlier that day. It looked incriminating. But she hadn’t done anything. Surely…
“I’d like to speak to an attorney, please,” she said.
With those words, the man’s expression became sadder and the female officer smiled in a way that could only be described as victorious. But what else was Jude supposed to do?
***
Dropping her purse onto her bed, Jude kicked off her shoes. The attorney didn’t even seem like he believed her and, of course, Schneider hadn’t leapt to her defense. Instead, when she tried to call him, she’d gotten his voicemail.
Her entire carefully constructed life, her attempts at normalcy, won her what exactly?
Suspicion of murder or accessory to murder charges. No, the police hadn’t actually charged her yet, but the attorney suggested it might only be a matter of time. Braunberger—of course now she could remember his damn name just fine—was undergoing surgery, so her only hope was if—when—he woke up, he’d verify her story. Otherwise…
But what if he didn’t wake up? What then? They’d put her away for a crime she didn’t commit? She couldn’t go to jail.
Besides, she hadn’t done anything wrong. But who would believe her?
She could call her sister—no, they’d likely track her calls.
She would have to run, hide out in hopes that he’d wake up and her problems would vanish. But the first place they’d look would be her sister’s house. Decided, she changed her clothes quickly. She’d been exhausted at the beginning of the day, but adrenaline gave her fresh energy. Packing a light bag—only a day or two of things, in hopes that Braunberger would wake up—she tugged on sunglasses and a droopy hat. Hoping to hide her identity as best as possible, she snuck down her own fire escape to leave. The police might be watching her house…
But she doubted she was important enough to have someone watching her fire escape on the first morning after the shooting. Two buses later and she got out at a coffee shop she knew. Once inside, she flirted with the boy at the counter, ordered a coffee and borrowed his phone to call her sister. Hopefully, they weren’t monitoring her sister’s phone, but why would they be on the day they accused her? They’d think she was home sleeping…
Sure the entire call that police were going to swarm in at any moment and arrest her, she kept her eyes on the door while she talked fast. She needed help. She needed to hide.
Her pregnant sister, however, couldn’t exactly jump up and help. She talked to her husband who texted a friend. Supposedly, the friend would meet her and help her hide.
Here’s hoping he’s better at this sort of thing than I am. She used cash to pay for a hotel room and tried not to consider the possibility of bedbugs. Exhaustion won and she drifted to sleep…hoping her supposed savior would indeed meet her at the airport in the morning.
***
The monitors on the machines in the hospital room beeped away as they had for days. Al tried to tune them out—wasn’t the brain supposed to get used to certain smells and noises and ignore them after a while?—yet nothing alleviated the repeated, steady noise. He’d tried pacing the room, holding his mentor’s hand, even talking to Stone, yet the man didn’t move. Nothing changed—not the overly antiseptic smell, not the droning beeps, not the steady pace of Stone’s chest rising and falling in tune with the thing breathing for him.
Rubbing a hand across his face, Al wished
for a shave. He wished for a shower. He wished for anything but the nightmare of watching such an active and lively man lying and looking so horribly small beneath the crisp, white sheet. Maybe it would’ve been better if he hadn’t come. He could’ve kept his memories of Stone the way they were rather than superimposing the lifeless form of his body—was Stone even in there anymore?—in the hospital bed.
Remember the rules, m’boy. They’ll never steer you wrong. Now, what was the second rule? At the time, Stone’s face had been ruddy from the wind and leathered from the sun as he’d peered down from what seemed a great height to a younger Al.
Protect the innocent. I remember the rule, but Nate is hardly what anyone would call innocent, Al had defended. At the time, he’d thought Stone couldn’t possibly have a rebuttal for his flawless logic.
But Stone always had a comeback. You’re all more innocent than you know. Boys, really, even if you’re beginning to have the bodies of men. It takes longer for the mind to catch up, I’ve always thought, to the growth of the body. You’re smarter than some, Al, but you don’t know everything. Protect the innocent. None of this using the internet or what marbles are rolling around between your ears against others. Make a difference, but the right kind, y’hear?
He’d heard. Although remembering the words when he couldn’t make a difference wasn’t terribly helpful.
“Look, old man, get up from this bed. Stand up and give me hell. Something. Anything.”
If his voice cracked on the last word, he wasn’t ashamed of it. No, the man in the bed had been more of a father to him than his blood one ever had. Holding the chilled, yet calloused hand in both of his, Al said a little prayer to whatever gods or entities might be listening. What he’d give to hear Stone one more time…