“I’ve heard he’s now looking to go in still another direction. He’s talking about kinetic sculpture.”
Stephenson’s eyebrows lifted. “Really. He hasn’t done a great many of these new pieces, and to change again, so soon, might not be a good idea.”
“Should I warn him of that?”
He actually blushed, and lifted both hands to ward off the idea. “No, no, no. I wouldn’t presume to advise an artist of his caliber not to follow a new idea.”
Betsy smiled at his discomfiture. “Artists don’t strike me as particularly sensitive.”
“Some are, some aren’t. I don’t know which he is, and it certainly isn’t in my interest to find out.”
“Thank you. You’ve reassured me about him. May I ask another question about art in general?”
“Certainly.”
“Is there anything you can say about artists that is true of all of them?”
He smiled. “You do ask interesting questions.” He thought for a bit. “All right, this may sound contradictory, but I think it’s true nonetheless. Once artists get an idea, it overwhelms them and everything else in their life becomes secondary. You can rush into the studio of an artist at work shouting that his place is on fire, and you’ll get, ‘Uh-huh, uh-huh, be with you in a minute.’” Stephenson nodded his head, his eyes distant, hands holding an imaginary brush and palette. “On the other hand, they are very distractible. You are going with one to a fair, a play, picnic. You’re in the mood to make love or serve a meal and she’s right there with you until suddenly her eye is caught by some notion and she’s off with her muse, sifting sand through her fingers, staring at birds in flight, muttering to herself and making a sketch on the back of an envelope. And you might as well repack the basket or put your clothes back on, because you’ve lost her for the next little while.”
Betsy laughed. “I’ve seen stitching designers—even stitchers—who get like that.”
Stephenson nodded. “I’ll stand by my statement, but of course it’s not exclusive to artists. I get like that myself when I’m restoring old silver, totally lost in the project.”
Betsy said, “All right, another question: Is there something absolutely forbidden to artists? You hear of drunken artists, lazy artists, lecherous artists, unfaithful artists, cruel artists, even insane artists, all of them famous, even revered. Is there something an artist can do that puts him or her beyond the pale?”
“Now that’s a tough one,” said Stephenson. He rubbed his chin with a forefinger, pulled an earlobe, blinked, and frowned. Suddenly a triumphant smile appeared on his face. “Okay, one thing,” he announced. “You can’t steal another artist’s work. You can be derivative—with the critics falling over one another to say who or what you’re being derivative of, they love to find connections like that—but you can’t directly copy another artist’s work and say it’s your own.”
Betsy said, “So those exact copies of famous paintings that you can buy aren’t really art. For example, I am totally in love with Impressionist art, especially Manet and Van Gogh. But there is no way I could possibly afford an original, and posters just don’t do it for me. I’m looking to connect with one of those studios that will paint a copy for me down to the last brush stroke. Is that wrong of me?”
He shook his head. “No, of course not. But you’re right, that isn’t really art. They’re replicas, copies, fakes. The first criterion for art is originality. And it has to be work done by the artist who signs it. All the same, you have good taste and there’s no reason you shouldn’t have a really good replica for your home.”
Stephenson looked at his watch and made an exclamation. He made a hasty apology and left while Betsy paid the bill. On the drive home, she thought over that conversation. Theft was the unforgivable sin. The image of the raccoon burglar Deb had showed her appeared at the front of her mind and asked for some consideration. What was it Deb had said? Don’t annoy an artist or a writer; they may immortalize you unflatteringly. Had someone stolen something from Rob McFey?
19
The weather broke at last; Betsy woke the next morning to the sound of thunder. The storm didn’t last long—before Betsy pulled an English muffin from her toaster, the rain-laden clouds had sailed away across the lake, leaving the town refreshed, the dust washed away, the trees and hedges looking new-made, the air sweet and cool.
But the sky remained a pale gray runneled with darker shades. A brisk breeze tumbled droplets of water off the leaves and eaves, a process that continued until pedestrians realized it wasn’t leftovers but more rain.
Betsy, knowing she was going late to lunch, ate a hearty breakfast. She put an egg, scrambled with green pepper and onion, onto the muffin and nuked a strip of bacon in the microwave. She drank a big glass of grapefruit juice and a cup of English breakfast tea with sugar and milk.
“Ah,” she said on rising from the table to put her cup, plate and glass into the sink. “Come on, Sophie, let’s get downstairs; we’ve got a lot to do this morning.”
An order she had placed with Tapestry Tent had come in yesterday. She took a few minutes to look over the painted canvases by Liz, delighted that the patterns were even more beautiful than she’d hoped. But now she had to find room for them. One would go in the window for a few days as advertisement—but which one?
An hour later, she was pinning a big painted canvas stocking of Santa with a dark and weather-beaten face, a wreath of holly for the hatband of his cowboy hat, and silver concho buttons on his denim jacket. A stitcher could work on that at a picnic without feeling the wrench that came from working on something out of season—which stitchers were always doing, as elaborate projects like this often took six months or a year of work to complete. She made a mental note to find a source for silver conchos in case the buyer wanted to put them over the painted ones.
Godwin came in dressed entirely in pale tan—except for his white socks, of course.
“Another new outfit?” said Betsy, looking him over.
“John is being rather kind to me lately,” said the young man smugly.
“Well, it’s about time,” said Betsy.
“You’re looking very spiffy yourself,” said Godwin, cocking his head sideways at her.
“Thank you.” Betsy, afraid she wouldn’t have time to go upstairs and change, had put on her matron-of-honor suit this morning. It was a deep spice color that looked good on her. And she’d taken some time with her hair as well.
“What’s the occasion? A supper date with Morrie?”
“No, I’m meeting Jill at the Elks Club for a late lunch.”
“What, they have a new dress code?”
“No, it’s . . . kind of a celebration.”
Godwin frowned at her. “Uh-huuuuh,” he said, drawing the second syllable out long and doubtfully. “Come on, tell Uncle Goddy all about it,” he coaxed.
“Remember what happened the last time I broke a confidence that involved Jill?”
“Oops,” said Godwin, and he turned back to unboxing and sorting an order of Kreinik threads without another word.
The morning fled swiftly, and Godwin remained good. When someone asked him if he knew what Betsy was dressed up for, he looked around at Betsy as if noticing for the first time how fancy her suit was, then said, “Beats me,” in a tone of studied indifference.
Betsy prepared to leave shortly after one. She said to Godwin, “Because you were so good, I’m going to warn you that I’ll come back from this lunch with some very interesting news.”
“About Jill?” he asked, his eyes hopeful.
But Betsy had learned her lesson and only left it at that.
The ceremony was performed in a small meeting room at the club, with—surprise!—Mike Malloy standing up for Lars. The judge had a kind, smiling voice and used a standard service from a small book. Jill and Lars took one another without a quiver or hesitation. When the judge said, “You may kiss the bride,” Lars did so with so much circumspection that one might have thought i
t perfunctory if one didn’t know the couple were not normally so pink or bright-eyed.
Betsy took a couple of pictures with her new digital camera, and then they went to lunch. Well, first Betsy and Jill retired to the rest room, where Jill took off her hat but not her corsage of small lilies and tiny orchids.
Betsy took her courage in both hands and dared to ask, “Jill, is there some special reason, other than being mad at the rules, that you’re getting not-quite-married right now, today, to Lars?”
Jill took more time than necessary to dry her hands, and then said, with a sigh, “You’re getting better and better at reading motives, you know that?”
“Then why don’t I have the slightest idea what you’re up to?”
“But you know there’s something up, and that’s more than even Lars knows. Let me tell you something that happened a couple of weeks ago. Lars was at home letting the steam out of his Stanley when he heard a call go out about a prowler—he has a radio in his garage tuned to police calls, did you know that?”
“No,” said Betsy, smiling, “but I’m not surprised.”
“Anyway, the location was about five hundred yards from his place out on Saint Alban’s Bay Road, and he’s been to the address three times in the last month on a domestic. The woman is trying to divorce her husband, who keeps coming over to break windows and generally make her life miserable. But it’s been escalating; last time he burned down her garage. So of course it was important that we get there fast. And Lars decided that since he was so near, he’d go. He was on his way up the road when he thought maybe he’d better call in to say what he was doing—and the battery on his cell phone was run down. But did he turn back? Not him. And I almost shot him.”
She said this so quietly, so matter of factly, that Betsy almost missed it. “What?!”
“I almost shot him.”
Though Jill tried to repeat it in the same tone, this time there was a very slight tremble in her voice. “Do you want to tell me about it?” asked Betsy.
“Jim was out on a call, Frank was on patrol, and Mike was fishing up in Alex. We called other jurisdictions and were getting arrival times of ten and fifteen minutes. And Lars hadn’t called in, so we didn’t know he was on his way over there. The woman was screaming into the 911 operator’s ear that he had a gun. So I grabbed a vest and said I’d go. I had to use my own car, so there was no siren to scare him off. I pulled up on the shoulder of Saint Alban’s by their driveway and started up it. And I heard someone crashing through the woods off to the left, headed toward the house. I started angling toward him, and saw someone with what I thought was a gun in his hand. I braced”—Jill illustrated by holding both hands clasped in front of her—“and I was ready to shout and, if he turned toward me, shoot, when I got a whiff of kerosene and that nasty boiler oil.” Jill lowered her arms. “I went to an arson fire set in a garage one time. It smelled something like that. He smelled something like that. Actually, I’ve smelled something like that, after being out for a ride with Lars.” Her voice changed timbre. “It was Lars and—well, I had to go down on one knee to keep from falling on my face. If Lars hadn’t gone over there straight from messing around with that stupid steam car, I might have shot the man I love.”
“Oh, Jill!” said Betsy.
Jill nodded, and Betsy saw there were tears in her eyes. “Then and there, I decided something had to be done. I don’t want one of us to die without leaving the other a widow.” With an effort, she managed not to let a sob escape. “Is that stupid, or what?”
Betsy came to Jill and put a hand on her arm. She wanted badly to embrace her, but Jill wasn’t a hugger. She felt an enormous pity for this woman who so suppressed her feelings that they could only come out sideways like that. And at the exact same time an enormous pride in Jill, who made her way deftly through the land mines of her life without screaming about how victimized she was.
“That’s the least stupid thing I’ve heard in a long time,” Betsy said. “And I’m so glad you thought of this solution to the no-frat rule!”
Jill reached over to touch Betsy’s hand. Her shiny-new, broad gold wedding ring gleamed on one finger. “Thank you,” she said. “Now we’d better get back out there.”
Betsy had the chicken salad for lunch. Lars, puffed up like a blowfish, could not take his eyes off Jill. And Jill glowed like a candle under his regard. Betsy thought that Father John had better find a hole in his calendar soon.
Mike, sitting next to Betsy, said, “How’s the investigation going? Circling in on anyone?”
He said it lightly, but the fact that he asked made Betsy ask in return, “Are you maybe not so sure it’s Mickey Sinclair anymore?”
“I am sure,” he said with a short nod. “He’s a punk from way back, and he needs to do some hard time.”
“I can’t disagree with you,” said Betsy. “He’s a liar with a bad attitude and a larcenous soul. But I don’t think he’s a murderer. Have you talked with him lately?”
“No. I think his attorney is working on him to cop some kind of plea. It won’t work; this isn’t some jerkoff who got killed. And it happened in the course of another crime, a felony, which bumps it up to murder one.”
“I think the murder had already happened when Mick came along.”
“Oh, yeah? Two separate criminals happening along at the same time?”
“Things like that happen. How many times have the police arrived at a disaster and had to run off the thieves busy picking the pockets of the victims?”
“Yeah, but they’re just amateur thieves, taking advantage of an opportunity. Like when the back door of an armored truck opens up and twenty-dollar bills go scattering along the freeway. Some gather them up and turn them in, some don’t stop, and some think of them as a bonus for being in the right place at the right time. Professional thieves will make an opportunity.”
“Still, it takes a certain hard-heartedness to go poking through a dead man’s pockets, surely,” said Betsy.
“Oh, I agree that’s different, going through a dead man’s pockets.”
Betsy nodded. “Okay, but stealing is stealing; it’s only a matter of degree.”
Mike nodded back. “And nerve. Me, I’m too busy trying to hang on to my dinner when I come across something gross to think about dipping into a pocket.”
Betsy looked across the table at Lars and Jill, lost in their own conversation. How nice to think that something gross was averted in their case. And led directly to this very pleasant occasion.
“Lars,” she said, and he looked over at her, eyebrows raised in inquiry. “Did you drive out here in your Stanley?”
“Yep,” he said. “Gonna take my bride for a ride.”
Jill smiled at Betsy. She hadn’t liked the machine when Lars first bought it, but Betsy knew now she would never again complain about its peculiar ways and bad smells.
Back at the shop, Godwin was waiting with six customers, all of them agog for the news. Betsy, glad she wasn’t going to disappoint them, laughed at their eagerness and said, “Officer Lars Larson and Sergeant Jill Cross were married today. They are very happy, and I’m happy for them.”
Godwin gaped satisfactorily, and most of the customers cheered—one or two didn’t know the happy couple. They all slowly cleared out, revealing Shelly waiting impatiently. It was not a day she was scheduled to work, and she didn’t have any needlework materials in her hand she wanted to buy. “I’m not telling you anything more about the wedding,” warned Betsy.
Shelly laughed. “No, I want to show you something.” She dipped into her purse and came up with some computer printouts of photos taken with a digital camera. “Here, look at this.”
Obediently, Betsy took the sheets and looked at them. They appeared to be of a very large puppet made of sheet metal suspended on wire cables. The figure was of a nude woman, her figure voluptuous, her pose graceful. A length of very thin material had been wrapped across her breasts and around her upper thighs. A gentle breeze must have been bl
owing, since a streamer of the fabric was lifted into a graceful line.
The second picture was taken from a slightly different angle—no, it was the same angle, but the figure had moved. The pose was more sensual. Betsy looked inquiringly at Shelly, who nodded vigorously. “Isn’t he wonderful?” Shelly said.
Betsy looked again at the photos. “He did say he wanted to make a kinetic sculpture. Is this it?”
“More like a study or a model,” said Shelly. “The final piece will be jointed differently, and about ten feet tall. It’s supposed to hang outside so the wind can make it change poses. What do you think?”
Betsy thought she knew Shelly, but the Shelly she thought she knew couldn’t possibly be pleased to think the general public would someday be staring at her naked self doing a bit of dirty dancing. But it was not her place to say so. “It’s . . . interesting,” said Betsy, the standard Minnesota reply to a question one didn’t want to answer honestly.
“Look at the next one,” said Shelly.
On the next sheet was a picture more like the sculptures Betsy had seen on Ian’s website. It was of an old man peering forward, as if straining to see. His ancient skin had as many folds as the loincloth he wore. He held a lantern high in one hand. The patina had come out wrong, thought Betsy. Instead of an effect as of light coming from the lantern, it was as if the lantern had spilled soot all over the old man on that side.
Betsy studied it for a minute. “It’s really nice,” she said. And it was, but it was somehow different from the ones she’d seen on the website. The figure was more explicit, somehow. Apparently Ian’s excitement over the kinetic sculpture had started him thinking differently about his style. It more nearly resembled the veiled dancer than it did the angry child.
“There’s not a strong expression on the face of the man,” said Shelly.
“Well, yes, now you point it out,” said Betsy. The man looked lost, or maybe just sad, it was hard to tell. And that was the big thing that was wrong with it; the other sculptures expressed powerful, unmistakable emotions.
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