by Leslie Leigh
Vivian came to the kitchen door and announced that she was calling her daughter to come to bus.
“Good idea!” Melissa said. “I was just wishing I had called someone in.”
Brian was sitting at a table he shared with Miss Ada and one of her friends. He pretended to be catching up on his newspaper reading, but Melissa was sure he had his ears pricked up at the conversation going on at his table.
By the time the crowd started to thin, she had washed up from the baking and was serving Brian a Chelsea bun and coffee. She saw that Miss Ada and company were gone, so she decided to join him.
“So was it entertaining?” she asked, referring to his table mates.
“Entertaining and informative,” he said. “Apparently, there’s an art dealer coming to town.”
“Coming to Catalonia?”
“Mm-hmm--with the express purpose of seeing James Michael James’ paintings.”
Melissa arched her eyebrows. “Well, well,” she said. “Here I was ready to give up, and now we have three new suspects.”
“Three?”
“Debbie, of course, George Hall whom I had forgotten, and now the gallery owner. Kimmie wouldn’t be the only one to profit from the sale of Jim’s art.”
“Actually, Kimmie might not be able to profit at all,” Brian said. “They weren’t married. The law gets pretty sticky in those cases. Any proceeds from the sale of his paintings would go to James’s next of kin, and, of course, the gallery owner would get his cut.”
“I hope there was actually something in writing in that regard, something that Kimmie can produce; otherwise, Mr. Davis, the gallery owner, could claim to have purchased them outright from James and keep all of the proceeds.”
“Do we know that he didn’t buy them outright?”
“He never seemed to have any money,” she said.
“Yet, he paid rent somehow and had enough to imbibe.”
“True.”
“Somehow, I’m thinking this isn’t going to get wrapped up before I’m supposed to go back to Tucson tomorrow.”
“Probably not, now.”
“We can go to see George Hall if you want.”
“And it’s Saturday night. Do you want to go back to The Flying Pig?” she said.
He rolled his eyes. “I guess so. Not exactly my idea of a Saturday night date, but maybe we can eat dinner in Nogales before we go.”
“Ooh, I know just the place,” she said. “I haven’t been there for quite a while, and I’ve missed it.”
Chapter 8
Brian’s eyes bugged out at the menu at the restaurant Melissa chose.
“I want it all!” he said. “How on earth do I choose?”
“As hum-drum as it might sound, the tacos are to-die-for. Completely authentic, handmade corn tortillas, and everything fresh, natural, and completely amazing. You can never go wrong with those. But if you want something more dinner-entrée style, their Chilaquiles de la Casa are magnificent. They use real cream and fresh cilantro. Or, if you like something with some heat, the Camarones a la Diabla are unsurpassed.”
He shook his head. “We have to eat here once a month for the next year so I can try everything.”
Melissa laughed. “I’m game.”
Their host, who turned out to be the owner, was very gracious and attentive, and he ensured that his staff kept everything flowing. He was a great conversationalist. The music was subtle with strings and Latin rhythms.
The night breeze was soft, and the stars appeared, brightly, despite the streetlights. By the time they left Nogales behind, it was fully dark with an amazing, diamond-studded sky.
Brian was surprised upon pulling into Ranch Rio at the number of vehicles parked at or near The Flying Pig. Upon entering, Derek Winslow was nowhere to be seen, but there were two waitresses and the bartender.
Although the place was packed, it didn’t seem as though the number of customers could account for all the vehicles they had seen.
Debbie came by them with her hands full of spent glasses and cocktail napkins. “There’s an open table in the back,” she shouted, trying to be heard over the jukebox.
Melissa began to wonder why she had insisted on coming here on a Saturday night. It would be impossible to talk to Debbie, even if she were waiting on their section, which she was not.
After a couple of cocktails each, Brian shook his head. “I just don’t understand the attraction of this place. No live music. No dance floor. I mean, I see some people having a good time, but still.”
“We’re not having fun because we’re not trying to get laid,” she said. “Not all that much social contact in the middle of the desert. Either you go to church or you come here. Some people do both.”
His eyes smiled, and he nodded his head. “I suppose you’re right.”
“I’m ready to go if you are,” she said. “Just let me powder my nose.”
She got up.
“Have we accomplished what we came here for?” he asked.
She shrugged. There was too much nose to even try to answer him. She leaned across the table. “If we’re staying, just order me a Coke, I mean a cola. Vanilla, this time.”
She walked back toward the restrooms, unhappy to see a long line. Why, she questioned, is it that they only ever build one men’s and one women’s restroom? It takes women three times as long to do the deed as a man, meaning that there needed to be three times as many stalls for women as there are for men.
The restrooms were by the back door. Men kept walking by and exiting out the door. At first she thought there must be a parking lot out there because the men who went out never came back. But one guy who went out swung the door really wide as he stumbled through it. She could see a lighted entrance way several feet outside the door, and she could see people going into it.
Her curiosity got the better of her, and she walked toward the door. She looked back over her shoulder as she went out and a couple of the women were staring at her. One gave her a dirty look, the other, a shocked look.
She pushed the door open and went out. She stood off to the side, out from under the light above the door and watched. The building was large, a single floor, but it seemed to go on forever when she tried to look down the side. There was a curved, lit portico where people were entering—specifically men.
It looked as though it was an old stucco building, possibly with many uses over the past. However, the odd thing was that where there should be windows, there was decorative wrought-iron grating—common to such buildings—but there was not a single window behind the iron. The only light emanating from the building at all was the light over the portico.
She shifted her position slightly and could see that there was a large bouncer-type guy standing at the front door, checking IDs and matching faces with the ID. This guy was serious about his job. It made the hair stand up on the back of her neck. For some reason, she didn’t think this guy was trying to keep out people who were underage. There was no music audible outside the building—although just because she couldn’t hear it didn’t really mean anything. She figured it could be deep inside the building.
She started feeling self-conscious about being there, even if she wasn’t all that visible, and she knew Brian would begin to wonder where she was. She turned to go back inside only to find that there was no door handle from this side, so she had to wait until the next man came out and to catch the door before it swung shut. He did a double-take when she stepped out of the dark. He stopped to stare at her, but she could tell he was pretty tipsy. She darted quickly in the door before he had a chance to accost her.
She passed the women still waiting for the restroom and saw that the woman she had been directly behind was still like fourth in line. She walked back to her table—where Brian had ordered her a cola.
Without sitting down, she picked up the drink and downed as much of it as she could.
“Let’s go,” she said.
He didn’t question her somewhat urgent look; so, he stood
and left two twenty-dollar bills on the table. They made their way back to the front. Melissa stopped Debbie as she passed them.
“I’d like to talk to you sometime,” she said.
Debbie nodded. “Just call,” she said. “I’m always here.”
“Okay,” Melissa responded, and they departed through the front door.
“What’s the matter?” he said.
“I never got to go to the bathroom.”
“What? Why?”
“Too long a line. Let’s get back to Nogales. We can stop at a gas station or something.”
She sighed as she got in and fastened her seat belt. Even though no one smoked in the bar, she felt like she still stunk of stale beer and cigarettes.
Brian started the car, and they got back out onto the frontage road toward Nogales.
“You want to hear something weird?”
He nodded, so she told him what she had observed out the back door of The Flying Pig.
“Some kind of club, do you think?”
“I’m at a loss. There was no real indication that it was part of The Flying Pig, but there was certainly no signage of any kind.”
“And men only, huh?”
“From what I saw,” she said.
“Could have just been a strip club,” he said.
“I don’t know why, but it gave me the creeps for some reason.”
He looked at her and picked her hand up out of her lap and kissed it. “If it gives you the creeps, then I’m sure it’s worth looking into,” he said.
She looked at him to see whether he was being sarcastic, but she didn’t sense that from him.
“I think we should have taken the freeway,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because I really have to pee.”
Chapter 9
The next day they decided to go see George Hall before Brian headed back to Tucson.
Melissa stood on the concrete steps up to his porch since he knew Melissa. Brian stayed on the sidewalk below. Melissa knocked several times.
Finally, a neighbor came out and saw them. “If you’re looking for George, he’s been gone for several days.”
“When was the last time you saw him?” Brian asked.
“Couldn’t much say. Somebody came and picked him up, though. George doesn’t drive, you know.”
“I didn’t know that,” Melissa said.
“Would anybody around here have an idea when he might have left or where he went?”
“Can’t much say,” the man said.
“Thanks,” Melissa said.
“The wife might know. You want me to ask her?”
“Could you? That would be great,” Melissa responded.
The man was gone several minutes. He finally returned. “Well, the wife couldn’t say for sure, but she thinks he’s been gone at least two weeks.”
“We appreciate it,” Brian said, nodding to the man.
“I’m almost tempted to look in the windows, but it looks as though all the curtains are drawn.”
“Kind of like he doesn’t expect to be back anytime soon,” Brian said.
“Two weeks. That corresponds with James’ death.”
“Well, except they couldn’t say for sure.”
Melissa pushed him and laughed.
# # #
Late that afternoon, Brian got ready to return to Tucson.
“It’s been really nice having you here,” she said.
“It’s been really nice to be here,” he returned. “Can I call you for updates?”
“Of course,” she said.
“So, what’s your plan?”
“I’ll snoop around and see if I can find out anything about George Hall. Beyond that, I guess I’ll just wait until the art dealer arrives. Hopefully, he’ll come in to the café at some point. Otherwise, I’ll just have to keep my ear to the ground.”
“Are you friends with the gallery owner?”
“I know him from the Catalonia Chamber of Commerce.”
“You could just go into the gallery and ask questions in a conversational way.”
“I could.”
“Beyond that, there’s always Flora and Miss Ada.”
“Yes,” she said and laughed. “There’s always that.”
“Be careful,” he said. “I don’t feel that you’re in any particular danger, but anything can happen when you get too close to the truth. Just remember that I’m only an hour away. If there’s something you feel you really need to do, but you feel that it could be risky, please call. Trust your instincts, Melissa. You’re very tuned in.”
She nodded. “I learned my lesson last time. I didn’t sense the danger until too late. I wasn’t tuned in because it was all so unexpected. I’ve never been around vicious people before.”
“Vicious because they feel cornered. Their normal personality may not seem like that at all, but fear brings out the worst in anybody. I would ask one thing,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“Don’t go back to The Flying Pig without me.”
“Why, because you like the place so much,” she asked, laughing.
“No, there’s something I don’t like about that place, either. It may or may not have anything to do with James’s death.”
“So, not even if I have a lead?”
“Nothing should be that urgent. Call me. If I don’t need to come back this week, I will be back Saturday morning.”
“Good,” she said, leaning up on her tiptoes to kiss him.
He captured her and kissed her thoroughly. “Maybe I’ll even come back Friday night.”
“You would be most welcome she said.”
He ran the tip of his finger down her nose and tapped the end, leaning in to kiss her lightly one more time.
Chapter 10
Melissa didn’t have a chance to chat with Mr. Davis at the gallery because the art dealer swept into town with an entourage the next morning.
There were plenty of lookie-loos in and out of the gallery that morning, despite its small size. Melissa decided she would swallow her pride and go along with the crowd so that she could find out first hand was what happening.
She managed to wedge through the door and move around the perimeter of the room until she could at least hear what the dealer had to say, even if she couldn’t see him. However, he didn’t seem to be saying anything at the moment.
Melissa could, however, see a woman who must be his assistant. She stood nearby with a recorder and notebook, apparently waiting for him to speak.
“What you find frightening about this work,” the man said at last, “is exactly what makes it great art. It not only reflects the soul of the artist, but also his statement concerning contemporary culture.
“Millennials will identify with his work. The fact that the work has no provenance isn’t’ an issue; it’s fresh, untainted. The fact that the artist could only see himself is what makes it culturally relevant.
“Another part of what makes it seem frightening is his medium—the impasto—which makes it jump off the canvas at you. The varied media—the stark, imperfect cover of black, layered over with the deep violet and blood red gouache makes this positively sensual.”
The art dealer conferred briefly with the gallery owner, inaudibly to the crowd, then announced, “We will set up a preliminary installation here for all of you to view. I believe with proper placement and lighting, you will begin to see James’s work from a very different perspective. I shall call it…” he said, with dramatic pause, “Narcissus and Nightshade.”
The name startled Melissa. The information about the belladonna had not yet been released to the public. Was this man prescient, or could it possibly be just coincidence? The Narcissus part wasn’t too hard to see, since every painting was a self-portrait. Perhaps it startled her simply because she was privy to the information about the belladonna. In thinking of the paintings of James’s that she had seen, she could see how the colors and textures might lend themselves to a represen
tation of nightshade. How uncanny, she thought.
The man stepped out from behind the wall divider, and Melissa saw him for the first time. He was or had been a large man at one time. Melissa could imagine him rotund and rosy; but, now, his cheeks were sunken and sallow. What surprised her most was the visible aura around him in the color of oxidized sulphur.
Melissa was not given to seeing auras very often, and it always surprised her when she did. To her, the color meant he had been a happy person at one time but now felt overwhelmed and stressed. The pervasiveness of the color around his body meant that it had been going on for quite some time. If the color had been any more gray, she would have suspected illness. However, she couldn’t help feeling that was what his body was working up to.
The gallery owner thanked everyone for coming, telling them that he was going to close up the gallery until the weekend whereupon they would reopen with an opening for Jim’s work.
Kimmie and her mother were nowhere to be seen. Did they know what was happening?
###
The next morning, Brian called.
“I see some huge advertising going on for an art opening in Catalonia of James Michael James’ work, an art installation called ‘Narcissus and Nightshade.’”
“Yes. I was in the gallery when it was announced. The thing that bothers me is the cost the gallery owner will undertake to do all of this. He must think he stands to profit considerably from it.”
“Is there a chance the art dealer is doing it gratis?”
“It’s not only the art dealer’s time and expertise; they’re redesigning the gallery and adding new lighting.”
“That would be a significant investment. And isn’t it a little bit getting the cart before the horse?”
“Meaning?”
“I’ve been doing a little case file probing, and there is no indication that they have had any luck finding a next of kin, or even that they’ve tried.”
“Weird. Maybe they know something we don’t.”
“I dunno. The space beside ‘Next of Kin’ on the form is blank.”