Mick flashed on a moment from that awful night, before he went to the party, before he found out that Donnie was dead. Jenny’s call for him from the bedroom, saying her zipper was stuck… His fingers on her back… The way she swayed into him.
“A frame-up would be more accurate,” he replied.
Alvarez snorted. “You were fucking your best friend’s girlfriend. Maybe the two of you killed Donnie.”
Mick clenched his fists. “What, to get him out of the way? Why would we have to do that?”
Alvarez was silent for a moment, and then this: “Why don’t you tell me what happened that night between the hours of nine and half past midnight?”
Mick swallowed hard, but his throat was dry. “Jenny called me, said she needed my help, that she was going to surprise Donnie, propose getting back together with him.”
“And why did they break up?”
Mick grimaced. “Donnie kissed someone else at a party, and Jenny caught him.”
“So Donnie was a player.”
“I wouldn’t call him that.”
“Of course you wouldn’t.”
Mick shrugged. “Donnie really liked people. Everyone he met. He never discriminated, never talked bad about anyone else, and he’d give you the shirt off his back. He was the friendliest guy I’ve ever known. He could seem kind of clownish, but people loved him. Sometimes too much. And Donnie couldn’t resist loving them back.”
“And the night of the fire?”
Mick remembered. Her back was so soft, and she pressed her ass into his crotch. Then she whispered, “I’ve seen you look at me, Mick.”
He’d let his hand trace down her back, down to the curve, felt her flex and arch backward.
But then he stopped. Pushed her away. He knew what she was doing. “You’re just trying to get even.”
She grabbed her phone, let her dress drop in front, and took a selfie with Mick there behind her.
Mick knew then that she wasn’t just trying to get even; she was trying to destroy his friendship with Donnie. He lunged for the phone.
“Forget it, Mick!” She threw the phone into a drawer and stood in front of it, her arms crossed.
He knew he could take her. He could throw her aside, grab the phone, and smash it against the wall. But he’d have to hurt her, and something in him stopped him from that. This was dangerous ground, and he knew it.
“Jenny,” he said. “I know Donnie hurt you. But this is… This is low.”
“Get out!” She took off her witch boot and threw it at him. The pointy toe caught him in the chest.
“Don’t send the photo,” Mick said.
“Maybe I will, and maybe I won’t!” She threw her other boot at him.
So he left.
He told this to Alvarez.
“And that’s it? What happened after that?”
“I went to a bar and got drunk. Then, to please my sister, I stumbled over to the Art Basel party but didn’t make it past the hotel bar. And Donnie got burnt to a crisp.”
“Have you reached out to Jenny Baines since then?”
“I tried, but she threw me out.”
Alvarez sighed. “Wait here.” She picked up the photocopy and left him alone in the room again.
Then a few minutes later, the door opened, and in came Jenny with Alvarez, Santiago, and Speck. They sat down at the table, Alvarez at the head and Speck and Santiago in the middle, flanking Jenny. Santiago set a few bagged pieces of evidence in front of him on the table.
“Ms. Baines—Jenny,” Alvarez began. “Tell us the nature of your relationship with Mick Travers.”
Jenny cleared her throat. “Mick and I used to be friends. Because of Donnie.”
“You never slept together?” Alvarez said.
Jenny looked right at Mick and said, “I wouldn’t sleep with Mick if he paid me. A lot.”
Mick didn’t respond. Her anger sounded like a thin veneer covering over a wound that would never heal. Her eyes didn’t look mad to him, just very sad. Her thick mascara had stained her face where it ran from her tears. She smelled of weed.
“Let’s have the evidence,” Alvarez said, motioning to Santiago. He passed the topmost white bag to her, and she opened it and retrieved what Mick recognized as Donnie’s cell phone, perfectly intact.
“This was in Donnie Hines’s car,” Alvarez said. She gazed at Jenny. “He always left it there, didn’t he?”
Jenny nodded, tears welling in her eyes. “Otherwise, he’d lose it in his studio. Drop it in a paint can. He did that once.”
“We found the selfie you took, Jenny. It had been viewed. But you already know that, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“We have his cell-phone records,” Alvarez said as gently as she could. “We know you talked to Donnie before he died. You were the last person to talk to him.”
Jenny broke down. “Please… I didn’t mean…” She covered her face with her hands.
Mick felt his anger like a flame lit deep in his belly. “What did you say to him?”
“I want my lawyer,” Jenny said through sobs. She attempted to dry her eyes on her sleeve.
“We’re going to hold you,” Alvarez informed her. “And yeah, you might want to get that lawyer. You wanted to hurt Donnie the night of his death. Maybe you went too far.”
With that, Speck rose and gently placed handcuffs on Jenny, whose body was wracked with sobs as he escorted her out.
Mick didn’t know what to say.
Alvarez turned to him. “She didn’t try to get the phone out of his car even though she knew it would incriminate her. What do you think her last words to him were?”
Chapter Seven
Grace walked in to find her granddaughter and Mick sitting in the living room, talking. Cat still had her purse slung across her body, as if she’d just come in. Mick had the rental car keys in his hands. Grace had hoped they’d help each other somehow with their shared grief, which was part of the reason she’d taken the Sanibel trip and dawdled along the way. They’d obviously been out somewhere together.
“We have some big news on the case,” Cat said.
“So do I,” said Grace. “But there’s something in the car I need you to help me with first.”
They followed her outside, where a good-sized painting was jammed in the rear seat of Grace’s rental car. It was covered in cloth, so she didn’t unveil it to them till Cat carried it into the house, where Mick propped it on one of his sawhorse easels in the lanai.
“Good Lord,” remarked Mick. “You bought one of Candy’s paintings. Why, Priscilla?”
“I wish you’d call me by my legal name,” Grace complained. “And I’m not sure why I bought it. Something told me to. I’m sure the reason will reveal itself in time. Isn’t it lovely, though? It’s one of her best, I suspect.”
“Which isn’t saying much,” Mick said.
“I should think you’d be more charitable,” Grace reprimanded. Her brother could be entirely too critical of both himself and others. It was his Virgo temperament.
“I really like this one,” Cat said, the response on her face genuine. “It’s about something. These kids, their world on the other side of the fence. It’s like the artist wished she could step back in time and join them.”
Grace clapped her hands together. “Oh, Cat! I agree.”
“It doesn’t challenge anything,” Mick put in.
“It doesn’t have to,” said Grace.
“But we can’t take it back with us,” Cat said. “On the plane. When we go home.”
“We’ll give it as a gift to Ernesto,” Grace said, right as the idea came to her. “He’d like it. And doesn’t it fit well in his cottage?”
“I’ll give you that,” said Mick. “Art shouldn’t match your couch, but this one does.”
“Oh, stop it,” said Grace. “You’re such a snob, Mickey.”
“Now listen to what’s going on with the case,” Cat insisted. She and Mick filled Grace in on w
hat had happened with Jenny Baines.
Grace was surprised to hear of the development. “Do you think she could have killed Donnie?” She directed her question at Mick.
“No,” Mick said. “At least not directly.”
“We were talking about that when you came in,” explained Cat. “Mick thinks whatever she said to Donnie Hines, plus the selfie she sent, drove him to drink more than his usual that night.”
“Of the two of us, I’m more the drinker,” Mick said.
“Yes, I know.” Grace shook her head at Mick.
Grace closed her eyes for a moment, imagining the scene they’d described to her, especially Jenny’s desire to hurt Donnie. She pictured Jenny hanging up on him. Then Donnie throwing his phone in the car and heading up to the studio, where he would have found Mick’s just-opened bottle of Bushmill’s. He drank too much and went to lie down on the cot. As a diabetic, his body wouldn’t be able to handle it. He wouldn’t have heard the arsonist. The fire didn’t wake him up; he’d died in his sleep.
“So what did you find out about Candace Shreveport?” Cat said.
“She signs her paintings Candy Port,” Grace said, pointing to her stylized curly-Q signature. “But that does not an arsonist make.”
“Have you eliminated her as a suspect?” Mick said.
Grace could tell from his tone that he hoped she had. “No,” she said. His face fell.
“I swear to God, if that woman killed Donnie—”
“Don’t say anything you wouldn’t want to have come true.” Grace stopped him and motioned to the living room, where Cat had set up a sort of temporary office. “I see you got the files from the Miami PD.”
“Yes,” said Cat. “It took a bit of bargaining, however. I said we’d share our own research with Alvarez and her team.”
“Good work, Cat. It’s always better when people work together, isn’t it?”
Her granddaughter gave her a begrudging nod.
Grace was glad Cat was losing some of her territoriality. If she had let more people help her on that Missouri case, they might have caught Anita Briggs sooner… Ah, well. That was Grace’s own judgment creeping in. She’d have to let that one go.
“And you?” Grace prompted her little brother. “Have you found your way to the canvas again?”
“No, I haven’t. But seeing Candy Port’s masterpiece here made me realize something.”
“What’s that?” Grace asked, pleased that the painting was having whatever effect it was meant to have.
“Well, that and my heart-to-heart with Cat here. If all I see when I stare at the canvas is Donnie, then that’s what I should paint.”
With a newly determined flourish, he turned and disappeared into the lanai, shutting the double glass doors for privacy. He pulled the curtain shut.
“Let me make you some tea and a snack,” Cat said to Grace, leading her to the kitchen counter delicately by her arm. “You must be exhausted from your trip. And I’ll catch you up on things here.”
“I am.” Grace sat on a bar stool. Her back was kinked up from the drive, which a bit of yoga outside on the sundeck would cure, but first she needed that tea and snack. She listened intently as Cat filled her in on her visit with Chester Canon and their conversations with Alvarez. When she got to the part about investigating whether Donnie was the intended victim, Grace perked up.
“Wonderful,” she said. “Let them spare us that legwork, since it most likely won’t turn anything up.”
Cat filled a teapot with hot, boiling water from the kettle and then let it steep as she cut fruit and cheese for a snack. Grace was famished and snuck a piece of plum and bit of goat cheese off the tray.
“I agree with Alvarez on the possible scenarios,” Grace said. “But my hunch is that someone either wanted to kill Mick or at least hurt him, by torching the place where he makes his art.”
“And you think this Candace could have done that?”
“What did the evidence report say, Cat? Was it the work of an amateur?”
“It seems so. I’ll let you have a look yourself.” Cat went over to the couch and picked up the file. She carried it over to the counter for Grace, who opened it.
“What is this? Six-point type? Fetch me my reading glasses, would you, doll?”
Cat handed Grace the red Art Deco frames she’d brought with her from Seattle.
“There, that’s better.” Grace read down the page, turned to the second page, and then announced, “Here it is. ‘Ease of identification of accelerant despite obvious opportunity to hide it suggests the work of an amateur arsonist.’ Oh, for goodness sake.”
“You just read the part about the Coleman fuel, didn’t you? That’s how I finally decided Uncle Mick is innocent. In his dream, he used a can of gasoline to set the fire.” She set two teacups down and poured them both a spot from the pot.
“The arsonist brought in his own accelerant. Camping fuel. Something Mick didn’t have on hand. He ignored the flammable liquids Mick already had there in his studio.”
“The mark of someone who’s never done this before,” Cat said.
“Exactly,” said Grace.
Cat laughed. “It sounds like our arsonist did an online search for ‘How to Commit Arson.’ Maybe Mick’s wrong. Maybe Jenny did do it.”
“Or Candace,” Grace said. She couldn’t get the woman out of her mind.
>>>
While the police tried to find more solid evidence against Jenny Baines, Grace decided it would be best to follow up on some of the other people on Mick’s “hate list,” as they’d taken to calling it. So the two sleuths planned a quick trip up to New York, where the next three lived.
Cat had never been, but Grace had been there many times. She’d lived in the Big Apple for a few years in her thirties. It was the Sixties then, and she had experimented on numerous fronts, using her dreamslipping ability to become a sort of mystic within a band of hippies centered around Washington Square Park. She told this to Cat on the train, which Grace insisted on instead of the plane for a change of pace, and ease of the journey, as they could get up and stretch their legs—even practice some yoga—more readily on the train. Grace wasn’t sure she could keep up this pace and wondered if she should have waited a few more days before embarking on another trip.
But it was too late for second guesses, and she’d never been one to dwell on the past, even the recent past.
“I once met Jack Kerouac at a party,” Grace announced. “But honestly, I didn’t find him very interesting. His girlfriend, on the other hand… Now there was a gal.”
Cat laughed. “Only you, Gran. Half the time, I don’t know whether to believe you or not.”
“Oh, my dear, everything I tell you is the unvarnished truth.”
“Now let me see… His girlfriend was blonde and from the country, as I had been. We compared our strict religious upbringings. She was Protestant, but unlike regular people, whom we called ‘squares’ back then, she didn’t hold me at a distance for my Catholic upbringing. Though it probably helped that I was busily trying to shed it.”
“So how did you use your dreamslipping with them?”
“Oh, I was a bit of a charlatan, I’m sorry to admit.” Grace smiled, enjoying the opportunity to tell Cat a story she’d never heard. “Several of us girls would share an apartment, you see, so I had occasion to slip into their dreams. I gleaned details about their lives from those dreams, and I would use them in my work with tarot cards. People were amazed. They thought I was psychic.”
“Well, aren’t we?” Cat asked. “In a manner of speaking.”
Grace shrugged. “I prefer to think of it as ‘spiritually in tune.’”
“Too bad you never slipped into one of Kerouac’s dreams.”
“Oh, heaven forbid. Have you read that man’s writing? I agree with Truman Capote’s assessment. ‘That’s not writing,’ he once said. ‘That’s typing.’”
Cat couldn’t stop laughing. “Granny Grace!”
“En
ough of this chatter,” said Grace. “Let’s see what the view’s like from the dome car.”
Once they arrived in New York, Grace wished for a moment that they weren’t on a case but rather there for a weekend on the town. How the two of them could cut a rug if they had the chance. She’d love to show Madison Avenue to her granddaughter, take her to a Broadway show, tour the Met… The city still sparkled, still held for her the allure of so many possibilities, so many people to meet. It pulsed with excitement, even now, despite the digital billboards and the yawning absence of the World Trade Center towers.
But they had work to do, and that meant talking with the rest of the top five on Mick’s hate list, starting with a graphic artist named Norris Grayson. Norris had been a student in the same program as Mick, and like Mick, he’d dreamed of making it as a painter. But he had not enjoyed the same success as Mick, so he did what a lot of creative types do, and that was figure out how to find work that paid but approximated art. Grace was eager to speak with Norris, as he seemed to be the most likely person to have written the Letter to the Editor printed in Art in Our Time that was supposedly penned by “Mick in Miami.”
Norris worked for a PR firm in Midtown Manhattan that was tucked down a narrow hallway, ironically, thought Grace, past several small art galleries.
A secretary—they still employed them? questioned Grace—led them down another narrow hallway within the offices of Sturdiman Fullman Grayson, or “two man son,” as the firm had been nicknamed. Norris greeted them with a wide, bleach-whitened smile and a brisk, vigorously pumped handshake.
“Sit, sit,” he commanded. “So? You’re here about some artist I went to school with?”
“Not just some artist,” led Grace. “Mick Travers. The most successful one of your class.”
“Travers! Of course.” There wasn’t a trace of bitterness in his tone. “That old hack. Is he still making art?”
“He’s not only making it,” Grace said, letting her eyebrow arch for emphasis, “he’s showing it regularly here in New York. You might have caught one of his shows, maybe even right here in this building.”
“You don’t say,” Norris replied, his gaze distracted by Cat, whom Grace had to admit, did look rather fetching in a green skirt suit and heels. The suit emphasized her narrow waist and swelling hips, but the ruffles on the blouse gave the illusion that her bust line dimension echoed that of her hips, which it did not.
Framed and Burning (Dreamslippers Book 2) Page 7