He frowned at my occupation of his turf. “Even assuming you’re right, what of it?”
“Not much. I just need to talk to her about something.”
“I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
“Because you don’t know where she is or because your boss is keeping her under wraps.”
He was too elaborately uninterested. “What boss would that be?”
“Jensen Lattimore.”
Wellington’s countenance darkened by three shades and a twitch emerged below his left eye. “Who says Jensen Lattimore has any connection to DigiArt?”
“I do.” I smiled. “And since you’re trying to keep it secret, you’ll want to know my price for keeping quiet. My price is the whereabouts of Nina Evans.”
His eyes traveled the room. “I can’t tell you that. I’m sorry.”
“The last guy who took pictures of Nina ended up dead. Doesn’t that worry you a tad?”
His face reddened. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“What do you know about a girl named Mandy who used to model for Gary Richter and dance for Victor Krakov?”
“Nothing.” He glanced at Maxine. Maxine walked to the door and stood ready to usher me out. “I’m afraid I have business to attend to. It’s been nice meeting you, Mr. Tanner,” Wellington said smoothly.
I didn’t budge. “What will happen if I plant a story in the local paper disclosing the connection between Lattimore and DigiArt and speculating about what you guys are up to? Maybe implying that it’s some new form of pornography service, like some of the sicker stuff that keeps showing up on the Internet? How would the boss feel about that?”
Wellington sighed. A sweat stain blossomed beneath the billow of his shirt. “We wouldn’t want you to do anything of that nature. Obviously.”
“Then tell me where Nina is.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“So I can put some people’s minds at rest.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I can’t give you that information.”
“I can take this to the cops, you know.”
“Why would they be interested?”
“Because Nina might know something about Richter’s murder. They’ll wonder what your connection with Richter is, too, I imagine, especially when they learn you stole his best model from him.”
“Nonsense.”
“You don’t look like a bad guy, Wellington. But all of a sudden you look like a worried guy. I wonder why that is.”
He left it to Maxine to dispose of me.
CHAPTER 21
Despite the melodramatics of her isolation, life with DigiArt has been benign. Although she is supposedly on call twenty-four hours a day, in reality her contact with Chris Wellington has been minimal. They have worked together twice a week for six weeks: six sessions, two in the studio and four at various points outside, including one in the Seattle Art Museum and one in the Japanese Tea Garden at sunset when the light was so thick and viscid it made her cry. They had used the venues after hours, had the places entirely to themselves as far as she could tell, which let her cavort among Pollocks and Picassos and rub up against weeping willows and mossy stones, all to her heart’s content.
She wonders who pulled the strings. Not Chris, that’s for sure. Chris barely has the ego necessary for the job at hand. He is far too deferential, too accommodating, too nice to claw his way to the top of the heap, even in the fledgling world of digital art. The contrast to Gary Richter couldn’t have been more dramatic. Or more appealing.
She gets up from the chair on the deck and goes into the kitchen to refill her wineglass with Chardonnay. Nice. Nice and free and plentiful. It is becoming more difficult to stay angry and alert, to connect her current situation with the obscenities she unearthed at Gary’s place and gave to Roan to keep for her, to flesh out the framework of her plan. To tell the truth, if she could just keep Gary’s murder off her mind, and remember Mandy only from the old days, she would be somewhere close to happy.
Suddenly the light in the kitchen goes out and the stereo falls silent in mid-wail by Michael Bolton. As she is walking to the kitchen to see if she can find a fuse box, there is a knock at the door. A caller is sufficiently unusual to be alarming. She looks through the peephole but sees nothing. She hooks the chain and asks who it is.
“Chris,” he says softly, appearing like a rubber ghost in the fish-eye of the peephole. “Can I come in?” He grins timidly. “I’ve got goodies.”
She hears something different in his voice, an absence of formality, a presence of emotion, in contrast to his work persona. She wonders what he’s up to and unhooks the chain to find out.
“Hi,” he says as she opens the door.
“Hi.”
“Is this all right?”
“Sure.” She decides to put him at ease. “What’s in the bag?”
“Strawberries and shortcake.”
“Yummy.”
“I remembered you like them.”
“I do, but if you want milk we’d better eat fast. My electricity just went out.”
He nods. “The whole building is dark. Must be a transformer somewhere. They’ll fix it in a minute, probably.”
She leans against the wall. “I’m having wine on the deck. Want some?” Sure.
“Might as well—you paid for it.”
She goes to the kitchen and fills a second goblet and returns to the foyer and presents it to him. He toasts her silently, then follows her out to the deck.
“I thought you wanted me to lose weight,” she says impishly. “Now you bring dessert. Which is it?”
“You could gain a pound or two.”
“Where would you like me to gain it?”
His smile is oddly bashful. “I don’t think you can choose, can you?”
“I usually gain in the hips. Then thighs. Then belly. Then breasts. Unfortunately, I reduce in reverse order.”
“Sounds like you’ve made a study of it.”
“My body is my only asset. I figured I should pay as much attention to it as other people do to their stock portfolios.”
He examines her through the dusky twilight. “I wouldn’t say it’s your only asset.”
“Oh yeah? What else is there?”
“Your mind, for one thing. I’m really enjoying working with you. You’re quite funny, sometimes. And you have excellent aesthetic sense.”
“You’re funny, too.”
“But I don’t always mean to be.”
She smiles to show she finds his artlessness charming, then finishes her wine and glances at the interior of the apartment. “So why are you here, Mr. Wellington?”
“I thought we could spend some time together away from the office, so to speak.”
“What kind of time?”
He reddens. “Quality time, I suppose.”
“Does the definition of quality have anything to do with sex?”
His writhe of embarrassment tips the director’s chair. “Only if you want it to.”
“Even if I want it to, we’d need to talk about a few things first.”
“What things?”
“We have to talk about lamps. And then we have to talk about getting me a little something I can carry in my purse for protection.”
I caught an early dinner at a place called the Two Bells Tavern, which served as good a burger as I’d had in years, then wandered back to the motel on a cushion of Pilsner Urquel. When I got to the room I called Peggy, even though it was before the appointed time.
“Yes?”
“It’s Marsh.”
“I asked you not … is anything wrong?”
“Nothing that wasn’t wrong at lunch. I’m coming over.”
“But we—”
“I need to talk to Ted. Have the cops released him?”
“Yes, but—”
“Is he home?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes. If you think it’s going to get messy, you can go to the party alon
e and he’ll join you when we’ve finished.” I hung up before she could dish up another excuse.
The Evans house loomed even larger than on my previous visit, gleaming in the summer evening like the palace of some minor king. It wasn’t irrelevant, that house, not as much to the issue at hand as to the decision of its mistress to leave me.
As the years have passed, and the titans of industry and lions of literature and icons of sport have become my peers and younger, I’ve had trouble rationalizing my lack of financial attainment. Many of my friends, like Clay Oerter, are well-to-do. Some of my clients have been wealthy by any measure of the term. Almost everyone I know, including Charley the cop, earns more than I do in the average year.
I have plenty of proof of poverty. My car is ten years old and the seat fabric has worn to the foam. My house isn’t a house, it’s an apartment. My music still comes off vinyl and tape; my TV is a thirteen-inch RCA; I don’t own a computer or microwave or a toaster that matches the current dimensions of bread. I don’t own a stock or a bond; I have no interest in pension or profit-sharing arrangements; I possess no precious metals other than a dozen silver dollars I won one time in Reno. I do have a valuable painting, but it’s something I’ll never sell. The self-employment tax is killing me.
At bottom, my net worth, exclusive of personal possessions, totals thirty thousand dollars. In financial terms, my life has been a joke, quite simply, and more and more financial terms seem to be the only terms that matter. At one time or another, I have feared that every woman I’ve cared for would leave me for someone with money. More often than not, they have done just that.
I shook my head and laughed at my flight of fancy. The contours of Peggy’s decision to leave me warped beneath tons of self-pity, I walked to the porch and rang the bell. My heart was thumping, my hands and forehead were wet with sweat, my brain whirred with the effort to mount some snappy sayings that would impress all concerned with my wit. When Peggy opened the door, she looked even worse than I felt.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi.”
“This isn’t nice of you, you know.”
“This isn’t a nice situation.”
She closed her eyes and sighed. Her hair fell in a wave that always returned to its starting place. Her dress was an equally soft jersey, of the precise tint of her hair and eyes. It was probably Armani or one of those guys. It probably cost more than my car.
When she spoke again, the words trembled a bit; it wasn’t cool enough for the cause to be climatological. “Now that you’re here, you might as well come inside,” she said.
“Does he know I’m coming?”
She nodded. “He went to the store for some liquor—we were out of scotch.”
“He didn’t need to do that.”
“He thought he did.”
She made room for me to pass and I entered Mr. Evans’s impressive domain. His fiancée led me to the living room at the pace of a forced march.
The room was expensively and expertly decorated, mostly in mission style, the deep tones of burgundy and slate mixed with plenty of plaids and stripes to add to the sense of substance. The art on the wall was Native American—masks, blankets, sand paintings, headdresses. The rugs on the floor were in the same vein, as were the pots on the shelves and the baskets in the breakfront. It was a man’s room, not a woman’s, but I’d bet Ted had already promised that Peggy could redecorate once they had plighted their troth.
I sat on a leather wing chair and Peggy sat on the brown leather couch. She had dressed for the occasion as though it were a benefit ball—I resisted the urge to suggest that she kick off her heels and get comfortable the way she used to when she worked for me. But comfort wasn’t on the agenda.
I made the requisite survey of the room. “Nice.”
“Thank you. Ted has good taste.”
“In women as well.”
She blushed and was angry. “Please, don’t.”
I shrugged away my goof. “How did Ted fare with the cops?”
“I guess okay. He explained why he went to see that Richter man, and they seemed to take his word that it was nothing more than an argument.”
“What made him go down there?”
“I … maybe he should tell you himself.”
“Maybe so.”
We zigged and zagged, our thoughts and glances dancing out of reach of each other in a game of emotional tag of the sort you play in junior high school. It occurred to me that middle age might mean that from then on you go backward, both physically and psychologically.
I decided to wait for Peggy to set the next direction. “I tried to convince him to just let her go,” she said after a minute.
“How do you mean?”
“To get on with his life—our lives—and let Nina do what she will when she wants to do it.”
“What if she can’t?”
Peggy looked at me. “If she’s been kidnapped or something, you mean?”
“I’m not sure what I mean. But if you think her disappearance is because of some grudge against you, I’m not sure you’re right.”
“Then what is the reason?”
“I don’t know.”
I started to say something about Jensen Lattimore, but the front door opened onto my question and someone came into the room. He was wearing his walk-the-dog outfit and carrying a brown paper bag; his eyes gleamed with equal parts interest and aggression.
I stood up. We smiled and nodded. We stuck out our hands. We stepped forward so we could shake.
“Marsh Tanner.”
“Ted Evans. I’ve heard a lot about you over the past couple of years.”
“I’ve heard a lot about you over the past couple of weeks.”
He held up a paper bag. “Peggy says you’re a scotch drinker. Ballantine’s.”
“Fine.”
“Back in a flash.”
Ted toted the booze to the kitchen. Peggy smiled tightly. I sat back down in the chair. “He’s nervous,” she said.
“So am I.”
She smiled. “So am I.”
We sort of laughed.
“Who would have thought we’d meet in a situation like this?” she mused softly.
“Like what?”
“Like …” She waved her hand, as if to encompass the universe. “This.”
“I always thought your getting married was a pretty likely possibility, actually.”
“But I always thought I’d be marrying you.”
I glanced toward the kitchen, not knowing whether I was happy or sad that Ted was nowhere in evidence. In the nether reaches of my mind, I heard Peggy whisper an apology.
A minute later Ted was back, bearing drinks on a silver tray. Mine was at least a double, with three clear cubes of ice. I never know how rich people keep them clear like that. “I hope it’s all right. The ice.”
“It’s fine.”
He handed Peggy what looked like a gin and tonic, then picked up a glass that contained what looked like sun tea but was probably bourbon. “Cheers.” Peggy and I raised our glasses and repeated the word.
I drank enough to matter, then raised my glass again. “Here’s to your future happiness. As Mr. and Mrs. Evans. Or Nettleton-Evans. Or Peggy and Ted, or whatever you’re going to call yourselves.”
“Thank you,” they said, exchanging thankful looks, grateful to have it out on the table. As we drank to their connubial future, I didn’t even cross my fingers.
Ted sat next to Peggy on the couch. Peggy looked at each of us in turn, then stood up. “I think it’s time for a bachelor party,” she said, and hurried to another part of the house or maybe off to the dinner engagement. Her drink lingered on the coffee table, a sweaty token of her affection.
“Well,” Ted said.
I asked a question I’d asked of Peggy. “How’d it go with the cops?”
“All right, I guess. I didn’t say much—my attorney advised me not to—so they’re not very happy with me.”
“Cops aren’t h
appy with anything short of a full confession.”
“Yes, well, I don’t have anything to confess.”
I smiled. “I wish I could say the same.”
“But you … oh. I see. Yes. Well, we’re none of us perfect, of course, but I don’t really think they expected I’d had anything to do with Richter’s death.” He looked around the room. “I mean, after all …”
I nodded my agreement: “After all” is the best defense there is. “Are the police going to be looking for Nina?”
“They said so, but I’m not sure what that means.”
“Neither am I, beyond some sort of allpoints bulletin. Do they have a motive for the murder?”
“Not that they disclosed.” Ted took a swig from his drink. “Have you learned anything at all, Mr. Tanner? Where do you think she is?”
“I think she’s hiding from whoever killed Gary Richter.”
His eyes widened and he leaned toward us. “Who do you think it was?”
“I think it was connected with Richter’s work. Someone who became obsessed with Nina’s modeling, maybe. Someone who wanted her for himself or maybe wanted to keep her from exposing herself to the world the way she was doing. Someone who saw himself as her savior, or maybe the opposite.”
“You make it sound so … biblical.”
“Murder gets biblical pretty fast. So does sex if you let it.”
“So we’re looking for some religious nut?”
“Maybe. Some sort of fanatic, anyway.”
“You sound like you know his name.”
I shook my head. “I don’t. Do you?”
He blinked twice. “No. Of course not. How would I?”
“I thought maybe Dale Crowder might fit the bill.”
His glass stopped halfway to his lips. He rose off the couch, looked at the direction in which Peggy had disappeared, then sagged back into his seat. “Does she know what you know? About all that?”
I shook my head.
“Does she have to?”
“Not unless it’s relevant. Is it?”
“I don’t have the faintest idea. Crowder’s a worthless sot who’s been out of our lives for years. I doubt he could have summoned the effort to attack Richter even if he wanted to.” Ted’s voice turned misty. “I tried my best to replace him, to be everything he wasn’t in their lives. I thought I did a good job. Till this.”
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