Murder at the Falls

by Stefanie Matteson

  “I remember: ‘Wanted: small “dinette” diner to restore.’ Why didn’t you let me know you had resurrected it?” he asked, miffed.

  “We didn’t want to publicize it in advance because we weren’t entirely sure we could bring it off. In fact, it was touch-and-go until the last minute. It took a lot of work: restoring it—that alone took seven months; getting the proper permits; getting it in here.”

  “How did you get it in here?” asked Charlotte.

  “Just.” She pointed to the opposite wall, which was lined by a row of huge double doors. “Those doors are fifteen feet high by twelve feet wide—they were meant to accommodate locomotives—and we had measured carefully, but we weren’t sure until the day we moved it in that it would actually fit.”

  “What would you have done if it hadn’t?” asked Tom.

  “Our fallback plan was to set it up in the parking lot, but we really wanted it to be part of the exhibit. What do you think?” she asked.

  “Terrific. But here’s the real question: Are you serving the little hamburgers with the chopped onions? Because to serve anything else at a White Manna would be decidedly less than authentic.”

  “Not only are we serving them, we brought back the same short-order cook, Swifty, who served them up in Somerville for forty-six years. He came out of retirement especially for the exhibit. Grinds all the meat himself.”

  “Well done,” said Tom, who looked as if he’d gone to diner heaven.

  “Why don’t you try a couple?” Diana urged.

  “Not right now. I just finished a dinner of hot Texas wieners and fries at the Falls View. But give me a few minutes to digest. Then I’ll be more than happy to sample some of Swifty’s famous burgers.”

  Charlotte envied Tom his digestive system, which seemed to be able to process countless cups of coffee and endless quantities of fried food without any problem; it would definitely be more than a few minutes for her.

  “Here are the programs,” said Diana, handing them out. “The exhibit starts on your right and goes counterclockwise around the diner,” she said, gesturing toward the exhibition hall, which was already filled with a respectable showing of people.

  After Tom had deposited his magazines, they armed themselves with wine and cheese and set off to look at the exhibit. It turned out to be more fascinating than Charlotte would ever have expected. The first section dealt with diner history, including how diners had been made and assembled at the Paterson Vehicle Company. The next dealt with diner memorabilia, and included displays of everything from Hamilton Beach milkshake blenders to vintage jukebox speakers to what people in the antique trade called “ephemera”: things like menus, matchbook covers, and postcards.

  But the focus of the exhibit was the paintings of New Jersey diners, which were done in the photorealist style that had become popular in the 1970s as a reaction to the domination of abstract expressionism.

  “Okay, Graham, interpret,” ordered Tom as they approached the first group of paintings, which was by Randy’s mentor, Donald Spiegel. Rather than reading the catalogs at art shows, Tom preferred Charlotte’s capsule summaries.

  “Donald Spiegel, generally considered to be the founder of the photorealist school of painting.”

  “Why didn’t he like the label?” he asked.

  “A lot of the photorealists work from photographs by projecting slides directly onto the canvas. Spiegel doesn’t, or rather, didn’t. He added and subtracted things. He also manipulated perspective to create a certain effect. Look at the parking lot in this one.”

  The parking lot in the first painting, which was of the Bendix Diner in Hasbrouck Heights, seemed to be tilted toward the viewer, the unnatural angle making it look as if the diner were being served up to the viewer on a platter.

  “These paintings are from his early period. Though he was the first to paint diners, he later went on to other things.” She eyed Tom: “I guess he figured, Who’s going to achieve immortality by painting diners?”

  “Hey,” Tom warned, jumping to the bait, “I’d be careful about denigrating the subject matter if I were you. There are some people who consider diners as noble a subject as ballerinas. What did he go on to?”

  “Urban landscapes, mostly. He started with New York, and then moved on to European cities. His paintings command enormous prices: a million and more. Jack has a couple of them.”

  Tom whistled.

  Charlotte continued: “I don’t have much of a taste for photorealism myself, but I always thought Spiegel’s paintings were extraordinary. All those layers of reflection force you to ask what’s real. Is it the image behind the glass, the image reflected in the glass, or is it the glass itself?”

  “Well said,” came a voice from behind.

  Charlotte turned around. The voice belonged to Randy, who was accompanied by a tall, distinguished-looking man and his younger wife, whose hot-pink hair was sculpted into spikes that stood straight up on her head as if she had stuck her finger into an electric socket.

  “Hello,” said Randy, “I’d like you to meet some friends of mine. “This is Arthur Lumkin and his wife, Xantha Price. This is the writer, Tom Plummer, who’s thinking about buying one of my paintings, and the actress, Charlotte Graham, who I think needs no other introduction.”

  “Hello, Arthur,” said Charlotte, standing on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek, and then bending down to kiss the petite Xantha.

  “Then you know each other!” said Randy.

  “Only for about ten years,” said Charlotte.

  Arthur and Xantha Lumkin were probably the country’s most prominent collectors of contemporary art, and had the distinction of being listed right before Charlotte’s fourth husband, Jack Lundstrom, in the “ARTnews 200,” the magazine’s annual listing of the world’s most important art collectors.

  Until he met Xantha, a British fashion designer and author of steamy romance novels (and whose name before she changed it had been Geraldine), Arthur had been just another rich investment banker whose idea of a fun evening was studying corporate balance sheets. Xantha’s passion for contemporary art had introduced him to an exciting new world in which collectors with deep pockets were courted by artists, dealers, and museums.

  Now the darlings of Nouvelle Society, the Lumkins could probably have wallpapered a bathroom with party-page photos and listings in the gossip columns. The fact that his wife called the shots didn’t seem to disturb this shy, genteel man in the least, so happy was he to have acquired a purpose in life other than the dull pursuit of money. Nor did he seem disturbed by her outrageous get-ups and her rumored dalliances with aspiring young artists.

  “Tell me,” said Arthur now. “How is Jack?”

  “I hear he’s fine,” Charlotte replied. “From his daughter, Marsha, with whom I still keep in touch. I really don’t see him that often anymore.” In fact, she didn’t see him at all.

  Jack Lundstrom had been the most recent in her life-long history of making mistakes when it came to men. She had thought a successful businessman like Jack wouldn’t be threatened by being Mr. Charlotte Graham, which in fact had been the case. The problem was worse: he had wanted a wife. As the widower of a traditional wife, he was accustomed to someone who would accompany him on his business trips, decorate his houses, and host his dinner parties. He had stopped short of asking her to take his suits to the cleaners, but not by much. Worst of all, he had wanted her to live with him in Minneapolis, where his company was headquartered, and where she found, much to her dismay, that he was well-known as a civic leader.

  Though it didn’t take long for either of them to recognize that they’d made a mistake (in Charlotte’s case, the first charity dance at a local hospital), they had limped along pitifully for several years trying to redefine their relationship on the basis of some kind of long-distance friendship. He had finally stopped calling her when he came to New York (after her first encounter, she had never gone back to Minneapolis), and their relationship simply petered out. She had h
eard from Marsha that he was now courting another woman, the widow of a fellow member of Minneapolis Old Guard.

  “What brings you here?” she asked them, thus rescuing Arthur from his obvious discomfort at having asked an awkward question.

  “I’ll show you,” said Randy. He led the the way to the next group of paintings, which were his, and nodded at the label affixed to the wall next to the first one, which read: “‘Falls View Diner’, by Randall Goslau. From the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur W. Lumkin.”

  Like Spiegel’s, the painting was exact down to the finest detail: the quilting in the stainless steel, the pattern in the Formica tabletops. But unlike Spiegel, whose palette ran to grays and browns, Randy leaned toward colors that looked faded with age.

  “Where are the people?” asked Tom.

  “I take them out. I call it the neutron-bomb school of painting.” He laughed, a high-pitched, nervous cackle. “They detract from the diner. I also take out the electric lines, the adjoining buildings, the automobiles. Just the diner, pure and simple.”

  “It reminds me of an old postcard,” said Tom.

  “That’s a very astute observation,” Randy commented. “I’ve been collecting postcards of diners all my life; I have over five hundred.”

  The painting had a folk-artish kind of appeal, and Charlotte could readily see why a diner lover would pay thirty thousand for one. But it lacked intellectual depth. It was like a Norman Rockwell: a sentimental portrait of a favorite subject.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a greeting from a short, balding man with a warm smile. “Why, Morris!” she said. “What a delightful surprise! I didn’t expect to run into anyone I knew here, much less three people.”

  Morris Finder was another collector of contemporary art, but of a different stripe from the Lumkins. A lifelong employee of the Social Security Administration, he had amassed an astonishing art collection on a salary that was probably less than what Arthur Lumkin made in a day. His fellow collectors joked that his name stood for his ability to “find” new talent before it was generally recognized by the art world. Charlotte liked him and his wife, Evelyn, who worked as a secretary for a brokerage house, enormously. They were simple, unassuming people whose lives were governed by one overriding passion: their love of art.

  “What brings you here, Morris?” asked Xantha, after Charlotte had introduced him to Tom and Randy. He was already well-known to the Lumkins.

  Xantha’s question stemmed from more than just polite curiosity, for Morris’s quiet pronouncements regarding the talents of up-and-coming young artists were closely heeded by more affluent but less discriminating collectors like the Lumkins. Like those of many others, the value of the Lumkins’ collection had soared as a result of their following Morris Finder’s leads.

  “I came to see Ed Verre’s paintings. Do you know his work?”

  “No, I’m afraid we don’t,” replied Xantha in her cute Cockney accent.

  She was wearing a low-cut garment—a playdress, a sunsuit, a romper?—of hot-pink taffeta to match her hair, with a tightly laced bodice that uplifted her ample bosom, and ballooning shorts that buttoned just above the knee. The style might have been called punk bordello.

  “But I might ask the same question of you,” Morris responded.

  “We’re here to see Randy’s paintings. Arthur and I just love his work. How many of your paintings do we now have, love?” she asked. “Eight, is it?” As she spoke, she grabbed Randy’s hand in an intimate gesture that led Charlotte to wonder if he was the latest of her young protégés.

  “Nine,” he said, “If you count the Short Stop.”

  “Oh yes, the Short Stop. The Short Stop, of which we have a painting, is the latest addition to Randy’s collection of diners,” Xantha explained. “He bought it last January. Saved it from the wrecking ball.”

  “The Short Stop that used to be in Belleville?” asked Tom.

  Randy nodded. “I have a collection of diners at my camp out in western Jersey. Five of them, now. When I see a diner for sale, I can’t resist buying it. I’m afraid that if I don’t, it’s going to disappear. I think of it as my contribution to historic preservation.”

  Intrigued by the idea of a collection of diners, Charlotte asked, “What do you do with them?”

  “I live in one, a 1931 Worcester lunch wagon with Haitian mahoghany paneling. I use another, a 1942 Tierney, for a studio and gallery. The other two—a Swingles and an O’Mahoney—are still being restored.”

  “I’d like to do a write-up on your collection,” said Tom.

  “You’re welcome to come out anytime.”

  “What about the Short Stop?” he asked.

  “I’ve turned the Short Stop into a guest cottage,” Randy replied. “That way my guests get the idea that I don’t want them to stay around too long,” he joked. “If they do, I just turn on the neon.” He raised his hands, opening and closing his fingers in a flashing motion.

  They all laughed at the image of guests being reminded that they had overstayed their welcome by a flashing neon sign saying “Short Stop.”

  “As I recall, the Short Stop is a Paramount, circa 1948,” said Tom.

  “Good guess,” said Randy, “Nineteen forty-seven, to be precise.”

  “Then you have an example of at least one diner from most of the major manufacturers from the golden age …”

  “I don’t have a Silk City.”

  “There are a lot of them around,” said Tom. “If you’re interested in finding one, you could put an ad in Diner Monthly.”

  “I don’t need to,” Randy said. “I know which one I want.

  “Which one is that, love?” teased Xantha.

  They had moved on to the paintings of the third painter in the show, Ed Verre. If Spiegel’s paintings could be summed up as intellectual and Randy’s as sentimental, then Verre’s would be documentary. In fact, it was a testament to the inaccuracy of such labels that these three painters had ever been lumped together under the rubric of photorealism.

  Unlike Spiegel’s and Randy’s paintings, neither of which showed people, Verre’s painting not only included identifiable people—John was clearly recognizable from his height and his hunched-over shoulders—but even the specials for the day. The title was “Falls View Diner at Two A.M.”

  Though there was nothing specific to convey the idea of two in the morning, the painter had nevertheless captured the loneliness of the early morning hours. It was something about the harsh white light and the way the two men at the counter were huddled over their coffee cups, a stool apart—alone, yet together. The presence of the customers added an intriguing narrative element. One had the sense of specific people on a specific night, waiting for something to happen. There was a 1988 calender hanging next to the poster of the Acropolis with the dates crossed off. The date was a year ago last spring.

  Randy and Xantha had lingered behind, discussing his paintings. Now they joined the rest of the group in front of the Verre painting.

  “It’s very good, don’t you think, love?” Xantha said to her husband. “But not as good as Randy’s work, of course.”

  As the group’s attention shifted to Randy, something very strange happened. Charlotte had the distinct impression that he was disintegrating before her eyes. She could almost see him breaking up into a thousand little glistening shards, like the glass of a shattered windshield.

  In reality, his skin was twitching, causing his hands to scramble frantically all over his body as if he were trying to stop it. His head was swiveling from side to side in wide-eyed terror. Charlotte had often heard the phrase “made my skin crawl”; now she knew exactly what it meant.

  As she watched him, it dawned on her this was a drug reaction, and that his appealing aura of energy had been drug-induced. Turned up by several degrees—or rather, all the way—it was no longer very pretty.

  “I think I know what he had to go back to his studio for,” Tom whispered.

  “What is it, love?” aske
d a concerned Xantha. She hovered next to Randy like a protective fairy, her magenta-rimmed eyes wide with alarm.

  “I see them,” he said, staring at the painting. “This time I’m certain I see them.” Then he moaned, a low moan, like an animal in pain, and stuck his right arm out stiffly at the painting. “They’re under the counter.” Beads of sweat had popped out on his temples. “Don’t you see them?”

  “What do you see, love?”

  By this time, Randy’s behavior had attracted the attention of the other guests, who stood around in silence, plastic wineglasses in hand, staring discreetly out of the corners of their eyes.

  “What’s happening?” asked Diana, appearing at Charlotte’s side.

  “Randy’s going off the deep end again,” came the bored, cynical voice of the woman behind her. “Somebody had better go get Patty.”

  Suddenly Randy shouted: “I’ve got to get out of here.” Then he lifted his forearms, as if he was trying to shield his face from attack, and backed slowly away. “Where can I go?” he cried out. Then his knees buckled and he crumpled to the floor, sobbing.

  As the guests stood around trying to figure what to do—it had all happened so fast—a woman appeared at Randy’s side. Charlotte recognized her as Patty Andriopoulis. She had shed her black polyester waitress’s uniform for a simple black cocktail dress.

  Randy looked up at her. “Australia: that’s where I’ll go,” he said, answering his own question. “He won’t be able to find me there.”

  “Patty, thank God you’re here,” said Diana. Reaching into her pocketbook, she discreetly handed Patty a long white business envelope. “Here,” she whispered. “Give him this. Tell him it’s his ticket for Australia.”

  Patty nodded and grabbed the envelope. “I have your plane ticket right here, Ran,” she said in a soft, soothing voice. “Your flight’s at one A.M.” She gently took hold of his arm. “C’mon. Let’s go get a drink. Then we’ll go back to your place and pack your suitcase.”