“When were you married?”
“Just after graduate school.” Tears welled in her eyes, and she wiped them away with a clay-stained hand, leaving a streak of gray on her freckled cheek. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that I miss him so much. I feel like a piece of me is missing, a leg or an arm or something.” She gazed out the mullioned window at the lawn, which was shaded by tall trees, and bordered by hydrangeas, whose flower heads nodded in the soft September breeze.
“Then you were close, despite the fact that you were divorced,” said Tom.
“We weren’t divorced. We were just separated.” She took a deep breath. “Yes, we were close. He came here every day: to see me, to see Julius. We just couldn’t live together. Or rather, I couldn’t live with him.”
“Why not?” Charlotte asked.
“Have you heard about the mill?”
“A little,” she said.
“It was a zoo. There were people hanging around there twenty-four hours a day. I didn’t leave Don because I didn’t love him, but because I couldn’t stand his life. I felt as if everything revolved around him. I didn’t have any time for myself, for my art, for Julie. Most nights I cooked dinner for a dozen people: artists, musicians, the plumber who came in to fix the faucet—you name it. If they were there, Don made them feel welcome to stay until he went to bed, or even later than that. It wasn’t good for Julie, either; it isn’t good for a child to be exposed to a life like that. I just couldn’t stand it anymore. The constant partying, the endless cooking and cleaning up, the lack of privacy, the way people took advantage of Don …”
“Like Randy?” interjected Charlotte.
“I would rank him as leech number one, yes. Don was so generous to him: helping him along, introducing him to collectors like the Lumkins. And then Randy turns around and stabs him in the back.”
“The Artnews article,” said Tom.
She nodded. “It sounds terrible to say, but I’ve often wished that it was Randy who died first. Things were fine before he came along. We had a nice quiet life together, the three of us. Randy introduced Don to that Bohemian life, and Don went along with it. I never really understood the appeal for Don, because he wasn’t an extroverted person. We would have a dozen people for dinner, and he wouldn’t talk to any of them. He just wanted them around, to validate his status as a big-time artist or something.”
She was interrupted by the slamming of the screen door. A boy entered, carrying a knapsack. He was a short, slight boy of thirteen or fourteen, with a triangular face, dark skin and eyes, and an engaging puckish expression.
“Hi, Mom,” he said, coming over to give her a kiss.
Louise introduced Tom and Charlotte. “My son, Julius,” she said. “Mr. Plummer and Miss Graham are doing an article on Daddy.”
“Neat,” said Julius. Then he turned to his mother, and said: “Ma, Terry and Jack are going over to West Side Park to play ball. Jack’s mom is going to drive them. Can I go too?”
Louise said yes and the boy disappeared as quickly as he had come.
“Where was I? Oh, the mill. It only got worse after I moved out. That was eight years ago. Whenever I called—it didn’t matter what hour of day or night it was—I could hear glasses tinkling and the murmur of conversation in the background. I never knew who was going to answer the phone.”
“Did that life style have anything to do with your husband’s suicide?”
“I don’t know. I have no idea why he killed himself,” she said bluntly. She paused for a moment to collect herself. “It was an act that was totally out of character. There’s not an hour of the day that I don’t wonder if there was something I could have done.”
“Like what?” asked Tom, gently.
“Sometimes I think that I shouldn’t have moved out, that I should have been more firm and kicked the others out.”
“Did the note reveal any motive?”
She shook her head. “It was vague. The ‘I can’t go on’ sort of thing.”
“What about Bernice’s lawsuit?” he asked. “Did you approve?”
“No, I did not,” she responded firmly. “First of all, the paintings are legally Randy’s. Don signed them over to him. Whether Don meant to retract the agreement before he died or not is moot: he hadn’t done so at the time of his death. Second, to take up arms against a sleaze like Randy Goslau is to invite trouble, which is exactly what Bernice got.”
“In the form of the threat to sue for palimony.”
“Yes. Randy’s lawyers made no claim that there was any sexual relationship, but that was the image that the threat was designed to create. Anyone who knew Don knows that it was ridiculous. He liked women. Another reason I moved out was his peccadilloes with the adoring female art students who hung around the mill.”
“Groupies,” said Tom.
“Exactly. I once heard somebody say that artists are the rock stars of the eighties. Which is a good analogy because artists have groupies too.”
“But you stood to benefit from the lawsuit.”
“Only indirectly. It’s actually Julie who will benefit if the paintings are ruled to be part of the estate. Julie gets a percentage. But even if they are, it doesn’t make any difference. We don’t need the money. Don left us well provided for. As I said, he was a generous man, generous to a fault.”
“Are you and Bernice on good terms?”
Louise raised her hand and tilted it from side to side. “Mezza, mezza,” she said. “I tried to talk her out of the lawsuit, but it was no go. Stopping her would have been like stopping a rhino in mid-charge.”
Or a pit bull, thought Charlotte, reminded of Diana’s description.
“What about the paintings? Do you have any idea where they are?”
“Not a clue,” she said.
Tom folded up his notebook and put it away in his breast pocket. “Thank you,” he said. “You’ve been a big help. I’d like to ask one more favor. Do you have a recent picture of your husband?”
Louise shook her head. “Not a recent picture,” she said. Don had a thing about photographs. He was like those primitive people who believe that the camera steals your soul.”
That explained why Tom’s efforts to track down a photo had been fruitless, Charlotte thought. “That seems like an odd attitude for a photorealist,” she said.
“I think he took that attitude because he was a photorealist. He was aware of the power of the camera. He used to quote an essay that described the camera as a kind of assassin.”
“I saw his self-portrait,” said Charlotte. “The Finders showed it to me. If the camera was an assassin in that case, it was an assassin who had a hell of a time fixing its subject in its sights.”
Louise smiled. “That’s Don. A reflection in a sheet of plate glass: cool, objective, dispassionate. I lived with him for sixteen years, and I still don’t feel as if I knew him.”
“How about an old photo?” asked Tom. “From before he became a painter.”
“That I have. Our wedding photo from 1965. But I’m reluctant to loan it to you because it’s the only one I have.”
“I understand,” said Tom. “We could take it to a photocopier right now—you could even come with us—and have a copy made.”
“That sounds okay,” she said. “There’s a copy shop a couple of blocks away that’s open on weekends. I’ll get it: it’s in the house.”
She returned a few minutes later with the photo, which pictured Louise just as Charlotte had imagined her, in a long gown of white Indian cotton with a garland of flowers on her brow. Don had the same puckish expression as his son. He wore a Nehru jacket, and his hair was down to his shoulders.
“Definitely a sixties wedding,” said Tom as Louise handed him the photo.
“Definitely. Look at that jacket!” Louise studied the photograph. “The Italians—I’m Italian,” she explained—“have an expression for a person who isn’t really dead: someone who feigns death to get away from someone or something, or to get ou
t of a sticky situation.”
She spoke a word in Italian that Charlotte didn’t catch.
“That’s how I think of Don,” she continued. “He’s still so real to me. I know he’s dead, but I can’t believe it. I feel as if my feet are stuck in tar, as if I can’t get on with my life until I come to terms with the fact that he’s not going to be a part of it anymore.”
I know that feeling, Charlotte thought.
“I had a dream about him just after he died. In the dream, he told me: ‘I’m not dead. I just made a …’”—she said the Italian word again—“‘I couldn’t stand it at the mill anymore. I’ve gone to Round Hill for a while. Come and visit me’.”
“Round Hill?” said Charlotte.
“It’s our country house up in Dutchess County. You know, Julie and I actually went up to Round Hill after that. I really thought I might see him there. That’s how alive he still is to me.”
Their next stop was Ed Verre’s apartment at 24 Mill Street. When Charlotte had called Martinez for directions, she had learned that it was located in the Essex Mill, an old silk mill that had been renovated and converted into housing for artists and musicians who could live there at reduced rents as long as they met the income qualifications. As a neophyte artist, Verre would have qualified, but Charlotte suspected that he wouldn’t meet the income qualifications for long. If other collectors followed the Finders’ suit, Verre’s paintings would soon be bringing top prices.
But before they talked to Verre, Tom wanted to see the painting at the Paterson Museum again. Like Charlotte, he had only looked at it briefly before the incident with Randy. For that matter, Charlotte wanted to look at it again too, now that she suspected it had been painted by Spiegel.
“We can grab a couple of hamburgers there, too,” Tom said in reference to the diner that was part of the exhibit.
“Is that the real reason you want to go back?” teased Charlotte.
“Part of it,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to miss a chance to taste one of Shorty’s famous burgers again. Make that five or six of Shorty’s famous burgers. There’re pretty small.”
Twenty minutes later, their stomachs filled with the delicious silver-dollar-sized gems that were smothered in chopped onions, they wandered over to take another look at “Falls View Diner at Two A.M.”
“They’re here,” she said, pointing out the initials on the candy bar at the back of the display case. “DS Crunch.” She also repeated for Tom what John had told her about the argument over the ARTnews article, and pointed out the magazine sitting on the counter.
“It’s the same night in all three paintings, right?” asked Tom.
Charlotte nodded. “Long shot, medium shot, and close-up, as if the camera were on a dolly.” Reaching into her bag, she pulled out the Koreman Gallery catalog, and opened it to “Falls View Diner on a Rainy Spring Night.” “Here’s the long shot,” she said.
“That looks like Kenny Meeker’s van,” Tom said, pointing out the old gray Ford Econoline van with Michigan license plates that was parked next to the semi. “He calls it his wheel estate.”
“It is. John told me that he was there that night. On one of his cross-country diner trips.” Reaching into her bag again, she pulled out the photocopy of “Falls View Diner with Banana Cream Pie.” “And here he is eating the pie, or at least John said it was him.”
“That’s him, all right. The ‘roads scholar,’ as he calls himself. He likes puns. If you think I’m a sicko, you should meet Meeker. Talk about diner nuts: his diner log book has over twenty-five hundred entries.”
For a moment, they compared the three pictures.
Charlotte was struck by the increasing mood of menace. The distance view had an innocent look, the middle view was darker, and the close-up was downright ominous. “I still don’t get it,” she said. “Why would Spiegel paint three scenes of that night?”
“Maybe Meeker would know,” said Tom.
Of course! thought Charlotte. Why hadn’t she thought of that. “Tom, you’re a genius,” she said. “From what John said, he was there for most of the evening—he had given an impromptu concert in the parking lot earlier on.”
“Did John also tell you that he sleeps in his van?”
“No! That would mean he was there all night.”
“It’s a long shot, but it’s worth a try. I could call him right now. I have his number. He works at home—some computer thing. So unless he’s away on another road trip, he should be there.”
“There’s a phone booth outside,” said Charlotte.
Charlotte stood by impatiently as Tom chatted with Meeker, whom he reached right away. After fifteen minutes, he hung up and emerged from the booth with an expression that spelled success.
“Sorry I took so long. He had to tell me about his latest diner finds. He remembered the argument, but listen to this. He said he had just settled down in the van for the night when he heard loud voices. When he looked out, he saw the two guys from inside arguing in the parking lot.”
“I wonder why John didn’t say anything about that.”
“Meeker said he’d moved his van down to the far end of the parking lot, where it borders the river. John had wanted to reserve the spaces right in front for the early morning breakfast crowd. Anyway, Meeker said the argument degenerated into a fist fight.”
Charlotte raised an eyebrow.
Tom continued: “When he looked out again, he saw the guy with the ponytail walking up the street. He never saw the other guy again.”
“Could he hear what they were arguing about?”
“No. But he said it was the guy with the ponytail who seemed to be the angrier one—shouting the loudest, and so on—and that he seemed to be demanding something from the other guy that the other guy wouldn’t accede to.”
Had Spiegel threatened to fire Randy? Charlotte wondered. To kick him out of the mill? To cancel the gift of the paintings?
“That’s it, except for his complaint about some dogs waking him at five A.M. with their barking.”
Patty’s dogs, she thought.
What Kenny Meeker had told Tom changed everything. Charlotte had been operating under the assumption that Spiegel had deliberately changed his identity for some reason of his own. But now a different picture was beginning to take shape in her mind, a picture that answered the question of who it was that had been out to get Randy. The picture was one of an angry, coke-crazed young man, lithe and fit, taking on a man fifteen years his senior. He knocks him out, and then panics. Believing that he’s accidentally killed him, he throws him into the river. He then returns to the older man’s studio and forges a suicide note on his typewriter. When a decomposed body is pulled out of the river four months later, everyone takes it for granted that it’s the body of the older man. But in reality, the older man isn’t dead, only unconscious. He survives the plunge into the river, and comes back with a new identity to plot his revenge. His goal is to drive the younger man out of his mind, and ultimately to take his life, as the younger man had once tried to take his. Like a cat toying with a mouse, he wants the delectation of torturing his victim until he has taken his full measure of pleasure before proceeding to kill him. She could imagine how a painter with a style as precise and orderly as Spiegel’s would delight in the balance of his vengeance: Randy tries to kill him by throwing him in the river; he retaliates by throwing Randy in the river. One was a reflection of the other.
The Essex Mill was only a short distance from the museum. They could have walked had they known it was so close. In fact, though it was separated from Gryphon Mill by another restored mill, it was almost directly across the street, and located on the same raceway. Had Randy’s body passed through the culvert, it might have been carried right under the Essex Mill. They parked in a lot across the street from an area on the river bank that looked like Dresden after the firebombing: burned-out shell after burned-out shell, with only the smokestacks left to tell where mills had once stood. The Essex Mill itself, however, had
been beautifully restored, its charm only heightening the tragedy that was the wreckage of the other mills. Charlotte and Tom entered through an archway that opened onto a central courtyard, with a smooth green lawn in the center and planters filled with flowers around the perimeter. The only occupants were an old woman who sat in a wheelchair with her wrinkled face raised to the sun, and her black companion, who sat knitting on a nearby bench. The only noises were the hum of the air conditioners and the sweet strains of a tenor saxophone: a jazz musician practicing a riff.
Verre’s apartment was in the north wing, on the top floor. As they rang the doorbell, Charlotte’s heart was pounding. She was convinced that the key to Randy’s murder lay with the identity of Ed Verre. They had to wait some time for him to come to the door, but they could hear noises from inside, indicating that someone was at home.
At last the door opened, and they were looking at Ed Verre.
11
The wheelchair threw her at first. It was so unexpected. As was the silver-gray hair, beard, and eyebrows; the heavy, black horn-rimmed glasses; and the brown eyes. The eyes had been a light color in the black-and-white wedding photo: a pale blue or maybe a blue-gray. But when she looked again, she could see the triangular face and puckish expression of young Julius behind the beard and glasses, and … the ears. Remembering them from the photo, she realized now that they were responsible in part for the puckish look. They were unusually small, and pointed. One could grow a beard, put on eyeglasses, and wear tinted contacts, but one could not—short of plastic surgery—change the shape of one’s ears. She remembered a story she’d once heard about the woman who had claimed to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia. She told a convincing tale, but was eventually exposed as a fraud because her ears didn’t match those in a photograph of the real daughter of Czar Nicholas.
“Mr. Spiegel?” she said. “May we come in?”
For a moment, he sat there in his wheelchair with one hand on the door lever (Charlotte noticed that it was a lever rather than a knob), staring up at them. Then he gestured with his free arm for them to enter.
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