Shadow Image

by Martin J. Smith

  “Bren, you coming?” he called through the open door.

  “When I find the circuit breakers.” Her voice shrank as she moved into the shadows and rounded the corner of the house. “We’ve got no power, remember?”

  Chapter 13

  Christensen had never appreciated modern art—any art, really—the way he wanted to. He envied friends who said it spoke to them, moved them, who reached rare moments of insight by gazing at a given piece. He was genuinely bothered by his stunted sense of wonder and anchored imagination even as he enjoyed the loopiness of the modern stuff and its weird, free-form sense of humor.

  “It’s made entirely of individual pieces of whole-wheat toast,” Brenna read from the wall-mounted plaque beside an installation titled Jesus, Lightly Browned.

  Both kids were standing remarkably still beside him, staring at the life-size image of the crucified Christ on the facing wall. “Wheat,” he repeated. “Interesting medium.” He leaned in for a closer look. “How’d they get the crown-of-thorns pattern?”

  Brenna socked his arm. He was grateful for the attention. He’d seen so little of her since Sunday, felt her slipping into the gray zone where little else outside a case matters. And with whispered rumors that the crime lab had found someone else’s skin beneath Floss’s fingernails, the Underhill situation was becoming more than just another case. Would she have come along on this weeknight family outing if it didn’t promise some insight into Floss Underhill? Did he really want to know the answer?

  “Where do people come up with this stuff?” Brenna said. “A room full of balloons getting blown around by fans? What’s with that?”

  “This is weird,” Annie said. “Let’s go.”

  Christensen squeezed his daughter’s shoulder. In the ten minutes they’d been strolling through the Sofa Factory looking for the Once-Lost Images exhibit, only two things had sparked any interest with either Annie or Taylor. The first was Head-to-Head with Toyota, a hideously mashed Chevy Chevette—the nameplate still dangled from the hatch lid—that Christensen interpreted as a wry comment about the decline of the American automotive industry. Taylor solemnly pronounced it “cool.” Annie was more taken by a dynamic piece called Bad Environment for Monochrome Paintings—a sealed room aswarm with houseflies and hung with large white canvases on white walls. An equal number of flies lay dead on the white floor. “Way gross,” his daughter said, but he had to pull her away.

  Brenna nodded toward a wide door to their left. “I bet it’s that way.”

  The kids shuffled ahead, keeping their distance, whispering whenever they spotted a flash of nudity in one of the works. He took Brenna’s hand as they walked.

  “What do you mean he was weird about it?” he said.

  “Who?”

  “The Underhills’ security guy.”

  “I don’t know. Just a feeling I got. Staggers talks in vagaries. He says he’ll do things and he doesn’t. Like the life-insurance stuff. He didn’t seem to have a problem the first time I asked for it, but now every time I ask I get the same runaround about how Raskin has those files Downtown, not at the house. ‘Temporarily unobtainable,’ he said.”

  “You don’t really think that’s important, do you?”

  Brenna shook her head. “These aren’t the kind of people who’d try to rip off a life-insurance company. They own a couple of them, as a matter of fact. If someone did push her, you know that Mercer and Dagnolo are looking at all the obvious motives. And they probably could find something that looks suspicious enough to blow out of proportion before the election. But that’s not the point. I asked for the information, Staggers agreed to get it, then nothing.”

  “You said he didn’t seem too bright.”

  “He’s working on it.”

  Christensen laughed, remembering her story about Staggers’s earnest and constant pursuit of self-improvement. “Tried dealing with Raskin directly?”

  “All tied up on campaign stuff, his secretary said. He hasn’t returned my calls.”

  “Vincent?”

  “Him either. I’ve been trying to get back over there to talk to the gardener and his wife. Staggers was supposed to be setting it up. So why hasn’t it happened? They live right there on the property, for God’s sake. How complicated could it be?”

  From a narrow exhibit space hung with open umbrellas and dangling polyurethane cuts of meat, they followed the children into an open room that was either another incomprehensible artistic statement or undergoing renovation.

  Annie turned around. “This is creepy. Can we go?”

  Christensen spotted a small Once-Lost Images sign outside a narrow door, through which he could see an apparently clean, well-lighted place. Outside the door, a guest register was open on a small pedestal. He directed the kids toward the door. “Through there, guys. This is where we’re going.”

  “Strange place to have an Alzheimer’s fund-raiser,” Brenna said. “Who picked it?”

  They looked at one another, then mouthed “Maura” at the same time.

  Christensen stopped and signed the register, flipping back to the first page. The opening was an obvious success so far. Seven-and-a-half pages were filled, each with twenty-five names. For all her eccentricities, Maura Pearson was a remarkably magnetic personality. Her sixth sense for people with large checkbooks was legendary around Harmony, and it was the main reason the center’s art therapy program was one of the country’s best.

  He picked up an exhibit catalog, handed it to Brenna, and pushed into the crowd. Annie and Taylor had gravitated toward a gallery employee, a zaftig woman of about twenty-five with a stunning array of piercings and deep, deep cleavage. Christensen counted three studs in her nose alone. She appeared to be answering questions from a young black couple interested in one of the paintings as the children waited patiently, no doubt to quiz the woman about her appearance.

  “Number fourteen,” Brenna said, reading from the catalog. “That’s Floss’s.”

  They began with the painting just to the left of the door, Number 1. The watercolor showed a white sailboat skimming across a blue bay toward some distant harbor. The simple scene was rendered in bold strokes of bright color and titled, Racing for Cocktails.

  “This piece was painted three years ago by Candace, an early second-stage patient at the time,” Brenna read. “She spoke often of family vacations at Lake Chautauqua when she was a teenager. Though her family never had a home there and did not own a boat, relatives say many of Candace’s wealthier friends did.”

  “She died right around the time I started working at Harmony,” Christensen said. “Maura talks about her a lot.”

  The next painting, an acrylic, was an odd family portrait—two people, a man and a woman, standing proudly on either side of a computer terminal as though it were an only child. The background was deep burgundy, the woman green, the man pale yellow, the computer a brackish purple. Artist: Walter. Title: Talk, Talk, Talk.

  “Walter was a deep second-stage patient when his wife began participating in an online caregiver’s support network,” Brenna read. “He knew she relied on the terminal for comfort and communication, and at first resented its presence in their home. Eventually, he accepted the computer as an important part of their household.”

  Christensen studied the picture, so full of bright colors and smiles. “A pilot program run out of Harmony,” he said. “They put terminals and Internet connections into homes, thinking the caregivers would use them to talk to doctors about care decisions. They ended up talking among themselves, being there for each other. You should read the postings, Bren. It’s the kind of poetry only people on the edge can write.”

  Three paintings down they passed the kids as they debriefed the human pincushion. She was leaning down to talk to them, and Brenna caught him
staring as they circled wide. “Excellent breasts, well displayed,” she whispered. “Don’t you think?”

  “What?”

  “She could be your daughter.”

  “Shhh.” Christensen strained to overhear their conversation, wondering what Annie might be talking about so soberly with someone so exotic.

  “Where else?” his daughter was saying. “You know what I mean.”

  They waited to laugh until they were safely out of earshot. Christensen turned and watched as the embarrassed woman urged the two children along. “Curious little thing,” he said. “Mind if I move out when she’s twelve, Bren? Just for five years or so. Bren?”

  She had moved on, toward the only empty spot on the gallery wall. He caught up to her, then realized what had drawn her attention.

  “Number 14,” he said.

  “Where is it?”

  The wall plaque described the empty space. Artist: Florence. Title: Some Crazy Story about Gray. A laminated copy of the Press review with its photograph of the painting hung cockeyed from a pushpin beside the plaque.

  Brenna flipped pages of the catalog and read: “Florence was an avid equestrienne, and she rode a horse named Gray to many victories in competition. She speaks of Gray with great emotion, perhaps because she lost the horse several years ago following a tragic accident.”

  They looked at each other. Christensen scanned the walls again to see if any other paintings were missing or not yet hung. But the space in front of them was the only irregularity on the whole perimeter of the gallery. He shrugged.

  “Ask somebody,” Brenna said.

  He hadn’t yet found Maura in the crowd. A young man dressed all in black was leaning against a nearby wall, ignoring everyone, one black Beatle boot resting flat against the wall. He was wearing the most god-awful set of horn-rimmed glasses Christensen had seen since the early 1960s, a retro-hip victim down to his flattop haircut and Speed Racer belt buckle.

  “Are you with the gallery?” Christensen asked.

  He nodded, extending a flaccid hand. “Can’t talk sales, if that’s what you mean. Auction’s this weekend. They should be back in thirty minutes or so.”

  “No, no. I’m not a buyer.” Christensen nodded toward the spot where Brenna was standing now with both kids, still inspecting the empty wall space. “I’m just curious about the missing painting over there.”

  The young man smirked, an expression that completed the caricature. “Took it out right before we opened tonight,” he said. “We didn’t have time to rearrange everything.”

  Christensen waited, hoping for some further explanation. “There was a picture of it in the paper last week, you know, with a write-up about the show. They had a picture of that painting, see, and then when we got here it was gone.”

  The young man studied his fingernails.

  Christensen wanted to smack him. “We were just curious, see.”

  The kid shifted the Beatle boot to the floor, then put the other one up against the wall. Conversation seemed to greatly inconvenience him. “Alls I know is they called a couple hours ago and wanted it down. So Evan took it down, like, fast.”

  “Evan, the gallery director?”

  Christensen knew the question was dumb. Everyone knew local iconoclast Evan Garde, the former Corky Chaiken, a man best known for once quipping that he wanted to be Andy Warhol for fifteen minutes. Christensen interpreted the young man’s look as one of raw contempt. “You must know a lot of Evans,” he said finally.

  “Who wanted it down?” Christensen asked. “The Harmony people? The patient’s family?”

  “Bingo,” the kid said.

  “Which?”

  “Family, I think. The lady from Harmony seemed a little jagged off about it.”

  With the publication of Floss’s painting in both the Once-Lost Images calendar and the Press article, its fundraising value no doubt had increased enormously. Christensen couldn’t imagine Maura Pearson taking it out of the show, much less off the auction block, without raising some hell.

  “So they did take it out, though.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Because the patient’s family wanted it out?”

  The young man looked around. “You should talk to Evan.”

  “So the family said ‘Jump’ and everybody said, ‘How high?’ ” Christensen said. “Why is that?”

  The kid looked around again. Another smirk, this one more conspiratorial than the last. “Slam dunk, man,” he said. “They’ve got bucks.”

  Chapter 14

  The opening theme of Eyewitness News announced the time, but Christensen double-checked it against the Windows clock on his computer. Eleven already? Brenna had planned to be home from her Seventh Ward schmoozefest an hour ago, but he’d been too busy to worry. The evening had slid into that odd dimension between reality and personal computing where time’s pace quickens and logic is meaningless.

  For two hours, since the kids went to bed, he’d been caught in a swampy tangle of modem connectors, printer cables, and power cords as he tried to set up his computer in their downstairs office. Nothing about it was intuitive, at least not for him. Thank God there were no software problems. Finally it seemed to be working.

  The CompuServe Information Manager blinked onto his screen. He sat back as the modem made its digital appeal to the gatekeepers of cyberspace. Above the electronic chatter, he heard the throaty purr of a luxury car’s engine outside, slowing, then stopping. He pushed himself away from CompuServe’s welcome screen and went to the front door expecting to see Brenna’s Legend at the curb, but the only car on either side of the street was something sleek and dark two doors away. Its brake lights went off. Christensen watched for a long time, but when no one got out, he went back to the office. Burglars don’t drive cars that nice.

  He clicked through the online service’s menu until he reached the alphabetized Newspaper Archives list, then scrolled down to The Pittsburgh Press. He knew that the paper’s electronic database extended back only three years, long after Floss Underhill’s career as a champion rider had ended, but he wanted to search the types of stories that Terry Flaherty might have overlooked during his earlier electronic research. He couldn’t say exactly what it was about this whole affair that bothered him. Maybe it was cumulative. He was willing to dismiss Myron Levin’s dark warning as nothing more than a TV reporter’s hyperbole. But ongoing and judicious leaks from the sheriff’s department made him think its investigation was far from over, and he’d also begun to wonder about the version of Floss’s fall that the family had given Brenna. Why had Ford Underhill, out of the blue, floated the possibility that his exhausted, burned-out father threw his wife into the ravine? He’d presented it to Brenna that first day almost as an option—a perfectly defensible backup story in case the suicide explanation didn’t fly. With Brenna’s much-publicized passion about the plight of the caregiver, it just seemed a little too convenient.

  At the search prompt, he typed FLOSS UNDERHILL and HORSE and waited. A short list of headlines flashed onto the screen. Nearly all were society columns by Alexandra Pogue, the paper’s ancient chronicler of the Chanel-and-charity circuit. He scanned three of Pogue’s stories, enough to determine that she used the phrase “horsewoman extraordinaire” as the standard prefix for any mention of Floss. The most recent story was four years old, headlined “Pittsburgh’s Royal Family Steps into Alzheimer’s Charity Spotlight”—an account of one of the Harmony Center’s early fund-raisers, he guessed.

  He remembered the event, remembered how long ago it was. If that was one of the latest stories about Floss, she’d practically disappeared from the paper’s pages following her diagnosis.

  In terms of real information, all of Pogue’s stories were useless. Christensen tried again, throw
ing his electronic net wider. He typed UNDERHILL and HORSE.

  That search turned up dozens of stories in addition to Pogue’s worshipful blather. Several headlines alluded to the Oaks Classic, an annual equestrian event near Latrobe. He called up one of those stories, curious what connection the Underhill family had to that competition, and quickly found a reference to “longtime Oaks organizer Floss Underhill.” That seemed to him a logical progression for a woman so deeply involved with horses. When her riding days were over, she must have turned her passion toward staging competitions.

  Christensen scanned the other headlines, looking for something, anything, that might shed more light on Floss’s apparent fascination with the gray horse. He called up a five-year-old feature called “What It Costs” that listed the Underhill family’s Fox Chapel stables among “the most expensive goods, services and extravagances in western Pennsylvania.” The story cited in particular the polished oak stall doors and the “computer-controlled air fresheners mounted high above each spotless floor.”

  The headline “Zoning Board Settles Fox Chapel Horse Dispute” caught his eye, but it turned out to be the resolution of another resident’s complaint about “recurrent horse litter” left on public roads crossed by the Underhills’ mounts.

  A sudden, indistinct thump jolted Christensen from his online browsing. He froze, not sure what to make of the noise, or where it came from. He got up and went to the office door.

  “Bren?”

  He walked to the bottom of the stairs, listening for the kids. The sound was a lot like the muffled thump they made when they rolled over in their sleep and bumped against the wall. He listened intently to the house’s unnerving silence, then tiptoed up the stairs to check both kids’ bedrooms. Taylor was restless, as usual, and had probably kicked the wall. Christensen covered him for a third time and tiptoed back downstairs to the office.