Art of Evil

by Bancroft, Blair

  On the second floor we all tromped across the Special Exhibit lobby and down shallow steps to the loggia. I, naturally, fell to the rear as I clutched my cane in one hand and the banister in the other. But, blessedly, the phalanx of guards spread out as they reached the broad expanse of the loggia. Ahead, I could see quite a crowd about half way up the courtyard. Most were simply standing against the loggia balustrade, where, nicely framed in bougainvillea, they were staring out over the courtyard. I hitched myself along, my cane whapping the tile floor at a brisk pace, and finally caught up. Someone made room for me at the rail.

  The courtyard at the Art Museum is so large it is in three tiers, accommodating itself to the natural slope of the land down toward Sarasota Bay. (Which is why it is necessary to take an elevator from Security up to the second floor to reach the loggia.) Richard Bellman’s love of art did not stop with paintings. Although most of the sculptures he imported from Europe are described as “modern casts of Roman copies of Greek originals,” they were, nonetheless—like David—spectacular and ubiquitous. The vast courtyard was, in fact, littered with classical figures and fountains. One of the most innocuous of these was a Biga, a two-horse Roman chariot, so realistic it looked as if it might have raced in the Coliseum.

  Today, it was even more realistic, for it had acquired a driver. A figure, perfectly proportioned to the half-size chariot and horses, standing regally tall, reins in his hands, the guy wires holding him in place nearly invisible. He was dressed in the garb of a Roman officer, from plumed helmet to knee-length white tunic and ornate breastplate. All in brilliantly painted papier maché.

  It was a marvelous joke. And a stunning puzzle. The Bellman wasn’t Fort Knox, but security was tight. The courtyard was enclosed on three sides by the museum itself and, on the west, by the imposing raised walkway, a good twenty feet high, from which David surveyed his realm.

  The connection came so fast I realized my dormant brain was truly beginning to revive. Or was it what some people insisted on calling my “gift”? My occasional flashes of insight that came out of nowhere? Useless information at odd, unsuitable moments. Or so it had seemed to me ever since I’d led my lover to his death. I hadn’t had so much as a twinge of insight since.

  Not so. There were those insidious whispers after Tim Mundell’s supposed suicide. And my absolute certainty that Josh Thomas’s polished exterior harbored deep secrets. Just as, today, I knew the perpetrator of this outrageous prank—which required talent, agility, and daring—was most likely a certain hunky part-time security guard. Oh, my charming Billie, this isn’t the way to get the Museum’s attention.

  Billie Ball Hamlin was young enough and quirky enough to think up such a stunt. He was capable of sculpting and painting such a remarkable effigy. He was strong enough to scale a wall, carrying a half-size model of a Roman warrior. (For there was no way he had slipped something this size past the Security Desk or through the Art Museum’s locked and barred front doors.)

  Not that there weren’t a lot of students in the area. Not only was the Honors College next door full of high IQs with creative ideas and rebellious proclivities, but only a mile or so down the road was the Bellman School of Art, also full of budding young geniuses with eccentric tendencies. So why was I so certain it was Billie?

  It wasn’t much of a leap. Young men who dive into Florida ponds in the secret and dangerous depths of the night would not be fazed by a twenty-foot wall guarded only by a seventeen-foot man of bronze. Billie Ball Hamlin would, in fact, have reveled in the challenge.

  I turned away and slunk back to my tram, leaving the crowd of guards, docents, and other volunteers to gape their fill. After all, excitement at the Bellman usually consisted of a rare faint from the heat or someone off a tour bus irate because they had not been allowed time to see “everything.” An unauthorized Roman warrior could only make everyone’s day. Hopefully, if the culprit was discovered, the Powers-That-Be would go easy on him.

  I arrived at the main tram stop just as hordes of school children came trooping down the hill. Fortunately, each group was required to stay with its teacher and chaperon, so the children—all sixty of middle school age—walked in well-controlled snake lines past the tram stop, hiking down to the Casa Bellissima, where I figured the docents, well warned, were quaking in their sensible shoes. The Casa’s restoration took six years and fifteen million dollars. How would you feel shepherding sixty sixth-graders through such a home?

  And then it hit me. In less than a week we’d had a Suspicious Suicide, a Mysterious Stranger, and a Spectacular Prank. Connecting the first two was a stretch. Adding the third was nearly impossible.

  And yet . . . my inner alarm was clanging as loudly as my tram bell. Somehow, some way, there was a pattern to these disturbances. That exaggerated intuition of mine insisted on it. Wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  I looked around for Billie, but I suspected he was lying low, riding his golf cart, engulfed in an aura of innocence. Around me I caught snatches of conversation about the morning’s aberration in the Bellman’s serenity that indicated problems were dissipating nicely, shocked ripples calming to amused speculation. Even admiration.

  But I had forgotten this was Florida. Most of the Board members of the Richard and Opal Bellman Museum of Art were wealthy retirees from stellar careers in business, the military and/or politics. And, believe me, it’s not easy to find yourself retired in what seems the prime of life. Therefore, there were a remarkable number of Board members who found the Bellman the only place they could flex their once powerful muscles. Evidently, this morning they had leaped at the opportunity.

  There were two men waiting at the tram barn. My replacement and a stranger. After I turned over my vehicle, I discovered the stranger was still there. Maybe an inch shy of six feet, he looked as stalwart as the giant live oak that drooped low over his head. He was wearing a long-sleeved blue- and white-striped shirt and conservative navy silk tie with a tie clip that proved to be a tiny gold revolver. When he looked me over from my determinedly waveless brown hair to the tip of my cane, I suspected he had been waiting for me. I returned the favor. His face was that of the boy next door. His eyes were not. They were gray and sharp. Very sharp. Cop eyes. The rounded features of his Everyman face were set in a scowl. I got the impression he would rather be almost anywhere but at the Bellman, and that, as far as he was concerned, the papier maché. Roman Warrior in the Biga was just so much kindling. A great waste of his valuable time.

  For some ridiculous reason, I decided to challenge him. Perhaps because I thought the days when a man could openly assess a woman were long gone. (I had, of course, forgotten this was Florida, where Me Tarzan, You Jane still prevailed.)

  “My mother always told me not to scowl like that,” I said. “My face might freeze that way.”

  His scowl deepened. He flashed a badge. “Detective Sergeant Ken Parrish. I understand you were here early this morning.”

  Oh-oh. I felt the weight of a full burden of guilt, even though I was incapable of sculpting so much as the Roman warrior’s toenail. All because I was almost certain I knew who did.

  “Very much after the fact,” I told him. “I just followed the crowd to the action.”

  “See anyone on the grounds? Anyone who shouldn’t have been here?”

  “It was so quiet I didn’t even see a groundskeeper.” Which was true. Only security guards in golf carts rushing to the scene of the crime.

  “Any guesses?”

  I dug my cane into a crack in the broken pavement. I squirmed. He could see my guilt, I knew it.

  “Surely a student prank,” I offered, peeking at the bulging muscles under his cotton-poly shirt, the square set of his jaw, the bored, yet steely, glint of his eyes, the slither I could feel ascending my spine as I blithely lied to Sarasota’s finest.

  “You saw nothing at all?” Detective Parrish persisted.

  “Nothing, Detective, really.” I prayed he would let it go.

  “You’ve been
at the museum how long?”

  “Two months. But just on Tuesday and Friday afternoons.”

  “Long enough,” he intoned. “Do you know anyone who might want to play a little joke on the museum?”

  I gulped, recalling an oath I had once taken. “Really, Detective,” I reiterated, “I believe it’s just a lark.”

  He flashed a look that nearly curled my toes. He knew. I knew he knew. And he knew I knew he knew. Then he surprised me.

  Which is your car?” he asked. I thought I saw his lips twitch when I pointed out Aunt Hy’s gold Cadillac. He took me by the arm and steered me carefully over the broken asphalt and gnarled roots of the old oak. “Keys.” He held out his hand. Dumbly, I complied.

  When the driver door was open, he waved me inside. Some indefinable emotion swept over me. Mortification? Gratitude? Despair? My interrogation wasn’t over, but with the quiet manners of the Old South, Detective Sergeant Ken Parrish had decided he had kept the cripple standing long enough.

  With one arm draped over the open car door, he leaned down and said in a voice suddenly purring with insinuation. “And now maybe you’ll tell me why my briefing said to contact a Rory Travis, tram driver. She might be able to help me out.”

  I gripped the wheel, closed my eyes, and thought dire thoughts about my Aunt Hyacinth. She had never been discreet, even in her youth (or so my mother and grandmother told me). So how could I have expected her to keep her mouth shut when she had so many dear friends—wealthy and influential friends—on the Board of the Bellman.

  I popped the trunk. “Would you mind getting my purse?” I said, with a nod to the rear.

  I had to dig for it. Way, way down beneath wallet, checkbook, address book, notebook, a plastic baggie of pills, a card case, and an embarrassingly large array of crumpled tissues, I found the folding black leather wallet with my badge. I held it up for his inspection. “Long, long ago, and far, far away,” I told him.

  Detective Parrish nodded. His Everyman face was perfectly blank, but I felt he understood my anguish over being a has-been warrior.

  “So why,” he asked, “won’t you tell me what you know? There can’t be many around here who could manage a trick like that. Even I know that Roman’s a damn fine bit of work.”

  “I truly don’t know,” I said. “I might be able to guess, but I’m not slinging names around over a rather clever prank.” I looked straight into those questioning pewter eyes and added, “If there’s more . . . if things escalate . . .”

  For a few more moments I got the searching look, then he allowed himself a smile. It was a nice smile. Sternly, I reminded myself of my prior loyalty to Billie Ball Hamlin. I didn’t want complications in my life. I had enough troubles—

  “Hopefully, this is it,” Detective Parrish said. “As you say, just a student prank.” He held out his hand. “Nice talking to you, Special Agent Travis.”

  Automatically, I shook his hand, which felt just as I expected. Warm and solid. Even friendly. Almost, it took the sting out of his use of my title.

  He closed the car door, stepped back, waving a casual salute as I negotiated the bumpy circle by the tram barn and headed home.

  That night I waked to instant alarm. The blood red figures on my digital alarm read 1:40. A natural-born nightowl, I hadn’t been asleep that long. I scanned the dark room, even though I sincerely doubted even the most enterprising burglar could find his way to the penthouse of the Ritz-Carlton. No strange shadows. No sign of movement. I listened. Nothing.

  I sniffed.

  And then I came fully awake to the acrid stench of burning metal. I raced to the kitchen, spotted the lop-sided tea kettle slowly melting onto the burner, had sense enough to arm myself with potholders before attempting to remove it from the stove.

  The kettle was stuck, glued to the electric burner by its melted copper bottom. I switched off the burner (which would have to be replaced), then stood there, glaring at the damaged stove as if it had made the mess all on its own.

  Aunt Hy? Even the ever-faithful Marian Edmundson was not above suspicion. This was not, after all, an unusual disaster. Even my mother had once put a tea kettle on without checking to make sure the whistle mechanism was properly in place.

  But it was scary. Like my dilemma with Billie Ball Hamlin and Detective Sergeant Ken Parrish—where did my loyalty lie? Did I keep quiet and wait to see what happened next?

  And then I thought of Madame Celestine’s prediction. Dark Days.

  A Roman effigy did not constitute Dark Days. The television psychic was still a con artist, I assured myself. She had told Aunt Hyacinth about Dark Days at work. Nothing about Dark Days at home.

  Or had she?

  And that was when I realized I was standing in the kitchen with my cane still lying on a chair in my bedroom down the hall. I considered my mad dash. There was, it would seem, life left in the old girl after all.

  Twenty minutes later, when I was certain the burner was cooling as expected, I went back to bed, feeling just slightly smug. That misbegotten son of a slave driver at the Rehab Center was going to be proud of me.

  Chapter 5

  When I asked Aunt Hy about putting on the tea kettle at midnight, she looked at me, wide-eyed, and said, “But, my dear, you know I go to bed at ten.” Marian and I exchanged a speaking glance. She rolled her eyes toward the kitchen, and I followed.

  “Miss Travis,” she said quite formally, standing ramrod straight in front of white cupboards that gleamed only slightly brighter than her short cap of hair, “I feel I must tell you I did not do it.”

  “I know, Marian,” I said softly, for I was certain Aunt Hy’s faithful housekeeper would not lie. “Do you suppose she walks in her sleep?”

  Marian Edmundson’s shoulders slumped out of their military stiffness. “I believe she may, on occasion, miss—though I feel the traitor for saying so.”

  “It’s dangerous,” I declared. “Oh, not just the fire hazard, but she has a balcony off her bedroom, and we’re eighteen stories up.” I paused as a shiver took me, rocking not only my spine and my mind, but my heart as well. The kitchen faded, and I was back atop a roof in Philadelphia, fighting for my life.

  “Miss? Ah, come sit over here, Rory dear, and I’ll fix you some tea.” Mrs. Edmundson pulled out a chair and guided me into it, switching from offended long-time retainer to trusted housekeeper and friend at my first sign of distress.

  It was Aunt Hy who was ill, I told myself. Not me. I just needed more blasted rehab. That was all. Really.

  In the end, I dropped my feeble attempt to investigate the Case of the Consumed Tea Kettle. If my mother could burn up a tea kettle at fifty, last night’s little lapse didn’t seem so serious. I filed Aunt Hy’s possible sleepwalking with all the other serious problems I would deal with when living day to day did not seem so much of a challenge.

  Oddly enough, for the next week or so, Aunt Hy seemed rejuvenated. I wasn’t sure if it was the tea kettle scare or the invitation to the Bellman Gala that had kicked her sharp intelligence back into gear. I suspected the latter.

  “Come with me, Rory dear,” she trilled two days before the Gala, for which she had had me reserve two shockingly expensive tickets.

  Meekly, I followed her into her wardrobe room. (Yes, Aunt Hy has an entire room devoted to the clothing she has collected over a lifetime. Walk-in closets rate no more than a disdainful sniff from Hyacinth Van Horne. For this Twenties fund-raising event at the art museum there would be no need to visit a costume shop.)

  She led me past shelves stacked high with hats, past row upon row of perfectly arranged shoes, then through a maze of rolling racks groaning under garments of every description. At last, Aunt Hy stopped before a rack encased in carefully zippered plastic. For an idiotic moment I was reminded of my tram, cocooned against the rain. “Here we are,” she declared. At her nod, I unzipped all the zippers and tucked the plastic up on top of the rack. I then stood back, respectfully, and received a lesson in designers of that last Gol
den Age, the time between the two great wars when gracious living still struggled to stay alive. The world that was smashed forever by the tramp of Nazi jackboots and, finally, the roar of Allied air power and artillery in reply. And, not incidentally, by women going to work and discovering the power of independence.

  “Chanel,” Aunt Hy said, touching a knee-length black dress trimmed with a double row of drooping pink chiffon scarves. She moved on down the line: “Vionnet, Molyneux, Worth, Paquin, Patou, Poiret, Schiaparelli.” There was even an Erté, a designer, she kindly informed me, more noted for his theatrical costumes than ensembles for socialites.

  After numerous sighs and several scurrilous reminiscences associated with her collection of vintage gowns, Aunt Hy finally selected a turquoise silk Vionnet with scarf hemline, topped by a beaded tunic with long sleeves that flared in an almost Medieval manner. (Truthfully, she was quite sensitive about her arms which revealed her age far more than her face.)

  I was harder to please, for I had grave doubts about displaying myself in a gown of any kind.

  “The Schiaparelli,” Aunt Hy stated firmly. “It’s sleeveless, but that scar on your arm is practically invisible now. And it’s full-length, which will cover your legs quite nicely. It’s thirties, but no one will know the difference. And the rose will put some color in your cheeks.” She held the gown up in front of me, critically assessing the result. It was gorgeous, I had to admit. The slinky rose silk was decorated with three-dimensional flowers, each petal hand-painted and hand-hemmed with the tiniest stitches imaginable. Awed, I nodded my agreement, so dazzled I failed to notice just how low the V-neck was, or that the V was even lower in back than in front, making a bra absolutely impossible.