Art of Evil

by Bancroft, Blair

  Brisk, efficient, oh-so-clever Rory Travis, gone all to pieces over bitter memories and a few moments’ attention from a City Cop with a kind heart and a crooked smile.

  Chapter 9

  Two days later I was forced to another raid on Aunt Hy’s vintage clothing. Martin Longstreet, true gentleman of the old school, invited Aunt Hy and myself to the Ritz-Carlton’s famous Tea. “In reparation for our appallingly disturbed evening at the Gala,” he said. As far as I was concerned, any excuse would do. Aunt Hy had taken me to tea shortly after my arrival last July, and I promise you “Tea” at the Ritz-Carlton is an epic experience.

  Today, I chose a slinky Thirties dress in a pastel flower print that looked as if it had dropped off an Impressionist canvas. The dress was calf-length, with lots of gores . . . and I found myself wishing Ken Parrish could see me. After all, Josh Thomas already knew what I looked like when I made an effort. And, besides—most annoyingly—Aunt Hy never stopped singing Josh’s praises. “An excellent young man,” she purred. “So hard to find a real one these days. I just knew I could count on Madame Celestine.”

  I didn’t disillusion her. I didn’t tell her that for a girl who wasn’t looking—thank you very much—Ken Parrish was a much safer fantasy.

  Aunt Hy gilded the lily by selecting a picture hat for me. Its circumference was wider than one of my tram wheel. The hat was navy blue straw and had a matching velvet ribbon trailing down the back. (Shoes, fortunately, were no longer a problem. I had gone shopping and purchased flats in nearly every color of the rainbow.) I stared into the room’s full-length mirror (with ornate gilded frame) and saw a slim, almost elegant creature, whose straight brown hair gleamed softly just shy of her shoulders. The green in her eyes seemed to dominate the blue today, providing an extra sparkle of interest . Skin glowed healthily over rather fine cheekbones, and the lips looked positively . . . inviting. I tried to make the corners of my mouth turn down. They refused to move. Let’s face it, I looked great. Truthfully, it would have been nice if Ken or Josh—or maybe both—were waiting in the lobby below.

  Aunt Hy was still babbling on about Madame Celestine and Josh Thomas as I followed her into the elevator. As we swept into the Tea Room, following the hostess, who was also gowned in a flowered print à la the Thirties, I recalled the first time I had been to Tea, when I had hunched my shoulders and made a spectacle of myself, staggering across the bright sunny room, wearing black slacks, a white shirt, and sneakers, and leaning heavily on my aluminum quad cane.

  Yes, baby, I’d come a long way. Until this moment, I hadn’t appreciated how far.

  As we crossed the room, the harpist was playing, a marvelous cascade of sound that made me feel all that music was just for us. Martin rose to greet us, his spare figure emphasized by his height, gray-blue eyes sparkling behind his bifocals and capped by a thick crown of white hair. At his insistence we ordered the Champagne Tea, which included a tulip glass of bubbly to add that little something extra. Our choice of teas, however, was as varied as our personalities. Aunt Hy, a creature of habit, chose her perennial favorite, Earl Grey. I, perhaps dazzled by the advent of two men into my life, experimented with something called China Rose Petal. Martin, ever an intriguing man, ordered Lapsang Souchong. Pungent and smoky. It occurred to me that Josh Thomas—if tea ever touched those thin lips—might also drink Lapsang Souchong. Ken Parrish, I decided, was more of a conventional English Breakfast Tea man.

  Three flowered china pots arrived, each carefully set on its own warmer. The hostess poured. Our flutes of champagne appeared next to our bone china tea cups. We sipped, we savored. Then, ignoring good manners, I pounced on Martin. (Fortunately, the harpist had just gone on break, so I didn’t feel I was stepping on her exquisite notes.)

  November is not yet full Season in Florida, so we had the room almost entirely to ourselves. There was no danger of being overheard. “Martin,” I said, leaping straight in, “is there anything going on with the hierarchy at the Bellman that would provide a motive for the effigies?”

  His reaction was not at all what I expected. Martin Longstreet was as much the master of the poker face as Josh Thomas and Ken Parrish. But I saw a flicker of something—guilt?—quite clearly. I’d hit a nerve.

  “I’m sure you are aware that we seem to have two different factions causing trouble,” Martin replied, recovering his smooth façade and neatly deflecting my question.

  “Yes.” I waited, looking hopeful.

  “You do not accept the theory of student pranks?” Martin Longstreet at his most bland. Sunlight, filtering in from the terrace, glinted off his glasses.

  “One maybe, even two, but not all three.” Not to mention an alleged suicide.

  Aunt Hy was watching us, eyes shifting back and forth like a spectator at a tennis match. With precise skill, Martin poured himself another cup of Lapsang Souchong. “Martin,” I said, striving for a patience I didn’t feel, “have you heard so much as a rumor of anything odd? Anything at all?”

  Ignoring his freshly poured tea, he took a healthy swallow of champagne. “There’s a bit of a flap with one of the Board members,” he conceded. “Nothing that could possibly have anything to do with papier maché or mannequins.”

  And that, I realized, was all I’d get out of him on the subject. “What about the Bellman family?”

  “Richard and Opal had no children,” he pronounced. Repressively. Almost as if he were working at giving me a hard time.

  “Richard had siblings and associates.”

  “Rory, my dear, it was a very long time ago. I can’t see how any repercussions could have lasted this long.”

  I opened my mouth and caught a glimpse of the hostess returning with a large three-tiered server. Okay, I can’t resist the temptation to make your mouth water. Picture Smoked Salmon on Baby Brioche, Grilled Zucchini and Peppers on Olive Bread, Benne Seed Crusted Chicken Salad on Sourdough Bread, Lemon and Jonah Crab Salad on Pain au Lait, Cinnamon and Ginger Shortbreads, Raspberry Almond Cake, Freshly Baked Scones with Devonshire Cream. And for “dessert,” Coffee Opera, Key Lime Pie, Mini Fruit Tarts, Macaroon of the Day, and Jellied Fruit.

  The harpist returned, and we floated through the food and lashings of tea to enchanting ripples of music. And then I saw Martin’s face go blank, followed by a smile so polished and professional you would have had to know him well to realize he had just spotted someone he disliked. Martin excused himself and crossed the room to a couple who had just arrived. Both were early retirement age; the man at least six-three, perhaps mid-fifties; his wife, a forever forty-nine. They were plucked and polished and toned, broadcasting on all frequencies they belonged only to the most exclusive golf, tennis, and country clubs, with the yacht club thrown in for good measure. Motor, not sail, I thought. Sailing might disturb the manicures and the coiffeurs (his as well as hers).

  I’d never seen him before, but I recognized her. It was the docent who had lodged a complaint over the stroller incident. (I’d received a pat on the back, instead, from the Chief of Security.) At the moment she was so delighted with playing the gracious lady in the Ritz-Carlton Tea Room that she didn’t see me for dust. And if she had, I doubted she would have recognized me. She was the type who noticed lesser mortals only when they caused her trouble. Fortunately, her disdain did not extend to Martin Longstreet, a senior member of the Bellman Board of Directors. She was, in fact, practically simpering.

  Aunt Hy leaned close. “An awful creature,” she sniffed. “Money but no background, my dear. None at all. I can’t imagine what Parker sees in her.”

  “You know him?”

  “Oh my, yes. I’ve known him since he was born. Good family. Upper East Side, summers on the Vineyard, winters in Sarasota. Princeton, Wall Street. I believe I heard he started his own company sometime back—perhaps ten or fifteen years ago. And why shouldn’t he? He was born with the silver spoon and everything he touches turns to gold. She, however,” my aunt declared with asperity, “is a bitch. I’m certain she must mangle h
er Casa tours quite dreadfully. Her family may be rolling in wealth, but her accent reeks of Brooklyn . . . or perhaps it’s the Midwest . . . or Texas.” Aunt Hy waved a dismissive hand. “Oil, cattle, cornflakes, something of that kind. Totally declassé, my dear.”

  Sometimes one forgot Aunt Hy had been a very astute lady for more than a quarter century before I was born. And she was so much a product of another age that she wouldn’t even recognize PC as Personal Computer, let alone the more current Politically Correct. I opened my mouth to beg for more dirt, but Martin was coming back, bringing guests. Parker and Melinda St. Clair graciously allowed themselves to be introduced. I enjoyed the brief moment of confusion when she tried to place why I looked familiar. It didn’t last long. Obviously, I was not worth the effort.

  We exchanged the customary platitudes and, then, succumbing to an urge to mischief, I announced I drove a tram two days a week at the Bellman. Parker St. Clair displayed the full wattage of his perfectly capped teeth. “Splendid,” he boomed. “If only we had more volunteers your age.” I had to give him points. There wasn’t a hint he considered tram drivers second class citizens. But then my aunt was Hyacinth Van Horne, which definitely counted for something. And Parker St. Clair was the type who was already speculating on the odds of my inheriting her fortune.

  Melinda St. Clair, however, had gone pale. She actually placed her hand on her husband’s arm, as if to steer him back to their table. An excessive reaction, I thought, to her belated recollection of the day we had butted heads over a stroller. What had Martin told them? Come meet Mrs. Van Horne’s niece, the FBI agent? Even so, Melinda St. Clair didn’t impress me as a woman who would give two shakes about anything less than an introduction to the President, the First Lady, the British Royal Family, and maybe a duke or two.

  Odd. I filed it away, along with the few strange expressions I’d caught from Martin. Josh Thomas was, at that moment, in the same deep murky place in my mind. Along with worry over Billie and my vague sense of impending doom. For Ken Parrish was right. Two thousand dollars was excessive for a prank, even in the realm of the seriously wealthy.

  “He’s one of our newer Board members,” Martin said as the St. Clairs returned to their Tea. Martin’s face was completely unreadable. Which meant there was a great deal he wasn’t saying.

  I let Aunt Hy and Martin chat over the last fruit tarts while I did some quick free associations. Had Martin produced Josh Thomas from the old boy network like a genie out of a bottle—a favor for a friend? (Poor Rory . . . let’s see if we can find her a job.) But what kind of a job would it be, if created by the machinations of an octogenarian spook, a Vietnam-era spook . . . and Josh Thomas, the enigma?

  Legality, Josh had said, was occasionally in doubt.

  “Aurora? Aurora, my dear?”

  Blindly, my lavender-flowered cane sinking into the plush carpet, I got up and followed Aunt Hy and Martin out of the room, nodding politely to the St. Clairs as I limped by. I hated every moment of that walk. I could feel my cool slipping, my face turning red. Melinda, blast her, must be consumed with satisfaction. She was the type to enjoy the imperfection of others.

  I’d gotten far less from Martin than I’d hoped. Perhaps if the St. Clairs hadn’t come in . . . I made a note to try him again when I could arrange more privacy. Aunt Hy, however, turned out to be a fount of information when I questioned her later that day. I hadn’t known her husband’s family had wintered in Sarasota since the days when Richard Bellman was one of its most prominent developers. Not only did Hyacinth Van Horne know all the old socialite families, she had a surprising knowledge of that other side of the coin, the circus. The Circus. The origin of the Bellman wealth. The tiger tamers and elephant trainers, trapeze artists and daredevils, the horses, poodles, and monkeys. The clowns and skimpily clad girls in a circus version of the Ziegfeld Follies. The managers, vendors, and roustabouts. They’d all wintered in Sarasota and Venice for more than sixty years—until stymied at last by deteriorating rail lines no one could afford to fix. Since the early nineties the Circus Train could venture no farther south than Tampa, but Sarasota County clung jealously to its museum, its memories, and something far more tangible—its long roster of circus families.

  It was quite possible, Aunt Hy told me, that the county had more circus people per square mile than any other place in the nation. In fact, there was so much talent floating about, one of the local high schools was noted for putting on an amazingly professional circus show each year. So even though the Bellman Circus had moved out of the city of Sarasota to the wide-open spaces of Venice in 1960 and was forced north to Tampa thirty years later, it was Sarasota that claimed it, still benefitting from a Bellman advertising blitz seventy-five years in the past.

  If any of the current odd events at the Bellman were rooted in Richard Bellman’s past, the circus—which created the basis of his fortune—was the place to look. With Aunt Hy’s connections, she was able to arrange an interview with the doyenne of local circus folk, a woman of great age and greater inner strength, who had endured tragedy as well as triumph. A woman whose name was synonymous with Circus. To my surprise, I found her living alone in a modest Florida ranch-style home. Maria Joffa was petite, with intelligent dark eyes snapping under hair of the same color. Only a network of not-so-deeply etched lines gave away her age. I noted with resignation that her birch cane with lion handle in brass was considerably classier than either of my canes.

  Yes, she told me, she’d read about the effigies in the newspaper. No, she could not imagine why anyone would do such a thing. All that risk of being caught . . . and for what? “A high-wire walker knows he is there to entertain,” she informed me with some asperity. “The trapeze artists, the clowns, even the elephants understand. It is what we do. It is our life. But to make people of papier maché? To toss a mannequin into a crowd? A paying crowd?” She threw up her hands, rippling the long fringe of her cut silk velvet shawl. “ This is a risk that makes no sense.”

  Solemnly, I agreed. This was all I would learn, I knew it, yet I lingered, lapping up the tales elicited by a few simple questions. I heard about marriages between dynastic circus families. Births and deaths, scandals and tragedies, the many attempts to start new circuses—the failures, the occasional struggling successes. But nowhere could I find a single slim thread to tie any aspect of the circus or circus families in Sarasota County to two effigies and a mannequin.

  Ninety minutes and three glasses of iced tea later, I thanked Maria Joffa and sloshed back to the Caddy, full of wonder, admiration, and guilt. There was nothing like a peek at other people’s sorrows to offer a salutary lesson in objectivity. A kick in the pants, to be perfectly honest. It was almost as if Maria had taken a crowbar in her frail liver-spotted hands and pried open that crack in my icy armor another inch or two. Although circus people were devoted to their art, it was seldom fun and games. It was agonizing practice, cut-throat competition, brilliant moments of triumph punctuated by terror and tragedy. With what arrogance had I let my tunnel vision convince me I was the only person who had ever suffered?

  On the drive home I contemplated, glumly, just how little I had accomplished in my efforts to help Billie. I’d struck out with the circus connection, and Ken Parrish had come close to laughing in my face when I’d asked about the M.E.’s report on Tim Mundell’s suicide, particularly when I’d brought up the fact that Billie had been the one to hint at murder.

  “Tell your rent-a-cop pal to stick to sculpting,” Ken scoffed. “Mundell was full of scotch and Prozac—for which he had a legitimate prescription.”

  “But could he climb a tree in that condition?”

  “Kids that age can do darn near anything, given the right incentive.”

  So I’d shoved the suicide of a twenty-year-old computer nerd from Tempe, Arizona, to the back of my mind. I had enough problems, didn’t I? But I have to tell you, that boy’s corpse wouldn’t lie easy. It dangled in my mind, next to the long brown roots of the banyan, swaying in the br
eeze off Sarasota Bay. There was something . . . something that wasn’t right.

  After that flash of conviction that Martin and Josh were up to something more than arranging a job for a cripple, my infamous intuition had gone back into hibernation. So I forged ahead, relying on the tried and true—asking questions.

  A few days after my interview with Maria Joffa, I found my way to a very different circus-oriented location. A frame house in one of the oldest parts of town, it was tucked back under a canopy of palms, pines, and a massive jacaranda tree. It appeared to have been built in the heyday of local development in the mid-twenties, and it was a wonder Florida’s voracious termites hadn’t demolished it long since.

  The house was charming. And so was its owner. Daniel Miller was old enough to remember the Circus as it was just after World War II. But his knowledge extended farther back, for his father had been part of the old circus hierarchy, one of those who knew where all the old bones were buried. (Or so Aunt Hy told me.)

  Smaller and younger than Martin Longstreet, Daniel Miller was, I guessed, in his late sixties or early seventies. His gray hair was balding on top, but his general enthusiasm and attitude would have shamed many thirty-year-olds. I had come to hear about his beloved Circus, and he could hardly wait to show me. Everywhere I looked, the walls were covered by photos, the black and whites of every aspect of circus life, interspersed with colorful posters from a bygone age. In the living room, even the ceiling was postered over. I leaned on my cane and gaped.

  Daniel Miller was pointing, rattling off names completely unknown to me. I smiled, I nodded. Undoubtedly, I looked as stunned as I was, for he stopped in mid-sentence and said, “Forgive me, my dear. I should have realized it means nothing to you. You’re far too young.”