Art of Evil

by Bancroft, Blair

  “Martin didn’t call himself, dear. It was that nice young man we met at the Gala.” She smiled, conspiratorially. “Tall, dark, handsome. The one Madame Celestine told me about. You should wear something sexy, child. He’s a hunk.”

  I closed my eyes and attempted to control my breathing. I was trying to put my life back together, and the very sky seemed to be raining problems. Billie Ball Hamlin, Ken Parrish, even murder I might be able to handle. Josh Thomas was another story altogether.

  “A Celtic harpist,” Aunt Hy gushed. “You know how you love Celtic music, Aurora. It will be a lovely evening.”

  “Yardarm time,” Jody Tyler announced, thrusting a scotch into my hand.

  “You are a treasure,” I hissed out of the corner of my mouth as she zipped back toward the kitchen.

  “Tomorrow night,” Aunt Hy said as she drifted off toward her bedroom. “Choose something lovely to wear. Martin thinks highly of the dear boy, and Martin is an excellent judge of character.”

  Dear boy. I choked on my Glenlivet, so much so I had to grope my way to the couch and sit down, still coughing. Jody came running from the kitchen, with good old Marian right behind. Lord, how I hated people hovering, still thinking of me as an invalid! After one last hacking cough, I wiped my eyes and told Marian, with as much dignity as I could muster, that I would not be home for supper.

  “Mr. Thomas is it?” she asked, eyes alight with romance. (There were no secrets around Aunt Hy.) Jody, still clutching a dish towel, looked just as eager.

  “No,” I growled. “I’m being interrogated by the Sarasota Police Department.”

  Only after I said it did I realize I had unnecessarily hurt two people’s feelings. For some reason Marian Edmundson and Jody Tyler cared about me. They wanted me to have a date. Be like other women my age. I muttered an apology and fled to my room.

  So what does a has-been Feeb wear for a purely professional meeting with a Sarasota City Cop? Detective Parrish had never seen me in anything but my tram garb. Maybe it was a good thing my parents had gone to Philly and packed up nearly every stitch I owned. Hangers whizzed along the rod as I sought one particular little black dress. Jody had unpacked the boxes Mom sent. I hadn’t really looked at any of my dresses since . . .

  My fingers paused on the shoulder of the little black dress. I backed away, staggering like a drunk at closing time, my mind filled with kaleidoscope visions of other times and places. I’d never wear that dress again. Maybe I should Goodwill the lot of them. No wonder I’d been letting Aunt Hy doll me up in vintage gowns.

  I settled for black slacks and a teal silk sweater. At least it wasn’t as drab as my tram garb. I’d just learned a bitter lesson. It was going to be a long time before any man could find so much as a sliver of space in my damaged heart.

  Mike’s Place is a waterfront snack shack that grew with the times. Downstairs is a bar with a large outdoor dining terrace. The second floor and its spectacular view is reserved for more elegant dining. Ken Parrish was waiting and ushered me onto the sidewalk the moment the valet attendant slipped behind the Caddy’s wheel. “Out or in?” he asked.

  I paused, testing the nip in the evening sea breeze. I’d now been in Florida long enough to adapt my notions of chilly. “In,” I told him. Ken promptly turned us toward the elevator to the second floor. The appreciative once-over he gave me just before we turned was not the attitude of a detective to a witness. Nor was it the conscious look of a married man taking another woman out to supper. I was still indulging in a secret little smile when the elevator opened onto the second floor dining room.

  On three sides, behind the expanse of white tablecloths, gleaming silverware, and glimmering candles, was a breathtaking view of Sarasota Bay. Lights shone from many of the boats anchored just off shore, as if they’d been placed there solely to provide us with a picturesque view. Beyond them, also on three sides, were a myriad lights from houses, condos, hotels, and the arch of the bridge out to Pelican Key. I had not been to Mike’s Place since a visit to Florida many years ago. It was hard to tear my eyes from the view long enough to read the menu. When I did, I blinked. Obviously, Mike’s Place had increased its prices along with its size and the quality of its chef.

  “We’ll go Dutch,” I said.

  “Expense account,” he drawled.

  Sure it was. Sarasota City Cop with an expense account. Ha!

  We ordered drinks. “Tell me about Billie,” I said, forgetting who was supposed to be asking the questions.

  “We twisted his thumbs, sent him home. He knows he’s not to make any sudden trips.”

  “He adored that girl.”

  “Love. Hate.” Ken shrugged. “A girl like that. Taking it all off every day for a bunch of student artists. That’s a lot of temptation.”

  “But she wasn’t like that!” I hissed, wishing we were having this conversation in private where I could have the satisfaction of shouting at him.

  “She was an artists’ model.”

  “So her greatest talent,” I mocked, “was being able to sit still for long periods of time. Since when is that a crime?”

  “She’s dead,” Ken said, as if poor Lydia’s demise proved his point.

  “And I thought you were different—” I snapped my mouth shut as our Guinness arrived, suitably “built” with only a narrow layer of foam on top. I took a swallow, then wondered, idiotically, if I had a foamstash on my upper lip. A patently ridiculous position from which to scold a cop—City, County, State, or Fed.

  Ken’s face seemed to have permanently disappeared behind his mug. I wiped my napkin over my mouth, tried again. “She was an artists’ model, so she deserved what she got,” I sneered.

  But the City Cop wouldn’t fight. “Would you have any idea why Billie is so determined not to say where he was last night?”

  “Some people actually stay home, sleep in their own beds.”

  “We found someone who called Billie at eleven and got no answer. His voice mail recorded the time.”

  I squirmed, finally deciding an illegal alibi was better than no alibi at all. “He was probably communing with an alligator,” I mumbled.

  “Say again?”

  So I told Ken about Billie’s alternate source of income. “He told me he goes out almost every night. The money’s surprisingly good. He didn’t really need the two thousand he got paid for the effigies.”

  Ken plunked his mug onto the table and glared at me. “You’re slipping, Travis. Hasn’t it occurred to you maybe no one paid him at all? Hamlin was just setting a scenario for paying the girl back?”

  “He wouldn’t! Never.” I stopped, thought about it. “All right,” I said, “I concede almost anyone can snap if the conditions are right, but premeditated murder? Billie? No way!”

  Time out as our salads arrived. It occurred to me I really didn’t want to fight while dining out on baked stuffed shrimp. I took a deep breath. “Tell me,” I said, “are you getting extra traffic in the Evidence Room since the effigies were added?”

  Light warmed Detective Parrish’s gray eyes. Humor? Relief? Probably both. “Lots of traffic, he assured me, straight-faced. “But it’s all right. We’ve got the Roman guy standing guard over the naked girl.”

  I tried to picture the two nearly life-size effigies in the property room, alongside the array of weapons, drugs, and sundry other evidence. A startlingly real girl, in full color, wearing nothing but rope and an occasional flower . . . Oh, yes, I bet both cops and staff were wearing a path to that part of Cop Central.

  In unspoken agreement Ken and I finished our meal to the accompaniment of small talk. But, unfortunately, the harmony didn’t last long. We got into it again over coffee.

  As we settled down to talking about Lydia’s murder, things went well enough at first. Step by step, I detailed my discovery of the body, recalling things that surprised me. Like the padlock on the cage door. The strength that would have been needed to boost the body into the cage four feet above the floor. The lack of a blood
trail. “She was killed there,” I said, “but I’m willing to bet you’ll find she was drugged. No way could anyone have gotten her into that cage alive any other way.”

  Ken nodded. “Almost surely a man. With access to keys. Like a security guard,” he added.

  And we were off again, acrimony flying. No way had Billy killed Lydia Hewitt.

  My initial impression, the day I met Detective Sergeant Ken Parrish, had been right. Behind his Everyman face was a very hard head. As he handed me into the Caddy, I very much doubted I had convinced him Billie Ball Hamlin was being framed.

  Chapter 12

  Surprisingly, after my posh but rocky interrogation by Ken Parrish at Mike’s Place, Josh Thomas was a welcome relief. On the night of the Celtic harp concert at the Bellman, his charcoal pinstripe suit might have looked more at home in New York or Chicago and his sculpted saturnine features might have stepped out of a vampire movie, but he wasn’t glaring at me or asking questions I didn’t want to answer. He was, in fact, cool, contained, and only as polite as good manners dictated. In an all-too-feminine reaction I despised, I found myself itching to prod him into something more. Maybe even something like the open interest displayed when he’d peered down my décolletage that night at the Gala.

  But I didn’t, of course. We both had our pride. We sat stiffly, side by side, on folding chairs while the harpist filled the hall with glorious music and wall-sized paintings by Rubens looked down on the crowd of beautiful people, almost as if gleaming with approval. As if to say, this was the way art should be displayed, not just as an object hanging on a wall while people walked by and gawked, but as part of a living environment, where sometimes great art is merely a backdrop for other aspects of fine living.

  I have a weakness for Celtic music, so my mood was mellow when we arrived back at the Ritz-Carlton. I didn’t even consider protesting when Josh winkled me away from Martin and Aunt Hy, shepherding me straight into the Cà d’Zan lounge. This time we sat on a cozy couch set at a right angle to the terrace and marina outside. In the dim light Josh’s hair still managed to gleam blue-black, a darker hue than the oxidized surface of The Sleeping Satyr, supposedly transported to Tallahassee for cleaning. His eyes, however, were as blank. But not sightless. Oh, no, never that. Josh Thomas missed nothing.

  “Your friend’s gotten himself in major trouble,” he said. “Any chance he did it?”

  “No.” I scowled.

  For the first time that evening Josh unbent a little. His dark eyes projected a slight warmth, instead of swallowing every sign of emotion whole. “Loyalty,” he mused. “I like that in a woman.”

  I ignored the remark. “If Billie were going to kill someone, he wouldn’t have called attention to himself by creating those effigies.”

  “Crime of passion,” Josh countered. “He was trying to impress her. It backfired.”

  “No way.”

  Josh leaned back against the end of the Persian-patterned sofa and threw down the gauntlet. “All right, Ms. Travis, what’s your theory?”

  “Billie was set up. Very neatly. Why, I don’t know. But I have a horrible feeling Lydia’s death may be part of something more. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

  For a moment Josh stared down at his perfectly manicured fingernails. “Interesting,” he murmured. “On our way over here tonight Martin said almost exactly the same thing.”

  I pounced on his admission. “I think Martin knows more than he’s telling. Has he said anything?”

  “Not a word.”

  “You’re the secret agent man,” I said. “Are you sure this has nothing to do with something you’re working on?”

  Secret agent man. And he didn’t even blink.

  “I’m between jobs. On vacation. Remember?” he added on a taunting note, his thoughts as clear as if he’d said them out loud. Remember I asked you to show me around. And you turned me down. Remember that’s why I’m being so damn cool tonight. I got dragged on this date kicking and hollering.

  Well, so had I.

  Not quite. Hell, I loved Celtic harpists.

  “You could help,” I said, leaning in. “I’m theorizing on instinct, but I think Martin knows something. And you’d probably have better luck finding out what it is.” I proffered a slow smile. “Busman’s holiday,” I said.

  “That would make two of us,” Josh pointed out.

  A neat reminder neither one of us had any legal right to be investigating a murder at the Bellman.

  “She was a nice girl,” I said. “Yesterday’s newspapers called her an ‘experienced artists’ model.’ They made her sound like a whore when she was just a sweet-faced kid, not a day over twenty-three. And Billie being brought in for questioning came out sounding like he was an art student transformed into Jack the Ripper by the sight of all that naked flesh.”

  “Bible Belt,” Josh intoned. “I imagine a lot of people around here have trouble dealing with the concept of naked models.”

  “This is the cultural capital of Florida,” I snapped. “A sophisticated city.”

  “Scratch the surface . . .” Josh said, and shrugged. “Think positive. It’s unlikely your friend will get to meet Old Sparky. The jury will recognize the Temptation of Jezebel and only give him Life.”

  “That’s horrible,” I breathed. “Both Lydia and Billie deserve better than that. She was a darling, he’s being framed, and I’m going to find out why.”

  Josh actually smiled. Lightly, he applauded. “Bravissima, Rory. I actually see a spark of life in you.” He held up his hand to stop my sputtering retort. “Truthfully, I’m finding vacationing without the charming guide I’d thought to have a bit of a bore. So—on the condition you come clean with me, share everything you know, think you know, or even suspect might possibly be true—I’ll help. I’ll work on Martin, snoop around, do what I can.”

  I must have looked highly skeptical for he added: “I’m on your side. The whole thing’s too pat. There’s a puppet master somewhere, pulling strings in a very complex performance. I agree that what we’ve seen so far is maybe only the Prologue.”

  Let’s face it. I was drawn to the man. Wary, but fascinated. There were depths in him I couldn’t understand, places I feared to go. Josh was Life . . . and Death. I should be terrified, butI’d sensed the inevitability of this moment from that first zap of lightning.

  I took a chance.

  So we settled in and put our heads together. Me and my Awakened Satyr. Only when I woke in the wee hours to my familiar nightmare of falling, falling, falling, did I think to wonder if I’d spent the evening with the very clever Puppet Master himself.

  Effigies, mannequins, and murder aside, each day since mid-October, activity at the Bellman Museum of Art had increased as the Snowbirds returned from Up North. As visitors, eager to see the newly renovated Casa Bellissima increased, so did the tram traffic. In addition, Thanksgiving and Christmas would bring an explosion of visiting family members, to be followed by the height of the Winter Season in January, February, and March. Not surprisingly, a fourth driver—newly retired—had just been assigned to my Friday afternoon shift. His name was Rob Varney, and I met him two days after the concert in the Rubens’ galleries.

  Rob was early retirement age, still on the sunny side of sixty. A good-looking man with a tan that suggested golf courses, sailing, or fishing, but, somehow, he was as far from a Parker St. Clair as a man could get. There was nothing false about Rob. He had a firm handshake, and his eyes smiled as well as his mouth. He even had the grace to flirt just a little, enough to show he was aware I wasn’t just another one of the guys. I liked him immediately. There was no doubt he’d make an expert meeter and greeter for the Bellman.

  Rob Varney did have one startling attribute. He looked remarkably like a twenty-first century version of Richard Bellman, as compared to Bellman’s full-length portrait at a similar age, which now hung in the Casa Bellissima . Both were tall, sturdy men with round faces and dark wavy hair, only slightly shot with gray. Whe
n I remarked on the resemblance, Rob looked genuinely surprised. Later, after he’d seen the portrait, he admitted to the resemblance but swore it was coincidental. I, of course, continued to wonder.

  Late in the afternoon, when it seemed our visitors had all gotten where they wanted to go, I pulled up behind Rob’s tram at the Art Museum stop. He unfolded from his tram and came back to talk to me. He’d heard I’d been present at a number of crucial moments in the past few weeks, and would I tell him about it? His curiosity was natural, I thought, so I went through the whole thing, sticking, like Dragnet, to just the facts and leaving out my speculations. Rob nodded, seeming to absorb the complex tale with ease.

  “Were you a cop?” I asked.

  A slow smile spread across his broad face. “No—just insatiably curious. I’m here because four months of retirement had me climbing the walls. Though I have to admit when I trained to drive a tram, I didn’t expect to have to keep an eye out for dead bodies.”

  He had a point.

  “It’s a bit odd, isn’t it?” he added. “The mannequin and a naked effigy on the same night?”

  “Definitely. The mannequin may have been a genuine prank,” I offered, once again feeling nausea rise at recollection of all those shattered pieces.

  Rob Varney was quick. “And you think the effigies weren’t?” he challenged.

  I shrugged. I had not, of course, told him about the two thousand dollars. I had not mentioned Billie at all.

  He straightened up, slowly scanned the grounds, which looked as perfectly quiet and peaceful as they always did. “Murder at the Bellman,” he murmured. “It seems so very out of place. Makes me wonder what could possibly be so important that a young woman had to die for it.”