Art of Evil

by Bancroft, Blair

  I wondered if Martin danced. The picture of Aunt Hy in the arms of some young dance instructor out to make a bit extra on the side turned my stomach. Enough to put steel back in my leg and get me to my feet. I thanked Karen profusely and headed for my car.

  “Good luck, miss,” Fred said, brown eyes alight with sincerity.

  But when I found the dance studio, Aunt Hy had come and gone. The girl at the desk did not have the satisfied look of someone who had witnessed the signing of a pricey contract. No, she had not called a taxi for Mrs. Van Horne. Perhaps the old lady had found one outside. Perhaps she had decided to explore the many boutiques in the area.

  I wondered if I should call in a favor with Ken Parrish. Call Martin. Or Josh. In the end, I did what Karen Wayland had done. I went back inside, asked for a phone book, and began calling the cab companies. I didn’t hesitate to use those magic words, “FBI.” On the third try: yes, a fare meeting Aunt Hy’s description had been dropped off at a home on Pelican Key. I didn’t need to listen to the address. I knew it by heart.

  How long ago? Ten minutes. I thanked the dispatcher, thanked the girl who’d loaned me the phone book, and took off at a near run. It would take ten or fifteen minutes to get through the heavy traffic to Pelican Key. Making it approximately a half hour for a little old lady, lost in the past, to be turned away from the home that had been her own for most of her lifetime. To wander past mansions that hadn’t existed in the time her mind had reverted to. Or—worse yet—to find herself wandering the congested streets around the central shopping area, with cars and pedestrians whizzing in every direction when she might well be reliving the slow and easy days of the Forties or Fifties, before Florida’s most recent real estate boom.

  I sat at the red light where the Tamiami Trail crossed the road to Pelican Key and wiped away a tear. Damn! She was a wonderful old lady. I’d love her even if she weren’t my grandmother’s sister.

  It’s impossible to speed on the way out to Pelican Island. The traffic is solid. Just choose a lane and hope it keeps moving. A high-speed chase it wasn’t. I managed twenty-five past the new bridge construction, thirty as I passed the Sarasota Yacht Club. I hung a left and drove straight to Aunt Hy’s old home, keeping a sharp eye to left and right as I drove down the secluded streets, which exuded every evidence of the wildly wealthy. There was no sign of Aunt Hy.

  I pulled up in front of monumental black wrought iron gates and rang the bell. I explained my problem to a disembodied voice echoing from the speaker system. Slowly, the gates swung open.

  Aunt Hy was having tea and ginger cookies at the old wooden table in the kitchen. She smiled when she saw me. “Aurora, my dear, you have come to my rescue. What a good child you are!” She threw open her arms, and we hugged, although my eyes were too misted to see her clearly.

  “She was trying to remember her phone number, miss,” said the housekeeper, “but she had a bit of trouble.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I apologized, “but she lived here so long . . .” The housekeeper and I exchanged a look that said it all. Thank God this perfect stranger understood. She introduced herself as Flora Evans. There was a trace of the Welsh lingering in her voice.

  “The family hasn’t come down for the winter yet,” she explained. “I have come ahead to hire staff and prepare the house.”

  “Thank God you did!” I told her about my visions of Aunt Hy wandering about lost and alone.

  She nodded. “I was just about to call the police, but I hoped someone would think to look for her here. Such a lovely old lady. I couldn’t see her go off in a patrol car, now could I?”

  “I never spent much time in the kitchen,” Aunt Hy interjected brightly. “It’s really rather nice. I like it.” She sighed. “I suppose I should have learned to cook, but I never had to, you know. My Edgar had such a lot of money.” Her voice, with her mind, trailed off into the past.

  Suddenly embarrassed, I faced up to discovering if I was dealing with old school values or modern reality. I looked at Mrs. Evans. “Would you accept—”

  I got no further. “Oh, my no, miss,” she exclaimed. “I’m happy to be of help. It’s not often a person gets a chance to do a good deed. Made my day, I can tell you. You just take the poor lady home where she can be comfortable with all her own things around her.”

  I wouldn’t let it go at that, of course. A gift certificate inside a thank-you card would not be rejected, I thought. After another round of profound thanks from both Aunt Hy and myself, we made our way to the car. We were on the causeway, just before the drawbridge, when Aunt Hy said: “Madame Celestine was right. Those dance lessons were a scam, Aurora. Five thousand for the first round of lessons and they knew someone who could make a gown that would be absolutely perfect for me for only another four. Foolish children, I could have taught them how true ballroom dancing is done.”

  Although my mind wasn’t quite keeping up with what she was saying, I managed to ask, “Then why did you go there?”

  Aunt Hy heaved a sigh that went straight to my heart. “The first lesson was free, you see, and it had been so long since I’d danced. It brought back so many memories . . .”

  Once again, I wondered if Martin Longstreet ever danced. “You say Madame Celestine warned you about scams?”

  “Oh, yes, dear. And you’re to be careful too. Celestine says there’s danger lurking where you least expect it. But,” Aunt Hy added brightly, “your love life is definitely improving. Two young men, Aurora. Delightful. I am so pleased for you.”

  I had not mentioned a single word at home about Ken Parrish. Not one. The Sarasota City Police Department could stay out of my aunt’s high-rise condo at the Ritz, thank you very much. So either I was right that Martin and Aunt Hy were co-conspirators in matchmaking, or Martin shared all he knew with my aunt (highly unlikely), or Madame Celestine was not quite as much of a fraud as I thought. All three possibilities were abhorrent. I’d had months now of being jerked around like a puppet as outsiders—doctors, physical therapists, psychologists, my Uncle Sam employer, my family—dictated my life. I needed privacy. Independence. I would not be manipulated.

  I was an ungrateful ass, and I should be ashamed of myself.

  I was. Ashamed, that is. I’d barely cracked the chrysalis. I was so far from emerging as a gracefully mobile butterfly, physically or mentally, that the concept was downright ludicrous.

  That evening, after supper, when Josh called, asking me to join him downstairs for a drink, I invited him up to the condo instead. Shaken by the afternoon’s close call, I wasn’t yet ready to allow Aunt Hy out of my sight. And, yes, I also wanted to challenge him just a little. To see how Josh Thomas would react to Aunt Hy’s version of the palace at Versailles. And maybe, just maybe, he might seem more human if I saw him against a backdrop of home and hearth.

  It didn’t work, of course.

  The Sarasota newspaper recently printed an update on the Big Bang theory, the one where astronomers tell us the entire universe was created 13.7 billion years ago in one gigantic explosion. I’ve always found the idea bizarre, but they may have got one thing right. They say the universe is four percent atoms, twenty-three percent dark matter and seventy-three percent some mysterious element called “dark energy.” I’m inclined to believe them, because the description fits Josh Thomas to a T.

  When I let him into Aunt Hy’s condo, his dark presence permeated the spacious well-lit rooms. I swear the polish dimmed on the gleaming exotic wood furniture, shadows filtered over the glazed ceramics and sparkling glass, even those in the subtly lit etagères. The sturdy Tang horse, however, seemed to expand, its head held proudly, its polished flanks gleaming. Look at me, look at me! Josh went straight to it, studying it for some moments before examining the other Oriental ceramics in the case. He wandered to the next etagère and on about the room, his eyes coming to rest at last on the Meissen shepherd and shepherdess on the mantel. “These just sit out here?” he asked at last, his back to the pink marble fireplace. “Without so muc
h as a glass front and a lock?”

  “I thought they were reproductions,” I admitted, “until I saw the insurance premium.”

  “Insurance can’t replace them,” Josh snapped. “They ought to be in a museum.”

  “Aunt Hy has a right to enjoy her things!” I snapped right back, glaring. But he’d passed the test. His polish wasn’t all on the outside. Josh Thomas recognized real art when he saw it.

  “This is the most blatant burglary bait I’ve seen in years,” he added, unnecessarily belaboring the point.

  I told him in no uncertain terms that Aunt Hy’s penthouse at the Ritz was probably more secure than most museums.

  “Probably?” he huffed, throwing my words straight back. “I could clean this place out in ten minutes flat.”

  We stood there glaring at each other while I rearranged the neat little pigeonholes of my mind. Josh Thomas, art thief? Or merely Josh Thomas, know-it-all, expressing his superior male opinion?

  I turned my back and stomped off to the kitchen. As I began to tumble ice into the first of two squat Waterford glasses, Josh’s arms came round me from both sides and seized the glass. Ice tumbled over the edge of the doorfront icemaker, spilled onto the floor. My body stung, as if I’d been encased in dry ice. I was frozen, going up in flames.

  I jerked away, ending up across the room with my back against the wall of double ovens.

  “Sorry,” Josh murmured, after a few interesting moments as he juggled the Waterford glasses to keep them from shattering on the Italian tile floor. He shook his head. “Poor Rory. I didn’t think you were that skittish.”

  I stalked off to the living room, leaving him to find the marquetry cabinet that held the liquor supply. By now Josh knew my taste, pouring out the Glenlivet without a word. After handing me my drink, he eased himself into an upholstered armchair five feet away from the couch where I was sitting. He took a hefty swallow of his drink, then simply stared at me, radiating blank suavity.

  “Well,” I said, “did you learn anything from Martin?”

  “Didn’t your mama ever tell you about all work and no play?”

  “Didn’t yours? I thought you told me this was your first vacation in years.”

  “Oh, very good,” Josh mocked. “Rory Travis, the girl with repartee for all occasions.”

  Correction. He was not as calm and cool as he appeared. “What did Martin say?”

  “Martin, my dear Rory, is the original clam. Martin said absolutely nothing.”

  “Maybe you really are a burglar,” I mused. “Surely a spook-type would have managed better.”

  Josh raised his glass in salute. To Martin, I was sure. Not to me. “Martin is the spook’s spook,” he said. “Even at his age the grass does not grow beneath his fast-shuffling feet. All I got out of him was that there was a member of the Board currently involved in a business problem that has absolutely nothing to do with the Bellman. It was not the kind of problem that could possibly be related to a dead girl, two effigies, or a mannequin covered in fingernail polish. It was the Board member’s private business and, therefore, he was not going to discuss it.”

  I thought about it. “Do you think he’s right?” I asked.

  “I think I’d like to know what he’s concealing.”

  “I wonder . . . he may mean Parker St. Clair.” I told Josh about our meeting with the St. Clairs in the Tea Room downstairs. And about the distinct impression of distaste I had gotten from Martin when he had introduced Aunt Hy and myself to Parker and Melinda St. Clair.

  “Parker St. Clair,” Josh, savoring the name. “Let me check him out for you. I’m feeling remarkably useless at the moment.”

  I nodded, though I suddenly got the distinct impression he could have given me chapter and verse on Parker St. Clair without lifting a finger to a keyboard. And yet he was letting me take the lead, when I was quite certain it was many years since Josh Thomas had played second fiddle to anyone. He was backing off, professionally and emotionally. Giving me the time I needed to be me again.

  He was, in essence, a wiser and better person than I was at the moment.

  I resented him. His strength, his confidence. His power.

  I feared him. If he touched me again, I’d drag him into the bedroom and keep him straight through ‘til morning, and the Devil take the hindmost. Which was probably exactly what was happening. And the hindmost was me.

  I told him about my afternoon chasing down Aunt Hy. The depths of his black hole eyes actually parted long enough to let out a ray of sympathy. And I caught the moment when he clamped his jaw over his tongue to refrain from offering advice.

  For half an hour after that we rehashed the case from the Roman warrior to Lydia’s death, ending up as mystified as when we’d begun. Neither of us took it well. When Josh left at close to midnight, he made no attempt to kiss me goodnight.

  It wasn’t just Aunt Hy’s deteriorating health or Lydia’s death that formed my depression as I went to bed. Josh Thomas loomed, like some dark winged beast, over my every thought. I didn’t even like him, for heaven’s sake.

  Then again, I doubted heaven had anything to do with Josh Thomas.

  Chapter 14

  At nine-fifteen the next morning, as I was driving to meet that masochist, my physical therapist, my cell phone rang. Ken Parrish’s voice said, “I’m on my way to the Casa. Get over there now. I’ll leave word to let you in.”

  “What?” I squawked. But he’d hung up. I did a U-ey, and with a smile close to glee, I phoned the rehab center and told them not to expect me. Then I sobered as I realized only something serious could have triggered Ken’s abrupt call.

  Patrol cars, golf carts, Ken’s SUV, other unmarked cop cars. The scene was all too familiar. The bay gleamed tropical blue under nearly cloudless skies. Giant banyans and graceful palms ringed the uneven mix of asphalt and crushed shell that passed for the Casa’s parking lot. Birds twittered and small brown squirrels leaped across the green lawn. An ideal day in paradise. Yet blue uniforms stood guard at the top of the ramp to the mansion’s entrance, interspersed with the burgundy-vested museum guards. Every face was grim.

  Another murder. It had to be.

  The phalanx of guards parted, no need for explanations. Ken Parrish had done as promised, and, of course, the museum guards knew me. “Second floor,” one of them told me. “Richard’s bathroom.”

  When the elevator door opened on the second floor, I followed the low murmur of voices. (Somehow no one seems to shout in the face of death, although I’ve heard some really macabre black jokes.) I made my way through Richard Bellman’s bedroom with its sumptuous reproduction of Napoleon the Third’s furniture and the huge painting of a partially clad Pauline Bonaparte, hanging on the wall opposite the bed. (I once had a tram passenger ask me about that painting, wondering what Opal thought about her husband’s taste in bedroom art. Happily, I was able to tell him that Richard Bellman thought the first Napoleon’s sister resembled his Opal. He was, therefore, awaking each morning to a view of his wife. That, of course, is the official story. Frankly, I suspect the circus king turned art connoisseur simply had a genuine appreciation for a fine-looking, half-naked woman.)

  Moving past Pauline Bonaparte, I found that death had indeed come to the Casa Bellissima. Not, as I had been told, in Richard’s Bellman’s bathroom, with its tub cut from a solid block of golden marble. No, this body was in a room on the bay side of the house. A room with an actual barber chair, set so it had a view of the water and of Pelican Key, where Richard Bellman had been the driving force in real estate development. Except, today, the circus magnate and business entrepreneur was not the one sitting there ready for his morning shave. But someone was. I could see fluffy white shaving cream puffing out his cheeks in stark contrast to the blood congealing on his slashed neck, on his teal blue polo shirt and tan slacks. I could see the dark wavy hair, only lightly shot with gray, the round face, the ears that hugged his head, the broad shoulders of a sturdy body.

  “Tell me tha
t’s not Rob Varney,” I said.

  Ken looked up. “Sorry,” he muttered. “You got it in one.”

  Murder as art. There he was—the man who had said those words—artistically arranged with his head propped against the headrest of the barber chair, his feet flat on the metal supports. His right hand gripped the handle of a long narrow straight razor.

  As if anyone was going to believe this was a suicide! More likely, the razor was part of the artistic touch. Or a taunt. See . . . I’ve left the murder weapon in plain sight, and you still can’t find me.

  Talk about macabre jokes.

  “I barely knew him,” I murmured, “but I liked him. He was smart. Quick. He’s the one who called all our recent troubles the Art of Murder. A big sick joke by some madman. And now . . . it begins to look as if he might have been right.”

  Ken started to reply, but the medical examiner arrived, still puffing from the staircase. As he and Ken exchanged a few terse words, I stepped back into Richard’s bedroom. A team of forensic experts plus a medical examiner were about all the small shaving room could take. By the time Ken joined me, I had the essential question ready. “Has anyone checked on Billie?”

  Ken swore softly. “Don’t tell me you’ve come over to my side?”

  “Of course not. I’m just hoping he has a damn good alibi.”

  “Until the M.E. gives us Time of Death we won’t even know what hours to check. You know that, Travis.”

  I shrugged. “Guess I’m not accustomed to being first on scene, particularly twice in a row.”

  “That’s the Feebs for you. A day late and a dollar short.”

  Someone called a question to Ken and he was off, back into the midst of the seeming chaos around the barber chair. I examined Richard Bellman’s bedroom and bath with care, then thumped down the hall, past the stairs, following an alternate route to the room with barber chair. Left along the gallery overlooking the vast living room below—the one where the mannequin had shattered onto the tile floor—then left again, down another short hallway. I stopped short at the doorway opposite the one I had used before. The shaving room was still overflowing with technical experts. From here I had a better look at Rob Varney’s broad face. His eyes were open. Unsurprised. Blank.