Art of Evil

by Bancroft, Blair

  Chapter 16

  I turned down Josh’s offer to continue our sight-seeing with a drive along the chain of barrier islands all the way north to Cortez, one of the few Florida fishing villages that hasn’t been flattened in favor of sport fishing marinas, condos, and bayside resorts. Not that I wouldn’t have liked to opt out, to spend an afternoon being chauffeured around by the not-so-Sleeping Satyr, but I thought of Billie and Aunt Hy, of Lydia Hewitt and Rob Varney, and decided this wasn’t the time to explore what made Josh Thomas tick. Or my own very mixed emotions in that direction. The wise move was to be hard-headed. Then again, I was seldom wise.

  But this time I stuck stubbornly to no.

  Josh’s villa was on one of several streets with nearly identical homes, lined up side by side, daring their residents to find their way home on a dark night when three sheets to the wind. I use the nautical term advisedly, as each house has a dock, with boat, and each street dead-ends against Sarasota Bay. As Josh backed the car down the driveway, I waved my hand toward the waterfront end of the street. “Can we take a peek? I’d like to see if we can spot the museum from here.”

  I don’t think I fooled him for a minute. Josh did a very nice version of a man not looking toward his dock and his boat, as he nodded and drove the two blocks to where the street ended in a sea wall on the bay. He turned off the engine, leaned back. “Glove compartment,” he said.

  I kept my wits sharp as I looked inside. Not that I really expected a gun or a snake, but with Josh one could never be certain. But all that rested on top of a thin pile of local maps was a particularly fine pair of binoculars. The bay was broad. Without the binoculars only silhouettes were visible. With them, after a bit of adjustment and a careful sweep of the shoreline, I found what I was looking for. The Casa Bellissima, set on one thousand ninety feet of waterfront and sixty-six acres of lush plantings, did not exactly blend in with the other cheek-by-jowl mansions along the shore.

  “You’re almost directly across,” I said then wished I hadn’t.

  “Sure, I go over every night and prowl the grounds. How else does a spook amuse himself in this haven of senior citizens?”

  “It was just a comment,” I protested. Too strongly.

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Where does Parker St. Clair live?”

  Josh pointed to an area not far south of the Bellman museum grounds. “He was bragging he had to buy up four houses to acquire the land. Positively smug about pressuring the owners to sell. Guess one of them was really reluctant. Martin mentioned something about a dead dog.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No.”

  “And Martin doesn’t think St. Clair capable of murder!”

  “He never said that,” Josh stated patiently. “He said he didn’t see any motive for St. Clair to be involved in the murder of the girl. Or with the effigies. That was, of course,” he added thoughtfully, “before Rob Varney turned up dead.”

  “You think Varney’s connected to St. Clair?”

  “Could be. If Varney was a government spook, he could have run into St. Clair on either side of the fence—as a colleague or maybe while investigating Clairity’s more questionable ops.”

  My spine was prickling again. “Can you find out?” Maybe my wits had been scrambled by the gentleness of Josh’s hands as he bandaged mine, but at that moment any suspicions I might be asking the executioner to investigate his victim had vanished from my mind.

  “I’d need to get into the Clairity database,” Josh was saying, “which is about as easy as hacking the Department of Defense.”

  “Can you do it?”

  He shrugged. “If not, I know someone who can.”

  I nodded. Martin. I had to talk to Martin. Though why I was so sure a man, long-retired, would have important information had to be another of my odd intuitive leaps.

  “Josh . . . there’s something else. I’m probably wasting your time, but could you check on a Timothy Mundell from Tempe, Arizona—see if you can find something beyond the bare facts in the police report?”

  Josh’s frown deepened as I outlined the sad, all-too-short story of the twenty-year-old found hanging in a banyan tree. I did not care for his initial reaction, which was an incredulous, “Billie found the body?”

  “So?” I challenged, sparking righteous indignation straight at his satyr’s head. “He works security.”

  “Some security,” Josh scoffed.

  “Damn it, Josh, not you too!”

  “How many people do you know who challenge gators and water moccasins for golf balls? Face it, Travis, Hamlin’s certifiable. What’s a lil’ ol’ murder here and there?”

  Silence seethed as Josh drove me back to my car. And then he capped his demonstration of male pseudo-superiority by ordering me to stay home and nurse my scrapes. “And don’t go off tilting with your city cop either. Everything will keep ‘til tomorrow.”

  Oh, great. Even Josh Thomas thought of me as a deluded and ineffectual Don Quixote. Was absolutely everybody laughing at my feeble attempts at investigation? No pun intended.

  You recall that old expression about “ready to chomp nails?” Well, that’s how I must have looked as I stepped off the elevator to the penthouse. One glance at me, and Jody ran for the scotch. But an application of spirits wasn’t going to work, I knew it. I managed a smile for Aunt Hy, who was, thank God, having one of her Perfectly Normal days. A second single malt didn’t help either, but it made it easier for me to say no when Ken Parrish called. Not that I didn’t want to meet him for coffee—if for no other reason than because Josh had told me not to—but, truthfully, I needed to be by myself. To think. To make sense of the inexplicable.

  To wonder if Martin Longstreet held the essential key. Or was Martin the person who had set me up for this snipe hunt?

  And, yes—I confess—to wonder if maybe Billie really did it. An artistic temperament gone haywire. Weren’t most serial killers described as personable, even charming? Tossing me a hint about the possibility of murder in Tim Mundell’s death could have been the sheer bravado of a sick mind.

  I also had to consider it might be Josh—so conveniently handy on all occasions. He could have made a swift visit to Sarasota to leave two thousand dollars under Billie’s door. Or maybe the two thousand was a fabrication? Maybe Billie’s “twenty Ben Franklins” was a cover story designed by a madman.

  And, finally, I faced the stark fact that my desire to blame it on Parker St. Clair was simply because I didn’t want it to be Billie. Or Josh.

  Had I gone totally soft? My skills, even the renowned Travis intuition, now worthless?

  I used my sore hands and knees as an excuse for not meeting Ken. He was suitably sympathetic. If I’d lived anywhere but a penthouse at the Ritz, I think he would have jumped in his SUV and come straight over. As it was, I went to bed alone. Again. And every mistake I’d ever made—from an improper pirouette in ballet class at age seven, to guzzling rum punch at a freshman college mixer, to the usual personal and business disasters we all encounter, to those last horrible moments with Eric on the fire escape—kaleidescoped through my aching head. It was a bad night. With Lydia’s and Rob’s bloody bodies for a chaser. Not to mention a vision of myself kneeling amidst the shattered pieces of the mannequin, with that badly drawn gash across her throat, her white satin gown splashed with shiny red nailpolish.

  In the morning I once again climbed the two flights of Escher stairs to Marketing. The Blonde was Karen Woodley. She only confirmed what I already knew. Lydia had told her the story of walking in on the assignation in the aerie. It was, after all, too delicious a tale not to pass on. Yes, the girl had been Patricia Arkwright. The man Lydia didn’t recognize. Her only description: he was “big” and “older.”

  “I asked, ‘Big where?’” Karen confided, “and we both laughed so hard she never answered.”

  I thanked her and went in search of Patricia, waiting patiently while she finished a presentation on the circus to a busload of
fifth graders. I told Pat, flat out, that if she had any lingering affection for Billie, she needed to answer my questions. We sat at one of the picnic tables near the Circus Museum. She might not have been one of my favorite people, but if my intuition wasn’t totally screwed, I felt I had her attention. She was going to make an effort to tell me what she knew.

  “I apologize for getting so personal,” I said, “but was it you Lydia surprised up in the aerie?”

  All I could see was blond hair as she hid her face in her hands. She nodded.

  “Pat,” I said as gently as I could,” I wouldn’t ask this if I didn’t believe it’s important. Who was the man?”

  “I wouldn’t have minded so much if it was just Lydia,” she burst out, still not looking up. “But that awful creep, Mel Corbin. I mean, that man is slime!”

  “I agree, but he didn’t recognize you.”

  “Really?” Pat’s head came up with a snap. Her eyes locked with mine.

  “Really. I asked him.”

  “Oh, thank God!”

  I truly felt sorry for her. Some things just aren’t supposed to be made public. Like me sitting on a shell-covered john with Josh Thomas dabbing at my scarred legs.

  “Uh, Pat . . . the man’s name?”

  “I can’t,” she gasped. “He’s married. He’s a VIP.”

  “Do you want Billie to have an intimate connection with Old Sparky?”

  “That’s horrible!” she snapped. “You know Billie would never murder anybody.”

  “I know. Believe me, Detective Sergeant Ken Parrish does not agree with me. Billie’s in serious trouble.”

  She picked a live oak leaf off the picnic table, gazed up at the drooping Spanish moss high above, then allowed her eyes to drift down toward the riot of color that was Opal’s Rose Garden. “Parker St. Clair,” she mumbled at last.

  “Where did you meet him?” I kept my voice low and steady, as if the identification hadn’t sent a surge of blood pounding through my veins.

  “At a fund raiser last spring. He was gone for the summer, of course, but as soon as he came back, he seemed to want to take up where we left off.” When I didn’t come up with another question, Pat added, defensively, “I’d never seen what wealth can do. Never had Cristal with a meal. Flown to Naples or Key West for a weekend. It was . . . Oh, shit! Are you going to tell his wife?” Pat wailed.

  “Heavens, no.”

  “There is a God!” Pat fished for a tissue, blew her nose. “Parker married money, you know. And now that his company’s having problems, he’d really be in trouble if his wife left him.”

  Then he was damn stupid to be playing around. But, of course, I didn’t say so. Yet I couldn’t help wonder if I’d hit pay dirt. If Parker St. Clair was worried enough about Clairity to have mentioned it during pillow talk, then maybe the matter was serious. Rob Varney might have been here as an investigator. He might have been a whistle-blower. He also might have been exactly what he appeared to be—a retiree, keeping boredom away by becoming a volunteer. Even spooks retired. If they lived long enough. Look at Martin Longstreet.

  And Lydia? Where did an artist’s model without a serious thought in her head fit into all this? Surely as more than a witness to Parker St. Clair’s indiscretion? And what about Mel Corbin? Didn’t that make him a target also?

  Or was it truly a case of Murder as Art? And all the rest was peripheral?

  It was my afternoon to drive a tram, so I thanked Pat for being so honest, once again assured her Melinda St. Clair would hear nothing from me, and went off to find Tram 3.

  The next morning Josh called to ask if I was free for an interview with Martin Longstreet late that afternoon. And would I have supper with him afterward?

  I was back in skeptic mode. Never trust anyone. Never trust anyone. A woman with a shattered heart, as well as a shattered body, was most vulnerable of all.

  I told Josh I had already arranged a private interview with Martin, and I had other plans for supper. To soften the blow, I added that I was sure he understood that any old spook would consider three a crowd.

  The silence over the phone was so dense, I could almost hear the thoughts surging through Josh’s brain. But were they the rage of a villain, the arrogant frustration of a man accustomed to being boss, the annoyance of a cop shut out of an investigation? Or—just perhaps—the hurt of a male whose help had been rejected, along with his interest in me as a female?

  “Josh, I’m sorry,” I mumbled, and hung up. I had never felt more paranoid in my life. Outside the gilded womb at the top of the Ritz-Carlton, I had no friends. I had tried to adapt to this new life, really I had, but Lydia and Rob were gone, Billie compromised so badly only a fool would be blind to the possibility that he might be guilty. Ken Parrish was alienated because I clung stubbornly to Billie’s cause. And Josh Thomas was too lethal to ignore as a possible suspect. And Martin? Dear old Martin had a thumb in this pie somewhere. He might, in fact, hold the key that had stayed so elusively out of reach since the day the Roman warrior had appeared in the chariot in the museum courtyard. And today at four thirty when I would tackle the wily old boy in his lair, I was going to need every last bit of smarts I had.

  Martin Longstreet lived in a villa similar to the one he had found for Josh, though it was a bit more homey, with begonias, geraniums, and petunias dripping from hanging baskets on either side of the front entrance. The primary difference between Josh’s rented villa and his own, Martin explained as he ushered me inside, was that his home had three bedrooms and a deeper canal, suitable for his sailboat, which sat, barepoled, at its berth looking as sleek and expensive as it undoubtedly was.

  And Martin, of course, had his own furniture. Leather, gleaming wood, glass tabletops. Antique Persian carpets. No garish prints of palms, flowers, beaches, or small children. Martin’s taste in art was eclectic, ranging from Baroque to Impressionist to American Modern, but every painting was an original. I took the time to study his collection before finally taking a seat on the midnight blue leather sofa.

  Martin Longstreet had been married at some time. (I’d checked with Aunt Hy.) But to whom and how long ago, even she had no answer. He had come to Sarasota about twelve years earlier, unattached, and stayed that way. As attractive as his home was, it was wholly masculine. It was also a modest abode for a man of his wealth and influence. But this villa, I supposed, provided him with all the space he needed, freeing up whatever money he had to support the museum, and probably other local good causes as well.

  “Atonement,” Martin said, as if reading my thoughts. “I’ve spent my retirement trying to make up for things I wish had never happened.” He ran a wrinkled hand over his face, slicked back his shock of white hair. He looked years older than on the night of the Gala. “One of my more recent regrets is failing to talk to you about Parker St. Clair.”

  “Martin,” I said, sounding more severe than a feeble Feeb should when addressing an elder, and undoubtedly superior, officer, “there’s a lot more to all this than Parker St. Clair. Suppose you start at the beginning.”

  He grinned at me, damn him. An old man of at least eighty, flashing me a grin as outrageously wolfish as Josh Thomas’s. “No,” he told me. “Some of this needs to wait until we’ve got past this case. Concentrate on the murders, Rory. That’s all you should be doing right now.”

  “I have to know what right you have to tell me that,” I said, determined to get around his steely control.

  Martin steepled his fingers beneath his chin, gazed at a very fine painting of an old clipper ship sailing over a choppy sea. “Need to know, Rory,” he murmured, “need to know. But in this case you certainly have a right to some of it.”

  I waited. Respectfully. I had to accept that Martin would tell me what he thought I ought to know. No more, no less. And nothing would budge him. I imagined a great many people had used a remarkable number of methods to pry information from Martin Longstreet. And failed. I would have to settle for what he was willing to give.

 
“Very well,” he said, “as you seem to know, I worked for the CIA from the time it was still the OSS. Through the Cold War. Vietnam—where I worked with Josh’s father. Something I believe you also figured out on your own, with very little to go on. You possess a remarkable gift, my dear.”

  I was inclined to think Martin had that special gift as well. I suppose that’s how spooks got to be old spooks.

  “Not really,” I told him. “I knew about the CIA from Aunt Hy, and I overheard most of your conversation with Josh at the Gala.”

  “More than that, Rory. Your conclusion was a major leap. I’d heard about your gift, of course, but that was the first time I’d seen it. You heard a few minutes of conversation at a dinner party, and somehow you knew.”

  “I guessed.”

  “Admit it, Rory. You hate Madame Celestine so much because she just might not be a fake.”

  “She’s a scam artist!”

  “Agreed. But sometimes she nails it, and you just won’t admit it.”

  My chin was sticking out a mile. “Why,” I demanded, “are we talking about Madame Celestine?”

  We glared at each other. Finally, I shrugged. “If only my so-called gift was useful,” I grumbled. “If only I could see what’s going on at the Bellman. I mean, knowing you and Josh’s father were CIA in ’Nam is hardly going to solve two murders here and now. If a person is going to have flashes of insight, they ought to be significant to the moment.”

  Martin chuckled and poured out two cups of Lapsang Souchong that had been steeping on the low table in front of the couch. “Rory,” he said as he handed me a cup, “your insights wouldn’t have become so well known if they were always useless.”

  I hid my face behind my tea cup. I took a sip. Damned if I wasn’t more of a Lapsang Souchong type—smoky and mysterious—than China Rose Petal. I recalled thinking Josh, too, was Lapsang Souchong.

  “That night at the Gala,” I said, “your conversation with Josh—that was a Heads Up, wasn’t it? Time to give the poor girl a clue.”