by Maria Hummel
“So you know that your brother met Nelson de Wilde. On the night before he died.”
“I do.”
“But then what are you—”
“Waiting for? I was looking for someone named Genevieve, but I don’t know who she is.”
I paced my apartment, watching time tick toward evening as Ray told me how he’d spent months studying the evidence in Calvin’s murder: a brutal beating that looked unpremeditated, and hadn’t quite killed its victim. Drowning was the cause of death, but his attacker had left him unconscious in the rising water. It could have been a drug dealer. But Calvin had bought drugs before without incident, and drug dealers were careful about homicides. It was likely someone Calvin had angered. But who? And why? Did it have to do with the conference? Murderers didn’t usually lurk at art history conferences. And yet James Compton himself had been a wild card, a figure of unpredictable violence, with some criminal associations. What new angle had Calvin found about James Compton, and why wouldn’t someone want it known?
Ray had spent last winter digging into the Los Angeles art world. By the time Ray had met me in the spring, Nelson de Wilde had become his main suspect. Nelson was from London, and he had burst onto the same cultural scene a year after James Compton’s death, with a club and money and connections that no one seemed able to explain. The man was a superstar supporter of artists, and he’d had no criminal record in England.
Desperate to find some crack in the gallerist’s armor, Ray began to look into the financial side of the gallery business and concluded that Nelson must have had a significant source of undisclosed income in order to run the Westing. Where was the cash coming from?
A gallerist’s most obvious source of revenue was art commissions. Sell an artwork, get a percentage of its cost. After Kim Lord’s case practically dropped into his lap, Ray had concluded that one of Nelson’s secret sources of cash was Steve Goetz buying and rebuying Kim’s paintings—not honestly earned money, but not technically illegal.
Soon after the Kim Lord case had been solved, Ray had gone back to North Carolina for a couple of months to maintain his job there and take care of his nephew. During that time, he and Ynez broke up. He told her he didn’t have romantic feelings for her anymore. She told him that he was dangerously obsessed with his brother. He’d been planning a trip to London to retrace Calvin’s steps.
Ray related all this information in the same cordial tone that he’d discussed Calvin’s potential killer, but his voice strained on the word obsessed.
“She was right,” he admitted. “Because when the opportunity arose to orbit Nelson and the Westing again, I leaped at it. I’m closer than ever. This video is one clue. And you walking on foot to the gallery that day made me realize something else about my brother. He could have easily walked from the Westing to Venice Beach and bought that snow globe for Nathaniel. But that is just speculation. I can’t prove he ever went to the Westing at all. So I started digging into Genevieve again. The name that Calvin had scrawled on a piece of paper. A person? The name of something? And who or what is now funneling Nelson’s gallery the money to survive?”
“You could have told me about Nelson and Calvin,” I said.
“I was about to, on the drive to LAAC,” Ray said evasively. “But then I thought it might distract you from your own work.”
“You were right,” I said. “I am distracted. Does Nelson know who you are?”
“That’s unclear,” he admitted. “Janis never gave him my last name.”
“But you think it might be dangerous for me to go to his house,” I said.
“I wouldn’t advise it,” said Ray.
Yet even as he spoke, I knew I would go.
“Okay,” he sighed. “Give me a definite time that you’re leaving the party, and I’ll park down the street and meet you.”
“Nine,” I said.
There was a short hesitation. “I’ll be there,” he promised.
“You sure?” I said.
“I’m flying home on a red-eye,” he said. “Tonight. My boss—my real boss, not Janis—nixed my request for an extension today. I’m out of time for now. I’ll see you later, though.”
Maybe he was telling the truth about his boss, but after everything he’d confessed that night, Ray’s departure seemed like yet another secret that he had been keeping from me. It was getting late, and I didn’t want to dwell on it, though. I sped through our good-bye. I drove to the Palisades. My beat-up station wagon climbed the curving, hilly, gate-lined streets that led to Nelson’s house, and I tried to picture myself exiting my car’s stale, safe air and donning my department-store bathing suit to swim in a pool at a home that had cost more than my father and mother had made in their whole lives combined, all while on the alert for the man who might be involved in Ray’s brother’s death.
I topped a rise and saw a number flash, indicating Nelson’s address, and the silver intercom box at the gate. The car glided past it all, and I pulled to a stop by a sycamore tree and stared at its patchy peeling bark, silhouetted before the tumble of hills, the sprawling city and sea beyond. My breath began to quicken.
It was a beautiful name, sycamore. This city was full of beautiful names. Pacific Palisades. Mar Vista. I remember how La Cienega had run through me like a voltage whenever I’d said it aloud, my tongue sparking on the consonants and vowels. I thought cienega must mean something grand and otherworldly like “castle” or “star.” I found out that it translates from Spanish as “swamp,” and that was even more wonderful, in a way, envisioning a wet, murky, secretive place in this arid basin. I knew I couldn’t save anyone. Brenae’s death could not be undone. But I could keep searching for the truth. I filled three pages of my notebook with my impressions of the day. Then I rolled down my windows, heard helicopters in the distance, and tasted the west wind. Clear, sweet. I rolled the window up again.
19
EVEN THE WATER IN NELSON de Wilde’s curving pool felt enhanced by wealth: silky, prickly, and a little more buoyant. “It’s salt water,” Zania said when I asked. Then she dived under in her lovely, superbly impractical maroon velvet suit and swam for the other end, emerging by the tiled wall.
Nelson’s house was a glassy, wood-paneled modernist shoebox with a second-floor expansion. The pool looked crammed into the lot, undersized, a pool-ette, but every feature—the intricate tile, the shape, even the ceramic ladders—looked expensive. Where had the money for this extravagance come from?
Pearson was inside, changing clothes. It appeared to be a lengthy process for him. Erik appeared in his swim trunks, bare-chested, staggering, cheeks blotchy. He was holding a large bottle of bourbon by the neck, the brown liquid sloshing. “Your dad has such a killer wine cellar,” he told Zania. “It’s earthquake central here, and he’s got a wine cellar. That’s values.”
Zania looked at him blankly.
“I love your dad,” he said. “When’s he coming?”
“Sometime after ten,” she said. “He’s got an opening to go to.”
Erik swayed from foot to foot, contemplating the pool. “He thinks I’m full of shit, and I respect that,” he said. “I’m not the artist. I’m the craftsman.”
“You’re more than that,” Zania said with a note of passion in her voice. “We all are.”
“Where’s Layla?” he asked. “She keeps disappearing on me.”
“Kitchen,” said Zania. “She’s ordering food.”
Erik rubbed his face with his arm and took a swig.
“She’s in the kitchen,” repeated Zania.
“You’re here to celebrate, aren’t you?” Erik slurred at me. “This isn’t going to be much of a fucking party if no one is celebrating.”
Layla called Erik’s name. “Come help me order.”
Erik stumbled across the patio, toward the back door. Zania watched him retreat with her nose scrunched. She appeared to have forgotten about me. I thought of her interview with Ray, how she had expressed both resentment and admiration of Brenae, but also exoner
ated Erik. It’s a metaphor. To her, the man in the video was a symbol alone. I wondered why Zania made excuses for Erik, when she was so quick to judge the system that made him.
“How long have you lived in L.A.?” I asked.
“Seven years,” said Zania.
“Do you like it?”
She made a face. “Not really. I didn’t want to leave London, but I didn’t want to stay with my mum there, either.”
The crew’s trip to London had changed everything for them, especially Layla and Brenae.
“London,” I said dreamily. “Do you ever go back?”
Zania scooped the water with one hand and poured it into the pool. “Last spring,” she said. “It’s changed. I grew up in a big old broken-down flat that would cost a fortune now. The crew, we stopped in Shoreditch. It’s packed with pretentious people. And their designer dogs.” A faint British accent cropped up as she talked about the past. I hadn’t heard it before.
“Must have been fun, though, traveling together.”
She snorted and looked off to the kitchen, where Layla and Erik were. Then she plunged underwater and rose out again, her hair slicked to a dark rope. Clearly not a conversation she wanted to continue. I tried another tack.
“I saw somewhere that your father used to own a club there.”
“Local bartender makes good,” she said with pride. “His place was all the rage in the nineties.”
“I love the nineties art scene there,” I gushed. “I’m crazy about its stories. I was reading that Ditchfest’s ten-year anniversary is coming up. Did you go?”
“I helped out at the kissing booth.” She seemed pleased by the question.
“You must have met some people who are really famous now.”
“Yeah.” She dropped a few names and shrugged. “Should have saved up my allowance and bought their artwork then.”
“What about that guy who organized it? James Compton? He seemed like a trip.”
She bobbed in the water. “He was all right. He wore white suits and talked posh, like he was better than everyone, but he made things happen.”
“It’s a shame he died. I never heard of anyone overdosing on ether before.”
“Well, James did,” she said shortly.
Something sensitive there. I decided to leave off my prying, and just shook my head.
“Idiotic way to go, if you ask me,” she added.
“Yeah, pretty stupid,” I echoed, and waited.
“Not that I knew the truth at the time,” Zania said. “My parents told me he had a heart attack, and I believed them.”
She swam a few strokes, then stood at the edge of the pool, dripping, as Layla’s and Erik’s voices rose inside. We couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Zania listened intently nonetheless, tilting her head and swiping over her ears with her palms so her wet hair fell back and away. She looked troubled, then the slightest bit satisfied.
Abruptly the voices stopped, and Zania’s face turned blank again. She gazed at me, as if astonished to see me there.
“Do you think your dad’s excited about Hal’s show?” I said.
“He needs to make money on it,” she said. “But no one makes money on Hal’s shows.” Seeing my inquisitive look, she added, “Hal won’t sell his work. He never sells anything. Dad keeps trying, but Hal refuses.”
Mentally I calibrated what this meant for Nelson’s business. A month-long show for no profit? Why would he do it to himself?
“What happens to the art?” I said instead.
“Depends. This time, Hal wants viewers to take shoes home with them. He wants us to rip them out in the last week until the cathedral falls apart. He’s going to announce it at the opening. The whole thing will collapse while it’s on view. Everything we made. My dad gets nothing from this but press.” She sounded proud. Then she shivered. “I need to jump back in or get dressed. I hate this pool. He keeps it too hot.” Then she shouted to Layla and Erik, “How long till the food?”
“Half an hour!” Layla said, her voice muffled.
As I digested the new information about Nelson’s finances and his patronage of Hal, a large male figure in a black rash guard and navy board shorts appeared, strolling under the pool lights. “That means an hour, then,” Pearson said, and sat on a lounge chair. His body-hugging shirt reminded me of his considerable size. He could beat any of us to a pulp.
“You’re swimming?” Zania said. She sounded alarmed.
“Maybe. I like to warm up first,” said Pearson.
“The water is warmer than the air,” she said, and jumped back in, sending a spray of water in my face. I edged back to the far wall, away from her.
Pearson looked over to me, his eyes widening as if he had just noticed me for the first time. “You look different with wet hair,” he observed.
“She looks less mysterious,” said Layla, appearing behind him. Her voice was welcoming, but she didn’t smile. “How long have you lived in L.A., Mary?”
“Four years,” I said truthfully.
“Four years and still temping?” She made a face. “I’m so sorry.”
Layla was wearing a white bathing suit with white cutoffs, her pale, freckled chest and arms exposed. She came to the edge of the pool, sat down, and lowered her legs in the water, sinking them up to her knees.
“I’m trying to change careers,” I said.
“From what to what?” Layla said.
“I was in retail,” I said. “Eventually I’d like to work at an auction house, but I want to understand how the art market works.” I swam a few strokes, hoping to end the conversation. When I raised my head again, Layla was still watching me. Pearson had switched to a straight-backed chair. His calves were thick and muscled. He seemed in no rush to enter the water.
“Take it from a collector’s daughter,” Layla said after a moment, “the art market doesn’t work. It’s the most dysfunctional economy on the planet. There’s no rhyme or reason to why one painting makes a thousand and another ten million. People do make money, though, gobs of it.”
“That would be the very definition of a functioning economy,” said Pearson.
“You know what I mean,” Layla said.
Zania dived to the pool bottom again. I could feel the vibrations of her body underwater. No sounds came from the house. Where was Erik? When were the other partygoers coming?
“Art-making is not an economically viable career,” said Pearson. “But the art market is booming. People like our wonderful host can afford hilltop pools on what they earn extorting people.”
“Nelson supports artists,” Layla retorted. “Name someone who has done more than he has.”
“Incoming!” Erik sprinted onto the deck and jumped in over Layla’s head, soaking her. After a moment, she shrieked and leaped after him. The center of the pool shimmered and tossed, Erik careening about with a lunging, desperate joy, as if he were trying to splash away his drunken dread. Layla laughed, but covered her mouth like she was frightened. I retreated to the edge.
“You should come in,” I said to Pearson.
“I dislike pools,” he said agreeably. “Prefer oceans.”
“Where do you swim?”
“Anywhere in the Atlantic,” he said, then shifted in his chair. “There I go again, whining about the West Coast. I’m the worst kind of transplant.”
I asked who else was coming that night.
“A lot of LAAC people,” Pearson said. “Maybe a couple of other gallerists. Maybe even Janis Rocque. The grande dame herself. What do you bet she shows up rocking a navy pantsuit?”
I swallowed my irritation.
“Wow, Janis Rocque,” I said. “Do you go to parties like this a lot?”
He laughed. “You’re too sweet for this business. Look at them.” He gestured at Zania and Layla now both tackling Erik, snickering, dragging him under. “You want to be like them?”
I WAITED UNTIL BOTH DOWNSTAIRS bathrooms were occupied with people changing from their swimsuits to find Zani
a and get directions to the bathroom upstairs. “There’s only one hall, three rooms. Bathroom’s the first left. Can’t miss it,” she told me, digging her small fingers through the paper sacks of takeout.
In fact, the swimming had made me ravenous. I wanted to eat, but instead I fled the room and slipped up the smooth wood steps to the second floor.
I wasn’t going to be stupid and reckless tonight. I knew I shouldn’t try to help Ray. But Zania’s comments about her father and his past had made me curious. He had known James Compton well. He wasn’t coming home until later. As long as I didn’t spot a surveillance camera, I might wander into the wrong room, momentarily confused, or maybe a little nosy about a famous guy’s digs, on my way back downstairs. I would stick to my timeline, and my timeline would keep me safe.
The bathroom smelled faintly of sage. I turned on the light and fan and closed the door, to signify occupancy, and tucked my dry clothes in the linen closet. Anyone coming upstairs would assume I was inside, changing. Then I tiptoed down the hall, entering a cloud of acrid maleness and dust, the scent of a bachelor’s house. There were two other doors. At the end of the corridor, one was ajar enough to allow me to spot the edge of a bed.
I peered in at the bedroom, sweeping the ceilings and corners first. No cameras. The decor looked like it had been designed by the same eye as Nelson’s gallery office—it had a geometric black-and-white theme, understated but masculine, tasteful enough but yielding no clues to the owner’s true personality. A light fur of dust coated two photos, one of Nelson holding baby Zania, and another of overlapping shadows on a rocky beach, a taller and smaller figure. Father and daughter.
I scanned the ceiling corners again, then stepped in and slid open the door of the closet, cringing at the whooshing noise. The scent of dry cleaning gusted from a neat row of suit jackets, white and pastel shirts, ties dangling from a special hanger. The man had his wardrobe hyperorganized. Or maybe he had a house cleaner who liked taking garments to the cleaners and hated dusting. At any rate, the lack of clutter intrigued me. Everyone has a bit of junk they overlook or stash away, but this closet held only essentials, each one in its place. I was about to peek behind the suits when there was a noise in the hall.