AHMM, April 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  She heard the phone ringing and ignored it. The whole mountain was back-and-forthing tonight. “Did you hear? So awful.” Yisgadal v'yiskadash sh'me rabba. So began the Mourners’ Kaddish.

  Not much more than a year ago, it had been Tamar's turn to be the talk of the mountain. How will she ever get on? The woman's an artist, not a practical bone in her body.... Doesn't so-and-so have an unmarried brother?

  She smiled without much bitterness. She had met so-and-so's unmarried brother, who was forty-eight and wrote stories for comic books. Where had he been all her life?

  * * * *

  Jasper Kohl's new paintings dazzled her. The huge, complex cityscapes had a haunted emptiness, as if the towers and plazas had been built for people who had left no mark. Light echoed through vacant offices. Shadows spilled through afternoon streets, extending jagged angles like claws. Standing with a glass of champagne that she had forgotten, Tamar marveled at Kohl's technique and shivered at his vision.

  The man of the evening huddled in a wheelchair at the back of the Hologram Gallery, legs covered in an Irish blanket, only the sharp black eyes moving in a slack, wintry face. The mix of visitors at the opening was about half professional, half collectors, and Edgar Bean was coddling the collectors while largely leaving the artists to hiss at each other. Jasper Kohl was never alone. On his one side stood a strong-looking woman who had the dominatrix manner of a caregiver. Guarding the other flank was a small, half bald man in a dark suit.

  She ignored his minders and presented herself to Kohl.

  "We met once before,” she said, “when I was in school. You gave a lecture in New Haven."

  His thin mouth gaped, and a feeble voice emerged. “With pretty students like you, I should have taught full time.” He grasped her hand. His clawed fist trembled but was strong for a man who was past eighty years old. Tamar had read up on Kohl's career. His first solo show had been at the Weil Galley in Paris in the 1950s. For a few years, he had been a darling of French intellectuals. At that time, Kohl was painting hyperrealistic nudes in forest settings, which the intellectuals thought commented on man's plight—or woman's, in most cases—in nature. When Kohl replied that forest greens complemented flesh colors, thereby rejecting interpretation, the intellectuals adored him even more. Empty cities had worked their way into his pictures when he was in his sixties. Gradually the flesh disappeared and only the bones of structure remained. Coming from an aged artist, the message of decay seemed clear to critics who discovered Jasper Kohl anew.

  His grin was slightly lascivious. Even in his sixties, when Tamar heard him speak, Kohl had supposedly been a great seducer of young women.

  "What did I say?” he demanded.

  "You said that since one can't kill critics, it's best to ignore them."

  A finger stroked the cleft under his nose. “No, that's wrong. I would have said one cannot kill all the critics. It's possible to dispose of one or two.” His head twitched leftward, toward Edgar Bean. “Gallery owners, too, when the opportunity arises."

  He didn't seem to be kidding. Tamar said, “The police would object."

  "They shouldn't, when it's such a good cause. Does Beanie represent you?"

  "Yes."

  "What sort of work?"

  "I do portraits."

  "That requires a disciplined eye. He's a thief, you know."

  "He's always been fair to me."

  "He cheats his customers. I don't know about the artists. I haven't had an exhibit in a while."

  "I'm glad you're working again."

  "That's kind of you.” Jasper Kohl scratched his chin, where a few bristles had eluded the razor. “My memory isn't what it used to be. Did you ever pose for me?"

  "No, I didn't."

  "You're very pretty. I hoped I would remember."

  There was bump at her elbow, and Nate Perlman said, “Good evening, Tams."

  As Tamar turned, her neighbor from the lake stood large and brash, filling a double-breasted navy blazer, with a faded pink cravat at his throat and his sometimes unruly black beard trimmed almost to the skin. His scrubbing up hadn't been thorough. His hair needed cutting, and the points of his blazer's lapels were worn thin, exposing white threads. At least he wasn't spotted with paint. The young man was Tamar's only neighbor who tried to make a living at the easel. His technical skills were fine, but his manner when it came to selling his work was hopeless. When a socialite had wanted to buy one of his landscapes because it suited her upholstery, Nate Perlman had said he would sooner burn the painting.

  "How are you doing, Jasper?” he asked.

  Jasper Kohl's black eyes fixed on the young man. “Do I know you, sir?"

  Chuckling, Nate shook his head. “I've admired your work for years, Jasper."

  "That's gratifying.” The old man's voice was cold. “But even my captors here, philistines though they are—” He didn't bother looking at the dominatrix or the small man on his other side. “—address me as Mr. Kohl."

  "They have to take orders,” Nate said flippantly. “They're hired help.” He winked at Tamar and moved away. The dominatrix glared after him.

  As Edgar Bean arrived with a prosperous-looking couple in tow, Tamar surrendered her claim on the old artist and went back to the paintings. Edgar had priced the sixteen new Jasper Kohls for their scarcity as well as their other merits. The smallest painting was priced at more than a hundred thousand dollars. Tamar felt a twinge of envy. If she could get those rates for her own work, a single canvas would dig her out of her financial hole. She wondered what the old man had meant in saying Edgar Bean cheated his customers. She also wondered at Nate Perlman's rudeness. Anyone who believed artists were sensitive people had never met Nate.

  * * * *

  The show sold out before the evening was over. Tamar left before then but read the bubbly news in the next day's Tyler River Times. The famous surrealist's show had brought in more than two and a half million. Tamar spent two days on a portrait of a Jack Russell terrier named Bonaparte, got to the point of adding a Prussian blue glaze to the shadows, which amused her more than it should have, and drove over to spend Shabbas evening with her mother and friends. Ruth and Cubby Stone had walked down Esther Road and, keeping to Sabbath observance, would walk home after dinner. Tamar, to her mother's growing disapproval, would drive.

  Over coffee, Jean Ann Arnold became Topic A. Ruth Stone, a gray sparrow with a drinker's voice, announced that funeral services for Jean Ann had been delayed.

  "Why's that?” Tamar's mother asked.

  "The medical examiner hasn't released the body. The family is upset about what's being done ... the autopsy."

  Some religious Jews objected to autopsies, which disfigured the dead. Tamar knew the Arnolds weren't religious, but it was easy to imagine them being upset.

  Cubby Stone set down his spoon. He was a retired philosophy professor who often larded his conversation with names Tamar didn't recognize. Tonight he had a forced cheerfulness, as if he'd found that intellectual rituals explained only so much of life, and not the parts that disturbed him. Those had to be laughed at. “They can keep my cadaver for as long as they want,” he said. His wife barely smiled.

  "Why are they holding Jean Ann's body?” Tamar asked.

  "Her husband doesn't know,” said Ruth Stone. “We saw him yesterday. The kids have come in. Both sisters. An uncle flew down from Boston. Poor Bruce had made all the arrangements with the Burial Society. Then—” She threw up her hands. “—then nada. The police aren't telling Bruce a thing."

  Tamar's mother glanced across the table. “Do you think you could find out, dear?"

  "No, I don't.” For Tamar to call Cal Hoover would be presuming on their friendship. She measured her words. “I'm sure the medical examiner isn't doing this to upset the family."

  Ruth Stone smiled sourly. “You would say that."

  * * * *

  Edgar Bean's voice on the telephone was full of astonishment as he told Tamar that he had sold her gruesome landscape.
The buyer had paid the asking price.

  "That's wonderful,” Tamar said. She felt sometimes that she wasn't really finished with a painting until it hung on someone else's wall, and this was one she had wanted to be done with. If the painting was sold, the emotions that had fueled it could be laid to rest. They already had receded.

  "I don't even have to worry about the buyer's check clearing,” Edgar said. “Your new admirer is Jasper Kohl."

  "I'm flattered,” Tamar said. “Did Mr. Kohl say why he liked the painting?"

  "Actually, his doctor made the transaction for him. You remember Dr. Wendt from the opening?"

  One of Kohl's two caretakers, she thought vaguely. The image of the small, half bald man had faded in her memory.

  "Kohl wants you to come to dinner at his house,” Edgar said. “You're invited for Wednesday. I accepted for you."

  She hung up the phone feeling almost solvent.

  * * * *

  Tuesday morning, Cal Hoover phoned ten minutes before arriving at her door. “Hope I'm not disrupting things,” he said. It was a perfunctory apology. His mind was on business. “I wanted to ask you something about the Arnold woman. What sort of paint did she work with?"

  "You mean oils, watercolors, acrylics?"

  "Yeah, that's a good start."

  "Well, I never saw her use acrylic paint. A lot of us don't like it because it dries too fast. It's hell on brushes. When Jean Ann worked in her studio, she mostly used oils."

  "How do you know that?"

  "She showed a number of her paintings at the local art fair. She was a pretty good landscape artist. When she was with us outdoors, she usually brought oils—but sometimes used watercolors."

  "You use both oils and watercolors, right?"

  "Not much watercolor except for sketches.” Tamar wondered where he was leading.

  "Can you show me your paint?"

  She took him onto the insulated porch that she used most of the year as a studio. An electric radiator ticked beneath a broad window that looked down the hill. Tubes of oil paint were lined up on a worktable and in the trays on the two easels she used. The watercolors were in a canvas bag, but he didn't seem interested in them.

  "Is any of this stuff dangerous?"

  She looked around the studio, thinking. “In different ways, a lot of it is. You want to tell me what this is about?"

  He shook his head. “What's dangerous?"

  "Most solvents are both flammable and toxic, in varying degrees. Shall I tell you about the flammable part?"

  "No."

  "All right. A lot of art materials, particularly the solvents we use to mix paint or clean brushes, are poisonous. People who paint with oils often become sensitized to gum turpentine. You breathe the fumes, absorb the liquid into your skin. I use a mineral spirits alternative, and I still wear rubber gloves for protection. There are several brands of water-based oil paints, which get around that problem."

  He was reading the back of a gallon can as she talked. “What else?"

  "What do you mean, what else?"

  "What else is toxic?"

  "You name it—Venice turpentine, copal, stand oil, Japan drier, black oil. They're all lethal if you drink them—pretty bad if you breathe the fumes. Some varnish would knock you off your feet if you didn't have a ventilator fan going.” She ran out of patience. “What's this about, Cal?"

  "The M.E. didn't like the look of Arnold's skin, so he ran a tox screen. She had a high concentration of something that shouldn't have been there. I wonder where she got it. What's this one?"

  "Let me look at the label.” She took the small bottle. “It's poppy oil, useful if you want a cracked surface on a painting in a couple of years. Most painters don't, so we don't use it much. You could pour this on a salad and eat it if you wanted to. What showed up in Jean Ann?"

  "That's supposed to be confidential."

  "Cal, a lot of things in an artist's studio are toxic. Some, like the benzene that used to be in rubber cement, are both toxic and narcotic. Some are cumulative poisons."

  "What about metallic compounds?"

  She made a take-your-pick gesture at the tubes of paint. “Flake white, which a lot of artists still use because of its opacity, contains lead carbonate. Bad stuff. Naples yellow contains antimony. Cobalt and cadmium are both poisonous. So is chromium. But you know, most of us don't lick paint off our fingers. That's about the only way to get a big dose of a chemical..."

  The way her voice trailed off made him turn around.

  "But not the only way?"

  "Well ... sanding would be a possibility."

  "Sanding?"

  "Someone who's painting thin can't always just cover up a mistake. I use a fine grade abrasive paper and sand down the problem, then repaint. If there's something toxic in the old paint, it would get released in the sanding dust."

  "Much of it?"

  "No. You'd have to do a tremendous amount of sanding to get a bad dose of these metals. Not that you would want to inhale any of them. But now that I'm thinking about it, there's another way. All paint starts out as a solid. The pigment gets ground into a powder, then mixed with linseed oil or something similar. The powder can become airborne."

  "Would an artist have the powder?"

  "It's possible. Some people grind their own pigments. I can't imagine Jean Ann bothering. Most of us use store-boughts.” She looked at him sharply. “Jean Ann didn't have arsenic in her system?"

  Cal turned his head. “Why arsenic?"

  "I just remembered that some obsolete colors were made with really dangerous things. There's one called king's yellow that employed arsenic trisulfide. It's amazing that painters in the seventeen hundreds didn't die younger."

  "How do you know about early paints?"

  "The school I went to used some very old-fashioned methods, what we call Old Masters’ techniques."

  He smiled and asked too casually, “What about copper arsenite?"

  She stared at him, her mind clicking through old lessons. “Emerald green,” she said with a touch of awe.

  "Would Arnold have used that?"

  "Not unless she was crazy."

  Tamar pulled a thick book off a shelf, flipped pages. “According to The Artist's Handbook, emerald green is a brilliant green made from copper acetoarsenite, which is highly poisonous. It says here the chemical is sold as an insecticide as ‘Paris green.’ This edition is a few years old. I don't know if that stuff is still on the market."

  "It is,” Cal said.

  "Was Jean Ann poisoned with copper acetoarsenite?"

  "She had it in her system.” Cal's answer seemed evasive. “Thanks for the help. I've got to go serve a search warrant on the widower. I wanted to be sure what I was looking for."

  "You might find a tube of paint marked ‘emerald green,’ but it would use some modern substitute material. The real thing hasn't been used in more than a century."

  "The warrant is pretty broad,” Cal responded. “'Toxic chemicals’ in general. I'll scoop up anything in her studio that looks green and let the lab see what's in it. Also anything that looks like insecticide. You said she would be crazy to use it, right?"

  Tamar nodded. “Besides being dangerous, it wasn't lightfast and it changed color in mixtures. A landscape artist has lots of modern greens available. She wouldn't have needed this one."

  He hesitated on the front step. “How did Mr. and Mrs. Arnold get along?"

  "Okay, I think,” Tamar said. She heard the doubtful note in her voice. It implied, How does anyone get along? Suddenly she felt like a betrayer, like an informer, like all the things someone in Jean Ann's family might expect a cop's widow to be. Before she had always been able to reject their suspicions. Now she wasn't so sure.

  But if Cal Hoover found emerald green in Jean Ann's studio, he would be right to ask how it got there.

  "I'm not going to give away your secrets,” Tamar said. “Did Jean Ann die of poisoning?"

  "She had a lot of copper arsenite in h
er body. She died of a broken neck."

  "From the fall?"

  "That's possible,” Cal said.

  * * * *

  She hadn't felt deeply depressed in months, but her conversation with the police detective left her sad. She didn't like her role in Cal Hoover's inquiry, and she didn't like the direction the investigation was leading. A woman's death was bad enough. This was heading toward the destruction of a family.

  Tamar bundled up and drove down to the lake with her portable easel. It was a sunny, cold day, and she was able to work up a half dozen washes of bare trees and reflective water before Nate Perlman saw her from his house and walked down to the shore.

  "Let's resume the plein air group next week,” he suggested. The painters hadn't met on Sunday.

  "If it's okay with you and Bobbie, I'm available,” Tamar said.

  "Yeah.” He chucked a rock far out into the lake. “I hear the police are still investigating Jean Ann's death."

  Tamar glanced at the bearded young man. “I don't know anything."

  He raised his hands. “I wouldn't ask.” But he had her attention. “You didn't like Jean Ann much, did you?"

  "What are you getting at?"

  "Nothing, Tams. It's just funny, you know. Somebody dies and you start thinking about all the people who didn't like him—or her. Not thinking that anyone did anything about it, but just wondering what the person would have been like if she knew how people felt about her.” He turned his gloomy look away. “Jean Ann wasn't the easiest person to like."

  "Not many of us are,” Tamar said.

  "Oh, you pretty much get along with everyone. I ask advice on a painting, you give me ideas on how to make it better—and convince me I thought of them. When someone on the community board throws a fit, people count on Tamar to calm the person down. You get them focused on the project, and they forget to be pissed off."