Topaz Dreams

by Patricia Rice

  Dinah herself popped out to wait on them, since her waitresses, Mariah and Sam, were apparently otherwise occupied with the art dealer and ghosts. As far as Kurt could ascertain, she was a he dressed in a shirtwaist dress from the fifties and wearing red lipstick bright enough for a movie star. But Monty swore by Dinah’s food, so Kurt didn’t much care what she/he wore.

  “I promised them chocolate cake. Is that doable?” Kurt asked.

  Dinah beamed. “I’ve got better, plus hot chocolate. Coffee for you two?”

  Teddy nodded, and as the cook hurried off, she turned to the child who’d complained. “Who was mean to you and why?”

  The girl glared balefully from beneath the black fringe. “Everybody.”

  “That’s a lie.” Teddy turned to Jeb. “Was anyone mean to you?”

  He sucked his thumb and squirmed. His eyes were identical to his sister’s, a light blue bordering on turquoise. Kurt almost sympathized with the poor kid.

  “What if you just tell us what happened?” he suggested. He’d been managing people for years. Kids couldn’t be a whole lot different.

  “They laughed because we got no boots,” the girl said with a pout. “And because we couldn’t get on ourselves. I can ride! I’m just not big.”

  Teddy rubbed her forehead. “The staff didn’t laugh, did they? You mean the other children?”

  Both their little heads bobbed. Dinah arrived in the nick of time with steaming cups of hot chocolate and a coffee carafe.

  The morning fog had lifted and the day was already warming up, but the children eagerly sipped the chocolate.

  “Boots aren’t needed for ponies,” Teddy pointed out. “And you rode all the way into town by yourselves, so I know you can ride. You need to stick your tongue out at the bullies and keep doing what you like to do.”

  Which is probably what she’d done most of her life, Kurt figured. Teddy was tough. She hadn’t screamed when confronted with a skeleton or gone into hysterics when he’d fallen down the stairs. A ghost didn’t daunt her. She’d obviously taken on her sister’s children without a clue of how to raise them, but she was soldiering on just as if she were their mother. If he’d ever given it any thought, she was probably the exact opposite of what he’d imagine a high-fashion jewelry designer to be.

  Teddy wouldn’t be a clingy neurotic once the lust wore off and they went their separate ways—he stopped to consider that. She’d had a dramatic meltdown last night, but he was pretty certain that had been stress and exhaustion. If she really got angry, she’d cut off his balls. Something to consider once she lost any lawsuit over the house.

  “Mama says it’s not polite to stick out our tongues,” the girl said primly as Dinah slid a plate of chocolate-frosted chocolate donuts in front of them.

  Even Kurt’s mouth watered, and he didn’t eat sweets. He waited for the children to dig in. Teddy helped herself, and he lost interest in the donuts while watching her savor them.

  He needed to be watching what the sheriff was doing, but he couldn’t see Teddy’s house from here—just the sheriff’s vans pulling into the lot and spilling men with equipment.

  When he spotted Walker, Sam, and the gallery owner striding down the boardwalk in this direction, Kurt interrupted the etiquette discussion to elbow Teddy and nod out the window. “We’ll have the whole town here in about two minutes. Want me to take the kids back to the play center when I send someone to fetch the ponies?”

  She bit at her luscious bottom lip, and he almost forgot the question. Obviously, he’d been working too hard and hadn’t had enough sex this past year since Kylie had dumped him.

  “I really need to be working, but the sheriff won’t let me in the shop, will he?” The question was apparently rhetorical. She continued without waiting for an answer. “I’ll go back with you, talk to the stable staff, then take advantage of your internet. I’ll have to hope they’ll let us back home tonight.”

  Damn, that’s not what he wanted. He wanted her right there at the lodge where he could find her.

  Crazy Daisy putted into the parking lot in her golf cart, looking like a wild woman in her red feathered cape and flowing gray hair. With a sigh, Kurt slid out of the booth and held out his hand to help Teddy. “The circus is about to begin. Run now or regret it forever after.”

  Teddy sent a longing look toward the people spilling into the café, then glanced back at the children. “Syd is gonna owe me for this,” she muttered, accepting his hand.

  Sid? Boyfriend, brother, husband. . . ? Kurt’s gut clenched. He didn’t have time for this. While Teddy gathered the children, he held open the door for the parade of people streaming through. Teeth gritted , he nodded greetings. The Lucys ignored him as they collected around the counter to study the café’s mural. Fine. He didn’t like being social anyway. He shoved Teddy and the children out in the first break of the stream.

  “The mural is not Lucinda’s work,” he heard the gallery owner state as they fled outside. “That’s an Ingersson. Granted, the tempera is unusual for his style, but that’s a solid block wall he’s painted on. He was probably imitating medieval churches in a statement of irony. It looks as if someone has tried to repair it with an acrylic mix and varnish.”

  “If you don’t turn Hillvale into spook hollow, you should turn it into an art gallery,” Teddy said, shooing the children to her own van instead of his car. “The place is packed with potential, and the unique buildings are part of the charm.” She added that dig as the kids reminded her of the dog, and she jogged back for the animal.

  Kurt followed her swaying hips down the street of dilapidated structures bravely decorated with colorful planters and flowers. Teddy was worth watching. The graying wood and crumbling stucco was not. During the fire, he’d almost hoped the dump would go up in flame so he could use the insurance to rebuild.

  But maybe not if there were priceless pieces of art hidden in the damned attics. Shit.

  Walker

  June 27: afternoon

  * * *

  Using his authority as police chief, Walker closed up Teddy’s empty shop after the coroner departed with the skeleton. The plywood artwork had left with the sheriff’s forensic team, but he had some good photographs to work with.

  He studied the town as he strode down the boardwalk to the café. If, in fact, the artwork had been painted ten years ago—and not half a century ago as the art dealer claimed—Hillvale hadn’t changed a great deal. The painting had mostly been depicting people, with the eccentric array of buildings in the background. There had been tourists in shorts, with cameras hanging around their necks. The car lot had only been half full. What had caught his attention had been a man in a long coat and boots struggling to put a wrapped package into the back of an old woodie wagon.

  If the artist was good at proportion, the package would have been about the size of a four-by-eight panel.

  There had been a few familiar figures in the painting, some carrying packages, and no reason to believe any of them had anything to do with the skeleton. So much for talking to ghosts.

  He shoved open the café door and was engulfed in a cool air-conditioned breeze and the aroma of fresh coffee. The place was standing room only, but Sam waved at him and lifted the carafe to indicate coffee was on the way. Just her smile boosted his day. Before he’d met Sam, he couldn’t remember when he’d last felt happiness. His late wife’s battle with mental illness had dragged them both into a dark place for too long. Sam was sunshine and roses in comparison.

  The room gradually grew quiet as people noticed his entrance. He’d have to get used to that. In LA, he’d mostly been a faceless entity, sitting in an office and directing others to do the field work. Here, he was part of the community’s fabric. In a diverse crowd like this, he blended in. Which meant if people didn’t like him, it was probably because of his job, not his facial features or skin color.

  He kissed Sam on the cheek when she delivered a mug of coffee. “They know I can’t tell them anything, right?”<
br />
  “They’re reading your vibrations, your cards, and your chart,” she whispered with a laugh. “Give them something. They want to help.”

  Finessing an entire eccentric community rather than a corporate board meeting was a challenge he’d have to learn to meet if he wanted to stay here with Sam. He shrugged and sipped his coffee. He’d learned to play the inscrutable card from the best—his mother.

  They wanted to help? Fine. He could work with that.

  “Forensics will have to determine date of death,” he announced to the room at large. “We’ll have to research who lived here and had motive and opportunity once we have that information. We’ll have to hope those factors help us identify the victim, unless someone wants to confess.”

  The goateed antique dealer lifted a board from behind a bench and propped it up on the counter. “We enlarged the photographs Miss Lee took. We’ve identified several of the people in the painting.”

  Damn, but they worked fast.

  “We think if we hang it in the café, people can identify themselves or others who lived here ten years ago. It’s just a photograph, so we’re writing on it.” Tullah from the thrift shop pointed at a tall dark figure on the boardwalk. “That’s me in my turban phase. My features aren’t distinct, but everything else is pretty close.”

  Impressed, Walker made his way over to the counter to study the tidy writing. “This panel just depicts the middle of town, so your store and Aaron’s aren’t here. But Dinah’s is always the center of attention. I wouldn’t have recognized half these people.” He took out his phone and captured a shot, then jotted down the names they’d already scribbled on it. “We still have no reason to believe this is evidence.”

  “There had to be a reason Lucinda painted this day in a future she would never see,” Samantha insisted.

  “A lot of these people don’t live here anymore,” Harvey pointed out. The lanky, black-haired musician leaned against the counter, helping Aaron hold up the photograph poster. “And people like me and Val weren’t here at the time. Hillvale gets a lot of changeover.”

  “But there’s Lance.” Bracelets jangling, orange-haired Amber pointed at a tall familiar figure crossing the parking lot. The Kennedys’ uncle had been graying even then. “And Cass. The artist captured a lot of familiar faces who might have lived in town when she painted this, whether it was 1960 or 1990.”

  Walker zeroed in on the guy with the woodie. Someone had written “Thompson” over his head. “And this guy?” He pointed him out. The name rang familiar.

  Sam appeared at his side and murmured in a low voice, “Cass said he and his wife lived in Teddy’s shop for roughly ten years and left about ten years ago, which confirms the date of the painting as between ten and twenty years ago. And Xavier says Thompson is the one who sold the shop to the Kennedys.”

  Bingo, Suspect Numero Uno.

  Twelve

  June 27: evening

  * * *

  “I’m moving back to the shop in the morning,” Teddy announced defiantly to the table of people waiting for her in the lodge’s restaurant. “I can’t keep leaving the kids with babysitters. I’ll just have to live with ghosts.”

  Kurt pulled out a chair so she could take a seat. She recognized Sam and Elaine Lee, but the older gentleman with the graying ponytail and rugged cheekbones resembling the Kennedy brothers was a stranger to her.

  “Theodosia Baker, my uncle, Lance Brooks,” Kurt gestured at the older man he’d seated next to the gallery owner. “He’s known the art community as long as Cass has.”

  Lance shrugged his bony shoulders. “I can’t claim to know them well. I grew up in the city, not here. But I did meet Lucinda Malcolm when she visited San Francisco. Lovely lady, very frail at the time.”

  “He’s being modest,” Sam said. “He’s an excellent portrait artist and has captured the images of almost everyone who has ever crossed his path.”

  “Is that why Deputy Walker isn’t here?” Teddy asked, glancing at the menu. “He’s matching portraits to the photograph?”

  Sam beamed. “Precisely. You sized him up quickly.”

  “And he’s Chief Walker now,” Kurt added. “I think the town has completed some formal arrangement with the county. We’ll still have to call on the county for backup, but Walker will have his own office at the town hall, once we do some work on the upstairs.”

  “He hates the bureaucratic red tape of the sheriff’s office,” Sam explained. “Walker owns a firm of investigators he can order about as needed, although I don’t think we’ve worked out how the town pays him if he has to use his private services. It’s conflict of interest and complicated.”

  “So you invited me to this confab why?” Teddy asked, pointing at a chardonnay on the menu for the waiter leaning over her shoulder. “I don’t know anyone.”

  “Because you are living in a building where a priceless piece of art was discovered,” Elaine Lee said. “I understand ownership of the building is contested, which means ownership of the art is also contested.”

  “Oh. I hadn’t given that any thought. You think my father may have originally owned the triptych? I can’t imagine him treating it so carelessly. He worked with metals and crystals and not paint, but he respected the work of others.” Teddy was more aware of Kurt taking the chair beside her than the absurdity of this conversation. If her father had ever owned anything priceless, he would have donated it to Greenpeace or something equally unprofitable.

  “The only art I’ve ever bought is through a commercial dealer for prints in colors that match the lodge’s décor,” Kurt said dryly. “I’m quite certain we’ve never bought priceless museum pieces.”

  “Your father used to take art in exchange for services. Town did too, once upon a time,” Lance said, sipping what appeared to be mineral water. “The mural at the café was probably painted to pay a meal tab. The Ingerssons didn’t have much cash at the start.”

  “The Ingerssons were quite prolific in their time.” Elaine sipped her wine and studied the artwork on the restaurant walls. “They eventually faded into obscurity, much the way many Expressionists were replaced by Pop Artists of the period. Some of their more famous work can still command a good price, but the market has moved on. Still, the pieces in your town hall could bring a good price if we bring collectors up here. But Lucinda’s work is timeless, prized not just for the artistry but for the mystery behind the seemingly innocuous scenery.”

  Sam opened a digital notebook and passed a photo gallery across the table. “These are some of her fortune-telling pieces.”

  “Fortune-telling?” Teddy studied the images. She’d taken business and marketing classes in college, not art, but she knew good design when she saw it. These paintings would look spectacular on any wall. They varied from what appeared to be intimate wedding portraits to intriguing scenes similar to the one on the triptych panel.

  Elaine took the notebook and scrolled to one of the portraits of a distinguished couple in a church. The slender blond lady wore a wedding gown in a mid-century style. The mustached older gentleman wore a chest full of medals.

  “My grandmother started our gallery. She sold this Lucinda Malcolm piece back in 1940. I still have the invoice in my files. It’s merely labeled Royal Wedding.” Elaine pressed the screen and another image appeared. “If you’ll look, you can see the resemblance to Grace Kelly and Prince Ranier in these photos of the royal wedding in 1956.”

  Teddy studied the two images. They weren’t identical. In the painting, the bride was more radiant, the groom more authoritative than in the aging photograph. But the details of the gown and the medals were close enough to look like a copy of a photograph of the couple in a slightly different position. “An invoice doesn’t mean this is the same painting as the one sold in 1940,” she argued. “It’s impossible for someone to paint a wedding nearly twenty years before it happened!”

  Elaine shrugged and took the notebook back. “This is the only Royal Wedding portrait she’s ever do
ne, and it’s just one of the more dramatic examples. Most are like the triptych. In her youth, people considered her a fantasy painter, drawing absurd cars and too-sexy clothes on people with odd hairstyles. Eventually, she stopped painting the futuristic and satisfied herself with fantasy sketches. She limited her more expensive oils to ordinary landscapes of flowers that don’t change over the years, theoretically. But even her garden portraits contain plants that weren’t imported or developed until years later. Only gardeners notice, however, so they sold well. She was extremely talented.”

  Kurt took the notebook to study the images. “Even if you convince us, and I’m not easily convinced, that Lucinda Malcolm could paint the future, you’ll never convince a judge and jury if we find evidence in the painting that one of the people on the panel is a killer just because a ghost says so.”

  “Most likely not,” Elaine agreed with equanimity. “You need to accept though, that the painting was not done in the period that it depicts. We believe she painted images of powerful emotional moments that are in some way connected with her rather extensive family. The Malcolms are related to some of the wealthiest, most titled families in the world. It was no coincidence that Lucinda painted Grace Kelly—the Kellys are a direct descendant of one of the distant branches of Malcolms. Lucinda’s name wasn’t actually Malcolm, however. That was a pseudonym.”

  Teddy gratefully sipped the wine the waiter set in front of her. “None of this makes sense,” she admitted. “Why did she use a pseudonym?”

  “According to the notes in our files, her name was actually Lucy Kelly Wainwright, but she claimed her ancestry was a Scots/English family of Malcolms who were descendants of Druids and often called witches. One of those witches was rumored to have painted works that later came true—although the original Lady Lucinda Malcolm’s paintings were apparently more closely connected in time, so people recognized almost immediately what she’d done. Lucy Wainwright took that artist’s name to keep her notoriety from affecting her wealthy socialite family.”