Dark Picasso

by Rick Homan

  Tiffany nodded. “Yes. I’ve seen it several times.”

  That confirmed what Jappling had told me about how Tiffany became interested in buying a Picasso. “I don’t know if you’ve looked at it recently,” I said, “but I noticed that, like the one you bought, it’s rather sexually explicit.”

  “No. I hadn’t noticed. Of course, it’s been a while.”

  “When I was here a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned the explicit sexuality in your painting, and, as I recall, you were upset it about.”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “So, if it makes you feel any better, you aren’t the only one who has a painting like that. In fact, many of the paintings Picasso made in his last years were quite explicit.”

  Tiffany sat staring into space. I didn’t know what she was thinking, but I decided to plunge ahead. “I’ve since discovered that your Picasso and Anne’s have something else in common.”

  Tiffany now gave me her full attention.

  “I’m very sorry to tell you this, but I’ve learned that both your Picasso and hers are forgeries.”

  To my surprise, she did not react. She didn’t even blink. I thought she must be having trouble taking in the implications of what I was saying.

  I went on. “I visited the Redburn Gallery on Sunday and talked to Lester Jappling. He admitted that he knew Anne bought a forgery and that he gave her a receipt to make it look like she bought it from the Redburn. He also admitted that he sold you this painting,” I nodded toward the one above the mantle, “knowing it too was a forgery.”

  “I know,” said Tiffany. “Anne told me.”

  That was the last thing I expected to hear. I didn’t know what to think, except that Tiffany could have saved me a lot of trouble if she’d mentioned this earlier.

  “How long have you known?” I asked.

  “A little over two weeks.”

  “So, you found out around the same time Anne was killed. Did you already know when I came to visit you on the Tuesday following the dinner party?”

  “No. I was so shocked when you pointed out how disgusting my painting is that I wanted to talk to Anne about it.” Tiffany got up and walked toward the mantle as she talked. “I called their house, and John told me she’d gone to the mall to get some shoes. I thought about calling her cell phone, but I was afraid she’d blow me off. She was like that. I don’t know if you noticed. Plus, by then, I was really upset.”

  Tiffany stood in front of the fireplace, gazing up at the fake Picasso that hung above the mantle. “So, I drove over to the mall and cruised around the parking lots, looking for that cute little sports car she drove. When I found it, I parked a little ways off and waited for her to come out. When she did, I walked up to her and told her the Picasso I bought at the Redburn Gallery turned out to be pornographic, and did she know about that when she told me to go look at it?

  “She just laughed and said, ‘You think that’s bad? It’s also a fake.’

  “I was so mad. I just stood there thinking about that day, years ago, when she got me to play in that doubles match at the tennis club. I knew I wasn’t good enough to compete with Anne and her friends, but she just wouldn’t let it go. ‘Come on, Tiffany, you’ll never get any better if you just play with beginners.’ So, I played, and I pushed too hard and blew out my knee. That was the end of tennis for me.

  “I stood there in that parking lot, with Anne laughing in my face, and thought about how she ruined tennis for me, and now she wanted to ruin art for me just when I was starting to become a connoisseur. That’s when I remembered I had this with me.”

  Tiffany opened a drawer in a cabinet by the fireplace and took out a small black pistol.

  “Dale got me this a few years ago and said I should always carry it for protection. I guess he thought we were so rich somebody might try to kidnap me for ransom. That is so stupid. Can you imagine me trying to hold off a couple of big guys with this little thing while they’re trying to pull me into a van?”

  Tiffany pointed the gun in my general direction. I heard a snap and splinters flew from the top of the coffee table in front of me.

  I hit the floor and scurried toward the wall, trying to get to the door in the corner. I had the presence of mind to stay low while reaching for the door knob but gave up on escaping when I heard a second snap and splinters flew from the wood paneling next to the door.

  I peeked around the corner of the sofa and saw Tiffany’s aim waver. She started walking toward me while keeping the gun pointed at me.

  I looked up and remembered I had my back to a wall decorated with almost a million dollars’ worth of art.

  I stood up, and Tiffany stopped where she was and waved her gun to the side, as if that would make me step away from her collection.

  On the wall next to me was that large drawing of a reclining nude. I plucked it off its hook and held it in front of me. By crouching, I managed to make it cover me from my nose to my knees.

  “Not the Matisse!” screamed Tiffany. “It cost a fortune. Dale will kill me if anything happens to it.”

  “Tiffany, put the gun down,” I yelled.

  “You know too much.”

  “It’s not just me. Pat went to New York with me. He knows too, and he knows I’m here this afternoon.”

  Tiffany sighed and lowered the gun. “Well, crap.”

  She sat again in the armchair by the coffee table and dropped the pistol onto the tea tray.

  I moved closer, keeping the drawing in front of me. “Tiffany, I swear, if you reach for that gun, I will smash this drawing over the coffee table.”

  “Don’t worry.” She slumped in the chair, her eyes ranging over her art collection.

  I sat on the sofa and reached for the end of the tea tray. “I won’t be able to relax while the gun is between us. I’m just going to slide this away from you.”

  “Don’t touch it.”

  That didn’t seem like the time to argue. “Will the maid or someone else come to find out what all the noise was?” I asked.

  “No. They probably didn’t hear anything. I’m sure they’re all in the kitchen, eating the rest of the macarons, and gossiping about me.”

  “Alright then,” I said, reaching for my purse on the sofa next to me. “I’ll call 911. I think we have to talk to the police.”

  “Let’s hold off on that,” said Tiffany.

  “I think it will look better if we call right away.”

  “I need to decide what to do next. I should talk to Dale.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s in Columbus for the day.”

  “What do you think Dale would want you to do?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, sounding on the verge of throwing a tantrum. “That’s why I want to talk to him.”

  “That’s okay then,” I said as softly as I could. “Maybe you could call him.”

  She shook her head.

  “Tiffany, a little while ago, you said you wished you could go away somewhere and not have to make any decisions.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of prison.”

  “Maybe it won’t come to that.”

  Tiffany locked her eyes onto mine. “I killed Anne Ghent.”

  “So, you get a lawyer. He’ll probably tell you not to say that to the police. Who knows what happens after that?”

  “I can’t go through all that,” she said, eyeing the gun.

  “Yes, you can. You’re a strong, smart woman. Call your lawyer and follow his instructions about calling the police.”

  “No. Leave now.”

  I was not going to leave her alone with that gun. “The police have a man under arrest for the murder of Anne Ghent, a black man from Wickwood. Think about that. All he did was go to his job at the mall, and he got arrested because someone saw him in the parking lot. He had to talk to the police and talk to a lawyer. Now he’s sitting in a cell. His family is going crazy, worrying about what will happen to him. Are you going to let that go on? Are you going to let him go on tri
al for murder?”

  Tiffany had tears in her eyes.

  Moving slowly, I grabbed the end of the tea tray and slid it to the far end of the coffee table, which put the gun right in front of me. I hated looking at it, so I covered it with a napkin. I set the drawing on the floor, leaning against the front of the sofa, within reach.

  “Call your lawyer, now,” I said.

  She picked up her phone, tapped a few times, and held it to her ear.

  Chapter 33

  The police arrived. Lots of police. Two of them arrested Tiffany and took her away. She had been well-schooled by her lawyer not to talk to them. Others went down the corridor to the drawing room and, I assumed, to the kitchen to talk to the staff.

  One officer sat with me in the reception room and interviewed me. I did my best to keep it simple, saying that, when I told Tiffany her painting was a forgery, she came out with her story about confronting Anne Ghent and killing her in a rage. That led to questions about how I knew it was a forgery, and how Anne Ghent was involved. By the time I was done answering, I’d told most of what happened at the Redburn Gallery.

  The officer asked me to wait and went down the corridor. While I had a moment to myself, I checked my phone and saw a new email from Sheriff Adams. His background check had turned up no criminal record for Lester Jappling. Under the circumstances, that no longer seemed important. I tapped out a reply, thanking him, saying there had been developments, and that he should watch news reports.

  After a few moments by myself, I remembered I had first sat on the same sofa almost four weeks earlier when Pat and I arrived for the Milmans’ dinner party. The day after that I had emailed Tiffany, expressing interest in her Picasso. Two days later, I had visited and mentioned, among other things, the explicit sexuality in the painting. That set off a series of events that resulted in the murder of Anne Ghent within a few hours.

  I knew I wasn’t responsible for Anne’s death. I hadn’t known the sex act depicted in the painting was Anne’s practical joke on Tiffany, or that Tiffany would confront Anne in a parking lot, or that Anne would mock Tiffany by telling her the painting was fake, or that Tiffany carried a pistol. But knowing I wasn’t responsible didn’t make me feel any better about being the rock rolling down the hillside that triggered an avalanche.

  The officer who had interviewed me came back with Detective Brian Murphy. They stood outside the archway to the reception room as the officer read from her notebook and Murphy listened. After a brief conversation, the officer went outside, and Murphy joined me, sitting in a chair at the end of the coffee table.

  “I understand you had a scary experience,” he said.

  “Yes,” I replied. “Now that I think of it, this kind of thing has happened to me regularly since I moved to Ohio, though this is the first time I’ve been shot at.”

  “That’s never happened to me, though somebody pointed a gun at me once. I’ll be glad if that never happens again.”

  He took a moment to look out toward the front hall and watch some officers and technicians go by. “I guess you were right about Tyrell Johnson.”

  “I suppose. But I was wrong about Lester Jappling, and Curtis Diaz, and Dale Milman, and I was wrong to jump to conclusions. I could have given you the information without implying that your arrest of Tyrell Johnson was an example of bigotry.”

  He shrugged it off. “The important thing is you came to talk to me when you had information. The officer who took your statement tells me you came here today to talk to Mrs. Milman about her art collection.”

  “That’s right. I thought she should know that I found out her Picasso is a fake.”

  “And what was her reaction?”

  “She said she already knew, that Anne Ghent told her, and that she was so angry when she heard this she took out the gun she carries for self-defense and killed her.”

  Murphy nodded his head slowly as if listening to an old story. “People have been killed for less.”

  “They had a history, Tiffany and Anne Ghent. This was not the first time Anne played a nasty practical joke on her.”

  Murphy leaned forward, ready to stand up. “We’ll call you if we need to talk to you again. Will you be alright to drive back to Cardinal U.?”

  I thought about it for a second, and decided to stop at that coffee shop for a little pick-me-up before I left Shawville. “I’ll be fine.”

  Murphy got up, and I did to. “Thanks again,” he said before he went back down the corridor.

  I walked out to my car, expecting to be stopped by one of the officers who glanced at me as I walked by, but apparently there was no longer any restriction about leaving the scene of a crime.

  Once I was seated at the coffee shop and had a cookie and half a cup of tea inside me, I called Pat, and he picked up. “I’ll be back in about an hour,” I said. “Let’s have dinner. Also, I’m freaked out about what just happened at Tiffany’s house. I’ll tell you all about it.”

  “I’ve got some soup in the freezer. I’ll start thawing it.”

  “That sounds great. I’ll stop at Steadman’s in Blanton and see if they still have some good bread. By the way, I’d love to cancel my classes tomorrow and start the weekend early, but I’ve got to keep pushing to get them ready for exams. So, sorry, I can’t sleep at your place tonight.”

  “No, not tonight,” he said. He sounded down.

  I took my tea out to the car, turned the radio on loud and hit the road.

  When I smelled the aroma of soup as I walked in the door of Pat’s house, I knew how hungry I was. I cut up the bread while he filled two bowls, and we sat down to eat.

  Though I was desperate for nutrition, I couldn’t stop babbling about what I had been through. There’s something about almost dying that makes you glad to be alive, ecstatic in fact.

  I started by telling him how Tiffany pulled out a gun when I broke the news that her Picasso was a fake. By the time I was done telling him about how I talked her down and the police came, I had also told him who Detective Brian Murphy was, and why I had gone to see him about Lester Jappling two days earlier.

  When I went to ladle a little more soup into my bowl, I remembered Pat still didn’t know how John Ghent reacted to the story of Anne’s forgery scheme. I felt a bit queasy while telling him Ghent was delighted to hear of his wife’s treachery.

  As I wiped my bowl clean with my last bite of bread, I mentioned that the deans had decided to suspend the normal rules of scholarship so they wouldn’t alienate parents and donors.

  Pat had long since finished eating. He looked exhausted. “Has it been only four days?” he asked.

  “I know. It’s hard to believe. I’m sorry I just blurted all that out, but I’ve been running from one thing to the next ever since we got back from New York, and each thing seemed more outrageous than the last. With all the driving to Shawville and back I never had the time or the energy to call you so we could get together for a meal and have a normal conversation.”

  “Not much has been normal for me either this week.”

  I took his hand. “How are you feeling?”

  “Walking on eggshells.”

  “I can’t imagine what it was like, growing up the way you did.”

  “The hard part is, it’s not over.”

  I must have looked as confused as I felt.

  “Dad’s been gone seven years now,” he said, “and I don’t feel any different. That’s how trauma works, if it’s bad enough and goes on long enough. It changes the brain. There’s no way to change it back.”

  I didn’t know whether to take this literally or to think it was an expression of his depressed thinking.

  “Thanks for telling me about this,” I said. “I’ll do my best to learn more about it. I can learn how to recognize when it’s happening and what to do. Maybe we could go together for counseling. I know you’re a psychologist and you know all about it, but maybe a neutral third party could help us.”

  “Nicole . . .” He froze, unable to think
what to say next.

  “There is counseling for this, isn’t there?”

  “Yes, people go for counseling, and it helps, but there’s only so much they can do. I can learn—I have learned—to make these episodes less frequent and less severe, but I will always be someone who can be triggered.”

  “But can you keep making them even less frequent and even less severe?”

  “It’s not that simple. Meditation is supposed to help, and I do some of that. Getting in touch with nature is supposed to help, which makes this campus perfect for me. Exercise helps, which is why I lift weights. I tried running, but it bothered my knees. But here’s the catch: lifting weights has made me stronger, and that makes me more dangerous.”

  “Only if you’re triggered,” I said. “Most of the time you’re just stronger. I can live with that.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “What do you mean? How bad can it be? It’s not as if you’re going to hurt me, is it?”

  He looked at me, and looking into his green eyes was like staring into the depths of the ocean. “I could never hurt you,” he said.

  “Alright then, the rest I can live with.”

  He shook his head. “You don’t want to live your life knowing that at any time I could do something like what I did on Sunday.”

  “Pat, as I told you, it wasn’t that bad. Sure, you should probably avoid getting physical with people, but I was more scared when he put his hands on my shoulders.”

  “Think about it, Nicole. Jappling could still decide to take legal action. He could accuse me of assault. You could be called to testify as a witness. If we were married—I know we haven’t seriously talked about marriage, but if we were—you could be bankrupted along with me if I had to pay damages.”

  I squeezed both his hands with mine. “And lightning could strike, or I could get cancer. Life is risky, and none of us gets out of it alive. There’s no getting around that. But while we’re here we have to have some fun, and I like having fun with you.”

  He had tears in his eyes.

  I went on. “I’m not letting you go, Pat Gillespie. If you want to get rid of me, you’ll have to come up with something better than PTSD.”