Dark Picasso

by Rick Homan

  He slid off his chair and knelt next to mine, which put us eye to eye. He wrapped his arms around me, and I hugged him back. I heard him sobbing and felt him struggle for breath.

  When we’d both shed enough tears, he sat back on his heels. I used my napkin to wipe my face and his.

  He smiled and said, “What a mess!”

  “Yes. It is, and I love it. I love our mess.” I kissed him. “Now I’m going back to my Rabbit Hutch and getting to bed before I fall asleep in your kitchen.”

  He stood up. “I’ll walk you back. It’ll do me good to stretch my legs and get some fresh air.”

  I gave him a skeptical look.

  He smiled. “I know: We said no sleeping over tonight. I won’t even come in. I’ll just walk you to your door and say good night.”

  As we turned from Fellbach Circle onto College Avenue, I said, “I’ve decided we’re going away somewhere this weekend. Let’s talk tomorrow morning and figure it out. Someplace we’ve been before, so we don’t have to think about it. We’ll just eat take-out, and have picnics in parks, and take long walks. Someplace that has traffic and noise where we’re not surrounded by trees.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Chapter 34

  On Sunday evening, I dusted, swept, and generally tidied up my Rabbit Hutch while awaiting Abbie’s arrival. She had texted that she was bringing lasagna from her favorite place in Pittsburgh and offered to share it. I told her to bring it to my place, since she had hosted our last meal.

  After setting places at my cafe table, I got out the bottle of red wine I’d picked up when Pat and I were on our way back to campus earlier in the afternoon. We’d had a lovely couple of nights in Cincinnati. We weren’t quite back to being our usual fun-loving selves, but we were feeling close to each other. Mission accomplished.

  I read the front and back labels on the wine bottle, looking for some encouragement about its quality. After all, I had bought the “red table wine” that cost a dollar more. That’s how one splurges on an assistant professor’s salary.

  I thought about opening it and seeing how it tasted, but decided not to. Although I’d seen Abbie’s car go by half an hour ago, I didn’t know how long it would be before she brought the lasagna over. If I tasted the wine, I knew I would keep sipping it, and I didn’t want to use up my quota of wine before I started eating. Of course, if I poured only a single sip into the glass, and, after tasting it, rinsed my mouth out with water . . .

  I was saved from this decision by a knock on my door. “It’s unlocked,” I yelled.

  I heard, “Help!” from outside, and opened the door.

  Abbie came in, using oven mitts to carry the covered pan. “Prepare for Petretti’s finest!”

  “I remember it well. Pat and I went there with you and Sharon.”

  “That’s right. You did.”

  Abbie dished up the plates while I poured the wine, and we sat down to eat.

  “Just as good as I remember,” I said.

  “So, what’s it been, two weeks?” Abbie asked.

  “Seems longer.”

  “What have you been up to?”

  “Do you remember I asked you about those two Picassos and whether they could be investments? Turns out they’re both forgeries.”

  “Whoa! I’ll bet that made a couple of millionaires very unhappy.”

  “It was a little more complicated than that. The man who asked me to look into it —the one whose wife was killed—thought it was hilarious. It turns out his wife knew she was buying a forgery and didn’t pay much for it. He’s decided to keep it as a memento of the kind of woman she was.”

  Abbie chuckled. “It takes all kinds, I guess. How about the owners of the other one? How did they take the news?”

  “It wasn’t news to Tiffany because Anne—the murdered woman—had already told her it was fake. That’s why she killed Anne. Anne had set her up to buy it.”

  Abbie shivered. “Obviously I wasn’t keeping up with local news while I was in Pittsburgh.”

  “I’m not sure how much of this has been in the news.”

  “So, how do you know what happened?”

  “Tiffany told me right after I told her painting was fake.”

  “Wait! You told her it’s fake, and she confessed to killing her friend?”

  “Not right away. First, she pulled out the gun she used on Anne, pointed it at me, and fired off a few shots.”

  “What?”

  “I managed to talk her down and get her to turn herself in.”

  Abbie sat back and stared out the window for a moment. “In a way, I wish you hadn’t told me this. Stop doing things that could get you killed!”

  “Do you mean things like investigating the provenance of modern paintings?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  We both took a minute to eat and drink some wine. The lasagna was just as heavenly as I remembered. The wine was okay.

  Abbie smiled as she said, “You must be feeling pretty good about exposing art fraud and getting a murderer arrested.”

  “I’m not sure how I feel. I had a very strange day, last Tuesday.”

  “Strange how?”

  “I drove over to Shawville to talk to the detective investigating the murder. This was before Tiffany confessed. I told him the sales manager at the gallery who sold Tiffany the forgery had a motive to kill Anne Ghent. Unfortunately, the detective wasn’t interested.”

  “Why not?”

  “He said since it was a shooting in a parking lot at night, the killer must be from ‘a different class of people.’ So, in his mind, a white guy, who definitely had a reason to kill her, was not a suspect, but a black guy, who had no connection to her other than being at the same mall at the same time, was a suspect.”

  “I can see how that would ruin your day.”

  “It wasn’t just that. On the same day, I got an email from our dean, Vera Krupnik, telling me to grade a paper for my Modern Art class even though the student refused to acknowledge the source her paper was based on.”

  “Why would the student refuse?”

  “I assume someone told her I was planning to accuse her of plagiarism if she admitted she used a source.”

  “Couldn’t you tell her there was no question of plagiarism?”

  “We never got that far. The dean told me to grade it as if there were nothing wrong with it.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “It turns out the student was the winner of a big scholarship in the School of Business, and therefore cannot be allowed to fail in any way.”

  Abbie shook her head as if trying to get rid of the thoughts inside.

  I continued. “Tuesday was a day when nothing made sense. Motive is supposed to be important in a crime investigation, but the detective decided it wasn’t. Acknowledging sources is necessary in scholarship, but the dean decided the student could skip it. Where does that leave me?”

  Abbie blew air out between her lips. “I need more wine.”

  We picked up our glasses and moved to the canvas-sling beach chairs by my front window, which were only two steps away. Living in a Rabbit Hutch is so convenient.

  Abbie swallowed some wine, cleared her throat, and said, “I don’t know anything about the murder investigation, but I do know something about your academic problem. Do you remember, last year, there was talk of moving the Department of Economics from the School of Liberal Arts to the School of Business?”

  “I heard something to that effect.”

  “I argued on the side of keeping my department in liberal arts because I didn’t want to work in a business-school culture.”

  “Which means what?” I asked.

  “A culture in which the ends justify the means. You win at all costs.”

  “Really? That may be true of some people in highly competitive businesses, but not university faculty. Our colleagues in business are scholars like we are.”

  Abbie smiled but looked sad. “There’s a guy at Rutgers—in their
School of Business, as a matter of fact—who has documented this with large-scale surveys. He asks students and faculty to define cheating and decide when they think it’s acceptable to break the rules—things like that. It turns out people in business schools are much more, shall we say, flexible.”

  I’d never heard anything about this. “Why would that be?”

  “Students go to business schools so they can get higher-paying jobs. Anything that doesn’t help them do that they feel free to ignore. That same guy has broadened his surveys to all kinds of undergrad and graduate schools. The rule holds: In schools and departments that promise high-paying careers, students are more willing to cheat, and faculty are more willing to tolerate it.”

  It all made sense now. “Bayliss, the business-school dean, was in on this, the day I went to talk to Krupnik. So, it seems our dean just caved in to pressure from the School of Business.”

  Abbie nodded. “And, since the university has placed a multi-million-dollar bet on the business school, the pressure is huge.”

  “So, do we have to play by their rules now?”

  “For the moment at least.”

  I took my last sip of wine and set my glass aside without pouring more. I needed to keep my head clear. “That’s going to be a problem for me. I forced myself to grade that paper, but I don’t know if I can go on doing things like that.”

  Abbie finished her wine. “I doubt you’ll have to. You ran into the perfect storm: Your student was the poster girl for the biggest change ever to hit this school. I doubt that will happen again any time soon.”

  “I don’t feel like waiting around to find out.”

  Abbie laughed. “We’re back to the ever-popular topic of getting a job at a better school. Seen any good job listings, lately?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “It’s not all bad here. You’ve got your own gallery where you can exhibit artists you like without having to worry about selling enough paintings to pay the bills.”

  “That’s true. That’s a good thing, but it’s not enough.”

  “Apply for a sabbatical.”

  I started to laugh and almost choked. “I’ve only been here three years. I’ll be due for one four years from now, but I don’t think I can hold on that long.”

  “You don’t have to. Our sabbatical policy is not based on years of service. The university provides for a certain number of research leaves every year. They go to whoever applies for them. Some years it’s competitive, in which case a committee is formed to review the applications.”

  “How did the faculty negotiate that?”

  “Actually, it was President Taylor’s idea. I think he recognized we’re a long way from research centers here. Offering research leaves to whoever has the best idea sent a signal that he didn’t want the faculty to get complacent, teaching their same courses every year.”

  “Have you ever done this?”

  “I had a semester off the year before you came here. I spent a week in New York and a couple of weeks in Chicago to use libraries and attend conferences, but mostly I stayed home with Sharon. I got a lot of writing done and published a couple of articles.”

  “Wow! I have to do this. When’s the deadline?”

  “They’re all decided for next year, but start getting your application ready now and apply in the fall. At the end of fall semester, they’ll name the recipients for the following academic year.”

  “I’m excited just thinking about this. But I wouldn’t want to go away for the whole time. Pat’s here, and I’ve gotten used to having my man around, if you know what I mean.”

  Abbie smiled. “For me, it’s having my woman around, but, yeah, I know what you mean. Get Pat to apply for the same semester. Maybe you can go away together.”

  A warm glow erupted in my belly and spread throughout my body. “I think this could work.”

  “You can make it work. Believe me, after living in a city for a semester and a summer, you’ll start to think of this campus as your country home.”

  I got the wine bottle from the table, poured a glass for Abbie and half-a-glass for me. “Here’s to making it work,” I said.

  We raised our glasses and drank.

  Thank you for reading Dark Picasso.

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