Dark Exhibit

by Rick Homan

  “She was at the gallery on Saturday.”

  The report included a portrait photo of her, much better than the one Adams had shown me. Hoping there was still a chance to end this call, I said, “I don’t think so. She doesn’t look familiar.”

  “It says in the article she came to the opening.”

  I scanned the story, and there it was, about half-way down. “. . . earlier in the day had attended the opening of an art exhibit at Fuchs College.” Not good.

  “Oh, yes. I see what you mean, Greta. Hmm, that is unfortunate.”

  “Unfortunate? Is that all you have to say?”

  “I’m very sorry this happened to her, but I’m not sure what we can do about it.”

  “We have to meet.”

  “Who has to meet?”

  “The Gallery Advisory Committee.”

  “Why?”

  “To decide what we should do.”

  “Do about what?”

  “There could be a murderer on campus.” Greta put extra emphasis on the word, “murderer.”

  “The murder took place at a motel.”

  “But they think Edgar Yount did it.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “It’s in the article.”

  As I scrolled further down the page, what was left of my hope evaporated. The relevant passage read, “authorities have questioned the artist, Edgar Yount, who is known to have a prior association with the murdered woman.” So, the cat had exited the bag.

  “Greta, it does not say they think he did it. It says the sheriff questioned him.”

  “They just put it that way to avoid lawsuits. Why else would the sheriff question him?”

  “For the same reason he’ll talk to everyone who knew her.”

  “I’m free tomorrow afternoon. Do you want me to see if the others can meet then?”

  “No. We are not meeting. This is not the committee’s business, especially since we don’t know whether this has anything to do with the gallery.”

  “Nicole, I can think of several ways this could play out. I would feel better if we could meet and go over these scenarios . . .”

  “No. We are not going to sit around and imagine all the horrible things that might happen.”

  That shut her up for a moment, but she soon caught her breath. “Well, I must say, I think you are leaving us unprepared.”

  “For what?”

  “We could be in for some very bad publicity.”

  Since saying no wasn’t going to work, I decided to try another approach. “Greta, I have an idea. Now that you’ve brought this to my attention—and thank you for that by the way—I’ll stay on top of it. For instance, I’ll call the sheriff’s office. Maybe I can find out what’s going on before it gets in the papers.” I thought about telling her I had Adams on speed dial, but that seemed like laying it on too thick. “I’ll let you and the other members of the committee know if anything comes up that concerns the gallery. How would that be?”

  “I suppose that might work. Are you sure they’ll talk to you?”

  “Once I tell them I’m director of the gallery, I’m sure they will.” That really was laying it on a bit thick, but I was desperate.

  “All right then,” she replied. “I’m glad you’re willing to act on this. I think it’s for the good of the gallery. That’s really my only concern.”

  “Of course, it is, Greta. I know that. And there is something you could do to help me and to help the gallery. If anyone else mentions this article to you, would you tell them that we have this under control? You know how some of our colleagues can blow things out of proportion.”

  “You are so right,” she replied. “I hate to think what some of them would make out of a report like this. Before you know it, they’d be saying Edgar was stalking students, and . . .”

  “Oh! Greta, I have another call coming in. It’s my parents calling from San Francisco. I have to take this.”

  “Alright, but . . .”

  I hung up.

  Of course, there was no call from my parents.

  As I walked over to Abbie’s Hutch, I calmed myself with the thought that the news report meant only that more people knew what had happened. It made my situation more uncomfortable, but it didn’t make it worse.

  I hoped a chat with Abbie would show me how to start making it better.

  Chapter 8

  Abbie let me in and walked to the fridge. She was wearing sweats and two pairs of socks. “Are you going out in your car again this evening?”

  “No.” It was such a comfort to take off my shoes, step onto her carpet in my stockinged feet, and sit in one of her easy chairs. Maybe I would get real furniture one of these years. She must have had the electric heaters running all afternoon because her living-dining-kitchen room was at a comfortable temperature.

  She handed me a beer. “To what do I owe the honor of this visit by the reigning queen of art on the campus of Fuchs College?”

  I took a sip and got a handful of peanuts from the dish on the table. “Before I get into all that, thank you for coming to the opening and bringing Sharon with you.”

  “Sure. It was the highlight of our weekend. The paintings are amazing, and I really liked Yount’s talk. Sharon enjoyed it too. Besides she was eager to meet you.”

  “That’s sweet. I’m glad I finally got to meet her, and I’m so glad you two patched things up. I remember things were a little shaky for a while last year.”

  Abbie smiled as she took a moment to remember. “Yeah. When we finally got around to talking about that, it turned out she was afraid I was having a little chop suey on the side.”

  When I understood what she was saying, I half-inhaled a peanut and had to cough it back up. “Thanks for the racist nickname!”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Why would she think that?”

  Abbie shrugged. “Apparently for a while I was coming home on the weekends and talking a lot about my new friend on campus, ‘Nicole.’ I guess I sounded a little too enthusiastic. I wasn’t even aware of it.”

  “You told her I’m not gay, right?”

  “Once she told me what was bugging her, yeah, I told her. Even then it took a while to convince her. When she met you yesterday, she thought the whole thing was pretty funny.”

  Falling in love with a woman has never been on my agenda, but I was a little insulted by the suggestion that someone would think it was funny. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You saw her yesterday: maybe an inch taller than you, slender, black hair, cute little nose.”

  I groaned. “I get it. Why cheat on her with someone who looks just like her?”

  “Right. It’s all good now. Really. When she said you should come up to Pittsburgh some time, she meant it.”

  “Okay, I’ll take you up on that.”

  I took a long swallow of my beer to clear my throat for talking business. “When you were at the opening yesterday, did you notice a woman in her thirties, almost your height, curly brown hair? She was hanging out with Edgar and his friends.”

  Abbie shook her head. “I don’t remember anyone like that.”

  “Doesn’t matter. The sheriff called me this afternoon about her. Her name is Jessica Fabrizio. She was murdered in her motel room last night.”

  Abbie’s jaw dropped.

  I went on. “I’ve just come from Edgar’s studio. He’s broken up about it because he lived with her for a while when they were in college, eight or ten years ago.”

  Abbie sat back as if hit by a wave. “This news would be horrible no matter what, but coming the day after his exhibit opened? Talk about irony!”

  “It gets worse. Sheriff Adams questioned him earlier this afternoon. Edgar told the sheriff that after the reception at the gallery, he went to Jessica’s motel to pick her up for dinner. He says she didn’t answer the door or her phone, so he just went on and met his friends. That doesn’t look good because that’s about when she was killed.”

 
“So, the sheriff thinks Edgar might have done it?”

  “Apparently so. The fact that Edgar and Jessica were lovers once upon a time makes him look more suspicious.”

  “That’s definitely worse. The poor guy!”

  “And, to make matters even worse, the first news story on the murder has come out. It says she was killed after she left the reception and the gallery, and it focuses on Edgar as the most likely suspect.”

  Abbie shrugged. “That’s not good, but how does it make matters worse?”

  “I’m pretty sure this is not what President Taylor had in mind last year when he proposed opening a gallery on campus and putting me in charge of it.”

  “I’m not sure I follow you.”

  “He said he wanted to bring cosmopolitan influences to the campus. Instead the first artist I bring to campus is in the news linked with a murder investigation.”

  “You couldn’t have foreseen that. Nobody could.”

  “True, but what if Taylor decides having the gallery is not worth the bad publicity?”

  Abbie thought about that for a moment. “I think you’re probably getting ahead of yourself, but, okay, what if he did?”

  I took a moment to think. “The gallery is my best chance to make my job here worthwhile. Without it I’m living in the middle of nowhere, getting paid very little for teaching a few courses. I could be living downstairs in my parents’ house, getting paid about the same for teaching part-time at the community college, and I’d be home in San Francisco with my friends and surrounded by museums and galleries and other good things.”

  Abbie frowned. “Yeah. I’ve had the same conversation with myself, only in my version I’m living with Sharon in her fancy condo in Pittsburgh. In fact, she has suggested I do that. But, so far at least, I’m not willing to give up on full-time employment to be supported by my wealthy girlfriend.”

  “Yeah, I’d hate to give up too. After investing all those years and all that money in getting a PhD, I can’t believe I’m even thinking about living off my parents. It’s humiliating.” I drank some beer and let it settle. “So that’s why I’m frustrated. I just wish I could do something.”

  “About what?”

  “The investigation.”

  “What could you do?”

  “I don’t know, but I can’t do nothing. This feels like waiting for an accident to happen.”

  “Maybe it’s not that bad. Are there any other suspects?”

  “Sure. This woman, Jessica, was a professor at the University of Louisville, so I imagine the police are trying to find out if anyone there had a reason to kill her. Same with her friends in Cleveland. Since she was killed near here, and she was at the opening, the sheriff is looking into other people who saw her when she arrived at the gallery toward the end of the reception. That would include Edgar’s friend from Cleveland, Mel Schrier; my gallery intern, Paul Weinert; and Matt Dunkle.”

  “Dunkle? From the math department?”

  “Yeah. He’s on the Gallery Advisory Committee and he was at the opening yesterday. They all would have seen her at the gallery.”

  “Want another beer?”

  “No. I haven’t finished this one.”

  Abbie drained hers and rinsed the bottle at the sink.

  After she had returned to her chair and folded her long legs under her, I said, “Help me think of something, Abbie. There has to be something I can do.”

  “What about Matt Dunkle and . . . what’s his name? Your student in the gallery?”

  “Paul Weinert.”

  “They’re right here on campus. You know a little about each of them already. You have easy access to find out more. Why not find out what you can about them?”

  “What good would that do?”

  “The sheriff will want to know if they were acquainted with the victim before she showed up at the gallery. If you can feed him some information that shows they probably weren’t, that may speed up the process. The less time he spends on people from the campus, the quicker he’ll catch the real killer, and the quicker the bad publicity will end.”

  “That seems like a long shot.”

  “Sometimes a long shot is the only shot you have. You said you want to do something.”

  “I guess you’re right. I could find out what’s on file here and pay attention if one of them comes up in conversation. I’ll also check what they have on social media.”

  “But remember, Nicole: Either Weinert or Dunkle actually could be the murderer. So, keep a low profile. You don‘t want whoever did it to see you coming after him.”

  I felt a chill at what Abbie said. “I’ll be careful. Thanks for the beer.”

  As I went back to my Hutch and got ready for bed, I thought about how unlikely it was that Weinert or Dunkle had some reason to kill this woman who showed up at the gallery yesterday. Of course, it was also unlikely that someone, who knew her in Louisville and had a reason to kill her, followed her all the way up here to do the deed. And it was unlikely that Edgar killed an ex-girlfriend he hadn’t seen in several years, or that Mel, a friend of theirs from back then, had done it. It was not likely that anyone had killed her, but someone definitely had.

  Chapter 9

  Looking into Weinert’s and Dunkle’s backgrounds was postponed by a swarm of academic chores. Class preparation, grading quizzes, and other things kept me busy Sunday evening and all day Monday. Because I was still catching up from a week of restless sleeping, I got up late Tuesday morning, leaving me only enough time to eat a piece of toast and get to my morning class.

  After class, I glanced at my calendar and saw my department was scheduled to meet. Though I had hoped to have a hot meal in the snack bar at the Student Center, I had to run in, grab an egg-salad sandwich and a bottle of water, and run back to the seminar room on the second floor of the Arts and Humanities Building.

  Unlike our offices, this small room with a conference table and eight chairs had no view of the wooded hillside. In fact, it had no windows at all. In my opinion, this was a stroke of genius by the architect. There’s nothing like a creeping sense of claustrophobia to make people sitting around a table decide to keep it short.

  On this particular Tuesday, the art department met for further discussion of the college’s new emphasis on preparing students for careers. “Further discussion” is the academic term for “looking busy.” So far in our meetings on the subject, we had made great progress in defining the word “career.” I fully expected that any day now we would begin reaching a consensus on the meaning of the word “preparation.” Conducting these discussions without the use of a dictionary made them all the more thrilling.

  We were pursuing this topic because sixteen months ago, at the beginning of my first year at Fuchs College, President Roland Taylor announced that the trustees had decided to add a School of Business to the institution. A few months later all departments in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences were asked to assess their programs and write a statement describing the ways in which they prepare students for careers and proposing ways in which they could do more to prepare them.

  This shift to career preparation was not the only change we faced. With the addition of a School of Business, Fuchs College would become a university. Although the school’s name was pronounced as it would be in German so it rhymed with “spooks,” the idea of an institution of higher learning called “Fuchs U” seemed ridiculous to most people.

  But, when President Taylor called upon the faculty, alumni, and students to come up with a new name, sides were taken, battles were fought, and wars were waged over whether to keep the old name or look to the future with a name such as “Reliance University.” Of course, the students proposed names like, “Can’t Afford U.” The way things were going, it looked like the new building for the school of business would be done before the new name was chosen.

  When I got to the seminar room, the other members of my department were already gathered round the table. Wilma Halberstadt was, as always, dressed i
n beige with brown accents and seemed worried, though that may have been an illusion created by her thick glasses. Her art education courses were part of the teacher certification program. She spent a lot of time showing students how to cut things out of construction paper and had them quoting Piaget’s developmental psychology from memory.

  Irving Zorn made huge sums of money painting vast canvases that were pale imitations of the great Jackson Pollack. He was a tall man, always in need of a shave and a haircut. He wore brightly colored shirts that strained to cover his pot belly.

  Frank Rossi, our chairman, was a competent landscape painter. He wore a dark green suit and a persimmon-colored silk shirt. I suspected he had his clothes made for him, though he could not have afforded that on his faculty salary.

  He called us to order in his usual style. “All here? Good. Short agenda. One item. Career preparation. Nicole?”

  I gave them the speech I had prepared. “As you all recall, I proposed a gallery internship last fall and we approved it. My first gallery intern, Paul Weinert, has been working very hard and shows great potential. I think the internship could become a permanent position with a new student taking over each semester. As the reputation of the gallery grows, we should find it easier to place our interns in entry-level positions with galleries, museums, and perhaps historic homes. The possibilities are endless.”

  In other words, I lied through my teeth. And I left out the part about Paul being a murder suspect.

  “Excellent, Nicole,” said Rossi. “Very promising. Real growth potential. Irving?”

  He turned to Irving Zorn for his report, but Wilma Halberstadt spoke up before Zorn could swallow his mouthful of sausage pizza. “I just want to remind everyone that the department has a very successful program for preparing art majors for careers in teaching,” she said.

  Wilma never stopped reminding us that she, the only member of the department who was neither an artist nor an art historian, ran the program about which parents loved to say, “at least you’ll have something to fall back on.”