Dark Exhibit

by Rick Homan

  I decided to give it a day or two and see how many leaves were added to the stem and what kinds of things Jessica’s buddies shared.

  Tuesday morning all I could think about was getting a look at Edgar’s notebooks. I had sent Ella Yount an email saying I would drop by the studio that afternoon and hadn’t heard back from her, so I assumed she didn’t mind. At least I had done my due diligence.

  My art history class went pleasantly. It was so much easier having given all these lectures last year. That left me with only a meeting of my department standing between me and my trip with Abbie to Edgar’s studio, which felt like having a mountain range standing between me and the Promised Land.

  I purposely arrived ten minutes late for the meeting. It was a cowardly and obvious strategy to avoid small talk with whoever arrived on time. It earned me a scowl from Frank, but still I thought it was a good trade-off.

  We were gathered to discuss our ideas for career preparation programs for art majors. Frank began the meeting by passing around a report prepared by Wilma Halberstadt documenting the practical application of work done in her classes by students planning careers in art education. It was more than twenty pages long. She had taken the syllabus for each of her courses and expanded it by appending a paragraph to each line. I glanced at the first page and found it was like reading a blow-by-blow description of making yourself a cup of coffee.

  Frank asked her to comment on her report, and for the first time in a year and a half I felt real affection for Wilma. She said only that her written report needed no explanation because the viability of the art education program was well-documented. Frank and Irving must have felt as relieved as I did because they too nodded and muttered, “Very good.”

  Next Frank passed around the report I had emailed to him on Friday. Though brief compared with Wilma’s—only two pages—it was nonetheless tedious because it documented the obvious: Entry-level jobs in museums require knowledge of art history. I had job listings from the websites of several prominent museums and some boilerplate from the American Alliance of Museums backing me up. On the second page, I had gone out on a limb and said there was “anecdotal evidence” that the same was true for jobs in commercial galleries. That was the academic way of saying, “Everybody says so.”

  When Frank asked me to comment, I followed the example of my esteemed colleague and kept it short.

  This brought us around to Irving Zorn’s report. I saw that Frank had no more photocopies to pass around. Instead, he turned to his fellow painter and asked, “Irving?”

  Zorn cleared his throat and said, “I made some phone calls and talked to some people in the industry. They all say the best place to start is with the fundamentals: drawing, painting. Get as much of that as possible. The students will go on to graduate school anyway. The good ones will. I think we’re already preparing them to work in animation.”

  Frank nodded. “Makes sense. Still, a written description?” He looked around the table and asked, “Comments?”

  Wilma stayed quiet, so I said, “We all have viable programs here. I’d like to see us support one another to make them as strong as possible.”

  Frank was nodding again. “Of course.”

  Sensing an opportunity to score a political success, I forged ahead. “Can we make the animation program stronger by giving the students some actual experience in animation while they are still in school here?”

  Zorn clouded up. “What are you proposing?”

  “I don’t have a proposal. I’m just wondering if we can do more for them in animation. For instance, in my area we give them the background in art history and we offer some practical experience in the gallery. Maybe in addition to the drawing and painting courses we could get funding for our own computer lab with appropriate software and give them some experience making short, animated films.”

  I had Frank’s full attention and he was halfway to smiling. “Interesting. Irving?”

  For a moment I thought Zorn would explode, but he surprised me by speaking as if bored. “I suppose that sounds very sexy—anything with computers does. But the fact is they barely have time to become competent in drawing and painting as it is. It’s all we can do to give them enough studio time to build the fundamentals. One doesn’t become an artist in just a few years. I think what you’re describing would be a distraction.”

  Wilma was as usual staring at the table top.

  Frank was staring at Zorn. “But Irving, if we’re going to have a career track in animation, surely some time spent making animated films would be attractive to students and might make them attractive to employers or graduate schools.”

  Zorn sounded even more bored as he said, “I’m sorry, Frank. You’re proposing to water down the studio curriculum. That’s against my principles. I will not compromise.”

  For perhaps the first time in the year-and-a-half I had known him, I saw Frank becoming angry. “I think there’s a misunderstanding, Irving. No one is proposing to water anything down, least of all the studio curriculum. What about this: In addition to getting funding for an animation lab with computers, we get approval to add perhaps six or nine credit hours to the requirements for the studio art major? That way our students would take the same number of drawing and painting classes as they do now, and they would take an animation course or two on top of that.”

  I was thrilled to learn that Frank could resort to complete sentences when the cause was great enough.

  Zorn was shaking his head and seemed to be having trouble finding words. “Who would teach . . . these . . . these animation classes?”

  Frank looked at me. I shrugged. Frank replied, “Maybe we can get funding to hire an adjunct to teach one course each semester.”

  Zorn forced a laugh. “Money for computers, money for an adjunct. If all this money is available, I have a few things I’d like to spend it on before we go in for these flashy new toys.”

  Frank seemed flabbergasted.

  Wilma spoke up. “Are we done?”

  “No,” said Zorn. “I’m not done. I think we need to re-evaluate this gallery on campus. It’s a distraction. It’s also misleading. False advertising. It’s pretentious for us to say we’re giving students professional experience on campus. We’re educators. We should stick to what we do.”

  Still apparently unable to think straight, Frank turned to me. “Nicole?”

  “In the first place, it’s not our gallery. It comes out of the president’s budget. He calls the shots.”

  Zorn cut in. “Yes, but your gallery internship carries academic credit given through this department. Our name, our reputation is at stake. I will not see that devalued . . .”

  It was my turn to talk over him. “The gallery does not devalue the department’s reputation. It gives us something to be proud of.”

  Frank found his voice. “Take a step back. Think about what we’re saying.”

  I ignored him. “By contrast, preparing students for careers in animation would make us look bad since there are fewer and fewer careers in animation every year, in the United States at least.”

  I now had everyone’s attention, and I made the most of it. “One of my classmates from San Francisco State works as an animator at Industrial Light and Magic. I checked with him. American filmmakers are now farming out the work of animation to places like Romania and Costa Rica. It can be done at lower cost in anyplace that has educated workers.” I looked Zorn in the eye. “I guess the ‘people in the industry’ you talked to didn’t tell you that.”

  Zorn was up and out of the room without another word.

  Wilma glanced at me, and then at Frank, and said, “If we would encourage more of our majors to pursue teacher certification we wouldn’t have to worry about any of this.”

  Frank nodded and gathered his things. “Good point. Next time. Full discussion.”

  He left and Wilma followed him. I sat alone for a moment in the seminar room thinking of how good it had felt to throw Zorn’s own words back in his face and wo
ndering whether that feeling was worth bringing my career at Fuchs College to a premature end. Surely after this no one in this department would vote in my favor when it came to tenure. They might even shoot me down for annual renewal.

  I peeled myself out of my chair and wished I could go straight home, but my coat was in my office. As I headed for the third floor, I hoped my colleagues in art had departed for lunch so I wouldn’t have to see them when I walked by their offices.

  In a way I agreed with Zorn. We had no business claiming we could give students a head-start in their careers. But since the president had declared we were going to, I at least wanted us to do so with some integrity.

  Maybe it wasn’t this way at other schools. Maybe Fuchs was doing what it had to do to attract enough students to keep its doors open. Maybe other schools didn’t need to do that. Maybe one of them would have a job for me.

  Chapter 24

  By the time I got upstairs to my office and bundled up, I had run out of maybes. I walked home, being careful on the slippery spots, opened a can of soup, and poured it into a pan. While it heated up, I opened my laptop and started a new email to Mom and Dad.

  I hadn’t talked to them since Edgar was killed three days ago. Sooner or later I had to tell them, but I was afraid Mom would freak out the way she did when I called last week to tell them Jessica Fabrizio had been murdered. I didn’t feel up to another conversation like that.

  So, I put it all into an email: my trip to Columbus, which was cut short after less than twenty-four hours by a call from the sheriff, my meeting with Edgar’s sister, the concerns of the Gallery Advisory Committee (Greta’s concerns), and so on. I even included Abbie’s observation that both murders seemed to have something to do with the exhibit and the gallery, and that, since I was the curator of the exhibit and the director of the gallery, I might be next. I’ve always been one for ripping the band-aid off rather than peeling it bit by bit.

  I went on to say that my main reason for sticking it out at Fuchs College—making the most of having my own gallery—now seemed foolish. Whether or not the murders had anything to do with the gallery or me, I couldn’t focus on doing good work with all this going on.

  I finished by telling Mom and Dad I had reached a decision. One way or another, I would leave Fuchs College in the spring. I would stay in touch with the school in Michigan where I had applied for a job, and, if that job panned out, I would give academic life another try on that campus. If not, I was ready for Mom’s “different plan.” I would live in the apartment behind the garage in the house where I grew up, while getting trained as a dentist or optometrist (I really couldn’t do tech), and then I would set up a nice, boring practice.

  As I re-read the email I felt as if I had electricity flowing through my body. I read it aloud to make sure it said what I wanted to say.

  It did.

  I clicked send.

  As I finished my soup, I felt stronger and breathed easier. Liberated from having to justify my presence at Fuchs College, I was eager to find out why Edgar painted those middle-period paintings. Also, I couldn’t wait to find out what whether Weinert or Dunkle had anything to do with the murder of Jessica Fabrizio. I felt as if I’d drunk a cup of strong coffee.

  Hoping for some good news, I logged onto BudStem. Jessica’s friends from SUNY at Albany had, as I had hoped, posted names of friends, roommates, and others who were not on BudStem. One had asked, “Who was that guy she was dating junior and senior years?” Another had replied, “Matt Dunkle. They split up just before graduation.”

  I held my breath and reread that leaf to make sure it really said what I thought it said. Matt Dunkle and Jessica Fabrizio had dated for two years. No doubt about it: They had “a prior association.”

  That was bad news for the college, the gallery, and me. But, with two people dead, I wasn’t worried about reputations. I wanted Sheriff Adams to catch the killer.

  My call to Adams went straight to voicemail. My message said I had important information and asked him to call me.

  I changed my clothes for the trip to Edgar’s studio to look in his notebooks and try to understand what he was thinking when he made those peculiar paintings in his middle period.

  On the way up to Edgar’s studio, I asked Abbie, “Do you remember telling me to find out what I could about Dunkle?”

  “I do.”

  “There’s bad news and good news. Dunkle and Fabrizio were lovers.”

  Abbie watched a patch of scrub trees go by before saying, “That’s pretty bad. What’s the good news?”

  “They broke up fourteen years ago.”

  She nodded. “So, it would be a stretch to think he saw her on Saturday and was so enraged by the pain of being rejected fourteen years ago that he had to kill her.”

  “That would be a very delayed reaction.”

  She folded her arms and scowled as she looked through the windshield. “On the other hand, what if he had recently tried to start things up again?”

  “Why would he? Why now?”

  “Maybe he heard she moved to Louisville, and figured they could be together on the weekends.”

  Playing along, I said, “Okay, maybe he did.”

  “And she shot him down. He felt rejected, and then saw her at the gallery with Edgar and went crazy.”

  “You make it sound plausible.”

  “Just doing my job,” said Abbie.

  “So, when I talk to the sheriff and I have to report another member of our campus community has a motive for murder.”

  Abbie turned to me and smiled. “Don’t you just love being an art historian?”

  When we arrived around three, the afternoon light was already weak. The white-painted, one-story, cinder-block building almost disappeared into the snowy landscape around it. The line of trees along the gully behind it looked like shadows against the snowy field beyond.

  We parked on the patch of gravel in front of the building. As we got out of the car, Abbie said, “Not exactly glamorous.”

  I got out my phone to look up Ella Yount’s contact info and get the alarm code for the security system. In doing so I noticed Sheriff Adams had called me back. His message said he would be in Cleveland for a couple of days, but that he would send a deputy to talk to me if it was urgent. He asked me to let him know. I decided to call him when we were done in the studio.

  Before unlocking the steel door at the far end of the building, I paused. It had been three days since the sheriff called me to say he found Edgar hanging in this place. My gut told me to stay out, but I knew his body would have been taken away along with all the evidence. The security system whined, and I punched in the alarm code. When all was quiet we stepped in and closed the door.

  It was almost as cold inside as it was out, though not so cold that we could see our breaths. We wouldn’t be staying long, only long enough to see whether those notebooks would tell me what or who influenced Edgar to make those odd paintings in the years before he went to Europe.

  I couldn’t help looking up toward the ceiling and wondering what Edgar had been hanging from. The steel trusses that held up the roof? The sprinkler pipes? The two-by-fours that braced the storage racks at the far end of the room? Feel frightened, I focused on why we were there and got to work.

  I turned on the floor lamps near the furniture in the corner near the door, then did the same with the work lights over the computer desk and worktable in the middle of the room. In the painting area with its easel and wooden platforms, there were four floodlights on metal stands, all plugged into one plugging strip. When I tripped the switch with my toe, they all lit up.

  “Whoa,” said Abbie, standing by the worktable in the middle of the room and shading her eyes with one hand. “That might be a bit more than we need.”

  I switched them off and went back to the bookcase by the computer table. The white labels on the spines of the notebooks gave the dates when each notebook was used. I took one out, laid it on the work table and opened it. As I did, Abbie st
rolled back to the painting area to satisfy her curiosity about how artists work.

  I scanned each page to see whether the name “Jessica” was on it or if there were any words referring to the titles of the paintings in question. I also looked for references to the fellowship Edgar would have applied for during this period.

  After I found the first use of Jessica’s name, it turned up fairly regularly in notes about day trips they had taken, ideas for buying her gifts, and even details of especially satisfying sexual experiences, which I skipped over as quickly as possible.

  About three months into their relationship I found a note which brought me up short: “88 = HH = Heil Hitler.”

  I must have gasped out-loud because Abbie called out from the far end of the room, “What’s wrong?”

  “This is a little shocking,” I replied.

  She joined me, looking over my shoulder.

  “I get the part about ‘Heil Hitler,’” I said, “but why does 88=HH?”

  Abbie hummed for a few seconds before saying, “H is the eighth letter of the alphabet.”

  “I see. So, I guess, if you wanted a secret way to say, ‘Heil Hitler,’ you could just say, ‘88.’”

  Abbie looked genuinely confused as she asked, “Why would Edgar want to say ‘Heil Hitler’ secretly or otherwise?”

  “He didn’t necessarily,” I explained. “Artists are scavengers. They notice all kinds of things and save them for later. Sometimes those things turn out to be important and they turn up in a painting.”

  “And this one did.”

  That surprised me. “It did? What do you mean?”

  “The painting of the old car. It was an Eighty-Eight.”

  “That was a model Oldsmobile used to make. It’s not as if Edgar chose to put that number on the car.”