Murder in Pastel (8 page)

“I don’t know!” Joel cried. “I simply do.” He wiped his eyes. Took out an immaculate hanky, unfolded it, and blew his nose. “I simply do,” he repeated muffledly.

I said at last, “I don’t think he has any intention of leaving Adam.”

“I know that.”

“Then why do you—”

“Adam might leave him.”

That went through my system like a jump-start on a dead battery. Even my fingers tingled. “Why do you say that?”

Joel shook his head. “Because I hope it’s true.”

I hoped it was true too. Not because I believed Adam would turn to me; Adam kept a friendly but cautious distance between us. I knew he would never be able to stop thinking of me as that sickly adolescent “mooning” over him. And I knew it wasn’t anything to do with our ages because at twenty-one, Brett was six years younger than me.

I told myself it was for Adam’s sake that I hoped he unloaded Brett. Brett was not good for Adam. He was not good for anyone, as evidenced by the effect on our colony in little more than a month. Like a cat among the pigeons, he had set a snowstorm of feathers flying.

Which isn’t to say that I didn’t like Brett, because strangely enough I sort of did. I appreciated his malicious sense of humor (when it wasn’t aimed at me), and he had certainly livened things up. But he was dangerous. Dangerous in the way of beautiful wild things. You could admire his beauty, but you couldn’t trust him.

Unless you were Adam.

I assumed Adam trusted Brett, but maybe he just loved him unconditionally.

My other problem with Brett was the periodic assault on my chastity—such as it was.

“Haven’t you ever been with anyone?”

“Of course!” I closed my mind to the memory of awkward and fumbling collegiate encounters, more painful than pleasurable, and just plain embarrassing after the fact.

Brett was disconcertingly serious. “I mean—”

“I know what you mean.”

His smile was unkind. “Are you saving yourself for Adam?”

“Bite me.”

“I’m trying to!” He chuckled. “Hey, you get a boner at the mere mention of his name. I could ask him to do you once as a favor. He’d do it for me. He’ll do anything for me.”

“Well, that is sweet of you. I’ll think about it,” I drawled, which seemed to amuse the hell out of Brett. He actually dropped the subject.

The best thing was not to give him a reaction. Easier said than done.

“What is it with Adam and the graveyard?” I inquired, politely batting off Brett’s groping hands one day when I was paying one of my obligatory visits.

“He’s painting the chapel. Maybe he’s getting religion. Or hoping I will. Shit, you are so
shy
—”

“I’m not shy. I’m not interested.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not—
hey
!” As his hand shot out to twist my nipple.

“You’re hard again.”

“I am not!”

“Made you look.”

“You are such a juvenile, Brett.”

These impromptu wrestling matches usually ended with Brett collapsing in laughter. The funny thing is, I often ended up laughing too. I’m not sure why.

Once, though, I came up for air to find Jack Cobb standing at the screen door, silently watching us.

Brett was unfazed. He hopped up and went out on the verandah, paid Jack for mowing the lawns and cutting the hedges, and came back inside whistling.

As we sat there listening to the eight-cylinder roar of Jack’s pickup fading away, Brett slid his eyes my way, slapped his forehead and said slyly, “Hey, I could have had a V8!”

* * * * *

Then, on a hot July night when the full moon hung ripe and golden above the ocean, and the fireflies darted about the woods like fairy lights, something truly extraordinary happened.

The way the story was retold to me, Jen was stripping the varnish off a dresser Vince had purchased at a local yard sale. It was an ordinary dresser, not an antique, but real cherry wood beneath the white enamel. Each drawer had a lion head handle with a brass ring through its mouth. Jen removed all the drawers and was waxing the runners when she noticed that the back wall of the dresser appeared to be canvas not wood.

She pulled at it gently. The canvas was nailed to the wooden backing. She tugged harder, working it free. One by one she pried the nails out.

When the last nail was out she slid the canvas up, easing it out through the slats, inch by inch. At last she pulled it free. Immediately it rolled up into a tight scroll.

Jenny carried the rolled canvas into the kitchen and spread it out on the wooden table, using jam jars on the ragged corners to hold it flat.

What she saw there in the lamplight had her gasping for breath. She ran outside, shrieking for Vince.

Vince spilled out of his hammock. He grabbed a hoe and raced in ready to do battle with snakes, mice or spiders.

Jenny dragged him into the kitchen and pointed to what lay on the table. Vince gaped and goggled, and then they phoned Joel.

I heard the tale many times after that, in particular, I heard it from Vince who eventually claimed the find as his own, but it was Joel who called first to tell me that
Virgin in Pastel
had been found.

Chapter Six

B
rett and Adam threw a party for Vince and Jenny to celebrate their good fortune. Later I heard from Micky that Vince had tactfully suggested that it might be awkward having me there. Apparently he was afraid I might lay claim to the painting. Adam had told Vince that if I wasn’t on the guest list, there was no party, so Vince had to put up with my awkward presence.

Though the night of the party turned out to be of the dark and stormy variety, everyone came, even several folks from Steeple Hill, including the mayor, Miss Irene and Jack Cobb. I suspected Brett must have invited them to get Jack there.

The wind kicked up off the ocean and set the leaves whispering like a thousand gossiping tongues. Now and then the lights flickered, and a boom of thunder rolled across the music. Joel acted as bartender, mixing up alcoholic concoctions he called Gypsy Queens which were four parts vodka, one part Benedictine and a dash of orange bitters blended into a foamy freeze. They made your forehead numb, but we swilled them like water from opalescent green cocktail glasses that had belonged to Drake Trent.

Everyone contributed. There was enough food for a funeral. Joel brought marinated green olives and prosciutto-wrapped melon. Micky fixed her specialty: endive with herb cheese. The Cobbs donated a variety of tarts and cookies. Irene could cook like an angel with an eating disorder. It hadn’t affected Jack’s waistline yet, but the mayor wasn’t likely to squeeze into his old army uniform anytime soon. I made the bachelor special: nachos—and ended up eating half the plate before I left the house.

Adam’s cottage was already crowded by the time I arrived.

Greeting me at the door with a sympathetic grin, Adam steered me over to the bar where Joel was working his magic. Adam was immediately called away.

“Well, what do you think?” Joel said, and he nodded over his shoulder. I stared at the canvas tacked up on the wall behind the bar. Vince, apparently afraid to let it out of his sight, had brought
Virgin in Pastel
to the party. “Is it the real thing?”

For a moment I felt light-headed. The painting was shockingly familiar, though the last time I’d seen it had been the night Cosmo left. Now it was like I couldn’t quite focus. I had a hazy impression of cream and ochre and pink, like the heart of a rose or the lining of a cloud or summer moonlight…

“Kyle? Are you all right?” Joel’s voice was sharp. “You’re sheet white.”

“I’m fine.” I gave him a quick shaky grin and avoided looking at the canvas.

“Here, have a drink.”

He watched narrow-eyed as I drank.

“Really, I’m okay,” I said, embarrassed at my reaction. Joel looked unconvinced, but his bartending skills were being loudly sought, and he had to let it go.

I was fine by then, a little puzzled by my freakish response. I hoped no one else had noticed, and no one seemed to have. I downed two Gypsy Queens in quick succession, and chatted with a few people, but it was an effort. I’ve never been much of a party animal. Crowds make me want to bite my fingernails.

“I so admire people who can write fiction,” said a woman from the local paper. “It must be so rewarding.”

“Sometimes.”

“You’re Cosmo Bari’s son, aren’t you? I wonder if you would consider giving an interview…”

I spotted Irene Cobb; she looked more miserable than me. I remembered that I hadn’t been able to find the bug killer apparatus she had loaned me. My garden now purged of the dreaded aphids, I’d meant to return it that night.

I excused myself from the lady journalist and got myself another drink, but Brett swooped down upon me and snatched it away as I raised it to my lips. When I opened my mouth to object, he kissed me; a wet smooch that effectively shut me up.

He flitted away.

I talked to more people and checked the grandfather clock in the corner, trying to decide if it would be rude to leave before midnight. I was conscious every moment of where Adam was in the room. It was like I could see him even when I wasn’t looking at him. I glanced across and, yep, there he was, handsome and at ease as he chatted with his guests. His skin was very brown against the white of his shirt; his black hair gleamed in the mellow light. It was getting longer again, starting to curl.

“Stranger on the Shore” came on the stereo, and I realized how badly I wanted to dance with Adam, to be held tight in his arms, to be held close against his hard, spare body. Brett was right. I had it bad.

Instead, Jen asked me to dance. We swayed dreamily to the music, each of us pretending we were with somebody else. We moved past the bar and I glimpsed the painting—and felt that unnerving shift in my head.

“Stranger on the Shore” ended. Joel asked Jenny to dance. I sat down on the settee, rubbed my forehead. The room seemed hot and noisy.

Someone sat down beside me. I opened my eyes.

“What’s wrong, Kyle?” Adam was inspecting me, his blue eyes kind.

“Who me? Nothing.”

“Bullshit.”

A lot of things were wrong, so I picked the one I thought was safest to talk about. “I guess…all these years I took it for granted that when the
Virgin
showed up, I’d finally know what happened to him.”

Adam put his hand on my shoulder. It took everything I had not to turn to him for comfort. His touch seemed coded into every cell of my body. How could a casual gesture affect anyone this way?

“I know I’ve been saying it all along, but I guess it finally hit me that he really is dead. That we never are going to—” I couldn’t put it into words because I didn’t know myself what I felt.

“Reach an understanding?”

“I guess that’s it.” I laughed shortly. “Sad, huh?”

“It is sad. He would have wanted that too.”

“Oh come on, Adam. Cosmo? You don’t have to sugarcoat it for me.”

“No, listen, Kyle.” He seemed dead serious. “He cared about you.”

“In his own way?”

“Yeah, in his own way. Like he did everything. He said to me that summer…when it looked like you might not make it…that the worst part was that you were just getting interesting.” Adam’s eyes tilted, and I had to laugh because that was so much my father.

“What’s so funny?” Micky joined us on the other side of the settee. She was wearing a black lace vintage dress, the kind of thing she found at thrift shops and turned into high fashion.

Adam gave my shoulder another of those casual squeezes, and departed.

“I was telling Adam that it doesn’t make sense to me. If Cosmo didn’t take the painting with him, who did take it? And why would someone nail it in the back of an old dresser?”

“To hide it?”

Hide it from what, I wondered? “You couldn’t sell it on the open market. It’s too well known. It would have to go to a private collector.”

We were both silent; I was remembering allegations that Sotheby’s Auction House had been selling stolen masterpieces to collectors overseas. Such things did happen.

Except the
Virgin
hadn’t been sold in private auction. It had been sold for $10.00 with a chipped dresser at a local yard sale.

I wondered if anyone had tried to track the history of the dresser.

“Could it be a fake?” Micky wondered aloud.

I studied the painting from across the room. Even at this distance the nude girl in the painting seemed warm and breathing, touchable, from the pink soles of her small feet to the glint of gold around her neck.

I shook my head. “Gut feeling? No. I grew up staring at that painting. It looks real to me.” Of course, that was the point of a good forgery, wasn’t it?

Micky’s face was sympathetic. “You know, legally you have a pretty strong claim on that painting.”

I reached for my drink. “I’m not going to court with Vince.”

“‘You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.’ It’s an awful lot of money.”

Unbidden, the question sprang into my mind: how much was enough to kill for?

“Did you know my grandfather has one of my father’s paintings?”

“You’re joking.”

I shook my head. “My mother gave it to him, which is the only reason he hung on to it. It used to hang in his workshop. Probably still does. Sunrise in the old cemetery; Drake Trent’s angel bathed in fiery light.”

“I don’t remember that one.”

“It’s probably worth a small fortune—and a lot easier to steal. A lot easier to market too.”

I’m not sure what I was trying to say; I can’t claim that I was beginning to put two and two together. Hell, I didn’t even recognize the equation.

“When the Cobbs had their painting appraised, it was worth close to a hundred thousand dollars.” Micky scratched her nose meditatively. “I bet a lot of people in Steeple Hill are kicking themselves now that they didn’t hang on to their own works by Cosmo.”

“I always sort of assumed Cosmo took the
Virgin
with him.” I wiped the dampness from my forehead with the heel of my hand. “It’s weird to think I’ll never know what happened to him.”