The Drowning Tree (33 page)

Sure
, I think,
right after you tell me my ex-husband—who I saw today for the first time in over a decade—might have impregnated my best friend
. I take a long sip of my drink. The conversation Neil described having with Christine couldn’t have happened more than five weeks ago. Why didn’t I ask him if that was the first time he saw her? Why had I been so anxious just to believe that he hadn’t seen her before that? Because I’d let myself hope that Neil was better enough that there might be a second chance for us. I didn’t want a little detail like the thought of him and Christine together ruining that. But if Neil was the father of Christine’s baby, I’d better find out, and Detective Falco—
Daniel
—might be my best source of information.

“Okay, Daniel,” I say, finishing my drink and picking up another one
from the bar, “although you’ve obviously never been to one of these college functions before if you think
fun
is what they’re about. Half the people here are worrying that they won’t get tenure, the other half are worried that their departmental budgets will be cut, or if they’re spouses they’re worried that their wives or husbands are cheating on them with their young and beautiful students.”

“No dancing?”

I laugh in spite of myself. “Maybe later on the terrace. Academics are a pretty reserved bunch.”

“So what do people do at these things?”

“They trade gossip and recent honors—book deals or journal publications, grants and fellowship awards.” I look around the room and notice Professor Da Silva standing in front of a painting of Virgil leading Dante into the underworld—a school of Lorraine work—and instantly regret my glib dismissal of academia. Many of these people are real scholars and—like Professor Da Silva—real friends. I realize that the line I’d just taken was Christine’s and even she had stopped complaining about academia when she’d gone back to grad school. “There are the paintings,” I say. “They’re worth seeing.”

“Great. Tell me about these.” Falco gestures with his glass toward the closely hung paintings. “I don’t know much about art but these look dark and dreary enough to be worth a fortune.”

“They do need cleaning, in fact—” I squint past the festoons of tulle and notice a few blank spots. Maybe that’s the real purpose of the tulle—to disguise the blank spots. “It looks like a few have been removed. I think it’s part of Gavin’s campaign to spruce up the college for its centennial along with the restoration of the Lady window. Not that these paintings are really all that valuable. Augustus and Eugenie collected them on their various trips back to Europe, but unfortunately, most of them turned out to be fakes. Take this one for instance of the Muses on Mount Parnassus. Penrose thought it was by Mantegna, but it’s really a nineteenth-century copy. And this one of the three graces—”

“Now this looks familiar, wait, let me guess, I did take one art history survey class at John Jay … Botticelli?”

“Very good—only it’s not. If Christine were here she would explain how you can tell it’s not a real Botticelli.”

“So are they all fakes?”

“Not all of them. Occasionally Penrose got lucky, or, as Christine believed, he followed Eugenie’s better judgment and picked out an authentic work. There’s a real Ingres here and a Rubens …” I start looking for the voluptuous flesh of some minor goddess by Rubens, but if she’s here she’s well hidden by the tulle.

While I’m looking for the plump goddess I see instead the queenly Regula Howell through the French doors leading to the terrace. She’s exchanged her long Aztec coat for a full-length ivory chiffon off-the-shoulder gown with tulle wrap. She looks like an amazon warrior, her height accentuated because she’s standing next to tiny Joan Shelley, who’s wearing a wispy little white dress that looks like the costume Bea wore in her third grade ballet recital. I guess I missed the part of the invitation that said wear only white.

“Maybe it’s one that’s been removed for cleaning. Why don’t we go look at Penrose’s paintings,” I suggest to Falco. “At least we know who painted those.” It’s also occurred to me that if we run into Regula she might say something that will reveal to Daniel Falco that I saw Neil today, something I neglected to mention when Neil’s name came up earlier.

We walk through the central courtyard and turn down the Forest Hall with its paintings of mythological characters turning into trees.

“Daphne and Apollo, right?” Falco points at Penrose’s rendition of the myth. Unlike most versions I’ve seen—Bernini’s sculpture, for instance—instead of looking over her shoulder at her pursuer she’s looking at her own outstretched hand, which is beginning to sprout leaves. The look of horror on her face is haunting.

I nod. “You’re pretty up on your mythology Detec—Daniel.”

“I took Latin for six years at Our Lady of Perpetual Help and read some Ovid—that’s where most of these stories come from, right?”

“Yes. His early subjects usually came from medieval folklore and Romantic poetry, but like J. W. Waterhouse and other second-generation Pre-Raphaelites he turned back to classical mythology. He especially liked stories about nymphs.”

“If you ask me he was looking for an excuse to paint young naked girls.”

“Well sure, but if you look closely some of these young girls aren’t so
beautiful while they’re being turned into trees. I think Augustus Penrose was fascinated by metamorphosis—one thing turning into another. Maybe it was because he watched his sister-in-law go crazy.”

We continue walking down the hall until we’re standing in front of the second painting in the Iole and Dryope series. Dryope’s just noticed a drop of blood on her fingertips and her expression is one of dawning horror.

“Wait, don’t tell me, let me guess which myth this is.”

I try to keep from smiling—I seriously doubt that Falco will know the story of Dryope and Iole—and move closer to study the painting myself. I know from Eugenie’s journal that the portrait of Dryope is really Eugenie and that Iole is Clare. While Falco rubs his chin, no doubt wracking his brain for the allusion—
it’s really not fair
, I think,
Dryope is a pretty obscure myth
—I study the two figures to see if I can tell the two sisters apart and decide which one is depicted in the Lady window. They look too much alike though. As in the photo Christine showed in her lecture the only difference is their hair. Iole’s flows freely down her back, while Dryope’s hair is drawn back tightly—as if snatched by the clawlike fingers of the branches and yanked and twisted into an uncomfortable-looking chignon of bark and twigs.

I turn to Falco to put him out of his misery but he holds a finger up to his lips and signals for me to be quiet. He hasn’t, after all, spent the last few minutes pondering over mythological references. He’s listening to the conversation occurring behind the screens in Gavin’s office.

“A
ND
I
TOLD YOU, THE BILL WILL BE PAID BY THE END OF THE WEEK
. I
HAVE A SMALL
liquidity problem at the moment due to a fund transfer from the family estate. If you don’t wish to wait I can always suggest that the college look elsewhere for its landscaping needs next year …”

There’s a pause during which I raise my eyebrows at Falco and he, in turn, mouths the words
small liquidity problem
with such mock gravity that I nearly burst out laughing. He’s managed, without uttering a sound, to mimic Gavin Penrose’s upper-class inflections to a tee.

“Yes, I realize the flowers for the party aren’t a college expense and I certainly never meant to imply that they were—”

I look down at the narrow canal of water that feeds into the fountain
in the central courtyard. It’s clogged with fragrant white gardenias. The marble urns that line the hallway are filled with the same assortment of white lilies, lilacs, and roses as the urns in the courtyard. The air is thick with the sweet smell of so many flowers, some of which, like the white lilacs and lilies, must cost a fortune because they’re out of season.

“No, I never told your girl that they should go on the college account. This is a private party—which I should be attending to at this very moment so if you’d please …”

I miss the last few words because Falco waves with one hand to guide me back down the hall to the courtyard while keeping one finger to his lips. I take one step and he cringes at the slap of my sandals on the tile floor so I slip out of them and walk the rest of the way barefoot and silent like some penitent nun. What I’m thinking of is Gavin’s phrase
your girl
. The landscape company that has the contract for the college grounds is Minelli and Sons. Dominic Minelli is Annemarie’s husband’s uncle. Uncle Dom. A sweet potbellied man who always gave Bea a daisy or a miniature potted cactus (Bea’s favorite) when we’d go into the nursery to buy flats of geraniums and impatiens for my father’s flower boxes. The
girl
Gavin is referring to could only be Dom’s unmarried daughter, Angela, who graduated top in her class at Hunter College and gave up a job at one of the top eight accounting firms to help in the family business when her mother died five years ago. She does my taxes every year and she’s one of the smartest people I know. If Angela was under the impression that Gavin was charging the flowers for this party to the college it could only be because that’s what he told her.

When we get to the courtyard I start to explain all this to Daniel Falco, but he shushes me again and hurries me through the dining room and out onto the terrace. A light rain has chased most of the guests inside, but still he guides me under a pergola at the far end of the terrace, which gives some protection from the rain and makes us nearly invisible from the house. Falco leans back against the balustrade, nearly knocking over one of the frosted glass luminaria (shaped like a gardenia, I notice) that have been set up all along the length of the terrace and along the garden paths—and I rest my arms on the cool marble and look out at the formal rose garden below us—its perfectly manicured hedges and flourishing
roses a testament to the care of Minelli and Sons. I know the rose garden is Dominic Minelli’s favorite part of the grounds because of its Italianate formality—a leftover from the previous estate that had been on this property before the Penroses came. The rest of the grounds are landscaped in a more naturalistic manner that harmonizes with the Arts & Crafts style of the buildings.

“I know Dom and Angela Minelli,” Falco tells me when I begin my defense of Angela, “and I couldn’t agree more. Angela would never make a mistake like that.”

“So Gavin must have tried to get the college to pay for the flowers, and when he got called on it he didn’t have the money to pay for them himself. I’ve always thought he was so wealthy—he’s always driven expensive cars, traveled in Europe, and he’s got an apartment in the city and a house in the Hamptons.”
And this beautiful house to live in rent free
, I think, gazing at the manicured box hedge maze and the marble statues glowing dimly in the greenery, some of which, I notice when a piece of marble drapery seems to move in the breeze, have been draped in the same tulle as the picture frames in the dining room.

“So what he’s got,” Falco says, “is an expensive lifestyle on a college president’s salary—which would probably be plenty for you or me but might fall short of the image he likes to present.”

“I guess I just assumed he was wealthy because he’s a Penrose, but actually, Augustus Penrose gave most of his money and all of his property on this side of the river, except for the glass factory, to the college—”

“—and the glass factory went bankrupt in the sixties,” Falco adds.

“There’s still all that land on the west side of the river where Astolat used to be.”

Falco shakes his head. “It can’t be developed. Augustus Penrose stipulated that in his will. The Land Conservancy has been trying to gain control of it, but I’ve heard that it can’t even be sold until a specified number of years after Augustus’s death—I forget how many.”

“So Gavin might actually have very little other than his salary to live on.” I think of the figure the young Gavin Penrose had cut all those years ago when he’d pull up in front of our dorm—the smart, preppy clothes, the out-of-season tan. It would never have occurred to me that
he didn’t have all the money he could possibly need—but then I suppose that someone who grew up in the shadow of a once-wealthy family might have needs more extensive than anything I could imagine. For instance, I can’t imagine needing that apartment in the city and a vacation home when he lives here. It’s like Arcadia, I think, gazing at a grouping of statues of three girls with their arms clasped around each other’s waists. The Three Graces, I suppose, although I can’t remember them being there.

“I guess his financial situation will change when he marries Joan Shelley,” I say, “but I bet you she has no idea that he has any money problems.”

“No, I’m sure Mr. Penrose has been careful to create the impression that he’s at least comfortably well-off. I imagine a woman like Joan Shelley—”

“Shh,” I touch his arm and shake my head. “I think that’s Joan down in the garden. Look …”