The Witchfinder (10 page)

Her lips parted. I’d surprised her. “It’s interesting you would say that. It was sculpted in Madrid before the First World War. It represents an execution using the garrote. May I ask what you were doing visiting the gas chamber?”

“It was a business trip. Are you Miss Talbot?”

“No, I’m Jean Sternhagen, her assistant. Miz Talbot’s busy in the office. I can help you if there’s something specific you want to see.” A puzzled line marred the wide brow. She hadn’t made up her mind how to take me.

Now I recognized the honey-over-grits dialect of yesterday’s brief telephone conversation. She came from one of those states where they’re still combing minie balls out of the carpet.

“I need to talk to the boss.” I gave her one of my cards.

She pursed her lips over it, excused herself, and swept away. She had on an ivory silk blouse with a calf-length skirt designed for sweeping.

In a little while a woman came my way who was no more than life size, with red hair cut short like a boy’s and wearing a black jumpsuit pinched at the waist by a silver belt, the slacks tucked into knee-length black boots. Instead of a riding crop she was carrying my card.

“I know for a fact we haven’t been dealing in stolen Picassos.” She stopped in front of me and stuck out the pasteboard.

“Keep it,” I said. “I couldn’t talk the guy into printing just one. You’re Lily Talbot?”

She said she was. She gave each syllable its full value. I was betting on one of those elocution tapes you play in the car. The rest of her was just as crisp. She was an interesting example of architecture, from the fine bones of her face to the long legs that whoever had designed her outfit liked to set off. Well, Furlong wouldn’t have left his drafting board for anything less; but her lack of stature did surprise me. It must have been true love.

“I need your opinion about a picture,” I said.

“I see. Are you representing a collector, or is this for yourself?”

“Neither. At the moment I’m working for Jay Bell Furlong.”

A pair of hazel eyes iced over. “Who are you?”

“It’s on the card.”

“He hired you to find me?”

“He knew where you were. He’s kept track of your career. He has a message for you.”

“I’m not accepting anything from him. Not even messages.”

“It can wait. The picture I wanted to talk about is of you and Lynn Arsenault.”

“That bastard.”

“Arsenault?”

“Furlong.” She touched a corner of the card in her hand with a fingertip, as if testing its sharpness. “I take that back. We’re supposed to be charitable toward someone in his condition. He’s a fool. How close is he to the end? The media seem impatient.”

“Close enough to want to clear the air,” I said. “I need a little more than that. Is there someplace we can talk? I think
The Mortal Thought
is listening.”

“My interest in Mr. Furlong’s condition is purely curiosity. We haven’t anything to discuss.”

“People who say that usually have plenty.”

She glanced toward the guard by the drinking fountain, or maybe it was an exhibit.

“He’s big enough,” I said. “Your call on whether he can get it done without tipping over statuary.”

When she looked back at me she’d made her decision. “How did Jay find you? I wouldn’t have thought there was another man like him born in this century.”

“I’m the first listing in the book. Under
A
for anachronisms.”

She led me through a maze of partitions, kiosks, and
objets d’art,
down a short unfinished corridor not intended for public view, and into a back room nearly as large as the gallery proper. The floor was bare plywood and there were ladders and loose tarpaulins and mops, brooms, and buckets under a skylight that hadn’t been cleaned since
Laugh-In.
The turpentine fumes made my eyes burn. Jean Sternhagen caught Miz Talbot’s glance from atop one of the ladders. She shoved a cardboard carton into a niche on a supply shelf, climbed down, and went out into the maze without a word.

“It would take more than terminal cancer to affect a mind like Jay’s. He must know it’s too late to patch things up.” Lily Talbot leaned back against the table covered with cleaning supplies and stained newspapers and crossed her ankles.

“He still wants to apologize.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

“Tell him I accept.”

I waited for the rest. I wanted a cigarette, but the fumes weren’t going away.

“It’s easy to forgive a person you feel nothing for,” she said. “I loved him for a while, and for a long time afterward I hated him, but that passed too. I’m a woman, and I’m supposed to care about a fellow human being in pain. All right, I do. Beyond that the tank’s empty.”

“Is that why you called him a bastard?”

“That was a knee-jerk reaction from the woman I used to be.” She uncrossed her ankles and straightened. “You’ve delivered your message, and you have my answer. Now I really have a gallery to run.”

“He knows the picture’s a fake,” I said.

“He should have known it then.”

“Did you tell him?”

“I would have, had he asked. The question never seemed to have occurred to him. That’s what killed us, his readiness to believe he’d been betrayed. I didn’t realize it then, but I did a lot of thinking later and I came to the conclusion that he was waiting for something to come along and prove I didn’t love him. What it really proved was that he didn’t love
me.”

“That works for everyone but great men and women with rich fathers.”

She seemed to realize she was still holding my card. She looked at it. “Funny, it just says ‘Investigations.’ You left out ‘Spiritual Counseling.’ ”

“No extra charge. What do you know about the picture?”

“I know it wasn’t real, of course, but I knew that then. At the time I didn’t know the man in it was Lynn Arsenault.”

I felt a rush. It might have been the turpentine. “At the time?”

“Last year—longer ago than that, I think—he commissioned some pieces for his new office. He came in person without an appointment or I’d have left it to Jean. I recognized him immediately. If I played by Jay’s rules, I’d have told him to shop somewhere else. I won’t say I didn’t consider it. But it was a big order. I’m not doing well enough yet to afford a set of principles.”

“The place looks prosperous.”

“Smoke and mirrors. The arts are in eclipse, in case you didn’t notice it. Washington’s bailing out and so is the public. Culture is the first thing people find they can do without when the squeeze is on. They’re just decoration, after all. Talbot Gallery is holding its own, thanks to a little integrity-bending whenever the odd Arsenault comes to call.”

“Did he mention the picture?”

“No. I don’t think he even knew who I was, apart from someone who could sell him some art. The picture was getting to be a long time ago even then. He might simply have forgotten.” She glanced at a tiny watch on a silver strap on her wrist. “I’m expecting a group of Japanese automakers any minute. They want to see the Wyeths. Tell Jay all is forgiven.” She held up two fingers in blessing.

“Why not tell him yourself?”

“I should fly to California to ease his guilt?”

“How about driving out to the Airport Marriott?”

“Which airport?”

Somehow the question had sounded less silly when I’d been the one asking it. “Metro. He’s sharing a suite with Stuart Lund.”

She turned that over behind her face. Her complexion wasn’t as pale as the redhead’s in Eulisy Worth’s studio. She was getting to that age where even natural red hair looked suspect. “What’s Jay hope to gain by convincing the world he’s sick?”

“He’s sick. You don’t get any sicker. He just tweaked the time frame a little. For what it’s worth, my instructions don’t include telling you any of this, but I don’t think a three-word reply to his message is what he hired me to bring back.”

“What am I supposed to do, run to his bedside and hold his hand?”

“That’s between you and your Wyeths. I’m off the clock.” I turned the doorknob.

“Wait.”

I waited. She was hugging her upper arms. The place wasn’t that cold. The air conditioning stopped at the end of the unfinished corridor.

“The gallery’s listed,” she said. “So am I. Jay could have sent Windy Lund with the same message. What else are you doing for him?”

“Guess.”

She nodded. “Jay wouldn’t be Jay if he laid aside pragmatic details for his own mortality. Don’t think I haven’t wondered who hated me enough to disgrace me. Five years ago I’d have jumped all over Arsenault asking questions. But life goes on. Priorities change.”

“Like you said, it was a big order.”

She considered her response. “You’re not much of a diplomat, are you?”

“It cost me an ambassadorship.” I told her good luck with the Japanese and used the doorknob.

Jean Sternhagen was staring at a painting of a cracked water jug when I came out into the gallery. She spoke without turning. “Does that look crooked to you?”

I hung a cigarette off the corner of my lip. “I think it’s the jug that’s crooked.”

“I think so too. I hope I have the courage to tell the artist when he threatens to pull out of the show. Last time he took home everything but the hooks. One of the guests thought the apple in a still life looked like it had a worm.”

“Did it?”

“It wasn’t an apple. It was a pomegranate.”

“You handle the artists as well as the pictures?”

“Lily does all the wheeling and dealing. I fetch and carry and keep the customers warm.”

“I guess you wouldn’t know anything about the Arsenault sale.” I primed the pump. “Executive over at Imminent Visions, an architectural firm.”

“Oh, him. We busted our rumps on that deal. Any time a customer’s willing to pay full price on an order that size we go the extra mile and a half.”

“Full price, no haggling?”

She nodded. “He ordered limited-edition Impressionist prints, reproduced from new plates taken from the original canvases. That runs into money, but we can knock twenty to thirty percent off the purchase price in quantity.”

“Like selling in bulk.”

“Right. Only we don’t call it that in the art world.” The wide mouth got wry. “I guess Mr. Arsenault was in a hurry. He bought twenty prints and paid ten thousand dollars. It must be nice to be so rich you don’t have to—”

“Jean, why don’t you go to lunch? Everything’s under control here.”

She turned and saw Lily Talbot. Walking noiselessly in boots on a waxed floor is an art you can’t hang in a gallery. Jean’s face flushed. “Sure. I was just asking Mr. Walker if he liked
The Mortal Thought.
He was looking at it earlier.” Her eyes pleaded.

“I don’t,” I said. “I didn’t like the gas chamber either.”

“I’m glad. I keep hoping someone will buy it so I can stop having nightmares about it.” She told me good-bye and went out the back.

“I prefer to be present when my employees are being pumped for information.” Lily wasn’t hugging herself now.

“Don’t ride her too hard,” I said. “She has to get along with the temperamental types. That means talking.”

“Her job’s secure. I’m just deciding whether it might be worth breaking a few things to have you thrown out the back door.”

“I’m not an architect. For me, pitching two to three thousand dollars down a hole just to save a couple of minutes takes a big hole. Does that kind of thing happen often?”

“A lot of different kinds of people collect art. Some don’t like to haggle.”

“Rich people.”

“It helps when you can afford it.”

“Eight years ago I bet he’d have taken the discount.”

Her lids narrowed; and she had long feral eyes to begin with. “Tell me something. Does the sun ever rise in your world, or do you see shadows wherever you look?”

“I don’t have to look as hard as I used to.”

She said the door was in the same place it was when I came in. It was the first thing she’d told me that didn’t lead to more questions.

I
LIKED
L
YNN
A
RSENAULT
. A Lot.

I couldn’t think of anyone else I’d never met whom I was so crazy about.

Suddenly I was hungry. I washed down a Reuben with a glass of milk downtown and stopped at the telephone to call Imminent Visions. The silver-haired receptionist I’d met earlier apologized and said Mr. Arsenault hadn’t yet checked in from whichever building was in crisis. I listened hard, but office acoustics have changed. You can’t always hear the rest of the staff snickering in the background.

When I hung up I liked Lynn Arsenault better than Colonel Mustard in the library.

The next call was to my service.

“Yes, Mr. Walker. Mr. Millender called and asked if you could meet him at his boat instead of his house, same time. He’s going sailing.” She gave me a dock and berth number at the Grosse Pointe Marina.

“Don’t hang up,” I said. “Do you sail?”

She chuckled. “The last time I was on a boat it capsized when I stepped aboard.”

“Clumsy?”

“No, just fat.”

I made a note to stop asking personal questions of disembodied voices. I needed to hang on to all the fantasies I had.

I fished out another thirty-five cents and dialed a number I had memorized at the City-County Building. There was a telephone card in my future.

After one ring a voice I recognized came on. Never mind whose.

“This is the tooth fairy,” I said.

He paused only long enough to make the connection. “No loose molars today, sorry.” But he stayed on the line. I’d sprung him from a jam once involving a female glee club president at Mumford High, which if it had ever come out would have cost him his corner office. The higher he climbed in our democratic society, the more he owed me. Someday he was going to be a powerful enemy.

But not today.

“That’s okay, I’m fresh out of quarters. I’m trying to track down a party named Larry Furlong.” I spelled it. “Senior citizen, recently retired postmaster. Oakland County maybe, only he isn’t listed there.”

“Civil servants are public record. Look it up.”

“That takes days. My client’s in a hurry. The way I see it, your Fed friends outrank mine. They’ll know where his Social Security checks are being sent.”