To the Grave (13 page)

Catherine realized she might have been overanalyzing, but she felt oddly certain she was correct. She tried to give Ken an “I don't give a damn what you think of me” smile, but she knew it wasn't successful when his expression didn't change. She hadn't a clue as to what Dana thought of her or her visit. The woman with her frozen-muscled face was a cipher. Catherine wished she could immediately leave, but she couldn't think of a graceful exit. With an inward sigh, she decided her only option was to get through her ill-advised tour of the gallery with as much composure as possible.

“Your sister seems to be our muse,” Ken told Catherine as they circled the first floor of the gallery. “She did another excellent newspaper piece on our latest exhibit—the work of Nicolai Arcos. I'm sure you've heard of him.”

“Yes, I have. He's supposed to be very talented.”

“He's remarkable,” Ken said. “He was already well-known by his mid-twenties. I don't remember seeing you at his opening exhibit, though.”

“No, I couldn't make it that night. I was coming down with the flu,” Catherine lied again, and this time didn't care if she sounded as if she was lying. After all, she had no doubt Ken Nordine knew Arcos's relationship with Renée was the real reason Catherine hadn't attended the Arcos exhibit opening.

“What a shame! It turned into an even bigger night than we expected, didn't it, Dana?” Dana had not left Catherine and Ken alone for a moment, keeping close behind them, as if they would forget she existed. Ken rarely acknowledged her, but Catherine made a point of glancing back at Dana's narrow, searching eyes. Catherine recognized and sympathized with insecurity when she saw it. “We think the success of the showing was partly because of Marissa's newspaper article.” Ken added.

“She likes writing hard news, but I think she's best at feature writing,” Catherine said. “They always seem pleased with her features at the
Gazette
.”

“No wonder! She's an excellent writer.” Ken gave Catherine another dazzling smile. “Let's begin by showing you some of Nicolai's work.”

He started swiftly across the gallery toward a painting. Dana raced to keep up, no small feat in her skintight black designer jeans and turquoise platform pumps with what Catherine guessed were four-inch heels. Dana had tightly cinched her turquoise silk blouse with a wide silver belt. She looked as stylish and whip slim as a model. She also looked winded.

Catherine slowed slightly and Dana dropped back with her. Ken didn't appear to notice either of them. He stopped about four feet from the painting and stared at it. ‘This is
Eternal Wait.
It's one of Nicolai's earlier paintings. What do you think?”

Catherine gazed at the oil portrait of a boy sitting on a boulder under a sky the color of smoke, gazing at a restless dark gray sea with a film of hovering fog. The child appeared around ten years old, his pale face shown in bleak profile, his near-shoulder-length black hair blowing back from high cheekbones and large dark eyes.

Although far from being an art expert, Catherine had seen portraits of this style before—sad, misty studies painted mainly in shades of gray and usually featuring a lonely-looking child. She recognized that in
Eternal Wait
Nicolai Arcos had captured a true melancholy with the child's rounded shoulders and hopeless eyes gazing at the slightly silvery mist above the intemperate sea.

“The boy is Arcos, isn't it?” she asked.

“Yes, it is,” Ken said. “He was born in Romania in a small village on the coast of the Black Sea. He never knew his father and his mother ran away before his first birthday. He lived with his grandparents. Thank God they considered him a gift from God and he adored them.” Ken sighed. “It could so easily have worked out just the opposite, since the daughter gave birth only four months after her marriage and her parents were very religious.

“Nicolai's grandfather worked on a fishing ship that traveled the Black Sea,” Ken continued. “When Nicolai was twelve, the ship never returned. People in the town thought well of his grandparents and of Nicolai. He'd sketched before then, but I believe that's when sympathetic townspeople managed to give him some canvas, brushes, paints, and he began his work in earnest. His grandmother died when he was fifteen, and that's when he made his way illegally to the United States.”

Catherine nodded, thinking the narrative sounded as if Ken had told it word for word many times. She didn't blame him for perfecting the story of Nicolai's background that made the painting even more poignant.

“The style seems mature,” Catherine said. “You said it was one of Arcos's early works. How old was he when he painted it?”

“Oh, about eighteen,” Dana piped up. “After he came to the United States and began formally studying painting.”

“Where did he study?” Catherine asked.

“The University of Arizona,” Ken answered quickly, “but he attended only for a couple of years and received an associate's degree. He didn't like Albuquerque. He taught for a while at the local community college just to earn a living. Then someone brought him to
my
attention.”

Ken couldn't seem to suppress a slightly smug smile. He turned and quickly pointed to another painting. “This is one of my favorites,
Cathedral.
I particularly like the play of light on the towering boulders. Nicolai painted it a couple of years after
Eternal Wait
and I think you can see the growth of his style.”

Catherine cordially agreed that she could see Arcos's growth of style, although she really couldn't see much difference. Ken showed her four more paintings resembling
Cathedral.
She “oohed” and “aahed” appropriately, although she felt certain Dana sensed her lack of sincerity. Catherine knew enough about art to recognize Arcos's impressive talent, but at this time works like
Cathedral
didn't affect her. She hadn't come to the gallery to see a Nicolai Arcos collection—she had come to see only one painting. As a result, her restlessness and distraction grew with every minute until the fingers of her left hand began twitching, a lifelong sign of nervousness.

Finally, they took several steps to the right and Catherine felt Dana tense and draw a sharp breath before Ken announced grandly, “And here is
Mardi Gras Lady
, the painting everyone is talking about! I never dreamed it would cause such a sensation, did you, Dana?”

The painting hung with at least ten feet of empty, light bisque wall space on each side, making it a showpiece, and it was twice as large as any others on display. The portrait bloomed with so much vivid color, depth, seemingly inherent life, vivacity, and motion that for Catherine the other works of Nicolai Arcos seemed to disappear, banished to obscurity by the image of a woman.

Catherine thought she'd prepared herself for what she might see by smiling casually at Ken before looking at the painting. To her shock, the image seemed to fill her vision, to overwhelm her, and she couldn't stifle a gasp.

Mardi Gras Lady
gleamed in rich though refined shades of gold. Although the lady was poised at a slight left angle, the viewer could still see at least a foot of her wide, horizontally hooped skirt cinched dramatically at the waist. A corset flattened her bodice, pushing her breasts into creamy, full orbs above the low, square neck of silk damask elaborately embroidered with deeper gold metallic thread and topped by a thin row of ivory lace. A wide, ivy-patterned gold choker embedded with pearls and diamonds circled her neck, and long teardrop pearls hung from gold bezel-set diamonds on her earlobes.

Tight sleeves stretched to her elbows, where below a wide band two layers of ruffles cascaded to her mid-forearms, the second ruffle swooping lower at the back than the first, elongating the arm. The Mardi Gras Lady obviously wore a wig—glossy, black hair upswept nearly six inches in front with long shining coils draped over her shoulder and running nearly to her waist, a slender string of milky pearls gracefully winding their way through the elaborate hairstyle. Her raised left hand held a delicate, unfurled ivory silk fan constructed with what looked like mother-of-pearl gilded sticks. Sequins highlighted the carefully arranged figures of women and men, fully naked and caught in the act of sex in a lush garden setting. Obviously, the vintage fan had been made for the private view of a connoisseur of erotica, not to be flaunted in a formal painting.

Catherine felt every detail of
Mardi Gras Lady
etching itself on her brain, including its delicate brushstrokes, the textured quality of the oil paint giving the painting a sense of depth, the seemingly flickering light in the background, and the overall haunting quality of the piece.

Most of all, she was entranced by the life Arcos had infused in his subject, especially her graceful, ethereal quality. Catherine had not seen Renée up close since the wedding, but she would never forget that perfect, oval face, the porcelain skin, the delicately curved nose, and the perfectly shaped lips. Especially, she would always remember Renée's eyes—those dark eyes with tiny burnished gold rings around the pupils and set at a slight, beguiling tilt—haunting eyes with a trace of vulnerability and hurt beneath their blatantly magnetic, enticing siren song of sexual invitation and risqué self-confidence. At the wedding, Renée had sent the full power of those eyes into Catherine's gentle heather green gaze.

Now, Renée once again directed the full power of them into Catherine, only this time the unmistakable eyes looked out from behind an elegant white and gold half mask with a thin, delicate band of lace around the edges, the mask bathed with a light sprinkle of gold glitter. The most striking aspect of the beautiful mask, though, was the black five-pointed star painted around the right eye.

The eye through which someone had shot a bullet, sending Renée to her death.

 

CHAPTER SEVEN

1

James Eastman unlocked the door to his small town house, walked inside, flipped on a bright overhead light, winced, and looked at a towering grandfather clock he'd brought from his former home to see that it was only 6:32. He felt as if it were midnight and he'd been digging ditches all day.

James ambled to the kitchen and fixed a double shot of bourbon. He took a sizable sip and carried the drink to the sparsely furnished living room, where he flung himself on the couch. He'd turned out the entry light, and the only illumination came from the halogen lamp across the street shining through the front window with its open draperies. He lay in the near darkness, rubbing the cool glass over his aching forehead and trying to blot out the image that seemed burned into his brain. How many drinks did it take to wipe out a memory? More than he could stand if he planned on going to the law office tomorrow. Maybe he should have taken off a week as Patrice advised.

James took another sip of bourbon and groaned. No. A week of idleness, a week without business to occupy his thoughts, would be unbearably depressing and give him far too much time to think. He wished he'd taken off today, though, instead of working even harder than usual. He felt almost weak with fatigue.

Earlier in the day, Chief Deputy Eric Montgomery had called James to tell him the dead woman's fingerprints were not on record and as yet police had located no official identification of her from the cottage—no purse with driver's license or Social Security card, and no car with license plate, vehicle identification number, insurance, or rental papers. The police could not reach the Moreaus in New Orleans. Otherwise, they could have come to Aurora Falls for next-of-kin identification. The autopsy had been completed by the medical examiner, and now the body lay at the morgue, unofficially identified but with no one to claim it.

Eric asked if James would consider visiting the morgue to take another look at the body. “I hate to ask you to do this, James, but I have a feeling the Moreaus aren't unreachable—they're just dodging us. If
you
can get hold of the Moreaus, they might come here and identify her.”

“I've tried,” James had told Eric with a mixture of dullness and anger. “If they're just dodging you, they're just dodging me, too.”

“Well, that's unfortunate.”

“Unfortunate?”

“I could use more colorful language, but I'm at the office. Anyway, you've only been her ex-husband for about a week. A formal identification by you might carry some weight. Also, you signing a few forms could expedite the release of the body when we're finally able to notify her family,” Eric had said. “You're under no obligation to put yourself through this ordeal, though. I don't know that I would do under the circumstances. I just wanted to let you know the choice is yours.”

James had told Eric he'd think about it, certain he would be calling back in a couple of hours to decline seeing Renée again. Four hours later, though, he realized he was having trouble concentrating on anything else. The situation troubled James. He knew he could just let the matter drift—Renée was no longer his responsibility—but she had once been his wife and he couldn't stop thinking about her lying unclaimed in the impersonal coldness of a morgue. If viewing her body again and signing release forms could help free her remains from the place, he would do it. If nothing else, she deserved to be laid to rest in New Orleans with family, he thought.

Finally, he'd told Patrice he would be leaving work half an hour early so he could go to the morgue. She hadn't asked if he wanted her to go with him or even mentioned that he might prefer to go with someone else. She had simply announced she would be accompanying him—an act he knew she would loathe, but one she would do without thought for a friend she thought needed her.

At first, James had protested, telling Patrice he was capable of making quick work of the task and not letting it bother him; after all, he'd seen the body Saturday. Still, she'd insisted. Later, he was secretly glad not to be alone as the drizzling rain of the day stopped, followed by an unusually foggy dusk as they pulled up to the old morgue sitting on a damp, dreary piece of land nearly a quarter of a mile away from the new hospital on its beautiful, well-lighted grounds. The construction company promised they would finish the new morgue attached to the hospital by spring, but for now construction conditions were not optimum. In other words, the dead could wait.