Trophies (25 page)

"Charles," she said, "how could you leave me
last night when I needed you?"

I kissed her cheek and she squeezed my
arms.

"Where were you hiding? I looked everywhere."
It was a polite lie, of course.

"Not in my office, you didn't." She shook me
before releasing me. "Listen, buster, this is the most exciting
show your sweet aunt and I ever put together — I have never seen
any other artist's work fly off the walls like this — we've sold
two more today, have you heard? — but I still have to fortify
myself with Kentucky sour mash before opening. The least you could
have done was sneak back there and keep me company while my life
flashed before my eyes."

In the past, Prissy had given me the eye more
than once, and more than once I'd been tempted to sample that
openly advertised merchandise. Then, each time, I listened to her
posturing and wriggled away. There was no way I was going to put up
with that all night long; no one was that good. For such a smart
woman — and her gallery was a smashing success — Prissy could be a
serious pain.

"But you're here now." Maybe she'd noticed my
sideways glance at the roses. "Charles, I am so sorry about Edith.
That woman was a treasure. I can't believe she died right on my
doorstep."

I used her pause for air to introduce
Sherlock and found unholy glee in the slight, fixed widening of his
eyes. Quickly, he and Patricia excused themselves and disappeared
behind the gem carvings. Lindsay showed no intention of leaving
until Patty grabbed one arm and Sherlock the other. I sighed. It
seemed I'd inherited a leech.

"Prissy, how's the rest of the show going?" I
took her arm and guided her toward the other half of the showroom.
We stopped before the first big oil, which faced the entry but at
such a distance no details were clear, only the blur of vibrant
colors. "This is Danny Vasquez's work."

Prissy straightened the big panel
millimetrically. "I just knew his style would blend with Trés' and
I was right."

She was, too. Danny Vasquez painted flower
gardens, but not as any gardener ever grew them. In the panel
before us, a gazebo and fountain sprawled beside a wall, surrounded
by rioting hydrangeas, azaleas, hibiscus, and foxgloves. Climbing
roses encircled the gazebo and wisteria spilled over the bricks;
underfoot, thyme and creeping phlox stalked the pond's edge. A
chaise lounge waited beneath the gazebo's shade, beside it a table
holding a pair of reading glasses, an overturned book, and a
cut-glass decanter and snifter. One had to look closely to see the
hidden animals, birds, butterflies, and smiling faces designed
within the scene. I knew Danny spent hours imbedding those little
motifs into each of his paintings, for each motif was as detailed
and correct as the flowers. And his prices reflected the time he
spent on each panel.

"They do make a good combination," I said.
"How's the show going for Danny?"

She sighed. "He will do these big canvases
that take forever to sell and require massive insurance policies in
the meantime. I mean, if I ever have a fire, he's set for life. I
won't take any more of them, Charles, I swear to you I won't do it,
and I don't care how soulful those brown eyes look at me nor how
good the work is. And this one, oh, believe me, you could stand
here for the rest of your life and not find all the little gizmos
he's hidden in there. It's wonderful." She faced me squarely. "He's
worried."

Not a surprise, that. "As to what he'll do
without Aunt Edith?"

"Exactly. And he should be. I mean, as good
as he is, people aren't falling all over themselves to invest in
these big scenes of his. Now, if he'd listened to Edith years ago
and done a lot of little ones with running motifs, roses here,
gazebos there, some with fountains, some with hydrangeas — you get
the idea, don't you? I could sell that and he would never have to
teach another hopeless art student. Now, I don't know what he's
going to do and neither does he."

I glanced around at his other panels, all
smaller ones but just as richly detailed. There were fewer than a
dozen paintings in his little corner of the show. "Usually he gets
more room, doesn't he?"

Prissy nodded. "Much more. And Charles, was
he ever unhappy about that. I must have explained to him a hundred
times, this is really an introduction for Trés and Danny should be
happy he got any room at all. If Edith hadn't been concerned that
no one would bother reviewing a show for a seventeen-year-old
greenhorn, well, Danny wouldn't be here. You know, I hate saying
something like this about a grown man, but I do believe he was
jealous of all the attention Edith gave to Trés."

"Was he here last night? I didn't see
him."

"Oh, yes, he was here, and he told me you
didn't visit with him either." She gave me a crinkly look from the
corner of her eye. "That's how I know you didn't look very hard for
me. I have my spies. I know you yelled and left in a huff."

I let her comment slide and risked the
question I wanted to ask. "And I suppose he was here late that
night fussing over everything with Aunt Edith and Trés?"

She snorted; there was no ladylike word to
describe that sound. "Danny? After all the shows he's done here? He
hangs the canvases and leaves. The pub's down the street and it
calls his name." She eased me toward the last corner of the
showroom, near the back and facing the area where the buffet tables
had been. "Have you seen Sidnë's work? I think you'll like it,
too." She paused a moment and lowered her voice considerably.
"Whether you'll like Sidnë herself, well, that I can't say. She's a
bit hard to take sometimes."

The panel she guided me to was also an oil,
almost as large as Danny's signature piece. In the lower right
corner was a café scene with wrought iron table and chairs, a
green-striped umbrella, and three young women leaning together over
coffee and cake. One woman spoke; the other two listened. From the
center of the table, as if from the words being spoken and heard,
swept the image of a couple dancing at a formal ball. The dancing
woman's gown swirled all around, framing and dominating the scene
in opalescent blues and lavenders, but it was her face that
interested me most. For it wasn't the face of the woman speaking,
or at least not exactly; there was something in there of all the
women, the speaker plus her two listeners. It was as if the story
told by the one was taken in and adopted by the others as their
own, too, and shared by them all.

I glanced at the sign on the side. It was
called — of course —
We Could Have Danced All Night.
The
price was average, neither high nor low.

"What do you think?" Prissy asked.

"I like it," I said. "It's very sexy. Is all
her stuff like this?"

"Oh, she's a girl, Sidnë is. Lots of
beautiful dresses, coffee klatches, manicures, hot tubs, things
like that. Of course, you'd never guess it to look at her. But
she's here, so I'll keep my voice down and when you meet her in a
moment you can decide for yourself."

I leaned close to whisper. "But I'm sure
you're right."

As if I'd flipped a switch, something in
Prissy's face hardened. She jerked her head toward Trés' side of
the showroom. I followed her past the displays, past the door to
her show office, past another door that led into the building's
central corridor, to the far side of the showroom, where we paused
in front of the third and final door into the rear.

"All right, something's bothering me," Prissy
said, as if I'd wheedled it out of her. "Step back into my office
with me, will you? I don't want to discuss this out here."

I paused. "Am I safe?" After all, she was
nearly as big as I.

"With me, darling? Never." She fluttered her
eyelashes at me. But she wasn't smiling.

I made certain Sherlock saw us leave the
showroom. Just in case.

That third door, buried behind Trés'
strategically displayed artwork, passed into a short corridor, with
an open kitchen on one side and a small unisex bathroom on the
other, and then into the warehouse, with rows of shelves on the
right and the back service door to the mews straight ahead. But a
path skirted the shelves, leading back across the building to a
door on the warehouse's far wall which returned us to the central
hallway. Numerous doors sprouted here and there off the corridor,
one of which lead back to the showroom. But Prissy pushed through
the door leading into her final rabbit-warren area, the
offices.

Her roundabout path circled most of the way
around the building. Clearly she didn't want us to be seen or
overheard by anyone working in that corner of the showroom, the one
we'd have to pass to reach the door directly between the showroom
and her office. Was this Sidnë such a major problem?

In the back of the building, Prissy kept two
offices, a fancy show office for meeting clients and artists, the
other for what she called real work. It was this crowded cubbyhole,
overflowing with files and papers and computer gadgetry, to which
she led me now. She closed the door behind us, but when she turned
to face me all flirt was gone.

"Please be discreet with this," she said. "I
overheard Sidnë and Edith arguing the night she was killed."

Her words drew me short in disbelief. "A bad
one?"

"I've known Edith forever, even if we did
look like a Great Dane and a Chihuahua." Prissy closed her jacket
and folded her arms beneath her breasts as if suddenly cold, then
sank into the chair behind the desk, the only chair in the office.
"You know, I never heard a hard word from her. No matter how
temperamental the artist, how unreasonable a collector, how ugly a
drunk — she never lost her temper." Prissy stopped and met my eyes.
She seemed to have gained ten years in the space of a breath and
for the first time, she looked her age. "The night she was killed,
I overheard her yell at Sidnë at the top of her lungs that she
would never sponsor her in a show again."

No air moved in the little office; not a
paper flickered. I just couldn't fathom it. Aunt Edith dying over
floor space in an art show seemed so trivial. Perhaps all that
stuff we found in the garret — the ugly scenarios of blackmail and
murder — perhaps none of it meant anything at all. Perhaps the
murderer right now fussed over her canvases in the showroom. Blood
pounded in my ears, a slow steady tympani, and the office was
stifling.

"Charles? Charles!" Prissy rose, knocked the
papers off the corner of the desk, grabbed my arm, and guided me
down. "I'm sorry. I suppose I should have padded that news."

"I'm all right." I held onto the rim of the
desk, the hard edge cutting into the palms of my hands. Sensing
texture, the Army shrink had told me, sometimes kept the mental
demons at bay. "I just can't imagine that, that's all."

She slouched back into her chair. "So what do
I do with this?"

I stared at her.

"I mean, do I tell the police?"

"Are you crazy or am I? Of course you—"

She shook her head hard. "A scandal at the
wrong point in an artist's career, and it's over. If the police
even hold her on suspicion, she could be finished. And Sidnë's just
about ready to break out — well, you saw her work, what she can do
with faces."

I didn't need to think it over. "An argument
isn't enough of a reason to hold a person. The police would need to
have real evidence before they could do that."

"But if it even leaks out—"

"—then I'll sponsor her for as long as it
takes to re-establish her career. But Prissy, I have to know."

She smiled and the years fell away. "You'd do
that, would you?"

I managed a bit of a smile in return. "I
suppose I can afford it now."

"Suppose you can." She kicked the papers on
the floor beneath the desk. "Damn bills. Come on, at least meet the
woman first. You might prefer to eat those words."

We returned to the showroom the short way,
through her pristine show office, which had nary a paper nor
computer in sight. We rounded a display of Sidnë's canvases and ran
smack into Jacob, Patricia's brother. Prissy and I jumped; he
didn't.

"Business over?" His clipped tenor sounded
rough, as if he didn't use it often enough. He wore black jeans and
a charcoal Polo shirt, like an artiste wanna-be who hung out in
refined atmospheres, hoping to be discovered by a powerful patron.
The elegant twins had ragged him for as long as I could remember
and if he'd not yet found himself, they had to take some of the
responsibility.

"Hello, Jacob." I held out my hand.

His smile, both charming and lopsided, didn't
seem to match what little expression escaped his black, pupil-less
eyes, although I supposed that wasn't his fault. He glanced down,
clasped my hand, slapped my shoulder, and started to walk away,
toward the ladies and Sherlock, who stood near the gem
carvings.

But it was an unanticipated opportunity to
clear up at least one of the mysteries from the garret. Quickly I
excused myself from Prissy. "A moment, Jacob."

He turned. His eyebrows were so light,
matching his blond hair, they were nearly invisible on his pale
skin, and I was only aware he raised them by the movement of his
facial muscles. He seemed so utterly unlike anyone else with the
name of Ellandun that I warmed to him; like the twins and Patty,
he'd maintained his individuality while upholding the family name,
the task I'd never accomplished. "Something wrong?" he asked.

"Not wrong, no. Just curious."

We stood in the open area where the buffet
tables had been the previous night, with Sidnë's big panel beside
us. Prissy had withdrawn, and Patty and Sherlock were still
pointing at the gem carvings although his glance regularly darted
in my direction. Lindsay stood beside them without talking, her
mouth curled and her expression bored. It was as private a location
as we were going to find without borrowing one of Prissy's
offices.