Whiskey’s Gone (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 3) (19 page)

I didn’t know it at first, but Star Newcomb was another Arthur in disguise. No, I got that wrong: Arthur was a burden, intrusive, nothing I couldn’t deal with. But Star was worse than Ma and Arthur rolled into one.

“I want to paint you,” he said to me that first morning when Malcolm thought I was visiting my pregnant cousin. I should have pegged him by the look in his eyes. Haunted. Obsessed.

“You’re sick,” I said and walked out.

Star Newcomb

I’d had enough of Whiskey’s journal for a while, so I closed the book and sat, letting her words swill around in my head. Her form was coalescing into someone I was beginning to understand. Someone with a reason for guilt. Someone human like me.

I wondered who had taken her, trying to convince myself it was Arthur. Yet something niggled in the back of my brain. I promised myself to try to keep an open mind. Could Seymour Wolsey have abducted her? Malcolm? He pined for her, that was a sure thing, and with all his apartment buildings, he had access to plenty of places where he could stash her. What about Star Newcomb?

I was leaving a note for the artist when I heard faint scratching noises and felt my heart do its tide-rushing-in imitation. The skittering could have been the blood flowing through my ears, but I didn’t think so. Then I heard a clank inside the elevator shaft in the distance. I waited, still in the hallway darkness, listening to the metallic sound of the cage opening and closing, hearing the whoosh of the doors. I heard whistling, footsteps approaching. Pretty soon I saw the outline of a man. As the form got closer, I had to give it to him, he was a hunk. Dark curly hair, tall, muscular, in tight-fitting jeans and a cornflower blue work shirt. He stopped, smiled, waved.

“Hello, little girl. Lost?”

He didn’t know it yet, but this was not a good way to start out with me. “Star Newcomb?”

“Brilliant! Got it in one.”

By this time he was not only close to me but invading my space.

“God, you’re beautiful. Ever do any modeling? Stay with me tonight and I’ll paint you in the morning. I’ll make you famous.”

I held up my ID.

He raised his arms in mock surrender. “Now what’ve I done?”

“I have some questions about Whiskey Parnell if you don’t mind.”

To give him credit, he didn’t hesitate. “Shoot, little lady. What brand of whiskey did you say?” He winked as he stood barring the door to his studio, arms crossed, a wet curl dangling over his forehead. Way too much product and seriously full of himself.

I gritted my teeth, trying not to hate him. “Whiskey Parnell. Surely you remember her?”

He wasn’t about to give in, but something flickered across his face. “Never heard of her.”

“Not only are you a chauvinist but you’re a lousy liar.

He rolled his eyes. “All right, I might remember the name. What’s she done this time?”

I told him what I knew about Whiskey’s past and his involvement with her and Malcolm Giro. I said she was missing, and I’d been hired to find her.

“Afraid I can’t help you.” He gnawed on a fingernail. “Whiskey was a long time ago. A one-night stand is all. Maybe two. Don’t get me wrong. I could see from the start that Malcolm was all wrong for her. She was luscious, electric, and he was boring. I’ll admit it: she wanted me, and I always find that enticing. We could have had something juicy, but she skipped town on me, although now that I think on it, she did me a favor. The kid and I didn’t get along.”

He stopped while I stood there, taking my time to consider him more closely.

In the space of three or four seconds, he chewed on a few fingers, his eyes darting back and forth. “I liked her well enough, met her in a bar, as a matter of fact, but in the end”—his arms gestured an empty expanse—“it was just a fling, we didn’t hit it off all that much. Too impressed with herself.”

He stopped talking and stared at his reflection in the windowpane. In less than a minute, he’d managed two different spins on his affair with Whiskey Parnell, and I wasn’t buying either version.

“I’ll let you in on a secret, little girl, I’ve got my career and reputation to think about. She didn’t fit in—she wasn’t what you’d call ‘star quality,’ you might say.” He bit his thumbnail and beamed.

I almost vomited.

“No pun intended.” He hesitated, waiting for more of a response from me, but I gave him nothing. The trouble with Star—he had a mouth.

“Besides, I don’t have time for relationships. I’ve got a show to prepare. Thornton Galleries, in case you’re not into the art scene, and you don’t strike me as … as a patron. It’s currently the hottest gallery in Chelsea. You know where that is, don’t you, little lady, or are you a true-blue Brooklynite?”

I bit my lip, two milliseconds away from batting him hard on the place where he lived.

“I’m preparing for a show. Got to deliver two paintings a month or I’m out of a gallery; that’s the way it goes in my world. So if you’ll excuse me … or better yet, come inside, and I’ll show you my drawings.”

When I said nothing, I watched his face go from cocky to wary. A tic close to his right eye came alive.

“Oh, wait, you think I know something about Whiskey’s current escapade, don’t you? So I’m a suspect?”

“We’re all suspects.”

At that, he reared his head and laughed.

I must admit, I did sound a bit canned. I watched his biceps flex as he took a couple of steps backward and fisted his hands by his side.

“I’d like to ask you a couple of questions if you don’t mind. And if you don’t comply, that’s a shame because later, after we find her and she’s been beaten or worse, and we discover you knew something about her disappearance, just the slightest bit of information or worse—where she was all along and didn’t tell us—you’ll be in big trouble. It would be a major difficulty, a real shame for your reputation. Gallery owners don’t like painters who give them trouble. Art patrons might complain and want a refund.”

He said nothing, but drew a finger across his lips, which by now were pressed tightly together.

“I’ve been asked to investigate her disappearance and I will, believe me, and that means I’m investigating you, too, front and rear, side to side, and I don’t leave anything to chance.”

His face quivered, like a horse.

I said nothing.

“Don’t look at me like that. Like I say, Whiskey was a fling—one night, maybe two, that’s all—and I haven’t seen her in, Jesus, years.”

I smelled something rotten in his eyes. While I stared him down, his emotions turned from inscrutable into a fear so palpable I could smell it.

“You’ve seen her, haven’t you?”

He backed away, my words hitting him like bullets, and I shook a finger at his rock-solid chest. “I think you know something.”

He shoved a fingernail into his mouth and began chewing again, and his eyes darted. “All right. You better come in.” He unlocked the door and motioned for me to enter.

The space was a cavern of a studio. As I peered into the darkness, my eyes adjusted to the dim light, and I saw what looked like garbage strewn all over the floor.

“Sorry about the mess. My cleaning service quit last week.”

Usually I’d jump at the chance to sell Lucy’s, but I hesitated. I wasn’t so sure I wanted Star Newcomb as a client. Still, business was business, and that thought overcame my reluctance. I asked for his phone number, saying I might know a good cleaning service looking for new clients. He hesitated a couple of seconds, but decided in favor of handing it over, and I keyed it into my cell.

“Let me show you around. Not every day you get to visit the studio of a master.”

He led the way, his hand on my elbow until I twisted free and slammed the side of my hand into his forearm. I felt the jerk of his alarm, but to his credit, he stopped and faced me.

“Sorry. I guess my normal advances won’t work with someone like you.”

Despite the fact that I hate his type, I felt a spark of interest. So I did a stupid thing—I smiled.

His studio smelled of varnish and linseed oil, rotten food, and paint. I had to step over debris on the floor—paper towels, rags, old newsprint, balled-up drawings, candy wrappers—while I followed him into the interior, a huge space with five easels. One wall held storage for his large canvases. A few distant planets twinkled down on us from two large glassed-in affairs in the ceiling.

Star turned on overhead lights, which he explained were halogen or tungsten, expensive, he said, but he needed the light to be true. “This isn’t my best work, but you’ll get an idea if you go through my paintings in the drying racks.” He strode over to the two-by-four shelves lining one wall, and pulled out several large canvases, canting them against the braces. I had to step back, he told me, to get a proper view. From a distance, I must admit there was something arresting about his work, especially his portraits. There was one in particular that caught my eye, the portrait of a man. I’m no judge of art, but there was something about the guy’s eyes, something about the painting that drew me in.

“I’m trying something new,” he said, “mixing abstract statements with portraits. Thornton suggested it, just to show the patrons I could draw. But I need more models. Arresting faces, like yours or … Whiskey had something mesmerizing about her, but too bad she was Whiskey.” An involuntary shudder went through him.

I thought about that, but said nothing, picking up a small painting, slashes of color. There was something about his abstract work that told me so much more about Star Newcomb. Maybe it was the design. Or the fury of it. The work had to come from the mind of someone obsessed. I mean, why would someone spend hours with an easel and the smell of chemicals and paint? I walked over to another painting on one of the easels, careful not to step on whatever was scattered on the floor, but I couldn’t help it, my shoes crunched the debris.

“Step back from the painting and watch it turn.”

I liked him better when he was talking about painting and not himself, and while I’m no art lover, I must admit I liked his canvases. I was drawn into them, following the lines his brushes made. But the color, I loved his color. I stepped over a bird’s nest and what looked like part of a wig.

“Here are some of my smaller works.”

“How do you get your ideas?” I asked. I looked up through a skylight and saw a few evening stars. Nothing too bright, but my feet were cold.

“What’s behind that door?” I asked, pointing.

“More storage. Large stretchers, rolls of linen.”

“Let me see?” I asked, becoming curious.

Star Newcomb shrugged and fished for a key. “That’s where I keep my reluctant models. Two nights locked in there and when I free them, they’re so happy to be out, I can set them into any pose I want.” He laughed again, and this time I felt a distinctive frisson of fear travel up and down my spine.

The door creaked open, revealing a shallow space. I reached in my bag for a flashlight and shone it over some huge rolls of canvas and stretchers. A long piece of wood began to fall toward Star, who propped it up again. As he did so, my eye was caught by movement on the floor. The tail of a mouse or who knew what. I stepped backward. Another, a smaller creature, definitely a mouse, scampered out and flew toward me, stopping at my shoe. I jumped, and the mouse darted out of sight. Star closed the door again, locking it. “Sorry, I called the building manager last week. The exterminator is coming tomorrow.”

I wasn’t spooked by the mouse—I’d seen enough on my many cleaning gigs in high school—but Star had begun to shake.

He walked over to some shelves on the far wall. They held palette knives, something he called gesso, rolls of canvas, brushes, jars, and a bunch of art books in various sizes. Next to it was a barrel filled with shorter rolls of linen and more wooden stretchers. “I do a lot of sketching in the mornings and late at night. Unless, of course, I happen to get lucky. He shot me a knowing look.

I stepped away and took up one of the books, feeling the grit of dust on the cover. Thumbing through the thick pages, I saw drawings, not abstracts, but pictures of bark, close up, and doors. I turned pages and saw sketches of people sitting in subway cars.

“I’m interested in the texture of things, like the texture of surprise on a woman’s face.”

I nodded as if I understood what he was saying, and continued turning the pages. They smelled of plaster and I came across drawings done on a white substance.

“I plan on gesso, so I slather it over the face of the page like shaving cream.”

Interesting, but this was getting me nowhere except to realize the guy was obsessed with drawing and painting. I put the book down, reached for another, and his hand covered mine. Instinctively I pulled it out from under his, but he squeezed it tight and drew me closer.

I gulped, feeling that warming sensation, and bit my lip. What was wrong with me? I smelled his cologne, not a bad scent at all. I waited a half-second, long enough to have a good talk to my lower region, and drove my heel into the toe of his shoe. “Next time I won’t be so gentle.”

He seemed to fold into himself, and I gave him a moment. To his credit, he recovered quickly. Shrugging and giving me the shadow of a smile, he led me back to an area I’d call a sitting room. The furniture looked like it had been liberated from a nearby dumpster, and there was dust all over the place, but two walls were filled with windows. The view of Brooklyn and Manhattan lights winking in the distance was breathtaking. Why did such a pig get to live in a space like this? Probably made up to every gallery owner in town. I had to move a stretcher, but found the edge of a couch not covered in tarpaulin and sat while Star paced.

I was beginning to enjoy his discomfort, until I heard my mom telling me I could be cruel. Her remark, echoing from the grave, sobered me, and I almost felt sorry for the guy, so I pulled out my notebook and flipped through pages, giving him time for his emotions, whatever they were.

In a while he sat down opposite me, shifted his body to the edge, his head cradled in his hands. When he began to speak, his voice was muffled like it was coming from a deep well. “Late last night, I can’t remember what time it was, might have had too much ale, but I was on the way home from a friend’s apartment when I saw something near an ATM.”