Murder at the Falls (27 page)

“The Amigo?”

“That’s the brand name. The technical name is a battery-powered three-wheeled platform mobility aid.” He nodded at the motorized wheelchair that was parked in a corner, with another set of crutches tucked into a carrier on the back. “I can go anywhere with it: grass, sidewalks, carpeting—you name it. Four and half miles per hour, sixteen miles on a charge.”

Charlotte stared at the Amigo. With it, she realized, Spiegel could have made it up to the diner for the aprons in much less time than she had figured, which did away with his alibi. Operating a motorized vehicle was a lot easier than rolling a manual wheelchair uphill. Moreover, he could have used the Amigo to drag the body from wherever he found it to the raceway.

“It’s the world’s greatest invention for the handicapped,” Spiegel continued. “I use a wheelchair at home, but I use the Amigo everywhere else. The operating mechanism is a simple lever on the handlebars: you press one side for forward, and the other side for reverse. It’s a lot simpler than this thing,” he said, referring to his motorized easel.

In fact, Charlotte thought, the Amigo could explain the aprons. It would be easier to drag a body that was wrapped up than one that wasn’t. As she mentally returned Spiegel to the top of her “A” list, she wondered: if the Amigo had been the instrument of Randy’s death, why would Spiegel be telling her about it, and then decided that it might just be the arrogance of the murderer.

Spiegel pressed a button, and his chair moved up so that he could reach the top of the painting, which was a large oil depicting a man inside a cave, hunched over in torment. Written across the top in Gothic lettering were the words: “Let the day perish wherein I was born.” “This is my current work-in-progress,” he said, as she sat down in the chair he had dragged over for her. “What do you think?”

Charlotte returned her attention to the painting. It was a realist painting, but not a photorealist painting, unless you could snap a shutter at the soul. In her opinion, the banality of the photorealists’ subject matter was the weakness of the style. She understood the technical challenge of painting shiny surfaces, but the style lacked emotional appeal and importance.

“Well?” Spiegel prompted.

In this painting, Spiegel was applying photorealist techniques to important subject matter—not diners and storefronts, but personal myth and inspiration. In doing so, he was taking the style to new frontiers. “I think it’s a masterpiece,” she said finally. “The application of photorealist techniques to an inner reality.”

“Exactly,” he said, pleased that she understood. “It’s a new direction for me. My new identity has also given me the chance to break new ground artistically. New York is filled with artists who repeat themselves
ad infinitum
. I didn’t want to be one of them, but I couldn’t break away. To have a waiting list for your paintings puts a damper on the need to take risks.”

Morris Finder had been right. Spiegel had undergone an artistic rebirth, but it wasn’t with the diner paintings; it was with these meticulous representations of the inner man.

Spiegel continued: “When I started out, all I cared about was sunshine and shadows. But as time went on, I found myself getting into reflections: what was bouncing off the glass. First from far away, then from up close. As I moved closer in, the surfaces kept bouncing me back out when what I really wanted to do was go through the glass, to see what was behind the glittering surface.”

“To make your paintings subjective instead of objective.”

He nodded. “William Blake said it best: ‘As poetry admits not a letter that is insignificant, so painting admits not a grain of sand or a blade of grass insignificant—much less an insignificant blur or mark.’”

“What’s it called?” she asked.

“This one is ‘Job’s Wrath,’ after Blake. Being in that tunnel was my crisis of the soul. Like Job, I was angry at first at my fate, but then I came to realize that I had been denying what was most important to me—my art, my family, my soul.” To her surprise, tears sprang to his eyes. “I had a spiritual disease, the cure for which was the renunciation of my former life.”

“That’s what the new identity was all about,” she said.

He nodded. “I came to welcome even the paralysis. My inability to move my legs became a metaphor for my suffering: the outward and visible sign, so to speak.” He nodded again at the painting. “This is the third in a series.”

“You like doing things in series, don’t you?” she said, thinking of the series of the Falls View.

“I guess I’m a systematist. Would you like to see the others?”

“Very much.”

“The series is called the ‘Path of Experience,’ after Blake’s
Job
,” he said as he shifted himself back into the wheelchair. Then he rolled it over to a storage rack.

“May I help you?” she asked.

“It’s not necessary, thanks. I’ve gotten quite good at this.”

One by one, he slid three canvases out of their racks, and set them across his lap. Then he rolled himself over to another easel. “The only trouble is that I can’t lift really large canvases,” he said as he hoisted the first painting onto the easel. “But that’s okay; I look on it as just another limitation that I have to work within.”

“What’s the ‘Path of Experience’?” she asked.

“The five states established by Divine mercy to help the fallen man find his way to the true God. This painting represents the first state: Innocence. The title is ‘The House of the Gryphon.’”

The painting showed the same man. This time he was sitting at a bountiful table, surrounded by his adoring family and friends. The setting was clearly the dining room at the mill. Written across the top were the words from the Bible: “When the Almighty was yet with me, When my children were about me.”

Spiegel pointed to the gryphon—half eagle, half lion—that hovered above the assemblage: “The gryphon is an emblem of valor and magnanimity,” he explained. Then he removed the painting from the easel, and put up the next one. “This painting represents the state of Experience. The title is ‘The Palace of Delights.’”

The setting was the same room, but now it was the scene of an orgiastic party, with the same figure at the center. The Biblical quotation was: “Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house.” The gryphon had disappeared, and now a cloven-hoofed Satan loomed over the gathering.

“The third painting you’ve seen, representing the state of Revolution, when Job rebels against his woes, and now I’ll show you the fourth. He lifted another painting onto the easel. “This is the Dark Night. The title is ‘The Forest of the Night,’ which is a metaphor for the false theories that block the path to enlightenment.”

The painting showed a man cowering in a dark forest. Overhead loomed a beneficent angel of light. The quotation was: “Shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall a man be more pure than his Maker?”

“I haven’t done the final state,” he said as returned the painting to the rack. “I’ve managed to penetrate the surface of the glass, you see. But I have yet to come out on the other side.” He rolled his wheelchair back over to the automated easel. “Now,” he said, transferring himself back into the chair, “What can I do for you?”

“Do you know Jason Armentrout?” she asked. “I assumed, since he was a friend of Randy’s, that you would know him as well.”

“You assumed correctly. What do you want to know about him?”

Charlotte described the scheme that she suspected Jason of engineeering, and then said, “What I want your opinion on is this: Is Jason clever enough to have come up with this scheme on his own, or was he put up to it by someone a lot cleverer?”

“The latter,” he said definitively. “Jason is a rich kid whose funds have dried up, and who can’t make a living from painting: a
poseur
. He’s too flaky to think up such a scheme himself. Maybe Diana”—he paused, and then shook his head—“but I don’t think it was her either.”

“That was the feeling I had too,” she said. “But I’m glad to hear you confirm it. Which also means that you don’t think Jason could have murdered Randy for the paintings.”

“Not necessarily. You have to be clever to carry out a scheme of the kind you describe, but you don’t have to be clever to throw somebody in a river, especially if he’s already unconscious.”

Charlotte noticed that he said
river
and not raceway, which could mean either that he was innocent or that he’d read the newspapers. Thinking over what he had said, she decided that he was right, which didn’t mean that he wasn’t trying to deflect suspicion from himself.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“I guess I’d have to agree,” she said. “By the way,” she added. “Do you care about the paintings? I’m just curious.”

“Not a whit. They’re ancient history to me now.”

“Randy has left them to Patty Andriopoulis of the Falls View Andriopoulises. She’s the heir to his estate. That is, if Bernice doesn’t press you to get them back for her.”

“They should go to Patty, if she’s his heir,” he said. “If they turn up, that is. Though I may have wanted to rescind it, I did sign an agreement saying that I gave the paintings to Randy.”

“Bernice isn’t going to be happy about that.”

“Bernice isn’t going to be happy, period. I’m going to have to call her today, before she hears about my resurrection through the grapevine. I have the feeling that she’ll prefer me dead to alive. That way the real person doesn’t get in the way of the reputation.”

“One final question,” said Charlotte.

Spiegel nodded.

“Do you have any idea where Jason might have stored them?”

Spiegel thought for a moment and then said, “As a matter of fact, I do. His studio is downtown in the former Columbia Bank building next to City Hall. Nine Colt Street.”

Charlotte nodded. “I visited him there.”

“Then you know the setup. Across the hall there’s a utility room where he stores his canvases. It’s filled with racks like those.” He nodded at the storage racks against the wall. “I’ll bet they’re in there.”

Charlotte smiled. “Thank you very much!” she said.

Back at home, Charlotte fixed herself another drink, and took a seat in her living room. She loved her little townhouse in Turtle Bay, with its mementoes of her fifty years on the screen. As her eyes swept the room, they alighted on a tape recorder that had appeared on an end table. This was getting ridiculous, she thought. She would have to have a talk with Vivian. The first one had appeared two weeks ago on her bed stand; the second one had appeared three days later on the kitchen counter; a third had appeared on a table in the library; and now, here was a fourth. They were multiplying like the pods in
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
. For a moment, she considered a policy of appeasement. If she spoke into one of them for a few moments—there must be some innocuous memories that she’d be willing to share with this sinister creature—would its shiny black plastic lose its threatening quality? Would it cease to reproduce at such a frightening rate? Would its commander in chief halt its relentless
drang nach Osten
? But ultimately she decided on a more hostile tactic. Getting up, she grasped it by its handle and then vigorously shoved it under the biggest armchair in the room. Then she resumed her seat, eyeing its resting place suspiciously. She had no doubt that it would reappear, if not here, then someplace else. Or worse, spawn dozens of tiny black plastic offspring among the dust bunnies in the womblike darkness underneath the armchair.

The tape recorder safely stuffed out of view, she took a long swig of her Manhattan. She had bought her townhouse years ago, when she had still been married to her first husband. It had been 1939. He had lived here by himself after she had gone to Hollywood. That was what had done them in: the separation. And her career. She had married him when she was eighteen. He had been her home town sweetheart. As diligently as he’d tried, he hadn’t been able to cope with the sudden onset of her fame. One minute she had been the girl next door, the next she was a glamorous movie star. After the breakup, she had bought his share of the house from him. Looking back, she supposed he had really done quite well, considering how young he was. With the exception of her second husband, to whom she would probably still be married had he not died prematurely of a heart attack, none of her other husbands had done any better at being Mr. Charlotte Graham, and they had been well aware of what they were getting into. Including the most recent, Jack Lundstrom.

For a moment, a gorge of bitterness rose in her throat. To be dumped by a seventy-two-year-old Minneapolis businessman for a ladylike suburban widow whose sole function in life was to decorate houses and give parties! But the voice of reason quickly came to the rescue. What had she expected? Particularly when, after six cold, awful weeks in Minneapolis that had included half-a-dozen country club parties, a hospital charity ball, and—horror of horrors, a company snowmobile picnic—she had decamped to Manhattan, never to return. Jack wasn’t the only one who should have known what he was getting into. Though she had known Jack made his primary residence in Minneapolis, she had made the mistake of acknowledging only the Jack who maintained an apartment at the Pierre, and who was well known as a collector of contemporary art. It came as something of a shock to find out that she had become the wife of a leader of the Minneapolis Old Guard with all the social trappings and expectations that went along with it.

If she couldn’t claim to have loved Jack (after the initial infatuation, that is, and at her age she should have known better than to trust an infatuation), she had certainly liked him very much. He was amiable, charming, and considerate—an all-around boon companion—and she knew that he had felt much the same about her. She had vowed after her third marriage never to marry again, but Jack had been so different from the tin horn dictators and American man-boys, to borrow a phrase from Hemingway, that she was accustomed to from Hollywood. Their relationship had sputtered along on the basis of mutual regard for a number of years. She had stayed with him when he came to New York on business, and had even tagged along occasionally on his business trips abroad. He had accompanied her on a trip to China when she’d served as the advisor to a Chinese production of Arthur Miller’s play
The Crucible
. But it was now time to call it quits.