Charlie nodded. “Let’s go in and go through the exact same movements you made before. Honey, you want to chat with the watchman?” Johnny looked around in bewilderment; there was no watchman in sight.
“Oh,” he said, and then led the way back into the building; they were now on the first floor; here the elevators had the big brass numbers that Constance had seen on her tour. “I went up to Five A,” he said, and held up a wallet with computer lock cards. He used one to open the elevator to Five A and they entered it. “I used the stairs to go to the other floors. Each elevator is dedicated to its own unit at this end of the building.” He glanced at Charlie who nodded in understanding. They arrived at the foyer on five, and glanced inside the unit without entering, went to the end of the hall and down the stairs to four, and repeated the inspection, then to three, two, and finally they were back on the first floor. It had taken no more than five minutes in all. The apartments all appeared to be identical. Only Six A still showed the evidence of recent painting activity. Six A and Five A had both been outfitted with a conference table and chairs in the large living room. In Five A coffee service had been added. Probably they would have had doughnuts, Charlie thought, for the money men. This side of the building had the biggest apartments, the most expensive, the only ones with their own elevators.
“The watchman was here when I came out,” Johnny said on the first floor, walking toward Constance and the car. “I didn’t talk more than a few seconds with him. Then we left. Pierce, the watchman, followed us to the construction gate and closed it after us.”
He started to open the car door, and Charlie said, “Hold it just a second. What about the briefcase?”
Johnny looked blankly at his hands, as if trying to remember. Then he said, “Yeah, I tossed it inside the trunk.” He went back around the car and opened the trunk and made the motion of throwing in the briefcase, and then they all got inside the Continental again, and he drove to the gate.
Charlie looked at his watch, more unhappily than before. Fifteen minutes, at the very least, and eighteen was more likely.
“Okay,” Charlie said. “Back to the house. Thanks. You were over here earlier, weren’t you?”
“I’m over here every day,” Johnny said. “It’s our job, I’m riding herd on it.”
“I see. But you came over Friday and sent some workers home, and told them to come back Saturday and finish up? Is that right?”
“Yes. I came back to change clothes, and they were doing the stripes on the floor or something. I told them it could wait until the next morning, and I locked up when I left to pick up Debra and her friends at the train station in Maryville. I don’t know what time that was. I had to wait a few minutes at the station, not long. The train comes in at five thirty.”
“Um,” Charlie said. “What I really wanted to know is did the men return Saturday morning and finish? Would they have been likely to go up to Six A to clean up their stuff?”
“No,” Johnny said. “I told them I’d pull the tarps off and put them in one of the closets sometime Saturday afternoon. All they had to do was finish up in the basement and clear out the brushes and cans and stuff. They did that. At least the stuff is all gone now. This is the first time I’ve been back over,” he added, disgruntled. “They wouldn’t let me back into Six A at all to get those tarps out and look around.”
“Then you and your friends drove into Washington and you didn’t come back here until afternoon on Saturday. Is that right?”
Johnny’s voice was hard and tight when he said, “I drove to the city and we had dinner, and I was with Debra Saltzman until after two thirty in the morning. I slept until noon on Saturday, and after I showered and ate, I came out here, and have stayed on since then. Is there anything else?”
Charlie looked at him in surprise. “Okay,” he said. “Take it easy. Were you able to reach everyone about canceling the tour?”
“Finally,” Johnny said. “Sorry I jumped on you like that. This is my first… investigation of this sort. Edgy.”
They had reached the house again; this time he pulled into the driveway and drove through until they were even with the back door. “I’ll go park,” he said. “You can get out here if you want.”
They got out and he continued to drive toward the garage. “Did you find anything new?” Constance asked as soon as the car left them.
“Hm, not sure. Look,” he said, and pointed. At the far side of the yard Paul Volte and Toni were walking together, her hand on his arm, his head bowed as if listening to her.
“Looks like she’s over her fear of him,” Charlie said. He continued to face their direction, but he was no longer seeing them. Something, he thought, something about the crates. “You saw those boxes before and after they were opened,” he said slowly. “Was there anything on them to identify them, stenciled addresses, names, contents listed, anything?”
She had to concentrate on visualizing how the crates had looked. No marks. No names. No contents. Nothing to identify the contents to anyone who hadn’t already known. She described them and said, “Oh.” But someone could have told Victoria about them, she thought swiftly then. From inside the house Ba Ba’s voice screeched suddenly, and Tootles yelled something at her, and then they were both yelling.
Charlie took Constance by the arm and turned her toward their car. “You know what would be nice along about now?”
“Tell me.”
“A nice quiet room, eventually a nice tall drink, and no Babar, no Tootles, no Johnny.”
“You say eventually?”
“Well, I always say first things first. Let’s wrap it up here and scram, kiddo. Show you some interesting etchings, or something.”
He loved the way she laughed then, and later in their room he knew he would love the way she would agree that first things should be first.
TEN
Claud Palance lived in
an apartment near Bellarmine College; about ten miles from Maryville. That’s how this part of the world was, Charlie brooded. You think you’re out in the country, and then there’s another bedroom community, another town, another complex of apartments, schools, shopping centers. He thought gloomily of a megalopolis stretching from above New York City down to the Keys, one bedroom community, one city center, one parking lot after another all the way. He shuddered. To get to country, real country, you would have to turn inland and even then it wouldn’t start for another fifty miles, a hundred miles. At their place in upper New York state real country began at their door.
Sheriff Bill Gruenwald drove five miles over the speed limit in his unmarked green Ford. He appeared to be in deep thought and was silent for the fifteen-minute drive. He had called ahead; Palance was watching for them and met them at the door of his apartment before they had time to ring. His rooms were at ground level, Spartan, obsessively neat, the sort of place where you asked permission to move a paper or chair, maybe to breathe. He led the sheriff, Charlie and Constance out the back door to a shared courtyard with several grills, comfortable chairs, and a small swimming pool. The young men he had banished to camping in the wilderness were now taking turns tending sausages at the grill, plunging into the pool, returning to stand dripping once again at the grill.
Claud Palance was in his early forties, with thinning light-colored hair, smooth-faced, with watery pale blue eyes. They had camped near the Appalachian Trail at a lake, hiked in seven miles to it. They had heard no news, he added. He mentioned the name of the lake they had camped by and Sheriff Gruenwald nodded. No news out that way, he agreed, and proceeded to give a concise rundown of the events of the weekend. Palance was stunned and speechless over it. It seemed difficult for him to make sense of the questions the sheriff asked; he had to go inside and get a Diet Coke first, and then he did a few breathing exercises before he began to describe the boxes of artwork for Tootles’s show.
“Do you know without a doubt that the crates had not been tampered with Thursday night?” Gruenwald asked.
“Yes, at least up to the time we left. We worked until dinner time on the project. Six maybe. After we ate I reminded Marion that I planned to take the boys away for the weekend. We left then, but they were okay at that time.”
“Do all of them stay over at Marion Olsen’s?” Gruenwald asked, indicating the boys, who were splashing each other vigorously; they looked like high-school kids.
“Two of them do,” Palance said. He pointed them out. The other three were his students, or had been, and all of them had worked on crating up the pieces at one time or another.
“Why?” Charlie asked then. “Why you and your students? Did she hire you to do it?”
Claud Palance looked startled at the question. “No, of course not,” he said. “When it came up, I just said we’d do it. She didn’t know how and neither did the kids at her place. I did. It’s that simple.”
Charlie was studying him curiously. “But that doesn’t really get to the question of why, does it? Volunteer work? I take it that it was dirty, time-consuming, exacting. You were over there a couple of weeks already?”
“Yes. Each piece requires its own unique box, its own straps or braces, supports, whatever. You don’t just pack up art with newspapers and hope for the best. You need to crate each piece in such a way that the gallery people, or museum people who are going to show it can uncrate it and then box it again when the show comes down. They aren’t expected to reinvent the wheel, but simply follow instructions, and that means the instructions must be exact. Crating up a show that size might take weeks if you’re using novice labor, as I was, teaching them as I went.”
Sheriff Gruenwald was following this with narrowed eyes. “How long would it have taken to open twelve of them, slap paint on them, break a piece here and there, and then close up the boxes again?”
Claud Palance hesitated. “It really would depend on how careful the person was, how hard he was trying to hide what he had done. Couple of hours probably. Maybe more. Did he open one and destroy that one and close it up again and then go on to the next, or open them all at once and then have to find the screws again to close them? If you want fast and malicious damage, why bother to close them up again afterward?”
And that, thought Charlie, was one of the best questions yet. Another good question, he realized, was why not mess up all the pieces? Why leave two untouched? It sounded to him as if the guy had run out of time.
“Did Marion Olsen help with the crating?” the sheriff asked.
“Once or twice.” He grinned, and something about his musculature made his ears stand out, almost pop out.
Charlie tried not to stare. “It went much, much faster when she didn’t help,” Palance said, the grin fading away.
Across the apartment complex a young woman appeared with two small children in tow. They all hesitated at the sight of the college boys playing in the pool. Claud Palance called, “Hey, Ron, settle down, okay?” One of the boys looked at him, glanced at the woman and children, and nodded. All the boys climbed out and sat on the grass.
“You know Marion Olsen at all?” Claud Palance asked the sheriff then; he glanced at Charlie and Constance as if inviting them to answer or not.
“Some,” the sheriff said cautiously.
“Well, let me tell you something you’ll run into. People either love her and will do anything on earth for her, or else they want her driven out of the state. I don’t want her driven out of the state.”
“That’s a school over there?” Charlie asked. “She’s running an art school?”
“A one-woman art academy,” Palance said. “No credentials, no diploma, no grades, nothing to show for it except some of the best instruction you can find in sculpting. That’s what she does, and as far as I know she’s never charged a cent. Some of them pay, if they can, whatever they can, but they don’t have to. And I don’t know anyone in the business who wouldn’t trade years at any accredited school for a year under her tutelage. I would be her student like a shot if I could be.”
“Why aren’t you?” Charlie asked.
“Because I’m not good enough. She knows it and so do I.”
The sheriff drove them back to their motel. He had to pass through Maryville, out the other side, and on for another few miles. They were all silent during the drive. It was deep twilight now, the countryside very still.
“There’s a coffee shop, isn’t there? At the motel. Or a bar or something?” Gruenwald asked.
“Yep. Nice little lounge. You knew pretty much what Palance was going to say, didn’t you?” Charlie commented; it wasn’t really a question.
“Yeah. Some of it.” He slowed down as he neared a congested area, and then turned off the highway and stopped at their motel. Lights from the building turned his face pink and green. He glanced at Charlie. “You working yet?”
“I’m working,” Charlie said.
“Come on. I could use a beer or something.”
The lounge was almost deserted; a man and woman were having a quiet talk at one side, and at the other the bartender watched a television screen with the sound turned way down. They took a booth; the bartender came quickly and they ordered, beers and wine.
“Charlie,” Gruenwald said then, “let me tell you about the first time I saw Marion Olsen.” He sprawled back in the seat on his side of the booth, his arm across the top of the backrest, gazing away from Charlie and Constance. “About seven years ago,” he said, then shook his head. “Exactly seven years ago in May. There’s a children’s hospital not far from Bellarmine College. For what they call special children, exceptional children in some places.” He stopped when the bartender came with a tray, and then he took a long drink from his glass of beer before he continued. “Okay, special children. I had reason to be in the hospital seven years ago, and I saw this woman come in and head straight to one of the activity rooms. That’s what they call them, activity rooms. She had a big box of stuff that she lugged in. I was curious and followed. The room she went in already had about eight or ten kids in it. Not doing much of anything, hanging out. Little kids, five years old, six. So Marion Olsen goes to a long table in there and begins to unload her box. It’s full of partly-made clay things, some you could tell what was intended, but mostly not. One little statuette could have been a horse, I guess. Hard to tell. Without a word she starts to mold that clay they use, plasticine. And pretty soon one of the little kids comes over and picks up one of the other pieces, whatever it was, and begins to squeeze it, change it. It was hers, apparently. And it was like that. Marion never said a word, and neither did the kids, but before long nearly all of them were working on something or other, purposefully working.” He drank again and put down his glass hard. “For some of those kids this might have been the first time they did anything with any purpose. I asked about Marion. She showed up one day with her box and said if she could have space, maybe some of the kids would play with her. Just like that. At first they said no way. Only trained personnel allowed. She threw a fit, and they gave her space just to shut her up and prove you can’t reach those kids with anything not analyzed and planned and presented by a shrink of some kind. That was seven years ago that I saw her, and she’d been doing her thing for three or four years by then, and she still does it once a week.”
They were all silent for several seconds until Constance asked gently, “Is your child any better now?”
He nodded. “Not much, a little. A girl, Nancy. She’s thirteen.”
Charlie signaled the bartender, who came over with two more beers, another glass of wine. No one spoke until he was gone again.
Then Gruenwald said, “That place of hers, what Palace calls a one-woman art academy? She doesn’t dare call it a school or the county would close her down. Fire trap, they call it. A few people complained; they go around and inspect it regularly, but what the hell, it’s a private residence. She doesn’t do anything by the books, get the right credentials, stuff like that. She’ll take in anyone she damn well pleases, and if there’s any formal education or training, it’s kept a secret. She’s turned down some people who’ve made a royal stink about her and her place that she won’t call a school. And she’s taken in some that have made people hereabouts want to scream. Blacks, gays, weirdos of every make you can imagine. But no one can prevent anyone having guests. As long as they don’t pay her, she doesn’t call it a school, she can do what she damn well pleases. She does and it drives a lot of folks nuts.”
“You love her or want to run her out of the state,” Charlie said.
“I don’t want to run her out of the state,” Gruenwald said deliberately. “I don’t want anyone to hang a murder charge on her, either.”
Charlie nodded. “They hired me today. I’ve known some of them for more than twenty years. It’s possible one or another of them might tell us something they wouldn’t tell you. Just possible. So far no one has told us diddly. What was in the note you found by Leeds?”
“I think it’s a fake, like you suggested, but still there it is. It was typed on the machine in the condo apartment, in the dining room. It said
Meet me at the condo, Six A, at seven thirty.
Signed M. Typed M, no handwriting anywhere. No prints recoverable. Paper and envelope from the house. There’s a drawer with stationery in the office. The state lab has all that stuff now, but I don’t think they’ll come up with more than that.”
“No map or directions?”
“No. Just that.”
“Too pat,” Charlie said after a second. “And it would make her out to be too dumb, to leave it in plain sight like that. But those who want to run her out of the state will buy it. A jury could be talked into buying it.”
“I know,” Gruenwald said. He lifted his glass and drained it. “I’ll be around tomorrow. You going to stay here at the motel for a while?”
“Couple of days. Then New York City. Why did Victoria Leeds invite herself to the party, that’s the question, isn’t it? Without an answer to that, we’re stuck exactly where we are right now.”
Gruenwald nodded. “You might want to do it again, but I checked out the group that went over to the condo Friday night. Debra Saltzman, Phil Michelson, Sandra Door. They call her Sunny. Good upstanding types, with fathers in Congress or counting their millions, that sort of thing. They confirm John Buell’s story. No body was in that apartment at ten past seven.”
“Right,” Charlie said gloomily. “The way it stands now, the artwork was okay Thursday evening. Friday night it was a mess. Victoria Leeds vanished a little before five Friday, and is unaccounted for for the next two hours. Where the hell was she? Smashing art? Why? Everyone who was an overnight guest or regular in that house, except Tootles, is covered by nearly everyone else from seven onwards. Have you talked with the watchman yet?”
“Pierce? Sure. He got there at six Friday; gate was closed, locked. He made the rounds, everything locked up tight. Nothing out of ordinary. They are being careful because there were a couple of accidents earlier on, one was fatal. So they’re being very careful.”
“Accidents?” Charlie asked, perking up.
Gruenwald shook his head. “Nothing for us. Some kids got in the grounds when they were still digging holes, and one of them had a fall, broke his ankle. That was over a year ago. This spring a guy fell from the roof of one of the buildings. Died instantly. Insurance company got antsy, I think, and now they’re super cautious. Both good and bad for us. But Pierce says the gate was closed and locked when he got there at six. Then Buell and his crowd came in a few minutes after seven, left ten minutes later, and he locked up again. No one came in after that. The buildings that have doors were all locked, and he checked the others. Nothing. He’s a pretty good gay. He’s sure. And like I said, they’re being careful.”
“Someone else got in,” Charlie said darkly. “The delivery man with the flowers?”
Gruenwald shook his head again. “Nope. Pierce met him when he arrived for work and carried the flowers inside himself; that’s when he checked out the building.”