I nodded.

  “She’s such a sweet woman, always comes to visit me. She helps me with my coloration sometimes. We go clothes shopping together, too. She picked this out.” He did a little twirl for me.

  “It certainly makes a statement,” I said, trying to keep a straight face.

  “Well, Trish brings food to Betsy’s. She never stays too long. I sometimes hear music coming out of Betsy’s studio. Jazz, classical, none of that hip-hop stuff. So I get the feeling that Betsy’s sort of refined. But whenever I knock on the door, you know, just to visit, she doesn’t answer, or she tells me to go away.”

  “So you’ve never talked to her in person?”

  “Sometimes I hear Trish asking her why she doesn’t open the door, and Betsy just says she doesn’t want company.”

  “So all your conversation, or lack of it, with Betsy has been through a closed door?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Like I said, she’s weird. But I think her paintings are brilliant, so who cares if she’s strange? It’s the work that counts.”

  “How about Damien? Does he have any visitors?”

  He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes for a moment as if to ask if I were for real.

  “When Damien’s here, there’s a woman here. And if you’ve ever seen Damien’s paintings, you’ll know exactly who he’s screwing that month.”

  I remembered Mr. Wembley’s initial visit to the gallery, and I thought of Mona, his wife. I described her as best as I could to Scotty.

  “I remember her,” he said, giggling. “Big caboose. I happened to knock on Damien’s door that day. I was out of magenta, and I thought he might have a spare tube. He’s not very modest, so he opens the door to anyone, anytime. As soon as he said I was also an artist, this Mona was eager to let me know that she was the one in the picture.”

  I asked what the procedure for claiming that distinction was.

  “She stuck her butt up in the air, just like the pose. It was definitely her face. She was pretty enough. You never see Damien with anyone ugly. But the body wasn’t hers.”

  “I noticed that also,” I said. “The female bodies are young; the faces always vary. But he flatters those, also.”

  “It’s the secret of his success,” he said, “but there have been a few angry husbands who said they’d kill him if he ever tries to paint their wives again.” He giggled. “You know what they mean by paint.”

  So Damien had a guaranteed market for his work. And if the husband or wife didn’t want the painting, there was a world of willing collectors to buy it. No wonder he wanted out of his contract.

  “Any repeat business?” I asked

  “Oh, sure, Damien’s quite the stud.”

  “Are there any women whose names would be familiar to me that are here often?”

  He looked up at me apprehensively and bit his lip.

  “Come on,” I said, “you can tell me. I’m a detective. I’m the one who worked security for Brian.”

  He closed his mouth, crossed his arms, and stared at his shoes. “Promise you won’t tell I told you?”

  I shook his delicate hand. “That is a promise. I never reveal my sources.” Well, hardly ever. If I gained a good suspect from him, I’d spill the information to Orby faster than the weather changes in South Florida.

  He lowered his voice to just above a whisper. Conspiracy has a certain charm. “Guillermo’s wife visits here all the time. And then there’s Suzy Dickerson and Kathy Ross. They’re really nice. Sometimes they come to my place afterward, and we have tea. And that woman with the big ass has been coming around about once a week. There are probably others, but I haven’t met them.”

  “Suzy and Kathy come together?”

  “No, just one or the other comes to visit me sometimes.”

  Marlene kills Guillermo, she gets the gallery, and Damien gets out of his contract. Marlene and Damien are a couple, or an occasional couple. They certainly looked good to be the pieces that would solve the puzzle that was Guillermo’s murder. Damien could have been responsible for the attempt on Brian’s life. At least it was a place to start.

  “By the way,” he said, “Suzy and Kathy’s husbands are really pissed at Brian because he won’t show any of the work from the artists that they bought. He says those paintings need to age some more before they’re ready for resale. I think that’s why they took our contract case.”

  “Do they know about Damien and their wives?” I asked.

  “Kathy and Suzy say they probably don’t care. They’re too busy making money. They figure their husbands have mistresses somewhere else.”

  He scratched his head. “I like those two women. They’re really nice people. But they’re sort of unhappy. You know, being rich isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  Logical murder theories weren’t all they were cracked up to be, either. I’d just gone from one good suspect to at least four.

  At that moment, Scotty glanced at his Mickey Mouse watch with the fire-engine red band.

  “Ooh, I’m late for my mani-pedi. I’ve got to run. Nice talking to you, Jeff.”

  25

  Like Scotty, Peter Kaplow had also told me that he knew all about Damien’s activities. But unlike Scotty, who’d spoken like a distant observer, Peter had talked like an eye-witness. So there had to be an observation area somewhere. I found the stairway to the roof.

  Because artists need light in order to paint, Brian had built eight skylights over each studio. They were only two feet wide, but they were six feet long, so light would be very evenly distributed throughout the day. I navigated my way to Damien’s studio at the far end.

  I noted various backdrops and tubes of paint and brushes.

  As I moved further down the rows of skylights, I had a view of a king-sized bed with a black comforter and six pillows covered in white. I also saw two easels.

  One was covered with a tarp, while the other was a work in progress; I could barely make out some pencil lines that vaguely depicted parts of torsos. Having seen some of Damien’s finished works, my imagination was not having too much difficulty completing the picture. The sound of a door slamming beneath me brought me back to reality.

  Damien had just entered his studio. There was a woman with him. They were talking quietly, and the only sound that made its way to me was a faint murmuring. They were silent for a time, and then I saw Damien start to unbutton his shirt.

  I moved very slowly and quietly to the skylight over the bed, just for investigative purposes, of course, and saw that the woman was almost completely undressed. I looked as hard as I could for identifying markings. It was tough from fifteen feet up, but I gave it my all as she moved around the bed, obviously accommodating his suggestions as to position. After about ten minutes I was ready to admit that she didn’t look familiar. But I thought I knew how Peter was so certain of Damien’s activities.

  Since I was already up here, I decided to peek into everybody’s studio. Peter was next door, so I performed a gaze-by of his place. It was what I expected: junk in containers from wall to wall, shelves for paints and brushes, and for manipulating sharp or dangerous objects, there were various garden implements hanging on the walls.

  Betsy’s place was next in line, and I was just about salivating to get a look at what went on in her odd world. I started from the back. There were some paint cans and canvasses in a storage area. The next skylight showed me saw a brightly varnished wooden floor but nothing else. I tried changing my angle and still saw nothing. I moved to the other side of the skylight.

  More polished wood. Having seen Betsy up close and partaken of her aromas, I was amazed at the cleanliness of her studio. Even Damien’s studio, which was also a boudoir, had shown evidence of paint spots on the floor. And Peter’s place had looked like a swamp after an oil paint spill. I moved up another row of skylights and saw three easels, but the paintings on them were covered with gray canvas cloths.

  So Betsy was here occasionally. Unfortunately, I wasn’t ready to camp on the roof indefinitely in order to lie in wait for her. I’d just have to get lucky. The logical thing would have been to ask a couple of my people to keep an eye on the place and let me know when she came in. Unfortunately, there was no place for concealment. The parking lot was vast and flat. There were only four residents, and they kept their cars in the garage on the grounds. There were one or two guest cars here on a good day.

  The last studio belonged to Scotty, and it resembled a messy playroom. There were canvasses all over the place: on easels, up against the walls, in various stages of completion. There were also pieces of what looked like a building block set all over the room. I noted that the blocks were set up in patterns similar to those that he put in his paintings. When I slunk to the rear skylight, I caught sight of something that was evidently not for public consumption. There was a narrow shelf replete with Ken dolls, each in a different-colored costume: a gold lame tuxedo, a blue pilot’s outfit, a silver spacesuit. There must have been a few dozen. But in the middle of the shelf, spaced away from the surrounding harem, were two Woody dolls in their cowboy hats and yellow checkered shirts. One was about two feet long. The other, half its size, lay contentedly in the lap of the larger one.

  I withdrew from my voyeur’s position, walked down the fire stairs, and quietly let myself out the exit door. I’d spied on Damien and his lady friend without any qualms; I’d investigated Peter and Betsy’s studios and thought nothing of it. But I felt cheapened by the discovery I’d made at Scotty’s studio. He had struck me as gentle and naive, but he functioned as an adult in an adult’s world. The fact that children’s dolls were a precious part of his existence was nobody’s business. Not even mine.

  26

  I thought it might be a good idea to meet Linda Valladares. She’d known Guillermo far longer than I, and she’d been there when Marlene had first cast her net for him. So I called the number Orby’d given me and said I was calling on police business. She graciously invited me over on the spot.

  Although she was in her mid-fifties, her makeup, personal trainer, and plastic surgery kept her looking at least ten years younger. She was attired in a white blouse and a long, loose-fitting white skirt. Her jet black hair was styled with that windswept look that suggested she’d just come in out of a tornado. The slight smile with which she greeted me, and the way that she focused her coal black eyes on mine when I told her I was here about the autopsy, seemed to indicate that she would find every word I spoke fascinating.

  “The official verdict for your former husband’s death is suicide. I assume you are aware of that fact, Mrs. Valladares.”

  “Please, call me Linda,” she said, sitting down on the end of a black silk sofa and patting the matching ottoman next to her with her right hand. “I know what the report said, but I don’t believe Guillermo would kill himself. He was too full of life. That’s why I requested the autopsy. I offered to pay for it myself.”

  “You know that the autopsy report showed myriad drugs in his system.”

  “That’s not surprising,” she said. “Guillermo was always a recreational drug abuser.”

  I asked what he used.

  “Coke mostly, but he had cut way down. Until that little slut came along.”

  By that complimentary term I knew she was referring to Marlene.

  “His current spouse?” I asked.

  “That little whore pushed him back into drugs to get control of his money. After he divorced me and married her, he barely knew what he was doing. He started gambling heavily; he got careless.”

  That was news to me. “He didn’t have a betting habit when you knew him?”

  “Once in a while, but nothing large; his weakness was the cocaine. Mostly he was dedicated to making money. He was good at it, and Brian and he got rich together. I was the perfect hostess and showpiece.”

  “How did his current wife get into the picture?”

  “Guillermo and Brian were attending one of Bruce Remsen’s shows. He’s the clothing designer. This is one of his outfits, by the way,” she said, patting her skirt. Yes, it looked very good on her, and no, I wasn’t going to mention it.

  “After the show, Bruce had a party, as he always does, and he was introducing his models to his patrons. Marlene recognized Brian because she had been in the gallery a number of times because of her interest in art.

  “Oh, Mr. Gorey,” she sighed, imitating Marlene’s breathy, gushing quality, “I come into your gallery all the time just to look at the amazing art in there. I can’t afford it yet, but someday, I’m going to buy one of those Jakoplic sculptures.”

  I looked blank.

  She explained. “James Jakoplic was one of Brian’s discoveries. His sculptures sell for two million and up today. He just did that monstrosity over near City Place. Anyway, Marlene said that she just happened to know a wonderful artist and wondered if she could bring in some of his work.”

  She laughed bitterly. “Brian saw through her charade immediately. She didn’t know he was gay. She knew he was single and that men found her very appealing. Brian said he’d take a look at the artist if he were showing somewhere.”

  “How does Guillermo fit into this?” I asked.

  “Brian went to see the artist’s work at some street exhibition. The artist was Damien Harmony. He bought a painting because he thought he saw something in it. He studies an artist before he makes any kind of decision. He probably buys paintings from a couple of hundred artists each year just so he can study the work at his leisure. He said Damien was a Picasso imitator trying to dissect the female figure. But Brian said he saw possibilities that could be explored.”

  She was growing more agitated as her story progressed. I asked her if she was feeling all right. She blinked back a tear, waved to signal that she was fine, and continued. “Brian contacted Damien and told him he wanted to see more of his paintings. This was a sort of audition, where Brian and Guillermo would see more of an artist’s work and hint about money and contracts if Brian felt that the artist was worth pursuing.”

  She said that when they got there, Marlene, who was Damien’s model, was standing around in the altogether. When Brian paid no attention and began a conversation with Damien, she turned her attention to the obvious bulge in Guillermo’s pants.

  “She was screwing Damien Harmony back then, and she was still screwing him after she married Guillermo. I think she, or both of them, killed Guillermo,” she said.

  “How about Brian?” I asked. “Do you think they tried to kill him, too?”

  “Why not?” she asked, reasonably. “If Brian were dead, his shares would be divided among his heirs, whoever they are, and Marlene would control the place. She learned a few tricks from Guillermo, I’m sure.”

  “But why kill Guillermo after the attempt on Brian failed?”

  “Why not? They planted a suicide note on him, and they’ll come back for Brian when he least expects it.”

  I thanked Linda for her time. At the door, she shook my hand. “Thank you for listening to the ranting of an angry ex-wife,” she said, looking at me and then down at her shoes as if apologizing.

  “Your observations were very helpful. I don’t believe your husband committed suicide, either.”

  “Thanks for your belief, Jeff,” she said. “Guillermo divorced me, but I could never bring myself to hate him.”

  27

  It seemed like I had almost everything necessary to build a case against Marlene and maybe Damien. The facts just about smacked me in the face with their logic. But it just seemed too easy. There was a feeling deep in my gut, a nagging I’d learned to trust during my years as a cop, that said I was still missing something important.

  Maybe it was because I hadn’t yet talked with Damien Harmony and I had no real feel for him. I’d gotten a glimpse of his impressive torso and chiseled features at Brian’s dinner party. But we’d never spoken. Maybe he was a quiet intellectual, refined yet reticent. Or maybe he was just a horse’s ass who was out to screw everybody and everything around him.

  Then there was Marlene. Sure, she’d lied about her relationship with Damien. But in her position, who wouldn’t. She wasn’t likely to confess that she’d kept a lover, or several, before and during her marriage, especially if she thought I suspected her of murdering her husband.

  But who was I to dictate how other people should behave. And I have to admit, I liked Marlene. She was honest enough to realize her shortcomings. She didn’t believe that she was better than anyone else, just that she’d been more fortunate.

  Then there was Peter Kaplow. He wanted out of his contract. He and Marlene were very friendly, but I saw them as co-conspirators in the contract game rather than as lovers.

  There were also the two high-powered lawyers, one or both of whom was allegedly enjoying Marlene’s favors. They felt they’d been screwed by Brian and Guillermo in the exhibition and resale game, and right now, it looked like their lawsuit against The Artery was not going anywhere fast.

  That meant there’d be no contingency fee from their rebelling artist clients.

  However, if they were able to make their case, Brian would be devastated financially, and the gallery would probably have to close its doors.

  But since Marlene now owned Guillermo’s share, there was no longer any reason for her to help the two attorneys.

  Despite the fact that they had led the charge of their clients against Brian and Guillermo, Dickerson and Ross, along with their wives, remained steadfast patrons of The Artery. The permutations were dizzying, and I had no answer.

  When I put all of these facts together, none of them made much sense as a motive to kill Guillermo.

  All this passed through my head as I was driving down 441 toward Boca Raton with my son. He was plugged into his iPhone, listening to something that seemed to be pounding on my head even though he was wearing earbuds.

  He and I had planned this date several months in advance, and I knew we were both looking forward to it.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23