by Paula Munier
The crowd oohed and ahed and surged forward. Mercy lost sight of the professor. But then she spotted her again, over by the entrance, on the arm of the mergers and acquisitions attorney her mother liked so much. They seemed quite enthralled by one another, if the way he ran his hand up and down her bare back was any indication. She wondered if he’d ever been to the south of France.
By the time she made her way through the throngs of gala guests, Dr. Winters was out the double front doors and gone. So was the attorney.
Mercy considered going after them, but given the fact that they probably had sex rather than murder on their minds, she wasn’t sure what that could achieve, other than embarrassment on her part.
Besides, she had no car and no plan and Harrington was blocking her way.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“MS. CARR?”
Harrington took her by surprise. She blinked. “Yes?’
“Daniel Feinberg would like a proper introduction.”
Another surprise. But one she could hardly refuse, if only for her parents’ sake. They did work for the man, after all. And it would be unneighborly to decline. Not to mention Harrington would not take no for an answer.
“Sure.”
He grabbed her harshly by the elbow and pushed her through the crush to the billionaire, who was surrounded by a clutch of admirers. Feinberg spied them approaching, and excused himself to come and meet them halfway. She appreciated that. Maybe he wasn’t as boorish as his friend Harrington.
The detective hustled her along to within a foot of Feinberg. But before he let her go, he leaned over and whispered in her ear. “Watch yourself. Because I am watching you.”
She didn’t say anything. Just shook the man off and smiled at the billionaire.
“Thank you, Harrington,” said Feinberg in a dismissive tone and turned his attention to Mercy.
Harrington nodded at Feinberg and glared at her, before falling back into the crowd. Out of her sight. But still watching her.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Carr,” said Feinberg.
“Please call me Mercy.”
“Mercy.” He smiled at her, and she was struck by the aura of power that emanated from the man.
She’d seen him from afar on several occasions when she and Elvis were out hiking, and they’d exchanged waves, neighbor to neighbor. Up close, he made a strong impression, with his full head of wavy salt-and-pepper hair and dark brown eyes that went from warm to wary to warm again in a split second. He was the kind of imperious guy who could play high-stakes investment games with a poker face—and win every time.
They walked together toward the elegant staircase that led to the second floor of the museum. Two bodyguards in black suits and earpieces followed at a discreet distance. As she and Feinberg climbed to the upper galleries, one of the bodyguards roped off the steps at the bottom of the staircase. Obviously this was meant to be a private audience.
“It’s nearly noon,” said Feinberg, consulting his Patek Philippe watch, the only obvious sign of his wealth apart from the bespoke suit he wore. “Everyone will be going out to the village green for the return of the Fountain of the Muses.”
“Don’t you want to see it?”
“I’ve seen it. I’d rather talk to you about what you found on my land.”
“Okay.”
They reached the second-floor landing, and he escorted her into the West Gallery, another large graceful space with an inlaid hardwood floor. Tall windows looked out into the full-leafed bower of two-hundred-year-old maples and oaks and beeches that surrounded the museum on three sides.
This gallery was devoted primarily to sculpture. There was a modern Madonna and Child completely conjured up out of computer chips, an angel’s wings crafted from the blades of kitchen knives, a nineteenth-century figurehead of an exotic raven-haired beauty that reminded Mercy of Cleopatra. “Eternity was in our lips and eyes, Bliss in our brows’ bent…”
“Pardon?” asked Feinberg.
Mercy flushed, realizing to her embarrassment that she’d quoted Antony and Cleopatra out loud to herself. Good thing her mother wasn’t here, or she’d be haranguing her to get out more. With those single attorneys, no doubt. “Sorry, sculpture always brings out the worst in me. Shakespeare.”
“Interesting.” Feinberg gave her a shrewd look. “And unexpected.”
But Mercy was barely listening. She walked away from her host toward the back of the room, where a striking bronze glowed like fire in the afternoon sun that poured in from the windows.
Another one of Adam Wolfe’s pieces. This sculpture was much like the one she’d seen in Dr. Winters’s parlor, only far larger and yet more intricate at the same time. The massive curves seemed to fall into themselves, repeating in sensuous waves that flourished and flowed and folded and somehow reminded her of the professor’s bare back.
“It’s called Confection.” Feinberg came up behind her and smiled at her obvious appreciation of the sculpture.
Mercy laughed, as much out of dismay as delight. “Of course it is. ‘Oh, shame, where is thy blush?’”
“Indeed.” Feinberg smiled. “Do you know Adam’s work?”
“I’ve only recently discovered it,” she said. He didn’t need to know how she’d learned of the artist’s sculpture. “It’s beautiful.”
“Yes, he’s very talented.” Feinberg cleared his throat. “You found a dead body at Adam’s compound in the woods.”
“Yes, I did.” There was no point in denying it.
He nodded. “The dead man was a Canadian, they tell me. A bird-watcher from Toronto.”
“Rufus Flanigan. I met him hiking the day before. He seemed all right.”
“But Adam was not there.”
“No. Everyone was gone, most everything was cleared out, really, except for the victim.”
“So Harrington has told me.” Feinberg’s dark brown eyes grew wary again. “I own that land.”
“Squatters?”
“No, I gave him permission to set up a studio there. I admire his work, and we share a commitment to preserving the land.”
“Did you know him well?”
“As an artist, yes. As a man, that’s harder to say.” Feinberg gazed at the bronze Confection. “I met him in Quebec.”
“Quebec?”
“I do a lot of business there. And at the time I was in the market for a piece by Paul-Émile Borduas. Do you know his work?”
Mercy shook her head and waited for the billionaire to enlighten her.
“One of Canada’s foremost abstract painters. Leader of the Automatistes movement and chief author of Le Refus global manifesto.”
“Manifesto? So he was an activist as well as an artist.”
“Very antiestablishment. That’s why Adam likes his work so much. He fancies himself an activist as well.”
“You sound skeptical.”
“Adam is a wild man, given to enthusiasms.” Feinberg shrugged. “His so-called activism is one of those enthusiasms.”
“He’s been hanging out with a lot of Vermont Firsters.”
The billionaire laughed. “He’s not really a Vermont Firster. He’s not even from Vermont. He’s from Quebec. He left there to revitalize his career, just as his hero Borduas did back in the fifties. Borduas went to Provincetown, Adam came to Vermont. I encouraged him.”
“You’re his friend as well as his patron.”
“We bonded over Borduas. I thought he had talent. He was doing bronzes back then.”
“Like this one.”
“Not quite.”
Mercy grinned. “So you know Dr. Winters.”
“I introduced them. When he first came here, I let him stay in my guest house for a while. I hosted a party in his honor and invited everyone in the local arts community. He met the professor, and the rest is right here before us.”
“Another one of his enthusiasms.”
He shrugged. “Or hers.”
“They both seemed to have moved on,”
she conceded, remembering the attorney’s fingers caressing the professor’s exposed skin. “Do you know Adam’s new girlfriend Amy Walker and the baby Helena?”
Feinberg nodded. “I’ve met them a couple of times, at the art colony. She’s a sweet girl, devoted to Adam and the baby. And the baby seems well cared for, as far as I can tell. I don’t go to the compound often; as you know it’s not so easy to get to. Usually Adam comes to the house.”
“You don’t think he was keeping her there against her will?”
“That’s quite a question.” Feinberg looked at her sharply. “Why would you think that?”
“She told me that he’d gotten very possessive.”
“I’ve never seen anything that would lead me to believe that. Of course, she is very young.” He shook his head. “Artists live by their own rules.”
“Amy and the baby are missing.”
“And you want to find them.”
“She came to me for help. And now she’s gone.”
“Understood. I’d like to know what’s really going on myself.”
“I thought he might be here today.”
“So did I.” Feinberg stared past her at the bronze. “He was supposed to be here.”
“You’d think he’d want to be, with his art on display.”
“He’s a bit indifferent to exhibitions, even his own. Probably to the detriment of his career. But I’m surprised he’d miss this.”
“When did you see him last?”
“Oh, it’s been several weeks. He’s off creating, and I have my own work to do.”
Mercy watched Feinberg as he continued to stare at Confection. “You must have been disappointed when he abandoned the bronzes for natural sculpture.”
“Not at all.”
“Really?” Mercy looked at him, but he seemed serious.
Feinberg turned away from the bronze and looked past her to the trees beyond the windows. “Do you know what a folly is?”
“As in foolishness?”
“That’s one definition.”
“You’re not talking about that kind of folly.”
“No. I’m talking about the decorative Greek ruins built on the grounds of old estates in Britain and France. Just for the hell of it.”
“What do you mean, just for the hell of it?”
“No purpose. That was the point of follies, that they served no purpose.”
“No purpose but art,” she said.
“Art is its own purpose.” Feinberg waved his arms at the world outside the museum windows. “I commissioned Adam to create natural-sculpture follies on my land.”
“He was cited for putting art installations on private property.”
“I know. It was my land and my complaint. But when I realized what wonderful work he was doing, I paid the fines for him myself and commissioned the follies.”
Mercy thought about that. “I think I found one not far from the compound.” She smiled. “A beautifully crafted arch made of chiseled stones, with a dry riverbed running underneath. Fitted between two trees so perfectly it seemed to grow right out of the forest.”
“That was his first.” He smiled back, and this time his brown eyes smiled with him. “A twenty-first-century folly, illustrating the virtues of the natural world.”
“Ingenious,” she said.
“He’s finished two of them, the one you found and another one south of the art colony, somewhere closer to my house.”
Feinberg’s house, as he called Nemeton, was a massive thirty-thousand-square-foot mountain lodge built out of native stone and lumber about halfway between Northshire and Stratton. The one her grandmother said had upset some of the townspeople when he built it.
“I’d love to see the other one.”
“Then you’ll have to find it, just like I have to do.” He laughed. “He says he’s working on ideas for the third, but I have no idea yet where it will be.”
Mercy grinned. “Nice.”
Feinberg grinned back at her. “There will be nine in total, scattered through the woods and the meadows like jewels.”
“Nine,” muttered Mercy. “As in a cat’s nine lives. Nine circles of hell. Nine innings in a baseball game. Nine months of pregnancy. Nine Supreme Court justices. Nine Worthies.” She snapped her fingers. “Nine Muses.”
“You got it.” Feinberg’s smile faded. “If he comes back.”
“That’s why you thought he’d be here today. For the return of the Fountain of the Muses.”
According to Greek mythology, the three original Muses—the meditation Muse, Melete; the memory Muse, Mneme; and the song Muse, Aoide—were the ancient ones featured on the Fountain of the Muses. Over time these three became the Nine Muses—from Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry, to Urania, the Muse of astronomy—who together embodied all of the arts and inspired artists of all kinds.
“Yes,” said Feinberg. “Shall we go have a look?”
CHAPTER FORTY
THE BLACK SUITS TRAILED MERCY AND FEINBERG back down the staircase to the ground floor of the museum. The galleries were empty now, the guests having retreated outside to the village green. Only the cleanup crew and the security guards and the art remained.
“Heavy security,” she said as they stepped out onto the porch and the guards shut the doors behind them.
“Can’t be too careful. Art theft is on the rise statewide. So we’ve upgraded the security measures here.”
“Smart.”
Feinberg nodded. “We’ve put in the very latest in alarms, infrared and microwave motion detection, scanners, twenty-four-hour video surveillance, staffing vetting and security, et cetera. It’s been quite an education, really.” They stood on either side of one of the fluted columns that supported the roof of the porch, surveying the scene in front of them. The village green looked much like it did in the Northshire primitive painting that so celebrated it: the First Congregational Church anchoring one end, the happy pedestrians walking the gravel pathways, young couples picnicking on the grass, vendors selling balloons and cotton candy, elderly citizens sunning on park benches, children playing by the three-tiered fountain. The only real differences being the arts-and-crafts tent that housed the artisans and their wares and the makeshift stage where a local eighties tribute band now played “Maneater.”
“Grandma Moses would love it,” said Mercy. “Except maybe for the Hall & Oates.”
“Don’t you?”
“I do. But Vermont is more than charm.”
Feinberg laughed. “Agreed. That’s why I like it so much.”
Together they walked down the middle path of the village green for a closer look. The Fountain of the Muses was truly restored to all its former glory. Now cast in durable aluminum and painted in a striking burnished dark antique copper, the Three Muses—Melete, Mneme, and Aoide—glistened in their diaphanous gowns as they sat in contemplation of the arts, crowned by curls of water spraying forth from the mouths of cherubs.
“You’ve done a good thing here,” she said.
“The merits of charm aside.”
“Yes. But this is more than charm for charm’s sake.”
“Thank you. That was the intent. Besides, charm can be fun.” He waved his arms, encompassing the scene. “This is fun.”
Fun. One of the shrinks her mother had dragged her to after she came home from Afghanistan had once told her that his richest clients came to him for one reason: to learn to have fun. They’d spent so much time working that they had no idea how to play. Now they had money and time and no idea what to do with it. Feinberg knew how to play. He played with art.
“I imagine your own private collection is quite impressive. Not just fountains and follies.”
“I’ve been collecting art for more than twenty-five years.”
“Did you ever meet Max Skinner or the Herbert brothers?”
“I know the Herbert brothers—or at least of them—because my groundskeeper caught them poaching on our land a couple of years ago. We didn’t press cha
rges, but we warned them to stay off my private property.”
“Hard to know sometimes where your property begins and ends.”
Feinberg smiled. “If you’re referring to my buying more acreage, that’s true. But we allow snowmobilers and hikers to use the trails on the land, except for those that pass too close to the house. We allow hunters during the season, with permission. We’ve posted ‘No Trespassing’ signs wherever it’s appropriate to do so.”
Mercy nodded. “All good.”
“And hunting out of season is against the law, no matter whose land you’re on.”
“Yes.” She thought of Troy, whose dangerous job it was to catch those people hunting out of season. He certainly didn’t think much of the Herbert brothers, even if they could play the fiddle. They obviously weren’t the brains of whatever operation was going on here. Which may or not involve explosives at all, no matter what Elvis alerted to. Nothing had happened at the parade and nothing had happened at the art gala and nothing was happening here at the unveiling of the Fountain of the Muses. Nothing but people having fun. Just like Feinberg said. But there remained the question of the tall man. “What about Max Skinner?”
“Adam talks a lot about his buddy Max, but we’ve never actually met. He did arrange for me to see some of his art in Quebec. But I didn’t connect with it.”
“Why not?”
“I found Skinner’s work too dark and disturbing. While it’s true I consider my art an investment, I also have to like what I buy.”
They circled the fountain, appreciating it from all angles. Feinberg’s presence was beginning to attract notice, and several people came up to greet him, Harrington among them. He glared at her and she glared back.
“I’m sorry,” Feinberg said, shaking her hand. “Do come to the house. I’ll arrange a tour.”
“I’d like that.” She turned to go, then thought better of it. “Did you ever buy that Borduas?”
“It’s hanging over the fireplace,” Feinberg said. “You’ll like it. It’s called Chinoiserie, aka Birches: Winter.”
“Two names?”
“Yes. Two names, like Paul-Émile Borduas. Adam says it’s the nature of duality.”
