Painted Truth

by Lise McClendon

  “Are you ready for dinner?” Paolo said to her without enthusiasm. He rattled the ice in his glass.

  “How about a drink first? A little social hour,” she said, sitting at the far end of the sofa and crossing her shapely gams at Paolo.

  “I was just leaving,” I said. “Thanks for the drink.”

  “Stay, Alix. Finish your drink,” Paolo said, now annoyed at me.

  I turned to Eden. “I spoke to Charlie Frye about your insurance today.”

  Eden brightened. “When do we settle?”

  “He wasn’t optimistic, I have to tell you.”

  “What does that mean?” She frowned.

  “Because of the arson, there are problems.” I glanced at Paolo. This wasn’t the time to get into all this. I would tell her later. “I’m still working on the appraisal. It may take some time.”

  “But I thought we finished that, Alix.” Now Eden was pouting. I moved toward the door.

  “We have reservations for eight, Eden,” Paolo said, looking at his watch. “Five minutes.”

  “Have a good time, you two,” I said cheerfully, closing the rose-colored door behind me. My head was pounding and no amount of fresh Teton air was going to help that. The most I could hope for was a taco and a Dos Equis and a little peace and quiet to try to sort out my future.

  I CLIMBED INTO my old car, the Saab Sister, in the alley behind The Merry Piglets. Spicy fumes warmed the air behind the building. My headache had relaxed over the beer and good food, although like many nights, I ate alone. The Saab, a ‘67, was running well tonight for a change. The Wyoming license plates—handsome blue mountains with the bucking horse and SIS in red—made the old beater look even shabbier. I had managed to get new tires, after a raft of bad tire karma. But Sis ran when you pulled the choke out just right.

  I drove out of town, toward Wilson and the Fish Creek pasture where Valkyrie roamed. She was nowhere to be seen and I didn’t have oats. I drove down the road and parked outside the Stagecoach Bar, a local hangout. I could hear billiard balls clacking and the sound of laughter through the open door. Backpackers, musicians, waitresses, and drunks went in, came out, smoked joints, drank beer. I sat there for half an hour, trying to process Paolo’s announcement. Would I have to change the name of the gallery, a reflection of our common vision, our partnership: Second for Segundo, Sun as part of Thorssen?

  I stuck my elbow out the open window, slumping down in the seat. The night sky was a violent purple, the mountainsides thickening with evening. On the breeze the smell of fish and moss and water floated up from the creek.

  “Hey, kayak queen. We on for Wednesday?”

  Startled, I bumped my knee on the underside of the dash. Pete Rotondi had his hand on my elbow, a big hand with long fingers. He squinted down at me. “We’re on, right?”

  I swallowed and tried not to look like the mess I felt like. “What’re you doing here?”

  He dropped his hand and gave me his toothy, confident smile. The breeze blowing into the car carried the piney smell of him, in jeans and a flannel shirt smudged with dabs of something white. “I could say the same for you. You want me to buy you a beer? Or are you waiting for somebody?”

  “No. I mean, yes.” He was just being polite. Music started up, an amateur cacophony of guitar and harmonica. “I was just heading home.”

  “How’s the nose?” He leaned over again, cocking his head to get a look in the open window.

  I touched my nose. “It’s okay. I guess.”

  Pete nodded. “Good. See you Wednesday, then.” He waved as he turned away, his long stride taking him just a few steps into the saloon. I couldn’t think about kayaking. I had too much to do to take another day off. Carl would be disappointed when he got here if I wasn’t up to snuff. Well, business comes first. I still had remarkable color from last week, for God’s sake. Not to mention my partner turning his back on me and a crisp with a mystery life.

  As the stars popped out, I spun my new tires on the gravel and headed back into town. To my smoky apartment where I would sleep alone. I tried not to think about Carl or kayaks. I had bigger problems. Like why was my former best friend abandoning me to the four winds?

  I cleared my mind, letting the sage-filled meadow air rushing in the window cleanse me. But as I crossed the Snake River with the moon a silver slash across its gravelly flats, a new, disturbing thought hit me. I knew whom Paolo had in mind for my new partner.

  Eden Chaffee.

  6

  THE INQUEST AT the county courthouse Tuesday morning was as unsurprising as Chief Frye had promised. After brief testimony by the powers that be, the death of Ray Tantro was ruled suicide. Margaret Elliot, the coroner, had in my opinion run a pretty fine line between death by burning and death by drug overdose and booze. But she appeared efficient and thorough, and sure of her findings. Although she admitted a small amount of soot was found in the victim’s bronchial tubes, a sign of smoke inhalation, she was sure he had died before the smoke or flames got him. Dr. Miller, the pathologist, took the stand and concurred. Ray Tantro wanted to die, they seemed to say. No one injected several ampoules of Nembutal into their veins without a pretty distinct plan. Plus drank a bottle of Wild Turkey to get up the nerve.

  Okay, but what about the fires? Frye worked hard during the hearing to keep the death of Ray Tantro and the fire itself separate. Frye was sitting on the arson evidence. Or hiding the lack of it. Arson was hard to prove under the best of circumstances, despite his threat about Eden. He might never have enough evidence to go to court. Was linking Tantro’s suicide to the arson of the Timberwolf too big a leap for Frye? Was he too hung up on his insurance business to care? Too focused on putting the clamps on the arsonist to give a rip about Tantro? Maybe whoever torched the Timberwolf Gallery, and consequently Ray Tantro, would never be brought to justice. As I stood up in the courtroom, I told myself that wouldn’t be true. I had promised Eden I would find out what happened to Ray. This inquest was only a beginning, not a finale.

  I ran into Danny Bartholomew on the way out of the courtroom. His black beard was stuck in a reporter’s notebook while he scribbled away. We literally bumped into each other. It took only minor arm-twisting to get him to agree to a cup of coffee before he went back to his desk at the Jackson Hole News. We sat at the bar at the Bunnery, smelling ethereal bakery smells, and sipped a cuppa.

  “You kayak, don’t you?” I asked Danny. He grunted, preoccupied. “You’ve done the Canyon, then.”

  “Sure, a few times. My wife doesn’t like me doing it much anymore, with the kids and all,” Danny said, his head down over his coffee cup.

  In the warm cocoon of the cafe, sitting at the counter on stools, gave me a comforting feeling. A mess of morning papers toppled at the end of the counter.

  “Plus I haven’t got the time anymore.” Although not tall, Danny fit easily into the lean-bodied Jackson male image, wearing well-worn hiking boots and carrying an intense look on his patrician but hairy face. “They’ve got me working all the damn beats at once. Too cheap to hire anybody. Only me dumb enough to work for peanuts anyway.”

  This lament was sung on a regular basis by most of my Jackson friends. It was tough to live on sardine wages in a caviar town. Housing was out of sight, and the biggest joy for locals was the opening of K mart, where at least one could afford to buy underwear. Having time to enjoy the natural wonders of the place—the reason most of us lived here—meant not working.

  “So what do you think?”

  “About what?” His eyes were bloodshot and had dark circles under them. I was surprised to see him looking so unhealthy.

  “This fire. Tantro.”

  He slumped again. Back to business. “I don’t know. Just some dumb schmuck abusing his body who got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He drank some coffee. I said nothing. Something about that picture of Ray Tantro, the artist who had captured the early-morning light of the foothills in snow, was wrong. Maybe he’d been a mess for years. But was t
hat the end of it? I drank coffee. Finally he said, “What? You know something else?”

  I shrugged. “Seems kind of weird, doesn’t it?” He lowered his dark eyebrows in question. “A guy wants to kill himself. Shoots up barbiturates, drinks a bottle of bourbon. Okay, you want to die, that’s one way. But why do it in the gallery?”

  “His paintings were there. He wanted to see his beloved art on his way out.”

  “Maybe. But why does the place explode into flame while he happens to be there?”

  “The sixty-four-million-dollar question.” Danny B. turned on his stool to lean his elbows on the counter, staring out over the cozy restaurant and the diners sitting at picnic tables on the sunny patio. His eyes seemed to clear slightly, squinting at the windows. “The wily pyro again?”

  I pushed my coffee away. “What do you know about this pyro guy?”

  “The cops did a psychological profile on him a couple of years back. The usual stuff, a male probably, gets sexual kicks watching a place burn down. A power trip, I guess.”

  “They like to watch, don’t they?”

  “Yeah, voyeurs.” Danny turned back as the waitress refilled our cups on the counter.

  “So why would a person go to all the trouble to set up these fires so that he—or she—would be somewhere else when the fun begins? Just to establish an alibi? I don’t know. These things were pretty elaborate, weren’t they?” I didn’t really get the gist of the attic blast and was hoping Danny would explain it.

  “The first-floor one was basic. Gasoline in a balloon sitting next to a candle. The one that blew the roof off was different.” He shook his head. “That one kinda scares me.”

  “How so?”

  “Did you see the building? It took the whole damn roof off.”

  “And it was vaporized gas?”

  “White gas, like in a camp stove.” Danny warmed to the subject. He drew me a picture on his napkin, showing a small hole in the attic door through which the pyro sprayed a gas-and-water mixture into the enclosed space. “He lights the candle. As the airborne gas cools, it settles on the floor, near the candle. Then … ka-blooey.” He threw his hands up in the air. “An inventive way to blow, you gotta admit.”

  I imagined the blast for a moment. Its force must have been incredible. Why two fires, one in the attic and one next to Ray? “Why didn’t Frye make an issue of the fire at the inquest?”

  “I asked him about it. He thinks the guy, Tantro, just happened to be there. Thinks they’re unrelated. The guy would have offed himself one way or the other. The booze and drugs did him in, so the fire was irrelevant.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  Danny’s caffeine fix perked him up, and he gave me a sharp look. “Makes sense.”

  “You don’t think there’s anything strange about Frye? I get the feeling he’s glossing over this somehow.”

  Danny squinted his eyes, inquiring-mind-like. “What’s your interest?”

  “Frye asked me to appraise Tantro’s art for the insurance.”

  “You don’t have to know what killed him for that. The guy’s dead. That’s the bottom line.”

  As we left the Bunnery and went our separate ways, I wondered about that bottom line. Raymond Wayne Tantro was dead. Was that all that mattered? It should matter to Frye who started those fires. It mattered to me what happened to Ray Tantro. He was on the way back from the wasteland. He had a new show of his artwork. Why kill yourself when things are finally looking up?

  DR. LYLE MILLER was on his way out of the pathology lab in the basement of St. John’s Hospital when I got to the door. The afternoon at the gallery had ripped by, filled with Paolo’s obvious solicitude and people who consider art galleries places to look at art for free. The door to the lab opened before me, revealing the tall, pleasant-faced doctor in bifocals. His hair was graying and receding, his nose sunburned with evidence of small scars like skin cancer excisions. He seemed surprised but flattered by my request to discuss his work on the Tantro case, but then I laid it on rather thickly. Oh, those feminine wiles.

  He turned the fluorescent lights back on in the small outer room. The secretary’s tidy desk and the two vinyl-covered green chairs had the look of clinical death to them. The only lively piece in the stark room was a photograph of a skier in midair, careening down a steep snow packed chute in a tuck position.

  “Is this you?” I asked, examining the photo. “Is this at the Village?” Teton Village is Jackson’s main ski area, about ten miles out of town.

  “In Corbet’s Couloir.” Dr. Miller smiled as if remembering the thrill of skiing down the nearly vertical chute, cradled in hard, glittering granite on each side. It was a double-black-diamond run that I considered a death wish. In the photograph Miller looked strong, in control, arms wide but legs bent and ready for the landing somewhere down below.

  “Wow. You must be good.”

  “Younger mostly. That was ten or twelve years ago. I’ve had to give up extreme skiing. Two knee operations.” Miller was a trim man with a touch of sadness around his eyes when he spoke. He wore his white lab coat with an open-necked green shirt and blue jeans.

  “You still ski though, don’t you?” Everyone in Jackson skied. If not downhill, then cross-country. It was impossible to survive the winter without it. The cabin fever was lethal.

  He gave a weary nod. “Not like the old days.” He blinked out of his reverie, looking at his watch. “Now, the Tantro case?”

  “The insurance. Charlie Frye is the agent.” I dropped Charlie’s name easily. “You did the autopsy?”

  “Hmm. Tragic case. Between the drugs and the burns there was plenty to see, though.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Not see in the visual sense of the word. When a body burns that badly often there is little to examine. But the forensic signposts are there. And the eyeball almost always survives.”

  I blinked. “Pardon?”

  Miller sat on the edge of the secretary’s desk, getting comfortable. “The eyeball. It usually doesn’t burn. So we get blood samples from there, tissue samples.”

  I felt a shiver up my spine in the cool basement lab. All that was left was the eyeball? I was grateful once again for not seeing the body.

  “How did his mother identify him if he was burned so badly?”

  “From his effects. Scraps of clothes, wallet. She was quite positive. I was here with her at the time. A strong woman.”

  “Not the hysterical type, huh?”

  Miller sighed. “It’s difficult sometimes. You forget if you work with the dead how it affects other people. But Mrs. Tantro handled it well. A shock, no doubt.”

  No doubt. Jesus, what an understatement. My overactive imagination already had a clear view of the corpse of Ray Tantro, and it wasn’t pretty. Flesh gone, blackened char where the skin was—I had to stop.

  “No fingerprints, then?”

  Dr. Miller shook his head. “His hands were badly burned. As was his face. His teeth were fairly intact. But the mother said she didn’t think he’d had any dental work done for years. Didn’t know if he ever had.”

  “And he had taken drugs?”

  “That’s right. Barbiturates, a sedative called pentobarbital or the brand name, Nembutal. Where he got the dosage, I’d like to know. Very tightly controlled since it’s habit-forming. Of course, like everything there is a black market on it.”

  “He injected it?”

  “Right. Probably had just the one syringe and kept refilling it till he had enough.”

  “How much is enough?”

  “To kill a person? Depends on the person. He was drinking alcohol too, so the lethal dose was less. He had about two grams on board, about ten times the usual dose.”

  “What would that do to a person? You know, physiologically?”

  If Dr. Miller thought my questions were off base, he didn’t let on. He rubbed his knee, which stuck out from his lab coat. “Causes a comalike condition, then the respiratory system fails, cir
culatory fails, everything shuts down. Of course, in a guy with liver damage the barbiturates work pretty darn quick.”

  “He had liver damage?”

  “From what we could find of his liver, it looked like it. I questioned the mother too. She said he had been an alcoholic for years.” Miller shook his head. “The barbiturates and alcohol knocked him cold before the fire could kill him. He definitely died before the fire.” Dr. Miller looked up from his roughened white hands. “I hope we don’t see another one like that.”

  I glanced through the opaque glass in the doors to the back, where the real work was done.

  “The body. Is it still here?”

  “Released to the funeral home early this afternoon.”

  I thanked the pathologist and walked out of the hospital basement, up the stairs with him, into the social milieu of the carpeted hospital corridors with fresh-faced nurses and emergency room jocks, and finally into the evening air. It smelled sweet and alive, without a trace of smoke or death.

  As I drove back to the gallery along Broadway, the sun was disappearing behind the black hulks to the west, our guardian mountains, sheltering us from the outside world of big-city torments. Or the mountains held us here, shackled and crazed, against our wills. There were at least two truths, two ways to look at small-town life and our glorious Rockies.

  I slammed on my brakes to keep from hitting the group of people who suddenly swelled out into the street. A peaceful group, they were laughing and carrying signs. I inched the Saab closer and tried to read them. “We Back Buck,” said one. Darlene, my decorator and purveyor of wrinkled linen, turned to me, laughing, her red hair aglow in the twilight. I waved at her, and she skipped over.

  “What’s happening?” I asked.

  Darlene bent down, laying her freckled arms on the window. “Buck’s announcing his candidacy for mayor. Of course, we all knew he’d run again. Just an excuse for a party. Park your car and come with us.”

  I looked at the crowd. Republicans. Happy, jeering Republicans. Buck Boyle was the biggest, most obnoxious Republican of all, though his support ran across party lines to include a majority of true Jacksonians, that is, anybody who’d lived here longer than six months.