Secrets, Lies & Homicide

by Patricia Dusenbury

  Why she'd done it was a mystery. She'd told anyone who would listen that she couldn't bear to go into Jim's studio, or have anyone else go in, now that he was dead. That was bullshit—she'd never gone in when he was alive—but it was her story and she was sticking to it. She'd always been weird about the studio. When she gave him the house, she'd told him not to open his father's studio until after her death, like it was some sacred trust.

  He pulled a beer from the cooler that he'd had the foresight to bring along and rolled the icy bottle between his hands. A month ago he would have been too intimidated by his witch of a mother to ignore her wishes, but falling off her horse had made her mortal. The woman who used to stride around like she owned the earth now took little baby steps while clinging to her walker.

  The accident had humbled her in other ways. For Christmas he'd suggested a holiday trip to a destination of her choice and tried to tempt her with promises of luxury accommodations. She'd declined without regret and bemoaned his transformation into a person with more money than sense.

  The prospect of six weeks in a low-rent nursing home had changed her attitude. Sunny Gardens charged three times what her insurance covered, and he was paying the difference. Her thanks had been grudging, and he didn't expect her gratitude to last longer than it took the ink to dry on the final check. He had abandoned his fantasy about a mother-son reconciliation. He finished the beer, tied a sweat rag around his head and went back to work.

  Tony's nail-removing and board-levering skills improved as he went along, and only one beer break later, he wrenched off the last board. The rusted doorknob wouldn't turn—no surprise there. He hefted the sledgehammer like a baseball bat and swung for the fences. The doorframe splintered, and the door swung inward, hinges creaking just like they used to when Dad was inside. Tony shook off the memories and stepped over the threshold.

  Under thick layers of dust, the studio was as he remembered. His father's easel stood in the center of the room, the tall stool beside it. A musty odor, strong enough to trigger a gag reflex, caught in his throat. Holding his breath, he knocked the glass out of the closest window and took another big swing. The sledgehammer broke through the plywood with a satisfying thwack. He put his face to the hole and inhaled fresh air.

  A dead mockingbird, feathers covered with dust and eye sockets empty, lay on the windowsill. The bird must have landed there and been trapped, unable to spread its wings for takeoff thanks to the boards nailed across the window. He left it there and smashed holes in the plywood covering two more windows, creating much needed cross ventilation and letting in some light.

  Sunlight streaming through the ragged holes fell on a stack of canvases leaning against the wall.

  "Yes!" Tony stabbed the air with his fist. He pulled the top painting free.

  Under dirt and cobwebs, vertical slashes of color created a woman, her hooded cloak open to show a long sliver of body. He recognized the picture. He'd watched his dad brush on the colors. He pressed his finger against a corner of the canvas, gradually increasing the pressure. It held. The studio smelled of mold and rot, but the canvas felt sound. He set it aside and returned to the stack.

  He was lifting out the next painting when he caught the movement. A shiny black spider crouched inches from his hand. He knocked the black widow onto the floor, stepped on it, and kept an eye out for others. He should have known. Spiders and webs covered the outside. They'd colonized the place.

  One at a time, he carried his father's paintings to the door, thumped them on the steps to dislodge any remaining spiders and took them around to the front gallery. When he finished, two more black widows had died under his shoe and fourteen paintings of various sizes formed a line from one end of the gallery to the other. He walked back and forth, admiring the paintings and grinning from ear to ear.

  Claire had said she'd stop by at the end of the afternoon, after she finished her errands, which could be in a couple hours, but Tony didn't want to wait that long to share his discovery. He'd known better than to tell Geneviève that he planned to open the studio, but now it was a fait accompli, why not tell her?

  "You won't believe what I've found," he said when she picked up the phone. "You might even want one or two for yourself."

  "What are you talking about?"

  He told her.

  Nothing in Tony's troubled relationship with his mother had prepared him for her reaction. Incredulous, then furious, and finally sobbing with what she said was grief, she demanded that he immediately replace the boards and never again enter the studio. He hung up, cursing his stupidity. He'd been so thrilled about finding the paintings that he'd forgotten what a bitch she was, how she'd rebuffed his every effort to appease her. Did he actually expect her to be happy for him? People don't change.

  He went back outside to look at the paintings, try to recapture his good mood. The phone rang, and through the closed door he heard Geneviève berating his answering machine. He walked back to the studio. His old toy box ought to be inside.

  * * * *

  The black Ferrari sat at the curb and paintings lined the gallery, but there was no sign of Tony. Claire walked around back and found him dragging an antique blanket chest down the studio steps. "Hey, what are you doing?"

  He stopped. "Did you see the paintings?"

  "Just a glimpse. I was looking for you."

  "You're not going to believe your eyes." He grabbed her hand and pulled her around to the front.

  "Tony," she said, laughing.

  He was as excited as a child at Christmas and practically carried her up the steps. "Look at what I found."

  Even covered with grime, Jim Burke's paintings were glorious swirls of color from the psychedelic sixties, strongly influenced by art nouveau. Most were large, four or five feet tall, which was perfect. The center hall was wide with a high ceiling. All but one of the paintings portrayed a beautiful woman, nude or semi-nude. Claire bit back a smile. His father's art would only enhance Tony's reputation as a lady's man. Perhaps it was genetic.

  "I'm overwhelmed," she said. "All these were in the studio? Unbelievable."

  "There might have been one more." Tony's expression became puzzled. "Dad used to say an artist should keep everything, even when a picture doesn't turn out as planned. But it looks like he burned one."

  "Still, look at all these. They're stunning." She walked the length of the gallery again.

  "Fourteen Jim Burke originals, and they're mine, all mine." He rubbed his hands together in a parody of a movie villain. "'They need cleaning, but the canvas looks in good shape."

  Claire listened appreciatively as Tony described his struggles with the pry bar and expressed concern when he told her about the black widows. Then a stray thought brought caution. "Are you sure these paintings don't belong to your mother? Did your father have a will?"

  "Geneviève deeded me this property and all its contents years after Dad died. The paintings are mine." His eyes darkened and he set his jaw.

  "Good, but you should tell your mother about finding them."

  "I already did, and don't worry. She didn't say they belonged to her or show any interest in seeing them."

  "I went to see her Thursday afternoon. Did she mention my visit?"

  "The subject didn't come up."

  "She was horribly rude, not to me but to other people living there."

  "I warned you." He turned back to the paintings. "Now, let's talk about something else, like these pictures. I've been thinking about how they'll go in the hall. I want to display the sketch on the easel, where I found it, to show a work in progress."

  "That's a good idea." She walked the length of the gallery again. "Your father was a talented artist."

  "I'm fresh out of Prosecco, but there's cold beer in a cooler out back. Come on." He took her hand. "I'll show you dad's studio. You've been wanting to go inside since day one."

  Tony was wrong. The studio had both fascinated and repelled her, and she hadn't even seen a black widow. She did not w
ant to go inside, but she really didn't have a choice. Opening it had been her idea.

  CHAPTER 4

  Light from broken windows laid jagged stripes on the floor; dust motes floated in air that reeked of decay. Claire put her hand over her nose and breathed through her mouth.

  Tony pointed to an easel in the center of the room. "That's where I found the sketch. Right where Dad left it."

  A tall table stood beside the easel, its top littered with tubes of paint, tin cans holding brushes and a splotched palette. Age and grime darkened all the colors. Charred remnants of canvas hung from the open door of a wood stove and fluttered when Tony walked past. He gestured toward a lighter-colored rectangle of wall.

  "The others were stacked over there."

  She nodded.

  A thin paisley coverlet lay crumpled on an unmade single bed. A faded blue work shirt hung from a hook on the wall. Shelves of books, an old TV set and a sofa defined the living area. Beyond that, dust coated a silent refrigerator and a long-cold frying pan still on the stove. The far corner had been enclosed for a bathroom, a sink and toilet visible through the open door. Jim Burke had lived as well as worked in his studio, and when his life ended, all his belongings were sealed inside. Like an ancient tomb, the studio contained everything the dead man would need in the next life.

  They should never have come in here. Something terrible was going to happen. Her throat had tightened. It hurt to breathe. She took a deep gulp of the foul air and tasted bile. She turned and ran outside.

  "Are you okay?" Tony stood beside her, a supportive arm around her waist.

  "I just need a minute." She couldn't have a panic attack in front of Tony. Or throw up at his feet. She liked him and cared what he thought of her. Her company needed his business.

  "The mold probably got to you. That place has been closed up for twenty-five years." He half-led half-carried her back to the house and helped her sit down on the back steps.

  "Could you get me a glass of water and my purse, please?" The panic attacks that plagued her after Tom died had abated. She'd not had one in months. She'd worked her way off the anti-anxiety meds but, like an ex-smoker who always has a pack nearby, carried the pills with her. Just in case.

  When Tony returned, she took the glass with both hands to keep from spilling and sipped the water, taking little swallows that slid around the lump in her throat. "I'm okay now. Thank you." She found a Kleenex in her purse, wet it and wiped her face. The pills stayed in her purse.

  He sat next to her. "It's hard to believe, the way it looks and smells today, but I spent the happiest hours of my childhood in that studio. There was lots of light. The bushes weren't all grown up, and Dad kept the windows open. I was crazy about trains, and he let me run tracks all over the floor as long as I didn't get under his feet. His models mothered me. Lisa was dad's favorite and mine too. She gave me little wooden cows to ride in my cattle car."

  Claire heard the smile in his voice and lay back against the step, her eyes closed, Tony solid and comforting beside her.

  "I told you I had only one of dad's paintings. I never told you how I got it. Do you want to hear the story?"

  "Please." She wanted him to keep talking, about anything.

  "My junior year at Tulane, a bunch of us were on a gallery crawl, looking for women and drinking free wine, when a painting caught my eye. I looked again, and it was like a punch to the gut. Took all I had not to start bawling. I found the gallery owner and told him my father had painted that picture. The model's name was Lisa."

  Finding his father's art should have been a happy discovery, but Tony didn't sound happy. She murmured something about a surprise for everyone.

  "Howard Levine, the gallery owner, told me Dad's art sold well in New Orleans but rarely came on the market. People didn't want to sell. He thought Dad would have become nationally known if he'd just lived a little longer and had a bit more of his work in circulation."

  "Your father was a good artist." All these paintings—why hadn't anyone taken them to a dealer after Jim Burke died? Shutting them up in the studio made no sense.

  "Howard sold me that painting at his cost and let me pay for it on time."

  "He sounds like a very nice person."

  "He is, and he likes Chagall. When I started making real money, I bought him one as a belated thank you present. Howard retired a few years ago, moved to Arizona, but we've kept in touch." Tony paused, and when he resumed speaking, anger made his voice harsh. "The next morning I called Geneviève and asked why I had to learn from a stranger that Dad was a recognized artist, not just some wannabe playing with paint and living off his wife. She hung up on me. She's the one who had the studio boarded up with the pictures inside. She had to know they were there."

  "Well, the paintings are out now."

  "There's other stuff that got locked up inside. When you arrived, I was wrestling with my old toy box, which for some reason weighs a ton. Tell me when you're ready to go back."

  "I'm fine here. Go on back and open it."

  "Easier said than done. Someone nailed it shut, probably Geneviève." He shrugged. "I don't know whether to be baffled or indignant."

  "If we're talking about the chest you were bouncing down the steps, I think it's an antique. Bring it here and I'll help you open it. There's a dolly in the back of my truck."

  Minutes later, he dumped the chest at her feet, and she showed him how to extract a nail without denting the surrounding wood. He pulled out all the nails that held the lid down but still couldn't lift it. He peered underneath. "It's glued shut." He reached for the pry bar.

  "Wait," she said. "This really is a nice old chest. Let me try to break the seal. I'm good at this kind of thing. There should be a wood chisel among the tools the crew left you."

  The chest looked to be early nineteenth century, probably from southern Appalachia. A pioneer family could have used it to carry blankets and linens to their new home along the Mississippi. Claire stroked the fine old wood. She pictured a young woman smoothing and folding the linens she had embroidered for her trousseau, preparing for the dangerous journey west.

  Tony returned with the chisel and sat on the steps watching while she tapped it along the seam. The glue, brittle with age and applied with a too heavy hand, cracked and split. She sat back on her heels. "It's your toy box. Do you want the honor?"

  "The cows Lisa gave me should be inside." Tony eased over and lifted the lid. He pulled out a square of decayed burlap, threw it on the ground and picked up another. "Sandbags?"

  The bags smelled awful, worse than the studio. Claire held her breath waiting for the stench to dissipate. How could Tony stand it?

  "Someone emptied a bunch of sandbags into my toy box. On top of my toys?" He ran his fingers through the sand, frowned, and pulled out a long white bone. "What's this?"

  Her stomach turned over. "Oh my God."

  "What?"

  "It looks like an ulna." She ran her fingers along the inside of her forearm. "This bone."

  "From a human being?" He examined the bone. "Are you sure?"

  "When my husband was in med school, I helped him study." She took a deep breath. "It's been a while, so maybe not."

  "But maybe yes?" A range of emotions played across Tony's face, bewilderment, disbelief, and then anger. He held the bone against his forearm. "About my size. Right?"

  "Tony? What are you doing?"

  He laid the bone on the grass, sifted through the sand and pulled out a second long white bone. "Another one." He held it up for her to see.

  "It's the other forearm bone." They'd found human remains. The studio really was a tomb. Tony's toy box was a coffin. She grabbed the stair rail and pulled herself up. "We'd better call the police."

  Tony knelt next to the toy chest, his back to her, his head bowed.

  "We should call the police," she repeated.

  "Go ahead. Phone in the bedroom works." He spoke without looking up.

  When she returned, he was still kneeling be
side the chest. "The police will send a car as soon as one is available."

  "The forearm was here." He drew a line in the sand. "So, the rest of the arm would be about here. Right?" He moved his hand over. "Someone my size, you'd have to fold him into a fetal position to fit him in."

  "The police said not to touch anything."

  He dug into the sand and uncovered another bone. "This is the upper arm, isn't it?"

  "I think so." She looked away.

  "What's this one called?"

  "Tony, please. Those bones used to be a person." The med school skeleton used to be a person too, but this was different. She extended her hand. "Let's go wait out front."

  He shook his head and continued digging, using both hands to brush the sand aside, pulling out bones and laying them on the grass. She couldn't stop him, but she didn't have to watch.

  "I'll be out front."

  "Don't go. Please. I'm putting him back together, and I could use your help." He held a long bone parallel to his thigh, frowned, and then slid it below his knee. "It's part of the leg, but which part?"

  "Tony, stop it, please. This isn't a game."

  "Trust me, sweetheart, I'm not playing. Tell me what this is."

  "One of the lower leg bones." She pointed to a bone he'd set aside. "There's its partner."

  "Which makes this the thigh." He put the bones in place.

  Claire sat back down on the steps and closed her eyes. Where are the police? She felt Tony beside her.

  "Look at this. Come on, Claire, help me." He was holding a skull as tenderly as a mother holding a newborn. He turned it sideways and pointed to an area of shattered bone. "A fractured skull. Probably what killed him."

  She nodded mute agreement.

  He returned to the skeleton and set the skull in place. It rolled onto the damaged side. He tried again; again it rolled over. His head was down and she couldn't see his face, but she could feel his tension. He would have been nine when the studio was sealed up, old enough to remember.