Half in Love with Artful Death

by Bill Crider

  “We might be able to clean it off,” Don McClaren said, “but it will never be the same. Now this is a little different. I can clean this easily.”

  He showed Loam a sculpture of what appeared to Rhodes to be a small, twisted tree. The sculpture was mostly white with some green on the branches, if that was what they were. There was gray paint on the white.

  “You can’t clean this one,” Eric Stewart said, pointing to a painting of something that looked familiar to Rhodes. It took him a second or two, but then he remembered when he’d seen something similar. It had been in an English book in high school, and it illustrated a poem he’d had to read, something about a seashell. The picture in the book was a photograph, not a painting, and it didn’t have a gray slash across it.

  “That one’s mine,” Seepy said. Loam turned her camera on him. “It’s a cross-section of a chambered nautilus. All my artwork is based on the Golden Ratio.”

  Rhodes had heard Seepy discourse on the Golden Ratio before, but not on its relation to his artwork. Then again, Rhodes hadn’t heard Seepy discourse on his artwork. On his music, yes. On his detecting abilities, of course. On his teaching skills and his martial arts abilities, naturally. But not on his art.

  “The Golden Ratio is 1.618,” Seepy said. “One plus the square root of five divided by two. That proportion occurs all through nature, just like in the chambered nautilus. Leonardo da Vinci used it often. The most famous example is in the sketch called the Vitruvian Man. Now, since my own field is nonabelian group theory—”

  “Hold it,” Rhodes said. Art was one thing he was pretty sure he didn’t understand. Nonabelian group theory was something he was positive he wouldn’t understand. “Stop right there. Does that theory have anything to do with what happened here?”

  “Not as far as I know,” Seepy said, “but I thought you might be interested in my art, since it’s been defaced.”

  “I’m more interested in catching the defacer,” Rhodes said. The best thing about Seepy’s minilecture was that Jennifer Loam had moved away with her little camera and was taking video of some of the other pictures on display, the undamaged ones. Rhodes raised his voice and said, “Did anyone see who sprayed the paintings?”

  The woman with the orange hair turned to Rhodes. Her hair, he decided, wasn’t corkscrewed so much as tousled, but it was definitely orange. She wore no makeup, or didn’t seem to, but then she didn’t really need it. She was attractive enough without it, orange hair or not. She had large eyes, a wide mouth, and a husky voice. She wore jeans and a white shirt. There was a small tattoo of a butterfly on her neck.

  “No, but one of mine is ruined,” she said, “and I did see that man coming out of the building as we were returning.”

  “Returning from where?” Rhodes asked.

  “We’d been at the college,” Don McClaren said. “The art students have a small exhibit there, and I wanted to show everyone what the kids had been working on. Most of us went on the college bus, but a few people had their own cars.”

  “I was in my car,” the orange-haired woman said. “I got back a little before everyone else, and I saw that man leaving. I went in and saw what he’d done. It had to be him. No one else was inside.”

  That didn’t mean much. Collins could’ve sprayed the paintings, and Rhodes wouldn’t have been surprised if that turned out to be the case, but the fact that he’d been in the building alone proved nothing.

  “I didn’t get your name,” Rhodes said.

  “Marilyn Bradley.”

  “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  “I’m from Derrick City. That’s not far away.”

  It was only about thirty miles. Rhodes had driven there not long ago when looking into another matter. He hadn’t seen any orange-haired women while he was there.

  “Well, Ms. Bradley,” he said, “there’s a big back room full of antiques right through that door over there.” Rhodes pointed to the door in the wall between two paintings, one of which might have been a cow skull. Or maybe not. “It might be locked, or it might not be. If it’s not, someone could have been in there and left through the back door. So we don’t know that Mr. Collins defaced the paintings.”

  “Defaced is too mild a word,” she said. “Mine was ruined.” She pointed. “That one.”

  Rhodes looked at the picture, which seemed to be of several golden-brown staircases leading nowhere other than into grayish clouds. Some of the staircases were upside down, or at least they looked that way to Rhodes. Maybe they were symbolic. They had no railings, but Rhodes supposed you really didn’t need one on a staircase that was upside down and led nowhere. A dark streak crossed several of the staircases.

  “You can see that it’s destroyed,” Marilyn said. “The judging is tomorrow, and now I won’t have a chance at a ribbon. Not that a ribbon means all that much, but the recognition does. I believe I do something valuable with my creative talent, and I want others to appreciate it. Now my painting is ruined. That man has to be punished.”

  Rhodes was surprised at her vehemence. “We don’t know for sure if Burt Collins did it,” he repeated.

  “I’ll bet he did. Who else could it have been?”

  “We’ll find out,” Rhodes said.

  “I’m sure you will,” Marilyn said. Her voice was calmer. “I’ve read about you in those books. I love those books.”

  “Books?” Rhodes said, though he was afraid he knew what she meant.

  “You know,” she said. “Sage Barton.”

  Just as Rhodes had suspected. A couple of women who’d been to a writers’ workshop in a nearby town had become acquainted with Rhodes and had later written a very successful series of novels about Sage Barton, a two-gun lawman who was often involved in crimes that affected the entire nation. No one ever believed Rhodes when he explained that he and Barton had nothing at all in common and that a big-time crime in Blacklin County was more likely to be something like a missing sneeze guard at a restaurant buffet than terrorists bent on the destruction of Western democracy.

  “Let me ask you something about Sage Barton,” Seepy said, interrupting the conversation.

  “What?” Marilyn asked.

  “You know that my name is Seepy Benton, right?”

  “Yes. We were introduced when the workshop began.”

  “I remember. I just wanted to be sure. Think about Sage Barton’s initials. S. B. Then think about my initials. S. B. You don’t think that’s an accident, do you?”

  “I … never thought about it,” Marilyn said.

  “It’s worth thinking about,” Seepy said.

  Rhodes thought about it. Seepy’s initials were C. P., which is where “Seepy” had come from, but if he wanted to believe he was the model for Sage Barton, more power to him.

  Rhodes saw a county car drive up. “I believe that’s Deputy Grady arriving,” he said.

  Seepy jumped as if he’d been stuck with a pin.

  “I need to speak to her,” Rhodes said. “I’ll be right back.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Seepy said.

  “I had a feeling you might,” Rhodes said.

  * * *

  After explaining the situation to Ruth Grady, Rhodes told her that he wanted her to question Marilyn Bradley a bit more about her suspicions of Burt Collins.

  “You need to question Dr. Benton, too,” Rhodes added.

  Ruth looked at Seepy. “Why?”

  “He’s the one who wanted to make a citizen’s arrest of Collins. Well, he and Eric Stewart did. Question both of them.”

  “Hello?” Benton said. “I’m standing right here.”

  “Good,” Rhodes said. “She can start with you. I’ll be next door at the senior center.”

  He left Seepy and Ruth there and went to the senior center. When he entered the building, he could hear the click of dominoes in one room and the hum of conversation from another. Someone was warming something in the kitchen, pizza, maybe, or spaghetti. It must have been getting close to lunchtime. />
  Rhodes looked into the domino room. Nora Fischer wasn’t there. She wasn’t in the room where the conversations were going on, either. Some kind of book club, Rhodes thought, since everyone seemed to be holding a book. He went on back to the kitchen, where he found the former history teacher standing behind a counter at the stove.

  “Pizza in the oven?” Rhodes asked.

  “Yes, indeed,” Nora said, turning to look at him. “How are you this morning, Danny?”

  Only people who had known Rhodes when he was a lot younger still called him Danny. He didn’t mind.

  “I’m doing all right. Is that vegetarian pizza?”

  “You mean no pepperoni and sausage? What kind of pizza would that be?”

  It would be the kind of pizza that Rhodes got at home, when he got pizza at all.

  “It has everything on it,” Nora said, “but it’s just store-bought.”

  That would be okay with Rhodes. Maybe he could cadge a piece later.

  “I wanted to ask you about the disturbance next door,” he said.

  “That was fun,” Nora said. “We old folks can use a little excitement every now and then.”

  “It wasn’t so much fun for Lonnie Wallace and Burt Collins.”

  “Lonnie was a good student,” Nora said. “He could name the three branches of government and tell you about checks and balances without missing a beat. Burt wasn’t like that. He never seemed to care much.”

  That wasn’t exactly the kind of information that Rhodes wanted. “Did you see the tussle between those two this morning?”

  “I did,” Nora said. “My eyesight is just fine, in case you were wondering. My phone’s an old one, though, so I didn’t get any pictures.”

  “Could you tell whether Lonnie fell, or whether he hit Burt deliberately?”

  “Lonnie would never hit anyone deliberately. It’s just not in his nature. I’m sure he fell. He caught his toe on the curb.”

  Since her version matched Lonnie’s, Rhodes wanted to believe it. She was partial to Lonnie, though, so he’d have to ask a few more people.

  “There are some interesting people in that crowd,” Nora said. “I’m not surprised that Burt doesn’t care for them. He seems angry a lot of the time.”

  “What about?”

  “Just life in general, I guess. He and his wife don’t get along, you know.”

  Rhodes had heard a few things, but he didn’t know the whole story.

  “You could ask Lonnie,” Nora said. “Those beauty operators know everything that goes on in this town.”

  Rhodes knew that was true. He could ask Lonnie, or someone else at the beauty shop. Lonnie might have a reason to equivocate. At the moment it didn’t seem like any of Rhodes’s business.

  “Did anyone here see Burt or anybody else go into the gallery while the artists were gone?”

  “We were all inside. We didn’t go out until the ruckus started.” Nora turned to the oven. “I need to take the pizza out now. Would you like a piece?”

  Rhodes grinned. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Chapter 4

  A good bit of the afternoon was taken up with questioning, so Rhodes was glad he’d had the pizza, though Nora Fischer let him have only one slice.

  Eventually Andy and Ruth were called away to look into a fender bender and a suspiciously damaged window screen at a vacant rental house. Rhodes finished up the questioning himself. His conclusions were that all of the art group believed they’d seen Lonnie Wallace trip and fall into Burt Collins. Most, but not all, of the people from the senior center agreed with that conclusion, but it was impossible to tell much from any of the videos that Rhodes saw. He didn’t think that either Lonnie or Burt would be pressing charges, however, so he wasn’t worried about what had actually happened. Not then, anyway.

  Most of the artists were upset with Burt, not just because they thought he’d ruined some of their work but because he’d been bothering them. Don McClaren, Eric Stewart, and Marilyn Bradley were the most vocal.

  “He’s ruined things for the college,” McClaren said. “We’re cosponsoring this workshop with Eric, and now half the people think the whole town is nothing but rednecks. They’ll never want to come back. It’s a disaster.”

  Rhodes didn’t think it was that bad, but Eric Stewart agreed with McClaren. “Nobody who came to the workshop from out of town will ever want to visit Clearview again. They think we’re nothing but philistines.”

  “Is that the same as rednecks?” Rhodes asked.

  “Exactly,” Stewart said, “and it’s the truth, too. Lonnie and I put good money into this workshop, and we planned to build something for the future. Nothing good will come of it now, and it’s all Burt Collins’s fault. Somebody should do something about him.”

  Marilyn Bradley agreed. “That man is terrible. He’s given most of us a bad impression of your town, Sheriff. I know it’s wrong to judge a town by one citizen, but that’s the way it is. Besides that, he’s destroyed my painting. It was one of my favorites, too. I’ll never be able to duplicate it. I hope that man rots in jail.”

  Rhodes had to remind them that they were still living in a country where a man was innocent until proven guilty. Their unanimous conclusion was that Burt was guilty, no matter what proof there was. Or wasn’t. He also had to remind them that even if Burt had damaged the paintings, he wasn’t likely to do jail time unless the paintings were valuable. Otherwise, what had been done was just criminal mischief, a Class C misdemeanor that carried a fine but no jail time.

  “What would it take to get him some jail time?” Marilyn asked.

  By now McClaren and Stewart were standing beside her, and they wanted an answer, too.

  “Damage to something worth between fifty and five hundred dollars,” Rhodes said.

  Marilyn was insulted. “Are you insinuating that my painting wasn’t worth fifty dollars?”

  “Uh,” Rhodes said.

  “What would some real jail time require?” McClaren asked.

  “Damage of more than fifteen hundred dollars,” Rhodes said.

  “My painting was worth at least two thousand dollars,” Marilyn said, “and some of the others were, too.”

  Rhodes didn’t have any way of knowing if that was true, but Stewart said, “We could easily have them evaluated by an expert. Someone from the college, say. Someone like—”

  “Me,” McClaren said. “Or if you don’t trust me, I can bring in an outside expert.”

  “I have an idea,” Rhodes said.

  They looked at him.

  “You can go about doing some evaluating, and I’ll try to catch whoever did the damage. Then we can get together and make a decision about what the charges will be.”

  They grumbled a while, but they agreed that was probably the best idea.

  “Good,” Rhodes said. “In the meantime, just carry on with your workshop as if nothing had happened.”

  Stewart waved a hand at the paintings. “That’s impossible. What if Collins sneaks back in while we’re gone and does more damage?”

  “You can lock the door,” Rhodes said.

  “Then the public can’t drop by and see our work,” Marilyn said.

  “That’s right,” McClaren said. “The whole idea of putting the exhibit here was to draw people back to this old downtown area. We wouldn’t be very hospitable if we locked the doors.”

  Rhodes shrugged. “It’s your exhibit. You can do as you please, but you should at least leave one person here to keep an eye on things.”

  “You’re right,” Stewart said. “We’ll do that.”

  Rhodes turned to go, but Seepy Benton caught up with him before he got out the door.

  “How do you like the art?” Seepy asked. “I haven’t heard you comment on it.”

  Rhodes stopped. “Which art?”

  “How about my chambered nautilus?”

  “I could tell it was a seashell,” Rhodes said. “Or part of one. I like being able to identify it.”

&nbs
p; “Art doesn’t have to be representational. Take Marilyn’s work.”

  Rhodes thought of several things he might have said and decided not to say any of them.

  “You don’t like it?” Benton said after a second or two.

  “Everybody likes different things,” Rhodes said. “Some people think a picture of a soup can is art.”

  “It can be,” Benton said. “Art is supposed to make us see ordinary things like a soup can in a new way.”

  “It just looked like any other soup can to me,” Rhodes said.

  He started out the door, and this time he got to the street before Seepy caught up.

  “I have some nonrepresentational art that I made with my computer,” Seepy said. “Fractal art. It’s a way to see the Mandelbrot Set.”

  “Is that anything like a play set?” Rhodes asked. “I know somebody who collects toy play sets. He has an Alamo play set that I like. He’s a police chief in Pecan City. He collects toy soldiers, too.”

  “The Mandelbrot Set is nothing like that. It’s—”

  “Never mind,” Rhodes said. “I have a feeling I wouldn’t understand your explanation.”

  “Maybe not. It’s complex. But that doesn’t matter. Let’s talk about the defaced paintings. I can help you crack the case.”

  “Crack the case?”

  “Just a little shop talk, one lawman to another,” Seepy said.

  “Right. We professional lawmen talk like that all the time. How are you going to help me? By staying out of my way?”

  Seepy looked hurt. “I can help by watching out to be sure Burt Collins doesn’t do any more damage.”

  “All right. They need somebody to stay here and watch. Talk to Stewart about it. Just don’t try making any more citizen’s arrests until you have some proof of wrongdoing.”

  “Collins is probably guilty,” Benton said.

  “Maybe so, but you can’t prove it.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Benton said, and Rhodes wasn’t sure if he meant it as a threat or just a statement of fact.

  “Remember,” Rhodes said, “you aren’t an official deputy, and I’m not asking for your help. You don’t have any standing as an investigator.”