Deadly Arts

by Ken Brigham

  The echo of his footfalls from the glistening marble floors in the lobby saddened him. The words of a song came to mind…Kristofferson “…Sunday morning coming down…” Sad alright. Nobody did sadness better than old Kris.

  Palmer walked directly to the south bank of elevators, entered the shiny gilt car, and pressed 19. The offices of Donnely, Hart and Combs, Attorneys, occupied the entire nineteenth floor. The attractive young woman at the desk that fronted the elevator recognized Palmer and nodded to him as he mimed a salute and walked past her down the hall to the corner office of J. Hayworth Combs, attorney, art patron, longtime friend, and, when the occasion required it, legal eagle counsel to Parker Palmer. Consistent with his general contempt for arbitrary social structures, Palmer ignored the secretary—strategically positioned in front of the lawyer’s office door and charged with protecting her boss from unwanted interruptions—and entered the office without knocking. Combs was reared back with his feet up on his desk talking on the phone, but he smiled and nodded to Palmer to have a seat.

  Jay Combs and Parker Palmer were both Nashvillians, but they were children of different planets—Belle Meade blue blood old money with A-list parents vis-à-vis an only child of a single parent constantly struggling just to put food on the table, toughing it out in the meaner part of south Nashville. Despite that, they became fast friends in high school. Combs’s socially conscious parents, convinced that their privileged son would benefit from exposure to a more diverse group of peers than he would have at the private academy where he had endured an extremely rigorous if highly contrived elementary education, sent him to a public high school. It was a wise decision. Their precocious son thrived academically and developed a delightful group of friends whom he would have never known otherwise. Parker Palmer was one of them.

  Their relationship had not only endured but had grown over the years. Combs had developed a passion for contemporary art and, whether because of his affection for Palmer the man or because he had a nose for potential aesthetic value, was especially fond of his old friend’s art. Combs probably owned the world’s largest collection of Parker Palmer paintings, to the amusement of his Belle Meade A-list friends, the walls of whose homes were adorned with more traditional and more socially acceptable works. Combs bought his old friend’s paintings because he liked them rather than as investments, but it was nonetheless satisfying to watch their value steadily increase. His Palmers turned out to be much better investments than the chiaroscuro landscapes favored by the Belle Meade crowd. Old friends could prove valuable on occasion. A fringe benefit.

  “Look, Jay,” Parker said as soon as his friend hung up the phone and maneuvered his feet to the floor, “I need to tell you some stuff and get your advice. There’s a lot of stuff I haven’t told you or anyone else that may be more important than I thought it would be.”

  “OK, pal,” Jay said, leaning forward toward Parker and resting his hands on his knees, “shoot.”

  “Like, this is lawyer to client, right? Privileged information.”

  “Does that mean I can bill you?”

  “You’re funny, Jay.”

  “Humor is a valuable trait in my business.”

  “Anyway, privileged, right?”

  “Fine with me. What is it that has you in such a state, man. I mean Mr. Cool seems a bit het up. Has the muse deserted you?”

  “Could be a helluva lot worse than that,” Palmer replied. “A helluva lot worse.”

  “Sounds like you may need a good lawyer. Fortunately, we’ve got that covered. But spill it, buddy.”

  “OK,” Palmer took a deep breath and told his old friend and lawyer the whole story as he knew it. He had kept most of the story as his own private history that he intended never to be known to anyone else. Very much like his mother had done until she was dying. Only then did she reveal things about their lives that might have changed the course of things if he had known them earlier. Her death bed revelations altered his understanding of the world and his place in it. And kindled in him an intense hatred of his dying mother that was the source of an abiding sense of guilt since her death.

  So, Parker spilled most of the beans to his lawyer friend that afternoon. The lawsuit that Palmer had convinced his friend to file questioning whether Sally Farmer was the rightful heir to Billy Wayne’s paintings was not frivolous at all. According to Palmer’s mother’s deathbed revelation, the woman was not Farmer’s daughter. Billy Wayne had taken her in as a small child and raised her as though she was his offspring, but that was not the case. Palmer’s mother knew this because she was Billy Wayne’s younger sister. They were hopelessly estranged for many years. She began to suspect that her brother was sexually abusing his assumed daughter, and possibly others, and swore never to have any contact with him after that. Why she didn’t pursue criminal prosecution went unexplained. Still was.

  “So Bechman Fitzwallington, nee Billy Wayne Farmer, was your uncle. And the woman who calls herself SalomeMe is not related to the old guy.” Combs mused, rubbing his chin and looking out the window. “Maybe that explains the urgent note I got earlier from the presumed daughter’s lawyer. I haven’t returned the call, but now I’m guessing that he got the DNA results,” Combs laughed. “Bet that got Jimmy Holden’s Christian blood heated up a bit. And he probably doesn’t even know that you’re the heir instead of her.”

  “Probably not,” Palmer replied. “But the ex-cop, Sherlock Shane Hadley, who seems to have an unholy interest in this case knows. Says he has incontrovertible evidence of my relationship to Uncle Billy Wayne.”

  “Does he know about the non-daughter?”

  “If not, I’m sure he soon will. He has a real bee in his bonnet about this thing, turning over a lot of stones that would best be left unturned. Seems determined to prove Uncle Billy Wayne was murdered and appears to suspect that I may have done the deed.”

  “Why would he suspect that?”

  “This is privileged, right?” Palmer’s anxiety was obviously increasing.

  “Come on, Parker,” Combs replied. “You know you can trust me.”

  “Ok.” Palmer got up from his chair and stood in silhouette before the expansive window that formed one side of Combs’s office. “The evening before Uncle Billy Wayne was discovered dead by his neighbor, I went to see him. I didn’t go for any particular reason. It was just that his health was obviously rapidly deteriorating, so I dropped by a little more frequently than usual. I had never told him that I knew of our relationship. In fact, I never told him any of the things my mother had revealed as she died.”

  “Really?” Combs interrupted. “But wasn’t it about the time your mother died that he started to trash your art?”

  “I guess you’re right, but that must have been coincidence. He and I never discussed it. Once he abandoned me professionally, we never discussed art at all. Of course, he was getting pretty sick by then.”

  “Why did you keep visiting him? Was it because you knew you were likely to inherit his

  paintings?”

  “I can’t really give you a reason. It wasn’t the paintings. I didn’t know there were any, and even had I known, I would not have thought them worth much until after he died, and the New York critic saw fit to inflate their value.”

  “The whims of the art world,” Combs sighed. “But go ahead. You visited your uncle in the dead of night, and he turns up really dead the next morning. Did you kill him?”

  “I don’t think so, but that could be indirectly true, I suppose.”

  “Go on,” the tone of Combs voice was beginning to take on a lawyerly edge.

  “We argued,” Palmer said. “He revealed to me that Sally was not his daughter but that he had initiated efforts to legally adopt her. Of course, that would make her his sole heir and cut me out of the picture. It wasn’t like a life or death matter. I had no illusions about a great windfall for whoever was Uncle Billy Wayne’s heir, but I was just pissed off that whatever there was would go to that totally ditzy woman and that a
ny claim I might have would be neutralized. It just didn’t seem right. So, we argued, and I left in a huff. But I left him very much alive if more than a little red in the face and breathing a little hard.”

  “Were you there alone?” Combs asked.

  “I thought so, but our friend Shane Hadley says there was a witness to our argument. Probably that nosy neighbor. I guess we were a bit loud.”

  “And you were the last person to see your uncle alive as far as you know?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “Did he leave a will?”

  “I don’t think so. He did say one time recently that he intended to do that but had not gotten around to it.”

  “Well,” Jay Combs said, getting up from his chair, walking over to stand beside his friend and draping an arm across his shoulders, “it looks like this could become more interesting than either of us would like, but you’ve got the two essentials on your side—a good lawyer and the truth. You are telling me the truth, aren’t you?”

  “As far as I know it,” Palmer replied.

  “Hello, handsome,” Marge worked her way down to the end of the TAPS bar where Hardy Seltzer sat and greeted him in her usual way, trying to infuse her voice with a maximum of seductive undertones. “What is up?”

  Hardy had come in later than usual. Marge’s shift would end soon. She wondered if he had timed his visit deliberately to be close to when she finished for the day so that he could whisk her away for a late dinner and whatever else seemed interesting to pursue that evening.

  “Not much,” Hardy replied. “Still trying to find a crack in the Hadley abduction case. Not much luck recently.”

  “How much is a little luck worth to you?” Marge’s eyes brightened.

  “Have you got something?

  “Maybe. You know the third member of the suspicious group who were here before Shane was grabbed.”

  “Of course, I remember—a guy named Bruce Therault from New York, a lowlife hood from Chicago name of Dudley Sysco, and an ex-New York cop named Mace Ricci?”

  “Well,” Marge replied, “if I am not mistaken, the Mace Ricci guy was in here again today. He looked vaguely familiar, so I checked out the name on his credit card, and that’s who it was.”

  “Funny. I’ve been trying to locate him but haven’t succeeded.” Hardy was genuinely surprised. He figured that if Ricci was involved in this, he would be long gone from the city by now.

  “He came in this afternoon for a drink. Sat at the bar by himself. After drinking two Scotches neat, he made a brief call on his cell that didn’t appear to be answered, paid with his credit card, and left. I wasn’t totally sure that he was the third guy, so I double-checked the name on the card.”

  “You are amazing, Marge Bland. You are a truly amazing woman,” Hardy responded, contemplating where to take her for dinner and whether to get his hopes up for how they might occupy the rest of the evening.

  “It’s just names, Hardy,” she answered, “I remember names.”

  Chapter 29

  Bruce Therault hung up the phone. He was frightened. Really frightened.

  It was mid-afternoon, and light spilled into his living room through the east-facing window that overlooked the park. He was inordinately fond of his Upper West Side flat. He thought that is suited him perfectly—unpretentiously elegant. He walked over to the small and well-stocked bar opposite where he had been sitting and poured a generous amount of twenty-five-year-old Macallan into a cut crystal tumbler. His hand shook, rattling the decanter, the ring of crystal against crystal. He relished for a moment the heft of the leaded glass. Swirling the deep amber liquid, he walked to the window and looked out, across Central Park West to the variegated canopy of lush green.

  Things were not shaping up very positively in Nashville. Mace Ricci had phoned him to break the startling news that the identity of the old artist’s heir or heirs had been cast into serious doubt and to let him know that the pesky ex-cop was still prying pretty aggressively into the circumstances of the artist’s death. No doubt that was delaying resolution of the situation. And now the uncertainty of the heir. A damn mess is what it was.

  What to do? Therault sipped at the whiskey, distracting his thoughts for a moment with the pleasantly acrid aroma and taste of smoke and peat. He took another larger sip with the hope of prolonging the distraction. It didn’t work very well the second time. He would have to wait for the active ingredient of the drink to kick in for the solace he sought.

  His thoughts drifted toward the implications of the situation for him personally. He had made some of the longer-range life plans that are essential for people like him whose greed or ambition or whatever got them mixed up with the sort of folks who were not reluctant to do one harm if the occasion called for it. He might need to use those plans sooner than he had intended.

  First, what not to do. He would not, for the moment at least, give any hint of this potentially serious complication to Mildred Roth. This was no time to invite the Wrath of Roth, not until he had figured out a concrete plan of action that had a chance of assuring the outcome that the investors expected. He walked back to the sofa where he had sat earlier, took his cell phone from his pocket, and rang Blythe Fortune.

  “Galleria Salinas,” the soft, confident voice of the gallery’s proprietor answered. “This is Blythe.”

  “Good afternoon, Blythe,” Therault responded. “This is Bruce with some quite interesting news.”

  “Of the good variety, I hope.”

  “I wouldn’t characterize it exactly that way. More like challenging.”

  “I’m tired of challenges.”

  “Well, you best rest up because I have a new one for you.”

  Bruce went on to inform his partner of the developments that were critical to any resolution of the future of the Fitzwallington paintings and to issue his challenge. Therault thought their best chance to get their hands on any of those paintings was to cut a deal with the only other gallery that was in contention, AvantArt in Nashville, and that Blythe was the only person likely to be able to strike such a deal. Mace Ricci had thoroughly blown any chance of establishing a relationship with the gallery’s owner, Athena Golden, and Blythe had at least had some seemingly pleasant contact with the Nashville woman. If they could agree among themselves on a proposal to share the sale of the paintings, hopefully with the lion’s share winding up in New York, that was probably the best they were likely to do, and the deal might be saleable to whoever wound up with custody of the art.

  Blythe listened patiently to Bruce’s monologue. It was obvious that he was trying to dump the responsibility for attempting to solve this thing on her. She wondered about his motives. Was it really that he thought she was the one with the better chance of working things out? Or was he looking to make her the scapegoat if things really went south? She was having second thoughts about her earlier decision to stay involved. She had hoped that she could do that while keeping a respectable distance from the shady doings that Bruce was clearly abetting. Well, abetting or enabling in some more direct way. She wasn’t sure which. How in God’s name had she been convinced to hook up with Bruce Therault? She had no idea who he really was and what drove him. Money, or the lack of it, had made her handle what she valued most too recklessly. Look where that got her.

  When Therault finished his little speech, Blythe allowed a more than respectable period of quiet to occupy the space between them before finally saying simply, “I’ll call Athena.”

  Blythe was not prepared to commit beyond that.

  Having dealt for the time being with problem number one, Therault proceeded to problem number two. He called Mace Ricci and instructed him to implement a new plan to sidetrack that pesky ex-cop. Therault wasn’t sure if it would work, but worth a try anyway. It required no appreciation of nuance. It was just the kind of thing that Mace Ricci knew how to do.

  Shane had spent the evening poring over the Fitzwallington autopsy report, staring again at the pictures that Hardy had take
n of the death scene, reviewing the few brief phrases he had jotted down in his little leather notebook, and googling Issy Esser. There was a wrinkle in the autopsy report that he needed to follow up on with Hardy, but he wasn’t sure if it was significant.

  He had learned that Isadore William (Issy) Esser was a pharmacist and worked in the research pharmacy (whatever that was) at the university. But so what? None of his evening efforts had produced any major advances in his consideration of the case. He had called Esser and they had agreed to meet the next day at Wall Street, but otherwise, it felt like he had wasted a lot of time. He checked the clock on the lower part of his computer screen and was surprised at how late it was. He had been so involved in wasting time that he had lost track of it.

  It was way past the hour when KiKi should have been home. And she hadn’t called. He took his cell from his shirt pocket and speed-dialed her number. Five unanswered rings and then her familiar voice mail greeting. He left a message for her to call him, but he was worried. Once in a while she had been this late, stuck longer than she had anticipated by a needy student or a troubled faculty member. But very rare. And she always called to alert him. He called her number again with the same result. He wheeled himself over to the bar, poured a glass of sherry and rolled out onto the deck. Nighttime action in the alley was just getting into gear, the cacophony of sounds that Shane thought of as the Printers Alley serenade beginning its slow crescendo that by midnight would approach a decibel level exceeding the pain threshold for most normal humans. Shane and KiKi were always in bed by then, at the other end of their flat, out of earshot of the alley.

  Shane’s phone buzzed and he answered it without checking the caller ID.

  “This is Shane,” he said, anxiously anticipating a response from his wife.

  “Hi, Shane,” Hardy Seltzer said. “How’s it going?”