They both looked at me in surprise. “What difference does that make?” Jeff said.
I had a lot to learn about journalism, obviously.
Jeff shrugged again and got to his feet. “Well, if you really wanted to find out anything about what happened, you’d have to get them to talk to you.”
The two of us were standing beside Cynthia’s couch. “How would I do that?” I couldn’t help asking.
Cynthia pinched me. I’m sure I was displaying an appalling lack of competence, but I couldn’t believe it could be so easy to be so callous.
“By telling the mother you think you were wrong. By offering to help prove that her son wasn’t the killer. Whatever she wants to hear.”
I remembered the “die, racist bitch” phone call and the promise that the caller knew who I was. I wondered what would happen if I presented myself at the Garcias’ front door. I’d be about as welcome as a puff adder, and the neighborhood was not generally renowned for its restraint in the deployment of weapons, even under much friendlier circumstances.
Cynthia and Jeff were looking at me expectantly. “Well, thanks for the tip,” I said faintly. “I’ll have to think about it.”
Jeff winked at me. “You’ll think of something,” he said, not fooled by my lame attempt at bravado. “It’s always hardest the first time.”
11
The Jensens’ party was not exactly le tout Los Angeles or even le tout Rolling Hills, but it was reasonably elegant and successful. In keeping with the origins of their newly acquired art, the hors d’oeuvres had a Latin theme—crepes filled with huitlacoche (corn fungus, but it’s better than it sounds) in a light cream sauce, squash blossoms stuffed with queso fresco. That sort of thing. There was tequila for the hardy palate and white wine and champagne for everyone else. I’d suggested a Chilean red to Mira, but she’d looked at me in horror. The carpets, she’d explained.
Since most of Jordan’s friends were in business, they didn’t have enough background in art to feel the necessity of making witty comments or glib aesthetic assessments that were usually founded in half-truths. Those were the sort of viewers I found annoying, the kind who sometimes feel obliged to enlighten you with their opinions at gallery openings. The Jensens’ friends politely admired the collection and passed on, talking of capital markets in Brazil. A few of them, their interest caught, asked me questions about Frederico Pinto and Regina Silveira, both Brazilian artists.
Valentin, lurking in the corner, and I occupied a position similar to the governess in Gothic novels—higher than the servants and not quite family. We were there as animate fixtures, supplying information on cue but not really mingling. It didn’t bother me; I didn’t know most of the guests socially and usually found it more interesting to watch. Valentin seemed to take this with a degree of bad grace, conscious, no doubt, that in really elevated circles, the decorator occupies a much loftier position in the firmament. No one would dream of asking Mario Buatta or Mark Hampton to personally arrange the curtains, the way Mira asked Valentin to do before the guests arrived. Still, it didn’t seem worthy of a major sulk, and I thought Valentin was being shortsighted. There were lots of potential clients, would-be lovers of the arctic landscape look, among the guests.
Mira handled my own position with reasonable delicacy. She told everyone she introduced me to that I was an expert in art who had been instrumental in acquiring the paintings they had chosen. A couple of people asked me for my card, which I gave them, feeling like a real estate agent. I was fairly sure I wasn’t supposed to hold forth on any topic other than the Jensens’ exquisite taste in art and/or furnishings, so in off moments I talked to the caterer. The hors d’oeuvres were delicious, and I wondered where she’d found the ingredients.
The only difficulty I’d encountered was in trying to explain to Mira why none of the artists could attend her soirée. The sole explanation that would satisfy her was that at least one of them was dead, and even that she seemed to regard with skepticism, as if they could have been there if they’d really wanted to. Merely living in Paris, like poor Fred Pinto, was no excuse.
Looking around, I wondered which guests were friends of Mira’s. The men—and a smattering of tailored, smart-looking women—gathered in knots, dropping names like Goldman Sachs and Monitor Co. into the conversation. There was a significant contingent of twenty-something trophy-ettes, separated by barriers of age, class, and mutual suspicion from a set of the still-married-after-twenty-years group, the latter with their skinny upper arms exposed like prizes in the war against gravity. As I had reached the point where certain parts of my body sometimes flapped in the opposite direction of my general motion, I knew this was no small victory.
Mira air-kissed everyone, but I wondered where she fit in. The twenty-somethings were her natural peers, but they were Attached Units, just like she was, and however desirable a miniscule waist might be in real life, it only goes so far as the basis of a communality of interests.
Maybe she read my thoughts, because she chose that moment to visit my station in the living room. “Having fun?” she asked me, clutching a flute of champagne. She eyed my glass of mineral water. “Don’t you want something more to drink?”
I shook my head no. Actually, I did fancy one of the excellent white wines they were serving, but I had long ago learned that it paid to be abstemious in the presence of clients. “It’s a lovely party, Mira,” I said sincerely. “It was so gracious of you to invite me.”
She smiled gratefully. “Yes, almost everyone accepted. And we’ve gotten so many nice compliments on the art and decor.”
“Well, you deserve them.”
“Thank you,” she said, without irony. “Is there anyone you’d like to be introduced to?”
I started to demur gracefully when I realized I was about to pass up the perfect opportunity to start work on my sleuthing. Or on the article. Or maybe both.
“Well, actually…”
Mira put her hand on my forearm. Her tennis bracelet had stones that would not have embarrassed Marla Trump. “Don’t be shy,” she said. “I’d be happy to introduce you to people who might be useful to you. Now that Jordan and I are building a collection, we’ve met a number of other people who are interested in collecting, too.” She was clearly relishing her new role as Patroness of the Arts. Well, more power to her. Now that government-grant money was running dry, people like her were the artists’ last best hope. And mine, too, not incidentally.
I wondered how best to put it. “That’s very kind of you, thank you. What I was wondering is whether you might introduce me to people you might have met or seen at Natasha Ivanova’s parties—that is, if there was anyone there who’s here tonight,” I asked her.
Her brow wrinkled and then cleared. “That’s right,” she said, “you were on that jury.”
“Yes, but that’s not the only reason,” I assured her. “You mentioned she was a collector, too.”
“Yes, but that old woman at the gallery had never heard of her.”
I winced inwardly on Karin’s behalf. Mira looked around the room, surveying the crowd. “I’m not sure,” she said finally. “We go to so many affairs. Still, I believe Dennis and Patrice were there, and Julia and Bruce. You’ll know Dennis, of course. He was on the Today show.”
She pointed to a man across the room. He was handsome enough, but very pale, with bad teeth. He was wolfing down, if I am not mistaken, Camembert quesadillas.
“I’m afraid I—”
“You know, Dr. Nugent,” she insisted. “The diet doctor.”
“What kind of diet?” I couldn’t help asking.
“You haven’t heard of him?” she asked in astonishment. “His book is called The Fat Can Be Beautiful Diet, and it’s sold, like, millions. He used it on Patrice, and you can see what she looks like.”
“Patrice?”
“His wife. She was a runway model in Paris before they got married.” Unconsciously, she touched her own slim hips with her outspread palm. “I’ve u
sed it, too. You can eat lots of kinds of fats and sugars, as long as you maintain the right metabolic balance. It really works.” She smiled. “I could loan you my copy, if you like.”
“Thank you,” I said dryly.
She put a hand to her mouth like a teenage girl. “Oh, I didn’t mean it like that,” she said.
“That’s okay,” I told her. “It sounds too good to be true, so I’d probably love it. I’m still waiting for the Doughnut Diet.”
We both looked wistfully at the hors d’oeuvres tray as it went by, and let it pass. “Do you know how they met?” I asked her.
“Who?” Her attention had already lighted on something else.
“The Nugents,” I said.
She shook her head. “I knew her before she was married, but she was a much more famous model than I was. We went to the same parties once or twice. Why don’t you let me introduce you, and then you can ask her?”
Patrice Nugent was a great-looking woman, something like an even more slender Whitney Houston. Her mocha skin and long black hair were perfectly set off by a simple silk tunic and pants in vivid blue. She looked like Egyptian royalty. When she was made-up for photographs, she must have been truly awesome.
She and Mira complemented each other, like an extremely elegant set of salt and pepper shakers. Had they walked around together on the street, they could have single-handedly raised the auto insurance rates in Los Angeles County. I could see several of the men in the room getting that glassy-eyed look that signals an elevation in the hormone level. In a few moments, they would be sloshing their drinks on their shoes.
“Ellen’s an art expert,” Mira said, in the course of introducing me. “She’s interested in Natasha Ivanova.”
I’d forgotten to warn her not to mention it up front, and now it was too late. All I could do was see how the news registered. It didn’t, much, although Dennis rolled his eyes a couple of times. After two or three minutes I noticed that he did this a lot, so it was hard to tell if it meant anything.
“Why is that?” Patrice asked me.
“I heard she was an art collector,” I said, before Mira could volunteer anything more.
Patrice smiled, showing dazzling teeth. I was mesmerized by her looks, wondering what it was like to be so galvanizingly attractive. She seemed heedless of the admiration and envy she was exciting, but it might have been just an act. No one could fail to be aware of having such a powerful effect on people. “Actually, what she was, was a show-off,” she said. “Not to speak ill of the dead or anything, but…”
“You didn’t like her?”
Her husband was watching her over the rim of his glass. She flashed him a smile. He smiled back, a newlywed grin, and went back to the conversation he’d been having with, if I remembered correctly, an oral surgeon from La Jolla. “She was okay. But very dramatic. Overdressed, too much jewelry. Some big-bucks baubles, too. Sort of like a more tasteful Barbara Cartland.” She smiled. “She always looked as if she was getting ready to have her portrait painted.”
That surprised me. Her corpse had been very stylish, and, if you didn’t count the Cartier watch, restrained. “Was she intelligent?” I asked.
“Oh, yes. But her opinions were a little too definite, if you know what I mean.”
“Her opinions about art?”
“About everything.” She gave me an assessing look. “Why are you really interested?”
I gave her a brief slice of the truth. “I was on the jury that convicted her murderer,” I told her. “Not all that much came out about her in the trial, and I’m interested in the fact that she had a reputation in the art community. Mira told me she was a well-known collector.”
“Well, she had these parties,” Patrice told me. “Mira and I were invited to a couple of them. God knows why; I certainly wasn’t interested in collecting the kind of art she was showing. I like very modern work, you know, the postminimalist stuff. The art she showed was too mainstream for me, and anyway, I couldn’t afford any of it till I married Dennis.”
She was completely unselfconscious about this forthright admission, so I decided to press on.
“So, basically, the art she was showing was offered for sale?”
“In effect, though it was more subtle than that. I mean, the art is for sale in the galleries, too, but when they have an opening, that’s not what they push, is it? It had that kind of flavor.” She pursed her lips. “She probably made some money at it—I know Dennis bought a couple of paintings from artists through her—but I think the real point was to gather a possible clientele for her other business. I mean, everybody there just happened to be single, and people were looking at each other as much as they were at the pictures.”
I longed to ask her if she had met her husband at one of these events, but I couldn’t think of how to do it. I wondered what Cynthia would have said.
“How often did you go?” I asked her.
She wasn’t fooled. “I was invited a number of times,” she said. “I only went twice. I met Dennis, so I stopped, but it really wasn’t bad. I got the impression that several of the men there expected to meet me personally. That doesn’t bother me, but it seemed a little fake.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” she said with a small smile, “that the event had an air of prearrangement. Like maybe some of them paid her to introduce me to them.” She shrugged. “Well, that was her real business, after all. The rest of it was just an expensive hobby.”
“Would that be unusual? I mean, someone paying to arrange an introduction?”
“Actually, no,” she said with disarming frankness. “A lot of people seem to glamorize the ‘profession.’ Some of them are sick weirdos projecting their fantasies. If Natasha’s guests were actually clients, at least they weren’t in that category. They were successful and affluent, and some of them were charming. If they paid to meet me, I really don’t mind. But I can’t say for sure, because I didn’t ask them. Usually it’s a little clearer.”
I couldn’t help myself. My eyes slid against my will to Dennis, who was, if I was not mistaken, holding forth about the virtues of pecan pie. I was definitely warming to this diet.
I looked away again quickly, but Patrice had caught me. She looked very serious. “I never asked him,” she told me. She pursed her perfectly shaped lips, which shimmered with frosty lip gloss. “I don’t want to know.”
Unlike Patrice, Julia Livingston was neither young nor beautiful. She was also very rich—trust-fund, old-money rich—a fact that Mira was not too well-bred to point out, sotto voce, of course. She had the confidence to wear very little makeup, and her hair was straight, faded, undyed gray-blond. Her clothing was so quiet it almost whispered, although what it whispered was “expensive.” The effect was an unsettling plainness that was clearly chosen. Everything about her proclaimed “discreet.” If I was going to learn anything about Natasha Ivanova from her, I would have to be very careful. She looked nowhere near as forthcoming and flamboyant as Patrice.
Her husband, Bruce, was a decade younger, his wife’s opposite. He looked like an aging surfer, with candid blue eyes, a vivid smile, short brownish-blond hair, and little crinkly sun lines around his eyes. Not devastatingly handsome, but a perfect poster boy for Southern California, raised on sunshine and fresh orange juice. Mira described him as a “financial analyst,” a catch-all description of a catch-all profession, and an “asset manager.” I wondered if the assets under his management were Julia’s.
“I’m delighted to meet you,” Julia said, in a quiet voice. Her hand was very cool. “I’m very impressed with the art you’ve chosen to begin the collection,” she said.
This was a no-no. “All the credit belongs to Mira and Jordan,” I assured her.
“Yes, of course.” She smiled slightly. “I noticed you’ve concentrated mostly on Brazilians.”
“Not deliberately, although I do think there are exciting things going on there because of all the crisscrossing influences. Really, I’ve jus
t worked with the Jensens on what they liked as well as what I thought would appreciate in value. Are you a collector?”
“My husband is,” she said, with a slight note of emphasis I couldn’t quite decipher. “He has excellent taste.”
Bruce gave us an “aw-shucks” smile. “Yes, I do, don’t I?” he said, looking at his wife fondly.
All this uxoriousness in one evening was getting a little hard to take. Maybe it was a new form of one-upmanship, a competition for the most perfect connubial satisfaction display in an age more characterized by domestic disintegration.
“What kind of art are you interested in?” I asked them.
“As a matter of fact, we’re furnishing a new house, and we might be interested in some Latin American works,” Julia said. “Maybe not anything as cutting-edge as these.”
Bruce winked at me. “My wife’s taste tends to be more traditional.”
I smiled but said nothing. There were usually hidden themes in such conversations, and it was better not to get involved.
“I was wondering,” Julia said to me.
“Yes?” I asked encouragingly.
“I understand from Mira that you specialize in Latin American art. Would you be willing to come look over the house with a view to seeing whether you could find anything for us? I’d be very interested in your ideas.”
Would I ever. “Certainly, I’d love to.”
Bruce caught his breath as if he were about to say something, and then he swallowed it. “Terrific idea,” he said brightly. Too brightly. I pegged him as the type who wanted to do it all himself, or at least convince himself that he had. I could handle it; it was not that uncommon.
“I’ll write down the address,” she said, crossing the room to retrieve her purse. I followed. She took out her pen and wrote on a piece of paper, folding it over. I reached out to take it, but her fingers didn’t release their hold.
“I heard you asking questions about Natasha Ivanova,” she said, very quietly.
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