Cutwork

by Monica Ferris

  “‘Twinkie-mobile?’”

  “Don’t you remember that TV show ‘Barney Miller’?”

  “Sure—oh, Ron Harris, who had all those euphemisms for Bellevue and the wagon that took you there!” Betsy laughed. “So when you fell in love, it was a mutual thing?”

  “Not always. Well, hardly ever. Once, actually.”

  “Is this the one time?”

  “No, the one was my first husband. This one’s infatuated.”

  “Shelly . . .”

  “I know, I know. But infatuation can lead to love. And I’ve intrigued the artist in him. He wants to make a kinetic sculpture of me.”

  “What’s a kinetic sculpture?”

  “I’m not sure. It moves—he says he loves the way I walk.” Shelly demonstrated her walk, mugging elaborately over her shoulder as she went between the box shelves into the back of the store. She did a model’s turn. “What do you think? Am I poetry in motion?”

  “You move smoothly, I can see that.” And she did, she was graceful as a dancer. As Shelly came back, Betsy continued, “What’s he like as an artist? I mean, do you really think he’s an artist, or is he a poseur?”

  “We had a conversation about that. I like your word, poseur, better than mine, pretender—but he’s not either; he really is an artist. He’s starting to influence me, the way he looks at everything, really everything, as a possible work of art. He got all interested in the light on the irises in Mrs. Elmo’s backyard, how the eye perceives shape and how distorted from reality perspective can be. So I told him about Marc Saastad’s patterns of roses and irises, and how he indicates shadows with color changes, and I almost had him persuaded to try a counted cross-stitch pattern. I guess you had to be there, but it was really amazing. I love the way his mind works, always aware of the play of light on textured surfaces. It must be like hearing music all the time.”

  Betsy said, “I had a friend who was a writer, and she said a part of her is always standing off to one side, taking notes.”

  “He says to be a successful artist he has to stay in touch with his inner child.”

  “I’ve heard that. Ever notice how often their inner child is a brat?”

  Shelly winced. “Touché! Though his doesn’t seem to be altogether a brat. It’s more like taking a three-year-old for a walk. It’s a way to see with new eyes how wonderful the familiar is.”

  “Speaking of new and familiar, this favor Ian did for Rob McFey, giving him money for his insurance policy, is this something he’s done before?”

  Shelly turned serious. “I asked him about that. And he says he’s always tried to spread the wealth around when he can, but nowadays he mostly gives money to foundations that aid artists. He says he used to make loans but he hardly ever got it back. And they’d just waste it, anyhow. Artists, he says, are rarely able to manage money. He includes himself in that—he has an attorney handling his money.”

  “So why did he give money to Rob McFey?”

  “Rob wasn’t stupid about money—and anyway, he didn’t give him money, he bought a viatical. He’s done things like that before. Once, when an artist didn’t have any insurance, he gave him a kind of mortgage. It was another welding artist. He says that’s where he got his oxyacetylene torch. The artist died in a fire in his studio that was attached to his house and all Ian got was the torch and a heap of ashes.”

  “When was this?”

  “I don’t know. From the way he talked about it, he gave him the money three or four years ago. The artist died in a fire soon after.”

  “Was this welding artist on the verge of becoming famous, like Rob McFey?”

  Shelly shook her head—then did a perfect double take. “What, you think Ian murders artists he thinks might become rivals?”

  Betsy raised both hands in protest. Put baldly like that, it did seem ludicrous. “No, of course not! I’m just trying to collect as much information as I can. Somewhere in all this mess, there’s a clue I’m probably missing.”

  “Oh. Okay.” She thought. “I don’t think he was about to become famous—this other welding artist. I’d never heard of him, anyway. He told me the guy’s name. Begins with an O. Benedict O. Gregory O? A Pope’s name,” she said, and thought some more. “His last name was Omar. No, Oscar. Well, something like that.” She shook her head.

  “Does Ian ever talk about why he does welded-metal sculpture? I mean, as opposed to clay, or stone.”

  “He can do clay, and stone. But he told me he likes the primal appeal of metal, its ability to take on any shape. He says most of the art we’re making today will rot or fade or fall apart, but metal won’t. He says metal is . . . alchemical. He says it’s like wizardry. You take copper and tin and melt them together to get bronze, which isn’t what you’d expect. It’s a whole different metal, not like either of them. And copper and zinc make brass, which is even more different.”

  Betsy said, “Wait a minute, I want to hear about Ian, not get a lecture on metal alloys.”

  “Well, it’s kind of to the point,” said Shelly. “Ian says people used to think metal workers were in league with the devil, you know, because they could handle white-hot iron and not get burned to death. And I think he kind of likes that idea, that his work is dangerous, both really and spiritually. He quotes this poem by Kipling: ‘Iron, cold iron, is master of them all.’ Meaning master of metals.”

  Betsy recited, “‘Gold is for the mistress, Silver for the maid, Copper for the craftsman, cunning at his trade.’”

  “Yes,” nodded Shelly, “that’s the poem, about the baron sitting in his hall. He gets all moved and excited about steel. He does this thing with the surface, gives it a patina, so it turns colors.”

  Betsy said, “I thought those big steel beams were painted.”

  “They were. But he hasn’t done the big steel beams in years. He does these smaller things—well, comparatively smaller. I saw a model of the tree piece, it was kind of like an Ent from Lord of the Rings, old and noble and sad. He said inspiration smote him hard and he did about six of these figures all in a rush. His gallery got all excited so he did two more not quite so fast—and he’s not satisfied with the later ones. He says that well was shallow and went dry, and now he wants to move on. But his gallery wants more of them. He’s working on one, it looks like an old man with a lantern, and he doesn’t like it very much, either. The Ent one turned up at a major auction and sold for over three times what the gallery price was, which was sixty-five thousand dollars. He’s getting reviewed by important critics and museums are interested.” Shelly’s voice had softened with awe. “His gallery keeps raising its prices, now they’re into the higher six figures, and they’ve still sold all but one. But he insists this lantern man will be the last. I told him he can work on whatever he wants to part of the time but he should definitely go with the flow and make more of the ones that really sell. Do you think I was wrong? I mean, there’s this artist thing about inspiration, but how can he just shrug off eight hundred thousand dollars?”

  Betsy lifted her hands. “You know him better than I do. Is he more after money than he is being true to his art?”

  Shelly thought that over. “You know, I can’t tell. Sometimes I think it’s being rich and famous he likes, and other times, I think he’d live in an unheated basement rather than give up his welder.”

  “So long as he has a welder, he won’t freeze,” said Betsy with a wink.

  But Shelly was too involved in talking about Ian to get the joke. “I told him, if he’s out of inspirations he could maybe go back to the first ones and just do variations on them. There’s a screaming little girl that’s very powerful, I saw a picture of it on his website. He could do that child as a boy, for example.”

  “Isn’t that cheating, to do something over again?”

  “I don’t think so. That artist who just paints his canvases all one color does that over and over. And museums just keep buying them. But . . .” She sighed. “Ian doesn’t want to prostitute his art—t
hat’s what he calls it. He says he wants to move on to the next level.”

  “A kinetic sculpture of you.”

  “Well . . . Well, yes, that’s right, isn’t it? I wonder what it will look like?” Shelly did a few waltz steps, arms up and around an imaginary partner. “I shall inspire him to new heights.”

  Bing! A customer came in, and Shelly fell back to earth to help her find a wedding sampler. Betsy went back to stitching.

  Now that she’d reeducated her fingers and was satisfied she could maintain a high level of sameness in the stitches, she could relax and get into the movement. As with knitting, the repetition took only a fraction of her concentration and the rest of her mind began to stroll through the furniture of this murder case. It studied the shapes and decided what went with what—and found a lot was missing.

  For example, she didn’t know much about the actual murder. Perhaps she should talk to Deb Hart, who had run the Art on the Lake fair for many years. Deb might know if there had been any previous trouble at Rob McFey’s booth. For example, Sunday was the second day of the art fair. Had there been any trouble on Saturday? Had Banner Wilcox come by to make threats? Had Rob told anyone he was expecting trouble?

  And was Banner really a nice little man, full of sound and fury but ineffective in action?

  What was the relationship between Ian Masterson and Rob McFey? By Shelly’s description, Ian was indeed well on his way to becoming an Important Artist, so how come he stayed friends with Rob after he realized Rob wasn’t able to help him with publicity? Nice that he had, of course, because he was able to help Rob by buying that viatical—and could afford to wait for the payoff. Had someone helped Ian when he was starting out, so that he thought it worth his while to do the same for others? Kind of nice to know he wasn’t entirely self-centered, that he was a man who, having attained a high plateau, reached down to help others in their struggle to climb up.

  Unfortunate that Rob McFey hadn’t lived to realize his own dream of fame.

  Or had he been happy where he was, selling at art fairs? Betsy, through her volunteer work at Excelsior’s art fair, knew there were many who were content to travel from fair to fair, rubbing elbows with the general public, making them happy to take home something to ornament their houses.

  Of course, Irene Potter, Excelsior’s zaniest stitching artist, wasn’t one of them. She had thought she would like selling at the fair, but she had only the smallest understanding of how other people’s minds worked, and was always surprised by their vagaries. She was, however, so prodigiously talented with her needlework, that soon her contact with everyday people anxious—or not (and that was always to her amusingly great surprise)—to buy her work would be minimal. But Betsy was glad she was at this last fair, because her telling Betsy what she had seen that Sunday morning was very helpful.

  It supported her theory that Mickey Sinclair had come upon the murder scene right after it had happened, and had taken the money from the cash box left helpfully visible. And if that was so, maybe he had come there so promptly he had seen something useful. Or someone. She would have to go see him again and ask.

  Once she started considering, there were a lot of questions she needed to ask. This case was like the cutwork she was trying to master, full of holes. Bad choice of comparison, she thought with a grimace, remembering how Rob McFey had died.

  Tomorrow was her day off, but the major restocking of her refrigerator and linen closet she had planned would have to wait. It was time to go talk to people.

  17

  After the shop closed, Betsy phoned the Wilcox home. Wilcox was puzzled when she said she wasn’t with the police but wanted to talk to him about Rob McFey’s murder anyway.

  “Why, what’s your interest in this? Are you a reporter?” His voice was pleasant but high-pitched.

  “No, sir, I’m doing an investigation on my own, as a private citizen. I talked with Skye McFey today, and—”

  “How is Skye?” he interrupted, sounding concerned.

  “She’s sad about her father, of course, but otherwise seems to be coping.”

  “Poor kid. She was her daddy’s little girl, and he was crazy about her.”

  “Yes, I’ve gathered that. She’s an intelligent young woman. She said I should talk to you, and I wonder what you’re doing tomorrow.”

  “Well, ordinarily I might say it’s none of your business what I’m doing tomorrow.” Betsy crossed her fingers. “But since Skye said I should talk to you, all right. Still, tomorrow I’ve got three job interviews, the first one around ten and the last around three. How about day after tomorrow?”

  “No, tomorrow would be best. May I take you to lunch?”

  “No, I’ll be on the road at lunchtime. But say, how about breakfast?”

  “All right, where should we meet?”

  “No, you come over to my house.”

  Betsy hesitated. “Well, I’d be all right with that but I wouldn’t want to make extra trouble for your wife.”

  He replied, with a smile in his voice, “It won’t put Peg out; I cook breakfast most mornings. Are you lactose intolerant? I make a mean pancake.”

  “No,” said Betsy. “And I love pancakes.”

  So around seven the next morning, Betsy came into the sweet-smelling kitchen of a little white house in Edina. Banner was a trim, short man, seriously balding, with pale blue eyes behind rimless eyeglasses. He had a spatula in one hand and an apron protecting his good charcoal gray slacks. He wore a T-shirt, and Betsy noted there were no love handles.

  He greeted her in his light, Father Mulcahy voice and led her into the kitchen. His wife was standing near a French window, a cup of coffee in her hand. She was a tiny creature, with graying blond hair cropped very short, and very pretty blue eyes.

  “Hello, Ms. Devonshire,” she said in a voice made more pleasant by a Georgia drawl. “I’m Peggy Wilcox.”

  The kitchen had recently been expanded; it was bigger than the living room. It had stainless steel appliances, quarrystone counters, and a tile floor—a he-man kitchen. It smelled deliciously of coffee, pancakes, and spiced apples.

  Banner seated Betsy at an oak breakfast bar and presented her with a plate of hot pancakes pulled from the warming oven and gave her a choice of syrups or apples cooked with cinnamon. Betsy chose the latter.

  Peggy sat down to a quarter of a pancake and reached across to fill the cup waiting by Betsy’s plate. “I’ll just finish up and leave you two alone.” She took a bite, drained her cup, and with an enigmatic glance at her husband, went away.

  Banner piled a great heap of pancakes onto his plate and, when he came to the table, poured lots of blueberry syrup on them. He filled his cup from the pot on the table, added sugar and cream, and sat down. “I’m gifted with a pretty active metabolism,” he said, gesturing at the plate. “I was the skinniest kid in my class right through college, even though I ate everything I could sink my teeth into.” He cut into his pancakes with his fork and took a big mouthful.

  Betsy cut off a bite and sank her teeth into a lightweight sweetness of apples and pastry. She chewed, swallowed, and said, “Gosh!” Then, “Have you always liked to cook?”

  He grinned, showing blue teeth, and said, “No, but if I wanted something good, I had to make it myself. Peg is a terrific wife everywhere but in the kitchen.”

  Betsy tasted her coffee, which proved to be industrial strength, but not bitter. “I told you I was investigating Rob McFey’s murder,” she said. “And I want to ask you about him.”

  He cut viciously into his stack, saying, “I wanted to kill him.” He glanced at her, saw her raised eyebrows. He nodded sharply and continued, “I even bought a gun. If someone hadn’t got there ahead of me, I might have. That bastard, excuse my French, ruined me.”

  “Were you on bad terms before he sold Information Please?”

  “Hell, no! We were good friends for years, we’d started about the same time at Barton-Bailey and worked accounts together. It was his idea to start our
own company, but I was glad to go along. I was management and accounting, he was sales and design. We had six employees and were looking for a seventh. The company was strong, we had some really satisfied accounts and were about to pick up another one, when he got sick. And all of a sudden he wasn’t interested anymore. It was like, ‘You know, I never liked this business.’” Banner said that in a slow, thoughtful, mocking voice. “I couldn’t believe it. He worked harder than anyone else, even me—and I did like the business.”

  “I understand he drank a lot.”

  “Well, yes. Yes, he did. But he’d always done that, even back at B and B. I never saw him under the table, or even drunk enough that I was afraid to let him drive home by himself. He had what my father used to call a hollow leg—he could drink a great deal and not show any effect. He was a great salesman, everyone looked forward to his presentations. He’d have clients and staff laughing like maniacs. Everyone liked him. I liked him—hell, I loved him. He took me places I never thought we could go. We were a success, a big, fat success. Then—” He snapped his fingers. “He didn’t like advertising anymore, he’d never liked advertising, he wanted to carve statues out of wood and sell them at street fairs like a goddam hippie.”

  “He thought he was dying and wanted to follow his dream.”

  Banner nodded and ate more pancake. “I know, I know,” he said to his plate, shrugging. “But so what? If I found out I was dying tomorrow—well, right now it wouldn’t be the great tragedy I would’ve thought it was back when I was vice president of Information Please. But still, I would remember my responsibilities, to my family and fellow workers.” He swallowed, looked a bit distant for a moment, then recalled himself with another little shrug. “It was a sad day when we got the news. Poor Rob, I thought, what a tragedy. He’s just hitting his stride with the company. We’d gone public, you know, and our stock was up a few points damn near every day the market was open. We’d been getting offers from Makejoy and ignoring them, but Rob got sick and suddenly things were different. He went to talk to them and came back all enthusiastic about how great they were, what a great offer they were making, how well we’d do if we accepted their offer. And I, like the gullible idiot I can be at times, believed him.” His voice turned bitter. “I got screwed. I had put all my eggs into the Information Please basket, and it worked extremely well for me. So I transferred them to Makejoy—and lost it all.” He took a deep breath, let it loose, and took a drink of coffee.