by Jane Tesh
She pointed to the spoon. “Oh, yeah, that’s it.”
I showed her the other photos. “Did your uncle have any of these things?”
“Nope, just the spoon.”
“Did he mention Leo Pierson or Art Nouveau?”
“No.”
“Let me forward these photos to you, and if you see any of these items in your uncle’s house, would you contact me?”
She regarded me suspiciously. “You think my uncle stole this stuff?”
“I’d be curious to know where he got it.”
“Okay, and I’ll give you his number, too. Maybe you’ll have better luck reaching him.”
We exchanged numbers, and after I sent Rainbow the photos of Pierson’s treasures, Camden complimented her on one of her rings.
She held out her hand. “Do you like it? It’s one of those mood rings from the Sixties.” She tugged it off and dropped it into his hand. “Try it.”
He slid the ring onto his little finger where it immediately went black.
“Oo, I’ve never seen it do that,” she said. “You must be having a bad day.”
He looked pensive, as if this was another bad sign. “Or my hand is cold.”
“That’s true.” Once back on her finger, the ring changed to blue. “Do you want to try it?” she asked me.
“Maybe later. Do you know of anyone who might want to harm your uncle?”
She flipped both braids back. “He’s really not the kind of guy people notice. That’s why he runs off. He just wants attention.” She glanced over to the busy counter. “I’d better go help Janice. Was there anything else?”
“No, thank you.”
“No problem.”
She drifted away. “Anything from the ring?” I asked Camden. “You looked like it bit you.”
He pushed his hair out of his eyes. “Everything she told you was true, and that’s definitely one of Leo’s spoons. She’s much more concerned about her outfit.”
“Well, now that we are fortified and have an honest-to-God clue, let’s take a short trip to Madison and see if Gallant’s hiding out at his museum.”
Chapter Three
“In This Dark Tomb”
Madison, like Celosia and Burnley and Tillson’s Corner, was one of the many small towns in North Carolina that replaced fading textile mills with a growing wine industry. Madison was forty minutes away, past strip malls, clusters of fast food restaurants, and acres of lush vineyards. When we got to the gallery, I parked beside a fleet of U-Haul trucks. One truck was backed up to the museum door. A dark-haired young man with a clipboard directed two workmen carrying a very large painting of a three red triangles and a big black dot. Two more workmen waited on the sidewalk. One held a statue of an oddly shaped black dog. The other had his hands full of iridescent blue-green tiles.
“That’s it. A little more to your left. Yes, slide it in next to the cabinet. Perfect.” The young man made a check on his clipboard list. “Okay, Wandering Dog goes next, followed by Uniform Tiles #650. Fill in the rest of the space with the paintings I showed you.” He turned to us. “Can I help you?”
I didn’t want word to get back to Jordan that I’d been snooping around, but fortunately, Camden usually dresses like a starving artist. “I’m John Fisher and this is my client, J. Michael. You may have heard of his work, The Other World Collection. We’d like to speak with Samuel Gallant about possibly holding a show here at the gallery.”
He shook my hand. “Andrew Winston, assistant curator.” He had an open, friendly face with dark eyes behind tortoise shell-framed glasses. “Sorry, friend. Mr. Gallant isn’t here and even if he were, it wouldn’t do any good to talk to him about a show. The gallery’s closing, due to lack of funds.” He indicated the trucks. “We have to return everything we borrowed, which is almost everything in the museum.”
“Do you have any idea where he is or how to get in touch with him?”
“I can give you his number, but he may not answer. I don’t mind telling you, he’s a man who’s easily distracted.”
“Is that one reason you have to close?”
“No, we were in financial trouble long before that.” He made another mark on his list and called over his shoulder to one of the workmen. “Don’t forget that stack of frames in the hall. Oh, and did somebody get that pair of red vases? Be sure you double-wrap them in bubble wrap.”
The workman assured him the vases would be double-wrapped. Another one approached carrying a bright yellow fire hydrant complete with a gush of plastic silver water. “Is there room for Hydrant Amarillo in this truck?”
“That goes to the Museum of Modern Art in Parkland,” Winston said. “Truck five.”
Hydrant Amarillo was hauled off to its new home.
“Too bad we couldn’t buy that for Rufus as a memento of our last case.” I said to Camden. When Rufus borrowed a bulldozer from his construction site and attempted to flatten a realtor’s office, he’d managed to run over a hydrant. Fortunately, Angie had been on hand to straighten him out.
“Anything else, gentlemen? I’m really very busy.”
Time to come clean. “Mr. Winston, my real name is David Randall, and I’m a private investigator. Were you aware that Gallant’s niece filed a missing persons report on her uncle, and the police consider his disappearance suspicious?”
He blinked, startled. “What? Suspicious? What do they think happened?”
“They’re not sure. When did you last see Mr. Gallant?”
He gave his glasses a push to resettle them on his nose. “Last Saturday. I remember because it was crazy around here. We were trying to have a discussion about moving everything out and we kept getting interrupted. He had numerous phone calls, and three people stopped by who had to talk to him.”
“Did you know these people?”
“One was Chance Baseford, and everyone knows him. Gallant had asked him to come have a look at the museum in the hopes of getting a good review in the Herald—like that was going to happen. I personally wouldn’t give that old codger the time of day. He’d say I was off by ten minutes.”
Chance Baseford was editor and art critic for the Parkland Herald and notoriously derisive of anything that didn’t meet his impossibly high standards. I was surprised he’d bother to come to a small failing museum outside of Parkland.
“One other man was Richard Mason, who came to pick up one of his outdoor mobiles, and the other fellow I didn’t know, but he was a large man with a booming voice and wavy red hair.”
Leo Pierson. “What did he want?”
“I didn’t hear their conversation. I was trying to get some work done.” He gave his glasses another push. “Are there serious suspicions about Gallant’s disappearance? I would bet you anything he’s just wandering around somewhere.”
“I hope you’re right. Were there any Art Nouveau pieces in the museum?”
“Gallant wasn’t into Art Nouveau. He was more interested in modern art, you know, squiggles and big splotches of paint. Which reminds me.” Another call with instructions. “Make sure we got the top that goes with Mason’s errant wind mobile.”
One of the workmen called back. “Thought that guy was coming to get it.”
“He forgot the top. I told him we’d bring it to Parkland.” He grinned at me. “If I were Mason, I’d forget the whole thing. It looks like a pile of rusty leaves to me.” Someone shouted another question. “Tell them to go ahead and load the statues. I’ll be there in a minute. Sorry I can’t be more help, fellas.”
“You’ve been very helpful, thank you. Would you mind if we had a look around?”
Fortunately, his list held his attention. “If you think it’ll help.” He reached into his pocket and handed me a key. “We finished cleaning out the main building Tuesday. There’s not much to see, but go ahead.”
The museum was a mod
ern gray stone building shaped like a horseshoe. I unlocked the carved wooden door. Inside, the curved walls were bare and the floors had been swept. Camden felt along the walls where pictures used to be and wandered through the larger hall and touched the empty pedestals.
“All modern art, as he said.”
“So Baseford, Mason, and Pierson all paid a visit on Saturday. Three possible connections to Gallant’s disappearance.”
Camden stooped down to pick up something. “Here’s a piece of wire.”
“Special wire that will lead to the killer?”
“No, but I can use it to fix the screen door.”
“Then I’m glad our trip to Madison wasn’t a complete loss.”
But as Camden straightened, he froze. “Major vision coming in fast,” he managed to say before he started to fall.
I caught his arm and kept him upright. “What is it?”
“Damn, what’s with these sudden attacks? They’re so abrupt.” He’d steadied himself, so I let go. He pushed his hair out of his eyes. “It’s Gallant. He’s here somewhere.”
“Hiding?”
“Dead.”
I looked around the empty hallways. Outside, the workmen continued to haul artwork to the trucks as the supervisor checked off each piece. “Where is he?”
Camden’s cell phone rang, startling us both. He pulled it out of his pocket. “It’s Kit.” He answered and listened. “Yeah, it just happened. I know, thanks. That’s what I saw. Okay.” He ended the call. “Kit apologized for the late warning. Gallant’s in the storage closet at the end of the hall.”
The unmistakable odor of a dead body, rotten fruit, and a cabbage smell, hit us first. Even though we were expecting it, it was still a shock when I opened the storage closet door—a slack dead face and shiny brown shoes, right before Gallant’s body toppled like an ironing board toward us.
“Look out!” I pulled Camden back, and we jumped as the body hit the floor.
Camden swallowed hard. “Good Lord.”
It was Samuel Gallant, all right. I recognized the bored expression and the sneer, now permanent fixtures. His yellow short-sleeved shirt and khaki slacks were rumpled, but I didn’t see any bloodstains, and he still wore his brown loafers. Out for a casual stroll, a last-minute inspection of his museum, or unsuccessfully hiding from an enemy?
Camden and I had encountered enough dead bodies to know not to touch him. I didn’t see any stab wounds, gunshot wounds, or evidence of strangulation. The body didn’t have the cherry-red color associated with carbon monoxide poisoning.
“He’s been missing for three days, but his body is still stiff,” I said. “What’s the deal with rigor? Thirty-six hours?”
“Sometimes longer, but three days is pushing it.”
“He was alive on Sunday when Rainbow did his laundry.”
We looked around for anything that might give us a clue to his death. Now that the body was found, Camden’s bad vibes had disappeared. “Randall, look at that.” He stooped down and indicated an object lying behind Gallant in the empty closet.
The little leafy spoon gleamed silver in the half-light.
“The spoon he showed Rainbow.”
“We’d better leave it right there,” I said. “It’s bad enough we found the body. We can’t tamper with evidence.”
Camden straightened. “Why didn’t the workmen find him? They had to notice the smell.”
“They finished in here Tuesday, remember?” I gave Gallant’s body one more look. Although I couldn’t roll him over for another view, there were no indications of a struggle. The closet wasn’t airtight, so he wouldn’t have suffocated. It was as if Gallant himself had gone into the closet and died. I’d been joking when I said maybe Gallant was hiding out in his museum. He’d played his last game of hide and seek. “Maybe he had a heart attack.”
Camden looked skeptical. “That doesn’t explain why he was in an empty closet. You want me to call Jordan?”
“Yeah, go ahead. He likes you.”
Jordan may not have been exasperated at Camden, but he wasn’t happy to find us at the scene of the crime. He took our statements and told us to get out. I wanted another chance to talk to Andrew Winston, but he was appalled by the discovery of the body and in earnest conversation with another officer. The workmen stood by the trucks, waiting their turns to be interviewed, smoking cigarettes, and looking unconcerned. When I started in their direction, another policeman warned me away.
“At least one of the spoons has been found,” I said as we walked to the Fury. “If Gallant showed the spoon to Rainbow and bragged about becoming rich, he must really be the thief, but where did he stash the rest of the artwork? Too bad you couldn’t hold the spoon for a minute.”
“The way my visions have been lately, I’d be afraid to.”
We got into my car and sat for a while, decompressing. Since starting my own agency, I’d seen more dead bodies than I liked, and Camden has a long list of horrors he says he’ll never forget. Add one more to the nightmare file.
“You okay?” I asked.
He took a deep breath. “Yeah.” His phone rang again.
“Is that Kit? Maybe he saw what happened.”
“It’s Ellie.”
I could hear Ellin’s voice, but couldn’t quite make out the words. I wasn’t surprised when he ended the call and said, “Red alert. Crisis at the PSN. We’d better get over there before Ellie implodes.”
Chapter Four
“If My Complaints Could Passions Move”
Before heading to the TV studio, I called Pierson to tell him Gallant’s body had been found and so had one of his spoons.
“The police will want to talk to you, and so do I.”
“He’s dead? I can’t believe it!”
Before he could launch into dramatics, I said, “Why did you go to Gallant’s museum Saturday?”
“To talk about showing my artwork, of course. Why else would I go?”
To check out closets big enough to store a body? “Didn’t you know his museum was closing?”
“I thought an exhibit of my Art Nouveau could help turn the tide.”
In a museum devoted to modern art? “Did you leave one of your spoons to hold your place?”
Pierson’s voice was loud enough to reach the highest balcony in the theater. “What are you talking about? No, I did not! If the police found one, does that mean Gallant stole my treasures? Then who killed him? Why? Was the dragonfly there? The poster? The vase?”
“After you talk to the police, give me a call.”
Camden didn’t have any details on the PSN emergency. Apparently, Ellin’s signals were too scrambled. But I knew we’d learn all about the problem in full stereo sound and high-definition. The Psychic Service Network is Ellin’s reason for living.
Ellin was holding a meeting on the light-pink and blue set of Ready To Believe, one of the PSN’s popular shows. The set was decorated with two pink chairs and a low white table set with flowers and an array of healing crystals, as well as pictures of swirling stars and planets hanging on the pale blue walls. The soothing psychic colors and healing crystals were not working today. Waiting along with her were Bonnie Burton, Teresa Perello, and Reg Haverson. Bonnie and Teresa were the two very attractive women who hosted Ready to Believe and Past Forward. Bonnie had feathery blond hair. Teresa was a brunette. Both had soft voices and a soothing manner, off-stage and on. Reg was the emcee, announcer, and warm-up man. All three were standing a safe distance away, not surprising, since Ellin was in one of her killer moods. I could practically hear the hum of radioactive anger.
Ellin Belton Camden was a stunning woman with short golden curls, big blue eyes, and a great figure. Seeing her, you think, “Wow, what a doll.” Get in her way and you realize you’re about to become part of the pavement.
Camden and I had entered the
side door of the small brick building and had passed the rows of seats for the audience, the cameras, and stepped over a fat row of cable on the floor when Ellin came at us in full force. “Cam, you will not believe what Matt Graber has done now. He’s stolen one of our best potential sponsors, and he has the gall to say he wants to be on the PSN Hour.”
Matt Graber was the host of Cosmic Healing, another show that dealt with the paranormal. I’d caught an occasional glimpse of the program while channel surfing. It looked so boring, I hadn’t been interested enough to watch more than a few minutes. “Why don’t you want him as a guest?”
She spared me a glare. “The only reason he wants to be a guest is so he can turn up his nose at our operation. He thinks he has the only format that works. Standing in front of an audience and answering their questions for an hour is not a format. It’s a snore-fest. We had the Tinkle Time Ice Cream account all sewn up, and now they say they’re going with Graber’s show.”
Teresa looked anxious. “Graber is always so intense. You can never tell what he’s thinking.”
I found this remark amusing since Teresa works for a psychic service, but she’s not psychic, and neither are Bonnie and Reg. Ellin’s even less psychic, if that’s possible, but she’s extremely protective of her network and always ready for battle.
“I’m going to have a word with Tinkle Time, and they’d better have a damn good explanation for why they changed their minds.” She turned on Reg. “You met with them initially, didn’t you, Reg? Did they say why they were going with Graber?”
Reg Haverson had the looks and the tan of a playboy tennis pro and spent more time grooming himself than a pack of baboons. He’s usually all over these staff meetings, pushing for his ideas and his choice of guests, but today he seemed distracted. Probably didn’t have his brand of super-styling hair gel at the Drug Palace.
“Ellin, the Tinkle Time Ice Cream advertising department is two scoops short of a banana split.”
“I don’t care if they’re stupid. I want their business.”
