A Fit of Tempera

by Mary Daheim

  MARY DAHEIM

  A Fit of Tempera

  A BED-AND-BREAKFAST MYSTERY

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  JUDITH GROVER MCMONIGLE Flynn scooped up a handful of dirt,…

  TWO

  ONE LOAD OF garbage, a sackful of mildewed linen, and…

  THREE

  IN A FLURRY of sound and motion, Iris Takisaki flew…

  FOUR

  A HUNDRED YARDS upriver, on the former site of a…

  FIVE

  JOE FLYNN URGED his wife to flaunt her talents. She…

  SIX

  “BY THE WAY,” said Judith as the cousins prepared to…

  SEVEN

  “SHUT UP AND pass the salt,” Renie said as the…

  EIGHT

  THE COUSINS COULDN’T see any reason not to return Clive’s…

  NINE

  THE TIN HAT Cafe in Glacier Falls wasn’t the newest…

  TEN

  JUDITH WAS FRESH out of advice. All she could do…

  ELEVEN

  “I CALL IT ‘Morning,’” Lark explained to her astonished listeners.

  TWELVE

  JUDITH ALMOST DROPPED her martini. “What?” She gaped at Iris.

  THIRTEEN

  JUDITH AND RENIE weren’t sure what was more miraculous: that…

  FOURTEEN

  JUDITH WAS DEBATING the efficacy of Truth. Fortunately, for Renie’s…

  FIFTEEN

  “WHAT ABOUT THE phone?” Renie demanded as the cousins waited…

  SIXTEEN

  UNDERSHERIFF ABBOTT N. COSTELLO was off duty. He could be beeped, however,…

  SEVENTEEN

  “STOP!” JUDITH SHRIEKED. “I can’t stand it! How could you?”…

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  OTHER BOOKS BY MARY DAHEIM

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  ONE

  JUDITH GROVER MCMONIGLE Flynn scooped up a handful of dirt, tossed it onto the bootbox, and bowed her head. At her side, Cousin Renie intoned the prayers for the dead.

  “‘Out of the depths I have cried unto Thee, O Lord…’”

  The words echoed in Judith’s ears as she gazed down at the sturdy cardboard box that held her first husband’s remains. Dan McMonigle had been dead for five years, but, Judith reflected, he had traveled more since his early demise at age forty-nine than in the last decade of his sedentary life. From the squalid rental house on Thurlow Street to the Grover home on Heraldsgate Hill, from the old toolshed in the backyard to the commodious Edwardian basement, he’d finally come to rest under the evergreens at the family cabin.

  “‘From the morning watch even until night let Israel hope in the Lord…’”

  Dan had enjoyed the cabin, as much as he had enjoyed anything other than stuffing his face, guzzling booze, and making Judith’s life miserable. His business schemes had ruined their finances, his disposition had soured their marriage, and eventually, his gluttony had destroyed him. As Judith was wont to put it, when Dan hit over four hundred pounds, he blew up. It wasn’t precisely true, but it was close enough.

  “May he rest in peace. Even if he was the biggest jerk I ever met. Amen.” Renie closed the prayer book and grabbed a shovel. “We did it, coz. Mike will be pleased. And Joe ought to feel relieved.”

  Judith, however, was still standing motionless at the other side of the shallow grave. There were tears in her black eyes. For whom? she wondered. For Dan, who had sympathy only for himself and strangers? For Mike, who had loved Dan as a father, but resented the harsh treatment of his mother? For herself, she who had been more relieved than grief-stricken when Dan died? Or for the eighteen years they had wasted, with Judith struggling to keep their travesty of a family together and Dan losing the fight against his self-destructive demons? Judith saw that Renie was looking at her, half-smiling, half-frowning.

  “Well?” Renie demanded, shoveling dirt over the bootbox. Judith didn’t say anything. Renie shrugged and kept shoveling. “That’s okay. Go ahead and cry. You never did much when Dan was alive. At least not around me. If Joe were here, he wouldn’t blame you, either.”

  Joe. Her second husband’s name stopped the tears and brought a smile to Judith’s face. She squared her wide shoulders, forced her statuesque figure to stand erect, and picked up the other shovel. The May sun filtered through the vine maples. Fallen branches covered with moss crisscrossed the dark earth. New ferns, budding trilliums, wood violets, and wild ginger grew around the little hollow. It was so peaceful in the forest, Judith thought, with the sound of the river rolling past and the spring air tinged with the lush scent of new growth. Across the river, above the cottonwood, Douglas fir, and alder trees, Mount Woodchuck sat comfortably with its winter crown of snow.

  Renie threw out more dirt, then began stomping about, evening off her handiwork. She grasped a small vine maple branch and snapped it in two. “I’ll make a cross to put on top,” she said. “Or should I form a ‘D’ for Dink?”

  Judith’s expression was wry. “It’ll work either way.” She waited for Renie to complete her task, crossed herself, and collected both shovels. The cousins headed back up the little rise to the cabin.

  For over half a century, the rustic summer home had sheltered the Grover clan. Only in the past few years had the younger generation developed other interests, and in the process, become weaned away from the verdant forest and outdoor plumbing. The cabin had suffered neglect. Moss covered the shingles; the front-porch floorboards were rotting; the downspouts, blown away in a winter windstorm, lay rusting among the salmonberry bushes.

  Still, the interior provided a snug retreat. No one could have guessed by looking at the exterior that the little cabin could sleep at least ten without resorting to sleeping bags. The living room contained a fold-out couch and a Murphy bed; the two bedrooms next to the kitchen held a double and two twins, respectively; the loft had yet another double bed. The furniture was old and inexpensive, an eclectic grouping of cast-off wooden chairs and tables. Grandma Grover’s homemade curtains hung at the windows, their serviceable blue-and-white plaid faded by the sun. Linoleum covered the floor, cracked and patched, worn away by four generations of work shoes, wedgies, bedroom slippers, sandals, sneakers, combat boots, hiking boots, fishing boots, and, in high summer, bare feet.

  Though the world had changed in over fifty years, the cabin had not. The kitchen’s wood stove remained, as did the sink with no running water. The cousins had stopped nine miles down the highway in Glacier Falls to pick up ice for the icebox. There was no electricity, and the outhouse was a good twenty yards from the back door. While the younger generation of Grover-McMonigle-Jones et al. found it a bore to rely on Coleman lanterns for light and on their own devices for entertainment, Judith and Renie enjoyed getting back to Nature, at least occasionally.

  “I’ll start a fire,” said Judith, delving into the wood box. “It may be spring, but it’s still cool.”

  “I suppose we can’t haul water from the river like we used to before we learned about germs,” mused Renie. “Do you think The Artist will mind if we dip into his well?”

  Judith was crumpling old newspaper. “He never has. Of course, it’s been a while since we’ve been over there.”

  “And he wasn’t world-famous when we used to trot our buckets to his place ten years ago,” Renie noted. “Riley Tobias has done very well for himself. I saw in the paper the other day that his paintings command a fifty-grand minimum.”

  “Wow!” Judith raised her dark eyebrows. “Think of all the customers I’d have to run through the Bed & Breakfast to earn that much! I’m lucky if I take in three grand a week during the height of the tourist season. And that’s gross.”

  “It’s gross, all right,” Ren
ie replied, getting down on her haunches to wrest the water bucket and the metal five-gallon milk container from under the sink. “My last graphic design project brought me a niggardly four grand, and it took six weeks. Maybe I should call myself a real artist and pretend I can paint. Some of Riley’s recent stuff looks like he sat on it.”

  The newspaper flamed; the kindling crackled. Judith replaced the heavy round stove lid, then opened the vent on the chimney. “This stretch of river has always attracted artists and such. Is that how you got inspired, coz?”

  Renie snorted. “You know what happened. My college profs got sick of me doodling instead of taking notes. Dr. Putz in the History Department told me to get the hell out and hie myself over to the Art Department. I took him seriously.” Her round face grew ingenuous. “And thus was a career in graphic arts launched. Wasn’t it lucky I knew what I was doing?”

  “It’s more than I did,” said Judith, waiting to make sure the old stove wasn’t likely to blow up. “Oh, I enjoyed being a librarian, but I would have liked it more if I hadn’t had to make extra money tending bar at the Meat & Mingle while Dan lay around like a lump and ate us out of house and home. Running the B&B is much better. Especially now that I have a husband who—imagine!—actually works!”

  Renie grinned at her cousin. Judith’s elation over her second marriage had not yet worn off. Their first anniversary was coming up in late June, and if Joe Flynn could get away from his duties as a big-city homicide detective, they planned a long weekend in San Francisco. Judith beamed in anticipation, then suddenly pulled a long face.

  “I shouldn’t have come here for three days,” she declared, grabbing the big galvanized water bucket. “If I’m going to take off in June when the guests start pouring in, I should have stayed home now.”

  Renie gave an impatient shake of her short chestnut curls. “You haven’t had a break since your honeymoon. Relax. It’s Tuesday of the first week of May. You only have four guests coming in while you’re away, and Arlene can take care of them. She’s done it before; she knows the drill like the back of her hand.”

  Judith had to admit that Renie was right. Besides being a longtime friend and neighbor, Arlene Rankers was well versed in the hospitality business. Still, Judith had qualms. “It’s not the B&B that bothers me so much as…Mother. This is the first time I’ve left her alone with Joe. Or should I say, left Joe alone with her.”

  Renie pushed open both halves of the Dutch door. “Don’t worry about it. Your mother has her apartment in the old toolshed, and Joe will be in the house—when he’s not at work, sorting out mass murderers.”

  Judith remained dubious as she and Renie trudged through the trees to the meadow that fronted Riley Tobias’s house and studio. The clearing, which had probably been part of a farm in an earlier era, provided an untrammeled view of the mountain. Long grasses, clover, wild strawberries, and vetch sprawled from the riverbank to the fence, from evergreens at one side to birch and alder on the other. The setting provided a favorite foreground for Tobias, who was also keen on cloudscapes. His one-story house was considerably newer but only slightly more sophisticated than the Grover cabin. The studio, however, was dazzlingly different, with huge panes of glass, two skylights, and a stone fireplace.

  It was there that the cousins first spotted Riley Tobias, his back turned to them as he tossed some crumpled paper onto the empty grate. Judith wondered if it was a discarded sketch; she marveled that he didn’t try to sell those, too. Riley Tobias seemed to have reached a point in his career where he could have sold his doodles in the Yellow Pages.

  Since Tobias wasn’t actively painting, the cousins had no trepidation about knocking on the knotty pine door. The artist opened it almost at once, beaming in welcome.

  “Judith! Serena! It’s been years! Come in!” He stepped aside and made a courtly bow. The big smile stayed in place, emphasized by the graying brown beard and tangled mane of curly hair. Riley Tobias was a big man, well over six feet, broad of shoulder, wide of chest, with huge hands that could apply paint to canvas in the most delicate ways.

  He offered chairs; he proffered beer. The cousins accepted both. The studio was remarkably uncluttered, with only a few paintings tucked away under cloths and a large but empty easel. There was no sign of paints or palettes or brushes at the ready. Judith guessed that they had caught Riley between works. After the initial catching up, she posed that very question.

  Tobias laughed, his big body vibrating with amusement. “I’m between periods, actually,” he replied. “You know my landscapes—the mountains, the sky, the forest, the river. That was the seventies and most of the eighties. Then came people—my own version, what I call neonerdism. Not in public, of course.” He laughed some more. “But people are such…silly creatures. They’re so average. And that’s what I wanted to capture, the ordinariness of the human race.” He got up, causing his cane-backed chair to rock on its legs. Tobias bounded over to the covered paintings. “Look here—is this or is this not a nerd?” He whipped off the cover to reveal a five-by-seven-foot acrylic of what looked to Judith like a plate of cole slaw.

  She blinked. “Ahhh…” She darted an appealing glance at Renie.

  “Mm-mmm,” murmured Renie.

  Tobias tapped the orange part of the canvas. “See those eyes? No expression. He isn’t perceiving. His body language”—Riley pointed to what looked like a blob of mayonnaise—“is timorous, ineffectual. He’s caught in life’s trap, destined to live out his days in vain.” With his knuckles, the artist rapped on a zigzag pattern of bright green tinged with brown. “That’s his soul—fresh, untried, yet withering around the edges. Painters, like writers and poets, seek Truth. You can paint a lie. In fact, you can do it without knowing you lie. But the measure of greatness,” Riley went on without the least nuance of self-consciousness, “is in capturing what is true. That’s what my nerd is all about. I’m not quite finished exploring the spiritual side. Does it dismay you?”

  Judith was indeed dismayed, but not for the reason Riley Tobias thought. All she could think of was cabbage, left by her mother in the refrigerator until it spoiled along with the mauve baloney and the blue horseradish. “Gee, Riley,” she said, trying to sound enthused, “it’s certainly a change from your earlier style.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Renie, never as strong on tact as her cousin, “we used to be able to tell what you’d painted. At least we knew the difference between animal, vegetable, and mineral. Are you sure you haven’t enrolled in the Twenty Questions School of Art?”

  Briefly, Riley Tobias looked annoyed. Then the big smile again spread through his beard. “Serena Grover Jones, you are, as ever, too tart. If I were to ask why you put a castle on the cover of a real estate company brochure, what would you say?”

  Renie looked only a bit taken aback. “That the company I was working for wanted to project an image of palatial properties, of affluence, maybe even security.” She gave a little shrug.

  Tobias had set his nerd up on the easel and returned to his chair. “Exactly! But that company is not selling castles. I’m not painting portraits.” He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his vivid blue eyes darting from cousin to cousin. “Do you get it?”

  “Well—sort of,” Renie allowed, picking up her can of beer.

  Judith gave a little shake of her head. “I know what you’re saying, Riley. I’ve never understood abstract art, or whatever you call it. You’ll have to forgive my ignorance.”

  Riley took a big pull from his beer, then shot out of his chair again, apparently struck by inspiration. “I can do better than that!” He lunged across the room once more, this time wrestling with a very large painting that was at the back of the covered collection. At last he managed to pull it away from the others and set it on end in front of Judith and Renie.

  “My last landscape,” he announced with flair. “It’s yours.”

  Judith remembered Riley’s earlier landscapes as falling into two categories—sure, strong strokes of bold colo
r, or muted pastels that evoked a tranquil feeling. His last—or at least his latest—was a hodgepodge of blue, green, brown, pink, purple, and yellow. The colors weren’t unpleasing, but the execution was jarring. Riley might have been trying to capture a river scene—or more cole slaw. Judith tried to focus on the subject matter and took a wild guess:

  “Oh, Riley,” she said with a crack in her voice, “you painted it here?” She saw him nod with self-satisfaction. “It’s…striking! But I couldn’t possibly take it. This painting must be worth a fortune.”

  Tobias, holding the painting with one big hand, gave a shrug. “I knew you’d say that. Then borrow it instead. Hang it in the cabin. Or would you like it for that B&B you’ve set up?”

  Judith tried to imagine the Riley Tobias original among the English hunting prints, the Dutch florals, and the Hudson River school landscapes that dominated the walls of Hillside Manor. Tobias’s work was four feet high and five feet wide. She had no idea where to put it. Maybe, she thought, blinking at the clashing colors, high on the stair-well, where the sun didn’t shine…

  Tobias gingerly set the painting against a large seaman’s chest. “I’ll wrap it for you. How long are you staying up here?”

  “Just three days,” Judith replied, watching Riley Tobias wrestle with a roll of bubble-wrap and some sturdy cardboard. She and Renie exchanged quick glances of dismay. “Really, this is too generous. You must have all sorts of old friends and devoted admirers who’d love to have that…”

  But Riley was chuckling and shaking his head. “When it comes to friends, I travel light. Always have; you should know that. As for admirers, let them pay.” Deftly, he tied heavy twine around the covered painting. “Early on, twenty years or so ago, when I was still splitting my time between this place and the houseboat in town, who kept an eye out for me? You and your relatives, that’s who. Remember that winter when your Uncle Corky shot a mountain lion that was trying to break into the studio?”