“Yes sir, they were.”
“Thank you for your service. Did you lose your fingers there? Bomb?” Helland asked.
“Nah. Lost ‘em right after I got back. Ironic, isn’t it? It was an ATV roll-over.”
“That’s sure too bad,” Helland said. “Really too bad. Were you right-handed?”
“Yeah.” Logan growled.
“Say, do you happen to know who parked the John Deere tractor the art show banner is displayed on?”
Logan looked surprised at the change of subject.
“No. I didn’t see who it was.”
Jessie was looking at the artwork. Then she picked up one of his illustrated books and thumbed through it. “I really like your work.”
“Thanks.”
“I notice that all your originals are marked NFS.” She looked at Helland and told him. “That means the piece is not for sale.” Turning back to Logan she asked, “Why are you only selling your prints?”
“Well, yeah. I make a living—not a great one but a living—selling my book and copies of the original paintings and sketches. Both the wildlife and the military prints sell well. In most art shows, you can only display originals on your walls, but they let you sell copies of your original work from a print rack.”
“Uh huh. I’m aware of that rule. I do a few shows.” Helland looked at Jessie with a slight smile.
“Before the accident, I did well,” Logan said. “Now…well, I get by on what I call “pity purchases.”
“Pity purchases?” Jessie asked in a soft voice. “Are you keeping your originals for something special?”
“Well, yeah. Since I’ll never be making new work, I need all my old originals for my display. Otherwise, I couldn’t do the shows.” He scowled at her.
Jessie looked thoughtful. “So, you aren’t making any new work?” Jessie looked incredulous. “None at all? Why not?”
He held up his damaged hand in an angry gesture. “Does it look like I could, lady?” he asked sarcastically. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Jessie’s eyes flashed. She tapped her head with an index finger. “You create art with your vision and mind, not your hands. It might be awkward. It could take you longer than other artists to get the piece the way you visualize it, but you should still be drawing, still be painting. I have a friend who lost her entire forearm in a grain auger accident, Logan.” Jessie reached into her purse and pulled out a business card. “Here’s one of the new business cards she sent me. She a watercolorist.”
He took it with a sour look. His eyes widened, and he glanced at Jessie. “She’s good.”
“You bet she is. And she was right-handed. She hadn’t painted at all before the accident. Afterward, when she decided to take art lessons, she tried to learn to use her left hand. It wasn’t easy. She uses it for most tasks, but when she paints, she still uses her right hand. It’s not a hand…it’s a hook.” She met Logan’s eyes. “She holds her brush in that hook. You have a big advantage over her. You could still hold a brush or pencil—maybe not the same way you used to—but you could make it work.”
“How do you know?” He glowered at her. “Big words from someone who doesn’t have a handicap.”
“Maybe I’m out of line. I probably should apologize, but I won’t. I won’t sell you short. In your work and the book, I see what you can do, and if you keep sitting back—try to get by on what you call the pity sales—then you’re selling yourself short. Give it a try, Logan.”
“Give it a try?” he echoed. “I bet you couldn’t draw a lick with three fingers.”
“Oh? Because I’ll call you on that bet if you want.” She reached into her purse again and withdrew one of her own business cards and slapped it on the small table where the last customer wrote the check. She glared at Logan. “We can tape my index and middle finger together and I’ll give it a shot. I’ll bet you one of my 8x10 originals against one of yours that I can get a decent drawing on my canvas in half an hour, tops. I’ll bet you could, too. You have a lot to offer.” She glared at him. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get on with life.”
Helland looked embarrassed. He took one hand off his cane and grabbed Jessie’s arm, trying to hurry her from the room.
Logan Cooper stepped backward, a shocked expression on his face. “I—” At that moment a couple came through the door. The artist gave Jessie a dirty look and welcomed the browsers to his room.
Helland gave him a short wave and he and Jessie walked toward the door. As Jessie neared the door she turned, put her hand up with the thumb, fourth and little fingers pinched together, the index and third finger stiff. “Anytime, Cooper.” Then she gave him a wink.
After the new buyers left, Logan perched on his director’s chair. He stared at his mangled hand, a thoughtful expression on his face.
*.*.*
“You were very hard on him, Jessie,” Helland admonished.
“No. I wasn’t. I…I was honest. Okay, also rude. He’s being hard on himself being so willing to just curl up and call it quits. You really don’t draw or paint with just your hand, Mr. Helland. And that man has a special way of using color, atmosphere, and brush strokes. He has a wonderful grasp of anatomy and perspective and he has interesting stories to tell. Yes, it would take longer and be more difficult, but he could still tell them. He only thinks he can’t.”
Helland was silent.
“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable, Mr. Helland.” Jessie mumbled.
“No. That’s okay. Sometimes being chewed out by a pretty woman makes a man think. Maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re wrong. If you’re right, Logan Cooper might man up and next year we’ll see some new work. Wouldn’t that be terrific?”
“I hope so. Yes, it would be marvelous.” Jessie said. She again pinched her thumb together with her fourth and pinky finger. “But just in case he calls me on my bet, I’m going to cheat and practice tonight after dinner. I’ll have to ask Esther to tape my fingers together.”
A belly laugh erupted from Helland. “You…are a red-headed rascal,” he said. “And a shyster.” He tapped his cane on the floor and adjusted the strap on his oxygen tank. Then he smiled. “I like that in a woman.”
*.*.*
In the other hallway, several doorways down from the Yellowstone Room, Arvid and Grant stood chatting. Surreptitiously, Arvid had followed Helland and Jessie’s circuitous route from room to room.
Grant yawned. Arvid paused in the hall, looking periodically at the door to the Yellowstone Room. Jessie had been in there a mighty long time.
“Did I imagine it, or did you say you’re following a certain redhead, Arvid?” Grant asked.
Arvid didn’t answer. He moved forward and peered into the room Jessie had last entered.
“Poop,” he said. “She’s gone. And I’m supposed to be watching her.”
“What—”
“There’s an elevator at the end of the hall. Let’s go see if she went to her room.”
Arvid hurried down the hall, Grant almost jogging to keep up. When they reached the elevator, there was a small crowd waiting to get on. The elevator light showed it was currently stopped on the eighth floor. Arvid tapped his foot and glowered at the door. “C’mon. C’mon, you slowpoke,” he muttered.
“Arvid, what the heck?”
“Tell you later. Long story,” Arvid grumbled.
The doors opened. Grant and Arvid stepped on.
“Second floor, please.”
Chapter Thirty-six
After saying goodbye to Helland, Jessie headed to the elevator and pushed the up button. When the elevator doors opened, a little girl with a mop of messy brown hair flew into the space in front of her and began gleefully pressing buttons. A woman with a pudgy baby on her hip, three artists with name tags, and a young couple with two rolling suitcases stepped in behind Jessie. They stood in the expectant posture people assumed when waiting for the movement of the machine to haul them upward. The young couple looked at the bank of glowing lights, sh
owing the selected floors, then at each other. The man looked exasperated. He took the woman’s hand and held it between both his own. Honeymooners, Jessie thought.
“Lynda Sue, stop that. All these nice people will have to wait for the door to open on every single floor if you push all the buttons.” The harried mother had also picked up on the young couple’s impatience and gave them an apologetic look.
“But isn’t that good for them?” The child pressed the last button. At the look on her mother’s face she stepped back and crossed her tiny arms over her chest, chin down, lower lip drooping like melting raspberry gelatin.
“Honey, why on earth would you think it’s good for them? They might be in a hurry.” Her mother, the woman with the now cooing baby, grabbed Lynda Sue’s hand and stepped back into the corner of the elevator. “It isn’t polite to make people wait at each floor when nobody needs to get off. Big people have schedules. Schedules means they have things they need or want to do.”
“You always say we shouldn’t be in so much of a hurry to get what we want.”
“Sure,” her mother said in annoyance, “but sometimes we need to be on time.”
Jessie watched the mother and child. She looked at the baby, a girl. An adorable little girl wrapped in multiple layers of pink fleece, her rosebud of a mouth making suckling motions.
The woman has two daughters. Two. Does she know how lucky she is?
She listened to the chortling coo of the bundled baby and glanced again at the young couple. She felt, rather than heard, a ticking. Big Ben again. To her horror, her eyes begin to fill. To stave off tears she silently recited her oil colors.
The elevator stopped on floor two. Nobody moved. The doors shut. Floor number three. The doors opened. Nobody moved. The young couple shuffled their feet impatiently. Lynda Sue’s mother glanced around and murmured a low apology. The doors closed once more, and the elevator moved quietly upward.
“See what I mean, honey?” the mother chided. “Because you pushed all the buttons, everybody has to wait.”
The little girl grasped a fold of her mother’s jeans and looked up at her with eyes like mirror images of her parent’s irritated orbs. “But it’s so good for them.”
“No. It isn’t, Honey. Why? Why do you keep saying that?”
“Because when you’re busy with the baby, you always tell me that patience is somethin’ everybody has to learn, and I’d just darn well better get with the program.”
Several people chuckled. Jessie covered her mouth to muffle a burst of laughter. Even Lynda Sue’s mother gave a wry smile.
Out of the mouths of babes.
Jessie knuckled her eyes. Right now, finding a husband and having children of her own seemed as likely as elephants trumpeting down the Expo hall.
She thought she’d shoved that dream away a decade before. But when she’d met Grant the previous year, it was like a dim night-light flared to blazing neon. He was what teens would call … heck, what term would they use? She was so long out of that picture she no longer knew what girls would call such a good-looking hunk of male.
Hmmm. She knew what she’d call him. Hot as jalapeno chili. Handsome in a craggy, rugged kind of way, even though he was a city boy. His intelligence was sharp as a razor blade and his sense of humor stellar. Jessie smiled ruefully. A sense of humor buoyed you through rough times like a life-raft over white water. Dad taught me that.
She’d also call Grant remarkably laid back for an FBI agent, even though she suspected he could be dangerous if the need arose. But above all, she’d call him out of reach. Way, way, way away from her home base of Santa Fe.
She sighed. “Well,” her sarcastic inner voice said, “who needs him, anyhow?
On the fourth floor Lynda Sue, her mother and the chortling baby left the elevator along with two artists. Jessie wondered idly what type of work they produced.
Her mind drifted to Tate’s graphite drawings. Again, she thought how odd it was that the Gingerbread Man immediately thought Tate was military.
The short hair? No. Something more.
She’d recently purchased a beautifully illustrated copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland for her nephew. It had always been one of her favorites. When she visited Tate’s art display room, she’d felt like Alice looking down the rabbit hole. Like his room was set as the scene of a play. Then, looking at the pseudo-harmless expression on Tate’s handsome face she recalled the small poem Alice read in the book.
‘How cheerfully he seems to grin,
neatly spread his claws,
And welcome little fishes
in gently smiling jaws!’
Somewhere behind Tate’s eyes she sensed a steely resolve. His off-handed attitude toward his own work and ineptitude in putting together the art room seemed odd. After they’d gone to dinner with Esther, Arvid and Russell, she’d gone back to his room and helped him finish setting up.
It was then she noticed that he had no business cards, no brochures. That’s bad business, but not weird. And she explained he could get some business cards in a hurry at one of the print shops. One should be given out with every purchase and handed to every customer who showed even a remote interest. At dinner he didn’t have any art show horror stories or funny incidents to tell, either. Most artists have a few humdingers. Could it be his first art show?
But of course, there’s nothing wrong with that, she thought. Maybe he just didn’t want to admit he was a newbie.
When the elevator clanked to a stop at the fifth floor, Jessie held the door open while the young couple spilled impatiently out with their luggage. Seeing the long table with the vase and silk bouquet against the wall across from the open elevator door, she realized she’d daydreamed her way to the wrong floor. She and Jack no longer stayed in 510. They were in 212.
Heck. Since I missed my floor, I may as well ride up to the top and back down.
The poster on the elevator wall touted a high-end restaurant and a deck with a dynamite view. Maybe it was worth a quick look before she went down to change.
*.*.*
Arvid and Grant exited the elevator on the second floor. “I don’t know how we lost track of her,” Arvid said quietly, “Not that anything could’ve happened between the lobby and the second floor, but I want to make sure she got to the room okay. As an excuse, I’ll say I forgot to invite her to dinner. Then you and I can go have a cup of coffee and I’ll fill you in.” He knocked on Jessie’s door.
Grant gave him a puzzled look.
“Meowr?” came the reply to Arvid’s knock.
Grant smiled. “She’s got the mouser along.”
Arvid nodded and knocked again. A low growl emanated from the other side.
“Jessie?” Arvid tapped louder.
A minute later, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket. “She’s not here. I’ll give her a call and find out where she is. Shoulda done that to start with.” He looked down at the black screen. “Shoot.” He slapped the phone against his thigh as though he could wake it up. “This battery’s dead. Second time this week I needed the blinkin’ phone and the battery’s dead again. I hate these new-fangled things,” he told Grant.
“New-fangled? Arvid, they’ve been around since 1973. Now, they’re ‘old-fangled’. My cell is in my hotel room on the charger. I’ll go get it and call her.”
“See what I mean? Everybody’s cellphone is always on a charger. Useless pieces of plastic. But nah, she might not pick up if she sees your number,” Arvid smirked, “you bein’ such a silver-tongued devil and all.” He waved a hand toward the way they’d come. “Let’s go back to my room and call from there. In fact, I’ll have Esther call her and if Jessie doesn’t answer, we’ll start back at the lobby and do a redhead hunt.”
“How could she disappear between the elevator and her room?”
“That’s the million-dollar question.” Arvid scowled.
“Okay Arvid, give. Why are you so worried about her? What on earth are you following her around for?” Gra
nt’s jaw clenched. “What’s going on?”
“Someone’s been trying to scare Jessie.” Arvid’s expression hardened to steel. “Or they want to kill her.”
*.*.*
The elevator door opened and shut on the sixth and seventh floors—courtesy of Lynda Sue’s handiwork with the elevator buttons. Jessie exited on the eighth. She immediately saw double doors opening into the elegant Copper Plate Restaurant.
A wooden stand held a menu listing the specialties of the house and the wines offered. Jessie’s mouth watered at the description of the entrées, especially the braised short-ribs with huckleberry BBQ sauce, and the bacon-wrapped bison tenderloin.
Most of the wines on the list were from the award winning Ten Spoon Winery near Missoula, Montana. By the menu stand, a glass-fronted cabinet displayed the available bottles. She put her hands on her knees, bending to peer into the case and scan the bottles, admiring the clever titles and labels on the wines. They were beautiful, indicative of Montana, imaginative and fun.
“Road Block Red” had an image of a Yellowstone bison bull standing in the middle of the park highway, blocking traffic. It was described as a balance of chocolate, tobacco and spice.
Jessie stood, remembering. She tried the wine last time she went to Missoula. Yes, it had held the promised hint of chocolate. I think Arvid would like the spiciness and touch of tobacco taste, too.
“Going to the Sun” Pinot Gris had an image of a backlit Glacier Park mountain goat standing before a craggy range of mountains. According to the blurb, Ten Spoon developed it to honor the mountain goats that leap from peak to peak at the top of the breathtaking Going to the Sun road.
The Pinot Gris, listed as having a delicate floral flavor, sounded like a great gift for Esther. Before I go downstairs, I’ll buy a couple bottles as a thank you gift for switching rooms and ferrying Jack and me back and forth from the Sheriff’s Office.
2 Death at Crooked Creek Page 24
