Art of Evil

by Bancroft, Blair

  “And then?” Martin prodded, while I took a deep breath and thought dire thoughts about little old ladies whose lives were too dull. Dear God, Zorro even fit the arcane time period of the Bellman’s much-vaunted authentic ambiance. The tiny balcony where he’d been seen opened off the Casa’s gameroom, and I was itching to get up to there and look around, and here we were allowing ourselves to be led astray by a dotty old lady.

  “It was so dramatic,” Purple Chemise sighed. “He had this woman in a long white gown in his arms—just like King Kong, you know—and then he raised her up and tossed her over the rail, like so much garbage. A hard toss, you know, to clear the second-floor gallery.” Our tale-bearer clutched her heaving bosom somewhere in the vicinity of her heart and declared, “I nearly fainted, truly I did. It was quite horrible. And then that awful splat, and she—the woman in the white gown, I thought she was real, you see—flew in every direction. My dears, I cannot describe how shocking it was.”

  Martin and Aunt Hy made soothing noises, murmuring their appreciation of her courage in being able to tell us of her perfectly awful ordeal. I wondered how I could sneak back to the elevator and get up to the third floor.

  “I suppose he was wearing gloves,” I offered. My moments of incredulity were fading fast. Purple Chemise’s details held the ring of truth.

  “Naturally, dear. Long ones, with a flared cuff. Like the old movies. The only skin I saw was his chin.”

  Solemnly, Martin thanked her and invited our informant to join us on the remainder of our tour of the Casa. In the background I could see Aunt Hy shaking her head.

  “Don’t you want to see the second floor before we go?” I asked.

  “I saw it in the spring before the House opened,” Aunt Hy declared firmly. “At the moment I’ve had quite enough excitement. I believe we should find our seats for supper.”

  “Perhaps a drink on the terrace?” Martin suggested. (I’d almost swear the old boy was conniving at giving me time to slip away.)

  “I’ll join you in a moment,” I said. “I’d like to take a look at the second floor.” Sure enough, as Martin escorted the two older ladies out the door, he turned and winked at me.

  The advantage of having a cane is that I was qualified to ride the elevator. Instead of 2, however, I pushed 3.

  I moved slowly down the short hallway to the gameroom, looking in vain for any sign someone had passed this way. It was completely empty, the tap of my cane sounding hollow and forlorn. On my right, the removable wall panel that hid the door to the walk-in vault was firmly in place, looking as fixed and innocent as it was supposed to. I stepped into the gameroom, a huge L-shaped chamber, lit only by light drifting up the convoluted staircase from the well-lit second story and in through the tiny balcony far above the Great Room’s floor. An electric charge shot through me. I could see him standing there on the balcony, in swirling cape, Zorro mask, and gloves with flared cuffs, holding the satin-clad mannequin high above his head, hurtling her over the edge . . .

  Head whirling, I leaned back hard against the door frame. I clutched my cane so tightly my knuckles cracked. Conquering my personal phantoms was hard enough, but I’d let Purple Chemise fill my head with nonsense. Yes, someone had been here, but it sure as hell wasn’t Zorro. I snapped my eyes open, poked my head around to the right and checked out the small bathroom. Empty, of course. Undoubtedly, Security had already come and gone, finding the gameroom as deserted and unproductive as I was. There was, after all, no place to hide. Just a great expanse, minimally furnished with a poker table, an ancient gramophone, a few chairs.

  What made the gameroom special were Willy Pogany’s brilliantly colored whimsical paintings on the walls and ceiling. Although subdued by shadows, they seemed to dance along above me, urging me on. Cautiously, I turned the corner of the L. Nothing but the green baize expanse of a billiard table. Frankly, there wasn’t even a place for a mouse to hide.

  If there’s a clue, you know where to look.

  Sure I did. But nothing was going to get me out on that balcony. The balcony I’d by-passed by ten feet on my passage across the gameroom. When I’d fallen from the very same height, my head hadn’t come off, my arms and legs hadn’t separated from my body, but my bones had broken into nearly as many pieces as that poor mannequin. My leg was only the last of many disarranged parts to heal.

  No, not quite the last. My head was going to be last. If ever. When I had forced myself to lie in the sun on Aunt Hy’s balcony far above Sarasota Bay, I had been challenging myself. Sweating it out. Telling myself it was doing me good.

  Believe me, I seized—with a vast rush of relief—the opportunity to get my fresh air via tram-driving.

  Face it, Travis. There’s nothing here except your own phantoms. Catalysts to nightmare.

  What did I expect to find? A golden hair from the mannequin? Useless. A muddy boot print when we’d had nothing but sunny days? Zorro’s calling card?

  But if I didn’t look, I was the worst kind of a wimp. Keeping a firm grip on the gameroom wall with my right hand, I edged out onto the tiny balcony. Its bowed black wrought iron railing seemed to be wavering, moving in and out, in and out. My stomach churned. I transferred my grip to one of the balcony’s upright iron bars and knelt. Teeth clenched, I checked every inch of the balcony floor. Nothing. The mannequin had materialized out of thin air and thrown itself off the balcony.

  Which brought me to how anyone could get into the Casa carrying a . . .

  I scrambled back into the gameroom on hands and knees, all the way to one of the support columns, handpainted in an elongated diamond pattern, which I used to drag myself to my feet. I stood with my back to the colorful geometric shapes until my breathing was close to normal. How long, how long, how long must I suffer for my sins?

  Okay, how could someone get into the Casa Bellissima carrying a full-size female mannequin? From the basement, up the servants’ stairs? But the basement, a Florida phenomenon, compartmented into maze-like sections to deter flooding, was locked up tight.. The Casa had vast attics and the dark hidden recesses that had once held organ pipes. Easy enough to hide a mannequin. But only with inside help. The security system at the House since its renovation was state-of-the-art.

  Or had Zorro climbed the sixty-foot tower, with the mannequin on his back, lain in wait . . . and entered from the outside staircase through a door that was as securely locked as the cellar?

  Obviously, my analytical talents were as rusty as my intuitive ones. Time to move on.

  I climbed one more flight and peeked into the bedroom Will Rogers once enjoyed. I didn’t dare announce my presence by turning on a light, and I was well aware ten Zorros could have hidden themselves in gloom of the private bathroom, not to mention the recessed nook in the far corner, or even under the bed. I finally had sense enough to recall that I was hors de combat, far from able to take on a Bad Guy armed only with my flowered cane. Reluctantly, I headed back to the elevator.

  In front of me, a door heaved open on a rush of sea breeze and cool night air. The security guard and I stared at each other, each too stunned to speak. He was, thank God, someone I knew by sight.

  “Hi,” I managed, leaning heavily on my cane. “I punched the wrong button. Sorry about that.”

  If he wondered why I’d gotten out of the elevator instead of simply correcting my error, he was too polite to say so. Or perhaps he was so excited by his find that his mind was preoccupied by the very human desire to share. In spite of my Schiaparelli, he recognized me as one of the privileged who had security clearance. Proudly, he displayed the items he was carrying. “Found ‘em in the Tower,” he told me. “Guy must have run out of the gameroom and straight upstairs.”

  “But how would he get down?” I’d seen those stairs. Treacherous, outside stairs curving up and around to a tower with a sixty-foot drop on the east side straight down to the driveway. On the bay side, the tower rose twenty or more feet above the uneven expanses of the Casa’s slanted and slippery red tile ro
of.

  “Rope,” the guard told me. “He must’ve rappelled all the way down. I left it up there. Thought the police might like to see it.” He looked down, rather guiltily, at the items in his arms. “Maybe I should have left these too, but I was afraid the wind might blow ’em away. Evidence, y’know.”

  He whipped a flat-brimmed sombrero out from under his arm, waving it triumphantly. A strip of black cloth dangled from the chin strap. With eye holes. Then the guard shook out what had been draped over his arm. A long black cape unfolded straight in front of my nose, its sides swirling to encompass the corridor.

  Shit. It was Zorro.

  The courtyard of the Art Museum glowed with enough ambiance to warm the cockles of the most gimlet-eyed fund-raiser’s heart. Seventy-five round tables, seating eight each, twinkled down the two long sides of the loggia, white tablecloths vying for sparkling honors with the silver tableware, all lit by candles in protective glass tubes. The white-jacketed cooks stood at their food stations, bartenders at attention in front of their glassware and high-end labels. Waiters hovered discreetly. Beautiful people wafted by, found their tables, and sat, to the accompaniment of bright chatter, a few leaning forward to impart the breaking news of tonight’s events at the Casa Bellissima.

  In the center of the grassy courtyard rose a spectral contraption of poles, wires, and double bars, swaying in the light sea breeze, quietly waiting for what was supposed to have been the highlight of the evening’s entertainment. A performance by one of the Bellman Circus’s finest artists, a strong supple lady just coming to the close of a year’s maternity leave. When the Circus returned to winter quarters in a few weeks, she would be plunging into rehearsals for next year’s season. Tonight was to be her return to the world of performance. Although I had never met the high-flying lady, I felt for her. I feared she had already been badly upstaged. Voices around the courtyard were growing louder. News of the latest incident at the Bellman was spreading fast.

  Poor Martin. He should have known he couldn’t keep it quiet.

  It occurs to me you may not have made the connection. Yes, Richard is that Bellman. The most famous of the brothers who tore their way out of poverty by establishing a circus. The circus. The most famous circus on earth. The brother who raised his eyes from the sawdust long enough to discover real estate, railroads, oil wells, and—finally—art. The brother who bought paintings enthusiastically, then gave them away when he became knowledgeable enough to recognize his early mistakes. The brother who made few mistakes after that, eventually acquiring one of the greatest collections of Baroque art in the world.

  Richard Bellman’s business practices, however, tended to be highly creative and secretive, to say the least. It is, most experts agree, a miracle the bayfront property with Richard’s and Opal’s house and the Art Museum, survived to become the property of the State of Florida, as Bellman specified in his will. And now, in the new millennium, the property was rising from seventy-five years of strict, often painful, economy to float, blissfully, into a new roof (no more buckets strategically placed in the Rubens’ galleries), a new learning center, a welcome center, library, more galleries, and sundry other long-needed repairs and expansions.

  No wonder the Director and Deputy Director were usually seen with smiles on their faces. Or was that all part of the PR skills needed to rise to such exalted heights?

  Martin escorted us to our seats with such aplomb, I swear he’d had a look at a master seating chart beforehand. He was that kind of man. No wandering around the loggias, peering at table numbers, for Martin Longstreet.

  Others soon joined us, filling the table. Except, of course, for the seat next to me. Not that I wanted to be obligated to shallow social conversation with some stranger, but, still, that empty seat beside me loomed. I told myself it didn’t matter. I tried not to think of better times when I would have had a date. I tried, very hard, not to feel shunned. But recognizing I was suffering from depression and shaking off my exaggerated feelings were two separate paths. I took the low road, unfortunately, succumbing to an antisocial display of stoic face and monosyllabic replies to all attempts at conversation.

  I was deliberately not looking, therefore, when something solid, but lithe enough to squeeze into the last seat at a table for eight, inserted itself beside me. The something leaned close, whispering intimately in my ear. “Very nice, Ms. Travis. Perhaps you should consider braless on a daily basis.”

  The voice was forever embedded in my brain. I closed my eyes. Introductions flew over my head. I heard the scrape of Josh Thomas’s chair as he half-rose to shake hands with Martin and brush a kiss over Aunt Hy’s limp fingers. (Yes, I peeked, damn him!) Aunt Hy, ignoring Martin’s attempts to shush her, immediately launched into a description of the events at the Casa. All other conversation at our table ceased, seven fascinated faces—including Josh Thomas’s and even mine—focused on Hyacinth van Horne in her turquoise silk Vionnet.

  When all the ohs, ahs, and gasps had finally subsided, Josh once again bent his dark head to mine. “Sounds like you were right in the middle of it,” he said, the black pools of his eyes quite unfathomable.

  I opened my mouth for a deliberately bland reply when I realized the significance of his remark. The person for whom that dirty trick had the most significance had been right there in the room, trailing her tour guide. An arctic breeze rippled over my soul. What had happend at the Casa couldn’t possibly be personal. No way

  “Rory, dear, did you learn anything upstairs?” Aunt Hy called from across the expanse of Martin’s ruffled white shirt.

  “Nothing more than the standard tour,” I declared, loud enough for the whole table to hear. Not difficult, as their ears were en pointe. “I saw Richard’s bed, Opal’s bed, the marble bathtub, the barber chair, and Napoleon’s sister, hanging on the wall, au naturel.”

  “And no sign of the intruder?” Aunt Hy murmured, with a look so arch a child of five would have suspected a conspiracy was afoot.

  “Nothing.” Ignoring her disappointment, I dropped my eyes and lowered my voice to hiss for Josh’s ears alone, “And where were you?”

  “Europe, actually,” he replied, deliberately misinterpreting my question. “I do work occasionally.”

  “Tonight,” I ground out. “When the mannequin bit the dust.”

  “Moi?” He did a nice imitation of wounded ego. “But I’ve just this minute arrived. Straight from the airport.”

  I didn’t believe him. Unfair, unjustified . . . my intuition coming back with a vengeance? Perhaps I associated Josh with bad things because I’d met him on the day Tim Mundell died. Or maybe my skepticism was as simple as the black shirt he was wearing under his tux. Worn with a white bow tie pierced on one side by a diamond stud. Truthfully, when I got up the courage to examine him, the impact was worse than anticipated—and I’d anticipated something pretty dire. Hair—blue black, dark and shiny as an indigo snake. The eyes of a cobra. A Wellington nose (or was it David’s?). Cheek bones as sharp as the shark’s teeth that wash up on Gulf Coast beaches. A mouth so grim I couldn’t imagine him ever kissing a woman. Attacking her maybe; kissing, no-o-o. He was scary. Yet like a flame to a suicidal moth, he beckoned. He sat there, politely applying himself to the salad of baby greens just delivered by the waiter, and I could feel him burrowing in. Oozing through my pores, into my flesh. Into my cracked but mending bones.

  Our connection had been born on an electrical charge, baptized by thunder, and nurtured by an awareness so strong, so frightening, I could actually taste it. Somehow this table pairing had been arranged. How? A couple of octogenarians sprang to mind, though how they knew Josh Thomas I couldn’t begin to imagine. And yet I doubted Josh knew anything about our Roman warrior. And only pure contrariness on my part associated him with Zorro and a shattered mannequin. For why on earth would any man, even one so smugly comfortable with his wicked image, bother tossing a mannequin into a crowd of Gala attendees? It was a nasty, motiveless crime. Surely beneath his touch.
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br />   Yet it nagged at me. Was I sitting next to a man who had played such an ugly prank for the hell of it? A man so motivated by an unknown something that, after tossing that miserable mannequin practically at my feet, he had climbed to the tower, shed his hat, mask, and cape, rappelled sixty feet to the ground, then calmly walked back to the Art Museum through the rose garden?

  He would have been seen coming off the tower. Had to have been seen by Gala patrons, trolley drivers, security guards.

  As I had seen him before he slid onto the tram seat next to me to the accompaniment of fire and brimstone?

  Josh Thomas, invisible man. Yet as we sat squeezed elbow to elbow and hip to hip, I could feel his presence solid as a rock. The most dynamic and least invisible man I’d ever met. And I heard every word of his conversation with Martin Longstreet, passed so casually across me. All that was said, and all that wasn’t. Old friendships and old wars. Unspoken knowledge hovering, elusive. Words coded for public consumption . . . the significant pauses. Martin and Josh were tightly connected, and I was beginning to gain an inkling of how.

  Because of Aunt Hy, for whom secret was not part of the English language, I knew a good deal more about Martin Longstreet than I should. Martin had been CIA, upper echelon. Josh Thomas’s father, I now gathered, had been part of that world. I reminded myself that CIA agents were bound to be acquainted with a lot of strange people. Including dangerous young men they were willing to invite to a Bellman fund-raising event? No matter what I thought about Josh’s black shirt and mysterious motivations, his character was validated by his presence at our table. Martin Longstreet vouched for Josh Thomas. That ought to have been enough, but of course it wasn’t.

  Later, as Josh passed the dessert tray of petit fours, mini key lime pies and cream puffs, he leaned in close, his breath scalding my ear. “Do you trust me enough to let me drive you home? If not, may I meet you in the Ritz bar? I’d like to talk to you.”