Art of Evil

by Bancroft, Blair

  And which of my elderly companions had blabbed about where I lived?

  My fingers betrayed me, rustling the pleated paper cupping the pie I had selected. “Did Aunt Hy put you up to this?” I demanded, hoping a blandly pleasant expression was firmly fixed on my face for the benefit of the rest of the table.

  “Your aunt is charming, but a stranger before tonight.”

  “Martin?”

  Sinfully long lashes opened to wide-eyed innocence. “Martin and my father knew each other in ’Nam. One of those amazing coincidences, I assure you. Well?” he challenged.

  I clutched my lavender-flowered cane, folded in its carry case that I was balancing in my lap, hopefully out of sight beneath the drop of the tablecloth.

  “I’m fond of women with canes,” Josh purred, as if he could read my mind or see beneath the white cloth. When I stared, he added, “Perhaps I fancy females who can’t run fast. I’m told I can be terrifying.”

  “Tell me,” I countered, leaning in as if bent on seduction. I fluttered my nicely mascared lashes. “Where do you carry your gun?”

  “Which one?” He didn’t even blink.

  Since I wasn’t sure if we were playing with the same nuances, I decided to forget about guns for the moment.

  He had, of course, seen my cane that first day in the tram. There could be no other explanation for his clairvoyance. Nonetheless, I recalled that I hated him. He was worse than my physical therapist. But I took up the challenge. I said he could drive me home.

  Aunt Hy was ecstatic.

  Chapter 7

  It’s difficult to choke on something so innocuous as a mini key lime pie, with flaky crust and pale green custard, topped with some twenty-first century version of whipped cream. But I came close to managing it. As I joined the general shuffle to turn our chairs for a better view of the performance in the center courtyard, I saw a young woman of about my own age and build—wearing a spangled minimum of clothing—climbing up, up, up into the rigging. Intellectually, I had thought myself prepared for the performance. Evidently not. My last bite of pie turned to concrete in my throat, bile rising beneath it. My fingers white-knuckled around my cane. The woman was going to perform thirty feet up with no safety net. Thirty feet. Three stories . . .

  A hand, firm and surprisingly warm, dropped over mine, lending strength like a transfusion of good red blood. I kept my eyes on my lap, where the long pale fingers of Josh’s left hand rested over mine.

  A strange man, Josh Thomas. Was there a heart beneath that suave, sophisticated surface? In spite of his compassionate gesture, I suspected his motives. Whatever pumped blood through his veins was as hard as David’s bronze. He was all but unreadable, a misty sorcerer’s mirror that reflected only what he wished you to see. Or—if a girl was stupid enough to be gullible—only what she wished to see.

  To others, Josh might look innocuous, fitting right in with the Bellman crowd, but when I looked at him, I saw a sign in flashing red neon: WARNING—DANGER.

  Only when applause broke out did I allow myself to look up. The talented young woman was back on the ground, making her bows to the crowd, graciously acknowledging her assistants. “Do you know the origin of the expression ‘Break a Leg’?” Josh asked. I shook my head. “In the early days of theater,” he told me, “everyone bowed ballerina style—knee bent, one leg back. None of this bowing from the waist.” He nodded toward the trapeze artist, who was now bowing to the opposite loggia.

  “It’s a killer position,” Josh continued. “Do it enough times, with one knee pumping up and down, and you’ll probably wish the audience had sat on its hands. So wishing a performer ‘Break a leg’ meant you hoped he got enough curtain calls that his leg broke from the strain of taking his bows.”

  I took a deep breath. I could feel color coming back into my cheeks. I peered at my mystery man. His face was a mask of bland civility. “Thanks,” I said. And meant it.

  He patted my hand, then rose to his feet. “I wouldn’t mind beating the crowd out of here,” he said. “Shall we?” When I managed a tentative smile of agreement, he helped himself to my cane case, retrieved the contents, and in a flamboyant Houdini-like gesture, flipped it into its upright position. As he handed it back to me with a gesture as courtly as Sir Walter Raleigh spreading his cloak for the queen, I had to laugh. Perhaps I didn’t hate him, after all. We made our farewells to Aunt Hy, Martin, and the rest of our tablemates, then followed the trickle of wealthy patrons getting a head start toward the parking lot.

  By the time we negotiated the length of the table-filled loggia and passed through the marbled lobby, the trickle had swelled to a moving, but gracious, stream, carrying us along in its midst. Ignoring the wheelchair ramp out front, Josh put one arm around my waist and swept me down the front steps as if I were no more than a ten-pound sack of sugar. While I was busy further readjusting my attitude, the crowd deviated from the front gate, veering left across the grass on a swell as inexorable as the tide. Voices rose. Politely. This time, no screams or pounding feet, but something had definitely detoured the mass exodus to the parking lot.

  We were moving faster now, Josh pushing his way to the front, still holding me tight, my feet touching the ground only every other step. His apologies were polite but firm; no one questioned his note of authority. And then we were at the front of the crowd, standing there gaping like all the rest. At Lygia and the Bull. Except now there were two Lygias. One, a superbly crafted effigy spreadeagled over the bronze original, and far more startling in her painted nudity than Moretti’s Lygia that had once scandalized Philadelphia.

  Mimicking the original, the Lygia of papier maché was tied to the bull’s horns and body by two ropes. In this case, genuine sisal. Her sea-blue eyes were open, wide with terror, her long dark hair—clearly a wig—tumbling down over the Lygia of bronze. The roses scattered over the effigy and onto the ground around the life-size sculpture were real. (There were going to be some furious gardeners at Opal’s Rose Garden in the morning.) One large pink bloom was tastefully placed in the spot where it would most protect her modesty. A nice touch, I thought.

  Like the Roman warrior, this effigy was the work of a very fine sculptor. I would have bet a goodly sum that whoever created this scene had no idea what had happened at the Casa earlier this evening. The sculptor had simply planned his prank for the Gala, then planted his Lygia while everyone was inside eating. Unfortunately, he had decided to up the stakes this time around. For, unlike the original who was merely stretched out over the bull’s back, this new Lygia was in the next stage of the unequal contest. The effigy’s pale peach shoulder was impaled on the bull’s bronze horn. Blood red paint spilled from the supposed wound, dripping down the Lygia of papier maché to fall over the bronze flank of the bull as well. (The outrage of the curator and conservators would surely eclipse that of the gardeners.)

  Unlike the crude mannequin, this sculpture was magnificently executed. Beautifully life-like, the face of Lydia Hewitt was unmistakable. Oh, Billie, you idiot!

  For about thirty seconds Josh simply stared at the great bull with its double burden of Lygias—memorizing the scene, no doubt. Then, without a word, he turned me around and slipped us sideways out of the crowd, moving along the front fence toward the gate. “Stay put,” he growled after we passed through the black wrought iron gate, then sprinted off to retrieve his car from the parking lot across the road. Gratefully, I leaned back against a pink stucco wall and reviewed the evening’s events. Curiouser and curiouser.

  There was no reason to blame Josh Thomas for any of this mess. Yet after he had made his mysterious appearance out of thin air a few weeks back, things had gone steadily downhill at the Bellman. Associating him with disaster was irrational. Absurd. Yet I couldn’t get away from the uncomfortable suspicion that somehow he was mixed up in all this. He had to be. Why else was he here?

  Josh Thomas, patron of the arts? Not likely. Josh Thomas, businessman spending a few off hours at the Bellman? Possible . . . still unl
ikely. Josh Thomas, gone to ground? What better place could a man with multiple guns find to hide in plain sight—taking a breather, as it were—than at the Richard and Opal Bellman Museum of Art? Screening for weapons was not part of the Bellman’s routine.

  And yet, both times Josh Thomas had come to the museum, he’d ended up sitting next to Rory Travis. An unacceptable coincidence.

  Josh pulled up in front, ushering me into his rental car as solicitously if we were on an actual date. Perhaps we were. As we turned onto the drive leading to the Tamiami Trail, I looked back in time to see Detective Sergeant Ken Parrish stepping down from a silver gray SUV. Oh-oh. My next interrogation was going to be unpleasant. Damn it, Billie, what have you done? I don’t want to be mixed up in this.

  Yet something was going on besides the plea of a young and unwise sculptor for recognition. The trouble was, I had no idea what. A mannequin tossed from a third-floor balcony made no sense at all. Unless . . . Prickles started in my toes and swept all the way to my head. Unless . . . it had been personal. Aimed at me.

  Na-a-w. Couldn’t be. No motive. No one had anything to gain from my reliving my life’s worst moment.

  As it turned out, I was wrong. But it took me an inordinately long time to figure it out.

  “A copycat?” I said to Josh as we sipped our drinks at the Ritz-Carlton’s dark and atmospheric Cà d’Zan bar. We’d been examining the evening’s events for half an hour and were back to Square One, up against an impenetrable wall. “Someone heard about the Roman warrior and decided to use a mannequin to disrupt the Gala?”

  “The problem remains the same,” Josh countered. “No motive. What can anyone gain from causing trouble at the Bellman?”

  “Someone out of the past, fighting old battles? Someone who doesn’t want the museum to survive?” I warmed to my topic. “Someone furious because the millions from the state take away the museum’s autonomy?”

  When Josh nodded, I suspected he was humoring me. “Possible,” he agreed. “Sick, but possible.” For a fraction of a second, his cobra eyes flickered, offering the tiniest hint of emotion. “There’s something you’re not saying,” he told me. “We agree the mannequin doesn’t fit with the other two effigies, but there’s more. You’re hedging on the sculptor. You know him, don’t you? You can tell me, you know. I’m safe. I’m off to Lima tomorrow.”

  I knew he didn’t mean Lima, Ohio.

  “Perhaps,” I conceded. “Perhaps not.” I cupped my hands around my snifter of brandy, warming my favorite B&B. And deliberately changed the subject. “Tell me about yourself,” I said. “Who is Josh Thomas?”

  The silence lengthened, as I knew it would.

  “An international traveler,” he said at last.

  “Making occasional stops in Sarasota.” He nodded. “And whose father knows Martin Longstreet.”

  “Knew. A long time ago.”

  “When Martin was CIA.”

  “That’s a leap.”

  “So is the coincidence of you turning up here just as all hell breaks loose at the museum.”

  His eyes flicked over the room, checking it out. It was late, the customers few. We were totally isolated at our window table overlooking the terraces and the marina outside—the wood, fiberglass and chrome of the expensive craft gleaming under a barrage of security lights.

  “Okay, my turning up here is not a coincidence. And, yes, I’ll tell you about it some day.” He leaned forward. As if I had no control over my body, I leaned in as well. Our noses were inches apart. Our eyes met. “One day, when you’re ready, I’m going to offer you a job,” Josh Thomas said. “I hope to hell you’ll take it.”

  “On which side of the law?”

  “That,” he returned steadily, “is occasionally in doubt.”

  He paid the bill, throwing down bills as carelessly as Aunt Hy. Arms dealer? Trust fund baby? Maybe both.

  Correction . . . Lima. Peru. Lots and lots of coca leaves.

  Not a pleasant thought.

  Josh walked me to the elevator (under the sharp eye of the Ritz-Carlton security guard who also knew dangerous when he saw it) and there, in the tastefully lit, plush-carpeted corridor, he leaned close and whispered: “Arrivederci, cara mia. Sta’ bene.” And then his lips—those two thin uncompromising lines of flesh—touched my cheek. “Corragio,” he added as the elevator doors slid open.

  When you grow up on the south coast of Connecticut, you inevitably acquire a few words of Italian, omerta being high on the list. With words of love, whispered by dark-eyed Lotharios, close behind. Take my word for it, cara mia was basic minimum in the love department. Nor did I need to be wished well. I was doing just fine, thank you, before and after the fleeting appearances of Josh Thomas. Corragio, however, I considered an insult. I did not need to be wished courage, particularly by a dark-eyed satyr who carried more than one gun. And maybe had a penchant for swirling black capes and rappelling off sixty-foot towers.

  And then the elevator doors closed, obscuring the face that somehow managed to look saturnine and smug at the same time. When I got to my room, I scrubbed my cheek until it was as pink as the rose over Lygia’s privates. But the kiss didn’t come off. I was branded. Seared to the soul.

  And tomorrow I had to face Billie Ball Hamlin. And Detective Sergeant Ken Parrish.

  The next morning, after a snarling goodbye to my physical therapist, I set out to find Billie. After the Roman warrior incident, I had cornered him in the staff snack bar in the farthest southwest corner of the Art Museum basement. Although the snack bar’s five miniature tables, tucked amidst shockingly modern vending machines, had been empty except for ourselves, I’d not been able to get any satisfactory answers from him. Yet I was certain his eyes were dancing with delight over the sensation created by the Roman charioteer. And he had looked positively smug when I praised the workmanship. But, other than that, Billie “Golf Ball” Hamlin was accustomed to keeping secrets. He did it with as much style and panache as he put into his sculptures of papier maché.

  Alleged sculptures.

  But today I wasn’t going to accept evasion. Billie seemed to have a surprising amount of talent, yet he was burning whatever bridge he hoped to have to the museum. (I had overheard Martin Longstreet expound on the Bellman Board’s opinion of the Roman warrior prank, and learned a few sophisticated substitutes for the F-word that I memorized for future reference.)

  Today, I didn’t dare ask where Billie might be on the vast grounds, for I had no doubt Detective Parrish would hear about it. I settled for eating my bag lunch at the picnic tables behind the restaurant and keeping an eagle eye on every golf cart that passed by. Each driver nodded or waved, but none of them was Billie. The seventh, one of the slightly less nubile young things en route from the Education Department to the Circus Museum, stopped to talk. We had a nodding acquaintance from the docent training classes, which I had audited so I could answer all those questions visitors ask their tram drivers. Patricia Arkwright was tall and severely slim, with blond hair cut short below her ears. She had the authoritarian personality of a nineteenth century schoolmarm—learn or get your knuckles rapped—although I judged she was not more than a year or so older than I. And she tended to treat the roomful of gracious, well-educated, and well-dressed volunteers training to be docents as if they were on the same intellectual and social level as a busload of fifth graders.

  Today, it seemed Patricia had heard that I was present when the mannequin splintered on the Casa’s black and white marble diamonds. “Is it true the man was dressed as Zorro?” she demanded.

  “There was a witness who says so,” I replied, blithely ignoring any claim she might have to a need to know.

  Her blue-gray eyes regarded me with only minimal suspicion. I was, after all, merely a tram driver. A volunteer. Not a docent. Not even a tour guide. She was wasting her time. What could I possibly know?

  “’Lo, ladies,” said Billie as he pulled up beside us. “Lookin’ good, Pat,” he added with a glance that didn’t m
iss an inch of the blond from Education.

  Patricia Arkwright blushing? I’d expected her to give Billie the cold shoulder, no matter how good looking, how macho, or how talented an art student. So . . . under that brittle exterior Pat liked men. Had I ever heard her put down one of the male trainees? A definite no. I tucked that seemingly irrelevant fact into my slowly awakening brain.

  “Oh!” Pat exclaimed, “I’m late for a class.” After a final brilliant smile aimed at Billie, she put the pedal to the metal and scurried off toward the classroom at the Circus. (She was, of course, teaching, not taking, the class.)

  Billie offered me a vacuous grin, peeping at me through half-closed lashes, undoubtedly lowered to mask his guilt. Blast it, I didn’t even know where to begin!

  Billie seized on the handy diversion. “Pat’s not so bad when you get to know her.”

  I raised my brows. “What about Lydia?”

  Billie shrugged. Pat and me were a long time back. We’re–uh–sort of kissin’ cuzzins now.” He grinned. “She’s moved way, way up since then. Got something going with upper management, I hear, maybe even a Board member. I’m surprised she even remembers my name.”

  My mind seethed with so many questions, I only nodded before reaching for my own momentary diversion. “How’s the golf ball business?”

  “Great! Got some beauties this week. So high end I can put ’em on the Net for twenty dollars a dozen.” He lowered his voice. “Big fancy new course where memberships cost a mint. Play with nothing but the best. Really gives a boost to my business.”

  I struggled against my months of apathy, against the Bellman’s smothering bonds of serenity. Here we were, chitchatting about golf balls when last night . . .

  Once again, the shock and anguish of the shattered mannequin washed over me. But this time, instead of turning me weak-kneed, the powerful emotions kicked the Travis temper into action. Billie Ball Hamlin—even more surely than Josh Thomas—was part of whatever anomaly was shaking the Bellman.