by P. N. Elrod
Brett didn’t resist and only stared. Adrian released him, took out a landscape from the racks, and held it next to the one on the easel. Side by side you could see the difference. Brett’s painting looked like the work of an imitator; Sandra’s was the more expert piece.
“The money wasn’t that important to you but your precious vanity couldn’t take it. Anyone, even one with a crippled soul and no talent can see it. She copied your style because it’s popular with the public, it sells, but she was better at it.” He turned back to Brett. “She produced the kind of quality you could never hope to master, you knew it, you couldn’t stand the thought of it.”
Brett slapped the back of his hand at Sandra’s canvas, missing it by a fraction. “She was embarrassed at first—and then she laughed, tried to make a joke out of the whole thing. She asked if I minded very much, that maybe I should be flattered. …”
The muscles in his heavy face knotted into something unrecognizable and I knew what Sandra had seen the second before he struck her down. Adrian saw it, too, and sensibly kept his distance.
”Flattered.” He looked to be working into something I couldn’t stop, unless I stopped it now.
”Brett.”
The interruption distracted him just enough. He looked at me and most of the tension left him, but none of the bile. “You helped, you know. You told me about those other paintings and where they were being sold from. I got Sandra’s name from them—”
Adrian cut through the smoke. “Don’t shift the blame, Leighton, he never told you to kill her.”
He didn’t like hearing that and shook his head as though the words physically hurt him. “I didn’t mean to, F really didn’t—you have to believe that …”
Adrian said nothing and turned away. He stopped before the studio door. “The only things I or anyone else can believe are your actions.”
“Alex, I am sorry. I lost my temper.”
“I’m sure the jury will be more than sympathetic,” he murmured.
Brett didn’t hear. “It got away from me. I truly am sorry, it was like before, I just couldn’t help myself.”
Adrian’s spine stiffened. “What did you say?”
“I … am … sorry.”
I got Brett’s attention. “We know you’re sorry, now tell us what about.”
His tone flattened from pleading to bald fact stating. “I’m sorry about Sandra … and Celia.”
Adrian turned, his face all caved in, and hell in his eyes. ”Celia?”
My influence had put the chink in the dam. Brett’s conscience, what he had of it, did the rest, and the dam broke at last.
“She said she wanted to go back to you. I told her you wouldn’t change. You’re like nails, Alex, all sharp points and iron outside, and nothing inside but more iron. What woman could love that? I tried to tell her.”
Adrian made a glottal sound and swayed, but stayed on his feet.
“You knew what she’d done, I told her she’d already lost you, that it was too late anyway. She was mine by then—she wouldn’t listen to me. She wouldn’t admit it to herself and she was wrong, and I hated her for … then later, when I saw how you took it, how much you did love her, I was sorry, more than you’ll ever know.”
“You killed her?” His lips barely moved.
Brett’s eyes stabbed around the floor for an answer. “She’d written me a note breaking it off, said she couldn’t go on any longer. I told her it wasn’t good enough and that I had to see her. I really tried, but she was in an awful state, and we’d both had a lot to drink. She just would not listen.
“I couldn’t stand it, I was so damned angry with her—I just couldn’t help myself. It was quick, she was passed out drunk when I took her home. I left her in the car along with the note. She suffered no pain….” He trailed off and finally shut his mouth.
Adrian backed right up to the door, bumped against it, and scrabbled for the knob with stiff fingers. It twisted and he got the door open and went out, leaving it to swing free; a gaping hole leading into darkness.
I got in front of Brett and froze him to submission and gave him some very precise orders. Escott had taken a step toward the hall, but paused when I said his name.
“Stay here with Brett, I’ll go.”
He nodded and looked at his charge with more contempt than pity. It was still fresh on his mind that Brett had hired him to keep tabs on the progress of the murder investigation, and being used like that galled his professional pride. He moved toward Brett and put him to work.
Adrian hadn’t gone very far. He was in some kind of sitting room down the hall. In passing, I just glimpsed his silhouette against the gray windows.
His palms were pressed flat to his eyes, with his fingers curled up over his forehead. He held his body erect, but was trembling all over as he fought for control and sanity against his grief and rage. After an endless moment the trembling lessened and stopped. The tension eased from the set of his shoulders and his hands fell away to hang forgotten at his sides. The walls were torn down and realization had flooded in. Perhaps he had known about Brett on some subconscious level, but had found it easier to blame himself for his wife’s death than anyone else; things not our fault always are.
There was a sideboard on one wall with a half-full decanter and glasses. I poured out whatever it was and took it over to him. He accepted it without comment and drained the contents as smoothly as a glass of water.
“Did you know?” he asked. The pale curtains had not been drawn against the night and his gaze drifted aimlessly in the dim light seeping through the windows.
“Not about Brett and your wife.”
He placed the glass carefully on a table. “I had to get out, it was that or kill him—and you wouldn’t have let me.”
“No.”
“You saved me that humiliation, at least. Do you like what you do?”
“No, but it has to be done.”
“And by whom? What are you? Is there a name for what you are?”
“Too many, and all of them ugly.”
“Nemesis comes to mind. It’s the wrong gender for you, but appropriate on this occasion.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh God, please don’t start parroting Leigh ton.”
“We had to have you along.”
“Yes, I was the ideal choice to witness your wresting the confession from him. I can keep silent about your methods. Was there no one else?”
“It had to be you. You needed to know, to see.”
“Did I?” His head came up sharply, but his gaze faltered after a second and eventually turned inward. “Yes, you’re right again. You told me what to expect tonight, but you could have hardly anticipated this.”
“I’d been looking for him, though.”
“For Brett?”
“For your wife’s killer, if he even existed.”
“Perhaps I’m being obtuse. Would you explain?”
“I’ve still got a lot of reporter in me and it sticks. I checked the papers, talked to Barbara Steler—”
“Barbara?” He went cold on me again, or even colder, if that was possible. “What did you learn from her?”
“A sad story. She still loves you, you know.”
He didn’t believe me, which was hardly a shock.
“We had quite a talk, only she doesn’t remember any of it.”
His mouth twisted, bordering on disgust.
“That’s how I learned that all the stuff about you killing your wife was so much eyewash. Barbara had been hurt pretty bad, it was her way of getting back at you.”
“I already knew that.”
“I think she knows she overdid it. She insisted on coming along the night you took on Dimmy Wallace.”
“I never saw her.”
“She didn’t want you to.”
“It’s probably just as well.”
I let the subject drop. “Anyway, I talked to a few people about you and your wife. The one thing that really got to me was t
hat no one who knew you or even casually met you could believe you’d killed her.”
“How generous of them.”
“Then the chance came up for me to ask you directly.”
“And just like Leighton, I told you the truth. Well, it’s too late now in be offended by your curiosity. How did you come to realize she’d been murdered?”
“I didn’t and I never did. I thought it was suicide like everyone else.”
“Then why pursue it?”
I didn’t want to tell him how I’d slipped back to his house and seen the portrait he’d done of Celia. I’d seen her through his eyes and the truth he’d recorded about her. Alex Adrian really had no conscious inkling of how deep his talent ran or the emotional effect it could have on others.
He’d painted the whole woman: her beauty, the guarded happiness, and the thin line of selfishness lodged in one corner of her mouth. In ten years that line would have taken over most of her face; in twenty, she’d have been quite ugly. The girl 1 had killed had been selfish, and I’d taken pains to make sure her death had looked like suicide. The parallel between her and Celia had gotten stuck in the back of my mind, so far back I hadn’t thought of it until now. I hadn’t wanted to think of it.
“Why?” he repeated.
Because by finding the truth behind one suicide and freeing Adrian of his guilt I could somehow expiate my own crime, or at least learn how to live with it as Gordy had advised me.
Because in my experience—and by now I did have experience—selfish people don’t kill themselves. They have to have help.
Maybe my reasoning was screwy, I was feeling tired again. That made it easier to lie. “I don’t know why, Alex. I just did, is all.”
By now his eyes had grown used to the darkness and he was studying me closely. “There’s more to it than that.”
He was as perceptive in his own way as Escott, damn the man. I nodded. “Yeah, there’s more, but it’s only important to myself.”
He believed me this time and knew I wasn’t going to talk about it. He shrugged acceptance and glanced past my shoulder. “What are they doing in there?”
I shifted mental gears to bring myself back to the present, to the house I stood in now, and the people in it. “Brett’s writing. I told him to do a full confession—on both murders. Escott’s keeping an eye on him.”
“That’s good.” His chin fell to his chest with sudden exhaustion.
“Alex …”
“What?”
“I can take the pain away; the memory will remain, but it won’t hurt so much.”
He thought about it and even raised his head a little. He knew what I was offering and could appreciate that I sincerely wanted to help. He was also aware I was giving him a choice in the matter. “I don’t doubt that you could, I may even take you up on it—later. For now I can stand things—I’ve gotten used to it after all this time.”
“It’s not the kind of thing you want to hold on to.”
“It will be exorcised soon enough—I’m not planning to kill myself, if that’s what you think. I meant when we take him in to the police. Will this mean the death penalty?”
“I don’t know.”
“I hope it does.” His eyes glittered unpleasantly and his mouth curled into a dry and bitter smile. “Don’t you?”
He misinterpreted the answer in my face.
“Or is it too bloodthirsty of me to want a little justice?”
“I was only thinking this is going to be hell for Reva.”
“She’ll be better off without him,” he said, dismissing the shattering of her own life with a casualness I didn’t like, but could understand. “God, but I’m sick of it all and it’s only just begun.”
“You need sleep.”
“I used to know what that was. I suppose you could fix that, too, as you did for Evan.”
“Yeah.”
“Evan.” Some of the hardness went out of his manner.
“He gets out of the hospital tomorrow,” I reminded him. “He’s expecting to come here.”
He looked pained. “Of course he can’t come here, not after this. I’ll have to take him in for the time being and—” He froze. “Evan would have seen the paintings—unless Leighton planned to destroy them.”
“If he wanted to destroy them he would have done so by now.”
“Then why hasn’t he?”
“You said the money wasn’t that important to him. Maybe not, but Brett wasn’t going to throw it away.”
“He’d finish them and sell them as his own?” Adrian shook his head, trying to take it in.
“Evan wouldn’t have been allowed to see them. Brett would have made sure of that. After the breakdown Evan had that night, no one would be too surprised if he took his own life. It’s easy enough to arrange.” I nearly choked on those last words, but he didn’t know the real reason why.
“You knew all this?”
“Charles and I put it together as one of the possibilities. If the paintings hadn’t been destroyed, we figured he had a reason to hold off. Greed was one of the ones we figured, it seemed plausible at the time.”
“Leighton has everything already, how could he possibly want more? The money they’d bring in would be only pocket change compared to what he has. Why should he take such a risk?”
“Greed was just part of it. You hit on the real answer earlier. He doesn’t have everything and he knows it.”
He started to twist the wedding ring again, then stopped and looked at his hands. He held them flat, palms up. They didn’t look like the hands of an artist, they were broad, the fingers blunt, but strong looking. Somehow they could transfer what he saw and felt onto paper and canvas in the manner that he desired. He could communicate his vision and emotion to others without spoken explanation. It was a gift, and perhaps by him it had been too long ignored or taken for granted.
“Sandra’s talent,” he stated.
“It’s as you said; he’d finish them, sign them, and sell them—as his own. That’s the key to all of it.”
“Talent.”
“Her paintings would have been his best work.”
“The bastard,” he said, with an odd uplift to his tone.
The DA got the verdicts he wanted, not that he had to work too hard with Escott practically handing him Brett’s signed confession on a silver platter. Brett was found guilty of the first-degree murder of Celia Adrian and the second-degree murder of Sandra Robley, but avoided the death penalty in the end. He looked good in court and his obvious contrition impressed the judge and jury, if no one else.
Escott and Adrian were the prime prosecution witnesses, but they didn’t have to work too hard at it, either. The facts concerning the murders were the bald truth, after all; the only lies had to do with how those facts were obtained. Escott gave the court a song-and-dance act about being suspicious of Brett’s behavior the night Brett hired him to look into things. He later communicated his troubles to Adrian. When the two of them decided to ask Brett a few direct questions he quickly broke down and confessed. I’d made sure that Brett agreed with their story. It was a lousy one and I’d squirmed the whole time when we’d worked it out, but everyone swallowed it.
Escott wasn’t too surprised. “They believe the most impossible things
they hear on the radio and read in the papers every day. A simple little problem like this is hardly going to hold public attention for very long.”
The papers were full of the story for a while, but mostly because of Alex Adrian’s name. Escott and Adrian covered all the angles between them so my name never came into it, which suited me fine.
Brett’s art at the gallery was sold off, and very quickly. The notoriety of the trial had drawn out collectors, thrill seekers, souvenir hunters, and other vultures. Because of the morbid competition, the paintings auctioned at premium prices. The money went to Brett’s sister. Reva gave the gallery’s commission to charity.
Things were tough for her, of course, though Escott wa
s of the opinion she’d been more upset by Brett’s affair with Celia than with his murders. After the trial, she went back east to stay with relatives until things cooled off, which they did, eventually. The next time we heard of her, she was re-opening the gallery, business as usual.
“What a resilient woman,” Escott commented as he studied the article in the paper.
Evan came in with a tray of drinks. “And she’s got good taste to boot. She’s promised she’ll take on anything I might have to sell.” He put the tray down and helped himself to a glass. “Maybe I should rephrase that, it sounds a bit rude.”
“We know what you mean,” said Bobbi, and that made him smile.
“I’m glad to hear she doesn’t hold anything against you or Alex—or vice versa.”
“It’s not her fault that Leighton’s a … well, that he’s the way he is, and we all know that. She’s better off without him, if you ask me,” he said, unknowingly echoing Adrian’s opinion from four months ago.
Christmas was only a week away and we were at Alex Adrian’s house to pick up Bobbi’s present.
“Anyway, it should be a success. She’s got a head for the business, knows everyone worth knowing, and has the two best artists in the country to supply her with goods.” Evan had aged a little in the last few months but was looking better tonight. He said he had a date coming by later, so apparently old habits were asserting themselves again and I was glad to hear it.
“Well, here’s luck to all of you.” Escott raised his glass and indulged in a sip, and the others followed his example. I kept out of sight in the back and faked it.
Adrian walked in and managed a smile. It was faint and a little self-conscious, but sincere. He still wore his wedding ring, but had dropped his habit of twisting it at about the same time he’d broken his painting block. “It’s ready for view,” he announced.
We followed him back to the studio. All the lights were on, blazing against an organized explosion of colors from every wall. Adrian was a busy man again, as much in demand as ever, but he’d found time to fulfill one private commission, and I was anxious to see it.
