Corinne’s murder and the studio’s precarious financial position to enjoy the beautiful day. A calico cat looked down on me from his perch in a bay window, bricks herringboned the sidewalk in a hypnotic pattern, and the drone of an airplane high overhead made me glance up briefly. Reaching the gallery before I was ready to, I strolled past it to linger in front of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, letting the sand-colored stones of its Gothic revival facade warm me, and admiring the swooping arches that fronted the church. Reluctantly, I retraced my steps to the art gallery and went in.
Dimness cloaked me, and I blinked while my eyes adjusted. The space was largely open, with bleached wooden planks on the floor, white panels for walls, and lighting provided by stainless-steel fixtures directed toward the paintings. A thin man on a stepladder and a minion struggled to hang a wall-sized painting that seemed to consist of little more than a canvas painted off-white with a wavy blue line bisecting it.
“We’re closed to set up for the exhibition. The opening’s Friday night,” the man on the stepladder called.
“I’m looking for Sarah Lewis,” I said, wandering closer to see whether the painting offered anything more up close. Nope. I peered at the discreet price tag on the wall and almost gasped: twenty thousand dollars.
“Back there.” The man jerked his balding head toward the rear of the gallery. As he spoke, a flash of light told me where I’d find Sarah.
“Thanks.” I wended my way around the panels and past more paintings as monochromatic and inscrutable as the first one. I like my art to have recognizable objects in it-people, dogs, flowers-or at least to feature bright colors. As far as I was concerned, these paintings took minimalism, or monochromatism or whatever the style was called, to heights of boringness seldom scaled by an artist. I left off critiquing the paintings as I rounded a corner to find Sarah Lewis adjusting a light on an aluminum pole.
“Do you think you could hold this just so?” she asked, spotting me. “It keeps slipping.”
I obligingly wrapped my fingers around the cool metal, and watched as she checked a light meter and then took a few photos of the canvas in front of us.
“Thanks.” Letting the camera hang from a strap around her neck, she reached into a multipocketed duffel and withdrew a CD case. “Let me know which ones you want. Eighty dollars each.”
I took the case from her, noting that she seemed a bit stiffer than when we’d last met. She broke eye contact almost immediately to shift the strap around her neck.
“Vitaly and I will look at them and let you know,” I said. I hesitated, wanting to ask her about Marco, but feeling awkward about it.
“Look,” she said as I was on the verge of leaving. Her head snapped up and her eyes met mine squarely for the first time. “Marco told me about your visit yesterday.”
“Um.”
“He said you know.”
“I didn’t know you knew.”
“Since I was eighteen.” She tossed her head so her dark braid slipped over her shoulder. “He and Mom took me aside to tell me that I wasn’t my father’s daughter, that I was Marco’s daughter. They thought I should know the truth for medical reasons and what have you. Great birthday present, huh?”
“It must have been hard to hear.”
She met my gaze, unsmiling. “The hardest. Not only did I have to come to terms with the fact that I wasn’t who I thought I was, but my mom wasn’t the person I thought she was either. All her blather about integrity and living authentically was just so many words. Great for spouting in the classroom but without any applicability to real life. We didn’t talk for a couple of years.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling intensely uncomfortable in the face of her anger and grief.
“Yeah, well, a lot of therapy has gotten me-us-through the worst of it. But then Corinne Blakely told Marco she was publishing her memoir, and that she was including the story of their romance and why she broke it off.” Sarah popped the lens off the camera and stowed it roughly in the duffel. She was silent for a moment, searching for a new lens and fitting it to the camera body. She mumbled something I didn’t catch.
“What?”
“I said I didn’t want Dad to find out that way. He loves my mother; he still thinks I’m his biological daughter. It would break his heart.” She looked up, her chin tilted a bit, defiantly. “That’s why when Marco told me you had the manuscript, I broke into your house to find it.”
My jaw dropped. “Say what? It was you?”
She nodded. “It wasn’t hard. I bought a crowbar at a hardware store and waited till I thought you’d be asleep. The waiting was the hardest part. I pried the door open and started searching, but then you woke up.” She loosed a long sigh. “I’m sorry I knocked you down. I hope you weren’t hurt?”
“I’ll live.” This conversation felt surreal. This woman had broken into my house with burglary on her mind, and now she was looking at me with concern. I tried to muster some anger, but the fact that it was my own lie that led her to break in kept me from working up any righteous indignation.
“Were you telling the truth when you told Marco you don’t really have it?”
I nodded.
“Then what am I to do?” Tears filmed her eyes.
“I think it’s totally possible there isn’t really a manuscript,” I said, relating what Mrs. Laughlin, Corinne’s housekeeper, had told me.
“Really?” Sarah stood a little straighter. After a beat, she added, “So someone killed Corinne for nothing?”
“Why would you assume Corinne was killed over the memoir?” I asked.
“Because the thought crossed my mind. And if it occurred to me, chances are someone else thought of it, too.”
I stared at the woman in front of me, so like me in many ways: She was close to my age; she worked for herself in an arts-related field; she was single (I thought) and childless. Had she just confessed to planning a murder?
“I didn’t do it, of course,” she said, perhaps reading my face. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t kill someone, not even to save Dad pain and keep my parents from divorcing. But I can’t really blame whoever did it-Corinne was asking for it.”
The tight expression on her face dared me to contradict her. Tap-tapping and a muffled “Damn!” floated over the nearest panel, and I started at the reminder that we weren’t alone.
“Do you suppose it crossed Marco’s mind?” I asked.
There was a barely perceptible hesitation before she burst out, “He wouldn’t! Marco’s a good man.”
Evidence of a daughter fathered on his wife’s sister to the contrary. I raised my brows.
“Sex is different from murder!”
No argument there.
“Just because he and my mom had an affair thirty years ago doesn’t mean he killed Corinne to keep it secret. Or that my mother did, either,” she added.
Hm, now there was a suspect I hadn’t thought of. Would Sarah’s mother kill to protect her marriage… or her job? It might be worth learning more about Phyllis Lewis. Except how would she have put epinephrine in Corinne’s pills? I decided Phyllis didn’t get a priority rating on my suspect list, although I might mention her to Phineas Drake.
“Are you going to tell the police?” Sarah asked in a low voice.
My thoughts were jumbled; I didn’t know what was best. “My concern is Maurice Goldberg. He’s my friend, and I’m not going to sit by and watch him go to prison for a crime he didn’t commit.”
I hadn’t really answered her question, but she nodded. “Fair enough. Look, I know it’s costing you time and maybe money to get your door fixed and all. Just pick the photos you want and I’ll get you another disk that’s not copyright protected-you don’t owe me anything.”
I regarded her somewhat cynically, recognizing a bribe when I heard one. “I’ll let you know.” I wasn’t sure what I’d let her know, but it sounded good.
We eyed each other awkwardly for a moment, not sure how to part, but then she half nodded and turned away to fiddle with the light stand again, and I slipped silently around the nearest panel. Out of sight of Sarah, I took a deep breath, blew it out, and hurried for the door, raising a hand in acknowledgment when the gallery owner called, “Don’t forget! Friday evening. There’ll be wine and cheese, and you can meet the artist in person.”
