Still Lives(42)

Evie’s clothing tastes have remained plain, but her appearance now exudes upkeep and expense. The material of her navy jacket has a silken luster. Her chin-length blond hair never gets a millimeter longer; her plucked brows are straight as a line of ink. Last year Evie got a loan to buy a loft near Boyle Heights, in a block of deserted warehouses on the other side of the L.A. River. It’s as austere and pretty as the rest of her: sun spills down onto the spare geometries of her modernist furniture. I didn’t like how empty the place must feel at night, but Yegina cooed over it and approved of the investment. “In five years, you could quit on what you’ll make from this.”

I hope Evie doesn’t quit. She’s good at her job of caring for our art collection and our loans to other institutions.

As I knock on the threshold, she startles and looks up, her eyes unfocused.

“Sorry,” I say, nervous. “I just wanted to see if you wanted to go to spin class with me and Yegina.”

A friendly expression slides over her face. “Thanks. I’ll try,” she says. “I have so much work. It’s ridiculous.”

I nod, casting about for a segue. On Evie’s desk, I spot a magazine, open to an interview with Janis Rocque. “What’s J. Ro got to say?” I say, stepping in, picking up the issue.

“She’s talking about her sculpture garden,” Evie says. “Dee’s been doing some installing there. She says she can get me in for a tour.”

“Wow. Lucky you.” The cover photo shows a steel ellipse by Richard Serra, big as a barn and flowing like a wave. Janis Rocque’s Bel Air estate has more art than most museums, ours included, and her sculpture garden is the stuff of legend.

“You want to go?” Evie glances at me. “You should ask Dee.” She turns back to her keyboard and resumes typing.

I page through the photos of Goldsworthy and di Suvero sculptures, oohing and aahing to a silent Evie. There’s a pull quote from Janis Rocque: “I like my art to cast a big shadow, but don’t get me wrong, I don’t buy something because it’s famous. I buy it because it’s a masterpiece.” J. Ro sounds as bossy and all-knowing as ever, but she gives the camera a shy, harassed look, as if she wished she weren’t being photographed.

I can’t keep it in any longer. “Did you hear that Shaw Ferguson was arrested?”

“He was?” says Evie, without turning around. “Are you relieved?”

“What?”

“I mean, he could have hurt you, too, right?” she says, her head framed by the gray glow.

The odds are stacked against Greg. His arrest makes sense to people. He is the victim’s boyfriend. He has no alibi. He rose so fast, from being an unknown personal assistant to opening his own gallery to dating a famous artist. From receiving no invitation to the Rocque’s annual Gala to sitting at its head table. Maybe he rose too fast.

I perch on the edge of Evie’s desk. “Look,” I say quietly. “I think they’ve got the wrong guy. We know Kim had a stalker, and I think we could find him. If you had time to help me.”

“You know who her stalker is?” For the first time in our conversation, Evie sounds interested. She swings around to me, searching my face.

“Not yet. But I have a good idea,” I lie. Then I hesitate again, reluctant to ask the favor.

Evie continues to study me. “You’re really scared for him,” she says softly. “For Shaw.”

Yes, I try to say, but the word gets stuck in my throat, so I just nod.

Evie’s brow wrinkles. “Of course I’ll help you.”

“Great,” I say, swallowing the lump. “I need someone to find out the provenance of Kim Lord’s paintings. All of them. Every one she has ever made.”


On the way out of the registrarial den, full of warm feelings toward Evie, who swore herself to secrecy, I pass a small, handwritten sign taped to the wall. The word Batcave is crossed out and replaced with Lascaux, with an arrow to the vaulting cavern that holds the permanent collection storage, the carpentry room, and the loading dock. I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels like this dim subterranean space is the real temple of the museum, precious and distant from the hubbub of the surface. Because we can’t possibly put on view even a fraction of the thousands of artworks the Rocque owns, there’s more art and history in our storage room than in most of Los Angeles: Pollock lined up beside Krasner, Krasner beside Kline, a Chamberlain wreck beside a Ruscha ribbon drawing. When our old director resigned, the space overflowed with gifts to the collection. Evie is now seeking a second, off-site storage facility. “You have no idea what it’s costing the Rocque just to own stuff,” she once told me, and then went into a copious explanation of the superb climate-control capacities of a new place in Van Nuys.

A shrill noise blasts from the carpentry room. I pop my head through the doorway to wave at Dee, who is slicing up boards with a table saw, goggles on.

“Spin today?” I shout.

She nods and gives me a froggy grin, then goes back to the saw. I envy Dee her underpaid job sometimes. I envy this sawdusty room. The stacks of plywood, the painting tarps. The pegboards hung with tools: mallet, chisel, hammer—worn handles, oiled blades, all neatly arranged. Here Dee makes tangible things—frames, pedestals, crates, scaffolding—that smell of trees and glue and metal. At the end of the day, she can touch them with her hands.