Still Lives(44)

“He disappeared, too,” I say.

“Exactly.” Lynne’s face tightens as if she has just stepped close to a fire. “After he vanished, everyone thought he meant to die. But he didn’t. He was making new work, he was devoted to it—” She cuts herself off and turns away, almost stumbling into a large Mondrian canvas. “Excuse me,” she mutters, and moves down a row of canvases hanging one after another on a large rack, the way they hang rugs in department stores.

I’ve only once witnessed Lynne at a loss to articulate her feelings, and it was at an opening for a photographer documenting white supremacist gatherings. Lynne’s mother was a Bergen-Belsen survivor. Now Lynne wanders farther off, into rows of shelves holding smaller sculptures—she is a vanishing silk jacket and trousers, bound black hair. A waver in her walk, as if it hurts to step. She must have changed her mind about Kim Lord. What’s more, she seems terrified for her.

“Journalists won’t leave her alone,” Detective Hendricks says. The drop in his voice suggests he dislikes the breed.

“Are you helping the police?” I ask. “Because Greg wouldn’t have hurt Kim Lord.”

The detective says nothing, but I feel his eyes on me.

“And I wouldn’t have either,” I say, “so you can stop wasting your time spying on us and start looking for someone else.”

“You have a someone else in mind?” he says.

“No,” I say quickly.

“I’m still free to talk,” he adds as Lynne rejoins us, folding her arms. She is paler than usual, but her eyes are hard and clear again.

“How about tomorrow morning?” I say, realizing the time. “We have a press conference—”

“Surely you can spare a few minutes,” hisses Lynne, but Detective Hendricks holds up his hand.

“Tomorrow morning is fine.” The long i again. Southern? “But let me give you my phone number, in case that changes.” The detective hands me a card that is blank except for his name, RAY HENDRICKS, and the digits, in a glossy typeface.

I tuck it in my pocket and then blurt my question to Lynne. “Do you know anything about the cloth behind the figure in ‘Disappearances’?”

Lynne frowns. “The cloth? What about it?” Her question drips with distrust.

Predictable heat floods my cheeks. “It looks like it was painted in a rush.”

“It probably was,” says Lynne. “She told me she wasn’t finished.” She turns to Hendricks. “She wanted to finish it.” Her voice cracks. “She was not suicidal.”

“No,” says Hendricks. “I don’t think so either.” He looks at me again, with sober eyes. “At least not in the conventional sense.”

“Excuse me?” says Lynne.

He turns to her.

“Maybe she didn’t run away,” he says, “even though she knew someone wanted her dead.” He shrugs and reaches out with his palm open, toward a massive all-black canvas propped beside Lynne, as if he sees something hidden inside it. “Or maybe she did.”

“I’m sorry, but you can’t touch that,” snaps Lynne. “It’s a Stella.”

Hendricks takes a step back, still absorbed in the painting.

“No, I wouldn’t,” he says in a gentle, respectful tone. “It looks ugly enough as it is.”

I leave them before I can fully hide the smirk on my face.





15

Within the next hour, I lie three times.

First I lie to Jayme, who wants to know what behind-the-scenes stories I’ve gathered for the museum’s annual report.

“I’ve done a few interviews,” I fib. “I already finished the write-up of Evie’s.”

Then I lie to Kaye, who calls with a twang of payback in her voice for my drunken behavior at her post-cancer party. She can’t believe they’ve arrested Shaw and wants to know how I’m holding up, it’s so crazy, is there really a killer on the loose, and oh my God, she can’t even get tickets to the exhibition for three whole weeks, do I think there’s a way I can just sneak her and a couple of her survivor friends in today?

“I wish,” I say, and fumble through an excuse about the fire marshal counting the people in the galleries. “Next week?”

Then I lie to the ArtNoise fact checker who calls about Kevin’s article. “I’m in a meeting right now, but fax me the article and I’ll look at it.” I hang up on her protests.

Then I tell the truth to Phil and Spike, because it is impossible to fib to two grown men wearing fisherman sweaters and Andy Warhol wigs, and carrying sitars. “We did some busking outside today,” says Phil. “How much do you think we made?”

“Honestly?” I say. “Nothing.”

“We had our fifteen cents of fame,” says Phil. “Hey, you could wear a blond wig and be part of our revue. Then we could be Edie Sedgwick and the Andies.”

“Maggie is blond,” Spike points out.

“Yeah, but not the right kind,” says Phil.

I tell them I don’t know how to play the sitar anyway.

“Neither do we. Chad traded us three lessons in exchange for designing his flyers,” says Spike. “He’s an awful instructor, though.”