Duma Key(132)

I was the belle of the ball and I had my family around me. There was light and champagne and music. It happened four years ago, on the evening of April fifteenth, between seven forty-five and eight o'clock, while the shadows on Palm Avenue were just beginning to take on the first faint tinges of blue. This is a memory I keep.

ii

I toured them around, with Tom and Bozie and the rest of the Minnesota crowd tagging after. Many of those present might have been first-time gallery attendees, but they were polite enough to give us some space.

Melinda paused for a full minute in front of Sunset with Sophora, then turned to me, almost accusingly. "If you could do this all along, Dad, why in God's name did you waste thirty years of your life putting up County Extension buildings?"

"Melinda Jean!" Pam said, but absently. She was looking toward the center room, where the Girl and Ship paintings hung suspended.

"Well, it's true," Melinda said. "Isn't it?"

"Honey, I didn't know."

"How can you have something this big inside you and not know?" she demanded.

I didn't have an answer for that, but Alice Aucoin rescued me. "Edgar, Dario wondered if you could step into Jimmy's office for a few minutes? I'll be happy to escort your family into the main room and you can join them there."

"Okay... what do they want?"

"Don't worry, they're all smiling," she said, and smiled herself.

"Go on, Edgar," Pam said. And, to Alice: "I'm used to him being called away. When we were married, it was a way of life."

"Dad, what does this red circle on top of the frame mean?" Ilse asked.

"That it's sold, dear," Alice said.

I paused to look at Sunset with Sophora as I started away, and... sure enough, there was a little red circle on the upper right corner of the frame. That was a good thing it was nice to know the crowd here was composed of more than just lookers drawn by the novelty of a one-armed dauber but I still felt a pang, and wondered if it was normal to feel that way. I had no way of telling. I didn't know any other artists to ask.

iii

Dario and Jimmy Yoshida were in the office; so was a man I'd never met before. Dario introduced him to me as Jacob Rosenblatt, the accountant who kept the Scoto's books in trim. My heart sank a little as I shook his hand, turning my own to do it because he offered the wrong one, as so many people do. Ah, but it's a righties' world.

"Dario, are we in trouble here?" I asked.

Dario placed a silver champagne bucket on Jimmy's desk. In it, reclining on a bed of crushed ice, was a bottle of Perrier-Jou t. The stuff they were serving in the gallery was good, but not this good. The cork had been recently drawn; there was still faint breath drifting from the bottle's green mouth. "Does this look like trouble?" he asked. "I would have had Alice ask your family in, as well, but the office is too freaking small. Two people who should be here right now are Wireman and Jack Cantori. Where the hell are they? I thought they were coming together."

"So did I. Did you try Elizabeth Eastlake's house? Heron's Roost?"

"Of course," Dario said. "Got nothing but the answering machine."

"Not even Elizabeth's nurse? Annmarie?"

He shook his head. "Just the answering machine."

I started having visions of Sarasota Memorial. "I don't like the sound of that."

"Perhaps the three of them are on their way here right now," Rosenblatt said.

"I think that's unlikely. She's gotten very frail and short of breath. Can't even use her walker anymore."

"I'm sure the situation will resolve itself," Jimmy said. "Meanwhile, we should raise a glass."

" Must raise a glass, Edgar," Dario added.

"Thanks, you guys, that's very kind, and I'd be happy to have a drink with you, but my family's outside and I want to walk around with them while they look at the rest of my pictures, if that's all right."

Jimmy said, "Understandable, but-"

Dario interrupted, speaking quietly. "Edgar, the show's a sell."

I looked at him. "Beg your pardon?"

"We didn't think you'd had a chance to get around and see all the red dots," Jimmy said. He was smiling, his color so high he might have been blushing. "Every painting and sketch that was for sale has been sold."

Jacob Rosenblatt, the accountant, said: "Thirty paintings and fourteen sketches. It's unheard-of."

"But..." My lips felt numb. I watched as Dario turned and this time took a tray of glasses from the shelf behind the desk. They were in the same floral pattern as the Perrier-Jou t bottle. "But the price you put on Girl and Ship No. 7 was forty thousand dollars!"

From the pocket of his plain black suit, Rosenblatt took a curl of paper that had to have come from an adding machine. "The paintings fetched four hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars, the sketches an additional nineteen. The total comes to a little over half a million dollars. It's the greatest sum the Scoto has ever taken in during the exhibition of a single artist's work. An amazing coup. Congratulations."

" All of them?" I said in a voice so tiny I could hardly hear it myself. I looked at Dario as he put a champagne glass in my hand.