T. Parker - Laguna Heat

He started when Ella appeared beside him.

“Unsigned,” he said.

“Powerful,” she said, cocking her head gallery-browser style, “but rather opaque. I kind of liked it after all the chintzy seascapes we see in this town. This painting has guts. So what the heck. I give up fifty dollars’ worth of paint and fifty dollars’ worth of canvas and brushes so he can do another one. It’s a fair shake even if I can’t sell it. You don’t sell nightmares in Laguna. Of course we’ve got enough real-life nightmares to keep us busy for a while, don’t we, detective?”

Shephard shrugged and continued to study the painting.

“No offense,” she said pleasantly. “I recognized you from the television news.”

Shephard accepted a cup of herb tea and sat with Ella for nearly half an hour, asking her every question he could think of about the man who had done the painting. But in the end her information was thin: he had come in one afternoon early last week, gone straight to the best paints and supplies, stacked them on the counter, and said that he was a great artist with no money but a painting he could give her in trade. He had then gone back downstairs — she had watched from the window — and brought back the canvas, framed, from the trunk of an early model red convertible Cadillac parked at the curb in front.

“How many blocks are we from St. Cecilia’s Church?” Shephard asked.

“Just three,” she said, then talked more about the strange painting, the humorless intensity of the man, his very near resemblance to the Identikit sketch that she now studied again. After a long pause she took the poodle up onto her ample lap and stroked its head. “Did he kill the old folks here in town?” Her eyes looked resigned.

Shephard nodded and touched the fluff of the dog’s head. “How much would you like for the painting?”

It fit nicely into the trunk of Shephard’s own convertible, which was parked, as the Cadillac had been, at the curb in front of Ella’s Corner.

With the evening traffic at its worst, Shephard took to the city on foot, moving north on the crowded sidewalk to the neighborhood overlooked by St. Cecilia’s Church.

His pace was quick, despite the throngs of tourists and beach-goers. He angled through the crowd, a lanky figure in a loose jacket, tall enough to be almost conspicuous, but otherwise unremarkable except for the Band-Aid that graced the bald spot on the back of his head.

Through a break in the buildings he saw the ocean, a smooth plate of bronze in the windless evening. The same ocean that had cradled Jane and him, he thought, and the same one that had swallowed Burton Creeley. He paused for a moment, as the pedestrians eddied around him, and witnessed the ocean as an admirer, perhaps a friend. The sun had begun its slow descent over Catalina, and Shephard could see the profile of the island, as choked in smog as the city of Santa Ana had been a few hours before. Then, back to the street where the shadows were as long and solid as dashes of gray-green paint.

Two blocks short of St. Cecilia’s he stopped again to survey the task before him. The west side of the highway was a solid front of shops, galleries, and apartments. To the east, the highway sprouted two hotels, a bed-and-breakfast house, and more galleries, the windows of which caught the sun and threw it back at him in bright rectangles of copper. With the stack of Identikit sketches in hand, he slipped through the crowd and into the first gallery, an incense-reeking little place called Outer Visions.

He was met by a huge canvas that hung on the far wall and easily dominated the dingy room with its electric blue hues. In the center of the painting was a life-sized depiction of Jimi Hendrix playing his guitar right-handed. The gallery manager sat at a desk, swamped in the smoke of incense rising from a brass burner in front of her. She eyed Shephard suspiciously through the blue smoke and finally rose to approach him.

He complimented her on the incense, which she said was homemade and named Hodgepodge. She showed a momentary interest in the Identikit but hadn’t seen such a man and promised to call if she did. He left a card and stepped back out to the highway to cleanse his Hodgepodge-filled head with the sharp aroma of the ocean.

One door north was the Haitian Experience. The gallery windows were filled with small, bright, primitive works on canvas and wood. The owner introduced herself as Beverly Doan and spoke with a chipper British accent about the “primitive heathenism,” “sensual innocence,” and “magical visions” of the Haitian painters. She explained that her largest seller was S. W. Bottex, a Haitian known for his childlike enthusiasm and innocent energy.

“You can see it all in this one,” she said, leading Shephard to one wall that was Bottex-covered. The scene was of an old man and a young girl sitting outside a wooden shed. Serene as the scene was, the canvas vibrated with hot pinks, bright yellows, and rich cinnamon reds.

Sensing his hesitation, Beverly Doan eased Shephard away from the Bottex to another wall featuring smaller paintings done on wood.

“You’ve probably never heard of some of these artists, and you probably never will,” she said matter-of-factly. “They are desperately poor men and women who live in the city and work night and day on their art. I’m biased, of course, but it all has an enchanted quality for me. It speaks of voodoo, poverty, sensuality.” She offered Shephard a quick smile. “But it’s never forlorn or bleak. The Haitians are a happy people and a spiritual people.”

Shephard brought Beverly Doan’s attention to the drab sketches in his hand and felt bad for interrupting her charming enthusiasm. Something as unhappy and dispirited as the search for a killer didn’t seem to fit with the Haitian Experience. She had seen the picture in the Tides and Times, and the face meant nothing to her.

“Think about one anyway,” she finally said. “A little Haiti can brighten up any home in the world.” She took his card with a polite smile and said she’d put him on the mailing list.

He continued, gallery after gallery, sketch after sketch, until the sun had gone down and the city hung in the brief penumbra of pre-darkness. Headlights flashed on, storefronts came alive for the night, traffic thinned, and the heartbeat of the city slowed for dinner, family, friends. The night was warm, and still no breeze had arrived. Shephard noted the last streak of orange over Catalina. He passed St. Cecilia’s Church and glanced in at the burnished silence of the chapel and the dark wooden cross that hung behind the altar. There were flowers and a white-robed father, with his back to Shephard, arranging them. The pews were empty but polished. A short block from the church he found another row of galleries. One specialized in seascapes, one in the work of a prominent Laguna artist, one in budget-priced posters.

But none of the owners had ever seen the man in Shephard’s Identikit.

Farther north he crossed the highway, jaywalking nimbly through the oncoming pairs of headlights. By then the stack of sketches in his hand was smaller, and the bottom ones were limp and ragged. He passed them out to the Gallery Andrea, the Coveside Gallery, and Gallery Laguna. Then the Jones/Churchill/Adams Gallery, the Gallery Panache, the Gallery Elite; Artiste’s, the Seaside Gallery, the House of Art, Svendell’s, Mason’s. Some of the owners had seen the Identikit — none had seen the man it pictured. Finally, his legs beginning to fatigue and his stomach gurgling for dinner, he stopped at a dark, dusty store called Charles’s, whose owner offered him a cup of coffee from a nineteenth-century cup and saucer.

Shephard declined the coffee and watched the man study the Identikit. His face reddened. He brought his hand across his hair — an involuntary urge to cover himself, Shephard thought — then shook his head slowly.