Faye Kellerman - Double Homicide

“She’s going to be heartbroken,” he said. “Shattered.” As if to illustrate, Reed cried some more.

Darrel handed him a tissue. “The dog.”

“Anastasia. She’s six. Borzois don’t live that long. Now that Larry’s gone… I can’t believe I just said that. Gone. Ohmigod.”

“Can you think of anyone who’d do this?”

“No,” said Reed. “Absolutely not. Larry was beloved.”

“Popular, huh?”

“More than popular. Beloved.”

“Still,” said Katz, “sometimes you run into difficult people.”

“If Larry did, I don’t know about it.”

“He didn’t talk business with you?”

“No,” said Reed. “That wasn’t my role.”

“Who works at the gallery?”

“Just Larry and one assistant. Larry was trying to streamline.”

“Financial problems?”

“No, of course not.” Reed gulped. “At least none that I knew of, and Larry didn’t seem to be worried or anything like that. Just the opposite. He was talking about buying more land. So he must’ve been doing okay.”

“Land where?”

Reed shook his head.

Darrel said, “What’s the assistant’s name?”

“Summer Riley.”

Katz remembered the name from the Palm Pilot. “Where does she live?”

“In the guesthouse out back.”

The detectives said nothing, both of them wondering what lay behind the guesthouse door.

Darrel said, “Did Larry receive any threats you’re aware of?”

Reed shook his head.

“Hang-up calls, weird mail, anything like that?”

Three more headshakes.

“Nothing out of the ordinary?” said Katz. “Especially within the last few weeks?”

“Nothing,” Reed insisted. “Larry’s life was tranquil.”

“Tranquil,” said Two Moons.

“I’m talking compared to his New York days,” said Reed. “He adored Santa Fe. Once he told me his original plan had been to spend just a few months here, but he came to love it so much that he decided to make it his primary residence. He was even talking about closing up one of the New York galleries.”

“Which one?” said Katz.

“Pardon?”

“He had two, right?”

“Yes,” said Reed. “The one in Chelsea.”

“West 21st-contemporary art,” said Katz.

Reed’s eyes were wide with surprise. “You’ve been there?”

“I used to live in New York. So Mr. Olafson was thinking of downsizing.”

“I don’t know for sure, but he mentioned it.”

“When?”

“Hmm… a month ago maybe.”

“What was the context?” said Katz.

“The context?”

“He didn’t usually talk business with you.”

“Oh,” said Reed. “Well, this wasn’t business. It was more… Larry was in a good mood, kind of… talkative… reflective about life. We were out on the portal - nighttime. Back when we had that warm spell?”

“Yeah, a month ago,” Two Moons said. More like a century ago in winter hours.

“Where was I?” Reed asked.

“The portal ,” Katz clued him in.

“Yes, right,” said Reed. “The portal. Larry was waiting for his dinner. Drinking wine. I’d cooked halibut in an olive sauce and penne with pistachios. After I brought the food to the table, Larry asked me to sit down and share with him. It had been a long day. Anastasia had some stomach problems. Larry said I deserved a break. So I sat and he poured me some wine and we chatted.” Reed sighed. “It was a really clear night, all those stars. Larry said he felt spiritual in a way he’d never experienced back East.” The young man’s lip quivered. “Now this. I can’t believe-”

“Closing up a gallery,” said Katz. “What would that have meant for the artists he represented?”

Reed tried to shrug. Being the filling in a detective sandwich checked his movement. “I guess they’d find new representation.”

“Except for the ones who couldn’t,” said Katz. “It’s like that in the art world, right? C students versus A students. Some would have found themselves with no representation.”

Reed stared at him. “I guess.”

“You an artist?”

“No, no way, can’t draw a straight line. I’m a cook. I trained to be a chef at the CIA-the Culinary Institute, up in the Hudson Valley -but mostly, I ended up being a cook. Actually, I ended up doing kitchen grunt work for minimum wage at Le Bernardin and places like that. So when Larry offered me a job in Santa Fe, I leaped at the opportunity.”

“How’d Mr. Olafson find you?”

“I was daylighting for a very high-end caterer, but I could tell you stories… Anyway, Larry threw a Sunday brunch at the gallery. I suppose I passed muster with the guests. The smoked pineapple and habanero-spiced prawns didn’t hurt, either.” Small smile. “He said he liked the way I handled myself.”

“How long have you worked for him?”

“Three months.”

“Enjoy it?”

“It’s been heaven.” Reed broke down and caught his breath long enough to plead for another tissue.

Another half hour of questioning proved unproductive. Reed denied a personal relationship with his boss, but he wasn’t convincing. Katz caught Two Moons’s knowing glance over the top of the houseboy’s head.

Run him through the system before we let him go.

But neither of them felt it would amount to much. When the houseboy’s preliminary arrest search came back clean, except for a speeding ticket two months ago on Highway 25 just outside of Albuquerque, no one was surprised. Reed was boy-sized, and the only way he could’ve smacked Olafson level across the head was if he’d stood on a ladder.

Not to mention wielding a heavy rounded instrument.

It was time to join the search for that.

Probably another dead end.

Katz and Two Moons stuck around for another hour and a half, supervising the boundaries of the cordon and the setting up of the night spots, working with three additional uniforms and two techs in the search of the property. A good chunk of Santa Fe PD’s force was here. It was the first homicide for all the uniforms, and no one wanted to screw up.

They forced open the lock on the guesthouse door. No body inside, just a messy one-room studio. Summer Riley’s personal effects, some weed and a bong in a night-stand drawer, an easel and a paint box in the kitchen, a bunch of really bad oils-crooked, ugly women rendered muddily-propped against the walls. On her bed was a pile of dirty clothes.

Two Moons found Summer Riley’s cell phone number in Olafson’s Palm Pilot, called her up, and got her voice mail. Sensitive guy that he was, he left a message for her to come home because the boss was dead.

It was Katz who found the murder weapon, lying under a creeping juniper, just off the pathway that led to the guesthouse.

No attempt to conceal. The thing had rolled to a low spot in the garden.

Big chrome ball-peen hammer, the size of a motorcycle engine, streaked lightly with pink stains-the faint adherence that Dr. Ruiz had predicted. Couple of brain fragments on the peen. Precisely the wide, round surface that Ruiz had described.

Three techs struggled to bag and tag the hammer. Huge and cumbersome, it had to weigh sixty, seventy pounds. Meaning a very strong bad guy, even factoring in the adrenaline rush.

“Killed by art,” said Darrel. “Wasn’t there some guy, some painter, who once said his goal was to create a painting where you’d look at it and drop dead?”

“Never heard of that,” said Katz.

“I learned it in class. The guy had a weird name-Man something.”

“Man Ray?”

“That’s the one.”

“You took art?” said Katz.

“Art history,” said Darrel. “In college. Because it was easy.”