Jeff Abbott - No Rest for the Dead

Belle was in her studio at the far end of our lot. It’s a metal building that was once a machine shop, but it has skylights and plenty of space. She was standing at an easel, working on a painting. Her shorts and hiking boots were covered in paint, her flannel shirt was paint splattered, her blond hair was tied back in a ponytail. She looked a mess, a gorgeous mess.

“You’ve got mail,” I said.

“Any checks?”

“No. And no Victoria’s Secret catalog either.”

“Tragic.”

I fished the Tony letter out of the book bag and set it on a workbench covered with paints and solvents and gesso.

“Open it,” said Belle.

I opened it. “We’re invited to a memorial for Rosemary Thomas. On the tenth anniversary of her death.”

Belle didn’t look surprised, just continued painting for a minute, then looked at me and lowered her paintbrush hand. “Who was it said that the past doesn’t just come back to haunt us, it never really leaves?”

“We can just say no.”

“She was a beautiful person and she helped me. What they did to her is unforgivable. You know how I feel about all of that, Don.”

Yes, I did. Rosemary Thomas had discovered Belle’s paintings at the Laguna Festival of Arts thirteen years ago and had brought them to the attention of her curator husband, Christopher. He was running the shows at the McFall Art Museum in San Francisco. He and Rosemary flew down one summer and Belle spent two days with them, showing them her work and studio, letting them hang around the festival and observe the scene. I was there for some of it. We came back here after the second night and drank. And Rosemary kept talking admiringly about Belle’s work, particularly Waves 27 , a small oil on canvas, a ship at sea in big, black waves, both beautiful and terrifying. Ryder, updated-the best of a series. We had it hanging in our dining room until shortly after Rosemary’s execution, when we learned of arrangements she’d made with Olsen to have the painting installed in the McFall as part of the permanent collection.

That evening while Rosemary talked enthusiastically about art, especially Belle’s, Chris just sat there looking at her with a wry smile. Later, more booze, and Chris confessed his disdain for most of the Laguna artists. He said they were worse than he’d feared. He said they could learn a lot from Belle, and from Art 101. He would consider her for a group show. You can imagine what that meant to her-it would be a huge leap in her career.

Starting then, Christopher began flirting with Belle more openly, as if he’d purchased her attention. He continued to treat Rosemary like something stuck to his shoe. I observed and tolerated this. For a while.

A month later, Chris came down without Rosemary and arranged to take Belle to dinner at a hot new restaurant in Newport Beach. Hip to this play, Belle and I decided she should go anyway. She did. Dinner was good. After, he said they should have port at the Four Seasons because they had a good list, so she followed him across town in her car. Of course after the port he invited her to his suite. Belle said she was spoken for and I wasn’t a half-bad guy, which, to tell the truth, was a higher opinion than I deserved. He blushed and smiled. After dessert he walked her across that nice lobby toward the valet and put an arm around her and whispered in her ear that her talent was nothing compared to her tits and ass, and she’d be better off selling trinket paintings to tourists in Laguna than having her work blown off the walls of the McFall by painters a thousand times better than she was, and he squeezed her butt and left her at the valet stand.

She told me all this when she came home that night, humiliated and furious.

I drove up to the Four Seasons and called Chris on the hotel phone, said I was Rudy the valet, and it looked as if somebody had keyed his Jag. Chris said, so what, it’s just a fuckin’ rental car, and I said, suit yourself, sir, but we either have to file a report with Newport Beach PD or get a sign-off from you so the rental agency won’t-

So Christopher Thomas, a take-charge guy, slammed down the room phone in my ear.

I bet myself it would take him less than two minutes to make the concierge desk. It took him a minute and a half. By the time he saw me, it was too late-I snagged him by his ear like a five-year-old and dragged him outside. Must have looked funny, a guy in a $2,000 cream silk suit led by the ear through the Four Seasons lobby, bent over, hands waving, whining about lawyers and damages and having me put back in prison for the rest of my life.

Outside, past the valet stand, I tripped him onto his back and held him there with my foot while I got Belle on the cell. I could feel his heart beating through my boot. I gave Chris the phone and told him he might want to apologize to my wife. On impulse I grabbed one of his ankles and dragged him through the flower bed that runs along the Four Seasons entryway, through the peonies and Iceland poppies and ranunculus and God knows what else that was planted there that week, Chris bouncing along, babbling away to Belle. I could hear her pleading with me to stop, but I wouldn’t. He made a fairly convincing apology. Security was there by then so I dropped his leg and grabbed my phone and backed away to my car with the rent-a-goon yapping on his walkie-talkie, his voice high and his eyes big, not much of an intimidator, and half an hour later I was home with Belle.

I should have felt a little bit better about the world but I didn’t.

So, you can imagine that the cops had some questions for me a year later when Chris’s body showed up in an iron maiden torture device housed in a Berlin museum.

Such as, where was I on the night he disappeared? (Twenty miles off the coast of San Francisco, coincidentally, hanging out with a friend.)

Such as, why had I assaulted Chris at the Four Seasons? (It seemed like the right thing to do.)

Such as, tell us about your time in Corcoran State Prison (a deuce for forgery and resisting arrest).

And who were my friends? And what about my job as a bouncer at a Laguna nightclub? And my relationship with Belle. That was the hardest thing for them to understand. How a con like me could win the heart of a woman like Belle-beautiful and kind and talented and hotly pursued. I told them the truth: I had no idea how.

That was true back then. Still is.

But Belle had a secret: a commitment she’d made to Rosemary. I knew that much. She told me it was better I didn’t know, and I didn’t push, I respected her wishes.

“It’s up to you, Belle,” I said. “You want to go to the memorial, pay your respects to Rosie, that’s good. The downside is the art-world phonies. But I’ll be your escort. I’ll be your man. I’ll mind my manners and dress real sharp. I’ll throw my coat over the San Francisco mud holes for you, and I’ll take you to good restaurants and I’ll make love to you any chance I get.”

“Business as usual.” She tried to smile but I could see the worry in her eyes.

“I’d rather stay home and spearfish. I missed a thirty-six-inch halibut yesterday, but I’ll go.”

“You’ve been brooding over that fish for about twenty-four hours, Don.” She smiled and shook her head. You look up beautiful smile in the dictionary, they show you a picture of Belle’s. “I need to go,” she said. “I made a promise. And I don’t have any trouble at all with Tony Olsen.”

I said nothing, tamping down my envy of a handsome billionaire my wife didn’t have any trouble with at all. I’m a jealous husband and I admit it. There was no real reason for me to humiliate Chris Thomas all those years ago, other than to smooth my ego, which had commanded me to make things right for Belle, to get her art shown, to make this McFall thing happen. When Chris rejected her, he became my enemy. So I escalated. It’s a prison thing. You escalate before you get escalated upon. My only regret when I got home that night from the Four Seasons was that I hadn’t escalated enough .