Bill Pronzini - With an Extreme Burning

Rents there weren't cheap as a result. Cecca knew what Louise Kanvitz was paying per month for the small space that contained her gallery, and it was exorbitant. How Louise had managed to meet it continually for a dozen years was a mystery. She certainly didn't do a large volume of business; the three paintings she had sold for Katy last Christmas had been one of her larger transactions for the year, or so she'd told Katy. Cecca suspected she had silent backing, though who the backer might be was another mystery. Louise had never married (rumor had it that she was lesbian), lived alone, seemed to have few friends; and while she owned a small critical reputation in the Bay Area, her own paintings—odd, nonrepresentational water colors, mostly—were riot commercially successful. She didn't make much from her teaching either. Yet she drove a newish BMW, dressed well, and never seemed to lack for ready cash.

She was with a customer when Cecca entered the gallery. Or at least she was answering questions from a matronly woman about a hideous free-form iron sculpture of an animal displayed on a cube pedestal. She glanced at Cecca but didn't acknowledge her, although they knew each other slightly. Waiting, Cecca wandered through the cramped space, looking at the paintings, sculptures, pottery urns and vases, Miwok beadwork, and other items for sale. As art, they struck her as eccentric and of no real distinction. But she was hardly a connoisseur, and her tastes ran along conventional lines.

Two of Katy's abstracts were hung side by side on one wall. Minor pieces, not nearly as well done as “Blue Time” or the three that had sold at Christmas. Still, Cecca wasn't surprised when she saw the yellow and red Sold tags hanging from the frames of each; given the ghoulish nature of people and all the publicity surrounding the accident, somebody had been bound to want them. What did surprise her—and make her angry—was the new price stickers next to the tags. One thousand dollars apiece! Each had been marked at two hundred dollars while Katy was alive; Louise had jacked the prices up an outrageous five hundred percent. Exploitative commercialism at its nastiest. And who in God's name would pay one thousand dollars for inferior work by an unknown artist, even a recently deceased one?

“Hello, Francesca. What brings you to Bright Winds?”

Louise had come up beside her; Cecca realized that the matronly woman was gone. She made an effort to keep her anger in check as she faced the older woman. “My brother's birthday is coming up,” she said. “I thought I might get him a piece of local art this year.”

“Did you have anything in particular in mind?”

“Not really. A painting, perhaps.”

“Both of those have been sold.”

“So I see. A thousand dollars each—my, my. They were marked at two hundred last month.”

Louise stood stiffly silent, the way a person does when making a careful choice of words. She was about fifty, small and thin and bony, hair and eyes the unappealing reddish-brown color of kidney beans. The eyes had a chilly quality, as if she were looking at you through a thin glaze of ice. It was a full fifteen seconds before she spoke again.

“Katy Mallory was a talented abstractionist,” she said. “These are her last two major works. In my judgment, they're now worth more than the original asking price.”

“Now that she's dead, you mean.”

“Bluntly, yes.”

Cecca curbed a sharp response and said instead, “Your judgment must be right, since you've already sold them. Both to the same buyer?”

“Yes.”

“Who would that be, if you don't mind my asking?”

“But I do mind.”

“Oh? Is it a secret?”

“Hardly that. I make it a policy never to discuss my customers or my business transactions. You don't reveal who bought a particular piece of property and how much was paid, do you?”

“Sometimes. If the person involved is a friend.”

“I'd rather not make an exception.”

“All right. Tell me, though—did whoever it was buy Katy's water-color, too? I don't see it here anywhere.”

“Watercolor?”

“The one she painted under your tutelage. She told me about it,” Cecca lied. “A representational landscape, wasn't it?”

“You must be mistaken. As far as I know, Katy never painted any kind of watercolor.”

“Then why would she tell me she had?”

“I'm sure I don't know.”

“She did study with you, didn't she? Monday and Friday afternoons, starting in May?”

“Yes, she studied with me.”

“Every week?”

“Every week. Faithfully.”

“But not watercolors.”

“She wanted to branch out into other forms of expression. I encouraged her to concentrate on perfecting what she did best, to explore the subtleties of Abstract Expressionism.”

“But she didn't paint any more abstracts,” Cecca said. “You said those two on the wall there were her last works.”

“Her last finished works. She experimented with different canvases, different approaches. They didn't please either of us.”

“Do you still have them?”

“No. I destroyed them after her death.”

“Because they weren't salable?”

“Because they were unfinished and inferior.” Louise's eyes were colder now, darker. Glare ice, black ice. “Is there any particular type of painting your brother prefers? Abstracts, still-lifes, landscapes, seascapes?”

“Something representational,” Cecca said, to prolong the conversation. “Watercolors, preferably.”

“I have a good modern by a Bodega artist, Janet Rice. Reasonably priced. Over here …”

Cecca followed her to another wall. The watercolor was a vineyard scene, pale and blurry at the edges. Vastly overpriced at $150. She pretended to study it.

“I've had it for a while,” Louise said. “I don't think Ms. Rice would mind if I let you have it for one twenty-five.”

“Let me think about it. Do you have any others?”

“Watercolors? No, not right now.”

Cecca straightened. “You know, it's odd, really.”

“What is?”

“That Katy told me she'd done a watercolor, when she hadn't. Why do you suppose she'd tell a fib like that?”

“I've already told you, I don't know.”

“You did say she studied with you every week for the three months before she died? Twice a week, never missed a day?”

“Just what are you getting at, Francesca?”

“I think Katy was having an affair,” Cecca said.

She was looking for a reaction, and she got one, small but unmistakable: involuntary twitch in one cheek, slight sideshift in Louise's cold gaze before it steadied again. The older woman said flatly, “What makes you think that?”

“I was Katy's closest friend. There were signs.”

“Did she tell you she was having an affair?”

“No, she didn't. Did she confide in you , by any chance?”

“Hardly. Ours was a pupil-teacher relationship.”

“So you wouldn't have lied for her.”

“Lied?”

“About her spending Monday and Friday afternoons with you.”

“Are you accusing me of lying?”

“I'm just wondering.”

“Well, you can stop wondering. What business is it of yours, anyway, if Katy had a lover?”

“Her husband is my friend, too, and I don't want to see him hurt. If I know the truth, I can talk to the man she was seeing, make sure he keeps quiet about it.”

“You're the one who'll hurt Dix Mallory if you keep prying. Why don't you just mind your own business? Katy's gone, it doesn't matter any longer what she was or was not doing. Let her rest in peace. Let sleeping dogs lie.”

Four clichés in a row, Cecca thought. Very good, Louise. Very earnest and sincere. So why don't I believe you? Why do I think you're covering up?