A Perfect Eye Read online

  “What for?”

  “Your expertise. What Harry trained you for.”

  “Paul—”

  Dave’s eyes danced. “Who’s Harry?”

  “The man who made Lily so observant.” His words were playful; the riff wasn’t. “Didn’t you know she has a perfect eye?”

  “Leave my dad out of this,” she warned.

  “Perfect?” Dave tugged at his forelock. “Shall I bow to you, Lily?”

  “I mean it, Paul.” The lab fell silent.

  “Fine.” He raised his hands in mock surrender, and she marched him to the door. “You’ve never seen Kurtz’s private collection, have you?” he stage-whispered. “I hear he has two Sisleys and a Van Gogh.”

  “Using masterpieces as bait? That’s disgusting!”

  He stopped. She saw it in his eyes again—a new uncertainty.

  “The crime scene’s… unusual,” he said. “You see things experts miss. Harry’s game, right?”

  Seeing wasn’t just a game.

  When she was a third-year lawyer, she’d been assigned to sell a rural bank. With the sale about to close, the senior partner complimented her on her documents, then asked if she’d bothered to visit the bank. What for? she said. To make sure it’s real, he replied. The next day she drove fifty miles to the plains, met the bank’s officers, and toured the facility. She was being hazed, but the lesson stuck: Life was more than data points. Later, when she saved Elena Brandt’s gallery from ruin because she looked—and saw—that Egon Schiele watercolor for the fake it was, she got a glimmer of what her eye could do.

  “Just an hour of your time, Lily,” Paul was saying.

  “I think I’ll let you and the cops handle it.”

  But the museum obsessed over its message. What would the Talking Points on the murder of its chief benefactor be? Kurtz’s fingerprints were everywhere you looked, from the Kurtz Building to the Kurtz Skybridge to his name on the wall next to countless pieces of art. And something more important than Talking Points was at stake: the visitors streaming in every day on the promise of being moved by art. When she entered a gallery, she felt the same hush, the anticipation of an orchestra tuning up. All those excited faces—would Kurtz’s death overshadow the art, distract them from what the museum really had to offer?

  She looked at Paul again. Despite his career achievements and bravado, was there a sadness tugging at his eyes? Something wasn’t right. What harm was there in going to the crime scene and taking a look?

  Chapter Three

  Built by an oil baron’s widow and bought by an Italian financier as a surprise gift for his wife, the Kurtz Castle had a two-story arched portico, stone parapets and a coat of arms filched from Burke’s Peerage. Its wrought-iron doors, copper-framed windows, greenhouse and lily pond added charm, but the storybook effect was undercut by a Mobile Crime Unit van and a half-dozen police cars parked out front.

  “I think you’ll want this,” Paul said. He held out his snowy hanky.

  She shook her head. The last thing she wanted was to smell cloves.

  He showed his ID to a uniformed officer at the gate. A plainclothes cop escorted them in. They went from an entrance hall with a travertine staircase with twisted railings and bronze plaques, through a living room with a carved marble fireplace, a walnut parquet floor, gold-plated light fixtures, and a Cezanne and a Picasso. A fan was running a few rooms away. At the soaring library paneled in red oak, the fairy tale ended.

  The first thing she registered were the hot police lights and men in sport coats and ties talking quietly as they clustered around an object against the far wall. The second was the stench. Then the frigid air from a ventilation system on full blast and the loud whir of an industrial fan. Paul hadn’t mentioned Kurtz’s body would be there.

  Something cool and crisp pressed into her hand. His hanky.

  The talking had stopped, the men were watching her. She was glad she’d skipped breakfast. She balled up the hanky and slipped it in her pocket.

  Propped on an upholstered chair against a wall papered in celadon silk with gold leaves, Kurtz stared imperiously. His head was intact, and his thinning silver hair was parted at the side and darkened and slicked with brilliantine. His hands rested on the chair’s arms in a lord of the manor pose. From his chest down, he was riven in two. There was so much blood she couldn’t tell if he was clothed, or even if he had skin. The Klieg lights flickered, creating a grotesque chiaroscuro. Paul seemed unaffected by the odor and gore. Maybe it was because he’d grown up on a farm.

  “When was he found?” she asked.

  “This morning, by his butler,” a paunchy detective replied. He seemed to be in charge. She almost missed the wink to his colleagues. Indulge the little lady so we can get this stiff outta here.

  Paul stepped in smoothly. “Ms. Sparks has been invaluable to the FBI. She’s a pro like you.”

  Their faces spoke resentment, skepticism, and doubt. How did they feel being one-upped by a Fed in a fancy suit jetting in from D.C., and some blonde he was probably shacking up with? It must’ve been hard for him to come to her for help. She ran through her dad’s training.

  Prioritize.

  Focus on one thing at a time.

  Quantify, assign a value to each data point.

  It’s only what you refuse to see that can hurt you.

  Details, please...

  But nothing prepared her for this. She closed her eyes to block out the lights and faces and stench. Think of it as a work of art, like the bird Jack caught.

  Specks of fluff by her night stand, a tiny red smear on the floor under her bed. The huddled mass fit neatly in her palm. Then the maggots…. Jack coolly watching, concealment versus credit resolved—it took you long enough! His jade cat-eyes devouring her with the naked passion of a lover. I did it for you….

  “Lily?” Paul said.

  “Can you turn off those lights?” The steadiness of her voice surprised her. “And the fan. They’re distracting.”

  He signaled one of the men, and the heat and noise cut off. “Just your impressions,” he said softly. “I’ll send you the photos later.”

  Breathing through her nose, she approached the body. Kurtz’s torso had skin, but every inch of it was flayed. She reached into her backpack for the tool of her trade.

  “What the hell is that?” the detective asked.

  “A loupe,” Paul said admiringly. Every conservator worth her salt carried one.

  She peered closer, trying to keep the nausea at bay. Just another canvas. Now she saw dozens, hundreds of geometric slashes and pointillist pricks, driven to the bone.

  Artists control their conditions.

  “Was he tied up?” she asked.

  “Not that we can tell,” the detective said.

  “Were these wounds inflicted before he died?”

  “Huh?”

  Paul came to her rescue. “This took time,” he explained. “The killer couldn’t subdue Kurtz long enough to carve him up if he was conscious.”

  A whiff of excrement emanated from the wall. She took four steps back. Daubed like impasto on the celadon silk were gobbets of intestine. From the flaying, or added later? Some gobs appeared completely dry, others wet-on-wet. Did he tamp down Kurtz’s guts with an instrument, then rub them in with his finger? They were confined to a specific area.

  Nothing an artist does is accidental.

  Putting away her loupe and stepping farther back, she turned to the composition. Art was deliberate, with an eye toward how it would be viewed. To the left of the chair was a divan with a coat and hat. If you ignored the divan, the tableau was compact, rectangular. The back of the chair created a strong horizontal line that tightened the structure. But was Kurtz meant to be viewed head-on? She moved back and forth, examining the scene from different angles.

  Degas said the frame is the painting’s pimp.

  What was central to Kurtz’s display, what was his proper frame?

  With the fan off, the smell had bec
ome a rancid, nauseating reek. The cops were getting impatient. They wanted to wrap it up, but she wasn’t ready. She looked again at the pale green silk, the crimson daubs...

  Aha!

  The wall itself was part of the display. But something bothered her. She was missing an important detail. She refocused on the chair. Granted Kurtz’s torso was split from sternum to hip, but something was unnatural about his legs. She took another six paces back, feeling the men behind her part to give her room.

  “Why are his legs bent like that?”

  “He was tall,” the detective replied. Papers rustled. “Six-one.”

  “Were his ankles broken?”

  “How’d you know that?” he demanded.

  “They’d have to be, for his feet to curl like that under the chair…. An inside joke.”

  “Joke?”

  Did I say that out loud? But painters inserted all sorts of things in a canvas or frame that had meaning only to them. “Maybe he wanted to make it look like the chair cut off Kurtz’s legs.”

  “Huh?”

  “Was anything stolen?” she asked.

  “No,” the detective said.

  “Alarm triggered?”

  “It and the cameras were disabled, but Kurtz’s paintings are armed. That pissed the burglar off.”

  At that gala, how quickly Kurtz’s flattery had turned to insolence! Did he insult his killer? She stepped back one last time. In the natural light, the wounds seemed artistic, impressionistic. But something about his legs…

  ―

  The detective signaled the medical examiner to remove the body. Crime scene specialists bagged and tagged the remaining evidence. It was almost dark when she and Paul left. He put his arm around her and before she could stop her herself she leaned in.

  “I owe you a drink,” he said.

  She pulled away. “Some other time.”

  “There’s something I want—”

  “Let’s not go there, Paul.”

  He dropped his arm. “Come on, Lily. One drink doesn’t mean a thing.”

  She hesitated. “I have a date.”

  He opened the passenger door and waited for her to buckle in. By the time he was behind the wheel, he was all business. It was better that way.

  “Just between you and me, what did the crime scene tell you?” he asked.

  “I felt like I was looking at a painting.”

  He stared like she was nuts. “You think an actual artist killed Kurtz?”

  “Yes. And he cropped the body to fit the frame.”

  Chapter Four

  Lily unpacked the Boston Market takeout. Barbequed ribs, sweet corn and…

  “Look, Dad. Pecan pie!”

  Harry Sparks never gained weight. In retirement he’d changed uniforms: a tan windbreaker and faded Rockies cap for the leather U. S. Postal Service bag and satin-striped trousers he’d worn for forty years. Like her, he was short and wiry, but there the resemblance ended. She got her hair and grey eyes from her mom; his were an unapologetic brown. Now, as they lit up at the food, she sighed with relief. After this godawful day, in the kitchen of her childhood home, with its worn linoleum and cupboards and the scarred table where he always sat, she was finally safe.

  “Where’s your food?” he said.

  “I’m not hungry.” Would she ever get Kurtz’s stench out of her head?

  “Oh.” It wasn’t his style to ask why. He dug into the ribs.

  She brought dinner every week, his same favorites, dreading him losing his appetite. He didn’t smoke or drink, and aside from puttering in the yard, watching baseball and playing penny poker, he had no hobbies. The red-roofed bungalow was a cave. And the neighborhood didn’t help either: the working-class enclave on the east side of town had become Denver’s pop-top capital, with SUVs and McMansions on every block. Where neighbors once gossiped comfortably over fences, no yards were left to fence.

  “How’s Jack?” he said. He liked cats.

  “He passed his physical this morning.”

  “Still trying to please you, eh?” He knew about the bird.

  “He’s very… male.”

  “Well, if he wants to hang out with an old fart like me, bring ’im over.”

  A wave of affection swept her, and she rose and kissed him on the top of his head. His hair was thinning, that and a worsening limp from childhood polio his only signs of age. He squeezed her hand and returned to his barbequed ribs.

  “How’s work?” he said.

  “Funny you should ask…”

  “Yeah?”

  “I got called in on a case.”

  “By your old firm?”

  He’d been so proud when she worked her way through law school, graduated at the top of her class, and was recruited by a Seventeenth Street firm. For him, it wasn’t the money. You have to believe in something bigger than yourself, Lily, why not the law? Her attention to detail quickly earned her kudos in the corporate department, where she shuffled piles of money around a desk. When Elena Brandt retained the firm to represent her gallery, they assigned the case to her. Looted art? Put Sparks on it. No different from tracing a real estate title—she’ll chase that rabbit down the hole! The gallery case was her reprieve from a slow corporate death, but her downfall too. It was how she met Paul.

  “No, Dad. It’s an art thing.”

  “Oh.” He tried to hide his disappointment. “But if they called you in, they know you’re good.”

  She washed his plate and put the leftover ribs in the refrigerator, then rummaged through the freezer for the vanilla ice cream she’d brought last time. It was gone. Good. She warmed his pie in the microwave and watched him eat it. How many times had she tried to explain why she left law to become a conservator—that art, too, was bigger than herself? He’d taken her to museums, but he never understood. Because he’d taught her to look at paintings, but not to really see them?

  Paul had opened her eyes to art and seeing him today brought it all back. When you look at a painting, Lily, what do you feel? A conservator became as intimate with a canvas as the artist himself. Sure, she had to understand the stroke and brushes and pigments the painter used, but more important were the emotions he sought to evoke. And some painterly surfaces begged to be touched. Unlike Gina, in the sanctity of her lab she could touch all she wanted. Kurtz’s killer liked to touch too. Was Kurtz his canvas?

  “I don’t know what to do, Dad.”

  “With that case?”

  “It’s … a police thing. The cops will handle it.”

  He looked up from his pie, more alert than in weeks. “Start at the beginning. Facts.”

  She sat again. “An FBI agent came to my office.”

  “Details, please.”

  “Six foot two, black hair, green eyes…” I met him ten years ago and slept with him.

  “What did he want?” he said.

  “To take me to a crime scene and tell him what I saw.” To break my heart again because he’s still married.

  “And you went?”

  “Yes.” I did, and he will.

  “What did you see?”

  “The dead body of a bigwig from the museum.” That I’ll never get over Paul.

  “Does he want you to help him some more?”

  “Yes.”

  He threw up his hands. “Then what the hell’s the problem?” He tried to soften it. “You know the drill, honey. The truth is facts, what you see with your own eyes. Look and follow wherever they go. Where would that little boy on the 1800 block of Gaylord be if I’d looked away? Who would I be?”

  His first mail route was near Cheesman Park, where she now lived. He studied everything on his beat: dogs, newcomers, disrupted patterns. When he saw the boy’s rubber ball in the same spot for three days, wet from the sprinkler, he told a cop. The cop investigated. The boy’s father had broken his son’s jaw. He was arrested for child abuse and her dad got a commendation. Years later the boy wrote thanking him. But couldn’t he lay off her for once? Being observant was
his talent. Had he passed it on to make up for her losing her mom? A memory of a blonde woman at a door with a suitcase flickered in Lily’s head. Why won’t she look at me? As quickly as she came, she was gone. But here he was, still pushing.

  “I’m not you, Dad.”

  “Of course you are! And you’re tough.” He reached across the table and brushed the bangs from her forehead, gently tracing the small white scar they concealed. “Remember that tree you fell out of, out back?”

  She didn’t, though he’d told the story a hundred times. Just as provenance was a painting’s history—who owned it, when and where it was exhibited, the hands through which it passed—her provenance was her identity. Where and how she lived, the experiences and people that shaped her. When her dad was gone, that scar would be another piece of history lost.

  “Don’t count on anything but your eye, Lily. Who would you be without it?”

  She brought his dessert plate to the sink and cranked up the faucet. Neither of them could stand self-pity. “Still playing poker with Walt?” The widower next door.

  “His goddamn son put him in a nursing home.”

  She dried the plate and wiped her eyes with the towel. “Why?”

  “So he could sell the damn house! They’ll put up a monstrosity like that one on the corner.”

  She came up behind him and gently massaged his bony shoulders. “Want me to stay over? I’ll make up the bed in my old room.”

  “Naw.” He patted her hand. “You go home to Jack.”

  Chapter Five

  The Kurtz Auditorium slowly filled with somber faces. Two dozen rows of plush red seats descended in a narrowing semicircle to a curved stage with a podium and cinema-sized video screen. From the screen, a twenty-foot George Kurtz glowered down at his final audience.

  Taking her place in the third row, Lily watched the governor, the mayor, two congressmen and a senator file in, followed by the museum’s major donors, docents and staff. She waved two rows back to Amy, in a black turtleneck instead of her usual snowy blouse with flowing sleeves. Next to her sat Dave. His concessions to the occasion were a tweed jacket, a white dress shirt with frayed cuffs, and a worn leather belt instead of suspenders. Nick had followed them in but stood against the wall, as if unsure whether his provisional status merited a seat.