A Perfect Eye Page 6

  Jack was motionless, face-down in a drift. She stroked his head and gently turned him on his back. His eyes were open but unseeing, the jade dull and pupils slits. The luster was gone from his coat and pricks of ice clung to his fur. His chest didn’t move.

  She kissed his face and breathed on him, trying to warm him. She stroked his stomach and chest and paws.

  Suddenly he convulsed. Violent shivers wracked his tiny body, each worse than the last. She stripped off her hoodie, scooped him up in it and ran to the Prius. With him in her lap, she sped to the 24-hour Vet ER on Broadway.

  Chapter Ten

  Dave Byers lived along a stretch of Cherry Creek that was once farmland and apple orchards. Now it was two blocks from a Super Target and surrounded by gas stations, Russian supermarkets, and marijuana dispensaries. But the enclave had retained its rural character; in defiance of the high rises looming over them, Dave’s neighbors grew squash and corn in their front yards.

  Driving there to pick up her dad a month after Kurtz was murdered, Lily marveled at what a good match the two men were. Dave’s wit lightened her dad’s mood, and they could grouse about developers and the Rockies’s pitcher to their hearts’ content. This was her first time there, and the address for what Dave had described as a 1950s ranch-style house was poorly marked. She followed the road past a NO OUTLET sign until it dead-ended at a cement culvert at the entrance to the greenbelt.

  Spring runoff had flooded the drain pipes, and on this June afternoon the smell of manure rose from the standing water. To the west, a high fence strung with wire prevented access to Four Mile Historic Park. Fitting for Dave, the last stagecoach stop before Denver on the Cherokee Trail was now a pioneer museum that charged admission.

  She turned the Prius around and parked behind a Dodge Ram pickup in front of Dave’s house. A thicket of irises and native grass overgrew the path to the front door. There was no bell, so she knocked. When there was no answer, she walked around back.

  “Dave?”

  From a wooden table he waved. She made her way down the slope to him. He wore a wide-brimmed straw hat and his sleeves were rolled up over his tanned, brawny forearms. Blinking in the sun, he looked like a bear coming out of hibernation. On the deck above them, her dad snoozed with a newspaper in his lap. His bad leg rested on an ottoman.

  “What’s the latest on those break-ins at your condo?” Dave said.

  “Nada.”

  She’d reported both incidents to the cops. She didn’t tell them about the birth control pills or her toothbrush, and since nothing was taken they insisted she’d left the balcony door open herself. She couldn’t imagine Paul throwing Jack off the balcony—jealous ex-lover, maybe; cat-killer, no—but she’d changed her locks and was glad he’d returned to D.C. for good. The lab was back to normal and she could give her full attention to the Degas. After a week with Gina, even Amy seemed content to be back in the fold.

  “What’s this city coming to?” Dave shook his head. “Police department’s as incompetent as the mayor’s office. At least they got the guy who killed Kurtz.”

  So much for her theory about Kurtz’s killer being an artist. With the arrest of the burglar who’d been terrorizing the Denver Country Club area, Kurtz’s murder had moved from the front page to occasional updates and then nothing. Even with a suspected link to a ring with an inside man who worked at an alarm company, crack-crazed burglars apparently weren’t good copy.

  “And that cat of yours,” Dave said, “is he okay?”

  “Fine, thanks.”

  It had been touch and go with Jack. He was lucky to have fallen from such a great height into a snow bank; the distance gave him time to spread-eagle before he landed. Ribs cracked and heart and lungs bruised, he spent three days in intensive care. At home, she cleaned him with Baby Wipes. When he was finally able to groom himself again, they celebrated with canned mackerel.

  “I don’t know about you, Lily, but if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s cruelty to animals.”

  “Amen to that. How was poker?”

  “If it wasn’t pennies, I’d be risking my retirement.”

  Her dad’s gallon jar had always been filled to the brim with pennies courtesy of good old Walt. How easily Dave had taken his place! She’d known Walt since she was a girl, but what did she know about Dave? He was retired and a widower, she knew that much.

  “Where’d you retire from, Dave?”

  “Coors. They offered a package too good to refuse, so I took my pension and ran. My wife and I traveled Europe before buying this place. A year later it was cancer.” His voice broke when he mentioned his wife. His bond with her dad was deeper than poker.

  A hardbound sketchbook lay on the table. It was opened to a study of grasses.

  “You draw?” she asked.

  “Sketch.” He shrugged. “Took a couple classes at the Art Students League, but apparently I’m not very good.”

  Farther down the hill was a tin shed. Past it and the chicken wire the greenbelt was thick with bushes, wildflowers, and weeds. The ravine sloped up to a biking trail and sun glinted off the gravel on the path. She looked at his sketch again. “I think you caught something here, Dave.”

  “You and my legions of admirers.”

  “Who’s your favorite artist?”

  “Caillebotte, of course.” Batting his eyes like a lovesick cow, he did a perfect imitation of Gina Wheelock. “Brooding alienation, disrupted perspectives, distorted interiors. Take a deep breath. Do I smell… manure?’”

  “Stop!” She was laughing so hard she felt sick.

  “What’s so funny?” her dad called from the deck.

  “Screw the experts, eh, Lily?” Dave said softly. “I knew there was something about you I liked, and that goes double for your old coot of a dad. Can I take him to Black Hawk?”

  It took her a moment to connect. Black Hawk was an old mining town. Luring gamblers with all-you-can-eat prime rib, its casinos now mined another kind of gold.

  “You set me up with a ringer,” he continued. “Don’t I deserve a chance to win back the pennies I lost?”

  How long had it been since she’d taken her dad to the mountains? And he loved prime rib. She felt a rush of gratitude for the bearish old docent. “Join us for dinner tonight, Dave?”

  “And miss this light?”

  ―

  “You want to go to Black Hawk?” she asked on their way home.

  “With that know-it-all?” her dad said.

  “What do you two talk about?” Surely not art.

  “We don’t talk, we play poker. He tried to tell me how to grow roses.”

  Just roses?

  “Dave’s nosy,” he continued. “He asked about your mother.”

  Oh? She was number one on the taboo list. “What’d you tell him?”

  He snorted. “She was killed by a drunk driver. What more is there to say?”

  Everything.

  What was he like before she died? Did losing her make him vigilant, did the one time he looked away cost her mom her life? After she died, Lily had scoured the bungalow for traces of her, but all she found was the gold compact where it had fallen behind his dresser. How many times did she click it open as a girl, hoping to catch a glimpse of her mom in the mirror? So often the tiny clasp was almost worn out.

  “How’s Jack?” he asked.

  “Eight lives to go.

  “That was some crazy fall.”

  She pulled into his driveway. “Hungry, Dad?”

  He was snoring gently. Dave had done him good.

  Chapter Eleven

  Sipping plum wine at the preview party for the museum’s Samurai Exhibition, Lily scanned the crowd. The ticketed event catered by a Japanese restaurant had drawn a mix of patrons, Asian art lovers, and weapons enthusiasts. Squeezing Nick’s arm, she strained to be heard over the drums of a local Taiko band. “Ready to go in?”

  He wolfed down his sushi. “Sure.”

  What a relief to date a guy who wasn’
t a lawyer! Still smarting from the scenes a month earlier with Paul at the lab, she’d tried to keep her new relationship quiet. Amy suspected something, which meant Dave knew too, but this was the first time she and Nick had appeared at a museum event together. Now he jumped the line to hold the door for a snowy-haired matron on an ebony cane. Ignoring the impatient shuffling behind them, the woman patted Nick’s cheek. Lily set down her wine and entered the gallery after them. She scarcely recognized the place.

  Knocking down and installing exhibits was like remodeling a house. Paintings needed wall space and objects demanded glass. Both required unimpeded traffic flow, narrative coherence, and visual drama. Because space was at a premium and time meant money, what could take weeks or months was telescoped into days. Crates were inspected and unpacked. Gallery walls were torn down and rebuilt, special lighting installed, art mounted or hung, and 75-word labels created for every object and painting. What little story did each piece of art tell? An exhibition was an enchanted world with its own legends and myths.

  This gallery’s entrance was guarded by a life-sized Samurai in full armor. His helmet was horned, his shoes were covered in bear fur, and his mailed fist held a fan with a blood red Imperial sun. From behind his iron half-mask, he glared at Lily with murderous rage. Nick had gone ahead and was peering at a display case of swords.

  “Your boy likes weapons.” Paul stood at her elbow with a wine glass.

  “What are you doing here?” Lily said. From the distance Gina waved. Her proprietary, infatuated look was one Lily knew well. She’d seen it enough times on her own face in the mirror after a night with Paul. “I thought Kurtz’s murder was solved.”

  “Denver has other attractions.” Gina was cooing at a patron but watching them.

  “So I see.”

  “Green was never your color, Lily.” He sipped his wine.

  “No food or drinks in the gallery.”

  “Must you ruin everything?” He set down his glass in a corner, where it wouldn’t spill. They moved to a display of armor bearing a chrysanthemum crest. “Your kind of exhibit, Lily, all these shields and spears—” Nick had moved to a seven-foot pole topped with a curved blade. “What do you suppose he’s thinking?”

  “What all men think when they see a gun or knife.”

  She detached herself from Paul and went after Nick. To maximize display space, this part of the gallery had been reconfigured into a narrow corridor. Suddenly it opened onto a magnificent centerpiece: three life-sized warhorses in full battle regalia with Samurai soldiers astride. On raised scarlet platforms, necks straining and hoofs raised, the horses were poised to charge.

  “Whoa!” Nick said. So uncomplicated—she liked that about him.

  The black stallion in the middle reared up on hind legs. It had its own mask with horns, flaming brows, and dragon’s teeth. Ferocious as they were, a mount-maker had said the horses were plexiglass and two men could lift them. Paul and Gina were now at a case of arrows. In intense discussion, and she bet it wasn’t about art.

  “Your ex?” Nick said.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “I saw you together.” He looked at Paul curiously, like an engineer trouble-shooting a problem. At least he wasn’t the jealous type.

  “Old news,” she assured him.

  “Does he know about me?”

  “Just that you’re dangerous,” she joked.

  Nick narrowed his eyes playfully. “Maybe he knows better than you.”

  Japanese flutes and plaintive singing had replaced the Taiko drums on an endless loop. Cocktails were over. As guests poured in, the heat had risen. Her head spun. The plum wine?

  Nick took her hand. “Not like the Impressionists, eh?”

  The crowd carried them from the horses around a bend to a case of spiked helmets and leather masks with hair. Not all the armor was behind glass; gallery hosts were positioned to make sure there was no touching, but still … The exhibition designer had totally redone the space, and she struggled to get her bearings. Was this really the same gallery where the blockbuster Van Gogh exhibit had run? The horses were almost directly behind her on the other side of the wall. Through a space between the partitions, she saw visitors gape at them.

  The noise was getting worse and the gallery was claustrophobic. She tried a round of her dad’s game. Where did each Van Gogh hang? But it was no use. When she came face to face with four life-sized Samurai advancing at eye level from behind a velvet rope, she’d had enough.

  “Five minutes,” Nick begged. “They’re showing a film on swords. The Samurai disemboweled themselves.”

  Gobs of intestine flashed behind him on the wall, and a whiff of excrement brought bile to her throat. But Kurtz wasn’t murdered by a Samurai.

  “After he slit his abdomen open with a wakizashi—”

  “Wakizashi?” she said.

  “—a short sword, his assistant cut his throat. He had a cup of sake first and a favorite last meal.”

  Did Kurtz’s killer offer him sake? But Nick’s enthusiasm was so infectious, she smiled.

  “I’ll wait outside.”

  Just before the exit was a mask the color of dried blood. Its eyeholes were wide and staring. A leather strap was at the throat.

  “Remind you of something?” Paul said.

  “Croatia.”

  They’d gone there for leads on the Schiele case. Facing a long weekend in Zagreb, they’d rented a car and driven to the Adriatic coast. The charming seaside town of Rovinj was packed with tourists. To escape the noise and heat, and drawn by a poster of a painting, they wandered into the local museum. They were the only visitors. A woman with mournful eyes and a hacking cough sold them tickets to a special exhibition and pointed to the stairs up. Instead of paintings, the gallery was devoted to medieval torture instruments.

  Iron masks, a rusty guillotine, a spiked throne under which a fire could be lit, a thread of metal hooks to be swallowed and yanked up with the intestines. Nothing was roped or behind glass. Each display had a helpful label in English documenting who, what, when, where, and why. And these weren’t replicas, they were the real thing. How about swabbing that Iron Maiden, Paul said. He took her hand.

  Numbly they went from room to room, followed at a discreet distance by the coughing ticket seller. Was she there to ensure they didn’t touch anything? Turning, Lily read a different question in the woman’s doleful eyes: Do you feel them suffer?At that moment, she knew what art meant: instead of killing things, it brought them to life. She squeezed Paul’s hand. I want to be a conservator, she’d said. Of what? he’d asked. Paintings like the Schieles in Vienna….

  “He didn’t torture him,” she told Paul now.

  “Who?”

  “Kurtz.”

  He started to reach for her hand, but she stepped back.

  “You never let go, do you?” he said.

  Gina was bearing down on them, her gobsmacked look replaced by a stony glare. “Oh, there you are!” She linked her arm tightly through Paul’s. “Isn’t our reservation at eight? Of course, if you’d rather skip dinner…”

  “We’ve been talking about Impressionists.” He spoke lightly. “Lily thinks they inspire modern artists.”

  Gina blinked coquettishly. “Is it a trend?”

  I hope not.

  “Perhaps a new exhibition…” Gina said.

  Paul nodded, but he was a million miles away. In Croatia?

  The real questions were why Seven, and why Kurtz? Did the killer use Caillebotte’s painting as a motif, or did Seven inspire him to kill?

  Chapter Twelve

  Sunlight streaming through Nick’s bedroom window woke her. Realizing it was Saturday, she settled back onto the pillows. In the shower, he belted out a lusty tune. She reached to the floor for his shirt and wrapped herself in it. Like Paul, he didn’t need deodorant; unlike Paul, he had no natural scent. Can’t have it all. Remembering last night, she stretched luxuriantly. When the water started running in the sink, she pa
dded downstairs to make coffee.

  Nick lived in a sturdy brick house with a two-car garage and a lousy yard. Typical bachelor’s digs, it had a kitchen that didn’t get much use, shelves crammed with Atlantics and Popular Mechanics, and a daunting electronic sound system. It seemed too big for one person, but if he’d had a wife or girlfriend there was no sign of her now.

  She rummaged through the refrigerator. Beer, Dijon, a brown avocado. The freezer had an opened bag of ground French Roast and freezer-burned English muffins. While the coffee perked, she cleared books from the dining room table. Among them was the catalog from an old Caillebotte exhibition at the Kimbell in Fort Worth.

  “We should go to more events with your ex.” Nick nuzzled her neck. His auburn hair was wet from the shower and he smelled of soap and shampoo. All he was wearing was jeans.

  Forget Paul.

  “Something turned you on last night,” she said, caressing his back. The angry slashes Jack inflicted when he’d jumped Nick that first time at her condo were finally scabbing over. I thought that cat was neutered! he’d howled. Since then they’d gone to his place. “Can I put on more ointment?”

  “He was just protecting you.”

  She poured coffee into mismatched mugs. “I didn’t know you liked Caillebotte.”

  “Just trying to impress the teacher.”

  He gave her an affectionate nip before accepting his coffee, and she paged through the catalog. It featured two of Caillebotte’s most ambitious works. On the Pont de l’Europe was a cityscape in his signature violet-blues. A top-hatted gent and a lady with a parasol stood on a bridge which, according to the catalog, was a place for surreptitious plein air assignations. A dog trotted towards them, a hind paw outside the frame. The Floor-Scrapers was a sepia-toned oil of bare-chested laborers in an elegant Parisian flat. One man’s legs were cut off by the frame. Caillebotte had been savaged for that and the workmen’s semi-nudity.