She didn’t answer Dante’s question, just reached forward and hooked the plastic handle of the beer pitcher instead. When she tilted it, she was surprised to find it held only enough beer to fill her glass halfway.
Dante heaved an exasperated sigh. “So, did Charlie loose any more contemporaries back during the Korean War? Were there any more suspicious deaths? Or just this Elizabeth’s?”
It wasn’t a matter of ‘just,’ Dante knew that. “Only her,” Claire muttered. She knew she sounded sullen, but she couldn’t help it.
“So it’s not like you’re hot on the trail of a serial killer. My guess would be that whoever did it – if someone did it, which I still think is questionable – has probably already paid the price. I can’t imagine that you could kill someone and just forget all about it and go on to live a happy life.” Dante shook his head. “And more than likely, whoever did this – if anyone did – is dead themselves after all this time.”
“Let the dead bury the dead, is that what you’re saying?” Claire drained the last of her glass and then looked longingly at Dante’s, still three-quarters full.
“I’m just saying that you’ve gotten to the point where you see murder everywhere. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. You’re letting your imagination run away with you. I just don’t understand how you could put some dead girl above everything we’ve talked about.”
Claire found herself becoming angry, even though part of her knew she was over-reacting. It wasn’t loyalty to a dead woman she would never know, could never know. “It’s not Elizabeth I owe something to. It’s Charlie. And if you don’t understand that, you don’t understand me.”
Chapter 30
NE14XS
After she got behind the wheel of the Mazda, Claire belatedly realized that maybe she shouldn’t be driving. She compromised by taking surface streets rather than the freeway, but even still she had the sense she were floating rather than steering the car. It felt as if the car were navigating itself. Dante was quiet, and she wasn’t sure if it was because he was lost in thought, mad at her, afraid of distracting her, or some combination.
Claire was used to hunting for parking in Northwest Portland, where parking spaces were as scare as sunny days in an Oregon winter, but on her second pass by Mercury she saw that they had valet service, a rarity in Portland. The valet managed to keep a straight face when Claire handed over the keys to her Mazda 323 that was probably only a couple of years younger than he was. He pretended not to notice the Snickers wrappers on the back seat or the long crease in the front fender that Claire had decided to ignore after she found out how much the body shop wanted to fix it. The income from a small trust provided Claire with just enough money to live on if she bought most of her clothes on eBay, lived with Charlie, and managed to keep her car running forever.
Mercury was hot, as predicted. Not just full of hotties dressed in black, but also too warm. Although the atmosphere was open and uncluttered, the thirty-foot high ceiling seemed to amplify the noise rather than absorb it. Several of the tables had pairs of blood red velvet curtains that could be drawn for privacy. The room was dimly light, with most of the light provided by dozens of flickering candles.
The maitre d held up a finger to show that he would be with them in a second. A few feet away, a waitress in a black thigh-high miniskirt walked past, a tray balanced on one shoulder. Instead of nylons, she wore a black garter belt fastened to hose that ended a few inches below the hem of her skirt. Claire saw Dante eyeing the shadowed space between the woman’s thighs and elbowed him in the side. Hard. And then almost lost her balance. Dante might be mad at her, but she didn’t think that didn’t give him license to gawk.
Behind Claire and Dante, the door opened and Allen and Mary Lisac came in. Allen was dressed formally in a navy blue suit, whereas Mary was wearing a bright red flowered dress with Birkenstock sandals and what looked like lumpy hand-knit forest green socks. Among all the black-clad diners, she stood out like a parrot loosed in a flock of ravens.
After introductions all around, Claire braced herself, waiting for either Mary or Allen to look more closely at her, for recognition to dawn, but it didn’t.
Mary said, “Taking all you folks out to eat has given me an excuse to drag Allen to some of the best restaurants in the city. Of course, I’m sure they don’t hold a candle to the ones you have in New York.” Good, Claire thought. Maybe Mary thought Claire lived in New York with Dante.
The maitre d returned and led them to their table, which was covered with a white starched cloth and six or seven white candles flickering in cut glass holders in the colors of emerald, topaz and ruby. The mini-skirted waitress came back with menus, and this time Dante was careful to look at nothing but her face, even though they were now sitting eye level with her laced-up bustier that seemed about two sizes too small for her breasts. Claire had the depressing thought that with her big thighs and B-cup she could never be hired here.
Instead of appetizers and entrees, Mercury’s menu offered what it described as small plates and large plates. Small plates started at $25, which Claire figured placed Mercury firmly in the stratosphere of Portland’s most expensive restaurants. The food was billed as fusion cuisine, with French, Caribbean, Asian, and Italian spices, terms, and flavors commingling, complimenting - and, in some cases, if Claire’s imagination was any guide - colliding.
Looking up from the menu, Mary said, “How come there’s never fusion cuisine that takes in the English? No banger sausages, no pickled hardboiled eggs, no ploughman’s lunches?”
No one answered Mary’s question, but she didn’t seem to expect anyone to. Claire smiled to herself. She didn’t know if it was just the alcohol, but she was beginning to like Mary, who seemed as warm as her husband was cold. Pretending to look around the restaurant, Claire let her glance glide over Allen Lisac. He certainly didn’t look happy. His lips were pressed together in what was either disapproval or pain. What would the prospect of a lifetime of unrelenting pain do to a man?
She was so lost in her own thoughts that it took her a minute to notice the smell of smoke. It didn’t smell like cigarettes, exactly. More like…
“Claire! Your menu is on fire!” Dante said. A flame about two inches high was moving from the left-hand corner – which listed the appetizers – and down toward the main courses. With his bare hand, Allen slapped her menu down on the table, extinguishing the fire with a half-dozen rapid-fire smacks. He moved so quickly that the only evidence was a smudge of ash on the white tablecloth and the remains of Claire’s menu. Dante shot Claire a horrified glance, before saying to Allen, “Is your hand okay?”
“Fine!” He held it up, although in the candlelight it was hard to see if his palm looked any redder than normal. “The trick is to move quickly.”
“Your hand was definitely quicker than my eye. Or my nose,” Claire said, then tried to change the subject. “What do you guys think you’ll order?”
“Definitely the oysters. We’ll have to get them for starters,” Mary said decisively. “There is nothing better than a fresh oyster.”
Did fresh mean raw? Claire wondered. The Montroses had never been much on eating food in its natural state. In her family, the delicacy of choice had been Spam. Before the war, Claire’s grandmother had been one of the Hormel Girls. She had traveled around America, marching in parades and singing about the wonders of canned meat products. Ever since, no Montrose family gathering had been complete without a Spam casserole.
There was certainly no Spam on Mercury’s menu. In addition to the Willipa oysters and the bottle of white wine ordered as a starter, Allen requested steak skewers, Dante chose dim sum with fillings never before wrapped in a dim sum dough, and Mary ordered steamed baby vegetables and something described as pumpkin-stuffed roasted ravioli. Claire settled on bite-sized pieces of pan-seared Chilean sea bass with a vermouth cream reduction dipping sauce.
The wine steward appeared, carrying a silver stand with a chilled bottle of wine. With a flourish,
he opened the bottle, offered Allen the cork to sniff, and then poured out the first sip. After Allen nodded his acceptance, the wine steward poured glasses for each of them. Claire was glad it was a white wine. If her clumsy streak continued and she sloshed a little out of her glass, it probably wouldn’t leave as bad a stain as a red wine. Telling herself it was better to be on safe side, she gulped down the contents of her glass in one go. The wine steward had already walked away from their table, but when he saw Claire toss back her glass, he pivoted and refilled it. When Allen wasn’t looking, Mary gave Claire a conspirital wink. Claire found herself winking back.
The waitress brought them a loaf of fresh bread. She pointed at the carafe filled with gray crystals that sat next to a tall bottle of pale green liquid. “That’s Fleur de Sel salt, from the coastal area of Brittany. It’s collected by hand using traditional Celtic methods. And the olive oil comes from a small estate near Lucca. The owner picks her olives by hand and cold presses them within a day.” Her delivery was flat, as if she had memorized the words without any thought for their meaning. “This fruity oil has the purity, clarity, and balance of a Renaissance masterpiece.” She seemed startled when everyone at the table laughed.
Allen spooned some salt and drizzled some olive oil across a small white plate, then tore off a piece of bread. “Speaking of Renaissance masterpieces, Dante, what did you think of the collection?”
“The paintings as a group are good. Very solid.” Allen’s expression seemed to freeze, and Claire guessed he was worried his paintings were being damned with faint praise. But at Dante’s next words, Allen’s features relaxed. “The drawings, though, are exceptional. It’s rare to have so many in one place.”
Allen nodded, and the first smile Claire had ever seen on him flitted across his face. “People think Portland’s a little back water hick town. They can’t even pronounce the name of the state right. Everyone says Ory-gone instead of Ory-gun. Wait until they see we’ve got something to rival the Louvre and the Met.”
“Craig Larson - that’s the museum head,” Dante said in aside to Claire, “- tells me that you have designed the wing.”
Allen took a small notepad and a gold Cross pen from his shirt pocket. “After forty years in the business, I’ve worked with enough architects to know what I want.” He sketched rapidly as he spoke. “Outside, there will be stone steps leading to big pillars. But once you step inside the entryway it will be narrow and dark. And there’s a low ceiling, so it’s like a tunnel, like birth.” Even though she had been listening to every word, Claire jumped when he slapped his hand on the pad. “Then boom, you’re out in the hall, and the ceiling’s so far overhead you can’t even tell where it begins, and there’s no overhead lights, just indirect lighting on each of the drawings or paintings, so it feels as if you are walking into a dream.” He leaned forward and extended the notebook to Dante.
Claire nodded as she looked at the sketch, picturing the drama of it. Then she noticed a few drops of wine beaded the tops of her breasts. When Allen slapped his notepad, she must have jerked her wineglass. Trying not to draw attention to herself, she crumpled her napkin in her fist and swiped them up.
Allen said, “We break ground this month, and we’ll be finished by next June, in time for the summer travel season and the tourists.”
“Nine months – that’s fast for a building, isn’t it?” Claire asked. Her cheeks, she noticed suddenly, felt numb. She reached up and pinched one. It felt like it had been deadened with Novacaine.
“Not if you’ve been in this business as long as I have. There won’t be any surprises on this job. I personally handpicked all the subcontractors. They all have the schedule and they’re all committed to meeting it.” He took a sip of his wine, looking satisfied, then reached for the bottle in its silver holder. “Would you like another glass, my dear?”
Both Claire and Mary said yes, so he poured out the last of the wine and then waved down the steward and ordered another bottle.
While they waited, Dante said, “Tell me more about how you acquired the art works. Have they been in your family?”
Claire thought she heard a certain inflection in Dante’s voice. She wondered if Mary did, too, because the other woman had cocked her head and was regarding him curiously.
Allen didn’t seem to notice anything. “They’ve been in a family, just not my family. We travel in Europe quite a bit. A few years back I met a man, an English fellow, and we got to be friends. He began inviting us to out-of-the-way museums, even to a few private galleries. I’ve always appreciated art, not as a professional of course, but as an amateur. An aficionado. Last year, this fellow told me about a family he knew who had fallen on hard times. Their great-grandfather had been a collector, with a special love for drawings. They could have put the whole lot up for auction, but they knew what that meant. One piece in the British National, one at the Guggenheim in LA, one at the Louvre, and half a dozen disappearing into private hands, never to be seen again. They didn’t want to see their great grandfather’s collection parceled out a piece at a time. When I bought it, I had to agree to buy all of it.”
Dante said carefully, “And this Englishman, why didn’t he buy them himself if he could see how valuable they were?”
Claire was afraid Allen would take affront, but the expression on his face didn’t change. “He didn’t have the money for them himself. Few people would.” Allen stated this fact calmly, without gloating. “But it was an opportunity I could take advantage of.”
“Did you have them appraised before you bought them?”
“Of course. I’m not stupid. But not by someone from Christie’s or Sotheby’s. I didn’t want them getting wind of it, cutting some deal. No. I found somebody private and swore them to secrecy. You should have seen his expression when he saw what there was. Nineteen paintings and seven Old Master drawings. When I first laid eyes on them, I hardly believed what I was seeing. I knew enough not to touch, that even your fingers have oils that would degrade the paper, but I couldn’t stop staring. I knew how rare some of the pieces were. And now all of Portland will be able to see them. People from all over the state, all over the country, heck, all over the world, will come to see the Allen Lisac Wing. I’m betting the unveiling of this collection will set the art world back on its heels. But it won’t just be for the rich. We’ll let in grade school tours for free. We’ll have family days, senior citizen days. We’ll hold classes for kids from North Portland, teach them how to draw, maybe frame the best pieces every year and hang them side by side.”
Dante leaned forward. “You are absolutely right about the collection. I only had a few minutes to spend with it, but I found it hard to tear myself away. You know what I would like?” He answered his own question. “To have a little more time – a few hours – to spend with the pieces. Drawings are like people. It takes time to get to know them. Some of those pieces seem similar to ones we have at the Met. In a few cases, we may even have other preliminary sketches that were done for the same finished piece, or even the finished painting or sculpture itself. I’m thinking,” he took a sip of wine, “that it might make sense to see if the two museums could put together a joint show. Such a show could play up the similarities and the contrasts. We could mount a show that would open here and then travel to New York, instead of the other way around. I need more time to look at them and think about what could be done.”
Allen Lisac looked enormously pleased. “Certainly. Why don’t you come by tomorrow morning? I’ll talk to the museum to let them know you’re coming. Would you like me to meet you there?”
Dante shook his head. “I think it would be better if I were alone to think about all the possibilities.”
Mary leaned forward, her cleavage threatening to spill out of her dress. “Can I ask a dumb question? What exactly does a curator do?”
Dante smiled. “That’s not a dumb question. There are a lot of areas a curator is responsible for: highly detailed cataloging, advising on potential acquisitions,
scholarship, and lecturing. But basically, a curator is almost like a writer. Only instead of using words, he – or she – uses art to get his point across. Look at all the people in this room.” He swept his free hand to one side and then the other. “Imagine they are works of art and I need to curate an exhibition. Curators never get to include all the art they find, so I would begin by selecting three or four of the people to create my thematic show.” He smiled at Mary. “I’m not going to tell you what my theme is, other than it’s concrete. I’ll choose them because they all have something in common. See if you can guess what it is.” He turned his head and slowly scanned the room. Then he said, “I choose that man in the corner eating by himself, the woman to my immediate right, and the man who led us to our table. What is the theme?”
“They’re all wearing purple,” Claire said after a second. It was only after Dante frowned at her that she remembered that this was Mary’s game.
“That’s not what I was thinking of,” Dante said. “But it’s common for curators to choose one theme and for viewers to see another. Both are equally valid. Mary, can you think of the theme I was trying to express?”
Mary pushed herself back into a sitting position and was quiet for a long moment. “Is it that they are all wearing glasses?”
Dante nodded. “Very astute!”
Just then the harried-looking waitress finally appeared with two plates of oysters, which she placed in the middle of the table. Each plate held a ring of oysters arranged on a bed of crushed ice. Netting-wrapped lemons halves nestled in the center.