Murder in Primary Colors

  Chapter 8

  The snow started about 3:30 and by 7:15 was beginning to pile up in the streets. Chris had asked Charlie to meet them at the parking garage so he could help Pansy maneuver. Pansy agreed that her wheelchair would be a better option than the walker because it promised to be a long evening.

  They took the elevator to the lowest level and set out for the museum through one of the tunnels that made life so much easier for pedestrians in the winter. As they walked, Chris thought longingly of ducking out early but was resigned to an evening spent being falsely cheerful. Questions about the Picasso haunted her.

  Seventy-five percent of the invitees had responded positively, so the museum was already elbow-to-elbow when the elevator opened to admit them to the atrium. Local and statewide movers and shakers wouldn't miss being special guests for the unveiling of the only painting by Pablo Picasso in the state. More particularly, they wouldn't miss connecting with the multimillionaire donor. After shedding their coats Chris and Pansy moved to one side to watch the arrivals.

  Charlie brought them wine and whispered, "Let me know if you need me, Boss. I'm going to circulate." He was gone.

  A medium height, bull-necked man and a tall woman wearing a mink jacket stepped off the elevator into the atrium. Howard Randall looked around and started for the coat check. Chris wheeled her mother into his path and reintroduced herself. "Welcome, Mr. Randall."

  "Of course, Dr. Connery. A pleasure to see you again."

  "And this is my mother, Pansy McMillan."

  "This is my wife, Tweety," responded Randall and waved at the statuesque blond who could have passed for a Las Vegas showgirl. She was at least twenty-five years younger than her husband and two or three inches taller.

  Chris tried not to react to the rather bizarre nickname. Pansy had no such inhibitions.

  "Tweety!" She radiated charm. "What a cute name! Is it short for something?"

  Tweety Randall hesitated a moment. It took a second for the charm rays to penetrate. "Well, my mother, rest her soul, named me after my Aunt Twila. Would you believe it? Anything's better than Twila."

  "I understand completely. My sister Daffodil has had nothing but misery from her given name since the day she was born," Pansy said.

  Tweety smiled and laughed.

  When Randall took his wife's coat and aimed for the coat check, Chris trailed after him.

  "Mr. Randall—"

  "Please, call me Howard."

  "Howard, I need to ask you one quick business question before you go into the party. Did you send a condition report or provenance document along with the painting?"

  Randall handed the coats over to the attendant and turned. "Condition report? Why do you ask?"

  "Well, since Page's death we've been trying to get everything tidied up, you know. I just can't lay my hands on it, if you sent one."

  "I can have another copy sent to you. How's that?"

  "That would be wonderful. Thank you so much. Enjoy the festivities." She returned to her mother, feeling smug for having accomplished her mission without defying her dean, at least not directly.

  The Randalls moved away and went to join the president of the university, who was chatting with a group of Camford's elite. President McGinnis turned and smiled engagingly at the man of the hour.

  Pansy whispered, "Did you see Tweety's ring, Teensy? I'm surprised she can lift her arm!"

  Chris shook her head. She'd been so focused on her problem that she barely registered the expensive burgundy cocktail dress and matching shoes.

  Pansy continued. "It's what takes the place these days of a brand on the trophy wife's ass."

  "Mother!"

  "I'm just commenting." Pansy waved away her daughter's objection airily. "You know what she said to me while you were gone? She said it looked like most of these people had to be from somewhere else because they certainly cleaned up too well to be locals."

  "Mother!" Chris gasped again.

  "I didn't say it, she did. She's a real New Yorker, all right. I asked. She was born and raised in Queens and moved to Manhattan as an adult. She's seldom seen the need to cross the George Washington Bridge. I'll bet she's spent more time in Europe than outside the city in her own country."

  "I guess that's not so unusual for someone in her circle," Chris whispered back.

  "Makes her pretty provincial in my book," Pansy declared and began wheeling herself into the gallery.

  President James McGinnis surveyed the crowd on the main floor and judged it about time to start the formal festivities. He said as much to Dean Campbell-McFee and Howard Randall, who stood beside him looking unusually solemn for someone who was about to be praised without stint. They climbed the stairs to the mezzanine and moved to the platform where there were chairs and a podium. McGinnis continued to look around for the director of the Alumni Association and the director of Fine Arts. They all needed to get on the stage at the same time. He spotted Harrison Foy chatting with the lieutenant governor and someone McGinnis knew he should know from the State Arts Commission.

  Leaving Randall and the dean standing by the platform he pushed toward Foy while continuing to scan the crowd for Chris Connery.

  Foy saw him coming and nodded. He excused himself and joined the president. "Isn't this a great turnout? What a wonderful event for the Randalls! We're really showing them how much we appreciate their generosity."

  The president had heard all that earlier and assumed that Foy had been saying virtually the same thing to everyone he met all night long. He hoped Foy would be more original during his turn at the mike. He finally caught sight of Chris Connery by the gallery entrance with a woman in a wheelchair and that young sculptor.

  The president asked Foy to head for the speaker's platform. "I'll be right behind you," he said, and moved off toward Chris. Before he arrived within earshot of the director of Fine Arts, the sculptor—Bjornson is it?—began talking loudly to someone McGinnis couldn't see just outside the gallery entrance.

  "Here's my biggest fan, isn't that right, Colin? Biggest fan! You wouldn't think it to look at him, but he likes my stuff. Isn't that right, buddy?"

  Heads turned. President McGinnis frowned. He marveled that someone would show up at a function of this sort actually looking like an artist. The young man wore a sport coat, jeans and a T-shirt with a picture of a presumably naked man in a trench coat flashing himself at a bronze statue of a nude woman. The caption read Expose yourself to art. Under the circumstances the Art Department had to be invited en masse, the occasion being an art event. McGinnis scowled. You'd think he could wear a tie just once. Besides being scruffy, he's clearly drunk. He shook his head. Completely unprofessional. As he approached, Colin McCarty nodded stiffly in obvious embarrassment, said something he couldn't hear and moved away.

  "Chris, it's time to start."

  "Certainly Dr. McGinnis." Chris bent to say something to the attractive older woman in the wheelchair.

  "Who might this lovely lady be?" McGinnis boomed heartily and bent to take Pansy's hand. Chris introduced them. Behind Pansy's wheelchair Bjornson was weaving slightly, an unfocused stare on his face.

  "You go ahead, Chris," Pansy said. "I'll get Professor Bjornson to keep me company. Wheel me over to the elevator, Richard, so I can get a good spot." Bjornson steadied himself on Pansy's chair and they started off around the crowd.

  "I'm not sure that's the best escort for your mother, Chris," the president whispered as they pushed through the crowd. "Seems like he got a head start on this party."

  "Pansy will be fine. And she'll keep him busy and out of trouble."

  "Let's hope so."

  The speeches began with the president welcoming everyone to the university and the museum. Harrison Foy did indeed say over the microphone exactly the same thing that he had said to everyone in the place as they came through the door. He added a few remarks about Howard Randall's tenure as a student at Midstate University, including a quote from Randall's fraternity housem
other, now 102 and living in a nursing home in Ft. Myers, Florida. The actual remark had been, "Who the hell's that?" but Foy, intent on including the centenarian, invented such a witty remembrance that the audience chuckled warmly and wished to a person to be so sharp at such an age.

  Howard J. Randall shook his head and laughed with the rest while he struggled to remember who the woman was. The days he had lived in the frat were a beer-drenched haze in his memory, and if he had paid any attention to the woman it was accidental. At that time he had preferred leggy blondes. He was pretty sure she hadn't been a leggy blonde. I still preferred leggy blondes, he thought, glancing down at his leggy blonde wife standing in front of the platform next to the president's wife.

  Chris rose when it was her turn and tried to put her reservations out of her mind for the duration of her speech. "It's my job to put this work of art in perspective, to place it in the context that provides the grounds for its value. Synthetic Cubism is a variation of the earlier Analytical phase. At the start of the Cubist revolution, Picasso and his friend Georges Braque studied traditional still life setups from various angles and presented the different points of view simultaneously in one image. In the effort to concentrate on form, they simplified their problems by severely limiting the palette to black, white, brown and blue. In contemporary parlance, they 'de-constructed' the traditional process of image making that had dominated Western art for the previous four hundred years. The resulting intersecting planes and varying points of view create images in muted colors with edges that don't quite define objects, space that is ambiguous at best, and forms that seem to be there and not there at once.

  "When the Synthetic phase, the style of our painting, began about 1912 they were continuing and simplifying that process. A full-color palette returned, but forms continued to be ambiguous. Previously in the Renaissance tradition the artist created a pictorial space, a 'magic window,' a visual illusion for the viewer's contemplation. But Braque and Picasso had created a new 'space.' This space intrudes upon the viewer; things are glued to the surface, textures are exaggerated, and one can no longer look through the magic window because everything is on the surface.

  "Most of the major movements in Western art of the Twentieth century were either positively or negatively responding to Cubism. It is considered one of the most important movements of the early Twentieth century.

  "History is always being rewritten. Where this particular object will fit remains to be seen. Assessment of its value may be subject to change as critics and scholars reevaluate the individual work, its period, and its creator. It is beyond doubt, however, that Pablo Picasso will remain the most significant artist, the most powerful shaping influence on Western art in the first half of the Twentieth century and beyond." She sat down and breathed in relief at having gotten through it.

  At last it was Howard Randall's turn. He rose to face the microphone. "My wife and I have lived with this picture for the last twenty-six years," he said.

  Several in the audience calculated that the current Mrs. Randall had probably been thirteen when Mr. Randall purchased this piece and had never heard of Picasso or Randall at that time. Of course, he hadn't said which wife.

  "We will be sorry to be without it, but this gives Mrs. Randall a chance to redecorate and it gives me a chance to find something else to hang in that spot."

  Polite laughter filled the gallery while everyone in the room pondered the fact that this man had even more art and money to give Midstate in the long run. Randall looked down at the president seated to his right. "This is just my way of saying thanks to this great university for getting me started in life." He sat down to the first heart-felt applause of the evening, his brevity having earned their genuine admiration.

  The president took the floor again. "Now it's time to unveil the painting. He asked everyone to turn their attention to the opening in the wall where a white sheet draped the picture. "The intention, as I understand it, was to place the painting so it could be viewed with the permanent collection in the mezzanine, but from enough distance for security's sake." He invited all present to ascend to that level to get a good look while they continued to enjoy the wine and the string quartet.

  Then it was Rachael Jacobsen's task to tug gently on the cord and pull the sheet from the much-heralded gift. When the cloth was a rumpled pile on the floor below, a murmur rose from the crowd. Belated applause filled the gallery and the speakers' platform emptied into the milling crowd.

  Chris Connery rescued Pansy from tipsy Richard Bjornson and they worked their way to the railing for another look. She hoped her doubts about the painting's authenticity hadn't crept into anything she'd said or into the look on her face as they gazed at it now. This painting, Still Life with Pipe and Wine Bottle from 1914, was typical of the Synthetic phase. It was much more colorful than its Analytical antecedents, with red and yellow planes that seemed to intersect, but didn't quite. Splashes of ultramarine blue, flat areas of yellow ochre, and slashes of black paint defined some forms and obscured others. The yellowed newspaper was collaged to the surface where one would expect the tabletop to be in a more traditional image. There was a rough texture, perhaps sand mixed in the paint, in what would have been the background if Picasso had cared about such things at that time. The result was a flattening of forms in a tense composition that was the essence of Picasso's style.

  Pansy cocked her head. "I really never liked his work much, Teensy."

  "Neither do I, Mom," Chris replied.

  "But what you said about it was interesting... about the 'magic window' thing."

  "It was a side effect of this kind of work to force the viewer to realize that even those old-master 'magic windows' had always been just paint on flat surfaces," Chris said, trying not to sound too professorial. "Picasso seemed to be challenging a tradition he saw as worn out."

  "Actually, I like traditions," Pansy said. Someone pushed up to the rail next to them. Colin McCarty leaned forward and squinted at the painting. He was a lean, handsome man who, even on the weekends, had creases in his pants that would cut butter.

  Chris always thought of Noel Coward when she saw him in a tux. "Well, Colin, what do you think of it?"

  McCarty ignored the question. "Did you know, Chris, that Picasso did some set designs in the 'Twenties? Quite unusual and, of course, very avant-garde. He was quite influential in more than just art, wasn't he?"

  Chris nodded.

  "Myself, I just don't get it," McCarty said at last and turned away.

  Around them, guests buzzed. Some, their tongues loosened by two or three glasses of wine, declared themselves not much impressed and left to find the hors d'oeuvres again. "Who would spend twenty-five million dollars for something like that?" said the mayor of Camford as he turned to leave the railing.

  Fenton Mitchell, senior professor of painting in the Art Department, pushed through the throng and joined them just as they were about to leave. When Chris greeted him and introduced him to Pansy she realized he was having difficulty speaking.

  "Are you okay, Fenton?"

  "Yeah, yeah," he said gruffly and pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket to blow his nose. "It's just that this is such a coup for the university, Chris. It's my favorite period. I mean just look what happened! The whole point of painting changed in those fifteen years and here's an example by the master himself. I can hardly take it all in." Mitchell continued to stare at the painting across the six feet of space that opened to the floor below. "You actually got to touch it, didn't you?" he said.

  "Yes, I did." Chris crossed her fingers that she'd never have to tell Mitchell he was getting worked up over a fake. They were turning to leave when Scott Mathern arrived.

  The lithography professor was clearly not as enraptured by the new acquisition as the painting professor. "Well," he said. "At least we didn't have to pay for it."

  When Chris had finally had more than enough, she had to persuade Pansy that it was time to leave. Pansy would have preferred to
stay parked near the hors d'oeuvre table where she was sure to meet everyone before the evening ended. She relented when Chris pointed out that Pansy was sitting down while her daughter was standing in three-inch heels.

  Howard Randall, with his wife at his side, was just outside the gallery in the atrium shaking hands and acknowledging compliments. He looked genuinely pleased for the first time all evening. Chris found it endearing that he should have been afflicted with nerves earlier, for such was her interpretation of his humorless expression when he'd first arrived. She and Pansy found themselves in line with the lieutenant governor and the head of the State Arts Commission, preparing to express their thanks.

  When they were finally before the benefactors, Chris thanked them on behalf of the students who would benefit from their generosity for years to come. Randall expressed the hope that would be true, and Mrs. Randall didn't say a thing except to thank Chris for her part in organizing "such a nice party."

  When they turned away and were headed for the coat check, Chris saw the one person she hadn't expected to stay at this function from beginning to end: Richard Bjornson. He was standing by a nearly empty tray of wineglasses just inside the gallery. While she watched he poured two decorously half-full glasses together and slugged down the contents in two or three gulps.

  Colin McCarty paused on his way past. He nodded toward Bjornson and whispered, "Is he as bad off as I think he is?"

  "Worse, I think," Chris replied.

  "I'll take him home," McCarty said after a short hesitation. "At least I know where he lives now."

  "You are a saint, Colin," Chris said in a whisper. She promised herself to send McCarty a little thank you on behalf of the Gala committee.