An Accidental Corpse Page 12

  As they approached the painting, Ossorio lifted TJ up to his shoulder so his head was level with the top of the canvas. “Look at the top right corner,” he prompted, “and tell me what you see.”

  “Oh, mira eso, it’s a hand!” TJ exclaimed, “and there’s another one!” He pointed to the left. “A whole row of them!”

  “Sí, Señor TJ. You can find lots of handprints once you know what to look for. Why do you think Jackson put them there?”

  “Did he do it on purpose?” asked TJ.

  Ossorio lowered the boy to the floor and crouched down beside him. “Oh, yes. It’s a kind of signature, much more personal than the written one.” He pointed out Pollock’s name and the number 50, the year it was painted, along the bottom edge at the left. “Everything Jackson did on canvas was deliberate. He said there were no accidents, however spontaneous his technique. He had remarkable, almost uncanny control of the liquid paint he used—ordinary house paint, but what extraordinary results he got with it. I can only aspire to his level of intuitive creativity. Perhaps I’ll get there some day, but I have a long way to go.”

  Thirty-two.

  “Well, we don’t have far to go for our tea,” interjected Ted as he joined them. Pushing a rolling cart bearing a pitcher of iced tea with lemons, a plate of home-baked scones, and ramekins of jam and butter, he waved them outside to the terrace, where a glass-topped wrought-iron table and matching chairs with cushioned seats were waiting under the shade of a large canvas umbrella.

  “I’m Ted,” he informed them as he unloaded the cart, “the hostess with the mostes’ on the ball,” quoting Ethel Merman. “And you are the Fitzgeralds. Delighted to meet you.” He bowed deeply and straightened to display a charming dimpled smile.

  “I’m Fitz, this is Nita, and our son TJ.” Hands were shaken all around. “It was good of you to go to all this trouble, especially since you have to get ready for the funeral tomorrow.”

  “Absolutely no trouble at all,” Ted assured him. “We have tea on the terrace every afternoon. It’s lovely that you could join us.” His expertise at making guests feel welcome was well practiced.

  “Oh, dear,” remarked Nita as he handed around the glasses, “you’ve got some nasty scratches on your arm. Shouldn’t you put something on them?” She had spotted what looked like claw marks on his left forearm.

  Ted shrugged off her concern, which—though he didn’t realize it—was strictly professional. “It’s nothing, really. I was trying to make some headway, forgive the pun, in the rose beds. So many dead heads to clip, so few hours in the day. The thorns are such a menace—I really must get gloves with longer gauntlets.”

  “I’m seriously thinking of having all those bushes pulled up,” said Ossorio. “They were planted by the Herters, and they were only here in summer. Flower gardens are too seasonal—they look awful in winter, dead and depressing. Evergreens would be much more suitable for a year-round garden. And a lot less work for our gardener.”

  “Meaning me,” said Ted with a chuckle. “I’m Mr. Fixit as well. Alfonso doesn’t know how to change a lightbulb. The only place where he can manage on his own is in the studio.”

  “Don’t you have a staff?” asked Fitz. “Surely you can’t run this big estate without servants.”

  “But we do, almost entirely alone, that is. The cleaning lady comes in once a week, and she helps clear up after a party, but that’s it. I’m teasing about Alfonso, he does his fair share around the house, but he really is worse than useless in the garden. He only has to approach a flower or a shrub to kill it, and God help the rhododendrons if he ever decides to take up pruning.”

  Ossorio expressed deep resentment at this offense to his horticultural prowess, and the two began to banter back and forth, much to the amusement of their guests. Presently Ted excused himself, pleading the demands of a boeuf bourguignon in progress.

  “Want to see what I’ve got cooking?” he asked TJ, who said sure, and off they went to the kitchen, at which point Ossorio decided it was time to find out the reason for Nita’s call.

  Having earlier considered Ossorio to be a prime suspect, she was now having second thoughts. His face and arms were unmarked. The scratches on Ted’s left arm might have been made by rose thorns, or maybe by fingernails—it would take a closer examination to find out for sure. If they were human inflicted, and a blood test matched the tissue samples, it would be damning evidence. Perhaps it was he who tried to head off Pollock, Kligman, and Metzger on their way into the concert.

  She glanced at Fitz, but he was deliberately focusing on the view, leaving her to improvise.

  “I told you I use my maiden name professionally,” she began, “but I didn’t say what that profession is. I’m a New York City police detective.”

  Ossorio couldn’t have been more stunned. “Detective Juanita Diaz? You astonish me. But then I imagine you astonish most people, including your handsome husband.” He beamed indulgently on the couple, earning a nod of agreement from a blushing Fitz and once again disarming Nita. This fellow could charm the birds out of the trees, she said to herself. I mustn’t let myself be taken in.

  “Fitz, TJ, and I are out here on vacation,” she explained, “and we just happened to be there when the car accident happened. As you know, Ruth Kligman is in the hospital. She was incoherent when I gave her first aid at the scene, and she’s been in and out of consciousness ever since. The chief of the East Hampton Town police asked me, as a favor, to question her when she came to, but she seems to have lost her memory of the events leading up to the crash. I was hoping you might be able to fill some of the gaps.”

  “What do you mean? What sort of gaps?”

  “Well, for instance, how far did Pollock get that night? Did he make it as far as The Creeks?” She knew this was a loaded question, since Ossorio had told Dr. Cooper that Pollock and the women didn’t attend the concert.

  Ossorio answered without hesitation. “If he did get this far, I never saw him. The concert began a little after nine. I introduced the pianist and the chamber orchestra, then sat down to enjoy the program. The gates were open, so he could have driven in, changed his mind, and driven out again. Since he was late, perhaps he decided not to interrupt.”

  From their tour of the ground floor, Nita remembered that the music room’s west windows faced the circular drive. “Wouldn’t his lights have been visible from inside?” she asked. “Surely that would have been noticed.”

  “You’re very observant, but of course you’re a detective, so I shouldn’t be surprised. However, the driveway was lined with parked cars—we had more than fifty people here—so the windows would have been shielded. I’m sure a car could have driven around the circle without attracting attention.”

  So someone outside could have encountered Pollock and the girls without anyone inside seeing them, thought Nita. And the music would have drowned out an argument several yards away. But is that what happened? Was someone outside—Ted, perhaps?

  With some fifty witnesses it shouldn’t be hard to verify that Ossorio was in the music room during the concert, or if he was absent for any part of the time. But what about Ted? Nita decided to pursue that question indirectly.

  “Do you think Ted might have seen them? Or was he in the music room, too?”

  “No, I believe he was in the dining room, laying out the food and drinks for the reception, or in the kitchen. Either way I doubt he’d notice a latecoming car, and after what happened I think he would have mentioned it. But why don’t you ask him?” Ossorio rose and directed them toward the kitchen. “Besides, it’s time to rescue TJ. Ted has probably put him to work.”

  Sure enough, Fitz and Nita found their son standing on a stepstool at the long central worktable. Clad in an apron, coated in a dusting of flour, and elbow deep in a huge bowl of bread dough, he was kneading away fiercely as Ted urged him on. His efforts, punctuated by loud huffing and grunting, w
ere receiving enthusiastic approval.

  “That’s right, sock it in the gut! Punch it in the ribs! Give it the old one-two! The harder you hit it, the better it tastes.”

  Fitz exchanged amused looks with Nita. “You two are having entirely too much fun,” he said to Ted, then addressed his son. “If you’re finished punishing that dough, it’s time we were going. Your mom wants a word with Ted, so if Alfonso will show me where the washroom is I’ll get you cleaned up.”

  The baker’s apprentice turned to his mentor for guidance. “Am I finished? Did I punch it hard enough?”

  “You beat the stuffing out of it,” Ted told him. “But it will rise again like magic. I’ll get four big loaves out of this batch. If you promise to come back, I’ll save one of them for you.”

  “Will you really? ¡Qué bueno! Can we, Mom? Can we, Dad?”

  With assurance that they would return in a couple of days, after the funeral guests had left, TJ agreed to be relieved of kitchen duty and headed off to the washroom. This gave Nita the chance to question Ted tactfully, without putting him on guard.

  “I’m sure you’re wondering why I asked to come over,” she began, then explained her mission as she had to Ossorio. She got an even more animated reaction from Ted.

  “A detective? Well, strike me pink! Apparently the plainclothes branch is launching a charm offensive.” Another dimpled grin spread into a wicked smile. “I must ask Fitz to rate your undercover work.”

  “Making suggestive remarks to a police detective is a criminal offense,” she countered. “Perhaps I should run you in. I’m sure I have my handcuffs here somewhere.” She pretended to search for them in her handbag while Ted pretended to be contrite.

  “Seriously,” she said, “I do want to ask you something, on behalf of Chief Steele. He’s trying to trace Pollock’s movements on Saturday night. Is there any chance he and the girls actually got here, but decided not to stay?”

  Ted’s brow furrowed thoughtfully. “I suppose it’s possible, but I’m sure they didn’t come into the house, or I would have noticed them. I was shuttling between the kitchen and the dining room, getting ready for the reception.”

  “You didn’t hear a car drive in late, by any chance?” She was gauging his responses carefully, looking for any hesitation or uneasiness, but he was apparently untroubled by her probing.

  “No, I didn’t, but the music was loud enough that I doubt I would have heard a car, unless it pulled right under the porte cochere. Maybe not even then, if I was in the dining room.”

  Now Ted began to wonder where this was leading. “But let me ask you a question. Why does it matter if they got here or not? Jackson did say they’d be at the concert, but we know they weren’t. Maybe the girls convinced him to go somewhere else. Maybe he took them out for drinks, or to the movies.”

  Easy does it, thought Nita, don’t make him think he’s under suspicion. But it does sound like he’s trying to deflect any hint that they could have turned up here.

  “I believe Chief Steele is investigating those possibilities,” she hedged. “He just wants to cover all the bases, and he’s shorthanded so he asked me to cover this one, just as a favor, you understand. Nothing official, I’m strictly off duty.”

  “If Harry Steele has any sense,” said Ted with conviction, “he’ll recruit you. The East Hampton Town force is extremely short on glamour, not to mention brains. And you’ve got both.”

  Thirty-three.

  Wednesday, August 15

  Lee spent the morning on the phone, relentlessly badgering everyone involved in the funeral. Unable to persuade Clement Greenberg, the art critic whose enthusiasm had helped launch Pollock’s career, to deliver the eulogy, she turned to Fred Williams for help. He lined up the pastor from the Amagansett Presbyterian Church, a house of worship in which the artist had never set foot. Although they came from Presbyterian stock, LeRoy and Stella Pollock disdained the church and had not had their sons baptized.

  When Lee announced that the funeral would be held in the chapel, Jackson’s brothers were surprised and somewhat offended. Was she doing it on purpose, to spite them? With that possibility in mind, Sande had questioned her choice of venue.

  “Wouldn’t the funeral parlor be more appropriate?” Sande had asked.

  Lee was emphatic. “No. When I went over there to discuss the arrangements, it was obvious that their rooms are way too small. I’m sure you realize that this will not be a strictly family and friends affair. It’s going to be a mob scene, Sande, so I had to keep that in mind. Besides, the chapel is much closer to the cemetery. My decision was simply practical.”

  It was also final, no arguments. The matter was settled, with the implicit understanding that the family could like it or lump it.

  In fact Lee was right about practicality. For the past two days, every time she replaced the receiver the phone would ring with a call from yet another artist, critic, curator, dealer, or collector telling her that he or she would be attending. Many of them were already in residence nearby for the summer, and others would be coming out from the city by car or train. Springs was not much more than a hundred miles from the center of the art universe. And in spite of her attitude toward the Bonackers, she knew she couldn’t prevent a contingent of them from turning up to say farewell to their drinking buddy.

  She was having less success with the people she wanted to be there. In addition to Greenberg, who turned her down flat with the excuse that he couldn’t praise a man who had killed his passenger, her attorney, Gerry Weinstock, also begged off.

  “I’m sorry, Lee, I have to be in court on Wednesday. But Mags and the kids are there, so they’ll be at the funeral. I’ll be out at the weekend, and we can go over the will and anything else you need to review then. Right now you have to think about protecting Jackson’s paintings in the studio. Put a padlock on it immediately, and for God’s sake keep it locked during the reception.” The wisdom of that advice was obvious.

  Her biggest disappointment was her brother, Irving, who also pleaded the pressure of work. With several of the staff at his insurance company out on vacation, he explained, his boss couldn’t spare him.

  “But I need you, Izzy,” she insisted, using his childhood nickname to underscore their blood tie. “I’m going to be surrounded by Jackson’s family—I need someone in my corner!”

  “Come on, Lee,” he said, “you’ll have plenty of friends around, you don’t need me.” He pointed out that their sister Udel would be there with her husband and kids, so she wouldn’t be the only Krasner in the room.

  “Don’t give me that, Izzy,” she retorted. “They’ll be completely useless. They have no idea how to behave with these people. The sharks are already circling, waiting for a chance to take a bite out of Jackson’s estate. If they can’t profit from his death, they’ll try to undermine his reputation out of spite. You know how to stand up to them. You know what’s at stake.”

  He knew, all right. It was Irving who had persuaded Lee to insure the contents of the studio for the full market value after Jackson installed a Salamander kerosene stove to heat the building. Terrified that he would spill the fuel and carelessly drop a lighted match or cigarette into it, she had asked her brother to write a policy that would protect her inheritance in case a fire destroyed the many canvases and works on paper lining the walls, in the flat file, and in the storage racks. Lee was his only heir.

  With the value of his work increasing annually, thanks to Sidney Janis’s expert promotion, the inventory represented financial security for Lee in the event of Jackson’s death. Since she had stifled her own career to promote his, there was virtually no market for her work. She knew it would take years to establish one, if ever.

  Most dealers, even the women, scorned female artists, believing them to be bad risks. Whether justified or not, this prejudice prevented many deserving women from achieving the kind of success—both critical
and financial—enjoyed by their male colleagues, who often reinforced that attitude.

  Even Jackson, who had persuaded his dealer to give Lee a solo show and often expressed pride in her accomplishments, was not above taking a cheap shot at her in private.

  “She’s talented, plenty,” he once told a friend, “but great art needs a pecker. Not even Lee’s got that.”

  Perhaps to compensate for that physical deficit, she had developed some metaphorical alternatives: an exceptionally stiff backbone, a very hard head, and plenty of guts.

  Thirty-four.

  “What are you going to wear?” asked Fitz as he watched Nita rummaging through the closet. He had laid out the white long-sleeved shirt, striped necktie, sports jacket, and navy blue trousers he had packed for evenings out; although, until now, with everything here so informal, he’d had no occasion to wear them.

  Sighing with frustration, Nita examined and rejected item after item of clothing.

  “Everything I have is too, I don’t know, too cheerful,” she said. “Maybe I should run down to that little department store in town and buy something black, or at least a dark color.” The various church funerals she had attended in Spanish Harlem led her to expect heavy solemnity and acres of mourning clothes, especially on the women.

  “Maybe you should ask Ossorio,” he suggested. “He’ll know what’s appropriate.” That seemed like a good idea to Nita, so she walked over to the inn and used the office phone.

  Ossorio told her that Fitz could forget the jacket and tie, and that her summer clothing would be fine. No one was going to dress in black, and no head covering was required for the women. The service would be brief and informal, without organ music or hymns.

  “Nothing like the Roman Catholic funerals you and I are used to,” he explained. “Lee tells me that the casket will be closed, so there will be no viewing, no parade of mourners. The minister will say a few words, perhaps one or two others will speak, then the hearse will take the body to Green River for burial. I expect that’s where the real grieving will take place. Then a lot of people will go back to the house, where crocodile tears will flow as freely as the whisky.”