Twenty minutes later, Robin and I were sharing a corner table at a small family-run place on Westwood Boulevard south of Olympic. Gregarious family, homemade pasta, early enough to get in without a reservation.
Over bread and Sangiovese, I asked Robin about her day. When she finished telling me, she said, “Your turn.”
I told her about the new suspicions of Okash and Dugong.
“The art world,” she said. “Yeah, it can get really vicious, one of the many reasons I left school. I think it’s because artists get a pass—talent confused with being a good person, they don’t think the rules apply to them.”
I said, “Caravaggio?”
One of the greatest painters who’d ever lived had been a rage-prone murderer.
“Of course, Caravaggio. But Degas and Mapplethorpe were bigots, Gauguin was a syphilitic pedophile, we won’t even get into how Picasso treated women and stocked his studio with stolen artifacts. If we move on to musicians, we’ll be here until morning—ah, here’s our food.”
—
Over fruit and coffee, she said, “Violence as performance art…like Chris Burden having someone shoot him in the arm. Or one of those classic grotesques—Bosch, that kind of thing.”
I said, “Maybe Geoffrey Dugong in his pre-candle days.”
“He was into gore?”
“No idea because no images from his early days have turned up. Maybe because they’re not fit for public consumption.”
“He could’ve used another nom de paintbrush.” She shook her head. “Dugong. What was the guy thinking? Did he figure on growing flippers? That could sure limit your brush control.”
When I stopped laughing, she said, “Nowyou’re relaxed. When we get home, we’ll have aleisurelydessert.”
CHAPTER
30
Strenuous dessert. Followed by a long bath and a couple of hours watchingFoyle’s War.
I’d intended to stay up after Robin fell asleep as I often do. Wanting to wring info from the computer on Dugong/Dowd and if that didn’t produce anything, search real estate sites for ownership of the house where Medina Okash had delivered the painting.
The next thing I saw was a blade of golden light riding the top of the bedroom curtains. Seven forty-eight a.m. Still in bed. No memory of the intervening hours.
Robin’s side of the mattress was empty. Slow, steady snuffling from my side led me to look down.
Blanche snoring joyfully, one paw resting in one of my slippers.
She waited, smiling, as I brushed my teeth and put on a robe, then padded after me into the kitchen. Coffee in the pot, two slices of rye toast on the table.
I said, “Where’s Mom?”
Trotting to the service-porch door, she sat.
I filled a cup and grabbed a piece of toast and the two of us went out to the garden. Pausing at the pond, I scooped a handful of pellets from the old porcelain Japanese urn I keep near the water’s edge and tossed them in. A few fell to the ground and Blanche was rewarded for her vigilance. The koi splashed her as they gobbled. She shook herself off and smiled some more. Not at me, at life, in general.
The right way to start the day.
—
Nothing on knife-attack victim Contessa Welles but the computer was more than happy to tell me who owned the house on Clearwater.
Privately held company named Heigur, LLC. Nothing anywhere about what it peddled.
I called Milo. He said, “Saw that, looked up the business license. Real estate, no details, no transactions for a while. Caught a picture of the house, doesn’t look like much.”
