Sherry took another moment to try to commit the face in the pictures to memory before carefully returning the whole mess to the shredder bin. Then she called the sheriff to tell him that she thought that she might have found some evidence.
This caused the usual sort of uproar and consternation. Sheriff Brown immediately suspected her of having tampered with a crime scene, an accusation against which Sherry felt compelled to defend herself despite the fact that, as usual, it was completely accurate. Eventually she was kicked out of her own office despite her objections and was forced to trudge home, where she wouldn’t have access to all the lovely library resources that she would usually use to track down a suspect. She would have to improvise.
First, she called Charlotte, who picked up after only two rings. She had, it seemed, followed Sherry’s advice about not immediately buying a pink convertible and hitting the town. “Lying low?” Sherry asked her.
Charlotte gave an uncharacteristically inelegant snort. “As much as I can,” she said. “I’m an unconflicted grieving widow whose husband never cheated on her once in his sainted life. I’ve had to leave the building a few times to stock up on essential food supplies. I got thefamily-sizedOreo pack.” There was a bit of softness and looseness to the sound of Charlotte’s voice that made Sherry wonder if she might have had a glass of wine or two. “Hey, listen. I cataloged all of John’s paintings to figureout what was missing. It was just a bunch of crap. A few untitled nudes and a couple of boats and things. So I guess they were just smashing up stuff for no reason. Is there any news?”
“There might be,” Sherry said cagily. “Did John ever go to any life drawing classes?”
“Every week,” Charlotte said. “He was the facilitator. Wednesdays at seven in Albany. He usually had drinks with some of the students afterward and got home late.”
Drinks with students, Sherry thought.A likely story. Frolicking with his freckled filly, no doubt.She gave the end of the pen she was holding a brief gnaw of excitement before poising it over a nearby legal pad. “Where exactly were the life drawing sessions held?”
“I have no idea,” Charlotte said after a brief pause. “That’s weird, isn’t it? Why wouldn’t I know that? God,werethere even life drawing classes? Was he just seeing some woman down there this whole time while I sat at home like a complete idiot?” Her voice, which had been growing steadily louder, reached a vibrant crescendo on the wordidiot.
Sherry winced. “There were definitely life drawing classes,” she said carefully.
“Does that mean that he was sleeping with a student?” Charlotte asked. “God, I’m sorry, I’m messing all of this up again. I soundexactlylike a horrible shrieking harpy of a wife who would kill her husband in a fit of jealous rage, don’t I?”
“You don’t sound like aharpy,” Sherry said, because she couldn’t in all fairness say that Charlottehadn’tjust shrieked, anddidn’tsound as if she was fully prepared to march down to the morgue to subject John to an additional, postmortem stabbing.
“You mean that Idosound like an unhinged murderer,then,” Charlotte said, and heaved a sigh so loud that Sherry could practically feel it on her cheek. “I think I hate him.”
“I know,” Sherry said, sympathetically. “It’s only natural.” Maybe Charlottehadkilled him. The sheer degree to which she seemed to be trying to endear herself to Sherry suddenly struck Sherry as more suspicious than she’d found it a day or so before. She was, surely, much too young and glamorous and interesting to needSherryfor her emotional support. “Has your mother arrived yet? Or any friends?”
“No,” Charlotte said. “It’s been crazy. Her flight was canceled, and then my aunt Charlie had a stroke. And my best friend’s dog is sick. Which, frankly, I find a little insulting. People are so weird about their dogs. We’ve been friends for ten years, myhusbandgets murdered, and your main concern is your cockapoo?”
“Cockapoo,” Sherry mouthed, feeling momentarily overwhelmed by the sheer capacity of The Youth to invent impenetrable new slang terms before it registered that the word rang a distant bell as, possibly, the sort of dog that glamorous young women from Manhattan might carry around in their purses. She cleared her throat, mentally setting the subject of cockapoos aside for further study in her leisure hours. “I’m very sorry to hear that,” she said, after what was probably a far-too-long cockapoo-induced gap in the conversation. “I hope that the…cockapoo”—what a joy to say aloud it was!—“will recover. And youraunt, of course,” she added hurriedly. “I hope that yourauntwill recover. Obviously.”
“I don’t,” Charlotte said. “She’s the meanest old lady I’ve ever met in my life. I’ve always been mad that I had to be named after her. When I was eight she slapped me across the face for saying that I didn’t like the supper she’d cooked.Maybe if she was going to be that sensitive about her pork chops she shouldn’t have cooked them until you could side a house with them. Oh my God, I’m doing it again, aren’t I? Do I ever say anything thatdoesn’tmake me sound like a serial killer? Youdefinitelythink that I killed John now, don’t you?”
“I’m withholding judgment,” Sherry told her. Honesty, after all, was still the best policy. “I’ll talk to you soon, Charlotte.”
“I’ll be here with my Oreos,” Charlotte said. “Plotting my next kill, I guess. Promise you won’t let them give me the electric chair, Sherry?”
“I don’t think that they use the electric chair in New York,” Sherry told her. “I could look it up for you, though, if you want.”
“Wow, thanks for that,” Charlotte said. “I won’t worry at all now.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Sherry said. Then they both hung up.
“Cockapoo,” Sherry said, to the silent and uninterested room.
Five
After having spent most of her day of rest on earnest sleuthing, Sherry decided to give herself the rest of the afternoon off. She cooked herself an enormous plate of spaghetti and had two glasses of cabernet. Then, just to make very sure that she would fall asleep promptly, she put herself into a nice hot bath withAnna Karenina. She’d barely made it through two pages of Levin holding forth on all the extremely important modern innovations he wanted to bring to nineteenth-century Russian agriculture when she almost dropped the book in the bath. She’d started to nod off.Perfect.She’d tried many methods over the years to treat her occasional insomnia, but she’d yet to find one as reliably efficacious as Tolstoy.
The next morning at the library was a quiet one, which was normal for a Monday. She took the opportunity to hide at her desk and make a few phone calls.
The woman currently at the front desk of the main branch of the Albany Public Library system picked up the phone very promptly and was immediately ready to help out a fellow librarian in a time of need. No, they didn’t host life drawing classes at the library, but she could check the communityboard to see whether anyone was advertising one in town. She came back sounding triumphant: there was a flyer on the board for a life drawing session on Wednesday evenings in a local coffee shop called the Night Kitchen. She also, helpfully, provided the coffee shop’s phone number.
The first time she called the coffee shop, no one answered the phone. The second time, the gentleman who answered was less than helpful. Who organized the life drawing classes? He didn’t know, but he was pretty sure that they didn’t do that. They didn’t organize the classes, or didn’t host them at all? He was unsure. Could she speak to a manager? A heavy sigh. The manager wouldn’t be in until three. “Oh, thank you!” Sherry trilled. “I’ll call back then!” In response the young man grunted, then hung up on her.
Sherry called back promptly at three and patiently made her way through an aural gauntlet of hostile or baffled teenagers before finally reaching the manager, a harried-sounding woman who nonetheless did her best to help. “The art people? They rent out the back room every Wednesday night. Hold on a second—” There was the sound of an espresso machine in the background, and two teenagers shouting back and forth about whether or not there were any everything bagels left. Eventually the harried woman returned. “Hello? The organizer is a guy named John Jacobs. Do you need his number?”
Sherry swallowed back a groan. “No,” she said. “Unfortunately, John passed away last week. I was hoping to contact whoever he was working with on the figure drawing classes to let them know.”
The harried woman made the appropriate noises over this lamentable turn of events. Sherry soldiered onward. “Is thereanyone else I could speak to? Someone who might know how to get in touch with his model to let her know that she doesn’t need to come in?”
