“The police never found the killer because it could have been anyone in that ring,” Hendricks says. “She bragged about talking to Jay Eastman, one night when she was drunk. Everyone in town knew what she had done. But she didn’t talk to Eastman, did she? She talked to you.”
Nikki, by the lakeside, turns to me, her long, dopey face flashing with fear and eagerness. “I could show you the Ski-Doo map they use in winter to take heroin over the border, but I know I’ll get caught,” she said. I know I’ll get caught. Was there a thrill in her voice when she said that?
“Why are you so curious about what happened to me years ago?” I say to him coldly. “It’s none of your business.”
To my surprise, he looks sheepish and squirms in his chair.
“You’re right,” he admits. “But something about you didn’t add up. So I asked Shaw, and then I looked into it.”
I push back from the table. Hendricks makes an abrupt movement with his arm, as if to grab me, detain me, and then, just as fast, his hand lands back down.
“Listen,” he says, and falters, rowing back in his seat, sighing, looking off toward the skyscrapers around us. “I’ll tell you what I know about Steve Goetz, but then will you please drop this?”
“For how long?”
Now Hendricks’s phone buzzes and he glances at it. “I may have to go,” he mutters, rising. Now that he’s the one leaving, and I’m still full of questions, my curiosity surges like a wave.
“Okay,” I say. “I promise.”
“You won’t talk about this with Shaw, or any of your colleagues, at least until we find the killer.”
“I said I promise.”
Hendricks gives me an appraising glance and then lowers his voice. “Steve Goetz didn’t just underwrite Still Lives. He gave two million dollars to the Rocque in order to guarantee Kim Lord a high-profile spot on the exhibition schedule.”
I knew it. “Driving up her prices,” I say.
“And fattening the budget for his pal Bas Terrant,” says Hendricks. “Not illegal, but certainly not in the tradition of the historic Rocque.”
My phone rings again. Jayme. I hit decline again.
“So Kim must have figured the whole thing out. She must have felt betrayed at such career manipulation, and decided to donate Still Lives. And they freaked,” I say. “Is that reason enough to kill her?” But even as I’m saying it, I know Steve Goetz didn’t do it.
“Both Goetz and Terrant have solid alibis for all day Wednesday and Thursday,” says Hendricks.
Of course they do. I like games, Goetz said. I wish I hadn’t gone to the gallery now. I wish he hadn’t seen my face.
“Goetz can’t be prosecuted for what he did, can he?” I say, thinking of the shelves in his office, all the catalogs of women artists. “What if there are more victims than Kim?”
Hendricks hesitates before shaking his head. “Nothing to prosecute. Some might even see it as a career boost.”
“But Bas could still be fired by the board if they learned of this.”
“For what?” Hendricks says. “He got a huge donation to put on an exhibition by a rising star.” He tosses down his napkin and moves to rise.
He’s right, and I am being na?ve, but their maneuvers still infuriate me.
“Something I don’t get,” I say. “If the supercollector never sells an artist’s work, how does he earn his money back?”
“Steve Goetz is a patient man,” says Hendricks. “Art investments usually take a couple of decades to pay off. Kim Lord’s first show was fifteen years ago. What if he starts slowly selling the work at auction and through the gallerist, all the while paying privately for more media hype? He could quadruple his early investment, and”—he takes one last slug from his glass—“the supercollector becomes a powerful and influential figure in contemporary art. More original than Kim Lord herself.”
“And she goes down as a fake, created by hype and back-door dealings,” I say. “But she’s a genius.” I hear Brent’s agonized cry on the night of the Gala, It was all her. It was all her.
My phone rings again. Jesus, Jayme will not give up. I hit decline for the third time.
“A genius because of this last show,” says Hendricks. “I suspect that Goetz thought she’d be a flash in the pan.”
“She burned up the pan,” I say.
“She burned down the whole kitchen,” Hendricks agrees.
For one unshuttered instant, across the table, our eyes meet and I see longing in his. For what Kim stood for? For me?
Hendricks abruptly stands. “Now you have your answers. Do we have a deal?”
“No leaks,” I promise. “But who killed her?” I ask. “You must have a theory.”
Hendricks wavers for a moment above me, the night sky inking his shirt, his hair. “It won’t do you any good to know my theories,” he says quietly. “And I think your boss wants to speak with you.”
I turn to see Jayme frowning behind me, her arms folded.
Jayme starts her lecture with the same lacerating poise she maintains in her media previews, her voice cool as a blade. But the deeper she gets into recounting my behavior in the past seventy-two hours—skipping the annual report meeting, giving Juanita the impression that I was trying to steal something from her office, and now sitting at a restaurant when I’m supposed to be home sick—the more a moan of betrayal creeps in. How could I, of all people, do this to her? Jayme trusted me with her past last night, with the anguish she keeps buried, and almost as soon as she did, I started behaving like I want to distance myself from her as fast as possible. Like I want to be fired. I stare down at my empty drink. How do I ask her to forgive me? How can I tell her about Kim’s death?
“I insist you take a leave for the rest of the week,” concludes Jayme. She has not sat down or unfolded her arms. “Starting tomorrow. Okay?”
“Okay,” I say. Silently, I practice saying it to her: They found Kim’s body. I see Jayme’s eyes go dull and her shoulders slump. Then I see her once again hoisting herself straight and tall, marshaling her strength to tell me I need a break, I need time, when whatever pain she is carrying has rooted so deep she can’t pull it out for fear of destroying herself. They found Kim with her head bashed in. The words don’t come because I don’t want to be the one to utter them. I don’t want them to be real.
“You need me to call you a cab?” asks Jayme.
“No.” I get up carefully from the table and grab my keys. “Thanks for tracking me down. I’ll be at home if you need me.”
When I get to my car, I call Yegina again and get a curt text in return. I’m home. Everything’s fine, thank you for finally checking. I’ll call you in the morning.
It doesn’t seem like her, but I’m so overwhelmed that I can’t think about it as I inch my car along the freeway, careful not to weave.
Ray Hendricks’s revelations are pinging around in my head. Should it ease my mind to know that Nikki squealed on herself, and that she never named me? It doesn’t. It doesn’t restore Nikki to life; she won’t be snickering at herself for tripping in her snow boots, or fingering her delicate ears when she’s searching for a word.