The Hot Pink Farmhouse Read online

  “Is there a lot of huffing in this town?”

  “You wouldn’t think so, but Dorset isn’t Oz.”

  “Even Oz wasn’t Oz,” Des pointed out as they passed through the door into the middle school. “What happened to Ricky’s eye?”

  “He gets in a lot of fights.”

  “This I can well imagine. Are you sure it didn’t happen in the home?”

  Miss Frye puffed out her cheeks. “Trooper, I’m not sure of anything.”

  When they arrived at Superintendent Falconer’s outer office, Des encountered a harried, frantic secretary and a short, big-chested woman with bushy hair who was about to explode.

  “Okay, what seems to be the problem?” Des asked them calmly.

  “The problem is that I have been waiting out here like a piece of garbage for thirty minutes!” the short woman retorted angrily. “The superintendent is supposed to meet with me. Colin is in there. I saw him go in there. I have never encountered such rudeness, such-such—”

  “Trooper Mitry, this is Babette Leanse, president of our school board,” Miss Frye said quietly.

  “You must be Ben’s mom,” Des said, smiling at her.

  “I have an appointment!” she blustered, unswerving in her rage. She was an intensely focused, hard-charging little human blowtorch in a cashmere cardigan sweater and finely tailored wool slacks. Des made her for about forty. Her shock of black hair was streaked with silver. “That man knows I’m out here!”

  “I see,” Des said patiently. “And the problem is . . .?”

  “I’ve buzzed him repeatedly,” spoke up Colin’s frazzled secretary, whose desk nameplate identified her as Melanie Zide. She was a dumpy, moon-faced young woman with a pug nose, limp henna hair, eyes that looked sneaky behind clunky black-framed glasses. “I called out his name. I knocked. H-He just won’t answer. And his door is locked from the inside and I don’t have a key. I’ve got the custodian searching for one, but . . .”

  Des jiggled the knob. It was locked all right. “Is there a window in there?”

  “There is,” Melanie said, chewing nervously on the inside of her mouth. “But it has security bars over it. And his venetian blinds are closed. You can’t see anything.”

  Des tried rapping on the door. “Superintendent Falconer!? Colin!?” Then she put a shoulder to it. It didn’t give. The frame was solid. There was a transom over it, of frosted glass. She pulled a sturdy chair over in front of the door and climbed up on it, placing her at eye level with the transom. She tried to pry it open with her pocket knife, only it was latched shut from the inside. She pursed her lips, frowning. “You’re sure he’s in there?”

  “Positive,” said Babette Leanse.

  “For at least a half hour,” Melanie added, her voice strained.

  Des asked the others to get away from the door and used the butt end of her Sig on the frosted glass, smashing a jagged hole that she could see through.

  What she saw was Colin Falconer slumped face-down at his desk, unconscious. On the desk, next to his left hand, there was an empty prescription pill bottle.

  “Call nine-one-one,” she ordered Melanie Zide sharply. “Tell them we need EMS now. We’ve got a possible overdose.”

  Miss Frye let out a gasp as Melanie lunged for the phone.

  Babette Leanse just stood there with her mouth open, speechless.

  The custodian still could not find a key to the superintendent’s door. Des asked him for a pry bar instead. He returned with a foot-long crowbar that she applied to the lock while he threw his weight against the door. The frame gave with a sharp crack and they went in, the broken transom glass crunching underfoot.

  Colin was breathing. His respiration was shallow, his pulse rapid, skin pale and cool. “He’s in shock,” Des said, checking the pill bottle. It was diazepam, the generic name for Valium. The bottle, if full, would have held fifty tablets, ten milligrams each. “We’ll need blankets.”

  The custodian ran to get some from the nurse’s office.

  “Colin, you fool,” Miss Frye said from the doorway, her voice heavy with sadness. “You stupid, stupid fool.”

  The ambulance got there in less than five minutes, pulling right up onto the playground next to the building, its siren silent so as not to alarm the children. Margie and Mary Jewett, who headed Dorset’s volunteer ambulance corps, were no-nonsense sisters in their late fifties. Des had already encountered them at a couple of fender benders and found them to be well-trained and unflappable.

  Margie checked Colin Falconer’s blood pressure while Mary hooked him up to a cardiac monitor, the two of them barking shorthand at each other. They did the Roto-Rooter thing on his stomach, then gave him oxygen and administered two hundred milliliters of saline solution through a large-bore intravenous catheter while they continued to monitor his vital signs. He was now semiconscious, murmuring incoherently under his breath.

  “He’s still a bit shocky,” Margie told Des. “But he’s healthy and strong and it’s pretty hard to kill yourself on Valium.”

  “Unless you’re blind drunk to boot,” Mary added.

  When they had him stabilized Margie wheeled in the stretcher and they loaded him onto it. “Let’s move!” she called out.

  “Moving!” Mary affirmed.

  And they hustled Colin Falconer out the door and off to the Middlesex Clinic in Essex, leaving Des to notify his next of kin.

  “I guess that would be his wife, Greta,” Melanie Zide spoke up. “She should be at the gallery by now.”

  Des thanked Melanie for the information, and Miss Frye for her help. The young teacher smiled at her tightly before she returned to her classroom, leaving Des with Babette Leanse. And the distinct impression that Dorset’s school superintendent had tried to take his own life rather than face this woman.

  “Mrs. Leanse, exactly what was this meeting between you two about?”

  “Trooper, this is hardly the time to discuss it,” Babette answered sharply, managing to look down her nose at Des even though Des towered over her by perhaps a foot. This was a woman who was trying very hard to command respect. If there was one thing Des had learned at West Point, it was this: The ones who had to work at it were seldom the ones who received it.

  “So when would be a good time?” Des asked her, as Melanie watched the two of them intently from behind her desk.

  “I suppose you could swing by my house this afternoon,” Babette allowed. “But I don’t understand why you’re pressing me on this.”

  “Because my job is to see that things like this don’t happen. That’s rule number one in the resident trooper’s unofficial handbook.”

  “And is there a rule number two?” Babette demanded.

  “Oh, absolutely,” Des said, smiling at her broadly. “Rule number two is to make absolutely sure that they don’t ever happen again.”

  The Patterson Gallery was located right down Dorset Street from the old Gill House, home to the Dorset Academy of Fine Arts. The gallery was in a bright-yellow converted barn that had previously been a grain-and-feed store. The gnarly oak tree out front had a red ribbon tied around it, indicating where Colin Falconer’s wife stood on the school-bond issue. Whatever was wrong between the two of them, Des reflected, it wasn’t local politics.

  Inside, Des found a clean, brightly lit space with sparkling white walls and polished fir floors. A fire crackled in the fireplace. Downstairs, the gallery featured an array of luminous early-twentieth-century landscape paintings from noteworthy shoreline impressionists such as Childe Hassam, Henry Ward Ranger, Carleton Wiggins and Elbert Frye, Wendell’s grandfather. Prices ranged anywhere between one and five times what Des took home in a year. On the second floor Greta Patterson offered more modestly priced works by contemporary artists, many of them recent graduates of the Dorset Academy. She served on its board, as had her father and grandfather, who had operated the Patterson Gallery before her.

  A discreet sign on the wall behind her massive oak partner’s desk noted that the Pa
tterson Gallery was the exclusive agent and legal representative of Wendell Frye, although there was no evidence of the great man’s work to be found anywhere—no catalogs, no photographs. It was very low-key, considering the amount of hype that generally went on in the art world.

  Greta was talking on the phone, but she quickly got off, bustled to her feet and offered Des a seat in one of the cozy armchairs set before the fire. Des declined an offer of coffee and sat, trying not to stare at the woman. Greta Patterson was a good deal older than she’d been expecting. At least sixty, possibly sixty-five. Plenty old enough to be Colin’s mother. She was a wide-bodied, square-faced woman with close-cropped silver hair and a red blotchy complexion that suggested many years of serious drinking. She wore a hand-knit cream-colored vest over a burgundy silk blouse, roomy wool slacks and a good deal of bright-red lipstick, some of which was stuck to her front teeth.

  “I know why you’re here, trooper,” Greta said to her in a booming, forthright voice. “Colin’s already phoned me from the ambulance. He’s assured me he’s fine, totally fine.” She did not seem the least bit fazed by her husband’s suicide attempt. Or even surprised. “We’ve been living apart lately, as I’m sure you must know, but I’ll bring him home just as soon as the clinic releases him.” Greta settled in the other armchair, clutching a Dorset Academy coffee mug tightly in her blunt-fingered hands. “Naturally, I’ll try to see that he behaves himself in the future. But I can’t guarantee anything.”

  “Has this happened before?” Des asked, crossing her long legs.

  Greta let out a guffaw. “What is this, his fifth try? Sixth? I’ve lost count. Colin is a deeply, deeply unhappy man. He’s been undergoing treatment for depression for a number of years, and lately—” She broke off, weighing just exactly how forthcoming she wished to be. “Let’s just say he wanted to work things out on his own. A lot of men undergo a change when they hit forty. I’ve seen it with countless artists—even the real swashbucklers. Their self-assurance is suddenly overtaken by doubt, anxiety, even panic. Some rush right out and nail the first female who’s willing. Some buy themselves a convertible. And some, like Colin, fall into a deep, deep funk. Call it hormones. Call it male menopause. Call it whatever you want. But it’s real. And for Colin, who was a brooder to begin with, it’s been pure hell.” Greta took a sip of her coffee and stared fretfully into the fire. “Up until now, we’ve managed to keep it between us. But now I suppose the poor boy will have to take a medical leave.”

  “Babette Leanse was waiting outside his office to see him,” Des said. “Could this particular suicide try be related to that?”

  “I have no doubt that it is,” Greta answered emphatically. “Babette has been making his life pure hell ever since this mold issue came up at Center School. Attila the Hen, he’s taken to calling her. Babette’s a driven, determined woman, and God help anyone who gets in her way. Sadly, that anyone has been Colin.” Greta shifted her bulk in her chair, sighing regretfully. “Dorset used to be a special place. Everyone got along with everyone else. There was an aura of true contentment—artists made it their home. Now we’re living in a war zone. Sometimes the war is fought over whether to put in a sewer system. Sometimes it’s about condos. And sometimes it’s about building a new school. But it’s always the same war. And it’s always the same outcome—the future always wins. I know that as well as I know the difference between the genuine artist and the fraud. But I don’t have to like it.”

  A piece of wood collapsed in the fireplace, setting off a shower of sparks.

  Greta stared at it in heavy, angry silence for a moment. “Besides, this one leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Our school board president, a woman who has turned that new school into a holy crusade, happens to be married to a real estate developer who happens to be building new houses all over town. Please! She’s his puppet, and little Brucie is busy pulling the strings and lining his own pockets. But don’t get me started on them.” Greta got up and put a fresh log on the fire, then stood there warming her broad backside as it crackled. “I honestly will try to get Colin to come home. But he’s a very stubborn boy.”

  That was the second time she’d called him a boy, Des noticed.

  “I’m sorry that the children had to be exposed to this. They must have found it alarming.”

  “It was handled very quietly,” Des said. “Just Mrs. Leanse, his secretary and the custodian were there. And one teacher, Miss Frye.”

  Greta’s face lit up. “Moose is Wendell’s oldest girl. Isn’t she wonderful?”

  “I liked her quite a bit.”

  “Very fine girl,” Greta said, nodding. “Considerate, kind. Steady as a rock. His other daughter, Takai, has that realty office right across the street from me.” Des noticed that Greta did not say that Takai was a fine girl. What she did say was: “Takai was the first realtor in Dorset to hire fluffers.”

  “Hire what?”

  “They’re like set decorators,” she explained dryly. “They dress up the houses to make them look like they’re straight out of House Beautiful, thereby jacking up the selling price. They truck in family heirlooms, antique furniture, dishes, silver. Totally faux, but that’s Takai. With her, it’s always about making a style statement. She was a runway model in New York when she was still in her teens. And, to this day she remains totally image-oriented. Which I guess is her way of rebelling against her father. Wendell, you see, has a visceral loathing for anything that he perceives as manipulative or fake—such as, say, the entire concept of business. Not that I’m complaining, mind you,” Greta pointed out quickly. “It’s a great, great privilege to be his dealer. Ordinarily, an artist of his stature would be represented by a big outfit in New York, not a funky local gallery such as mine. But Wendell’s magnificently quirky that way. The Pattersons were good enough for his grandfather and his father and that was all he needed to know. And this way more of the money stays right here in Dorset to nourish local artists. Thanks to Wendell, I’m able to provide scholarships to the academy, student loans, rent money, even money for canvases and paints.” Greta smiled at her, her eyes glittering. “Tell me, trooper, are you a fan of his work?”

  “I’m a tremendous fan,” Des said. “But please don’t ask me to explain why, because I don’t believe I can.”

  “You’re not alone, my dear,” Greta said reassuringly. “The closest anyone’s ever come to describing a Frye statue was a French critic in the early seventies who wrote that it was like a mirror into one’s soul—when you try to understand it, you end up trying to understand yourself. Hell, I’ve known the man for the better part of fifty years, and I’ve never really known him at all. You just missed him, actually. He left not five minutes before you got here, full of my good Irish whiskey. Stopped by to discuss a legal matter—doesn’t call, just shows up. That’s Wendell. Mostly, I’m his gatekeeper. If someone wishes to commission him, they go through me. And either he says yes or no—usually no, because he won’t take money from any corporation or individual whose ethical standards he doesn’t approve of. He can really be quite maddening sometimes. The Museum of Modern Art approached us a few months back about marketing a line of candlesticks and jewelry made from his designs. The museums do a huge business nowadays through their gift shops and catalogs. It’s really quite lucrative.”

  “He said no?”

  Greta nodded. “Not only won’t he be a party to hawking knickknacks, as he calls them, but he insisted that I rewrite his will so that no one can ever license his name for the sale of anything. That man simply does not care about making money. He owns no stocks or bonds. All of his wealth is in his farm and his art. That’s how he wants it. So that’s how it is.”

  Des nodded, wondering just how frustrated Greta Patterson was by a client who chose to leave so much money on the table. If she weren’t frustrated, she wouldn’t have brought it up. That was one of the most important things Des had learned about interviewing people: What they talk about can often be more revealing than the words they say.


  “The Pattersons believe in artists,” Greta explained. “And we always have. When I was young I honestly thought I wanted to get away from this. I studied law at Duke. But before I went in with a firm I put in a year in London at Christie’s, another two years in New York, and before I knew it I was right back here working in the family business. I suppose, deep down, I always knew that I would be. I’ve run it on my own since my dad died.” She narrowed her eyes at Des appraisingly. “I understand you’re quite the artist yourself, my dear. Don’t look so surprised. Talent can’t hide. Especially in Dorset. I’d love to see your portfolio of murder victims. Perhaps we can do something with them, you and I.”

  Des swallowed, taken aback. “I’m really not ready to show them yet.”

  “Now you’re being unduly modest,” Greta scolded her. “You’re a beautiful, take-charge woman of color. Your art is highly political. Wake up and smell the turpentine fumes, my dear. Your timing could not be better.”

  “But I don’t even know how to paint yet,” pointed out Des, who wasn’t expecting such interest so soon even in her wildest dreams. “I’m still learning.”

  “Picasso was still learning until the day he died,” Greta scoffed. “That doesn’t mean you can’t find a home for your work. Besides, raw immediacy can be very, very commercially viable. Especially coming from someone like yourself. Do you understand what I mean?”

  Des understood perfectly. Greta was saying that because she was a woman of color, people’s expectations would be considerably reduced . . . Step right up, folks, and see the barefoot colored girl. She draws!!! . . . Des sat there in silence for a moment, seething. Not that she was a stranger to this kind of prejudice. She’d lived with it her whole life. Had she honestly thought the art world would be any different? Of course not. That would have been deluding herself. “I still need a lot of work,” she finally said in a muted voice.

  “Good, I admire that. But please keep me in mind. I can get you wonderful critical attention in New York and Boston. Possibly even turn Oprah’s head. Trust me on this,” Greta said, eyeing her up and down. “You are very promotable.”