Murder at the Art Gallery Read online

  I was being fake nice, sounding chirpy as though I was an events planner who was helping plan this funeral. Truth to tell, it wasn't far from it. Originally I had done it to find out if anybody had a motive to kill David. Now I was beginning to think that maybe David drove them to it.

  I took Roger out of the car with his leash on. I knew that Joanie would love to see Roger again, she was a cat lover too. Many a time I had brought Fluffy to her place with the collar so she was used to me bring my cat around everywhere regularly.

  “Oh you're bringing this beautiful baby here again? Hi Roger, you're a beautiful boy.” Joanie said.

  She brought him a saucer of milk, which Roger devoured. Well, Roger had another fan. He drank his milk and then sat down, tucking his paws under him, the “hen keeping her eggs warm” pose that all cats do at some point or another. And here was Roger doing his version of that. It must be an instinctual thing because all cats do it. .

  The bell at the shop door rang, and in came Harold. He flashed his very white teeth at me in what appeared to be a genuine smile. In his hand, he held a few pieces of paper that had been paperclipped together. He settled into the booth on the opposite side of me and slid the sheets of paper across the table.

  “I managed to get a hold of all these people. All are okay with you asking them questions. However, there was this particularly nasty guy who always envied David and him and David were having a feud for the longest time because David was always undercutting him in price for portraits.”

  That allowed me to jump in.

  “Listen Harold, I want you to be honest with me. You know we're friends and as friends we’re doing all we can to honor David’s memory. Whatever I ask is between you and me and I'm not going to go to the police with this. I need to know for my own peace of mind.”

  Harold looked at me like I had two heads.

  “What happened, what are you talking about?”

  “Ok, it's this. I got a folder of invoices from Margot. I thought it would be a good idea to call some past clients as they might want to go to the wake. However, I called the first one and he was kind of angry because he had paid David a deposit of four hundred dollars and David never delivered the picture. I was lucky the guy didn't go off on me. However, looking through the rest of the invoices, he had twenty of the same type of invoices. He took a deposit and never delivered the pictures.”

  Harold was a little taken aback and at the same time, thought about events that happened back then.

  “Wow, I knew he was getting some money here and there around the time we had broken up, but it wasn't amazing money. I figured he was doing jobs, I never asked him when he was working. But I didn't know he was taking money from people and not delivering. That isn't like David. There's gotta be more to this.”

  “I didn't want to believe it, either, but I looked through this folder and there were twenty people with the same situation as the guy I spoke to. So, either David was losing his mind, or David was not really showing his true colors to us. Maybe he was going through a difficult period.”

  “Well, he was acting a little strange. I think that's why I cheated on him, I really didn't want to be around him, he wasn't that much fun anymore. Maybe I could have helped him more, but he never came to me with any concerns. He never told me he’d felt different, or terrible. He kept it all hidden.

  More and more it looked like David was leading a double life. He needed money for pot, and maybe for other drugs, and he wasn't doing work. Maybe he was depressed. He should have reached out to friends. There you go again Mandy, thinking of shoulda, coulda, but the fact is, David's dead and that's not going to bring him back.

  I had been wrong to ever classify David as a deadbeat. He wasn’t. He was emotionally disturbed.

  “So Harold, from what you saw, was David doing the pot for medicinal reason?”

  “Nah, he was just becoming a pot head. Honestly, I think part of the reason I cheated on him was that he just wasn't the old David I knew, he was going on a weird direction and maybe that's what turned me away from him. He was not the fun guy I originally met. Mandy, there were screws in there that were becoming loose and looking back now, maybe he needed therapy and he never sought it out.

  “He just went in some weird direction where he kept making wrong decisions. There was also talk, although who knows if this was true, that he had some kind of secret lover. I never found out if this was true, or if this was something he was telling me just to get revenge. Something immature, I have a secret lover. Yeah right. I mean, for instance, I got a new lover but people saw us together quite a bit. I never saw David with anybody. Which tells me that was just something he was telling me to try to get me jealous. I won't take you back cause now I have a secret lover. Like a kid. Na na, I got a boyfriend and I won't be your boyfriend.”

  Harold said this in a sing songy style

  After speaking with Harold, I was just as much in the dark as I had been before.

  David seemed to be relying on pot and who knows what else to deal with the realities of life. Not that it mattered now because he was dead. I had to keep reminding myself. I would go off in these tangents in my mind, where I wanted to talk to him and say, David you have to give back that money, you went about this whole thing the wrong way. But there was no David to scold. David was dead.

  Chapter Eight

  The day of the funeral I woke up early, not having been able to sleep well. I had a lot of things on my mind and the discoveries of the last couple of days had kept me awake. Roger rubbed himself against my legs as I walked. I figured I'd better feed him before I became distracted.

  However, it's hard to forget to feed a hungry cat. They have ways of reminding you and if they don't get you the first time, the second, third, fourth or fifth reminder will alert you to the fact that you haven't fed them. Cats are good like that. For me, it was just great to have a kitty in the house and Roger was turning out to be a very affectionate cat with very little maintenance.

  Before heading to work, I got all my information in order. I had all the names of people that Harold had contacted. They said it was okay for me to reach out to them about David, including the Nasty guy. Although I didn't look forward to any confrontations, maybe this nasty guy had something serious against David. Maybe it was more than just rivalry. Maybe David had done something underhanded to him and he was still angry about it.

  I went on Facebook to see what these people looked like. I couldn't possibly remember everybody but I figured Harold would fill me in on who I had missed.

  So far, my “investigation”, if you could call it that, had turned up things that weren't very flattering about David and basically, showed him in a way that I would never imagine David to be. Maybe one of these people could shed a little light as to what happened to David.

  Also, I might learn if there really had been a secret boyfriend or that was just a ruse, as Harold said, to make Harold jealous. This certainly was not the job I had signed up for. I just wanted to do something to remember my friend, something that would have had positive impact on his legacy. And to prove to myself that he didn't commit suicide, that this whole suicide thing was a mistake that I was sure I could clear up. Now, I wasn't so sure. I hated uncertainty, and I just didn't know what was going on.

  JiIl called to ask if I had any more material for the fan page. I told her maybe after the funeral, the former clients were a no go and that I would tell her the story later, while I was at work. I told Bernard that the funeral was today and he said that he might not be able to make it because of some prior engagements. That sounded like a poor excuse to me, but I didn't want to push it since he had agreed to do the showing and to give a brief memorial presentation. You have to pick your battles.

  Besides, the funeral had taken on a whole new meaning to me. I had to see if any of the people attending could have been someone that wanted David dead. Or could shed some light on why he had taken his life. Somebody knew something, that although might be a mystery to me,
it might not have been a mystery to others that dealt with him on a regular basis.

  *****

  I left work at noon and headed for the funeral parlor. This was one of the newer funeral homes. The layout was very clean and minimal. First person I saw when I got there was Margot and gave her a hug. Apart from three or four mourners, I didn't recognize the rest of the people. The majority of those assembled so far were David's distant relatives that had come into town, whom I had never met. Harold had told me he'd be there at one in the afternoon and that the people he invited would trickle in, there was no time set. It was looking like a long day in the funeral parlor if I wanted to talk to as many people as possible. I told myself that if nothing came out of all of this, at least I had closure in that I did the right thing. Maybe it would always be a mystery as to what happened to David.

  I was relieved to see Harold when he arrived. I was much more comfortable to be with a person that I knew well.

  “Mandy, it’s creepy here. I can’t go near that casket. I’ll stay with you. Ask me about anyone. I’ll tell you what I know,” he said.

  He looked like he didn't want to be there, but felt obligated to. This was harder for him than I had realized. But like me, I think he was beginning to want some answers. Things weren't as cut and dry as they seemed to be just 3 days ago.

  I spoke to some people I knew and they all spoke of how surprised they were to hear that David to had committed suicide, they had read the news and that's how they learned about his passing. Inasmuch as the term suicide still didn't sit well with me, I thanked them for coming to the funeral and went on to talk to the next person. The next person I spoke to that Harold had recommended was a guy by the name of Michael Chalmers.

  I introduced myself and he recognized my name as the one that Harold gave him. I proceeded to ask my first question.

  “So, how long did you know David for?”

  “Oh, I've known him since high school. We were pretty close and as far as I can remember, David was always talking about his art. Once he went to college, I lost contact with him for a while. He came back, and I tried to be friendly. He was friendly as well, and we would have some chats here and there, but nothing beyond that. A couple of weeks ago, he told me he had discovered a creative way of making money, which would allow him to pursue his more artsy ambitions. I also learned from him about this upcoming art show he was doing. He mentioned that even though he viewed his portrait work as his bread and butter, he figured that all artists have a secret longing to do artsy stuff, artsy being different depending on who you spoke with.”

  I thanked him and I asked myself what David could have meant by the word “creative”. Taking people's money was not creative, it was devious and dishonest.

  I spoke to a couple of other people during the course of the afternoon and they offered fluff - they didn't really know David.

  Then I ran across another person Harold had recommended, Trevor. I recognized him from his Facebook picture.

  “Hi, I'm Mandy Cummings, Harold had said you might be stopping by.”

  “Oh yes, Harold had mentioned that you would be asking some questions about David. I have to say, I was very surprised that Harold was involved with anything relating to the funeral.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Well, apparently, David dumped Harold in a really lousy way, telling him that they were over and that he was seeing someone else. I remember running into Harold that day and he was very hurt and angry. He was saying that he was going to get even with David for what he did, that he wasn't going to stand for anybody using him and throwing him away, like a tissue. I didn't pay it much mind, I figured they had a lover's quarrel and all would be well in no time. I loved David as a friend, even though he seemed a little weird lately. But you know, he was an artist, and artists have these weird episodes in their life. Look at Vincent VanGogh. He cut off his ear for the love of a prostitute. David wasn't that weird, but now that he committed suicide, honestly I wished he would have cut off an ear for Harold. At least he would still be with us. Excuse me, I just have to see my other friend over there.”

  That revelation was like a bucket of cold water. Why hadn't Harold told me the truth? Did he want to divert attention from himself as to why David died? He had left early and said he felt creepy being there. Was it guilt?? Could he have had anything to do with David's death?? This was just getting more and more insane.

  The day was getting long. There's only so much time you could spend at a funeral. But I had to stay if I wanted answers. So far, it had been fruitful. More people showed up over the next couple of hours, but most just paid their respects.

  Then there was another person I recognized from his web page. Jake, another artist. As I went up to him and said hi, I suddenly remembered who he was. This was the nasty guy. I had no graceful way to step away.

  “Oh yes, Harold told me that you might approach me about David. Listen if you're looking for good news about David, I'm not the one to ask.”

  “I'd love to hear everyone's viewpoints good and bad, but could we step outside? There's family here and sometimes they're touchy when it's not praise for the dead family member.”

  He looked around and huffed but reluctantly agreed. We exited the funeral parlor and stood on the sidewalk outside.

  “Let me tell you off the bat, that me and David have always been rivals. At first it had been friendly rivalry but as the years went by, David kept undercutting me in prices and taking business away.”

  “Well, that doesn't sound so horrible, people are always trying to get business and unfortunately cutting prices is a common practice.”

  “Well, I was particularly angry at him for the last six months. Apparently David had really been aggressive about getting clients and he had taken on all these customers. A couple of dozen. I was asking myself, is David a superman, he's going to do all these portraits in a month's time? I smelled a rat. You know what that little creep was doing? He was outsourcing the portraits and putting his name on them. I couldn't figure it out at first how someone could do so many portraits and some of them pretty good. But after looking at some of them I could see that they were in different styles. One person had not done all those portraits.

  “I know because being sneaky like I am, I asked those clients to see his work, as a way of getting business in the future. I started to follow David. I was basically stalking him. He would go to different clients' homes and get their business, then I would follow him all the way from the client's house till he got home. Once home, I would look through his window. It wasn't easy, but I wanted to see what he was doing. I would see him scanning the picture. Now if he did this only once I wouldn't have thought twice about it. But all the time I was spying on him, he was only doing his own paintings, not portraits. Four or five times I followed him for the portrait business, I would never see him start a portrait, only scan pictures he got from the clients and continue doing his own paintings.

  “I couldn't figure it out at first but then it hit me, he was outsourcing. Looking up online painters, I found one service that if you sent them a picture they would do a hand drawn oil paint for $150 bucks. That's how he was undercutting me. And that's how he found time to do his paintings for his show.”

  “Do you have proof of this”, I asked.

  “I don't have hard evidence that I could show you, I just stalked him and looked through his windows. Yes, I know it sounds sad and pathetic, but when somebody is taking food from your mouth, you want to find out how they're doing it. Recently, as I was trying to get new business, I found out that he wasn't even bothering to do the work he was hired for.

  “He was taking people's deposits and not delivering the paintings. And the reason I know this is because I got two jobs where they asked me if I knew a David Towsky because they had given him a deposit for a painting and he disappeared. I said I didn't know him. I also told them I would never do such a thing and that I would contact them as soon as I had the picture ready, or they could come
by my house if they wanted to check up on me and see the progress.

  “So, not only had he stolen business from me, now he had created distrust in the community. My guess is that his Chinese connection went out of business, he spent the money, and didn't bother to contact the people that hired him for the portraits. So, that's your little friend David, a crook, a cheat and a liar. Maybe he got what he deserved, or he killed himself because he couldn't live with himself anymore. You can close your mouth now.”

  And he stalked off.

  It was true that while he was telling me all of this, I was dumbfounded. He had figured it out. That explained all those invoices that David had. If I looked further in that folder, I bet I would find the orders to whoever it was he was outsourcing work to.

  I could also see that this guy had it in for David, even if David had never done anything wrong. He was jealous and he was a very unhappy person. But he also was trying to protect his turf in a desperate way. It also explained why David hadn't delivered the paintings. But he should have given refunds. He had probably spent the money. The whole thing was such a mess.

  I felt terrible for Margot because as executor of the state and power of attorney, all those problems could come to haunt her. I would have to tell her at some point so she wasn't blindsided. It's hard enough to learn that your son had committed suicide, it was doubly hard to learn that a son you loved was doing all these shady things on the side.

  Now she would have to right those wrongs or be open to lawsuits from all these people. Sooner or later somebody would read the news and come forward asking for reparations. They may think their calls weren't returned cause the artist died, but when they learn that the artist died recently, they're going to ask, why didn't he return our calls a couple of months back. I couldn't take it any longer, I had to get out of there. I went back into the funeral home and bid goodbye to Margot, told her I would call her the next day. I had to get some air and get a coffee or something to calm my nerves. That conversation with Jake had rattled me. I called Jill and told her to meet me at Joanie's in a half hour. Before heading out to Joanie's, I stopped by my house to feed Roger. I had left him plenty of food at noon and by now it was time for a second feeding. After he had eaten his dinner, I put the collar on him and went down to Joanie's to meet Jill.