Painted Truth Read online

  PAINTED TRUTH

  by Lise McClendon

  Copyright © 1995 by Lise McClendon

  Published by Thalia Press publishing at Smashwords

  © 1995 Lise McClendon. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

  All the characters and events portrayed in this work are fictitious.

  First published by Thalia Press in paperback in 2009.

  First published in the United States of America in 1995 by Walker Publishing Company, Inc.

  Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Canada, Limited, Markham, Ontario

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  McClendon, Lise. Painted truth : an Alix Thorssen mystery / Lise McClendon.

  p. cm. ISBN 0-8027-3271-2 (he)

  I. Title.

  PS3573.E19595P35 1995

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to everyone who helped in the process, including Larry McCann of the Billings, Montana, Fire Department; Tom Minckler of Thomas Minckler Galleries; Evan and Nick for the comics; Marvel Comics and everyone at The Mighty Thor; and as always Kipp.

  May you always have heroes.

  Painted Truth

  by Lise McClendon

  Prologue

  HE LIES WAITING. He is coming, he knows. His eyelids are too heavy to open. He tries to remember where he is. Not home, no. There is his mother then, in the kitchen of the house on Fremont Street, the white one with green shutters, and his dog, a wrinkled mutt named Hitch. When he remembers Hitch he feels like crying. But no tears come.

  In the dark he smells things that frighten him. He wants to run, to go far away, to go home. But his legs won’t work, his arms lie leaden and useless at his side. The fog in his brain keeps the thoughts from connecting. Then he smells the smell that scares him the most, and the scream that he tries to make stick deep in his throat.

  He wishes his nose couldn’t smell, wishes he could just lie back and sleep. How he wants to sleep, a soft bed, a pillow. God, what he would give for a pillow. But instead the hard floor makes him listen and smell, his only senses that work. The eerie silence is punctuated by muffled voices and the cry of a baby far away. A dog barking fills him with sorrow. It could be Hitch.

  The odor makes no sense. It reminds him of a birthday once when the candles made green puddles on the cake. Sweet like sugar, it’s comforting. For a minute the fear subsides. He is young again, eight or nine, and can smell the waxy leather of a new baseball glove.

  Then a pop, a whoosh, then another louder pop. The heat closes in like a suffocating blanket. His face feels shielded from it but his legs and arms get hot, hotter. He wants so badly to run; the scream builds inside his chest. With enormous effort he tries to move but even his mind refuses to obey. As his clothes burst into flame he is confused. This didn’t happen at his birthday party. He isn’t here. This is a dream, a bad, horrible dream. Just before he slips into unconsciousness he hears one last sound, strangely near yet far, far from him.

  It sounds like the end of the world.

  1

  LATE JULY, A Thursday. The kind of day where you make deals with the weather gods to never again complain about February if July could just stretch out ninety days long. The first truly summery day we’d had in Jackson Hole. June had been rainy and cold, and July had only just begun to bounce back. The wildflowers along the riverbanks broke hibernation in pink and blue. A striped-faced badger washed his lunch in a clear green eddy, while in a sky so warm you wanted to wrap yourself in it and sleep, a bald eagle let the wind lift his wings as he glided over the river. The kind of day where you expect birdsong and moments of penetrating contentment. Not twists of fate that make you mistrust your instincts.

  Instincts don’t come easily. I have to listen hard. I tried to listen to the river today; results were mixed. A snapping turtle with a brain and a bra, one boyfriend called me, right before he left me for a raven-haired tootsie. A left-brainer, I know it, even though I own an art gallery in one of the most beautiful valleys in the West, in the world. The irony hasn’t escaped me.

  We were in Pete’s car, the three of us, driving back through the Snake River Canyon into town, rehashing the white-water run, when I realized we’d been lulled into believing the day could be perfect. Driving was Pete Rotondi, my kayak instructor, a lanky, athletic guy, not my type but appealing in a rugged sort of way. Eden Chaffee, friend and witness to today’s escapade, sat wedged in the back among the gear, chattering about the photographs she’d taken. Pete was kidding me about the alabaster quality of my tan-resistant body, saying the only way I could get any color at all was to let a paddle flatten my nose. Which I had done today, upside down in my kayak. I could thank Kahuna, the Snake’s meanest wave, for giving my face color, although two black eyes weren’t exactly what I had in mind.

  The river run had been such blessed relief from the midsummer madness that was Jackson Hole, Wyoming, that I didn’t even mind the black eyes. My lungs ached from all the river water I’d sucked down. My nose felt fat. But I was thrilled to have done the Snake River Canyon, a mean bronc-busting stretch of white water that attracts serious kayakers and intrepid vacationers from all over. I was glad to have had a break from the Second Sun Gallery, to be able to give the problems there some perspective.

  I had spent the morning trying to find the truth of our troubles. My partner, Paolo Segundo, had refused to discuss them. Part of the mess was the promise I’d made, a promise I would have to break. The poor season, bad sales, and the rock we’d gotten through the front window hadn’t helped.

  The truth, of course, is a slippery thing. Take, for instance, the truth of who you are at any particular point in time. Today I am Alix Thorssen, semiprosperous art dealer, so-so kayaker, single girl, thirty-something. Tomorrow I might dye my hair purple, kayak the Amazon River, marry a half-naked native hunk with creative body paint, and live in the jungle forever. It’s doubtful, at least the marrying part, but anything is possible. So who am I? Who is anyone? Some questions float around us like clouds of confusion, grabbing our attention when we least expect it.

  The truth of a place is subject to the same confusion. And when a land has been mythologized as much as the West has, as a place of desperation, freedom, and majesty, the waters are plenty muddied.

  Some people see the West the way Albert Bierstadt did, as a hidden paradise where sunlight tastes like honey and rainbows remind us we’re only human. But that’s only one truth. For other folks it’s Indians or loneliness or the smell of latigo. Whatever your view of the West, you can bet it is right — and wrong. The truth isn’t necessarily what you see, but how you see it.

  Eden Chaffee leaned forward. “I got a great shot of you upside down in Kahuna, Alix.”

  “Yeah? My best side.” I flipped down the visor to get a look at my face. Below my Norwegian blue eyes were their evil twins: tomboy, brackish as a primordial backwater, I-can-do-anything-you-can-do-better, ail-American shiners. I had only been blessed with basic Scandinavian looks, no candidate for the Swedish bikini team. God, wasn’t I gorgeous now.

  “What’s that?” Eden said. She was a tiny person with a high voice that annoyed me when I first met her. “Shit.”

  Pete was craning his neck forward as I flipped the visor back up. “Looks like the square,” he said.

  Black smoke hung ominously over the town as we reached the Teton Pass turnoff and dissolved into the lines of traffic headed into the heart of Jackson. The sky darkened and the smell of burning reached us. I watched the smoke intensify, wondering what the hell was going
on.

  “You can’t tell from here. Can you?” Eden asked. She didn’t want to believe Pete. She owned an art gallery too, opposite mine on the town square. She had come to me for advice when she first moved here.

  “Could be anywhere,” Pete said. He exuded trust-funder sass, a ski-and-river bum more interested in a good time than money. His bleached-out brown hair hung over his forehead. He

  was at least a few years older than me, with crow’s-feet around his blue eyes. “Could be a grass fire.”

  The smoke was too black and concentrated for a grass fire; even my untrained eye could see that. Besides, it was in the middle of town.

  Eden leaned forward again, gripping my shoulder. “Jesus God, it is the square.”

  Jackson’s town square is a grassy park framed by arches on each corner built years ago from zillions of elk and deer antlers, lit up with twinkle lights at night. Boardwalks crisscross the grass. A bronzed bronc rider is installed in the center, with names of war veterans below, just like any small town. The square is the part of Jackson that changed the least, and because of that I liked it the most. The city planned to cut down a tree for purely aesthetic reasons last year and I made six urgent pleas to the city council before they reconsidered. I would have strapped myself to the old elm before they would change the square.

  I bit my lip hard and tried hard not to envision flames licking the corners of the Second Sun Gallery, my home for the last eight years. All the problems at the gallery disappeared. The precarious checking account seemed manageable. My apartment over the gallery was dry and secure, even though the roof leaked, and I installed extra locks last winter after a breakin and stashed the handgun my mother sent from Montana in a kitchen drawer. And, of course, Paolo still loved me.

  In my years in Jackson Hole, the Teton Mountains weren’t the only peaks and valleys I’d seen. Business had a way of slamming you down just when you were getting ahead. This summer had been particularly difficult, with slow sales due to the recession in the East and who knows what else. Just plain consumer reluctance to buy art, I supposed. There were so many shops in Jackson now competing for the tourist dollar: souvenir shops, factory outlets, sporting goods, Tshirts, posters, jewelry, junk, you name it.

  “Could be the pyro again,” Pete said.

  “What pyro? A pyromaniac?” Eden squeaked, running a hand through her unruly brown curls.

  “Everybody hoped he’d given up. Or moved on.” I turned toward Eden in the backseat. She had lived in Jackson just two years. The traffic around us had slowed to a stop about a half mile from the town square. “There were a bunch of suspicious fires in stores. About four or five over that many years. Nobody was ever arrested.”

  “And now he’s back,” Eden said, frowning.

  “Let’s just wait and see what’s happening.” I heard my voice, the calmness in it, and tried to reconcile that to the feeling in my gut. What if it was my gallery, my apartment above? What would I do? I pushed the thoughts aside and felt my nose, approaching zucchini squash status.

  Pete looked over at me. “Nice shiners. They’re coming right along.” He smiled, as if the fire meant nothing. He didn’t live in town. “Kahuna counted coups on you today.”

  I touched the bags under my eyes and frowned at him. My bangs hung in wet hanks over my thick brown eyebrows. I had forgotten to comb my hair after the aborted Eskimo roll in the Snake River. I doubted I even had a comb on me, patting the pockets of my damp river shorts helplessly. Instead I pulled on my Ray-Bans to cover my eyes and my olive green slouch hat to cover the river-whipped mess of almost blond, shoulder-length hair.

  “It must have been my instructor’s fault,” I said.

  Pete shrugged. “You can blame me if you want. I thought you looked great. What about that war whoop you let out just before Kahuna sucked you under?”

  I opened my mouth to answer, slightly embarrassed at my exuberance on the river. On the other hand, I liked that kayaking brought out my wild side. Sometimes the art business was too sedate for my taste. Maybe that was why I’d been concentrating on insurance and fraud work for the past few years. It got me out of the white box gallery into the real world. Last year I had stared down the barrel of a jealous lover’s pistol and tripped the light fantastic with a whacko medicine man. Maybe Big Kahuna’s right hook was as much violence as I’d have to face this summer. But something about the smoke told me Kahuna was only the beginning.

  The car hadn’t moved for ten minutes. I looked back at Eden. She sat with her knees pulled up to her chest, her khakis rolled up over black rafting sandals. Her short, dark curls were wild and the delicate features of her face were pinched with worry. She was twisting the ring on her finger round and round.

  “I think we should walk,” I said. “What do you think, Edie, hon? This waiting is killing me.” I’ve never been a patient person. It was one of those things I work on now and then, but this was no time for self-improvement. I put my hand on the door latch. “Park the car, Pete.”

  We hurried along the wooden boardwalks of Jackson, dodging baby strollers, ice cream cones puddling, gray-heads in small flocks, until we reached the edge of the crowd. It was dense and large, filled with cowboy hats, ball caps, porkpies, and big hair. We were still half a block from the corner of the square, and everything was obscured by dark smoke. The sky disappeared. We pushed through the crowd, my hands on Eden’s shoulders, guiding her along since she was so short she couldn’t see her way through.

  I kept moving, blinking furiously from the smoke. Eden and Pete were coughing. I could see the commotion on the near side of the square, not near the Second Sun. It wasn’t until I stopped, dropped my hands from Eden’s shoulders, and let loose a “holy shit” that she looked up at the landmarks and realized that we were in front of the corner where her gallery, Timberwolf Arts, stood.

  All four county fire trucks, a full contingent of our local cops, and every tourist who remembered the song about Smokey the Bear filled the square. Beyond the excited crowd, crying children, barking dogs, and a whole lot of official mayhem, stood Eden’s gallery, ablaze. The building, a blue frame two-story with a square front facade and yellow awnings on two upstairs windows, was, as they say, completely involved. Flames licked at the tops of the windows. The roof had disappeared in smoke and thin air. The sign that read “Timberwolf Arts” with a howling wolf was half burned and hanging off the facade. We stood, speechless, watching what was left of Eden’s dream go up in smoke.

  Eden Chaffee had come to Jackson two years before from upstate New York with her inheritance to invest in a gallery, her first. She had romantic notions about art and galleries, the same ones I once had of bringing beauty to the masses, of brightening the ugly workaday world. Maybe I felt the need to recover that old passion; I took her under my wing, taught her a few things about art, about the business, about the tourists and rich and not-so-rich art buyers.

  Despite my efforts and her warm personality, Eden was not a great businesswoman. She didn’t have a feel for what would sell, what people wanted. She had become discouraged lately and immersed herself in photography. She often took off in the afternoons to catch the sunset over Mount Owen or the Grand, or frame up an elk against the aspens. She usually hired someone to fill in for her on the days she went off shooting pictures.

  A confusion of yellow-slickered firemen had strung hoses from the red pumpers parked haphazardly in the street. Thick smoke poured out the windows. Above, attic insulation was exposed and wiring hung over the once-blue wood siding. The firefighters wet down the facade and roof of the neighboring cafe. I could see Billy, the grill cook, nearby in his greasy white apron, biting his nails. Arcs of water poured from gray canvas hoses into the broken second-story windows of the gallery. As I watched, a fireman wielded an axe and broke down the front door. The sound tore through me physically.

  “Oh, Alix.” The tiny words escaped Eden’s small, ashen face, a reflection of the grayness around us. I put my arm around her shoulders and trie
d to think of comforting words. None came to mind. None ever came to mind on the spot, the curse of the Norwegian. To be stoic, calm, rational in the face of chaos and tragedy: that was the ideal growing up with my mother. If the possibility existed for something awful, she would become rigid and start to clean. By the time the outcome was clear, good or bad, the baseboards were wiped, the kitchen floor shining, and the simple pine furniture rubbed with lemon oil. No time was wasted on emotion that might not be appropriate and certainly was unwelcome and embarrassing.

  Eden turned to me and began to cry. I held her, the only thing I could do. Pete touched her hair briefly, looking down on her childlike body from his height, and shrugged at me. Around us, tourists bored of the spectacle and filtered off, thinking, of course, that the worst was over.

  Pete gave Eden a polite hug and said good-bye, begging off because of a dinner invitation. The firemen scurried into and out of the frame storefront, windows gone, gray smoke belching through the holes. Timberwolf Arts had never had as much attention as it did today. Despite Eden’s hard work, my experience, and a great corner location, something never clicked. When she was not out taking photos, Eden stared out the window and sighed, “They never said it’d be like this back in Lackawanna.”

  At least the Second Sun had its good years. Eden just had no sense of style, no flair for choosing art. That was evident in her current show, a comeback for a once-great artist. She thought he was a big enough name to rescue Timberwolf Arts. But once again, she was wrong.

  Eden pulled away and wiped her face with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. Her eyes slowly moved from the chaos of the fire to my face, then back. A crash inside the building made her lurch forward, blinking her big black eyes. I put my arm around her shoulder again, and for ten minutes we watched the firefighters move into the building, knocking down walls, dragging hoses and debris. The fire was out now. The stench of soggy, smoldering wood blew over us in a cloud.

  Inside the building the firefighters suddenly began shouting. One ran out, his long yellow coat slapping against his black rubber boots. A new siren split the air, whining, raising the hair on my neck. The couple in front of us chose this moment to leave.