Page 19 of The Children of Eve (Charlie Parker #22)
CHAPTER XIX
A last-minute hitch with one of Moxie’s clients, who was due to appear before a judge that morning but instead decided that flight might be right, meant I didn’t get to Zetta Nadeau’s place until late in the afternoon, but I’d advised her of the delay. Her home and studio lay on the southeast of Cousins Island, not far from the Chebeague Island ferry dock. Cousins Island, part of Yarmouth Township, was connected to the mainland by what was colloquially known as the Cousins Island Bridge. The Cousins Island Bridge was officially the Ellis C. Snodgrass Memorial Bridge, but hardly anyone called it that, with the possible exception of the descendants of Ellis C. Snodgrass himself.
The house was a small A-frame situated on the grounds of a larger property that, had it been advertised for sale, would have promised little change from $2 million. The A-frame might originally have been staff quarters for the main dwelling, but Zetta had cut a deal with the owner to keep an eye on everything during winter and spring. She had also designed and constructed—at a knockdown price, and because the client wasn’t a governor she didn’t like—the gates that guarded the driveway. This was how artists survived. It might also have helped Zetta secure her show at the Triton Gallery, since the cottage’s owner happened to be Mark Triton.
As instructed, I called Zetta on arrival. I didn’t have much choice, as locked security gates at either side of the house denied access to the yard unless I was prepared to scale a boundary fence. I made three attempts to reach Zetta before the call was answered, but they weren’t a consequence of being ignored. I could hear what sounded like an angle grinder at work and pictured Zetta in coveralls and a welding mask, with ear protectors in place—which was essentially the vision of her that presented itself to me a couple of minutes after she finally picked up, except with the mask raised and the protectors hanging around her neck. The coveralls looked too big for her, but then Home Depot probably hadn’t yet grasped the potential of the waif market.
“Sorry,” she said. “Were you waiting long?”
“My clothes were still in fashion when I got here.”
“Unlikely. Still, I bet you’ll be the dandy of your retirement community.”
I followed her behind the house, where the smell of scorched metal was acrid enough to make my eyes water. Zetta’s workspace resembled an auto shop’s cut-up area as much as a studio. Through the open door, I could see what looked like steel fingers or flames linked at the base, each at least as tall as I was.
“What are you working on?”
“I’m not sure yet. It may come to nothing.” She stared at whatever it was. “I’m exploring new possibilities.”
“Why?”
“Did you see the review of my show in the Maine Sunday Telegram ?”
“I read it, but I can’t claim to have understood all the big words. Still, everyone likes ‘Local Woman Makes Good’ stories.”
“Is that how you read it?”
“Like I said, some of it went over my head.”
“My pieces were described as ‘impressive but chilly.’ It was suggested that they lacked a human dimension, which is more or less what The New York Times said in its hatchet job last time out. Even if I felt the new work wasn’t quite what it might have been, I still believed I’d developed in the interim, but maybe I haven’t. I think I need to go in a more radical direction.”
I wasn’t about to get into a discussion about the shortcomings or otherwise of conceptual art. Other than the gates she’d made for her patron, I couldn’t say that what Zetta did appealed to me, but I wasn’t the target market. Zetta was watching me, waiting for a response. I might have said that “chilly” came with her territory, but that would have been a good way to alienate a client.
“I’m not sure you should let them get under your skin,” I said. “In every critic lies a frustrated artist who couldn’t make the grade.”
“Yeah, that’s what we tell ourselves. I don’t know if it’s true.”
She wiped her face on her sleeve. At first, I thought she was removing sweat, but then I realized she was crying—not sobbing, just silently weeping.
“I’d always dreamed of being reviewed in The New York Times ,” she said, and she suddenly sounded very young. “That’s when I’d know I’d arrived. I wanted them to love what I did. Instead, I felt like I’d been nailed to a tree. The trouble is, maybe they were right, and now I’ve started second-guessing myself. It wasn’t the words themselves that wounded so much as the fact they made me doubt the validity of what I was doing. My confidence took a hit.”
She recovered, finding it in herself to smile.
“And those folks under the Russian jackboot think they have problems, right?”
“Yours is a calling,” I replied. “The rules are different.”
“I suppose we have that much in common. Come on, I’ll show you the house, then leave you to nose around. I don’t want to hang over you while you do whatever it is you do: dust for fingerprints, or listen for dogs that aren’t barking.”
“I don’t do fingerprinting since we unionized,” I said. “And there’s always a dog that isn’t barking, or else I’d have to find another racket.”
She led me to the back door, which opened into a small kitchen, which in turn opened into a living room that wasn’t much bigger. To the left was the hallway and the front door, and beyond the hallway was another narrow room with a dining table and too many chairs. The whole place felt dark and claustrophobic. I couldn’t imagine one person living here happily, or not for long, let alone two.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, “but I don’t spend much time down here. Upstairs is prettier, with better light. You’ll see.”
“How did you and Wyatt divide up the space?”
“What there is of it, you mean? He kept some of his stuff in the dining room. It’s all still there. I started going through it after he left, then stopped, the paperwork I gave you excepted. It didn’t feel right. I have less of a problem with you poking around because that won’t be personal. We shared the bedroom and had our own closet spaces. Wyatt wasn’t messy or anything, not like some guys I’ve known—though, to be honest, the women I’ve lived with were worse than any boyfriends I’ve had. But Wyatt didn’t have many possessions. It’s hard to make a mess if it’s just you, two bags, and a few books.”
She showed me upstairs. She was right about the layout. It was nearly all bedroom, freshly painted in creams and whites, with paintings and prints on the walls, an Indian rug on the pine floor, and a comfortable armchair by one of its two windows to catch the afternoon sun. The closets were built in and might have been oppressive but for the rattan inlay on the panels. To the right of the bed was a closed door, which presumably led to the bathroom. Through the windows, I could see blue water.
“Toiletries apart, Wyatt’s things are in the closet on the left. The rest, as I said, are in the dining room. If you want to go through my belongings, feel free, unless you blush easily.”
I told her that probably wouldn’t be necessary, and she tapped her welding mask.
“Back to the great effort,” she said. “If you need coffee, there’s a Nespresso machine by the sink and milk in the refrigerator. Soda, too—or beer, if you’re the type that likes to start early. Anything stronger, you’ll have to buy yourself.”
“Coffee when I’m done. We can talk again then.”
“Okay.” She looked sad and young again. “I really did like Wyatt, you know.”
“I know.”
“But when you find him,” she said, “I’m going to bill him for your time.”