“Long shots come in sometimes.”
“Sometimes the turtle beats the rabbit” — he nodded — “but you don’t bet that way. Or at least I don’t. Plus, I’ve been thinking about what Mrs. McClain told us last night. She lied to us until I called her on it, you know. And now I wonder how much of the rest of it was true.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know,” he said, exasperated. “I’m not saying she’s an archcriminal, but her health’s obviously pretty shaky. Maybe her memory is too. Maybe she forgot something.”
“Ross, her butler or whatever he is, says she has good and bad days,” I conceded. “He also suggested strongly that we stay away from her. And maybe he’s right. She seems in rough shape.”
“Fair enough, but what about the lady she mentioned, the one who stopped by?”
“Megan Lundy?”
“Right. Do you know her?”
“To say hello to. She’s an artist, teaches at the local community college.”
“I’d like to talk to her. But since she doesn’t know me from Adam, I wonder, could you give her a call and set it up?”
“Sure. I’ll come along if you like.”
“I’d appreciate that. It might help.”
“Not at all. But just so we understand each other, Mrs. McClain offered to pay me to be your... chaperone, I suppose. She’s afraid you might embarrass her family.”
“I’ve nothing against them. Hell, in a way we’re related. How much is she paying you?”
“Nothing. I turned her down.”
“You turned her down? Then why are you helping me?”
“I turned down the money,” I said. “I didn’t say I didn’t want the job.”
Megan Lundy’s home was only a mile or so up the shore from the McClains’. It was a converted summer retreat, an unremarkable two-story slate-gray clapboard salt-box with chocolate eaves and shutters. It was flanked by eyeless vacation cabins, closed for the season from the look of them.
I rang the buzzer and a voice from above yelled at us to come around back.
A broad redwood deck with balustered railings had been built out from the rear of the house at the second-story level to overlook the rocky beach and the bay. We climbed an ornate spiral stairway up to the deck. And stepped into Wonderland.
A barefoot young woman with stringy auburn hair was stirring an empty pot on a prop kitchen stove at the far corner of the deck. Her threadbare flannel bathrobe was open to the waist, revealing her breasts and the silky curve of her abdomen. She was twentyish, and seven months pregnant. And she was in chains.
Black iron manacles encircled her wrists and a heavy chain draped from them to the deck. She glanced up as Ray stepped onto the deck, then returned to her pseudo-labor.
Megan Lundy was working furiously at an easel that held a three-by-four-foot canvas, lost in her work, thrusting with her brush like a duelist. She was wearing a paint-spattered terry-cloth jumpsuit, a big-boned woman, forty-plus, squarish face, broad shoulders, a wide bottom, and no discernible waistline between. Her eyes were dark and intense, with heavy brows that matched her close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair.
“Make yourselves at home,” she said absently. “I’ll be done in a few minutes. Hate to lose the light. October...” Her voice trailed off as her consciousness disappeared into her art.
Ray strolled to the railing, politely giving his back to the half-dressed girl. He folded his arms and stared out over the water and I sensed a Do Not Disturb sign in his stance.
A pair of French doors opened into a studio and I wandered in. It was a huge room for the size of the house. All the inner partition walls had been removed, leaving naked steel jackposts to support the roof. The wall facing the lake and the two adjoining were glass, huge picture windows with an incredible view of the sky and the shore. The street-side wall was covered with paintings, some properly hung, but many just stacked one atop the other.
The subjects were similar to the scene outside, women of various ages and physiques, some pregnant, some not. They were all shown at tasks, typing, washing their hair, mopping a floor, bathing a child. And all were in shackles, though some of the chains were laced with flowers, and a few gleamed like precious metal. The colors were subtle, pastels that might be found on any morel wall, an understatement that lent the work a fiercer impact.
And they were powerful. Stark emotion that would have moved a stone. But there were too many. My eyes were drawn from one to the next so quickly I had to turn away to keep from being overwhelmed.
The window ledges were cluttered with half-squeezed tubes of paint, discarded pencils, charcoal stubs. And handcuffs and shackles. I picked a pair up, wondering if they were props. Nope. They were very real indeed. Odd. The shackles probably weighed no more than a pound or two each, yet the bondage they represented made them seem infinitely heavier,
A small table draped in gold velvet stood in one comer, a display of a different kind. They were ceramic replicas of what appeared to be primeval figures, rude clay earth-mothers with swollen bellies and breasts. One of them was so striking I actually caught my breath. A pregnant nude rising from water, her arms raised in victory. She looked ancient and familiar at the same time, as though I’d known her in another life. I was utterly enchanted. Without thinking, I reached out to her...
“Please don’t touch them, Mitch,” Megan Lundy said. “Some of them were never fired, so they’re quite fragile. From my Ashtoreth period.”
“Ashtoreth?” I said, glancing up. On the deck the model was pulling a pair of slacks on under her bathrobe. Ray was still watching the last of the light fade into the water.
“Ashtoreth, Phoenician goddess of fertility,” Megan said, tossing a gauze dustcover over the display. “I’ll bet I did a hundred different versions of her in college. And sold about two. I keep these around to remind me that there’s more to art than passion.”
“They’re very powerful,” I said. “The figure in the water...”
“That’s right, you’re the diver, aren’t you? Must be a tough field for a woman to break into,” she said briskly, taking my arm and leading me to the wall of art. “And what do you make of my current endeavor?”
“Stunning,” I said honestly.
“I’m outa here, Meg,” the model said, popping her head in the door. “Think you’ll stop by later?”
“I’ll call you,” Megan said, giving the girl a goodbye kiss that lingered a heartbeat too long to be sisterly. The girl whispered something to Megan, then waved goodbye in my general direction and wandered off.
“Oh, to be that young again,” Megan sighed. “You were saying about the paintings?”
“I really like this series. They’re rude and refined at the same time, and for somebody who gave up on passion, they nearly bleed it.”
“I didn’t say I lost any passion,” Megan said. “I just learned successful art requires more than youthful enthusiasm. I call this grouping Womyn in Chains, women spelled with a ‘y.’ Personally, I think they’re a shade too topical for pure art, but they sell like proverbial hotcakes in New York. I earn more for a couple of canvases now than my college salary for a year.”
“Shouldn’t you take some steps against break-ins?” Calderon asked, joining us. “I mean, this place is all glass and I didn’t notice an alarm.”
“You’re obviously an out-of-towner,” Megan said drily. “Nobody would steal art in Huron Harbor. I’d be lucky to get ten bucks a pop at the county fair. But in a chic gallery in the Apple, with suitable framing... You’re smiling. Do you find my work amusing?”
“Of course,” Calderon said, glancing at her. “It’s meant to be ironic, isn’t it?”
“In what way?”