Ida was Tex’s most loyal and faithful patient. The bluff, apple-cheeked middle-aged lady came in at least once a week, with some real or perceived complaint, and was as garrulous as they came. Which is why it surprised him that she’d waited until now to interrupt his monologue.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
Ida pursed her lips censoriously.“You know how I hate to gossip, doctor. But I’m afraid Marge’s art class isn’t above reproach.Morally speaking, that is.”
She placed particular emphasis on the word‘morally,’ indicating it was of the utmost importance to her, as well it might be. Ida was a widow, but even when Mr. Baumgartner was still alive, she’d been at the forefront of the moral revolution in Hampton Cove, always seated in the first pew in St. John’s Church on Sunday morning, and first to decry the slackening of morals in their small town.
“What do you mean, morally speaking?” he asked, thoroughly befuddled.
She took a firmer grip on her purse, as if afraid Tex might make a grab for it when he heard what she had to say.“There is a persistent rumor floating around town that Chanda Chekhov uses male models to pose for his students.” She gave a meaningful nod of the head and fixed him with a meaningful stare. “Nude male models!”
Tex opened his mouth to speak, but no words formed, so he hitched up the mandible. Nude male models? Posing for his wife? Now that was something she hadn’t told him. Even though she had spoken at length about her artistic experience, the words nude, male or model had never passed her lips.
“Are you sure about this?” he finally asked. It was a rhetorical question, for Ida was always sure about any of the claims she made.
She now nodded significantly.“Oh, yes, I am.”
He swallowed a little convulsively.“You mean there are males… in the nude?”
Once more she nodded slowly, a pair of glittering eyes fixed on him, allowing the meaning of her words to fully penetrate.
“So… a nude male model has been prancing around in front of my wife?”
“And for the full hour, too. A roomful of women, slavering over a naked man, studying him from every angle, under a row of spotlights. And people wonder why the divorce rates in this country are going through the roof. If it were up to me, this kind of sickening exhibition would be outlawed, and the perpetrator sentenced to life imprisonment for destroying the moral fiber of the community.”
“I find this very hard to believe, Ida,” he admitted.
“Oh, but I have it from someone who was there. She was so shocked at the spectacle that it took her a full week to recover. She also told me that attendance figures have tripled in the short time this man’s services have been retained.”
“You wouldn’t happen to know this male model’s name?”
“I didn’t catch his name, but I know he’s an artist himself. As one would expect.” She adopted an expression of disgust. “Seedy bunch, one and all.”
“Young?” he asked in a croaky voice.
“Twenty-four.”
“Twenty-four-year-old artist,” he murmured. “Naked in front of my wife.”
“And Charlene Butterwick, your brother-in-law’sunmarried partner.”
“I had no idea,” he confessed. It was probably a bad idea to show this chink in his armor in front of a patient, but he couldn’t help it. The shock was too great.
“If I were you, Tex, I’d take a firm line with Marge,” Ida advised.
“What do you mean?”
“Forbid her to go to this feast of immorality! This cornucopia of sin!”
“But it’s her art, Ida. Her art!” His voice had taken on a bleating quality.
“I know. That’s always their excuse. But at some point a man has to put his foot down. If this is allowed to go on, who knows what will happen next.”
“Yes, I see what you mean.”
“I wouldn’t give a dime for that marriage of yours, which is exactly what these people want. These… libertines! So you just tell that wife of yours no more art classes,” said Ida, summing up her point succinctly. “Or else.”
“Or else what?” he asked, suddenly prey to indecisiveness.
“That’s for you to decide, doctor,” said Ida primly. “Far be it from me to poke around in your marriage.” She said it with a straight face, even though poking around in other people’s marriages was all she did, and did well. In fact if a degree would exist at colleges and universities for Pokology, Ida would take first prize.
“Well, thanks for warning me about this, Ida,” he said. “I had no idea.”
She reluctantly got up, then planted her hands on Tex’s desk. “This is the way I see it. If my Burt had ever frequented some ‘art’ class where naked women pranced around all night, I’d have told him what was what so fast his head would have spun. No marriage can sustain this level of temptation, not even a great marriage like yours.” She stood erect, and nodded with satisfaction, her work done. “And that’s all I have to say about the matter. The rest is up to you.”
After she had left, for a long time Tex just sat there, dark thoughts swirling in his mind, such as it was, creating then discarding wild schemes to save his marriage, which was obviously in grave danger from these artist people.
It took some time, but from the hard mental work an idea was born, so brilliant in its simplicity it took his breath away. And as he picked up the phone, he was actually smiling to himself, knowing that it was the only course of action open to him. The only course of action any concerned husband could take.
CHAPTER 10
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That evening we were all enjoying a nice evening in—though of course almost all of our evenings are evenings in—when a call came that, judging from the look on Odelia’s face, seemed more or less urgent and of a decidedly serious nature.
“Is it an art gallery?” asked Harriet excitedly. “Have they seen my painting and are they going to offer me an exhibition?”
“It’s probably the supermarket,” said Brutus, “telling Odelia that the cat food you ate is being recalled.”
“Haha,” I said. “Very funny, Brutus.”
“No, but I’m actually serious for once,” said Brutus. “It happens all the time, you know, that these big brands are forced to do a recall. Last week they had to recall an entire shipment of baby food, which turned out to contain arsenic.”
This time I gulped, for I had indeed heard similar rumors in the past. So was it now our turn to become the victims of the mysterious phenomenon of perfectly good food turning out not to be as safe as advertised?
But then Odelia said,“We’ll be there in five minutes, Uncle Alec,” and hung up.
I sighed with relief. Clearly it wasn’t the supermarket, unless Uncle Alec had lost his job and was temping there now.
“There’s been a burglary,” Odelia explained to Chase, who’d been watching a movie about World War II. The war quickly lost its appeal when the topic of a burglary came up, and he switched off the television and got up from the couch.
“Hey, I was watching that,” said Dooley plaintively. “Now I’ll never know who won the war.”
“Where?” asked Chase curtly, all business all of a sudden.
“Tucker Street,” said Odelia, then frowned. “Isn’t that where Jay and Laia live?”
“Let’s go,” said Chase, already on his way out the door.
“Now that’s a dedicated cop for you,” said Brutus proudly. “Even when spending a nice evening with his family he can’t wait to catch the bad guys.”
Grace, who’d been gurgling happily, now gurgled some more, reminding Odelia and Chase that they might be ardent investigators, but they were also parents, which came with certain responsibilities, like taking care of their kid.
“We’ll take her along with us,” said Odelia after a moment’s hesitation, and so it was a full contingent of Kingsleys that filed into Chase’s pickup, which is a lot nicer than Odelia’s. Of course it’s not his pickup, per se, since it belongs to the police department, and in that senseactually to the people of Hampton Cove.