One of the gallery visitors was a med student. She and Rachel did what they could for the guy until the paramedics showed up, but they were too late. The guy had stopped breathing moments after hitting the floor.
“Oh my god.” Marian Krantz was pale, clutching her wine glass.
“Do you know him?”
“He’s—Archie Hammond. He’s a critic. Oh my god.” She turned away and gulped some wine.
Some uniformed cops had shown up with the paramedics and started asking questions. Fifteen minutes later a CPD detective showed up, his shield dangling over his chest. I know a lot of cops, and a lot of them know me, but I’d never met this one. He found me after talking to the patrol cops and Marian Krantz. “You’re Tom Jurgen.”
I nodded. “Private detective and art lover.”
“What are you doing here? Looking for ghosts?”
The reason cops know me is because I have the awkward habit of stumbling into supernatural situations and insisting on talking about them, even though they’d rather I just shut up. “Working,” I said. I glanced at Marian Krantz.
She looked back at me and finally nodded. “For me. It’s—nothing related to, to . . . Archie.”
“I’m detective Metzger.” He looked over his shoulder at a splotch of blood on the floor being photographed by CSI techs. “I guess my main question is, how the hell does a guy get stabbed in the middle of an art gallery without someone seeing it?” He looked at Krantz, then at Rachel, then me.
I shrugged. “Ghosts?”
Metzger snorted. “Should have figured you’d say that. You knew the man, Ms. Krantz? Any enemies?”
She forced herself to look away from the crime scene. “He was an art critic. The Tribune, then a magazine, now some online site. He could be—brutal. He said honest, but some artists have fragile egos. But I can’t believe someone would kill him over a bad review.”
“You’d be surprised.” Metzger smirked. “What about personally? Married? Girlfriend? Boyfriend? A little groping? Or worse?”
Krantz groaned. “He’s—was gay. Married, I think. More than once. I don’t—we were never close friends.”
“Uh-huh.” He looked back at the patrol cops questioning people. “Any chance we could set up a couple of chairs at the back of this place? We’re going to be here a long time.”
Krantz got an assistant to bring some folding chairs and a table from the back room, and Metzger set up in a corner. Everyone still in the gallery—a few had fled before the paramedics arrived—was brought back, solo or in pairs, to answer questions.
Marian Krantz got her share of questions from the guests. When she had a break she refilled her wine glass and leaned against a wooden beam, eyes closed.
I walked over. “Sorry to bother you.” She was clearly upset, and a little drunk. “A few questions?”
She opened her eyes. “Fine. I’m sorry for getting you into this.”
“No problem.” Rachel brought me a beer. And one for herself. “Thanks. Did Axel have any history with Archie Hammond?”
She tilted her head back, thinking. “He—Axel was in a group show last year, and Archie was a little merciless. He called Axel’s work ‘immature’ and ‘derivative,’ and more of the usual stuff. When we started working together, Axel was still holding a grudge. He wanted me to bar Archie from the gallery for this show, but I told him I couldn’t do that.”
She leaned forward and looked up and down the length of the gallery. “You don’t think—he’s not even here. How could he stab Archie in the chest without anybody seeing it?”
“An invisibility cloak?” I looked at Rachel. “Or a spell for moving super fast?”
Rachel glared at me and raised her fist for a punch.
“Hey, anything’s possible,” I said. “Remember Axel’s painting with the necklace?”
Marian Krantz blinked. “I suppose. I did contact you because you have a reputation for, well, unusual happenings.”
“That’s one way of putting it.” Rachel smirked and sipped her beer.
Metzger questioned us separately. When he was talking to Rachel I tried asking some questions of my own to the other gallery visitors, but one of the uniformed cops told me to quit. So I leaned against an empty spot on one wall and waited for Metzger to finish.
“What did he ask you?” I asked as we headed to the car.
“What I saw, why you’re here, what I’m doing with a loser like you.” She punched my shoulder.
“All valid questions. What’d you tell him?”
“I didn’t see anything before the guy fell over, we were there because you’re looking into Axel, and you’re good in bed. Tender and considerate, up to a point, and then you’re a ferocious beast. He made me stop before I could make up any juicy details.”
“Thank god.” I opened the door for her. “So what do you think happened?”
“Seriously?” She waited until I was in the car next to her, buckled up. “There was a lot of energy in those paintings. But that knife? No idea.” She leaned back in her seat and sighed. “Maybe I just don’t understand art.”
I started the car. “Sorry the date went haywire.”
“Hey, it’s not over yet.” Rachel patted my arm. “You don’t want to make me a liar to the police, do you?”
The murder was all over the media the next morning, but Axel’s name didn’t get much attention. I slept late, read the coverage with my cereal and coffee, and went to the office to start again looking for any trace of Axel on the internet.
Rachel came in at 9:45, in shorts and a long T-shirt. “I’ll have to call that detective and confirm my statement now.” She kissed the top of my head.
“Can’t you just post a tweet like everyone else?” I enjoyed watching her walk over to her desk and stretch her legs as she sat down, then forced my eyes back to my screen.
“Anything new on the case?”
“I found a birth notice for him. Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1992. He was kicked out of high school at 17, then reinstated after a year. No police records that I can find. A few minor awards at local art shows. Both parents dead. Cancer, first dad, then mom.”
“That’s sad.”
“Yeah.” I turned away from my desk. “I think I’m going to have to go out into the real world.”
“Scary. Don’t get too close to any paintings.”
“Yeah.” I finished off my coffee and headed out.
My first stop was the studio Axel had rented until recently. It was near Printers Row, just south of downtown. The building manager was a middle-aged woman in overalls. She took me up to the third floor and unlocked the door.
The one-room studio apartment was bare. A parquet floor, brick walls, a microwave, stove, and refrigerator, and tall windows at one end letting in a flood of morning sunlight. Scraps of paper drifted across the floor. None of them looked like they held any clues.
“Did you talk to him much?” I asked the building manager, Berenice.
She picked up a stray Post-It note from the floor. “”Buy paint.’” She crumpled it and tossed it away. “He didn’t talk much. I remember he only looked it over for five minutes before saying he’d take it. He always paid on time—I don’t handle the money, but the company would let me know if someone was late.”
She looked at the window. “He liked all the natural light. But he said he worked at night a lot. He needed the darkness.”
“Any idea where he moved after this? A forwarding address?”
She shook her head. “I can check with the company. He owe you money?”
I’d been vague about who I was and why I was here. “No. My client just wants to get in touch with him.”
“I’ll send an email.” She pulled her phone out.
I checked the cabinets and the bathroom. A half-empty bottle of antidepressants was in the medicine cabinet. I made a note.
Inside a closet I found a stack of folders. Kneeling on the dusty floor, I flipped through them. The top folder held sketches in pencil—a nude woman’s frowning face, a tree bent over in the rain, a snarling dog. The second folder had receipts, mostly from art suppliers, hardware stores, and CVS.
The third folder had more sketches, but these were in ink and looked like practice versions of his pictures at Marian Krantz’s gallery. Murder of Crows had more birds and a smaller sun, lower in the sky; the skull in Half and Half was just an empty, black void; another sketch showed two wolves glaring at each other.
The final one was a sketch of Marian Krantz’s scarab.
I took pictures of everything with my phone and piled the folders back in order. When I emerged from the closet, Berenice had a cigarette in her lips, unlit. A hint that she was ready for me to be done.
“That’s all, thanks.” I handed her my card. “If you hear anything about the forwarding address, would you give me a call?”
“Sure.” She tucked the card away. “Let me know if anybody wants to rent this place.”
I took one last look around. “I will.”
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