Chapter Twelve
Twelve
“You have a resident ghost?” Harper asked.
Constance smiled and clarified, “We blame him for all the mysterious creaks and groans in this old building. After all, what good’s an antiquarian society without a ghost or two?”
“They say it’s the residue of one of the original residents,” said Mr. Jones. “ ‘Stone tape,’ I think it’s called. These adobe bricks are as old as the earth, ’cause that’s where the adobe comes from. The mud soaks up the spirits, and Senor Sanchez can’t stand to leave his house.”
“Ghost or not, we’re happy to have him, aren’t we, Mr. Jones?” quipped Constance.
“No harm in him,” Mr. Jones replied with a nod. “Constance, I’m going to require some assistance over here. Can’t remember my own damned password.”
Harper thanked Constance and bid goodbye to Mr. Jones. As she walked to her car, she questioned herself: Had she really heard something? Or was it simply her imagination, stoked by too little sleep and too much talk of death?
It made her wonder, though. She knew she had seen something in that window in the Perles Mansion that first night. It made no sense, she couldn’t explain it, but still.
She knew it.
Maybe Joel was right about something, after all. Maybe Monterey really was chock-full of spirits.
The following day dawned sunny and clear. Outside in Ellen’s garden, birds were splashing in the birdbath and chirping merrily, and the day was already warm. Harper again struggled to accept it was October.
She had no classes today, just late office hours in case some of her students finally realized the midterm was coming up and were starting to panic.
Until then, she could return to the antiquarian society and read through more of Soren Perles’s account book.
Or she could stay in and work on her book manuscript.
Or she could follow Ellen’s advice, take advantage of today’s glorious weather, and do a little sightseeing.
She checked her phone. The charming, upscale town of Carmel-by-the-Sea was only ten minutes south on highway 1.
She called up directions to the art gallery that represented Delilah Mason, and the GPS guided her south on the highway before turning off onto what looked like a residential street.
After several blocks of private homes, cute seaside cottages set in lush gardens, Ocean Avenue became a main street lined with expensive restaurants and boutiques, galleries and cafés and ice cream shops.
It was not yet ten in the morning, but the street was bustling with well-dressed tourists: women with spray tans and Botox and hair extensions, well-coiffed men in pastel golf clothes. Prosperous-looking people.
Harper found a parking spot on a side street and headed for the gallery, Bentley and Highbaugh’s Fine Art, just one block off the main drag.
Boutique windows and candy stores were filled with Halloween-themed displays, witches and zombies and black cats. One store’s front window had red-gel handprints marching up the otherwise pristine plate glass as if left by the bloody palms of an assailant, or a victim.
Harper shivered. As a folklorist, she loved Halloween stories, but not the ones that focused on blood and gore. Especially lately. As Harper rounded the corner, she spotted a cute wooden sign: The Village Coroner. She did a double take and read it again: corner, not coroner.
Get it together, Harper. She had death on the brain.
Finally, she reached the glass door of Bentley and Highbaugh’s Fine Art.
It had been years since Harper had meandered through an upscale art gallery.
She made a point of going to major museums whenever visiting a city, the MOMA and the de Young and the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, the Art Institute of Chicago, and of course the many museums in Washington, DC, and New York.
But art galleries always seemed to her to be the purview of Ladies Who Lunch, though that was probably a wildly outdated stereotype.
Today, she noted the other customers were all couples.
A stocky, silver-haired man sat at a desk in one corner. His gaze swept over Harper as she entered, and he appeared unimpressed, no doubt divining, correctly, that she was not likely to spend thousands of dollars on art. He turned his attention back to his computer.
“Good morning,” Harper said, approaching the desk. “I understand you represent Delilah Mason.”
The man blanched slightly but got to his feet. “We do indeed. How do you do, I am Alastair Highbaugh, one of the proprietors.”
Highbaugh spoke in the clipped tones one might expect of a snobbish gallery owner, and though he wasn’t currently wearing one, Harper was willing to bet he had a few bow ties tucked away in his closet for special occasions. He seemed the type.
He waved a hand toward one wall. “Her paintings are right over there.”
The gallery had grouped the artwork around plaques featuring the artists’ biographies and brief statements. Delilah Mason’s section was prominently displayed up front.
The paintings were similar to those Tariq had shown her, the canvases colorful and surreal, and included tumbling crows and upside-down lighthouses, a startlingly realistic drowning man, a weeping woman sprouting wings, and massive cypress branches hovering above them all.
Although most of the paintings were landscapes, Delilah had included a door that stood ajar and that grand arched mirror, again and again.
The mirror always featured a ghostly visage within the glass.
There were no prices indicated. It was probably one of those situations in which if one must ask, one could not afford it.
Delilah’s artist statement read:
I love to disrupt the purity of a blank canvas with the representation of my dreams, my hopes and fears and demons. I look for the light in the dark, the dappled colors in the inky shadows, the open door, the spirits in the very earth—the adobe—from which my home emerged.
Leander drowned for want of a light to follow
And Hero mourned him
A face in the mirror. It is the wrong face…or is it?
Whatever that meant.
Only two of the paintings were from Delilah’s earlier California impressionist period.
The technique in her later work was similar—paint laid on thickly in some areas but lightly in others, with sections of bare canvas showing through the chalky brushstrokes—but Tariq was right: The artist’s style and subject matter had shifted significantly over the years.
But that wasn’t surprising; artists developed over time.
Pablo Picasso’s figurative Blue Period had famously morphed into outright abstract cubism as he matured.
At the sound of screeching brakes, Harper’s attention was drawn to the plate glass window up front.
A shiny green Jaguar had come to a halt and double-parked in the street directly in front of the gallery doors.
The driver jumped out, skirted his vehicle, and yanked open the gallery door.
He was tan, tall, and handsome in a bland, boardroom kind of way.
He appeared to be in his mid-forties, and his tailored wool slacks, cashmere sweater, and impeccably styled hair reeked of money.
“Highbaugh!” the man called out. “I need to talk to you.”
“Yes, of course. Always a pleasure, Mr. Philips,” the gallery owner responded, his tone obsequious. “Let us go speak in priv—”
“We’ll talk here. I have a tee time in twenty minutes,” the man said, glancing at the heavy platinum watch shackling his tanned wrist. “What’s the status of Delilah’s paintings?”
“In what sense?”
“What’s the legal status of her paintings now that she’s…” Apparently only now noticing there were other people in the gallery, the man paused and looked around.
Harper watched one couple slip out the front door while the other headed for the rear of the gallery, wildebeests fleeing the watering hole when the lion appears.
The man’s pale eyes landed briefly on her and, evidently deciding she was just another hapless wildebeest, ignored her. He turned back to the gallery owner.
“As I was saying, now that she’s no longer with us, what’s the status of Delilah’s paintings?”
“Oh, I, uh…” Highbaugh turned red.
Harper decided “Mr. Philips” must be Benjamin Philips, Delilah Mason’s ex-husband. Feigning interest in an ugly glazed ceramic sculpture, she lingered nearby to eavesdrop on their conversation.
“As you can imagine, Mr. Philips, this sort of situation takes time to resolve,” stammered Highbaugh. “We’ll need to confer with lawyers, and until her estate is settled—”
“I’m not sure I can wait that long. I have certain obligations…”
“Of course, I’ve heard about the new housing developments. Out on the old army base, is it? I’m sure that’s a huge—”
“I have no intention of discussing my business plans with you,” Philips said. “Suffice it to say that I own several of her canvases, which I imagine are worth considerably more now. The early work, I mean, not this recent crap.”
“I— Yes, indeed that is true. Of course, her California impressionist works have always been in high demand. But the newer work really does have its own je ne sais quoi, if you know what I mean. It’s very popular.”
Philips made a loud scoffing sound and glared at the dreamy canvases studding the walls.
“All right,” he said after another moment.
“It’s probably best to hold on to them for a while.
That’s what my attorney says, anyway. But I’ll need you to provide me with the proper paperwork and provenance for each painting, and I want to get them professionally photographed and advertised so people know what I have.
The anticipation will help drive up the price. ”
“I will be happy to,” Highbaugh said, his demeanor now livelier, no doubt by the thought of future commissions. “Why don’t I have my photographer get in touch? And, oh! We could put together a brochure featuring just your paintings. The Philips-Mason Collection, that has a nice ring to it.”
“Sounds like a cigarette company.”
“We’ll work on the title,” Highbaugh assured him. “Just a thought.”