Chapter Twelve #2
Philips seemed mollified, his hands on his hips, a muscle working in his jaw. He checked his watch again. “All right. You get started on that paperwork, and I’ll instruct my assistant to meet with your photographer.”
“Certainly, sir,” said Highbaugh.
The man turned on his heel and left without another word. Harper could hear him arguing with a meter reader before jumping into his double-parked Jaguar and zooming off, narrowly avoiding a bicyclist who wobbled and swore at the expensive car.
Harper met the gallery owner’s eyes. He gave her a half smile.
“Man’s a little intense,” Harper said.
Highbaugh shrugged. “Impatience tends to go hand in glove with money and power, in my experience. I apologize for the interruption. Is there anything specifically I might help you with?”
“As it happens, I’m also interested in Delilah Mason’s work,” said Harper, handing him her card.
“Lovely to meet you, Professor. I’m sorry to say that, as you may have overheard, I’ll have to wait until the estate is settled before selling more of Ms. Mason’s excellent paintings. However, I do have a brilliant young artist who has several new canvases…”
“I should confess, I’m not a buyer. I sort of met Delilah Mason, and after what happened…”
“Such a tragedy,” said Highbaugh with a dramatic sigh. “A great loss to the world.”
“Very sad, indeed. I’m new at Monterey College, and everyone keeps telling me that I have to check out Carmel, so here I am. While I’m here, I thought I’d look at some of her work.”
“Welcome. Please, enjoy our gallery.”
“Was that man her…?”
He nodded. “Delilah Mason’s ex-husband, Benjamin Philips. She kept her maiden name, Mason.”
“He doesn’t seem exactly broken up over her death.”
Highbaugh shrugged. “You know what they say: Everyone grieves differently.”
“I was just reading Mason’s artist’s statement. Remind me of the myth of Hero and Leander?”
“Leander was in love with Hero and used to swim across the river to visit her at night, guided by the flame of the lighthouse. One night, Hero allowed the flame to die out, and Leander lost his way…and drowned.”
“How romantic,” Harper said.
“Indeed,” said Highbaugh, either missing or ignoring her sarcastic tone. “The name Leander is from the Greek for ‘evergreen,’ and in Greek mythology the oleander plant symbolizes romance and charm.”
The couple that had been lurking in the back of the gallery reappeared. Highbaugh gave them his card and recommended a restaurant where they might have a “highly pleasant” lunch. The couple thanked him and slipped out into the sunny day, leaving Harper the lone customer in the gallery.
Harper was about to ask Highbaugh how much Delilah’s work went for when the gallery owner suddenly launched into a dramatic monologue:
“Leander, he would have lived many a fair year, though Hero had turned nun, if it had not been for a hot midsummer night; for, good youth, he went but forth to wash him…something, something…but being taken with a cramp was drowned and the foolish chroniclers of that age found he was ‘Hero of Sestos.’ But these are all lies: men have died from time to time and worms have eaten them, but not for love.”
Harper had no idea how to react.
Holding her gaze, Highbaugh smiled. “As You Like It.”
“I’m sorry?”
“As You Like It by William Shakespeare. Rosalind says it in act 3 or 4, I believe. I may have gotten some of the lines wrong. It’s been years since I performed onstage.”
“I’m sure you did just fine. Was Delilah a Shakespeare fan?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Highbaugh said, looking disappointed. Harper decided she and the gallery owner were not on the same wavelength. “My dear mother was a great fan of Shakespeare, and of Delilah Mason.”
“Ah,” said Harper.
“She died recently,” he said, tears glinting in his eyes. “My mother.”
“Oh, I’m so very sorry to hear that,” said Harper. “Truly. My mother died several years ago, and I still feel her loss deeply.”
“I kept her safe through the worst of the pandemic, but once I let my guard down…” His expression hardened, and he shook his head. “I confess I haven’t been myself since. I’m adrift in grief, or so I’ve been told. There’s no one quite like one’s mother, is there?”
“There truly isn’t. Especially for the lucky among us who have a great one.”
“In any case,” Highbaugh continued, clearing his throat. “As I was saying to Mr. Philips, I’m afraid these paintings cannot be sold until the artist’s estate is settled.”
Harper nodded. “Of course. I was just looking.”
Highbaugh handed her his business card. “Please do come visit us again the next time you’re in our charming town. And while you’re in Carmel, may I suggest you should check out 17-Mile Drive? But be aware that one must pay for the privilege.”
“How much is it?”
“Oh dear, I’m not sure. Is it a problem?”
“I’m on a professor’s salary.”
“Understood. In that case you might stop by the Cypress Inn instead. It was movie star Doris Day’s hotel, and it’s free to poke your head in. It’s just down the block. Pet-friendly long before such a thing was popular, you know. Charming.”
“That appears to be the word for Carmel-by-the-Sea: ‘charming.’ ”
“Oh, it most certainly is. Do visit us anytime.”
As Harper was leaving, a very muscular, very bald man was about to enter, but stood back to hold the door for her. It took a moment for her to place him, but then she realized it was Sgt. Emerson, the MP she had encountered in the abandoned military housing. He nodded in recognition.
What was he doing here?
Don’t be a snob, Harper. An MP could be an art lover. Small towns lent themselves to these kinds of chance encounters.
Harper dropped by the Cypress Inn, which was, indeed, charming.
Its old-fashioned air made her wonder what Carmel must have been like back in the day, with someone like Doris Day making her home here.
And later, Clint Eastwood became mayor of the town.
How many other celebrities were lurking behind the quaint facades of these seemingly sleepy, multimillion-dollar seaside cottages?
Remembering what Ellen had said about her favorite artist, Harper searched for the Thomas Kinkade gallery.
She located it, appropriately enough, in a picture-perfect rambling pedestrian alley rimmed with darling shops and studded with lush baskets overflowing with flowers.
The gallery was full of Kinkade’s otherworldly, idealized portraits of fairy-tale cottages and serene, sun-dappled rivers.
An old stone bridge, a picturesque well complete with bucket, a couple in old-fashioned attire standing beneath a weeping willow.
To Harper, the artwork was more appropriate to holiday calendars and mass-produced teacups, though the prices were anything but pedestrian.
What some people will pay for a glimpse of paradise…
But as she read the descriptions closely, Harper learned that none of the paintings were by Thomas Kinkade himself but from the “Kinkade studio painters.” She asked the gallery owner about it.
“Original Kinkades are very rare, and very expensive,” the woman said. “And after Thomas Kinkade died, his original canvases were worth a small fortune. He passed away at fifty-four, you know. Far too young.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Out of curiosity, how can you tell if a painting is a Kinkade original?”
“Funny you should ask! Thomas Kinkade was a man ahead of his time,” she said. “He used his own blood in his signatures.”
“Beg pardon?”
“The artist. He feared his famous style would be copied, so he began to include a bit of his blood when he signed a painting. For the DNA. Can’t fake that signature!”
“I should think not,” Harper murmured. She was starting to think the world of fine art was a world unto its own. Signing paintings in blood sounded too much like making a deal with the devil.
She eventually decided on a framed print of a little cottage by a river at sunset that reminded her of the glowing golden light spilling from Ellen’s kitchen window in the evenings.
When Harper mentioned it was a gift for a dear friend, the gallery owner insisted on wrapping it in cheerful floral paper and decorating it with a mound of ribbon topped by a huge pink bow.
“Enjoy!” she said, handing Harper the frothy package.
Harper stopped at a coffee shop and bought an overpriced but luscious latte to go, then returned to her car and headed for the Carmel Mission, which dated from 1797.
As a historian she felt duty bound to visit the place, though Harper knew well that mission history was highly problematic, its annals full of the savage mistreatment and exploitation of the native peoples.
It was complex, and yet the history should be acknowledged and analyzed.
The cashier in the mission’s gift shop suggested she visit nearby Tor House.
Remarkably, the poet Robinson Jeffers built the mini castle by hand, hauling the heavy stones to the site himself, one by one, then learning from a stone mason how to shape and lay them.
Jeffers was so enmeshed with his home that he promised to haunt Tor House after he was gone, writing:
My ghost you needn’t look for; it is probably
Here, but a dark one, deep in the granite, not dancing on wind
With the mad wings and the day moon.
Good thing Professor Harper Grae, with a PhD from Berkeley, did not believe in ghosts.
The first time she showed herself to me, I was frightened. Beyond frightened.
But I came to understand. It was the wrong face in the mirror, but it was her face.
Wrong in the sense that she was wronged.