At the Stroke of Madness

CHAPTER 35

Washington, D.C.

R. J. Tully paced in front of the brick apartment building, his hands in his pocket jingling change. He made himself stop. Leaned against the handrail and glanced up at the dark clouds. Any minute now they would surely burst open. Why didn’t he own an umbrella?

In his younger days it had been a macho thing. Men didn’t use umbrellas. Now as the breeze turned chilly and he lifted his jacket collar, he decided staying dry was more important than being macho. He remembered Emma telling him once that there was a fine line between being macho and being a dweeb. When had his fifteen-year-old daughter become so wise?

Tully checked his wristwatch and searched the sidewalks and street. She was late. She was always late. Maybe she’d decided she didn’t want to be alone with him. After all, they had done a good job avoiding that since Boston.

Boston…that seemed like ages ago. Then he saw her, walking a half block up the street, black trench coat, black heels, black umbrella and that silky strawberry-blond hair, and suddenly Boston didn’t seem so long ago.

He waved when she finally looked his way. One of those wide, open-palmed, counterclockwise waves, like some idiot directing traffic. Something like a total dweeb might do. What was wrong with him? Why did he get all nervous around her? But she waved back. There was even a smile. And he tried to remember why they had decided to forget Boston.

“Sorry I’m late,” Dr. Gwen Patterson said. “Have you been waiting long?”

“No, not at all.” Suddenly he easily discounted the twenty minutes of pacing.

The building superintendent had given him the security code and key to Apartment 502, but he failed to mention the open freight elevator they needed to take up to the loft. Tully hated these things, metal gates instead of doors and nothing to hide the cables or muffle the groan of the ancient hydraulic system. None of it seemed to faze Dr. Patterson.

“Have you ever been to her apartment before?” he asked, offering chitchat to fill the silence and take his mind off the screech of a pulley in need of a good oiling.

“She had a show about six months ago. I was here then. But that was the only time.”

“A show?”

“Yes. Her loft is also her studio.”

“Her studio?”

“She is an artist.”

“Oh, okay. Sure, that makes sense.”

“I’m surprised Maggie didn’t tell you that.”

Tully thought she sounded almost pissed at O’Dell. He had to be mistaken, and he studied her profile as she watched the number at the top, indicating each floor as they ground past the levels. He decided to leave it alone.

He would have known soon enough about Joan Begley’s profession. The loft looked more like a studio than living quarters, with track lighting focused on pedestals of sculptures and walls of framed paintings. In the corner, piles of canvases leaned against easels and more pedestals. Some of the canvases were filled with bright colors, others were whitewashed, waiting their turn. Chrome shelves held clusters of supplies, brushes still in jars of purple-green solution, paint tubes with missing caps, soldering tools and what looked like drill bits, alongside pieces of twisted metal and pipe. Interspersed among this mess were miniature clay figurines, thumbnail models of their larger finished counterparts. The only signs of living were an overstuffed sofa with matching pillows that tumbled onto the hardwood floor and in the distant corner a kitchen separated by a counter with empty take-out containers, discarded bottles of water, dirty tumblers and a stack of paper plates.

“Looks like she may have left in a hurry,” Tully said, but was wondering how someone could live in the middle of her work space. He knew he couldn’t.

“You might be right. She seemed very upset about her grandmother’s death.”

“So you spoke to her before she left.”

“Just briefly.”

Tully ignored the art stuff, a challenge in itself, and began searching for a desk and computer. O’Dell had given him a list of things she needed him to check out.

“Where the heck did she keep a computer?” He glanced back at Dr. Patterson, who stayed at the wall of paintings, looking with a tilted head as if she could see something in the random splashes of paint. Tully could never figure out art, despite his ex-wife Caroline having dragged him to gallery after gallery, pointing out social injustices and brilliant interpretations of individual pain and struggle where Tully could see only blobs of black paint with a mishap of purple splattered through the center.

“Do you have any idea where she may have kept her computer?” he asked again.

“Check the armoire.”

“The armoire? Oh, okay.” The cherry wood monstrosity took up almost one wall, and when Tully began opening doors and drawers it grew, spreading out into the room with swiveling shelves and sliding hideaways and, yes, a small laptop computer that seemed to be swallowed up inside.

“Do you know if this was her only one?”

Dr. Patterson came over and ran her fingertips over the armoire’s surface, almost a caress.

“No, I think she had a couple of them. She liked the mobility of laptops. Said she could go to the park or coffee shop.”

“So she may have had one with her in Connecticut?”

“Yes, I’m sure she did. She e-mailed me from Connecticut.”

He opened its lid, carefully, touching it on the sides with the palms of his hands, purposely not disturbing fingerprints or adding his own. Then he used a pen to press the on key.

“I should be able to get into her e-mail with a few tricks. It may take a while,” he said, as he brought up her AOL program. He hesitated when the screen asked for a password. “I don’t suppose you could save me some time. Any idea what she may have used as a password?”

“She wouldn’t have used her name or any derivative of it.” She stared at the screen and Tully thought he had lost her attention again when she added, “Try Picasso. I believe it’s one ‘c’ and two ‘s’s. He was her favorite. She used to say she was a whore to Picasso and his work. You may have noticed some of his blue-period influence in her paintings and the cubism influence in her sculptures. Especially her metal sculptures.”

Tully nodded, though he wouldn’t know cubism from ice cubes, and keyed in P-I-C-A-S-S-O, again using the tip of his pen. “No go.”

“Hmm…maybe his first name, then.”

Tully waited, then realized she thought he knew this. Geez! He should know this. If ever there was a time to impress her, this would be it. What the hell was it? She wasn’t helping. Was it a test? He stole a glance her way only to discover that her eyes had been distracted again, her face with the expression of someone lost in thought and trying to find the answers in the wall of paintings. And so even Tully’s flash of brilliance was lost on her when he finally keyed in “Pablo.”

“Nope. Pablo doesn’t work, either,” he announced, perhaps a bit too proud for someone who had just keyed in the wrong password. He waited. He glanced up at her again and waited some more. Finally he stood up, stretching his back, towering over her.

“I know what it is,” she said suddenly, without turning her eyes from what looked like an anorexic, pasty self-portrait, a nude with the metal frame cutting her below the emaciated breasts. “Try Dora Maar,” she told him, spelling it slowly while he keyed in the letters.

“Bingo.” Tully watched AOL come to life, announcing, “You’ve got mail. ” “How did you know that?”

“Joan started signing some of her paintings as Dora Maar. It’s complicated. She was complicated. That one,” Patterson pointed out, “reminded me.”

“Why Dora Maar?”

“Dora Maar was Picasso’s mistress.”

Tully shook his head and muttered, “Artists.” He clicked on the New Mail. Nothing had been opened since Saturday, the day Joan Begley supposedly disappeared. He clicked on Old Mail. One e-mail address stood out from the rest because there were so many, appearing every day, sometimes twice a day, but stopping the day she disappeared.

“This could be helpful,” he said as he opened one of the e-mails from the Old Mail queue. “She has quite a few from someone with an e-mail address of SonnyBoy@hotmail.com. Any idea who that might be?”

“That’s what Maggie and I are hoping you’ll be able to find out.”