Cat Under Fire

11

ART DEALER ON STAND

Defense attorney Deonne Baron today called three additional witnesses in the murder of artist Janet Jeannot. The first to take the stand was art dealer Sicily Aronson, owner of Molena Point's Aronson Gallery, and victim Janet Jeannot's agent… Aronson testified that there had been bitterness between Ms. Jeannot and the accused, Rob Lake. Under detailed questioning she told the court that Ms. Jeannot was not happy over Mr. Lake's gallery association with her ex-husband Kendrick Mahl. Ms. Aronson also told the court that since Janet Jeannot's death, and the destruction of most of the artist's work in the fire that burned her studio, the remaining canvases have doubled in price. The Aronson Gallery…

Wilma scanned the lead story with mild interest, standing in her front garden. The Gazette articles were getting tedious. Much of this story was a rehashing of Janet's personal life, which the reporters seemed to find fascinating; newspaper reporters were not conditioned to let the dead rest, not as long as there was any hint of story to be milked from a tragedy. She folded the evening paper again, tucked it under her arm, and bent to pluck some spent blooms from the daylilies. A cool little breeze played through the oak tree, rattling the leaves. Above her, above the neighbors' rooftops, the sky flamed red, so blazing a sunset that she considered hurrying the five blocks to the shore to enjoy its full effect spreading like fire over the sea. But she had dinner cooking, and she'd pulled that trick before, turning the stove low, nipping down to the beach for a few moments-and returning home to find her supper burned.

She wished Dulcie was home. She grew upset when the little cat was gone for more than a night and a day. Even with Clyde's reassurances that the cats were all right, Dulcie's absence was unsettling. Clyde would say little, only that they were perfectly safe. Turning from the daylilies she headed for the house, moved on through the kitchen, where she'd left the noodles boiling, and into the dining room to have another look at the drawings Charlie had left propped on the buffet.

She'd discovered them when she got home from work, had stood looking at the little exhibit, amazed. She'd had no idea that Charlie was drawing Dulcie, and she'd had no idea, no hint that Charlie could draw animals with such power. Until that moment she'd thought of Charlie's artistic efforts as mediocre, dull and unremarkable. The work which she had watched over the years consisted mostly of uninspired landscapes bland as porridge, studies so lacking in passion that she was convinced an art career was not the best use of Charlie's talents. She had felt a deep relief when Charlie gave up on making a living in the field of either fine or commercial art. Had felt that Charlie, in making a break from the art world, could at last throw herself into something which would fit her far better.

But these drawings were totally different, very skilled and sure, it was obvious that Charlie loved doing animals; strange that she'd never seen anything like this before. Always it was the landscapes or Charlie's hackneyed commercial assignments from class. But these showed real caring-the work was bold and commanding, revealing true delight in her feline subject.

The three portraits of Dulcie were life-size, done in a combination of charcoal and rust red Conte crayon on rough white paper. They brought Dulcie fully alive; the little cat shone out at her as insouciant and as filled with deviltry as Dulcie herself. In one drawing she lay stretched full-length, looking up and smiling, her dark, curving stripes gleaming, her expression bright and eager. In the second study she was leaping at a moth, her action so liquid and swift that Wilma could feel the weightless pull of Dulcie's long, powerful muscles. The third drawing had caught Dulcie poised on the edge of the bookshelf ready to leap down, her four feet together, her eyes wild with play.

This work was, in fact, stronger and far more knowledgeable than any animal drawings Wilma could remember. The cat's muscle and bone structure were well understood and clearly defined beneath her sleek fur, the little cat's liquid movement balanced and true. There was nothing cute about this cat, nothing sentimental. These studies created for the viewer a living and complicated animal.

Leonardo da Vinci said the smallest feline is a masterpiece. These drawings certainly reflected that reverence. She couldn't wait for Dulcie to see these.

To an ordinary cat, such drawings would read simply as paper with dark smudges smelling of charcoal and fixative. A drawing would communicate nothing alive to the ordinary feline, no smell of cat, no warmth or movement. A normal cat had no capacity to understand graphic images.

An ordinary cat could recognize animal life on TV primarily by sounds, such as barking, or birdsong, and by the uniqueness of movement: feline action sleek and lithe and deeply familiar, birds fluttering and hopping. Action was what most cats saw. She had no doubt about this, Dulcie had told her this was so.

But Dulcie would see every detail of these drawings of herself, and she would be thrilled.

Returning to the kitchen, dropping the evening Gazette on the table, she turned to finishing up her dinner preparations. Her cheerful blue-and-white kitchen was warm from the oven, and smelled of the garlic and herbs and wine with which she'd basted the well-browned pot roast. Removing the noodles from the stove, she drained them in a colander then pulled the roaster from the oven, releasing a cloud of deliriously scented steam. She basted the roast, put the lid back, put the noodles in a bowl and buttered them, set them on the back of the stove to keep warm. It was nice having company; she was pleased to have Charlie staying with her. She deeply enjoyed her solitude, but a change was delightful, and Charlie was just about all the family she had since her younger brother, Charlie's father, had died. There were a couple of second cousins on the East Coast but they seldom were in touch. Her niece was the closest thing she had to a child of her own, and she valued Charlie.

She laid silverware and napkins on the table, meaning to set them around later. Beyond the window the sunset had deepened to a shade as vivid as the red bougainvillea which clung outside the diamond panes, the red so penetrating it stained the blue tile counter to a ruddy glow, sent a rosy sheen over the blue-and-white floral wallpaper. She set out the salt and pepper, then returned to the dining room for another look. She couldn't leave the drawings alone. Now, suddenly, it seemed to her a great waste for Charlie to be starting a cleaning and repair business. Why had she hidden such work?

Charlie had mentioned once there wasn't any money in drawing animals, and maybe she was right. Certainly animal drawings weren't big in juried shows; one would have to build a reputation in some other way than Janet had done. Charlie said Janet was truly talented, and that she herself was not. Wilma wondered how much of that came from the narrow view of the particular art school she had attended.

She returned to the kitchen, moving restlessly. She was tearing up endive and spinach leaves for a salad when Charlie's van pulled up at the curb, parking up toward the neighbors' to leave room behind. The red sky was darkening, streaked with gray, the wild kind of sky Dulcie loved. She tried to put away her worries about Dulcie; it did no good to worry. Clyde had said, on the phone, that the cats were fine.

So where are they?

At Janet's. Joe is at Janet's.

Then where is Dulcie?

She's nearby-gathering some information, Joe said.

What does that mean? Snooping somewhere? She can't… Those cats can't…

Joe says not to worry, and what good does it do to worry? He'd let me know if anything-if they…

She had hung up, shaken, and no wiser.

She shook the salad dressing, fussed with the salad. Standing at the window, she watched Charlie come up the walk dragging, looking hot and irritable.

Charlie dropped her jacket in the entry and came on through the dining room into the kitchen, slumped into a chair. Her red hair was damp with sweat, curling around her face, her limp, sweaty shirt was streaked with white paint and rust.

"Not a good day," Wilma said tentatively.

Charlie reached for a leaf of spinach to nibble. "Not too bad. Mavity got a lot done. She's a good worker, and a dear person." Mavity Flowers was an old school friend of Wilma's. She had gone to work cleaning houses when the small pension left by her husband began to dwindle under rising prices. She'd be in fair financial shape if she'd sell her Molena Point cottage and move to a less expensive area, but Mavity loved Molena Point. She would rather stay in the village and scrub for a living.

Charlie rose and got two beers from the refrigerator.

"Cold glasses in the freezer," Wilma said. "I guess Mavity can be a bit vague at times."

"Aren't we all?" Charlie fetched two iced glasses, opened the bottles, and poured the dark brew down the frosted sides with care. "Mavity works right along, she doesn't grouse, and she doesn't stop every five minutes for a smoke the way Stamps does. I don't think James Stamps will be with me long."

Charlie had hired Stamps from an ad she'd put in the paper. He hadn't been in Molena Point for more than a week or two. He told Charlie he'd moved to the coast because Salinas was too dry. He was renting a room somewhere up in the hills, near to the house Charlie was cleaning, the Hansen house; she was getting it ready for new owners.

"I got all the little repairs done. Replaced the cabinet door hinges in the kitchen, fixed the leak in the garage roof. Fixed the gate latches." She sighed and settled back, taking a long swallow of beer. "Mavity and I painted the bedroom, and Stamps picked up the shelving units for the closets."

"Sounds like more than a full day."

"I had to tell Stamps twice, no smoking in the house. He said, 'What difference? They won't be moving in for a week.' I told him that stink stays in a house forever. But how can he smell anything when he reeks of smoke himself."

"Did he do any work besides picking up the shelving?"

"Under my prodding. Got the front yard cleaned up, the lawn trimmed, and the new flowers planted. But my God, I have to tell him everything. Mix the manure and conditioner in before you plant, James. Treat the flowers tenderly, don't jam them in the ground.

"It's not that Stamps is dumb," Charlie continued. "He's bright enough, but he doesn't keep his mind on the job. Who knows where his thoughts are. The cleaning and repair business is definitely not James Stamps's line of work."

Charlie glanced idly at the paper. "One day I'll find the right people. Meantime I keep on baby-sitting him. I had to tell him twice to tie up his dog. It sleeps in his truck; I guess the people he rents from don't want it in his room. I don't blame them, the beast is a monster. I didn't want it tramping around in the clean house, getting dog hairs stuck in the fresh paint."

"I thought you loved dogs."

"I can hardly wait to get a dog. A big dog. But not a beast like Stamps's mutt. I want a nice, clean, well-mannered animal. That creature won't mind, and it's mean." She grinned. "At least Stamps didn't eat lunch with Mavity and me, that was a pleasure. It was real nice to be rid of him.

"But then he was twenty minutes late getting back, and when I made him work the extra twenty, he got mad." She finished her beer and got up. "I'm heading for the shower; I smell like a locker room."

Wilma hadn't mentioned the drawings. She wanted to wait for Clyde-and wait until Charlie had cleaned up and didn't feel so hot and irritable. Charlie could be testy-if she was in a bad mood, anything you said could be taken wrong. Patiently, sipping her beer, she sat reading the rest of the lead article and a second, longer story.

Ms. Aronson was unable to produce witnesses to her whereabouts the early morning of Ms. Jeannot's death. She claimed that she was alone in her Molena Point condominium. Neighbors testified that lights were on that morning in her living room and bedroom, but no witness saw her white Dodge van parked on the street. Ms. Aronson told the court she had parked on a side street, that there had been no empty parking places in front of her building.

She testified that she did not leave her apartment until nearly 7 A.M., when police phoned to notify her that Janet's studio had burned and that Janet had died in the fire. She said she dressed and drove directly to Ms. Jeannot's studio. Under questioning, Ms. Aronson admitted that she had a set of keys for Jeannot's studio and apartment. She claimed that Jeannot had given them to her so she could pick up and deliver work for exhibitions.

The second witness was Jeannot's sister, Beverly Jeannot, who also admitted to having a set of keys. Police said that on the day Janet was murdered they were not able to reach Ms. Jeannot at her home in Seattle until noon, though they made several attempts by phone to notify her of her sister's death. Ms. Jeannot claimed she had not been feeling well, and that she had unplugged her phone the night before. She said she slept until 11:45 the morning of the fire, that once she was notified she booked the next flight to San Francisco, with a commuter connection to Molena Point. She arrived in the village at three that afternoon.

Scheduled to testify later in the week is San Francisco art agent and former critic Kendrick Mahl, a name of national stature. Mahl is Janet Jeannot's ex-husband and is also the representing art agent for the accused. A partial transcript of today's court proceedings follows.

Wilma was scanning the transcript when Clyde knocked at the back door and pushed on in. He was well scrubbed, his dark hair neatly combed. He smelled faintly of Royal Lime, a nonsweet scent from Bermuda that Wilma liked, though she detested the heavy and too-sweet scents that most men applied. He was wearing a new shirt. The store creases spoiled only slightly the fresh look of the red madras plaid. He got a beer from the refrigerator and pulled out a chair, scowling at the headlines. "Don't they have anything else to write about?"

"Good color on you. Don't sit down. Go in the dining room."

"What? Are we eating formal?"

"Just go."

He gave her a puzzled look and swung away into the dining room, carrying his beer.

He was silent for a long time, she could hear the soft scuff of his loafers as he moved about the room, as if he were viewing the work from different angles and from a distance. When he returned to the kitchen he was grinning. "I thought, from the way you talked and from what Charlie said, that her work was really bad, that art school was a waste of time."

"It was a bust," Charlie said, coming in. She was dressed in a pale blue T-shirt with SAVE THE MALES stenciled across the front, and clean, faded jeans and sandals. She had blow-dried her sweaty hair and it blazed around her face as wild as the vanished sunset. "I should have gone to business school. Or maybe engineering, I've always been good at math. I'm sorry I didn't do that, maybe civil engineering. It was a big waste of time, that four years in art school. Big waste of my folks' money."

Clyde shook his head. "Those drawings are strong. They're damned good."

Charlie shrugged. "I enjoy doing animals, but it's nothing that will make me a living."

Clyde raised an eyebrow. "Don't put yourself down. Who told you that?"

"The fine arts department. My drawings-any animal drawings-are way too commercial, they have no real meaning. Just a waste of time."

"But you took commercial art, too," Clyde said. "You got a BS in both. So what did the commercial people say?"

Charlie gave him a twisted, humorless smile. "That there is no market for animal sketches, that this is not commercial art. That you have to use the computer, have to understand how to sell, have sales knowledge and a strong sense of layout. Have to be a real professional, understand the real world of advertising, bring yourself up into the electronic age. That this-drawing animals-is hobby work"

"Rubbish," Clyde said.

"Trouble is, I don't give a damn about commercial work." She got another beer from the refrigerator and picked up the silver flatware that Wilma had dropped in the center of the table. As she folded the paper napkins neatly in half, she gave Clyde a long look. "They know what they're talking about. I can draw for my own pleasure, but as for making a living, right now my best bet is CHARLIE'S FIX-IT, CLEAN-IT. And I like that just fine." She tossed back her hair and grinned. "I'm my own boss, no one telling me what to do." Reaching across the table, she arranged the silver at their three places and set the napkins around. At Clyde's angry look, she laughed. "My illustration instructor said I can draw kitties as a hobby."

"Who the hell do they think they are?"

"They," Wilma said, "are our rarefied and venerable art critics, those specially anointed among us with the intelligence to understand true art."

Clyde made a rude noise.

Wilma studied Charlie. "I'll admit I didn't like your landscapes. But these-these are strong. More than strong, they're knowledgeable, very sure. Do you have more?"

"Some horses," Charlie said. "Lots of cats, all my friends in San Francisco had cats. A dog or two."

"Did you bring them with you?"

"They're in the storage locker with my cleaning stuff and tools."

"Will you bring them home?" Wilma said patiently. "I'd like to see them all."

Charlie shrugged and nodded. "The sketches of Dulcie are yours, if you want them."

"You bet I want them. Dulcie will be… is immortalized," Wilma stumbled. She caught Clyde's eye, and felt her face heating. "I'll take them down right away, to be framed." She rose and began to fuss at the sink, her back to Charlie, and hastily began final preparations for dinner, again checking the roast, making sure the noodles were still warm.

She was going to have to be more careful what she said to Charlie, and in front of Charlie.

And, she'd have to get those drawings out of the house before Dulcie saw them. The little cat could be as careless as she. If Dulcie came on those drawings unprepared, she would be so pleased she'd very likely forget herself, let out a cry of astonishment and delight that, if Charlie heard her, would be difficult to explain.