CHAPTER 13

Several weeks after the murder, Steve showed up unannounced at the Van Gogh’s Ear gallery with a moving van full of Carol’s artwork. He said he was preparing the Bridle Path house for sale, so he had to clear out all of her belongings, including every piece of art she’d ever done.

John Lutes, one of Van Gogh’s co-owners, got a frantic call from his daughter, who was working alone at the gallery that day. He drove straight over to oversee the unloading and was overwhelmed by the massive collection of items Steve had brought. Steve had not only delivered Carol’s artwork, he’d brought anything even related to her art: “All her incomplete work, sketch pads, every single bit of everything she’d ever done, and he just dumped it,” John recalled later.

For John and the other co-owners, this seemed like a suspicious and telling move. “Two weeks and we all thought he’d done it,” he recalled in 2014. “There were just stacks and stacks of things in portfolios . . . hundreds and hundreds of pieces of art.”

John felt nervous and uncomfortable at the prospect of dealing with so many pieces, not wanting to turn away Carol’s creations and works in progress, but not really knowing what to do with them, either. It was her life’s work, essentially. And the gallery was now faced with the task of inventorying the cache for sale.

“This was a really weird thing, but I didn’t want to refuse a home for her art, because you wouldn’t have wanted him, if we refused it, to go take it to the dump,” John said. “She had shown her art with us for years, and she had been a personal friend for years, and so we wanted to curate her art in the proper way and in a way to benefit her daughters.”

Part of John’s discomfort stemmed from Steve’s demeanor, which was so businesslike and matter-of-fact about the whole transaction, a marked contrast to the spirit and power of Carol’s work.

“You felt like he was expunging her or extricating her or washing his hands of everything that was personally her,” John recalled. “He didn’t show any emotional attachment to the work at all. And the work itself was very emotional . . . any feeling she had, feelings, bright spots in dark areas. It was about her passions, her fears . . . where the joys came from. Love.”

They ultimately drafted an agreement stating that all proceeds would go to Katie as the estate’s executor, and she would share them with Charlotte. Steve didn’t seem interested in the money for himself.

At that point Joanne Frerking, Carol’s friend and another gallery co-owner, began the daunting task of inventorying and pricing the pieces. She put them into several categories—signed, salable, and neither, as well as those the girls might want. Then she invited Katie and Charlotte to take the ones they wanted, which weren’t many.

“I never had any idea there was so much,” Joanne said. “She was so prolific.”