THE SHOW FINISHED up quickly after that. They cordoned off the second floor and called the police. People’s names and numbers were collected, and the cops began interviewing guests and staff in a separate room. As they left, the gallery staff handed out vouchers to guests, and encouraged them to visit the gallery online, where they would post a virtual version of the show. They would announce the winners of the gallery show there, and they would notify those who won demonstration paintings. None of the artists ended up winning the demo, but we didn’t really care about that; there was no prize, and we had other, bigger things to worry about.
Upstairs, on the second floor of the gallery, which had been mostly empty during the demonstration, art critic Andrew Neumann was dead. Someone stabbed him in the gut and dragged him behind the upstairs bar.
The police also interviewed the performers, and when it was my turn, they weren’t very gentle.
Inspector Liebowitz was there. So was Lacroix.
“So, Mr. Virtue. It seems like you’re involved in another murder.” Liebowitz gave me a snarl as she walked around the room. This was something she did when she questioned you. I think it’s because she was thin, and her long legs needed constant exercise. And she liked to snarl. The attitude was probably because people kept comparing her to Anne Murray. Well, I kept comparing her to Anne Murray. I could probably come up with a more contemporary reference. But probably nothing more Canadian.
“Yeah,” I said, “just me and the hundred other people here tonight.”
“Yet you were the one person seen arguing with the deceased.”
“Was I seen arguing? When did this happen?”
She looked at her notebook. “Yesterday, during the setting up of the show.”
“Oh, well, yesterday.”
“You threatened to …” she looked closer at her notebook. “… Shove a threatening letter up his ass and then sign it with a fountain pen?”
At this, Lacroix burst out with a laugh. Liebowitz gave him a dirty look, and he left the room, still snickering.
“That was a hypothetical,” I said, smiling. “And it was meant to be funny. You see, he had approached me with a letter. Something vague and threatening about him reviewing art, or something like that. Thought it was from me.”
“Was it?”
“Naw, don’t threaten people with letters. And I wouldn’t sign them.”
“But you do threaten people?”
“Good heavens!” I said, raising my hands in mock surrender. “I would never!”
“Uh, huh. And he’s dead now. Stabbed to death during a show.”
“Yeah, pretty crafty of me, stabbing him while on stage downstairs, in front of a hundred witnesses.”
Liebowitz pinched the bridge of her nose. “I know you didn’t kill him, Virtue.”
“And yet …” I gestured at everything.
“Do you know what might have happened?”
“There’s that letter, of course.”
“Signed with a ‘zed.’”
“Pretty informal, no? I wonder who it is?”
“We didn’t find any letter. Think you can remember the content?”
“Probably not exactly. It was pretty banal. But I can give it a try.”
I recited the letter as best I could, and she wrote it down. I described the rest of the encounter to her as well, just in case. What I didn’t mention was the USB drive. But I did mention the hot coffee spill, and how the city would be pretty empty if I killed everyone who spilled something on me.
I also promised to keep her informed if I found anything out, or remembered any additional details of the encounters with Neumann.
Liebowitz called out, and a big, uniformed cop entered, then took me away. I didn’t catch his name, but he was rough with the escort. Maybe it was a look from Liebowitz, or the fact I was the last of the interviews, but he marched me out like a bouncer ejecting a drunk from a waterfront bar. He gave me one last shove at the main desk, and Lacroix was there to take me outside.
“… and sign it with a fountain pen?” chuckled Lacroix. “Virtue, you’re hilarious!”
“Glad you liked it.”
“Weird, isn’t it? That you’re always around when someone gets murdered?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Look at all the murders in the world where I’m not around.”
Lacroix thought about it for a moment. “I just think that one day we’ll be bringing Liebowitz in for murdering you. We’ll probably have to let her go.”
“Why? Because I’m an asshole?”
“You said it, bud, not me.”
I sighed. “I do seem to get dragged into a lot of these things, don’t I?”
“Yuh-huh,” said Lacroix. He grabbed the iron handle of the main door, and it broke off in his hand. “This building is a piece of shit.”
“Yeah, one more thing to add to the repair list,” I said.
We stood on the steps outside the factory building. It was late, but the moon was almost full, and the nearby streetlight cast a bright, artificial glow on the sidewalk. Everything looked a bit orangey out here.
“Hey Lacroix,” I said to him as he tried to fit the handle back on the door. “You should come out to the next show. It’d be great to hang out without a murder happening.”
“Nah, I’m not really into the whole art thing. Besides, if I want to look at a wet piece of crap, I’ll just come over you your place.”
“That’s what your mom said …”
Lacroix and I looked at each other for a couple of tense, confusing seconds, and I turned and left.
They can’t all be winners.