FUNNY THING ABOUT being the suspect in a murder—it really didn’t bother me. Obviously, if I were a murderer, I’d be worried about getting caught. And, of course, there’s always a heavy feeling of dread that falls on someone who isn’t a murderer, but who’s on the suspect list. Worse still, if they’re wrongly accused and then wrongly imprisoned.
But, in addition to being shot at, I get accused of murder more often than you’d expect. A non-trivial amount, even for an artist who moonlights as a private investigator. In fact, I’d gone so long without being accused of murder that I … kind of missed it. Sure, it’s reason to be anxious, but for me it happened almost every other month. Imagine Taco Tuesday, but you didn’t get any tacos. Feels wrong, no?
At least I had a solid alibi for this murder. Still, I had the distinct impression that Liebowitz thought I was connected. Which I guess I was, in a way—there was still that mysterious USB drive and that plea for help from Neumann. Also the weird, threatening letter which seemed to be trying to frame me. But what did it mean by “in-depth art review,” and why was it “causing problems?”
While I was asking questions, one big question might be “Who wanted to kill Andrew Neumann?” Was one of the other artists angry at him? It’s possible he gave someone else a critical review. His reviews weren’t just negative—very often they were mean. Mean and personal. He was like if Gordon Ramsay and Roger Ebert got together to do art reviews. Not a pleasant thought. Though, it’s an interesting idea for a show.
Speaking of reviews, what was the “in-depth” review about? Neumann was often cryptic about his reasoning. He was often mean, sure, but I’ve never read anything by him that was deep. He kept his reviews under 500 words, and he never got into the technicals or the philosophy of the art. His was no TED Talk.
Where might he leave an in-depth review? On the USB key? Maybe he had left a review on the gallery’s website.
I got home and booted up my computer in the front room of my apartment. My pothos had grown another two feet since I last looked at it. It was climbing the windowsill, trying to get at the window behind the Roman blinds. The spider plant seemed content with the darkness, and just kept popping out new spider babies. I think the pothos was a little jealous. Both needed water.
I glanced over at the shelves by the window, at the two servers I maintained to keep my computer skills sharp. I just hoped the pothos didn’t try growing into those server cases. The thought of running a scheduled virus scan on the servers and pulling out vegetation reminded me to isolate the USB drive and check it for viruses before looking at it. Who knew where it had been?
The cleaned USB drive didn’t have any protection on it, so I didn’t need to enlist Vijay or Lacroix to help crack it, which was good. I got the distinct impression that the drive was for my eyes only.
My eyes were impressed. On the drive, there were maybe a dozen or so images of paintings. Looked like Group of Seven paintings. For the uninitiated, they were a group of artists (nine or more of them) who painted impressionist paintings of landscapes in Canada, starting around the turn of the century. The 20th century, that is.
I could tell right away that almost all the paintings were by Tom Thomson. He was a famous Canadian artist who inspired the Group of Seven, but was never an official member. If they were the Justice League, he was their Batman. Lawren Harris, the founding member of the Group of Seven, was more like their Superman. It’s an imperfect comparison, but in the DC animated universe, Batman liked to claim he was a part-timer in the League.
So I like art history and comic books. Fight me.
Other than the paintings, there was nothing else on the USB drive. No hint at what Neumann meant about the problems he was causing, and no text file that included any kind of “in-depth review.” Just a dozen high-resolution images of landscape paintings. I recognized many of them, but there were others that I’d never seen. They could have been made by other artists.
Thomson died in 1917, at age 39, and he didn’t start his art career until 1912. Still, during his five-year career, he produced about 400 oil sketches on small wood panels. Back in the day, these guys would travel up north, canoe out into the bush, and unpack a small art kit. They’d paint the essence of a landscape, like you or I would snap a picture with our phones. They would then paddle back, maybe get back on the train to Toronto, or wherever, then paint a full-size version of the scene.
Thomson drowned in a canoeing accident on Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park. I’ve always meant to go up there and pay tribute to him. Maybe do some painting while I was there. It’s still on my bucket list.
These USB pictures appeared to be some ones he did while up north. Identifying the paintings shouldn’t be too hard. I had a book on Thomson, and I had the Internet. Unfortunately, many of his paintings and sketches had the nondescript title of “title unknown.” I knew how he must have felt. I’ve done a lot of “title unknown” paintings as well.
One or two of his paintings had very descriptive names that reflected where the paintings were done. “Evening, Lake Scugog,” “Smoke Lake, Algonquin Park,” and so on. I just had to figure out what these were called. And why Andrew Thunderclap Neumann was killed over them.