Lyla Brandt sliced the top of the envelope with a quick upward stroke of her pearl-handled letter opener. Jasmine scenting wafted out of the envelope as she removed a four-by-five-inch piece of parchment. A cursory reading confirmed that it was yet another invitation to an artist reception at the Jerome North Fine Art Gallery in Dupont Circle. Fine art? As if. Why had she ever purchased that stupid little painting from Jerry? Now he invited her to every opening at his grungy little gallery. Another tedious evening of wine and cheese purchased at the local Safeway, with Jerry fawning over DC’s least important and most insipidly pretentious people? No thank you.
But when she threw the invitation into the recycling bin, she noticed a handwritten note on the back. “Lyla, you won’t want to miss this one. The artist says he’s a friend of yours. If you like, you can preview the show Wednesday night. Jerry.”
A friend? Showing at Jerry’s gallery? The only artists she considered friends would never exhibit at Jerry’s. Who could possibly…?
Adjusting her reading glasses, she focused on the artist’s name. No, no, no—it wasn’t possible. Rennie was dead. Long dead. Laraine had mailed the obituary. Ghosts can’t paint. It had to be a mistake or a viciously cruel joke.
She staggered to her feet and paced the sitting room. Her perfect room. Her perfect life as the wife of a prominent senator. Lyla ran her newly manicured fingers over her favorite possessions—the antique cherry bookshelves hugging her priceless first editions, the exquisite Ming vase from the Yongle era, her Chippendale side chair. If anyone in this town ever saw those paintings…
Should she try to contact Laraine? The two had severed all communication over fifteen years ago. But this was an emergency. Or was it? Jerry had offered her a private viewing. She’d recognize Rennie’s work instantly. And if it was Rennie’s work…oh, God. But there was no need to panic yet. She had a week before the opening. First she’d do some research—but not from home. Richard could never know about the years in Los Angeles with Rennie and Laraine.
* * * *
Two mornings later, Lyla arrived at the Rockville, Maryland, library precisely one minute after the doors were unlocked. It had taken forever to get crosstown on the Metro, but she hadn’t wanted to use her car. Her custom Lexus had been an anniversary gift from Richard, and it always drew attention. Today was not the day to attract any attention.
Wearing sunglasses and an auburn wig she’d purchased for a charity masquerade ball, Lyla strode past the service desk. She clutched a travel mug filled with cappuccino in one hand and her pawnshop-purchased laptop in the other. The study section was still fairly empty and she found a remote corner table where nobody could look over her shoulder.
Lyla plugged in the computer, logged onto the library’s WiFi, and signed in to various accounts she’d opened in the name of Bonnie Shepherd. Bonnie Shepherd was a recently deceased ninety-six-year-old neighbor. After all, Lyla rationalized, wasn’t it fitting to have one ghost hunt another ghost? Her husband might think Lyla never paid attention when he lectured about identity theft and computer security, but she never missed a syllable. She’d already reinvented herself twice before. It never hurt to update an old skill set.
A woman entered the study area and sat at a neighboring table. Lyla’s hands froze over her keyboard. When the woman picked up a notebook and started to write, clearly immersed in her own work, Lyla took one deep yoga breath to calm her nerves, and she began her search. It didn’t take long.
There was a Rennie Armand who was an artist. He even had a website and a professional Facebook page. There were no photographs of the man. Just the paintings. But those were eerily similar to the paintings Lyla remembered.
The Facebook page images were fairly conservative. Although there were a few nudes, the poses and treatments were classical. Then she pulled up his website.
His internet gallery had categories. David and Friends was, not surprisingly, all male nudes. They were well executed, and if any were going to be displayed at Jerry’s gallery, they’d sell well. Lyla quickly scanned dozens of the lean, muscled torsos, but then the initial impressionistic facial features started to become more detailed—and recognizable. Lyla scrolled more slowly.
In keeping with his Michelangelo theme, the artist had titled one such image Agony and Ecstasy. It was a charcoal drawing of a man reclining on his side, with the suggestion of another male just behind him. In the facial contortion of the primary figure, it was unclear whether the model was experiencing extreme pleasure or extreme pain. Lyla stared at the drawing until rivulets of perspiration streaked down her cheeks and dropped onto the keyboard. Self-consciously, she glanced up just as an elderly gentleman was passing by. He smiled at her. God, was there no place safe from prying eyes?
Lyla’s body felt numb as she slammed down the top of her computer and made a beeline to the ladies’ room. She didn’t reopen Rennie’s website again until she was safely perched on a toilet seat in the seclusion of a stall. The drawing filled the computer screen. Lyla knew who the Agony and Ecstasy model was. In fact, she had known him intimately.
It took her over five minutes of sitting in the stall before she could make her trembling hands open the gallery category she was most afraid to look at: Sappho’s Sisters.
As with David and Friends, the initial all-female paintings and drawings were classic poses, with only a few suggesting anything more scintillating than bathing beauties lounging on a beach or in a spa. But, once again, Lyla paused when she saw a painting of the back of a reclining female. The model’s face was hidden by a mane of blond hair, but Lyla knew instantly who the woman was. It had been painted in Rennie’s bedroom, and the model lounging against the brass headboard, with her toe entangled in the rumpled sheets, was Lyla. Worse, Lyla had a very good idea what paintings would be coming next.
Her fingers quickly tapped through the next pictures. Yes, there was Laraine, there were the peacock feathers, the scented oil, and the whip. She and Laraine had been particularly creative with the whip. And the young but talented Rennie Armand had exuberantly captured it all—with pencils, charcoals, and paints.
Back then, she’d been Joyce Remington, known as Joy to her friends and her regular johns. But now she was Mrs. Richard Brandt, and her husband was a Republican Party leader and a US Senator running for re-election. His constituents only knew her by her official biography, which made her sound like a cross between Betty Crocker and Mother Teresa. Lyla wore designer suits, headed church committees, was mother to two perfect children, and had become friends with all of the right people in Washington, as well as back home in South Carolina. She’d created Lyla Brandt to be the perfect woman for a US senator, and she wasn’t going to let Rennie Armand or Jerry North screw that up for her now.
Lyla had always been afraid her past could catch up to her, but this was the worst possible time. If Richard Brandt were still just the wealthy owner of a software company, nobody would care. Her husband would continue to love her and support her, and it might even spice up their romps in the master suite. But if it cost him his re-election—
Tap, tap, tap. Pause. Lyla held her breath. A woman’s voice said, “Do you need help?”
“Um, no, thank you. I felt a little sick, but I’m better now.”
“Do you need me to call somebody for you?”
“No. I’ll be fine, but thank you.”
Fine? Really? How could any of this be fine?
* * * *
Lyla spent all week preparing for her Wednesday night reunion with her past. She had the checkbook to her private account. She had cash. And she had a Walther P22 handgun in her purse. She’d purchased the laptop from a local pawnshop, but the Walther had necessitated a trip to West Virginia and a new disguise. The clerk in West Virginia hadn’t even asked for a driver’s license after she’d passed him an envelope bulging with small bills equaling four times the asking price of the gun. He’d even thrown in a courtesy box of ammunition. Lyla hoped she wouldn’t have to use the weapon, but she would if she had to. Though she’d had to leave the Joyce Remington name behind, Lyla was still the same South Carolina girl who could shoot a fly off a mule’s backside from fifty feet. Jerry would be a much bigger target, at a much closer range.
It took over thirty minutes, but she finally found the perfect parking spot on a remote back street. That was a nearly impossible task anywhere near Dupont Circle, but Lyla’s well-developed survival instinct told her she didn’t want her car to be seen too near the gallery or photographed coming in or out of a parking garage.
Lyla’s heels clicked angrily on the pavement as she thought of her conversation with Jerry. He hadn’t seemed at all surprised when she’d taken him up on his offer of a private showing. She’d asked if the artist would be there. He wasn’t sure. She asked if all of the artwork for the opening had arrived. He said yes, including a private portfolio for “special” customers. But he wouldn’t say anything else—just that Lyla should come to the back entrance.
He had to know, he had to have recognized one or more of the pictures of her. This had to be an attempt at blackmail, either independently or in concert with Rennie.
The funny thing was, after the initial shock, when she’d viewed Rennie’s website again, in the comfort of her own Jacuzzi—instead of doubled over, sitting on the toilet seat of a public restroom—she had loved the way Rennie had captured her and Laraine. The pieces were playful and erotic, and both women were in the prime of their sexuality and youth. She’d been in love with Laraine when Rennie had used them for models. Laraine was beautiful, kind, and gentle, whereas the men who patronized Top Drawer Escort Service were frequently well-dressed barbarians. But Joyce Remington hadn’t wanted a gay lifestyle. Back in the eighties, during the height of the AIDs epidemic, that was like signing up to be a social pariah.
Working as an escort had introduced Joyce to a glittering world that she didn’t even realize existed outside of movies and television. And she didn’t want to just visit there. She wanted to live there full time. That’s when Joyce-from-the-wrong-side-of-the tracks, and Joy, the sexual playmate for hire, both disappeared and were reborn as Lyla, a naïve, small-town woman who’d lost her college sweetheart in Iraq.
Lyla wanted money, and she wanted a place in society, and that meant hitching her wagon to a rising-star husband like Richard Brandt. But when Richard ran for Congress, and then for the Senate, he became an ultra-conservative, framing his campaigns around personal integrity and family values. The only place where he appreciated his wife’s free spirit was in the privacy of their bedroom. But he wouldn’t feel the same if her sexual creativity was on display in a DC art gallery—or on the front page of the Washington Post.
After walking six blocks, Lyla started to see the commercial lights of Connecticut Avenue. It was a warm, starlit evening. Laughter emanated from open-air restaurants, and the reverberating rhythms of live bands seduced patrons off the streets and into the mysterious depths of the many, many bars.
At night, Dupont Circle was an LGBT mecca. Lyla’s pulse quickened and her body responded to the energy whirling all around her. In the Foxhall Road neighborhood where she lived with Richard, the most exciting thing to happen on a July night was little Susie Reinhold being allowed to keep her lemonade stand open past seven o’clock. Behind her neighbors’ closed doors? That was anybody’s guess. But Dupont Circle was vibrantly open—people weren’t afraid to dance right out of their uptight administrative government jobs and onto the streets. Deliciously dramatic drag queens, handsome men flirting with each other in sidewalk cafes, gorgeous girls bumping hips and strolling hand-in-hand—it was intoxicating, and sexy as hell.
But as inviting as the nightlife was, Lyla was a woman on a mission. Jerry’s gallery was not in the high-rent district on Connecticut Avenue. Keeping her head down, she marched past the clubs and restaurants, past the laughter and fun, and tried to concentrate on what she was going to say and do when she confronted Jerry.
The lights were on in the Jerome North Fine Art Gallery, but the sign on the front door read “closed.” And the display window was surprisingly empty.
Compared to the heart of Dupont Circle, this part of town was practically deserted. If she was careful, she could run to the back of the gallery without any witnesses. Lyla pretended to study the display in a lingerie boutique next to the gallery. She watched the street in the window’s reflection. A blond man passed by, walking his Pomeranian pup on a slim leash. Then a couple of giggling women climbed into a red Kia. As soon as they drove off, Lyla made a dash down an alley to find Jerry’s delivery entrance.
She carefully picked her way between beater cars and overflowing dumpsters, wondering if she’d have to pull out the Walther just to defend herself from rats. Why the hell had she worn open-toed shoes? And the smell! She’d have to get rid of her clothes and shower before she let Richard get anywhere near her. Jerry had better be cooperative. By the time Lyla shook a used condom off her shoe, she was ready for a little target practice.
Cursing under her breath, she climbed the crumbling concrete stairs and knocked on the fire door. No one answered. The intercom hung sideways by a frayed wire and looked as if it hadn’t been functional for decades. There was no other buzzer. She banged again. Damn him. She was not going to call from her cell phone.
Finally, the door swung open. Jerry smiled and stepped aside to let her through. “Lyla, how good of you to come. You’re late. I was starting to get worried. Would you like a glass of wine?”
“Cut the crap, Jerry. Just show me the pictures, and tell me what you want for them. And there better not be any fucking prints!”
Not answering, Jerry walked toward the showroom. He flipped a wall switch and the display lights ignited.
Lyla stopped and stared. Pencil drawings, oil paintings, acrylics, pastels, and charcoals lined the gallery walls from floor to ceiling. There was no question that they were Rennie’s work.
Jerry folded his lanky frame into a black leather chair next to the reception desk. The gallery lights reflected off his shaved head, and Lyla noticed that there were breadcrumbs in his beard and mustache. And it looked like he’d spilled red wine on his tan turtleneck and blue jeans. A little brie and wine celebration of his expected payoff? Charming.
“Have a seat, Lyla. We need to talk.”
She lowered herself into the chair opposite him. When she put her purse on her lap, she felt the weight of the gun. It was comforting. She remembered a thirteen-year-old Joyce Remington, with a stolen pistol under her pillow, ready to shoot her stepfather’s balls off if he ever came near Joyce or her sister again.
Shaking her head, she focused on the task ahead. Could she make it look like a robbery? If she threw the gun in the Anacostia River, nobody would ever find it. There must be enough hardware down there to outfit an army battalion. But what would she do with all of the artwork? What about Rennie’s website? What about Rennie? Was he alive or dead?
Jerry gestured around the room. “Quite a talent, wouldn’t you agree? He captured you beautifully.”
“Yes. Thanks. Do you just want me to buy the pictures, or are you trying to get your hands on my husband’s money? He has friends who could close you down for good, you know. Or maybe even make you disappear.”
Jerry folded his hands and smiled. “Richard might do that for Lyla, but would he do it for Joyce or Joy? Oh, don’t look so surprised. Rennie has shared some delightful stories with me. Look, I’m not greedy. But I would like to move the gallery up to Connecticut Avenue. With this show and a better location, my reputation would be made.”
“So that’s the deal? Either I help you make your reputation or I lose mine? What will that cost?”
He shrugged. “Maybe a couple hundred thousand and having you recommend me to a few of your influential friends.”
Lyla opened her purse acting like she was looking for a tissue. Ready, aim, fire. Could she do it? Could she get away with it? Jerry wasn’t going to let her off the hook. He’d bleed her and bleed her until Richard left office. She’d be trapped. Even more trapped than she felt now. It wasn’t like she’d ever really loved Richard. She’d loved his money and his position. Her eyes went back to the paintings. And Laraine. She’d loved Laraine.
Somebody tapped first on the display window, and then the front door. Jerry said, “That must be Rennie. He said he was going to try to stop by.”
Rennie? Dead Rennie? While Jerry went to answer the door, Lyla slipped the Walther out her bag. Ten shots. One chambered. Safety off. She wanted this nightmare to end. She wanted to forget about Joy Remington; she wanted to forget about Los Angeles. Maybe as Mrs. Richard Brandt she was still a hooker, but she was well paid. Lyla carefully placed the gun into her jacket pocket. Make my day, Jerry North. Make my day, ghost from my past.
But the man Jerry let through the door wasn’t Rennie. He was shorter than Rennie, with spiked graying hair and an Armani suit. A beautiful man—he looked familiar but…
The man stared at Lyla and smiled. “Joy? Is it really you?”
Laraine! Dear Jesus, it was Laraine. Lyla jumped out of her chair and then froze. It was a different kind of ghost.
Laraine started laughing. “Do you really think you’re the only one who can reinvent herself? After Rennie died, he left me all of his work. I studied every brushstroke until I could paint like him.” She spun in a little circle. “What do you think? I was always a tomboy anyway.”
Lyla felt like that thirteen-year-old again. Confused, frightened, happy, then angry. Very, very angry. She’d wanted her stepfather to like her, to give her candy like he’d given her sister. But she hadn’t known the cost.
“But why blackmail me, Laraine?” Lyla’s voice was barely above a whisper. “If you needed money, we could have worked something out. But this?” Lyla gestured around the room. “How could you do this?”
“Oh, honey.” Laraine started to come toward her, but Lyla held up her hand. She almost drew the gun.
“Joy, sweetie. I’m not blackmailing you. I have money now. I’m living in San Francisco as Rennie Armand and making a damned good living. This was never going to be a public showing. You were the only one to get an invitation. I wanted to throw you a coming-out party. And a come-to-me party, if you’ll have me.”
“Did you change yourself? Your beautiful body?”
Laraine laughed again. “God, no! I like us both just the way we are. This is our time, baby. We can live openly.”
Lyla looked around the gallery. Was this really a second chance for her? Richard would divorce her in a second, no questions asked. And she could finally be with the person she loved. The person she’d always loved. Her children would survive. Richard would take care of them.
Jerry shook his head. “Well, as touching as all of this is, you’re wrong about one thing Rennie, or Laraine, or whatever the fuck your name is. I have a few other invitations ready to go out.”
He pulled a handful of parchment out of his pocket and started reading, “Senator Richard Brandt, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the State in South Carolina, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today…shall I go on?”
It all happened so fast, Lyla truly couldn’t remember any details. One minute she was running to embrace Laraine, the next minute she and Laraine were looking down at Jerry’s bloody body and she was holding a Walther with an empty magazine. All ten bullets had found their marks—three massed to Jerry’s head, three to the heart, and four to his…
Lyla dropped the gun and clung to Laraine. As their bodies came together, the years melted away. She felt alive for the first time in almost twenty years.
They sat holding each other, waiting to hear the sirens. When none came, they realized they might have another chance. There would be a lot of work to do before dawn, a lot of cleanup, but Lyla had done it once before. And back then she’d only been a child. Just thirteen years old.
As they packed up Rennie and Laraine’s artwork, they worked out a plan. Jerry always had a stash of cocaine in his office. He was just a third-rate gallery owner trying to welch on his dealer. Nobody would care—it happened every day in DC. Lyla could ask Richard for a divorce—if he refused, she could threaten to embarrass him with her past.
It was nearly daybreak by the time Lyla and Laraine had agreed on each detail, cleaned up every shell casing, and loaded the artwork into Laraine’s van. They were exhausted, but as crazy as it was, they believed they could make it work.
Carefully walking around Jerry’s body, Laraine made her way to a little kitchenette in the back of the gallery. She called over her shoulder, “Hey, there’s a bottle of champagne in the fridge. Is it too early for champagne and brie? We can dump everything in that last trash bag when we’re done.”
When Laraine emerged with the bottle and two glasses, Lyla shook her head. “So he gave the Safeway wine to his customers and saved the good stuff for himself. Cheap bastard.”
Laraine settled into one of the leather chairs while she poured. As she handed a bubbling flute to Lyla, she said, “What should we toast to?”
Lyla looked at the stripped gallery walls, at the body, and then at Laraine. “I don’t know if we’ll get away with this, but I’m willing to fight for a life with you. So let’s toast to us—indisputably the two masters of second chances and eternal reinvention.”
Robin Templeton is a Virginia-based writer whose short stories have been selected for several suspense anthologies. “Hunter’s Moon” appeared in Chesapeake Crimes: Furs, Feathers, and Felonies; “The Knitter” in Chesapeake Crimes: Storm Warning; “Ho’oponopono” in Malice Domestic 13: Mystery Most Geographical; and “Out of Time” was chosen for Snowbound: The Best New England Crime Stories 2017. Additionally, her longtime career as a professional photographer and experience as a private investigator form the basis for her works in progress, Double Exposure and Fatal Focus, both finalists in the Minotaur Books/Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition. Find out more about Robin’s writing and photography adventures at www.robintempleton.com.