“I’m glad you’re the one who came to the door,” Dante said as I swung open the front door of the Flamels’ house.
Dante was a neighbor of the Flamels. He’d been a murder suspect when I met him, but I’d always liked him and was glad he hadn’t turned out to be guilty. The retired music producer no longer dressed as if he was in a punk rock band himself, but he still walked with a swagger and the zippers of his black pants were subtly adorned with silver skulls. Only one other house was on the hillside, and the mansions weren’t in sight of each other. The privacy suited the occupants of both residences.
“That sounds ominous.” I stood aside to let him inside.
Dante shook his head. “You up for a walk in the garden? I know it’s raining, but—”
“I love walking in the rain.” I shut the door behind us and followed him to the path between the stone and flower sections of Perenelle’s pigment garden.
“What’s going on?” I asked once we were far enough from the house there was no danger of being overheard. A light drizzle of rain made it feel as if we were talking inside a cloud. Here in the hills, we probably were.
Dante didn’t speak immediately. When he did, instead of answering, he asked his own question. “Is everything all right with Nicolas and Perenelle?”
I glanced back at the house. “I know they’re eccentric, but—”
“Nah, that’s not what I mean. They’re the best neighbors. They’ve got strangely colored puffs of smoke coming from their two chimneys sometimes, but the sulfurous smell never lingers—and it inspired me to write a great verse about brimstone the other day, while I was having a pot of tea next to Carla’s Venus fly trap—wait, where was I?”
“The Flamels being good neighbors,” I reminded him as we continued walking.
“Right. They never complain about our last-minute concerts at the Inferno.”
Dante’s Inferno was the name of the stone ruins that were all that remained of an older section of his mansion. They’d never been cleared away because they made for a great outdoor concert venue. The previous owner of the Flamels’ house had complained about the noise, but Nicolas and Perenelle loved their neighbors’ rejection of cultural norms. I was pretty sure they also appreciated having stone ruins nearby.
“They’re even into the monster topiary.” Dante grinned. “You saw the new dragons they put in?”
“A dragon and an ouroboros.” I stopped at the edge of the Flamels’ drive, where I could see the ouroboros serpent eating its own tail, and faced Dante. His tall figure loomed above me, and a worried crease dominated his forehead.
“Why are you worried about them?” I asked. “You don’t need to worry about the strange smells from their furnaces. They’re not harming themselves or going to burn down the house.”
He chuckled, but the worried crease was still there. “I love them in the present. It’s their past I’m worried about. I got a phone call from someone claiming they were doing a background check on Perenelle related to her artwork.”
“A background check for an artist?”
“My thoughts exactly. The woman said she was an art collector thinking of investing in her artwork, so she needed to make sure nothing in her past would get her into trouble, and have the patron lose their money.”
“Did this woman identify herself?”
“Said she’d ‘rather not say.’ So I said back to her that I’d rather not say anything about my great neighbors. Had me wishing she’d called my land line instead of my cell phone, so I could have slammed down the phone on her. You’re too young to remember land lines, but it’s a really satisfying feeling.”
“I’ve got an old-fashioned phone on each floor of my house. I get it.” I had a million questions for Dante, but I didn’t know where to start.
“I shouldn’t have hung up on her without getting more information. I’m sorry I didn’t, but I at least wanted to find out if they were in trouble with anything. I mean, could they be in trouble with the law? I don’t even know how long ago they came over from France. I know growing woad on purpose is banned in Oregon, since it grows like a weed in the Pacific Northwest, but that can’t be it, can it? She has a legitimate purpose to harvest it to make colors for her art.”
“You think the woman who called was law enforcement?”
“Doubt it. Because why wouldn’t they just say that.”
“So you’d be more willing to cooperate.”
He shook his head. “They’d just have sent someone in person to surprise us. Nah, this woman… she was something else.”
“Her number,” I said. “She called your cell—”
“Tried that. The number is blocked. You okay, Zoe? You know something about this art collector?”
“Maybe. I was burglarized the night before last. I wasn’t home,” I assured him. “But a painting I love was stolen.”
“Valuable to an art collector?”
“Only valuable to me, for sentimental reasons.”
“I’ll keep an eye on them, and let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
Dante gave my shoulder a quick squeeze, then swaggered past the serpent, heading back to his house.
The killer already had the paintings. Why would they still be looking into the Flamels? Was this new American art collector a new player in this game I didn’t understand? Were we wrong that Betty Kubiak’s killer was the one who had the paintings?
“Dante,” I called after him as I hurried to catch him. “Would you know the voice of the woman if you heard it again?”