“Mom,” Chloe whined, “Cam’s eating all the cereal.”
“Am not,” I could hear my grandson say in a calm, even tone.
“Are too!”
“Quiet. You’re going to wake Grammy up,” he told her.
“Shhh, both of you,” Lizzie whispered.
“OMG, Mom. Can’t you make Grandma give my phone back? Pleeease? Daddy gave that to me ’cause I got all Bs. He’d be crazy mad if he knew.”
Her mother didn’t take the bait, only asking her if she was finished eating.
Way to go, Lizzie, I thought and wondered if the three of them were aware that I could hear every word they were saying. Probably not. Their rooms were separated from the kitchen by a long hallway. But mine was just on the other side of the wall. I bet they didn’t have a clue.
For a minute, I thought of getting up, putting on my robe, and rushing out to wish them all a good day. But that thought went away as I stretched my feet across the luxurious sheets.
Their conversation stopped suddenly but was immediately followed by the clanking of silverware hitting the stainless steel sink. The refrigerator seemed to open and close nonstop. Chairs skidded across the tiled floor until finally, thank goodness, Lizzie said, “Now grab your lunches and get in the car. I have to go to the office, so I can drive you to school, but you’ll have to take the bus home.”
“Shotgun!” Chloe shouted.
Cameron was silent.
I could hear one child run toward the front of the house; the other slowly followed. When the door slammed shut, I thought they were gone, until I heard a knock.
“Mother, I know you heard everything.”
“Yes, I did.”
Through the door, Lizzie said, “You have my cell number and the one at the office. I should be home late. Could you please feed the kids dinner?”
“No problem.”
“Thanks so much. Love you.”
“Love you, too, sweetheart,” I called back.
***
Curiosity finally made me get out of bed. Hearing that Randolph Pierce had opened an art gallery piqued my interest, and I decided to check it out. But first I had a cup of coffee and piece of toast while I looked for the spare keys to Sully’s jeep.
The Grand Cherokee was only a few months old with less than five thousand miles on it when he died. Neither Lizzie nor I could bear to look at it back then. But we couldn’t part with it, either. So it sat on his side of the garage until I sold our house, and then it got moved to Lizzie’s garage. When our grief finally turned into acceptance, we both felt comforted knowing it was there.
After a nice hot shower, I pulled a sweater over my head, stepped into my favorite jeans, and then hiked up a pair of soft leather boots. The turquoise necklace I added looked silly here in Minnesota, so I took it off. My hair was getting too long; I’d need a haircut soon. After applying a little makeup, I was ready.
My one luxury—well a necessity, really, considering all the traveling I did—was a smartphone. (The irony of taking Chloe’s phone away from her did not escape me.) But in order to find the location of the gallery, I had to know its name. Randolph Pierce had told Lizzie he’d “found himself” while living in New York. I never understood that term. It’s exhausting how much energy people spend losing and finding themselves. Anyway, if what he said about hating his family was true, the gallery would have an artsy, pretentious name—anything but Pierce. On the other hand, since Randolph always had such an inflated ego, I ultimately searched for Pierce Gallery.
Bingo.
***
The intersection of Fiftieth and France, in historic Edina, features some of the best shopping in the Twin Cities area. You can find anything from lingerie to fine wine. Pierce Art Gallery was sandwiched between a French bistro and an upscale jewelry store. The façade of the building was yellow brick. Over the ornate front door hung a wide, black awning, announcing the gallery’s name in fancy gray letters.
As I stepped inside, a buzzer went off in a back room. Before I could take a dozen steps, a petite woman walked casually toward me. She was wearing a short leather skirt, a tight black blouse, and stilettos so high I wondered how she managed to move so gracefully. Her hair was cut short—too short. From a distance, I guessed her age to be between eighteen and twenty. But as she got closer, I could see she was no teenager and probably closer to thirty.
“May I help you?” she asked, smiling an overfriendly grin.
“Is Randolph here?”
“Well . . . he’s very busy. Can I tell him what it’s about?”
“He went to school with my daughter; I’ve known him since he was a kid. When I heard he’d opened an art gallery, well, I had to come see it.”
“Oh, a family friend?”
That would be stretching the truth considerably, but I just nodded.
“I’ll let him know you’re here. Mrs. . . .”
“Katherine Sullivan, hi.” I held out my hand and was impressed when she offered a firm shake, rattling the large, colorful bracelet on her wrist.
“And I’m Stacey Jordan. Are you by any chance Lizzie’s mother? The chief of police?”
“In the flesh. And I’m retired now.”
“I met your daughter and her kids at dinner the other night. What a beautiful family. You must be so proud of Lizzie, her being a lawyer, working with autistic children in that art therapy program. I’m hoping to get involved with the project somehow.”
“Lizzie told me that you recently graduated with a degree in art conservation. Now that’s impressive.”
She shrugged off my compliment, looking uncomfortable with the praise. “I’ve always loved anything having to do with art. And I’m lucky that I get to work part time here and with Mr. Rousseau over at the mansion.”
“Rousseau? I’m not familiar with that name.”
“Antoine Rousseau. He lives in France but travels all around the world overseeing special projects. He’s the best art conservator alive today.” She took a step closer. “But just between you and me, Antoine can be a real handful. He’s an obsessive-compulsive—very meticulous. Maybe geniuses are all just . . .”
“Quirky,” I finished. “It’s the best way to describe someone who’s a bit off center. When I was a rookie, we’d say ‘kook’ or ‘nut-job.’ But now everything has to be politically correct.”
Stacey laughed. “Well, then, Mr. Rousseau is the most ‘quirky’ person I’ve ever met.”
I liked Stacey. She was obviously beautiful but, more important, energetic and smart. “Aren’t you tempted to snoop around that place?” I asked her. “You know, peek behind the Wizard’s curtain? I know I would be. There are so many stories about Pierce mansion.”
She rolled her eyes. “I could probably write a book about all I’ve seen out there. You wouldn’t believe—”
“Stacey!” Randolph Pierce snapped as he walked out from what I assumed was his office in the back of the gallery.
He had that casual look people work so hard to perfect. His sandy brown hair was cut close to his head. Beneath an expensive black sport coat, he wore a T-shirt tucked into a pair of tight-fitting jeans. He finished off his look with tasseled loafers and, of course, no socks. But his face was the surprise. Maybe there were a few wrinkles around his eyes and he’d put on a few pounds, but the forty-year-old man that stood in front of me looked exactly as he had when he was sixteen. I would have recognized Randolph Pierce anywhere, any day.
“Don’t you have some work to do?” His outburst made the other customers in the gallery look over at our threesome.
Stacey held back her embarrassment remarkably well. “It was so nice meeting you, Mrs. Sullivan.”
“You too, Stacey. Maybe we can have coffee . . . or a drink sometime?”
“I’d like that.” She gave me a weak smile.
Randolph glared at the girl as she walked away. I couldn’t help wondering what was going on between the two of them. As soon as Stacey was out of sight, he turned to me, all smiles.
“Mrs. Sullivan? It’s been a long time. You look great. Lizzie told me you were coming into town for a while.” Then he grabbed me into a quick hug. “It’s so good to see you.”
“You too, Randolph. You haven’t changed a bit . . . I mean it.”
“Well, I don’t know about that, but it’s so nice of you to stop in.”
“When Lizzie told me you’d opened a gallery, I had to come see it.”
“That’s right; you’re an artist now.”
“I’ve always been an artist,” I told him. “I studied and took all kinds of courses. When we needed some extra cash, I even thought of being a forensic sketch artist. Life just took me into another direction. But now that I’m retired and Sully’s gone, the old artist in me has been resurrected.”
“I was so sorry to hear about Mr. Sullivan. What a shock. Please accept my condolences.”
“Thank you, Randolph. That’s very kind of you.”
“Mr. Sullivan was always fair with me; I admired him greatly.”
“If I remember correctly, the last time he brought you in was when the Jergens family called, claiming you vandalized their lake house.”
Randolph was not the typical bad boy back then. He’d been raised by nannies; his parents were always out of the country or too busy to spend time with him. And there was a certain sense of entitlement that came along with the Pierce name. No matter what the poor kid did, it seemed he was despised by everyone in Edina. I suppose that after a while, it was easier for him to just stop trying and do whatever he wanted.
“I was so angry back then. Always trying to prove I wasn’t like my family. I did some stupid things.”
I saw he was getting upset, so I didn’t push it. “Well, that was then,” I said. “Look at you now.”
He beamed. “So you approve?”
“Oh, the place is beautiful but . . . I was surprised when I first walked in.”
“Surprised? Why?” he asked, confused.
“Knowing how your family collected classical art, I just thought that’s what you’d have here. But now I see you’re into more modern and abstract works.”
He glanced at the wall behind me. “And you don’t like it?”
“No, I didn’t mean that. I love the Kandinsky over there and that Stella—he’s my favorite pop artist. The abstracts are fantastic . . . Salvador Dalí is spectacular. It’s just not what I paint and definitely not what I’d expect you to like.”
“Oh, I hated visiting my grandfather at that musty old mansion. Everything was so valuable—don’t touch, don’t run, don’t sit on that chair because it belonged to some king or was made by a famous craftsman. The only thing missing were those velvet ropes they have in a museum to keep people out.”
“So how did you come to open your own gallery?”
“After switching my major from economics—my dad’s idea—to art history, it opened up a whole new world. I got into the gallery scene in lower Manhattan, met creative, liberal people. It was exhilarating. I’d go to lectures and gallery openings. It was incredible. So I purchased a gallery in the Meatpacking District, which led to me funding an art and technology collective.”
“You’ve been a busy boy, Randolph. And along the way, you must have made some great friends.”
His expression changed. “I guess so.”
I wondered what he was hiding, but before I could ask another question, the phone in his breast pocket rang.
It was an automatic reflex that made him pull the phone out and look down at the number calling. “I’m sorry. I have to take this,” he told me. “Look around. There’s some cucumber water in that carafe over there. I’ll be right back.” He smiled graciously and walked to the back of the gallery.
Being alone gave me a few minutes to look around the room. The front of the shop was all glass and the three brick walls were painted matte black. Moldings and baseboards were burnished silver. A huge chandelier made of silver discs of all sizes hung in the middle of the ceiling, which was also black. The floor was covered in a dusky grey carpet. Two leather director’s chairs were positioned next to a glass table in a corner. Sleek, modern, sterile, and cold is what the decorator was obviously going for—which was smart. It showcased the colorful, surreal paintings that hung at all levels on the walls.
I drew my attention to a small Picasso lithograph, something from his blue period, surrounded by a grouping of up-and-coming contemporary artists. It was near the corner where Randolph stood talking on his phone. I didn’t want to appear to be eavesdropping, but it was difficult not to overhear when his voice rose.
“No! I told you I can’t do that! Why would you even ask? I’m not going to tell . . .” He trailed off when I caught his eye.
I motioned that I had to leave.
He covered the mouthpiece. “I’d love to see your work sometime.”
“Sure,” I called to him, then waved good-bye and hurried out of the gallery. Something just didn’t feel right in there and I knew better than to ignore my instincts.