“I never thought something like this would happen a block away from us.” The woman behind the counter fingered a strand of pearls around her neck.
A second woman in the back of the shop replied. “I know what you mean. It’s—it’s disturbing.”
The next morning was one of those bright, crisp days that made people think winter wasn’t so bad. Georgia had stopped into the Susan Hatters art gallery, a relatively new shop not far from the crime scene. It was the type of upscale place Evanston had lured in an effort to distinguish itself from the blight of Rogers Park on one side and the middle-class ennui of Wilmette on the other. Unfortunately, a murder on one of the main thoroughfares wouldn’t help its carefully crafted image.
“From what I can tell they don’t have many clues.” The woman with the pearls was attractive in an over-sixty, Botoxed way. With expensive clothes and even more expensive cosmetics, the only giveaway of her age was her hands, which, despite a perfect manicure, revealed loose, crepey skin speckled with age spots. “Have you heard anything, Susan?”
“Nothing,” replied the other woman, who was clearly Susan Hatters, the owner. She looked Georgia up and down, then flashed her a smile.
Georgia smiled back. She briefly considered telling them who she was, but the police hadn’t released any information connecting her to the crime. She kept her mouth shut.
Jittery from too much caffeine and not enough sleep, she’d popped into the gallery to take a break from the questions swirling around her brain. She couldn’t draw a straight line, and the artwork was way out of her price range, but she was attracted to art. She would study the play of light on a canvas, its shapes and colors. She would admire the composition and speculate about the mood of the painter. Matt used to say it had something to do with left-brain activity—or was it right-brain? He’d tried to interest her in photography, claiming the principles were the same. But photography was too real; it exposed too much. She gazed at a colorful abstract in blues, greens, and violet. She shied away from color in her own life.
“Well, they’re saying it was an isolated incident,” Pearl Lady went on. “And that there’s no danger to the community.”
“So what’s their theory? Drugs?” Hatters asked. With long brown hair tied back in a ponytail, she was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt and looked more like a hippie than a gallery owner. Maybe that was the point, Georgia thought. Pearl Lady for the older generation, Hippie Sue for the younger. Ingenious.
“Isn’t it always?” The older woman gave a shrug and twisted her pearls again.
Georgia turned to a painting of a sailboat being launched off the shore of a rocky beach. She tilted her head. Something about that setting was familiar. She knew this place. She tried to blot out the chatter so she could concentrate, but the women’s conversation was relentless.
“I hear there’s going to be a press conference this morning,” Pearl Lady said.
Georgia’s stomach lurched. That was news to her. Had they ID’d the tail? Or was the conference simply to soothe nervous residents? Were they going to reveal her part? Gutierrez had promised not to; then again, he wasn’t in charge. Some PR flunky might pull rank on him. Having her name bandied around was not good. It would draw attention to her. And whoever gunned down the tail.
She continued to stare at the sailboat. She knew nothing about technique, but she was drawn to the painting. A lonely beach, cresting waves, a muscular surf. A figure stood on the boat, but it was indistinct, and she couldn’t tell if it was male or female. That had to be intentional, Georgia thought. The artist wanted to emphasize the smallness of man versus nature. One lonely sailor against the elements.
“I hear the mayor’s speaking,” Pearl Lady said.
Georgia’s gut loosened. The fact that the mayor was talking meant the press conference was political. The mayor of Evanston, a down-to-earth woman Georgia occasionally saw in the grocery store, needed to calm turbulent waters. She’d gone door to door after a previous murder asking residents for suggestions on how to make the city safer. Georgia turned away from the painting.
“You like that?” Hatters asked. “We just got it in.”
“It’s powerful,” Georgia said. “I feel the passion.”
Hatters nodded. “That’s what drew me to it.”
“Funny, it looks familiar. I keep thinking I’ve been there before.”
“It was done by a woman in Glencoe. She was away for a while and just got back.”
“Where was she?”
“I’m not supposed to say.” Hatters’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. She leaned over the counter. “But everybody knows. She was in prison.”
Georgia sucked in a breath. She turned back to the painting and peered at the artist’s initials in the lower right corner. A.W. Andrea Walcher. She’d dealt with Walcher and her daughter on a case not long ago. She’d been to their house, a palatial estate that overlooked the lake in Glencoe. The painting was a lake view of the rocky beach below their home. Small world, she thought.
Or maybe it wasn’t.