“You really think he’d do that?”
“I’d say it was a very very strong possibility. And it wouldn’t be the first time; you remember that Art Today case. Of course it was settled out of court finally. Ten thousand and costs to the plaintiff. In nineteen-seventy-two dollars.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Life’s not fair. Don’t be naive, Polly.” Jacky sighed. “But let’s talk about something pleasanter. I understand you hit it off very very well with Kenneth Foster.”
“Yes, he was quite helpful. He told me a lot about Lorin’s early work, and what she was like in college. He admires her as a painter; well of course you know that. But he didn’t care much for her as a person, apparently. He preferred Garrett.” Polly kept her voice neutral, though what she had thought during the interview was: A thirty-five-year-old professor seduces a twenty-year-old student, and leaves his wife for her, and Kenneth Foster blames the student; that’s really taking male bonding pretty far.
“Ah.” Jacky did not comment further.
“One thing he said that amazed me was that he had married Garrett’s first wife after the divorce. And now they’re all good friends, he claims. I found that hard to believe.”
“Oh yes. It’s quite true.”
“Most people I’ve spoken to don’t even know Garrett had a first wife.”
“Yes, well.” Jacky made his fishy moue. “I’m not surprised he didn’t mention it. Garrett prefers to forget whatever doesn’t fit his image, don’t we all. If someone does happen to hear about that marriage, his line is that it was just one of those brief impulsive wartime things. But in fact he and Roz were together for six, seven years.”
“What’s she really like, Mrs. Foster? I only met her once, at some opening.”
“Oh, quite nice. Of course she’s had rather a hard life; she’s not kept her looks too well.”
“Was she pretty once?” Polly asked this doubtfully; she remembered Roz Foster as overweight and raddled-looking.
“Oh, very. I think painters’ wives always are, don’t you? At least to start with. Yards of red hair, and a lovely creamy skin. Garrett always went for the beauties too, even though he wasn’t a painter. He thought he deserved them. The way Paolo put it once, Garrett thought he was God’s gift to women, and he wanted to play Santa Claus.” Jacky giggled.
Polly laughed too, but uneasily; it crossed her headache to wonder if Garrett Jones had given Jacky or someone Jacky knew a skewed version of her visit to Wellfleet.
“Lorin wasn’t the first student Garrett had fooled around with, of course,” Jacky went on. “But she was the first one he really fell for, and he got careless.”
“And so his first wife found out?”
“Eventually. And Roz was miserable. She really loved him, from what I hear. She couldn’t eat or sleep, she started to drink too much, smashed up the car, threatened to kill herself. Garrett was at his wit’s end; he was seriously scared. He didn’t want a suicide on his conscience; who would?”
“So then?”
“Well. What finally happened was that Kenneth Foster took Roz off his hands, so he could marry Lorin, and Garrett made Kenneth famous. He’s like the Skellys: he pays his debts.” Jacky giggled.
“You really mean —” Polly looked at the art dealer with something between doubt and disgust.
“Please, don’t get me wrong.” Jacky waved his flippers. “I’m not trying to say that Foster isn’t a marvelous painter. But without Garrett he might not have the sort of international reputation, or command the prices, that he does now. And has for years, of course. Anyhow, that’s all ancient history. And really the marriage has been surprisingly successful. There was a sticky patch at one time, but Roz has been in AA for twenty years now, and they’re a very very devoted couple today.” Jacky blew out a sigh. “None of your concern, thank heavens. I mean,” he drawled, “nothing you’d ever want to put in your book.”
“No,” she agreed.
“That’s just as well. Anyhow, you must be nearly ready to start writing now.”
“Yes; pretty soon,” Polly said. “I have an interview upstate to do first, and then I’m going down to Key West to look for Hugh Cameron.”
“You think he’s still there?”
“I know he’s there. At least he was three months ago. He hasn’t answered my last letter, but it hasn’t been returned either, so I figure he’s still around.” Polly didn’t mention that Hugh Cameron’s only response so far had been one line scrawled in felt-tipped pen across the bottom of her original inquiry: Sorry —haven’t time to answer your questions. “Anyhow, I want to see the place, look at the house where Lorin lived, try to talk to people who might have known her.”
“Ah. Of course.” Jacky took a gulp of the smoky gallery air and let it out with a slow wheeze. “You know, while you’re down there —” he added in a studiedly lazy voice that at once alerted Polly.
“Yes?”
“You might poke about a bit; see if you can spot any more paintings.”
“Oh, I will.”
“It would be especially nice if you turned up one or two of the late graffiti ones. There’s a lot of interest in those, you know.”
“I know,” Polly agreed. Lorin Jones’s final Key West paintings were remarkable for their inclusion of words or sometimes whole phrases in the manner of Dine or Kitaj. The two that had been included in “Three American Women” had attracted much attention.
“If you manage to get into Cameron’s place you might see something,” Jacky suggested.
“Well, I’ll look. But didn’t Lennie take everything away after Lorin died?”
“Ye-es. Supposedly. But it wasn’t all that much, if you think about it. I’ve asked myself sometimes, why do we have so few Joneses between sixty-four and sixty-nine? Far far fewer, for example, than in the previous five years. And then there are the two large canvases that didn’t sell at her last show. They seem to have vanished completely. Of course it’s always possible that she destroyed them afterward, or painted them over.”
“But you think Cameron might still have them.”
“I’ve always thought it was very very likely. From what I’ve heard, it would be like him to have forgotten to give Lennie one or two things. Perhaps out of carelessness, perhaps out of sentimentality. Or perhaps just out of natural orneriness; who can say?”
“Maybe it was greed,” Polly suggested. “He could have wanted the money.”
“No.” Jacky shook his large head slowly. “Not that, probably, because the paintings weren’t worth much at the time. And then maybe Lennie didn’t look too hard either. Nobody’s going to knock himself out over pictures that’d sell for maybe a few hundred, even if you could find a buyer. Which you most likely couldn’t, back then.”
“No,” Polly agreed.
“But now everybody wants a Lorin Jones; they’re worth twenty, twenty-five thousand, and rising fast. It’s a whole different kettle of fish. If you own one you’ve got to think about insurance, burglar alarms, restorers, the lot. You sell it, you can buy a year’s worth of dope, a sports car, a trip to Spain, whatever an individual of Cameron’s type wants.”
“You think Cameron might have some pictures he’d like to sell now?”
“It’s a possibility. Of course it’d be rather a dilemma for him. Legally he doesn’t own anything of Lorin’s, because they were never married and she died without a will. Everything belongs to Lennie. So if Cameron wanted to sell anything he’d have to do it under the table.”
“That wouldn’t be so easy,” Polly protested. Most collectors she knew of bought art partly for the pleasure of showing it off, and partly as an investment. They hated a dubious title: it meant lying to people who came to the house; and could be really embarrassing if they decided to sell the painting later or give it to a museum for a tax write-off. The first question then would certainly be, What was the provenance?