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Nude with Red Hat (The Museum Mystery Series, #2)
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323 pages4 hours
Summary
Susan, winner of a painting fellowship from the Ridges Museum in the college town of Foothills, Ohio, finds her artistic intentions interrupted when the dean of the College of Fine Arts receives a nude painting of his wife in the mail: postmarked Mexico. His wife, Angelina, is missing, and when he receives a second, horrible painting of her a few days later, he believes she has been corrupted, big time. The dean asks Susan to go to San Miguel de Allende to find his wife and bring her home.
In this second book of the The Museum Mystery series, Susan, and later Amy, the wife of the museum director, once more haplessly try to figure out what happened to Angelina, while running head-on into art fraud, prostitution, and murder. The lovely colonial town of San Miguel seems to be more dangerous than anyone thought.
Publisher: MuseItUp PublishingReleased: Aug 18, 2015ISBN: 9781771277327Format: book
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Nude with Red Hat (The Museum Mystery Series, #2) - Joyce Richardson
Back Cover
Cozy Mystery by Joyce Richardson
Susan, winner of a painting fellowship from the Ridges Museum in the college town of Foothills, Ohio, finds her artistic intentions interrupted when the dean of the College of Fine Arts receives a nude painting of his wife in the mail: postmarked Mexico. His wife, Angelina, is missing, and when he receives a second, horrible painting of her a few days later, he believes she has been corrupted, big time. The dean asks Susan to go to San Miguel de Allende to find his wife and bring her home.
In this second book of The Museum Mystery series, Susan, and later Amy, the wife of the museum director, once more haplessly try to figure out what happened to Angelina, while running head-on into art fraud, prostitution, and murder. The lovely colonial town of San Miguel seems to be more dangerous than anyone thought.
Nude With Red Hat © 2015 by Joyce Richardson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, or events, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
MuseItUp Publishing
14878 James, Pierrefonds, Quebec, Canada, H9H 1P5
Cover Art © 2015 by Cora Graphics
Edited by Anne Duguid
Layout and Book Production by Lea Schizas
eBook ISBN: 978-1-77127-732-7
First eBook Edition *August 2015
For the lovely colonial city of San Miguel de Allende,
where the art teachers are kind,
the poets are charming,
and the margaritas are worth their salt.
And, of course, to Phil, my love.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the staff of the Kennedy museum at Ohio University for allowing me to use their fine institution as a background for mystery and murder. Nothing of the sort ever happens there.
In this book my wicked imagination takes the characters to San Miguel, Mexico, and imbues the place with nefarious acts. Always remember this is a book of fiction, and in my travels there, I have not detected one bit of danger. What goes on behind closed doors, however, is anyone’s guess.
I would especially like to thank my editors at MuseItUp publishing, Anne Duguid and Lea Schizas, for continuing to believe in my work.
NUDE WITH RED HAT
The Museum Mystery Series
Nude Descending a Staircase
Nude with Red Hat
JOYCE RICHARDSON
MuseItUp Publishing
www.museituppublishing.com
Chapter One
The Nude
The dean of the College of Fine Arts was not smiling. His gathering black eyebrows threatened to bring a thunderstorm into my small art studio. "Damn it, Susan. I know it’s a painting. That doesn’t mean it’s not my wife."
He’d received the painting the day before in a long cardboard mailer and brought it to me as soon as he could, barreling into my space and slamming the door.
I looked once more at the colorful piece of canvas the dean had rolled out before me. Yes, it was a woman, and yes, it portrayed a reclining nude with a red fedora resting beside her on a white puffy coverlet. But the face? The blurred profile of the blonde could have been any pretty woman. Only the breasts were distinctive: light pink areoles, small and regular ovals that lost none of their shape on the reclining model. An observant husband would no doubt know his own wife’s breasts. I wondered if James would recognize mine.
Was there a return address?
I tried to sound sympathetic. After all, this was the man who voted for my fellowship to paint in a studio in the Ridges Museum, an art museum affiliated with Foothills University.
Mrs. Prouder,
the dean continued, this time using my last name, what do you think this means?
Why is he asking me? Tell me again where she is and what she’s doing.
And what does this have to do with me? I had known his wife one summer when we were fellow docents. Sure, we were museum buddies at the time, but we had not kept in touch since.
Dean Strange ignored my inquiry. He just sat beside me, staring at the painting, looking sad. He was a big man with the build of a former football player, quite the opposite of what one might expect from a singer of German Romantic lieder. I had been to one of his concerts before he became dean, and his satin baritone was, in a word, lovely.
Dr. Strange,
I began, please tell me about your wife and why you are so concerned.
Scott,
he said.
For a moment I didn’t comprehend that he was telling me to call him by his first name. Scott, yes, Scott. I was Susan, he was Scott. It made a world of difference.
Angelina,
he crooned. My angel.
He fingered the painting. This is not something she would do.
Pose naked?
I spoke softly. Even I did that, when I was in college, to make a little extra money.
The thundering eyebrows again. I realized, belatedly, that comparing myself to Angelina was not the brightest thing to do.
She’s shy, you know? But of course you know that.
I tried to remember the Angelina I had worked with but came up with little information. The dean shook his head from side to side as he gazed at the portrait. She turned her back to me whenever she got undressed, put her nightgowns on—and they were such pretty things—with a sleight of hand. I would never see her breasts until we made love. And now this bastard…
"How do you know the painter was a man?’
Of course he’s a man. You can almost see the slobber marks on the painting.
I opened my mouth and quickly closed it. Now here was a husband who projected big time. There were no slobber drips on the painting. In fact, there was little lust in the painting at all. The pretty woman was just a pretty woman.
The dean put one hand on my arm as he earnestly searched my face. My arm was the only part of my visible body that was not speckled. I’d been experimenting with spatter techniques that morning, and not all the paint landed on the intended target.
You’ve got to help me,
Scott said.
I don’t know whether it was the dean’s proximity or my small studio, but I was getting claustrophobic. I gently removed his hand from my arm and stood. Let’s walk outside so you can explain things.
We left my studio and walked to the elevator. The second floor of the Ridges Art Museum housed several studios provided for museum fellowship recipients. This was to be my second fellowship, which, with the aid of an Ohio Arts Grant, allowed me to take yet another leave of absence from my junior high teaching position. I was euphoric, to say the least. My sons were in elementary school, my husband was busy with his university teaching, and I was free to become the painter I always knew I could be. And it was autumn in Foothills, Ohio, where the trees were turning vibrant shades of red and orange and yellow, with variations of chartreuse and neon pink. A beautiful day. A beautiful time for me.
And now this.
We walked from the elevator at the first level onto the black and white marble floor of the museum foyer. To our left and right swirled two grand staircases that had existed in the former mental hospital since the nineteenth century. Even the flooring was original, as were most of the wide-set windows and doors. The art museum had retained the grace of the old Italianate structure with few of the creepy memories brought about by ghosts of mental patients and other horrors.
I no longer had nightmares.
As the dean and I walked into the golden sunshine of October, I turned to him. Please tell me about it.
His story came out with difficulty. Angelina had gone to Mexico to attend a poetry workshop and to take a weaving class sometime during the past year. Didn’t she tell you?
he asked.
I shook my head. I really haven’t talked to her for a long time.
I covered up my ignorance and seeming disinterest with a shrug. You know, with my teaching and family and all…
She’s in San Miguel, at least she was,
he told me. Both workshops have been over for months. Of course San Miguel isn’t the real Mexico.
I knew what he meant. The expatriate population of San Miguel, mostly Americans, exceeded thirty percent. Many thought it higher.
A bunch of artist wannabes,
Scott sighed. And Angelina fell for it, thought she was in some kind of Mexican heaven.
I studied painting there,
I said. The dean and I began our walk around one of the ponds set in the museum grounds. You know I went to Antioch?
I named the Bohemian college that had received so much bad press lately, a place I loved more than my own home.
The dean nodded. I read your resume. A very decent art school, although the Yellow Springs campus is no longer open.
And San Miguel was my junior year abroad. I loved it!
I now remembered giving Angelina glowing descriptions of the ever-blooming flowers and the ever-flowing tequila. I think I laid it on quite thick, but she had seemed so hungry for anything I could tell her.
But of course you loved it. You were what, nineteen or twenty, and it was your first time out of the country?
The place was different then, more real, but I know I saw it through rose-colored glasses.
Angelina’s in her thirties.
I picked up on a prissy tone in Scott’s voice. Surely old enough to know truth from fiction.
And what’s she been doing there since her workshops?
The dean bent down to retrieve a stick. He threw it into the water, and we watched it float toward the heart-shaped island. All the ponds around the museum had islands in the middle—shaped like suits of cards. We stood beside the Heart Pond.
I haven’t heard from her forever. Before that, I received an occasional e-mail from one of those cyber-cafés she frequented. For a while I just thought she needed her space. And then spring turned into summer, and I was so darned busy planning the Fine Arts anniversary this fall…
He frowned, his face troubled. All I got were the credit card bills.
I was struck by the man’s generosity. If he wanted her to come home, it seemed that pulling Angelina’s credit would be the logical solution. Credit card bills? When I was there the peso was the only form of exchange.
Not any more. It seems that my sweet Angelina has been having quite the time: receipts for dresses, receipts for earrings—one night she drank vino tinto until she must have been falling down drunk. That’s in addition to margaritas all afternoon.
Maybe she was treating someone.
I had struck a nerve. That’s exactly what I was afraid of, so I cancelled the cards. I haven’t heard anything since.
Oh, come on,
I admonished him, as we walked from the Heart Pond to the Diamond Pond. The Diamond Pond was smaller, more intimate. My husband James and I had skated on it in the wintertime when we were graduate students at Foothills. I’m sure she’s making friends with all sorts of Americans, fellow poets, weavers, and—
—painters of nude women,
Scott finished.
Painters of nude women. Really, is there anything wrong with that?
There’s something wrong with it if the artist sends the painting to the husband waiting at home.
Maybe Angelina sent it.
Scott grimaced. Now that’s sick!
I had to agree. Why would a wife send a naked painting of herself to a possibly jealous husband if she didn’t want to send him off the deep end?
The questions I didn’t ask lay between us. Why don’t you go down? Have you called the Mexican police?
Scott had his reasons, I supposed. The heart has its reasons.
I just don’t know,
was all I could offer. Then I said, much to my later dismay, What can I do?
* * * *
The dean left me at the door of the Ridges Museum and shook my hand in farewell. I managed to give him a sickly smile. What he was asking me to do was ridiculous, I knew, and I believe he knew it deep down. I have to admit, though, I was excited when I entered the museum. I couldn’t wait to tell my friend, Amy.
Amy Darwin is the wife of Dr. Donovan Darwin, the director of the Ridges Art Museum. She is my neighbor and also my best friend. She is small, dark-haired, and very attractive to men. She had a wild streak in her a few years back, possibly due to her not having babies when she and her husband thought she would. But since that time, she has calmed considerably and is a registered nurse and midwife at the birthing center in our local hospital. Rather than having babies herself, she helps other women birth them. Funny in a way, but that was Amy. The hospital staff and her patients thought she walked on water.
* * * *
Hungry, Suz?
Amy came to my studio in the early afternoon, bearing a lunch for the two of us. She was full of it, as usual. On Tuesdays she went to the hospital later in the afternoon, but she was always on call. I could usually depend on her this time of the week to bring us lunches.
Hey, let me wash up.
I wanted to remove some of the spatter paint from my hands and face.
Rather frenetic, aren’t we?
she said, as she looked at my most recent work. Amy so rarely commented on my paintings that I knew I had gone over the edge.
When I become the next Jackson Pollock, you’ll be happy you knew me when.
But are you going to exhibit your face?
Brat!
If Amy were not dressed so neatly in pink hospital scrubs, I would’ve thrown paint on her.
Nice colors, though,
she said.
Amy unwrapped the goodies for the day: spinach calzones with feta cheese accompanied by green iced tea.
I love take-out lunches eaten in adult company. Not that Amy and I were exactly adult-acting, but our table manners were a heap better than my elementary school sons’.
And the reason for this?
Amy gestured toward my crazy painting. Though abstract, my creations tend toward the measured, the precise.
I just thought it would be fun, for a change.
I took a bite of the calzone, spraying hot liquid cheese onto my tongue. I gulped the cold tea. Besides, I’m nervous as shit today.
I didn’t know ‘shit’ was nervous,
Amy laughed. I thought it just lay there.
Amy made fun of my language, which tended toward the archly profane. It was a hold-over from my Antioch days, when I tried to sound cool.
I couldn’t wait to tell my friend everything. Are you going to ask me why I’m so nervous?
Amy carefully leaned over my painting table to bite into her lunch, holding her napkin under her chin. Okay, Suz,
she said, her mouth full, why are you so nervous?
I took a deep breath. The fuckin’ dean came to see me.
Which fuckin’ dean?
Amy’s repetition of the f-word told me I should lay off it for a while. When I say it, it’s cute (or so I think). When she says it, it doesn’t sound so nice.
Dean Strange, you know, our dean, the fine arts dean.
The dean responsible for all our fortunes?
Yeah,
I said, that dean.
Amy frowned, if you can frown with your mouth full. Susan, I hope you were nice to him.
Of course I was nice to him—it’s just that…
What? Tell me you didn’t swear around him.
Of course not. Why would I do that?
Sometimes I’m not sure you even know when you’re cussing.
Of course I fucking know.
Amy grinned. Says you.
I wiped my hands on my napkin. Amy, he’s in real trouble. Do you know his wife?
Not well. I’ve met her a few times, at museum openings, at the receptions. She was a docent once, before that nun came and took it over.
Sister Faustina,
I mused. I still wonder what became of her.
The resident docent/nun had disappeared a couple of years back, just as suddenly as she appeared.
No one’s heard from her. An odd one, she was. But she really knew a lot about art.
Anyhow, Amy, the dean’s wife—
She had a funny name, I remember.
Angelina,
I said. Dr. Strange refers to her as his angel.
That sounds like him. He’s a sentimental guy, and I get the impression he’s loony about his wife.
Do you know anything about her, besides her being a docent? I knew her then, but only slightly. The dean seems to think we were best buddies.
She’s shy, I remember. And lovely. A blonde. Like you, only more so. She’s also an artist of sorts, a weaver. She makes her own dyes from the leaves and twigs around here.
She’s missing, Amy, according to her husband. Well, kind of missing.
Kind of missing?
And so I told the story, the story Dr. Strange had told me, how Angelina had left months ago for Mexico to write poetry and create weavings, and how he hadn’t heard from her for a while, only receiving credit card bills for dresses and drinks from the establishments in San Miguel.
So she’s having a party all by herself,
Amy said.
Not exactly all by herself.
I crunched on the ice in my cup of green tea. If she were drinking that much by herself, she’d be lying in a gutter someplace.
Maybe she is. Maybe that’s why she needs so many dresses.
Anyhow, the dean cut off her credit, and he hasn’t heard from her since.
Bite me!
Amy took a sip of her iced green tea. That sounds like something Donovan would do to me.
There’s something else. The dean just received a painting of Angelina in the mail.
Amy leaned toward me, her brown eyes sparkling. A self-portrait?
Not exactly. She modeled for someone else, it seems. And she’s as naked as a jaybird.
That revelation shut Amy’s mouth for a while.
She broke her silence after thinking for at least a minute. Okay, I can see Angelina posing nude for a portrait. Maybe she needed the money, after all. I take it that the picture is in good taste.
I nodded my head yes, although no one should trust me on matters of taste.
What I can’t understand,
Amy said, is why anyone would mail this painting to the woman’s husband.
Exactly! That’s why the whole thing is so weird.
What’s the dean going to do?
I became a flurry of activity. I picked up our lunch wrappings, stuffed them into the original paper bag, and took them down the hall to the studio galley.
Hey wait a minute!
Amy held onto her iced tea as I tried to grab it out of her hands.
I squeezed oil paint onto my palette and diluted it with linseed oil. I was ready to begin throwing yellow and dark blue and even red toward an already covered canvas.
Amy’s cell-phone rang. She stepped into the hallway and took the call.
When she returned, she did not look happy. ’Fess up, Suz. I’ve got to go; I’ve got a baby on the way. Now what are you not telling me?
I slung my brush from side to side, creating dots across the center of the painting. He wants me to go to Mexico,
I said. The dean wants me to find his wife.
Chapter Two
Why me?
As I drove home from the Ridges Museum in the mid afternoon, all I could think was, Why me? True, since I was a museum fellow, the dean was my boss. But he was not the boss of me, not any more than Donovan, the museum director, or James, my husband, was the boss of me. It was a cruel lesson to learn, but my independence had been hard won. I listened to my parents when they told me to get an education degree, instead of going to paint in London. I listened to James when he encouraged me to teach junior high school, instead of creating beautiful canvases and exhibiting in prestigious galleries. I listened to my own urges when I decided to have children: my sons, Matt and David. Finally, I decided to listen to myself, and this year I was doing what I wanted to do, which was to paint.
Actually, I was the last person the dean should send to San Miguel, because my sympathies were solely with Angelina. I knew first hand what it was like to feel creatively thwarted. I was a faculty wife (James was a meteorologist in the communications department) but I had seldom participated in the politics of academia. A dean’s wife would have to do some of that: give dinner parties, attend receptions, serve on committees, all of which would cut into her creative time.
But why did the dean choose me? The dean’s assertion that I had a relationship with his wife was only partially right. We had exchanged confidences, true, but that was so long ago, I could scarcely remember what she told me or what I told her. I did have the time to travel, however, if Scott were willing to come up with the funds. But I also had a family, which James reminded me of, when I broached the subject with him.
* * * *
I waited until the boys were settled in front of the television set and James was well-fed. I had served chili, a dish that just gets better with each passing day; that, and homemade bread, all chunky and buttery. I was not all that domestic, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Hey James,
I said, smiling until my cheeks hurt, you won’t guess what my boss wants me to do!
And then I proceeded to tell him.
In the deepest, brightest part of myself, I think I believed James would consider it an honor that the dean would give me a mission.
So I was a bit unprepared for his angry outburst.
"What the hell! He wants you to go to Mexico?" If I were to give a color to James’s rage, it would be bright-orange: from the orange in his beard to the orange of his complexion. He scared me.
Not just to find his wife,
I lied. Also to take classes at the Art Institute.
I made up my story as I went along. I think I told you that, in spite of the grants, my painting has been stagnating.
That much was true. It hadn’t helped that my school teaching had pulled me out of the artistic loop. So you see, it’s legitimate university business.
Finding the dean’s wife? That’s business? Sending you to the most dangerous country in North America? That’s business? What about our business, yours and mine? What about your family?
James boomed.
Matt and David and our big dog, Jambo, came running into the kitchen. Mom, Dad, what’s wrong?
Matt, ten, going on sixteen, sounded so adult, I thought I would cry. Beautiful, blond David, all of eight, scrunched his face into a grieving expression.
Your mom’s leaving us,
James said, and as I looked at my sons’ faces, I thought, what a bastard—for scaring them before I had a chance to explain.
I’m not leaving you, darlings.
I bent down to pat our black and white dog on his sides. With a dog that big, you don’t pet him in the usual way. And Jambo was big! Appalachian Elkhound
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