Caught In The Middle

THREE

Last night’s storm had indeed blown itself out to sea, leaving behind a thin coating of ice that caused a one-hour delay in school openings and a massive slowdown for morning commuters.

True to his word, Don picked me up and took me to arrange for a rental car. He solidified his place in my heart when he said, “Charge it to The News.”

“I need your piece on the murder by nine,” Don said as we left the car dealer. “Make it personal, real human interest. Mac will write a parallel news piece. You’ll both be front page.”

I nodded. The News was a twelve-to sixteen-page afternoon paper, which meant we scheduled news deadlines at nine, editing deadlines at ten, and it was printed and ready for delivery by noon. Don took personally any news that broke between ten and three because it couldn’t make the paper, yet readers expected to see it there.

“The Board of Education stuff?” I asked.

“Anything scandalous?”

“Just fighting over where to spend the money.”

He nodded. “So what else is new? Write it up for tomorrow. And don’t miss that interview with that artist.”

I groaned inwardly. A personality puff piece was the last thing I wanted to do now.

“Hey, his upcoming exhibit is going to be a big civic occasion.” Don apparently detected my mood. “Mayor McGilpin would be very unhappy if we overlooked it. Got to show Amhearst in a good light, you know.”

I nodded, grinning. “Especially after a murder.”

Don grunted. “And give me another human-interest piece for Friday about the murder. Interview the family. Find a wife or parents or brothers or sisters. Find out what a wonderful guy he was or what a louse he was. Is he local? If so, find teachers and old friends. If not, find out how he came to be here in Amhearst.”

I nodded again. Three angles or points of view, an old reporter had told me when I first started working back in Pittsburgh. For any human-interest story or information piece, find three perspectives on the story to give it enough depth. Parents, teachers, friends? Wife, employer, brother? His past, present and lack of future?

Of course, those interviews would have an emotional cost, both for those who had cared about Patrick Marten and for me, but I put that thought out of my mind as soon as it appeared.

I drove my rental to the office, thankful for a heater that worked quickly, because the sun, though shining brightly, had little warmth. I scanned the clear blue sky when the radio weatherman announced that another storm was due tomorrow. Chicago was already snowed under, he reported in the cheery voice of a committed skier, and the formidable flow of frigid Canadian air showed no signs of weakening before it reached the East Coast. I could practically hear him rubbing his hands together in anticipation of driving to the Poconos over treacherous roads for the thrill of throwing himself down mountains on strips of wood or whatever composites skis were made of these days.

I should live in Florida or Arizona so I need never be cold again. Even if I stayed in Pennsylvania, I had promised myself I would be intelligent about it and never, ever, ski.

Finally I settled down at my desk. Murder, I typed, is a distant crime that involves other people. Last night, to my utter surprise and distress, it involved me.

I looked at my CRT and reread my opening. Don was a stickler for a hard lead on news pieces, the traditional, journalistic inverted pyramid of who, what, where, when and why. But he seemed at ease with soft leads on special pieces like mine was to be. One thing was certain: he’d tell me if he was unhappy.

I had my copy on his desk before nine, and then I gave my mom a quick call. It was only a matter of time before she and Dad heard about last night, and I thought they should hear the story from me.

“Merry! Oh, Merry!” Mom was predictably distressed.

“I’m fine, Mom. I’m absolutely fine. And safe. Believe me.”

There was a small silence, and I could hear her skepticism zip clearly across the miles from Pittsburgh to Amhearst.

“Well, I’ve got to go,” I said quickly. “I’ve got an important interview.” And I hung up.

Sighing, I forced myself to begin planning my interview with artist Curtis Carlyle. I could hardly resist smiling every time I said his name. It was too perfect to belong to anyone other than an artist or a movie star or some other arty, public person. Had his mother been prescient, or did she just like alliteration? Was he named after a rich uncle, or had he made up the name to create a persona?

As I jotted my notes, I thought how incredible it was that I should do something as bizarre as find a body one night and something as routine as interview some local artist the next morning. Variety like this was one of the reasons I loved newspaper work.

Curtis Carlyle. Artist. Watercolors. One-man art show scheduled for Friday night and Saturday in the Brennan Room at City Hall in Amhearst. Chester County scenes his specialties, notably winter scenes with old stone barns and houses, wonderful skies. Former gym teacher. Still coached high school soccer and tennis.

Usually interviews intrigued me, and I looked forward to them. Finding out what made people tick was like opening locked doors. Always a new room appeared, and sometimes unexpected treasure. Today’s was an exception. How could an artist—even one with a name like his—compare with a murder? I found myself wishing I could skip him and get back to my murder investigation.

The last of the ice was melted by ten in the morning when I pulled up in front of Curtis Carlyle’s house, odd puddles the only reminders of the bad weather.

I studied the brick-faced ranch, looking for clues about its occupant. It looked much like the other houses in the neighborhood, not the retreat of an artist of some stature.

Thin sunlight patterned the roof through the barren branches of the beech and poplar that formed a semicircle around the lawn. Brown, frosty, winter-killed grass tufted the deep front yard. On the half acres to the right and left were other ranches very similar in appearance. Across the street a pair of three-year-olds made fat and unbendable by their snowsuits stared at me from the porch of yet another ranch.

I looked again at Carlyle’s house and shrugged. It told me nothing.

I rang the bell and waited. No response. I rang again as I checked my watch. Ten o’clock. That was the time we had agreed on. Could he have forgotten? Sure, he was probably busy with last-minute arrangements for his show, but I was as important to him as he was to me. If I could tear myself away from a murder investigation to make time for him, certainly he could return the compliment. After all, he needed the exposure as much as I needed the article.

I rang a third time. Maybe he was hard of hearing. It seemed to me that anyone who retired from teaching must have lost something through the years of dealing with kids. I would have thought it would be sanity, but hearing was a distinct possibility.

Suddenly the door imploded and a huge bear of a man filled the opening. A great smile lit his face, crinkling his eyes to slits behind their dark-framed glasses.

“Merrileigh Kramer from The News, right?” he asked as he threw the storm door open for me. “Hi. I’m Curt Carlyle.”

I nodded as I stepped by him, quickly revising my erroneous preconceptions. “Former gym teacher” obviously didn’t mean what I had thought. Curt Carlyle was no retiree; he was a man in his early thirties who exuded energy, whose mass of curly dark hair was a far cry from the sparse gray I had anticipated.

“Do you mind if we talk downstairs?” he asked. “I’m finishing up some things for tomorrow.”

He led the way downstairs and as we descended, he began to whistle “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” I grimaced.

Unexpectedly, a huge, bright room greeted me. The rear wall of the walkout basement was exposed by the downward slope of the lawn and had been lined with glass. The lemon light of winter was aided by great lights hanging over Carlyle’s worktable. Shelves lining the front wall of the room were filled with art supplies from paper and paints to huge rolls of popcorn plastic used for packaging. It was a roll of the wrap that he was working with now, swathing a framed picture four feet by three for safe transport.

I pulled out my new camera and began snapping him as he worked. He was happy to pose at his worktable and stood easily beside a wonderfully detailed watercolor of a stone barn backed by a brooding, stormy sky, dark clouds streaked dramatically with the brilliant oranges and yellows of an angry setting sun.

“This is the original of the picture I’m offering prints of this year.” He wiped an imaginary speck off the glass before he began wrapping it in plastic. “I select one picture a year to reproduce, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how successful the prints have been.”

“How many prints do you make?”

“Five hundred. Each numbered and signed.”

“I know you’re a former gym teacher,” I said. “How did you end up being a watercolorist?”

“I’ve always loved painting, but it didn’t seem like a very practical way to make a living. So I went with my other love, sports, and taught. In my late twenties I became very dissatisfied. I had visions of me rolling out the ball for the rest of my life while others played.”

I imagined him stalking the sidelines like a tethered grizzly, frustrated and unhappy.

“My sister, Joan, was the one who encouraged me to take the leap.” He nodded toward the portrait of an attractive woman I had assumed to be a wife or girlfriend. “So what if I had a couple of lean years, she said. I had only myself to feed. Our parents had left us this house, and since Joan was married, she urged me to live here and go for it.” He shrugged and grinned happily. “I did, and though I’ve been hungry a few times, I don’t regret it. Life’s exciting again.”

“Your sister must be very proud,” I said.

His smile disappeared. “I’m sure she would be, but she died two years ago, just before things really started to move for me.”

“Oh. I’m sorry,” I said.

“Don’t feel bad, Merrileigh. It’s okay. She was a strong Christian, and that thought comforts me.” He smiled and began to whistle again.

I listened to him for a minute, then said sharply, “Do you know what you’re doing?”

He looked at me in surprise.

“You’re whistling,” I said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Everyone does it, and it drives me crazy.” I tried not to grind my teeth. “Though most people usually sing.”

“What in the world are you talking about?” Curt asked.

“What were you whistling?” I demanded.

He thought a moment. “‘Merrily We Roll Along.’”

“Right. And what were you whistling when we came down the steps?”

“I don’t know,” he said patiently. “What?”

“Row, Row, Row Your Boat’!”

Curt looked at me as though I were unstable.

“It drives me wild,” I said. “Sometimes I’d like to strangle my mother.”

Suddenly Curt’s face cleared and he began to laugh. “Merrily/Merrileigh, right?”

I nodded. “Most people do it subconsciously, though some people actually do it on purpose just to bother me.”

Jack had been one of those people, and I’d never understood why he intentionally did something I disliked so much.

“It doesn’t matter whether you think I’m overreacting or not, Jack,” I said to him once. “Just please believe me when I say I hate it!”

And he’d smiled his knee-weakening smile and sung back to me to the tune of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”: “Calm, calm, calm yourself. Don’t get so upset. Merrileigh, Merrileigh, Merrileigh, I don’t like to see you fret.”

I looked stormily at Curt Carlyle, who smiled unrepentantly back.

“I’ll try to resist,” he said. “If I do slip, tell me, and I’ll shape up right away. Do people call you something besides Merrileigh to help then deny the word association?”

I was suddenly embarrassed about my outburst and how childish I sounded. It must have been last night’s shock.

“People usually call me Merry,” I said, and sighed. “I’m sorry, but if you’d lived with those songs every day of your life since the teacher first called your name aloud in kindergarten, you’d have developed a complex, too.”

“I’m sure I would have,” Curt agreed amiably.

He seemed to be studying me. My hand went to my spikey hair, but it stuck out above my head as it should. I glanced down at my gray slacks, jade sweater and navy blazer. They weren’t covered with Whiskers’s hair, so they looked all right to me. I sucked discreetly at the gap between my teeth. I hadn’t eaten anything since I’d brushed, but I always worried since the spinach-in-the-teeth fiasco eight years ago. I cleared my throat self-consciously.

“Don’t I know you from somewhere?” Curt asked.

I lifted an eyebrow and looked at him in surprise. “Isn’t that line a bit old?”

“I’m not giving you a line,” Curt said earnestly. “I honestly think I know you from somewhere.”