Free Lover Man: An Artie Deemer Mystery by Dallas Murphy Page A

envelope and showed her the one on top. It was a shot of Renaissance Antiques taken from across the street at a downward angle, which I had decided was the window in Billie's studio. En route to the library I had suddenly remembered that a couple of months before she left me, Billie had moved her studio from Chelsea to Eleventh Street, across the street from Renaissance Antiques.
    Sybel looked expressionlessly at it's image, then looked back at me.
    I tried the next one in the stack—I had arranged them in the order I thought most effective—but this one elicited no more response than its predecessor. It was a picture of Jones standing in front of Renaissance Antiques. His stance seemed to suggest that he was waiting for something or somebody.
    "Maybe you don't understand," I said. "These are the pictures Billie left for us in the ice tray. Important. Get it?"
    "What do you mean
us?"
    "Yeah,
us
. Why didn't Billie just messenger the note directly to me? No, she sent word through you. Why? Because she wanted us to meet. You know what else I think? I think she was killedover these photographs. So could you cut this hostile attitude and
say
something about them?"
    "I don't know you. Why should I trust you?"
    "Because Billie wanted us to meet. Never mind, just look at the pictures." I passed her the next one: Renaissance Antiques from the same angle; they were
all
from the same angle. Jones stood at the curb in front, only now there was a big panel truck in the frame. Two burly men were muscling a chest of drawers down a ramp from the rear of the truck, the arrival of which Jones might have been awaiting in the previous photograph. "Who are those guys?"
    "The Palominos," she said.
    "Which is which?"
    "The big one is Leon."
    He was considerably bigger than Freddy. Leon would never have fit in that refrigerator.
    I passed her another photo quite similar to the previous ones. Jones still stood near the stern of the panel truck, and the Palominos were still on the ramp with the chest of drawers, only now a long black car was parked behind the truck.
    "Just show them to me. I'm sick of you dealing them out one by one and watching my reaction."
    I passed her the stack. "Who is the cheery fellow behind the wheel?" He wore mirrored sunglasses and a dark scowl.
    "Ricardo. He's Jones's assistant."
    "Is Ricardo his first or last name?"
    "I don't know."
    "Is that the whole staff? Jones, Ricardo, the Palominos?"
    "And me." Her tone defied me to make something of it. She looked at the next photo. It was of Stretch at the phone booth.
    "Who's he?"
    "I don't know."
    "I ran into him last night in the hall outside Billie's studio. He asked me if I was part of 'the photography crowd.' Then heasked me if I knew a guy named Barnett Osley. Then he ran from me. Does that seem strange to you? It seems strange to me."
    But Sybel said nothing. She looked at the next photograph. It returned us to curbside, Renaissance Antiques. The van was gone, but Ricardo, Jones, and the black car remained. A stocky man in his sixties was addressing Jones forcefully, index finger pressed into Jones's chest. "Who's that guy?" I asked.
    "I think he's the owner."
    "What's his name?"
    "Pine."
    "What's his first name?"
    "I don't know. They call him Mr. Pine. I've never met him. He never comes into the store. I don't know him at all."
    "What's going on at Renaissance Antiques? Do you know that?"
    "Nothing that I know of."
    "Nothing? Then why did Billie leave all these photographs of the place and all its people in an ice tray before she was murdered?"
    Still she said nothing, just stared at me. She wasn't even trying, so I decided to haul up the bigger guns.
    "Freddy's dead," I said. "Murdered." That drew reaction. Her jaw dropped, and her black eyes blinked as if I'd just thrown sand into them. "I found him stuffed into Billie's little refrigerator like a hundred and eighty pounds of seedless grapes. The studio was ransacked. I think they were looking for these