Free Blind Overlook (Book 3 of the Jay Leicester Mysteries Series) by JC Simmons Page B

stumbled into, or fell
victim of, it wasn't getting him a first class ticket home. I intended to find
out exactly why.
     
    *
* *
     
    It was near dawn
when I finally dosed off. Rockwell Kent led a fascinating life. He was the
consummate artist. The man never did anything in his life which was not artistic.
    Politically,
Kent believed in the rights of the individual, and used his art to that end.
Subpoenaed to appear before the McCarthy committee in 1953 at age seventy-one,
he was not intimidated by Joe McCarthy and took the Fifth Amendment on the
question of belonging to the Communist Party. He had never been a member and
considered it nobody's business whether he was or not.
    There was one
exchange between Kent and McCarthy, which made me smile. He asked if he could
give a statement for the record. McCarthy rejected the request: "I'm not going
to listen to a lecture from you." Kent snapped back, "You're not
going to get one. I get paid for my lectures."
    I fell asleep
looking at the extensive collection of prints brilliantly put together by Dan
Burne Jones in his book, THE PRINTS OF ROCKWELL KENT: A CATALOGUE RAISONNE.
Those Kent did of the sea were my favorite. One titled, GODSPEED, is the best
that I have ever seen.
    Henry, the front
desk clerk, rang my room at seven thirty, as I had asked. Sleepily thanking
him, I struggled to the shower.
    Later, while
drying off, I called the police department. My road map showed Augusta only
about forty miles from Rockland. Thinking I had better check to see how long
the drive would take, my old friend, the Desk Sergeant, confirmed my guess.
    "Take
highway seventeen, Mr. Leicester. It should take about thirty or forty minutes.
Drive carefully, the roads are crooked. Yes, sir, I'll tell Detective Chamberlain
you will call him this afternoon. Good-bye."
    If we left the
motel by eight-thirty we should have plenty of time to get Sandy to the plane
on time.
    Knocking on
Sandy's door at eight-fifteen, she opened it naked, holding only a towel in
front of her. Her blond hair was wet and hung in strings across her shoulders.
    "I just got
out of the shower,” she said, not embarrassed at all. "Come on in, I'll
only be a minute."
    She turned and
padded barefoot toward the bathroom. Her naked spine made a delicious curve
down to what used to be a tail, and now begins the upper insertion of the gluteus
maximus, the ass. As she walked away, her spine traced imaginary curves in the
small space of the motel room. How lucky, I thought, to see these firm young muscles,
bathed in early morning light, dance together so perfectly in absolute
synchronization. Walking out on the balcony, I gazed far out into the North
Atlantic Ocean, and tried hard to get my mind off of raw sex.
     
    *
* *
     
    Sandy appeared
soon from the bathroom, dressed in black slacks and a sweater. Her damp hair
was bound with a cockade-like band wrapped around the head. She looked like a
palefaced Indian princess.
    "Ready,”
she said, smiling, pulling the sleeves up on the sweater. "Did I run us
late? God, I hope not."
    "We have
plenty of time,” I said, taking her small ditty bag, wondering where she had
acquired the bandanna.
    We drove north
out of Rockland, picked up highway seventeen and headed for Augusta. We rounded
high hills covered with majestic fir trees. Patches of obsidian rock, black and
shiny in the crisp, clear, spring air, glistened down at us. An endless flight
of blackbirds, early for this time of year, crossed the sky like visible wind,
undulating and whipping.
    "Are we now
an expert on Rockwell Kent?" Sandy asked with a sly grin.
    Laughing, I
said, "My definition of an expert is any s.o.b. away from home with a
briefcase."
    Sandy smiled and
ran her fingers through the rapidly drying blond hair. "I wonder where the
Kent collection is?" She said, more to herself than me. "With Renato
and Bilotti dead, it could be sitting somewhere undetected. Maybe forever."
    Sandy was an
enigma to me. One minute she did not seem