The Play of Light and Shadow & Writing by Barry Ergang

policy. So he snapped a
picture of Carol to give him a hold over her. When he went out to
the deck, she followed him and they argued about it. She tried to
get the disk away from him and Derek resisted. But Carol’s a strong
girl—she’s an athlete, remember. Derek wasn’t. She got angry and
panicked and wound up strangling him. She took the disk and hid it
in the office till she could wipe it. There was no time to get rid
of it—too many people around, and she was rattled.”
    “ The theft,” Gaines said hoarsely. “How
did she manage it?”
    “ Partly by feeding the notion that Paul
Marchand was the thief. I’ve said all along I don’t think Marchand
exists. There’s no police record, and my guess is that Riveau made
him up. He was ambitious, too, determined to make a name for
himself as an artist. But he needed money to support himself. He
engineered the thefts and the sales that got him the money, and
then created Marchand as a defense. That didn’t work and he went to
prison. You said he was something of a head-case to begin with.
Maybe prison made him worse and he began to believe his own
fantasy. Whatever, he wrote about Marchand in his journal, and art
collectors and dealers believed him. Maybe Carol discovered that in
her research and kept it from you.” He shrugged. “Whether
Marchand’s a myth or not, the outcome in this case is the
same.
    “ Think back to what you told me.
Lakehurst suggested the party as a deterrent to theft, and as your
assistant, Carol certainly knew that. Carol recruited the student
hostesses and came up with the idea of having them dress alike to
give her some camouflage.”
    He shifted his gaze to Marjorie. “Derek
persuaded you to let him take pictures of you and the girls, Carol
being one of them. You went into the gallery, Derek shot the
pictures, and then hustled you out of there. Carol hung back and
nobody noticed.”
    “ Hold on,” Gaines said. “Alan and I saw
them come out.”
    “ You saw a bunch of women, all dressed
alike, all but one with dark hair like Carol‘s. Did you count
them?”
    Gaines hesitated thoughtfully. “No, I didn’t.
Alan and I were talking.” He paused. “But we inspected every inch
of that room before we locked it. Carol wasn’t in the closet or
anywhere else. You saw that yourself.”
    “ She was in there,” Darnell insisted.
“We forgot to look up.”
    “ What does that mean?”
    “ This room has a pretty high ceiling,
doesn’t it?”
    “ So?”
    “ The closet has a high ceiling, too.
I’ll remind you again: Carol’s an athlete—a championship swimmer.
This morning Derek mentioned she’s also into
rock-climbing.
    “ She knew the schedule and that you’d
bring your guests into the gallery shortly after the photo session
was finished. She got into the closet before we checked the room,
climbed the ladder, stretched out, and walked herself up the wall
out of sight. The closet’s narrow and she’s a tall girl, so that’d
be easy. She was dressed in black, and the light in the closet
creates a glare you can‘t see past. She went far enough up the wall
so she wouldn’t be seen if anyone bothered to look up. No one
would’ve thought to. She’s strong and has enough stamina to stay
stretched out like that for several minutes.
    “ After we left, she came down the wall,
opened the door, ran out—wearing slippers that wouldn‘t make any
noise on a marble floor—removed the painting from the stretcher,
then ran back to the closet. But coming down or going up the wall,
she made a couple of mistakes. She either bumped or rested her knee
on the edge of the shelf, disturbing the dust. She stepped on the
vacuum hose, too, or accidentally kicked it. When we looked in the
closet this morning, the nozzle was on its side. After the theft,
it was face down on the floor.”
    “ I saw her in the crowd when we came
in,“ Marjorie said. “Surely someone would have noticed if she were
already here.”
    “ The door opens inward from