Fine Art of Murder Read online

  Edelson's artwork includes paintings, drawings, collages, sculptures, photography, books, story boxes, sketches and performance art. The common thread is her passionate view on feminism. Her Last Supper shows the faces of prominent women artists superimposed over the traditional figures in DaVinci's famous painting. Among her most noted performance art pieces was 1977’s evocative Memorials to the 9,000,000 Women Burned as Witches in the Christian Era.

  Active from the inception of the feminist movement, Edelson established the National Conference for Women in the Visual Arts and was a founding member of the feminist publications Heresies Collective and Chrysalis. Her activism led to her selection as a member of the Title IX Task Force with the object of increasing the work of women artists displayed in museums.

  In 2002, The Art of Mary Beth Edelson (Seven Cycles) was published, and in 2009, she was one of the women featured in the documentary, The Heretics. Her work is included in the collections of The Guggenheim, MOMA, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Walker Art Center, among others. In 1993, she received an honorary Doctorate of Arts Degree from DePauw University.

  Ceilings

  N. W. Campbell

  People never paint their ceilings. I'm amazed at this. In my line of work, I get into a lot of homes and businesses and the story is the same in just about every one of them. People will paint their walls, but ignore their ceilings. It's as if they believe nobody bothers to look up, so why go to the trouble and the expense of painting something no one ever notices? But I notice, trust me. Painting has taken up half of my life. I paint for a living and I paint as a hobby, to relax. My favorite is illusionistic murals, like Michelangelo painted on ceilings. Y'know, like the Sistine Chapel? Now, I'm no Michelangelo, but I've got a project of my own I'm very involved with, so when somebody skips a ceiling, I notice.

  Tonight, I'm working on the center of my project, a mural on my bedroom ceiling. First I sketch, then I paint. Sketch, paint, sketch, paint, adding detail and color a section at a time, until the mural comes alive, a mural that features April and me and shows the endurance of our love.

  April, she's the other half of my life.

  Painting matters to me. I've got a day job with a company that cleans and restores properties after catastrophic events, like fires, floods, earthquakes, and even crimes. First the cleaning crew goes in to scrub and clean and carry off the debris, sometimes even stripping things down to the bare studs and floorboards, just to get rid of the mold and the contamination. Then the dry-wall team goes in to rehang fresh drywall and to tape and plaster all the joints. Then my crew goes in. We prime and paint everything back to the customer's specifications, including the ceilings. Some of the guys will say, “Hell, this was a breaking-and-entering, the ceilings never got touched. Let's just give them a good wipe down, paint the walls, and call it a day.”

  No dice, not on a crew I'm running. We paint, ceiling to floor, period. Any painter who doesn't like it, leaves. After all, I live on my reputation.

  It was a tough job, that last one, and April was part of it. She's a big woman, thick and luscious. In school she was always bright as hell, like I never was. We grew up together, over on Southeastern Avenue near Clinton. April left there after high school, looking for bigger and better things.

  Unlike some big girls who got self-conscious, April knew that men liked curves, and she had ’em. Man, she could show ’em, too! Tight jeans, three-inch heels, scoop-necked blouses, bling hanging from her ears and around her neck and wrists, her dark brown hair pulled back with a bright bow, and the reddest lips allowed by law. All the male teachers at Clinton would glance over their shoulder at her as she walked by. The women teachers were always on her about her size, telling her she needed to slim down, but like she told me once, she knew what that was about.

  “They,” she told me, “wish they had it like I've got it. So I don't pay ’em any attention.”

  I took her to the prom and tried to make out with her under the bleachers. She was cool about it, and we were always good friends, but she let me down easy, with a friendly squeeze and a sisterly peck on the cheek.

  “I like you, Matt, but like a brother, y'know? Let's keep it that way.”

  That hurt me bad and it must have showed on my face, because I could see the fear in her eyes when she realized how much she hurt me.

  It wasn't long before I lost her. But I found her again, and began keeping tabs on her, where she lived, where she worked, who she was with, what she was doing. I've kind of backed off on that, though. I didn't want to blow my chances by giving her the idea I was stalking her, but I'm not giving up hope. She'll come back. She has to.

  It really hurt me, the day I caught her and that bastard boss of hers together. I was on a job up in Castleton, at the Penny-Pincher Inn, after some guy from Ohio checked in and shot himself. That place had a reputation as a suicide retreat, right there on the northeast side of Indy, right off the interstate. Some guy gets laid off, or gets word from his broker that his portfolio tanked, or he gets served divorce papers, so he jumps in his car and heads west until he can't take it anymore, then he pulls off, checks into a room, and—bang! Right through the roof of the mouth. The place ought to be renamed Can't Take It Anymore? $26 by the hour.

  Around Indy, it had another reputation. It became a handy place for short-timers looking for some afternoon delight. Don't know if I'd choose the place for that myself. Imagine banging away with some honey in room 202 and overhearing a gun going bang when some guy blows himself away in room 204. That would sorta kill the moment, I suppose.

  Anyway, this guy from Ohio headed west and stopped at Castleton. According to the evening news, he was in the middle of a bad divorce, his girlfriend was pregnant, and the law was after him for embezzling a quarter of a million bucks, apparently to keep his girlfriend set up in the manner to which she was accustomed. After the scene decontamination crew was done gutting and scrubbing, even to the studs in some places, I could still see flecks of blood and brain matter on the ceiling. Apparently the guys on clean-up that day didn't bother to look up, either.

  When they heard we got the job to paint it, one or two of the guys on my crew mumbled about the possibility of working on some other project. I got it. Some people were squeamish, even people who did what we did. Flood and fire damage didn't bother them, but blood and brain matter?

  Since it was just the one room, I told my boss I'd take care of it myself, an easy, one-day job in room 204, on the south end of the floor, right next to room 202. Do the dry-walling in the morning, and then scrub and paint the ceiling. Stop for a bite of lunch, then come back and paint the entire room, top to floor, in that flat white all these cheap motels used.

  I liked working alone. It gave me time to think. And what I thought about that day was that mural I'm painting on my bedroom ceiling. I've been at it for years, sketching and painting and perfecting the anamorphic perspective of each and every scene.

  The idea came to me one evening when I was sitting alone in my place, drinking beer and listening to an opera by Wagner on NPR. It was all about this woman warrior named Brunhilde who fell for a guy named Siegfried after he jumped through a burning ring of fire to rescue her. They fell in love and had passionate sex, then Siegfried left and was drugged with a love potion by some other woman who wanted him to marry her daughter. Siegfried fell for it, Brunhilde found out and had him killed, then she stabbed herself and jumped on his funeral pyre to join him in Hell.

  I'm not much for opera, but this one really grabbed me. As I listened, I could see the whole thing taking place, with April as Brunhilde and me as Siegfried. That very night, I stood up on my bed and started sketching the whole opera across that white ceiling, dragging the bed around the floor and moving furniture one way and then the other to get at the ceiling. I had to wipe out parts of my sketches and start over, time and again, but night after night I kept at it until I was sure I got everything sketched just like I heard it on the radio. Since then, I bought the CD so I could
play the Ring Cycle over and over while I painted my sketches to life.

  I spent all morning there in room 204, dry-walling and then painting that dirty ceiling, reliving the rescue from the ring of fire, with April in my arms, and daydreaming of making love. I swirled the paint on with brush and roller, with the music playing over and over in my head.

  When I finished, I stepped back and looked it all over carefully. The drywall patches were smooth and ready to paint. The ceiling gleamed a stark, clean white. I washed my hands in the room sink and stepped through the door to head down to my paint van and my lunch pail. Then I heard something that made me stop cold. Laughter was coming from 202—a deep, throaty laugh—the laugh April made when I caressed her under the bleachers. Only this one sounded a bit muffled. A guy said, “Lean forward a little, will ya, so I can….”

  I kicked the door open.

  April was naked from the waist up, lying across the bed. Her boss was standing over her with his pants down. I flushed with anger. The next thing I knew, my painter's prep tool was out of my pocket and I was cutting an ugly gash across his throat with the crack opener blade. He fell backward and I punched him in the face, hard. He went down and didn't move. Blood gushed from his throat.

  April screamed, “Get out of here, you freak!”

  I looked at her, stunned. He was raping her… wasn't he?

  Her eyes brimmed with hate. “Get away from me. You've been stalking me! I'm gonna see you die in prison for this!”

  I turned slowly to look at her. My face trembled and my heart pounded in my ears as the awful recognition rushed over me. She wanted this, and she didn't want me. Ever. I dove at her and my hands clutched her throat. Startled, she tried to fight back, but I clung to her firmly, my grip tightening around her throat. We struggled on the bed, my chest heaving violently from the exertion of squeezing the life out of her.

  In time, it was over. She went limp, her cheeks and lips blue. I cringed, realizing that her red lipstick was gone, probably wiped off somewhere on that bastard on the floor. I didn't cry. I just went numb looking at the two bodies lying there, perfect strangers.

  I felt sure my April was still out there somewhere, taking her time to come back to me.

  One thing about the Penny-Pincher was that the staff was never more than one guy who sat up front to take payment and hand out room keys. All along the back of the place, where I was, anything could happen and he'd never bother to notice. The cleaning staff, usually one person, came in and gave the place a lick and a promise, then headed off to the next room. Hell, that guy from Ohio lay dead in 204 for three days before anyone knew it. His sister filed a missing person report on him and the Ohio State Patrol had the credit card company trace his charges. That's how they found him in Indiana. All this lax security was good for me, because once I'd gotten past the shock of the moment, I knew I had to do something before anyone started looking for either of these two.

  I went back over to 204 and gathered up some drop cloths, which I took across to 202. Within a quarter of an hour or so, I had both bodies rolled up neatly, fully encased in plastic so there wouldn't be any dripping in the hallway. One at a time, I carried the bodies down to my paint van and loaded them in. The woman's body was the heaviest and I struggled and panted as I fought her down the stairs. Then I went back up, because now I had two rooms to clean and paint so there'd be no trace of blood or brain matter, just fresh, clean white paint.

  I worked, time passed, but nobody came because nobody cared. I finished the work on both rooms, cleaned my brushes and rollers in the sink, and stopped to inspect. If anything showed, any fleck, any splatter, I would do the whole thing over. I've got my reputation to think of.

  I headed across town to Tibbs Avenue where there was a junkyard I knew of, one with easy access after business hours. It had a hole in the barrier fence they covered with the hood of an old Pontiac, and no cameras or dogs around. Everybody who worked at the place was gone. I drove as close as I could to the access and walked the few steps to where the Pontiac hood covered the hole. I pushed it aside, went back to the van, and started carrying one of the bodies into the yard. I looked around and soon spotted a Mercury Montego with a jimmied trunk lid, open just enough for me to stick the flat end of my prep tool under the lip and pry the lid open. I dumped the body and slammed the lid down, hard. Then I got the woman's body and carried it through the access. This time, I found a wrecked Caddy, pink, a real longboat. I lay the woman across the back seat, pushed the door closed, and left, doing my best to put everything back the way it was.

  On my way back home, I decided to listen to the radio. NPR had a talk show with a woman describing how she finally escaped from a guy who had stalked her and threatened to kill her.

  Sick freak, I thought to myself.

  I pulled into my driveway, got out, and headed straight back to the bedroom. I lay across the bed, reached for the CD player, and dropped in the Ring Cycle. My eyes scanned the ceiling above. There were several scenes left to paint, but my mural was looking better all the time. I was really pleased with the way the central scene was turning out. My April—Brunhilde—was partially nude, lying on a bed of sheaves. All around her, a ring of fire burned. Just outside the ring, I—Seigfried—was in midleap, passing through the flames to get to her. I stood up on the bed and began sketching.

  But something was wrong. I needed more detail to finish the center of the mural, but I realized that I must see April again before I could continue. We'd lost touch, but not for long. I knew she was near, even now.

  I thought I had her under those bleachers, but I let her get away. That body the cops found back then, it wasn't her. Just like the body they found face down in a dumpster two years ago wasn't her, either. Just like that body in the pink Caddy over on Tibbs. She gets away from me, but I find her, and we're back together until she leaves, like today at the motel.

  I'll find her again, I will. Just like all those times before. Only this time, it will be for good.

  John Chamberlain (1927–2011)

  N. W. Campbell

  John Chamberlain, a post-war abstract expressionist, worked in a genre described as “found” art—works made from discarded materials. But Chamberlain didn't care for the term “found.” Biographer Helen Hsu, in Fitting in Time: A Chronology, quotes Chamberlain: “Some seem to think I work with found pieces, but I don't. They're chosen, you see. The idea is that there has been a lot of magic implied in the choice.”

  He made sculptures of automobile body parts, discarded foam, cast-off tinfoil, steel boxes, wire rods, brown paper bags, and Plexiglas. His choices served his concept of art as being “the right thing at the right moment.” His sculptures have sold for four and a half million dollars at auction. He drew, painted, and made films. He chose fanciful names for his works, like Cone Yak (1990), and Whirled Peas (1991).

  Chamberlain was born on April 16, 1927, in Rochester, Indiana. His great-great uncle, Alexander Chamberlain, plotted Rochester in 1835. His first major retrospective was at New York's Guggenheim Museum in 1971. His work is on permanent display at the Garosian Gallery in New York, the Chinati Foundation in Texas, and the Das Maximum Gallery in Germany. The Indianapolis Museum of Art has two Chamberlains: Madame Moon (1964), a sculpture of auto body parts, and a color lithograph, Flashback #2 (1977). A sample of his art went to the Moon on a ceramic panel alongside works by Andy Warhol, Forrest Myers, and other pop artists, in the Apollo 12 lunar lander.

  Chamberlain received many awards: The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1966, 1977) and the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture (1993). In 2006, he was elected into the National Academy of Design. He died on December 20, 2011, at age eighty-four.

  The Picasso Caper

  S. Ashley Couts

  King's Cross Rail Station, London:

  The American teens at the entry, wearing T-shirts and shorts, posed for selfies. In their youthful excitement, they totally missed the two criminals heading for the entrance.

 
; Doggedly trudging toward the entrance were the honeymooners, Mavis and Alex Greenwalt. He pulled a battered, lime green suitcase tied ’round with a bungee cord. Her cross-body shoulder bag contained cosmetics, sundries, and her medical needs. Among other ailments, she was diabetic. Both ached from the trip, her corn throbbed and his arthritic knee caused a bit of a limp, but they were dressed for travel in matching white wind-breakers and thick rubber-soled shoes. Grandma and grandpa on vacation heading to catch the train out of King's Cross.

  The suitcase wobbled as the wheel caught. Alex let out an exasperated sigh. It was heavy, but they'd soon remedy that. In fact, they would not take a train to Bath or Glastonbury nor would they watch the sunrise over Stonehenge. They were not at all what they seemed to be as they walked through the station and headed toward the public restrooms.

  He had plotted out this course in detail, figuring schedules to the minute. Their thrilling vacation plan, he called it. They only met a few months ago and now, looking upward, Mavis could see the architecture that he described to her—the contrast of old brick against the towering white fluted pillars. She vaguely recalled being here many years before, but it was different than she remembered. She was still familiar enough to assist with the plan though.

  He gave her hand a small squeeze to encourage forward movement. She was smitten at first sight, one of those successful date match stories. His online profile touted his experience as an art dealer, world traveler, and investment banker who was up for adventure. Of course, her Euchre club looked at the handsome photo, clucked their teeth, and then barraged her with horror stories from Dr. Phil. They urged her to run a background check. Not one of them attended the wedding held in the City-County Building back home in Indiana.

  “Isn't this amazing,” Mavis said with a gasp, scurrying to keep pace.