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dealer for a good price. But I can’t afford to wait.”
    “Was Paul Grimes the dealer?”
    “That’s right.” She looked at me with some suspicion. “Are you a dealer, too?”
    “No.”
    “But you know Paul Grimes?”
    “Slightly.”
    “Is he honest?”
    “I don’t know. Why?”
    “I don’t think he is. He put on quite an act about how much he liked Jake’s work. He was going to publicize it on a big scale and make our fortune. I thought that Jake’s big dream had come true at last. The dealers would be knocking on our door, Jake’s prices would skyrocket. But Grimes bought two measly pictures and that was that. One of them wasn’t even Jake’s—it was somebody else’s.”
    “Who painted the other picture?”
    “I don’t know. Jake didn’t discuss his business with me. I think he took the picture on consignment from one of his friends on the beach.”
    “Can you describe the picture?”
    “It was a picture of a woman—maybe a portrait, maybe imaginary. She was a beautiful woman, with hair the same color as mine.” She touched her own bleached hair; the actionseemed to arouse her fear or suspicion. “Why is everybody so interested in that picture? Was it worth a lot?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “I think it was. Jake wouldn’t tell me what he got for it, but I know we’ve been living on the money for the last couple of months. The money ran out yesterday. And so,” she added in a toneless voice, “did Jake.”
    She turned away and spread out the unframed paintings on the table. Most of them were unfinished-looking small seascapes like the one in my car that I’d shown to Arthur Planter. The drowned man had clearly been obsessed by the sea, and I couldn’t help wondering if his drowning had been entirely accidental.
    I said, “Were you suggesting that Jake drowned himself?”
    “No, I was not.” She changed the subject abruptly: “I’ll give you all five of them for forty dollars. The canvases alone are worth that much. You know that if you’re a painter!”
    “I’m not a painter.”
    “I sometimes wonder if Jake was. He painted for over thirty years and ended up with nothing to show for it but this.” The gesture of her hand took in the paintings on the table, the house and its history, Jake’s death. “Nothing but this and me.”
    She smiled, or grimaced with half of her face. Her eyes remained cold as a sea bird’s, peering down into the roiled and cloudy past.
    She caught me watching her and recoiled from the look on my face. “I’m not as bad as you think I am,” she said. “If you want to know why I’m selling these things, I want to buy him a coffin. I don’t want the county to bury him in one of those pine boxes. And I don’t want to leave him lying in the basement of the county hospital.”
    “Okay, I’ll take the five pictures.”
    I handed her two twenties, wondering if I’d ever get the money back from Biemeyer.
    She took it with some distaste and held it. “That wasn’t a sales pitch. You don’t have to buy them just because you know why I need the money.”
    “I need the pictures.”
    “What for? Are you a dealer?”
    “Not exactly.”
    “That means you are. I knew you weren’t a painter.”
    “How did you know?”
    “I’ve lived with a painter for the last ten years.” She moved the position of her hips, resting her weight against the corner of the table. “You don’t look like a painter or talk like one. You don’t have a painter’s eyes. You don’t smell like a painter.”
    “What do I smell like?”
    “A cop, maybe. I thought when Paul Grimes bought those two pictures from Jake that maybe there was something funny about them. Is there?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Then why are you buying these?”
    “Because Paul Grimes bought the others.”
    “You mean if he put out money for them, they must be worth something?”
    “I’d certainly like to know why he wanted them.”
    “So would I,” she said. “Why do you want the