“Am I that obvious?”
“Yes, but you’re not bad looking.”
“I’m a private detective.”
“Oh,” a blonde said, “a private dick.” More laughter. I joined in.
This was much more satisfying than doing Kemper Marley’s dirty work.
“Do you have a roscoe under there?” Wren patted my jacket and felt the .45 in its shoulder holster. Her playful smile froze. I gently set her hand aside, telling her she read too many pulp novels, and showed around the photograph.
“That’s Carrie Dell,” Wren, who introduced herself as Pamela, said. “I was in several classes with her. But I haven’t seen her this semester.” The others agreed. The progress was stalled when I asked if they knew anything about where she lived, who were her close friends, or any boyfriends.
But I had a name, at least, to take back up the stairs to get Carrie Dell’s information from the registrar.
Halfway up, Pamela called. “Aren’t you going to cuff me, private dick?”
“Maybe later,” I said over my shoulder.
* * *
Carrie Dell was nineteen years old, a straight-A student, and came from Prescott. This and other miscellany, plus the names and address of her parents, were in my notebook as I walked back around the pretty shaded campus.
On a lark, I asked directions to the Art Department, where I knocked on a professor’s door. A woman in a paint-stained smock answered and introduced herself as Pearl Kloster, instructor of Fine Arts. With twinkling brown eyes and light-brown hair in a chignon, she was somewhere in her thirties.
“Come in, come in. I don’t think I’ve ever met a private investigator.”
“We’re even, because I’ve never met a fine arts professor.”
She had a spacious office that doubled as a studio. An unfinished oil painting sat on an easel, a stunning sunset and mountains.
“That’s beautiful.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m no prodigy, but I usually drive out and set up outdoors to paint landscapes. Here I teach basics to students who might go on to teach art in high schools. I’m never going to make a living off my paintings. You want to see greatness, go find George Burr. He’s a magnificent etcher, lives on Lynwood Street in Phoenix. I’m sure you’ve heard of him.”
“Sorry, no.”
&n
bsp; I could see her opinion of me drop like the oil gauge of a jalopy.
“He’s world famous,” she sniffed. “He’s been kind enough to lecture at some of my classes.”
I showed her the photo.
“Carrie Dell,” she said. “She was one of my models. Don’t get the wrong idea. She never modeled nude. But I teach a class where students sketch and paint the human form. She’s so beautiful. She was a natural. A model has to be patient, hold a pose.”
She walked over to a large piece of furniture containing flat file trays, thumbed down to drawer three, and pulled out a canvas.
“Hold it at the edges,” she said.
It was a watercolor showing a blonde on a chair draped with a white sheet. Her shoulders were bare and a long nude leg stretched out behind her. Even with her face in profile, it was unmistakably Carrie. This was the first time I had seen her alive in color, the fair skin, golden hair, vivid blue eyes, and magnetic smile. Alive, at least, through the eyes of an artist.
“This is her,” she said. “Carrie is a perfect model, because she can sit for an hour at a time while the students work.”
I couldn’t make out the scrawl at the bottom. “Who painted this?”
“Tom Albert. He’s a junior, also plays football. He’s got talent. Unfortunately, he also has an attitude.”