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The graphic on the screen showed where work was under way to divert floodwaters upriver.
The phone rang. And rang. Then clicked over to voice mail.
The RCMP commissioner wasn’t answering. Or couldn’t answer.
Armand hung up. And decided that no news was good news. There was nothing he could do about it now, anyway.
He grabbed his coat and joined Beauvoir and Lacoste.
“Knock, knock,” said Myrna.
“Who’s there?” asked Clara, not looking up.
“Me.”
“Me who?”
“No, this isn’t a knock-knock joke,” Myrna said, entering the studio. “I just didn’t want to startle you. We were supposed to meet at the bistro for breakfast, weren’t we?”
“Sorry. I lost track of time.”
Myrna sat on the low sofa, her considerable derriere hitting the concrete floor, as it always did. She groaned, more in annoyance than pain. Would she never learn?
From her vantage point, essentially on the floor, Myrna could see that Clara was staring at a series of miniatures on her easel.
“I’ve been sitting here trying to decide if the tweeters are right,” Clara explained. “If these’re shit.”
“I believe we call those people twats, and no, they’re not right. And you think that’s bad, you should see what they’re saying about Armand’s return to the Sûreté. Madman with a gun. At least you only have a paintbrush. How much damage can you do?”
“You’d be surprised, apparently.”
Myrna brought out her phone. “Listen to this.”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“Strange, intense, feverish,” Myrna read.
“Is that about me or Armand?”
“It’s about van Gogh. Here’s another. The museum could have saved a good chunk by getting the plan and having the thing run off by the janitors with rollers. That was a review of an early Barnett Newman. I looked it up. One of his paintings just sold for eighty-four million.”
“Dollars?”
“Dog biscuits.”
At that, Leo got to his feet, tail wagging. Myrna dug into her pocket and brought one out before returning to her phone. “He’s a madman, desperate for conquest.”
“Picasso?”
“Gamache.”
Clara made a retching sound. “Just shit. Lies.”
“So if you know the tweets are wrong about Armand, why don’t you know they’re wrong about you and your art?”
“Because one’s objective and one’s subjective,” said Clara. “The record proves that Armand didn’t do any of what he’s accused of. And what he did do was to save greater pain. He’s been investigated, exhaustively, and cleared. But what I do”—Clara returned her gaze to the easel—“is open to interpretation. I had an email from my gallery in Montréal. A few collectors are asking about returning the paintings they bought, some from years ago. They’re concerned that the value has fallen through. That I’m not a real artist at all but … what did one tweet call me? A poseur.”
Actually, thought Myrna, that was one of the more polite descriptions she’d seen.
