Page 40 of Demon Loved
It was now well after ten o’clock, so there was no reason to believe the co-op wouldn’t be open. Or perhaps not; Belshegar had been in the small former mining town for less than a week, but he’d already noticed that many of the shopkeepers here appeared to be rather lax about their schedules and showed up to work when they felt like it rather than adhering to the hours posted on their shop doors or in their windows.
But the door to the artist’s co-op stood open when he approached, probably to let in that fresh morning breeze. He allowed himself a moment of relief, then stepped inside.
The space was larger than it had looked from the outside, with high ceilings and white-painted walls to set off the art hung there. Like so many of the other spaces he’d encountered in Jerome, it had many interesting angles and small rooms that didn’t seem to have much connection to one another. In a way, Belshegar thought that was a good thing, since it allowed a visitor to be alone to immerse themselves in the art in front of them rather than being distracted by what was going on in other sections of the gallery.
An older woman with shocking bright blue hair had been setting out a collection of hammered brass and copper jewelry in the display case by the cash register when he came in. She looked up at once and smiled, her fuchsia lipstick a friendly contrast to her blue hair.
“Good morning,” she said pleasantly. “Are you looking for something in particular, or did you just want to wander?”
Belshegar had already noted that there seemed to be a plethora of interesting things to look at inside, whether it was the brightly painted pottery displayed on a cunning multi-level shelving unit or the colorful abstracts on the wall behind the pottery. However, he was here on a mission, so he couldn’t allow himself to be distracted.
“I was wondering if you had any paintings by Connor Wilcox?”
At once, the woman’s face brightened. “Yes, a few. They’re over in the next room. Let me show you.”
She came out from behind the counter and led him to the space next to where they’d been standing, a larger room that appeared to be dedicated to oversized canvases.
“We only have three right now,” the woman continued. “He tends to have his paintings in quite a few different spaces, so it’s difficult to find a lot of them in any one place.”
“That’s all right,” Belshegar replied. “I’d heard about him and saw a couple of his pieces online, so I thought it would be good to view them in person.”
“There are a few more in West by Southwest just down the street,” said the clerk — or perhaps she was an artist as well, since this was a co-op and he’d read on the website for the shop that many of the artists took turns minding the store. “And if you’re up for a drive, I know they just added some to Van Gogh’s Ear in Prescott.”
“This should do for now,” Belshegar told her, which was only the truth. The Connor Wilcox collection here might have been limited to just three of his works, but still, they were all impressive in their own right. One was nearly six feet tall and showed towering red rocks peeking out from behind pine and oak and cottonwood trees, with a wide, rocky creek cutting through the foreground. Another portrayed a dense pine forest, deep and dark, while yet another was similar to the one he’d helped Brianna hang at Helen Doyle’s house, a landscape that had a slow-moving river as its main subject, although in this one, the sky above was brooding and dark, perhaps hinting at a monsoon storm to come.
He’d experienced some of the monsoons during his visits with Elena in her childhood home in Las Vegas. Those summer storms had fascinated him with the way they sometimes arose from the heat of the day and at other times descended in the middle of the night, bringing with them thunder and lightning and torrential downpours. Although he was enjoying the warm, bright weather of the region at the tail end of September, he thought it would also have been interesting to be here earlier in the summer and see if the monsoons in northern Arizona were substantially different from the ones he’d experienced in New Mexico.
“What can you tell me about the artist?” he asked next. Perhaps that was too bold a gambit, but the woman with the blue hair was clearly a civilian, and she obviously thought he was no more than an ordinary tourist. It didn’t seem too improbable that she might share the sort of information that Brianna would never divulge.
A smile that showed white teeth against the woman’s fuchsia lipstick. “He’s originally from Flagstaff — his family has been there for generations. Now he divides his time between Flagstaff and Jerome because his wife, Angela McAllister, is from here.”
Angela McAllister. Again, Belshegar wasn’t sure why a certain name would resonate so much within him, but somehow he knew she was just as significant as Connor.
Perhaps more.
Trying to make sure he sounded nothing more than idly curious, he said, “Is she an artist, too?”
“A silver artist.” The woman paused there and pointed toward a display case in the other room that held a collection of silver jewelry. “She’s an excellent silversmith — got it from her father, I suppose, since he’s part Navajo and is also a jeweler. We have some of her pieces here, but there are a lot more at McAllister Mercantile down the street, since her family has owned the store for generations.”
Of course they had, because the McAllister clan had been in this place for decades…more than a hundred years, from what he’d been able to determine.
“I’ll have to take a look,” he said, adding, “My girlfriend loves silver jewelry.”
An utter lie. Or rather, while he’d noticed that Brianna McAllister only wore silver, it wasn’t as if she was his girlfriend or anything close to it.
Probably better not to attempt to quantify their relationship.
“I’m sure you’ll find something you like,” the woman said. Another pause, and she went on, “Are you interested in any of the paintings?”
They were all beautiful, and if Belshegar had possessed an earthly home, he probably would have bought one on the spot. The rendering of the canyon with the red rocks spoke to him particularly.
However, he didn’t see how he could transport it to the dwelling on his plane, and it wasn’t as if he would do the painting the disservice of propping it against a wall in his hotel room for a few days and then leaving it behind.
It deserved more respect than that.
“My living situation is a little fluid at the moment,” he replied. “But I’ll keep these in mind in case things change.”
A smile. “Let me get you a card, and I’ll write down the name of the painting just in case. Most of Connor’s pieces sell pretty quickly, though.”
