High Art: A Short Story Read online

  “Yep.”

  There was a short pause before the woman said, “My name is Tara Prior. I’d like your help. I think my father was murdered.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was well passed eleven that Thursday when Tara Prior pulled her car into the rutted drive leading down to Tad Pike’s cottage. She had ended her call with the man just twenty minutes before. He had been incredulous about her assertion concerning her father’s death.

  “Huh?”

  “My father, Felix Prior. I am sure someone killed him,” she’d repeated.

  The phone was silent until Pike said, “Who is this?”

  Tara sighed. She wondered if contacting the man had been a good idea. He had seemed perfect. He was young, and so more likely to be open-minded and adventurous. He appeared to be independently wealthy, or at least self-employed, since he lived on a lake in the middle of nowhere without starving to death. And he had been a reporter. She expected him to jump at the chance to investigate a possible murder.

  Instead, he was just pissing her off.

  “My name is Tara Prior. Felix Prior was my father. You knew Felix Prior, right?”

  “Sure. Yeah, I knew him,” he said.

  It suddenly crossed Tara’s mind that the guy might be drunk. “Are you drunk?”

  “What? No!”

  Finally, some sign of life. “Okay, so you know who I am, right?”

  “Felix’s daughter. Tara. Fine, I got that bit. But why are you calling me? I mean, I’m real sorry about your dad and all, but I didn’t know him well enough to, like, write a eulogy or anything.”

  Tara frowned at her phone as though it had tried to lick her.

  “Are you drunk?” Tara asked.

  “Stop asking that. Just . . . just tell me what you want.”

  “Mr. Pike, I told you: I need your help. I think my father was murdered. In fact, I’m sure of it. I want to find out by whom and exactly why.”

  “Exactly why?” Pike repeated.

  “Yes,” Tara said. “I think I might know. I think I might know who as well but . . . I have to be sure.”

  A long pause.

  “Why me?” Pike asked.

  “I just think you could help.”

  “’Cause I was a reporter?”

  “That’s part of it.”

  “’Cause I wasn’t especially good at it. I was okay but I wasn’t some crack newshound.”

  “Look,” Tara said, “you went to journalism school, right? Took classes on note-taking and interviewing technique and stuff like that?”

  “Sure, but—”

  “That’s what I want,” she said. Tara realized she was being short with the guy. More calmly, she said, “Let’s just talk about it, okay?”

  Another pause before he said, “Fine, where are you?”

  “In my car, about twenty minutes from your cottage. It’s in the middle of nowhere, by the way.”

  “Yeah, it was the main selling point.” A sigh. “Okay, see you in twenty minutes then.”

  Now she looked through a rear window into the small cottage. She had knocked on the back door but there had been no answer. Night had fallen some four hours ago, so Tara was forced to cup her hands around her eyes to see inside. There was a small kitchen with a mismatched fridge and oven range. A few dishes were drying on a draining pan by the sink. On the kitchen table was a paperback and a pair of binoculars.

  And the music. Loud rock music issued from within the cabin. Tara recognized it as a punk-style cover of the Joe Jackson hit Is She Really Going Out With Him? For this reason, she was not surprised when her knocking did not lead to an answer.

  Tara shrugged and walked to the front of the cottage. A wide staircase led to the porch and front door. As she took a step up the stairs she heard a voice calling her name.

  “Hello?” She looked around, searching the darkness.

  “Up here,” the voice replied. It was close and it was Pike’s.

  Tara craned her neck, looking to the second story balcony that hung over the deck. “Up where?”

  “Behind you.”

  Tara turned and looked up. A man was crouched in a tree, about thirty feet above the ground. She could not see him clearly; he was obscured by the tree leaves and the night’s darkness.

  “What are you doing up there?”

  “Shooting,” came the answer.

  “Shooting? What, birds at point blank range?”

  “No,” he said. The man had the nerve to sound exasperated. “I’m not shooting a gun. It’s video.”

  “Right,” Tara said, smiling despite herself. “So you’re shooting video from up in a tree. At night. If ever you tell anyone else about this, I’d go with shooting birds at point blank. At least that’s a cool kind of crazy.”

  “Thanks for the advice. Hang on a second.”

  There was the sound of rustling leaves, twigs snapping, and Tara watched as the man named Tad Pike swung down from the tree, moving expertly from one branch to the next. He was definitely not drunk. Pike landed before her with a soft grunt. His short hair was mussed and his clothes wrinkled and he obviously hadn’t shaved in a couple of days. He was also barefoot. But he was lean and broad-shouldered; a swimmer’s build. He held a video-camera, about the size of a thick paperback, in his right hand.

  Pike looked her up and down. “You’re pretty tall,” he said.

  Tara squinted at him. “Taller than I sounded on the phone?”

  “No, taller than you looked from up there,” Pike said with a wave at the tree. “Up there you looked more . . . smooshed.”

  “Smooshed?”

  “Yeah, the angle. Couldn’t tell how tall you were.”

  “Good to know,” Tara said. “Can we go in, please? ’Sfreezing out here.”

  “Sure.” Pike nodded and led the way.

  *

  Tara Prior sat on the couch, the living room’s only piece of furniture. No coffee table, no chairs save the ones circling the kitchen table, just an ugly couch facing large picture windows which, Tara had to admit, offered a spectacular view of the lake. Even at night, the lake, the mountains surrounding it, and the islands dotting it, were absolutely beautiful. She’d forgotten just how beautiful.

  From the kitchen Pike asked, “Wanna beer?”

  “Yes, please,” Tara said.

  “Stella good?”

  “Very,” she said, accepting the bottle.

  Pike took a seat on the floor, back against the wall, his head against the window. He watched her, sipped his beer.

  “What were you shooting up there, in the tree?” Tara asked.

  “The lake.”

  “At night?”

  Pike nodded.

  “What for?” Tara said.

  “A project. Doing a story on the lake. The history, the village, the legend.”

  Tara rolled her eyes and took a long draw from her beer. “The legend. Yeah, I’ve heard just about as much as I can take about this lake and its legend.”

  “I don’t believe in it either,” Pike said. “Your father sure did though.”

  “Yes he did,” Tara tried her best to keep the resentment from her voice.

  “So tell me about it. Why do you think someone killed him?”

  “I got a letter from him,” Tara said.

  There had been nothing unusual about the letter. It had been like all the others. Her father explained that he was close to finally proving what he’d known to be true for years. He had discovered some new evidence, or talked to some new expert, or read some new book. He was always so sure, so optimistic. Over the ten years since she had last spoken to her father, Tara had received well over a hundred letters. She read them all, if for no other reason than to remind herself why she no longer spoke to the man she’d loved so much so long ago.

  Felix Prior had been the first person to produce a photograph of Deer Lake’s very own lake monster, Deery. He was also the first and only person to have been saved by the beast. Or so he claimed. When he was e
ight, Felix’s parents purchased a small cabin on Deer Lake. The Priors were part of the lake’s fledgling cottagers’ community. It was during that first summer on Deer Lake that young Felix Prior had heard the legend of Deery for the first time. An old French-Canadian local by the name of Remur Beaudoin had been the story-teller, a throwback to the days when telling tales over a camp fire was the only form of acceptable entertainment. In heavily accented English, the man had told Felix of an aquatic beast the size of a locomotive. It roamed the lake’s shadowy depths, keeping its eyes on the surface, watching for a wayward cottager buttered in vanilla-scented sun-block. The creature, Remur recounted, had lived in the lake for millennia, since the age of the dinosaurs. It had battled both time and the elements to stake its claim on the body of water and would certainly not suffer pale and overfed accountants in Speedos.

  An irascible drunk with a hatred for both cottagers and children, Remur Beaudoin had intended for his story to frighten the cottager child. Unfortunately, rather than terrified, Felix had been riveted and, from that day on, every moment spent at the cabin was devoted to catching a glimpse of the elusive beast.

  Young Felix spent hours on an inflatable raft, peering into the depths of the lake. He yearned to see a thirty-foot shadow passing underneath him, a lake-bound Leviathan. He built a hunter’s blind on Bingo’s Island—named after Bingo Bryant who had died following an unfortunate game of piñata with a hornet’s nest the size of a small child—and hid within its leafy confines with his father’s old Kodak Monitor. Over the years, Prior captured surprisingly tasteful photographs of geese, swimming deer, floating logs, an empty gas container, an overturned kayak, a fat cottager in a life vest, dead fish, seagulls, an Igloo cooler, small sailboats, a deflated beach ball, a fully inflated beach ball, his own inflatable raft, a lost flipper, loons and, once, a topless woman sunbathing on a surf board. Deery, however, remained a hard target.

  Until June 26th, 1962. On that date, years after he had abandoned his blind and upgraded to his very own state-of-the-art Nikon, Felix Prior, aged sixteen, stumbled upon a bear. Felix had been roaming the woods that lined the western shores of the lake. These woods were thicker, wilder, free of beaches and hence free of cottages. Unfortunately, these woods were also home to wildlife usually kept at bay by cottages and their loud, smelly occupants. It was a black bear sow that young Felix happened upon while searching the shore-side forestry for signs of the elusive Deery. The bear was, in effect, answering an age old riddle by shitting in the woods when it was quite rudely interrupted by young Prior. Understandably, the bear was quite unhappy and voiced its annoyance as only a bear in full crapus interuptus could. It rose onto its hind legs, stretched to its full and considerable height, and bellowed. Felix Prior proceeded to join the bear in its previous and more silent activity.

  It is impossible to know whether it was scent or sound that attracted Deery, but, as the black bear was set to fall upon the unfortunate teenager, an enormous lizard-like head, all teeth and scales, burst from the lake, grabbed the bear in its jaws and, with two powerful tugs, dragged the writhing mammal into the lake.

  Felix was left standing with a shocked look upon his face, a cooling lump of pooh in his pants and his camera in his hands. As he watched, the ripples that had been the only remaining sign of the beast and its meal—other than the pile of still-steaming crap the bear had left behind—softened and disappeared. But just as Felix was about to release the breath he’d been holding, a dark lump breached the water some hundred yards from shore. It was moving. Fast. Young Felix raised his camera and, with shaking hands, took a picture of the mysterious shape just moments before it disappeared below the lake’s surface.

  No one else had seen the beast. No one else had seen the bear. No one believed that Felix Prior had seen either. Felix, however, could not have been happier. He had seen the Deer Lake monster, and he had taken its picture.

  The photo was promptly developed and sent out to every major news outlet in the country. It was printed in three local publications, including the Deer Lake Announcer, and fifteen magazines that specialized in the occult and unexplained. In the National Truther, Felix’s photograph appeared below the heading “Lake Lump: Secret Government Submarine?” The Crypto-Science Monthly published a six page feature using Felix’s photo as its centerpiece. Despite the dearth of serious, or sane, interest in his picture, Felix Prior had resolved to prove to the world that Deery did exist and that his photograph was authentic. Deer Lake’s Ahab would find his Moby Dick.

  Since then, he’d become a local celebrity as the lake monster’s most ardent believer and fan. He’d devoted his life to his passion, this above all else. Friends abandoned him, his career as a financial advisor faltered and finally crumbled. Unable to compete with Felix’s growing obsession, unable to compete with the myth, the mystery, the legend, Doris Prior left her husband of seventeen years and took fourteen-year-old Tara with her. Felix relocated full-time to his family cottage. Neither woman nor girl had spoken to the man since.

  Felix, however, had never given up the hope of rekindling his relationship with his estranged daughter. He mistakenly believed a bond built around a shared passion for Deer Lake and its crypto-zoological native could be fostered between Tara and him, that he had only to convince her that Deery was worth her time, her energy, her passion and endeavored to do so through a series of letters detailing his imagined progress.

  So when she received his latest missive, Tara didn’t think much of it. She read it and quickly filed it away with the others. When it proved to be his last letter, however, she dug it out and reread it. Over and over again.

  “In the letter,” Tara explained, “he tells me he’d found evidence that explained why Deery was so hard to find. He didn’t say what it was. He did say, though, that it would be ruined and that he had to stop that from happening.”

  “Stop what from happening?” Pike said.

  “He was vague. I can show you the letter if you want,” she said, pulling a folded sheet of paper from her back pocket. “He basically said he had this evidence but that it would be destroyed by Benning’s plans.”

  Pike raised an eyebrow. “Oliver Benning?”

  Tara nodded. “Yeah.”

  Pike accepted the letter from her and unfolded it. He scanned the contents.

  “Benning, the amusement park guy?”

  “Right. And porn.”

  “Of course. And porn.

  Pike read the letter:

  Tara, I have finally found what I’ve been looking for all these years. I have found proof of Deery’s existence. This time I am absolutely sure of it. This is not like the tooth I found (it was a bear claw, remember?). Neither is it like the Deery coprolite I found (that turned out to be a petrified tree trunk, remember?). This is different. I can feel it.

  I must say, it was my boldest venture thus far. But it was well worth it. I know where it lives, Tara! I know now why it is so difficult to find! People always said there could be no monster in this lake, that the waters were so clear that such a large animal would be easily spotted. I can answer them now! I can! Please see me and I will tell you all!

  In fact, I truly wish you would come to Deer Lake because, apart from simply seeing you and sharing with you my wonderful find, I may need your help. My discovery is in danger of being destroyed, and quite possibly Deery him/herself with it!!!!

  Oliver Benning has plans for our little town and these plans could spell the end of everything. Please come, Tara. I will explain everything and I am sure that, once you’ve heard what I have to say, you will help me. Until then, I will do what I can to stop Benning myself. I must.

  I love you, Tara.

  —Your Father

  Silence as Pike digested the information. “You’re right, it’s vague,” Pike said. “Why not spell it out?”

  Tara sighed. “He’s trying to entice me. He wants me to come see him. He figures that, if he leaves stuff unclear, I might come here just to find out more.”
r />   “Yeah, he really wanted you to come, huh?”

  Tara didn’t want to talk about her relationship with her father, not with a man she’d just met. “What do you think of the letter, Pike?”

  “Well . . . let me get this right. You’re saying that, based on this letter, you’re convinced that Oliver Benning, one of the richest guys in the U.S., had your father killed?”

  “Exactly,” Tara said.

  *

  Pike finished his beer and placed the empty bottle on the floor between his feet. It was midnight, he was tired, and had now been introduced to a lake-side murder mystery which, to be completely honest, made absolutely no sense. This tale of dubious intrigue and questionable suspense had been proposed by a woman he had just met and, though she was tall, long-legged and really quite pretty, he was debating whether or not she was crazy.

  Of course, maybe she was drunk.

  “Are you drunk?”

  The woman tried to kill him with a glare. “No, Mr. Pike, I am not drunk.”

  “Okay, good. And just Pike is fine.”

  “Oh, you’re one of those guys,” she said.

  “What do you mean, ‘those guys?’”

  “Try to make yourself sound tough by taking on a single word for a name. A word that just happens to be a medieval weapon, of course.”

  Pike cocked an eyebrow at her. “It also happens to be a kind of fish. Plus, it actually is my last name. And my first name is Tad, a really tiny sperm-like kind of fishy thing. How would you handle it?”

  The woman laughed. “Okay, you got a point there. Sorry. Pike.”

  He smiled, glad she was finally loosening up a little.

  Now that the frost appeared to have melted, Pike felt he could voice the concerns rattling about in his brain.

  “Okay, Tara,” he said, climbing to his feet. He sat next to her and took a moment to gather his thoughts. “I think you’re pretty much nuts.”

  The frost was back. In fact, it was now a glacier.

  “But,” he added, “I do want to hear more about this. I’m being honest here: I don’t think your father was murdered. It’s sad, but I am absolutely positive that he was torn up by a boat prop.” She opened her mouth to speak and he held up his hand, silencing her. “But, look, I’m willing to listen to you. It’s just that if all you’ve got is that letter . . . I just don’t—I can’t buy it.”