No Rest for the Wicked - Chapter 5
It was almost an hour and a half before Theo reappeared from his tour to whisk Max off to lunch. Not that Max minded. The extra time gave him the opportunity to take extra photos of not just of the note that was clearly from Erin Davenport but other scribbles of interest written in the margins of Adrian’s notebooks and sketches of bugs that seemed out of the norm for someone who painted landscapes and families.
Theo insisted on taking Max to a trendy new vegan taco joint not far from the university. Bright colors, murals, and young idealistic artistic types filled the restaurant, making it easy to see why Theo liked it.
“Can we get an order of the cauliflower ceviche and I’ll have two plantain con mole tacos with a lemon water please? Max, order whatever you’d like. It’s on me!”
Max perused the menu, struggling to find something that would satisfy a meat eater like himself.
“Uhhh…I’ll just have two birria tacos please and regular water.”
Theo smiled and watched as their waitress headed back to fulfill their order before turning back to Max. “So, dish what did you find in Adrian’s things? Anything good?”
“Yeah I think so, I found this letter that I’m fairly certain is from Erin Davenport. I had heard there might’ve been a love affair between the two.” Max handed his phone to Theo so he could read the letter.
“Oh my, how very poetic and tragic at the same time. I think you are likely correct that the E stands for Erin. I remember the rumors about the two of them. They were always together it seemed, and she was an immense supporter of his work.”
“Can you talk to me a bit about his work? I’m not an artistic type person so I’d like to understand better the style of his work and how he created his pieces.”
Theo winked at Max. “Don’t sell yourself short. Everyone has the ability to be artistic, you just have to want to create something of beauty for the world. Adrian painted landscapes that featured families enjoying some aspect of the environment. For example, if in the landscape there was a lake, the family would likely be boating or fishing of some sort. He used oils and acrylics with his work and his subjects had a cubist look to them, which is what made the pieces more interesting than work from, say, a Monet or Bierstadt.”
Max nodded as if he could spot a Monet or knew who Bierstadt was, even though that was the furthest from the truth. “Did he do anything special with his paints or canvas? Something that would maybe make the art change over time?”
Their food had arrived and as Theo dipped a chip in the cauliflower ceviche, he gave Max a puzzled look. “What do you mean change? Oh, you must try this ceviche it’s to die for!”
Max looked skeptically at the ceviche, but admittedly, he was surprised that his birria taco resembled a real birria taco from any other place. “That’s alright, I don’t care much for ceviche in its regular form. I doubt my aversion to it will change in this cauliflower state. I was just wondering if it was possible for any of Adrian’s paintings to have changed on their own by some sort of trick with the paint or something.”
Theo let out a pleased chuckle, “You are fun, Max! And no, to answer your question, his paint and canvases that he used were all very standard. What a curious question to ask. Has his paintings changed in some way?”
Fiona won’t be happy to hear that he’d dragged one of her colleagues into the “fringe”, but Theo seemed game for just about anything so Max thought it couldn’t hurt to share some of the more interesting details of the case so far, “I haven’t been to see them myself, but my client said that the paintings that are up at the Davenport estate look different from the way they did when they were originally painted.”
“Hmmmm, the plot thickens! Well, I can’t imagine anything that would make Adrian’s paintings change over time. But it isn’t unheard of for artists to create dynamic work of that sort. There is an exhibit making waves in Rome that features paintings that reveal hidden symbols when photographed with specific filters. There’s also a Dutch still life that uses optical illusions and lighting to make the fruit in it appear to decay over time.”
Max had finished his first taco and while the texture wasn’t what he would prefer, the flavor was pretty good. “You said that Adrian painted landscapes and families. Did you ever know him to be interested in sketching insects or entomology in general?”
Theo put his half eaten taco down and scrunched his face in disapproval. “No, that sounds dreadfully sterile and uninteresting.”
Max grabbed his phone from between them and brought up the photos he had taken of the sketches in the margins of the notebooks. “Here, I found these in Adrian’s notebooks and sketch pads. If you scroll to the right, you can see them. They look like bits of bugs…up close views of eyes, wings, legs.”
Theo scrolled through the images with idle curiosity…until one made him stop cold. He leaned in, squinting. “Well, now that’s not just a bug,” he muttered, tapping the screen.
Max leaned in, too. “What do you see?”
Theo tilted the phone, studying a fine-lined sketch that, at first glance, looked like the segmented wing of a fly of some sort. “This pattern here…it’s not anatomical. It looks…symbolic. Almost like a cartouche. I haven’t seen one of these in years.”
“Do you know how to read those?”
Theo let out a dry laugh. “I used to. Briefly dated an archaeologist in my late twenties…utterly brilliant, absolutely unhinged. Dumped me in the middle of a dig in Saqqara because I made fun of his little ceremonial dagger.” Theo rolled his eyes. “Anyway, he was obsessive about cartouches…taught me a bit before we imploded.”
He zoomed in on the sketch, tracing it with a finger. “This one’s faint, but I recognize a few glyphs. See this loop with the line through it? That’s the shen…a symbol of eternity. And here, the three squiggles…water, often meaning time or passage.”
“So it says something about time?”
Theo’s expression had shifted, now noticeably more serious and focused, scholarly even, “I’m not sure, but this symbol here…this one’s unusual. It’s not standard. But I think it might mean something like reverse or return.”
Max’s mind turned back to the other night, and his mysterious contact who claimed to know information about his dad but seemed to fall off the face of the Earth. What was it he had told him? The words came to Max in an instant. The mysterious contact said ‘time is like the ocean, ebbing and flowing back and forth’.
What was Adrian on to?
