79. Interview with Felicia Veicht: Part 1

Felicia Veicht is the owner of Veicht Studio in Boca Raton. She is the aunt of Cathy D’Amico as well as the promoter of Anthony’s (a.k.a. Les Palmer’s) art exhibition the night of his death. Her office is located in the back of the gallery, a large room with a painting on each wall and a large window behind her head. Ms. Veicht is a middle-aged woman, though she doesn’t look it with bright red lipstick and short, pink hair and a youthful, attractive face. Crow’s feet by her eyes and faint wrinkles in her hands are the only giveaways, as she frequently flails them around while she talks about her association with Anthony Stephens, whom she knew as Les Palmer

25 June 2011

– Les?

– Knew him a little, yes. Hardly know anything about him and Claire, though. [Ms. Veicht scowls] A matter that is still sensitive as far as I’m concerned.

– I abhor secrets. Absolutely despise them. I do not keep secrets from anybody I consider a companion or close acquaintance. And even then.

– No exceptions.

– I’m absolutely serious.

– Ok, an example: the morning of the day I filed for divorce from my ex husband—that very morning, before I got in the car for the meeting that would lead to the dissolution of our arrangement—I walked up to him in our apartment, looked him in his eyes, and told him that I was going to the lawyer’s office, that the papers would be drafted in due time and he’d be getting a call that afternoon.

– Yes, no hesitation in matters of truth.

– Likewise, prior to the divorce proceedings, when Mr. Klein—my lawyer—asked if my soon-to-be-ex-husband had committed any unsavory acts during our marriage that could be used as leverage against him, I told Mr. Klein about my husband’s affair with my half-sister—Catherine’s mother—a matter that I would urge you not to discuss in front of Catherine if you please. For her own sake.

– I also told Mr. Klein about the drunkenly awkward backhand my soon-to-be-ex-husband gave me one night in the driveway. I even told him that the slap came after I called him a sniveling little prick who had his head shoved so far up his mother’s rich, pruned rear-end he could smell her rancid breath from the inside.

– And even after everything, even after the judge awarded me half of his sizable fortune, I still walked up to him and told him that it had been extremely nice doing business with him, and that I would be retiring from my profession as a realtor and opening two art galleries on the coast: one here in Boca and the other on South Beach, in Miami. I told him that my half-sister would be heading the Miami location, and that he should come by and visit sometime.

– Full, complete honesty in each and every situation. The truth shall set you free.

– It’s not cliché, it’s fact.

– What does it have to do with Palmer? It has a lot to do with him. I may exhibit a superb amount of indifference in my social life, sir, but there are no secrets when it comes to me. And I don’t understand why it can’t be the same for other people. Absolve stress from your mind and body, liberate the truth, set it free from its shackles, discontinue this dreadful habit of reining it in.

– I do believe that most people have honest souls, or as honest as they can be. But Les Palmer? Cathy’s lover? I could never tell with him. He was a hard egg to crack, not rotten from what I could perceive, but definitely…boiled.

– A remarkably handsome young man, if I must say so myself. I can see what Cathy saw in him. A bit too rough around the edges for my taste, but handsome nonetheless.

– As an aging woman in this ruthlessly decadent fine art industry, I have nothing but my reputation to hold me above the rest of these money-grubbing heathens, and dating a young, disheveled African-American male with a seemingly dark and mysterious past is not the way to wow the type of crowd that frequents my gallery.

– I wouldn’t care otherwise. From the glow on Cathy’s face in those first few months, he must have been exquisite in bed.

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