Art's Blood (21 page)

She was almost finished with her second wreath when she heard the tractor approaching. Hurrying to the door, she waved at Ben to stop. He cut off the motor and waited, unsmiling.

“Come in here in the shade a minute, Ben. I need to talk to you.”

Once in the cool of the workshop, he seemed to relax slightly. “I didn’t know you were down here. Did you see that guy? The one in the black car? I’ve got a real feeling that’s the one Kyra calls the nanny.
And
probably the one who attacked her.” He went to the tiny refrigerator in the corner, pulled out a jug of water, and drank deeply.

“I heard some of what he was saying—” Elizabeth began.

“Bastard was warning me to stay away from Kyra!” Ben pulled off his shirt and wiped his face with it. “Gave me some crap about she’s psychologically unstable and it would be best for both of us—”

“Did he say who sent him?”

Ben looked puzzled. “Well, that would be Kyra’s father, don’t you think? I mean, the guy didn’t actually say so; just ‘my employer feels’ and ‘my employer suggests’ and I assumed— well, hell, who else would it be?”

Elizabeth frowned. “You’re probably right.”

“I was getting so pissed that I was ready to deck him, thinking about what he did to Kyra, but I knew I didn’t have any proof, so I decided just to get out of there.” His smile, the first Elizabeth had seen since the Tawana incident, was slightly embarrassed. “I thought I’d go work on the water breaks— some of them have gotten so shallow they won’t carry all the water if we ever get a big rain— and, with hurricane season, we probably will.” He pulled his shirt back on. “I dug them all out deeper except for the two nearest your house. I’ll get them the first of the week. Right now I’m heading in to Asheville.”

“Ben…are you—”

“I’m going in to see Kyra. I told her I’d help her set up for the studio stroll tomorrow.”

Elizabeth turned back to her wreath making. Ben’s truck went down the road with a friendly beep of the horn as he passed the workshop. She smiled, happy that she and her nephew were back to their old easy relationship. Then she saw the sketchbook.

Shaking her head in dismay
— must be that Old Timer’s—
she turned back to her work.

Up at the house for lunch, Elizabeth dialed the number she had written on her hand. There were two buzzes, then a soft voice said, “Yes.”

“Kyra, this is Elizabeth Goodweather.”

“Elizabeth, hi, how
are
you? I feel bad that I haven’t been in touch to thank you for taking care of me out there.”

“I guess we didn’t take as good care of you as we should have…. Are you doing okay now? Has anything else happened?”

Kyra laughed. “I’m being a good girl and staying with GeeGee. Nothing’s going to happen to me while I’m there. And I’m working in my studio in the River District— getting ready for the show at the QuerY. Ben’s a big help— there’s a studio stroll tomorrow and he’s coming in this afternoon to help me hang some things.”

“That’s one reason I called,” Elizabeth admitted. “I have a sketchbook of yours that you left at Miss Birdie’s a good while back. Your cell phone number was on the cover, so I thought I’d let you know the book’s here. Ben just left, on his way in to see you, and I forgot to give it to him but we’ll get it to you as soon as possible.”

“My sketchbook?” Kyra’s voice was doubtful. “What kind of stuff was in it? I don’t remember….”

“I saw a wonderful sketch of Miss Birdie in her recliner.” Elizabeth was pleased with her Jesuitical answer.
No need to mention what else I saw.

“Oh
…that
book.” There was a guarded quality to the girl’s voice.

“So, anyway, it’s down in the workshop and I’ll try to remind Ben to bring it in—”

“Oh, don’t worry; I’ll remind him too. I’d wondered where that sketchbook was.”

“Kyra, I need to ask you something,” Elizabeth said impulsively. “There was a man out here this morning, a man in a black car…” There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end, but Elizabeth persisted. “He said he was from ‘the family’ and he more or less warned Ben to stay away from you.”

“Do you think I haven’t done the same thing?” Kyra’s reply was quick and bitter. “I warned Ben that my father takes an unhealthy interest in my boyfriends— I told him that he should think about what happened to Boz. Elizabeth, I don’t want Ben hurt, but he just laughs when I say anything.”

Her voice was becoming shrill and Elizabeth broke in. “Kyra, I—” but the girl overrode her, agitation growing with each word.

“Don’t worry— I’m going away after the opening of the show at the QuerY. GeeGee knows a place where I can be away from all of this and I can do my art….” A sob interrupted the spate of words.

“Kyra, sweetie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Elizabeth, you blundering idiot— remember “emotionally fragile”?
“I just wanted to ask if the guy in the black car could have been the one you call your nanny.”

A sniffle at the other end and then Kyra answered in her usual voice. “Probably. What did he look like?”

“Heavyset, in his forties, I’d say. Dark hair cut real close, sunglasses.”

“Bingo.”

The afternoon was hot and Elizabeth lingered on the porch with her after-lunch iced coffee. She had attempted to reach Phillip Hawkins but had only been able to leave a message.
I want to tell him about the nanny and get his opinion— not that it would matter to Ben. He’s in deep enamoration, as the girls used to say. But is he in danger? And Phillip may be interested in Kimmie and her white SUV— but I’ll just leave out the part about my careful study of Blondie. No point embarrassing myself. Sherlock, forsooth!

Across the valley the nearest mountains were veiled in the late-summer heat haze. Far beyond, the Blue Ridge was completely obscured and the very air seemed to lie heavy on the land. But in the usual seasonal pattern, several days would go by, each one hotter and hazier than the last, till it seemed, at times, a struggle even to breathe in the thick atmosphere. Then would come the towering thunderheads, creamy billows of cloud that dropped great quantities of cooling rain, suddenly washing the air clean and revealing those far-off peaks in crystalline clarity. Those were the days when the sky was a deep clear blue and the beauty of the fields and woods and gardens beyond words.

But it’s not bad right now,
Elizabeth decided, gazing with complacency down at her garden— the bright cadmium yellows of the sunflowers and black-eyed Susans complemented by the butterfly bushes’ soft blues and purples and the mauve mops of joe-pye weed. In the little fish pool below the porch, the fantailed goldfish hung almost motionless. Only the filmy orange and white veils of their tails and fins swayed in some gentle current.

As Elizabeth surveyed her domain, a thought struggled to articulate itself.
It’s like a painting— a Monet or maybe a van Gogh. But it’s dynamic, changing all the time. And isn’t that part of the beauty and the challenge as well— to make a garden that will be beautiful year-round? Maybe that’s a reason to paint a landscape— to capture a place at a particular moment…and maybe eliminate the weeds.

She looked down at her little pond, noting that the lotuses whose lush blooms had been so breathtaking in July were now spreading ominously, threatening to take over the entire pool. The flowers, with their many petals of pink-tinged translucent white, had been coolly fragrant. She had showed them proudly to visitors, explaining how the Hindus used the lotus with its long stem reaching down to the mud as a symbol— beauty arising from darkness. Now, however, those large round leaves held high above the water were advancing relentlessly on the open half of the pool, and green pods, like drooping showerheads, stood ready to release their ripening seeds. If she didn’t want her goldfish pond to become a lotus swamp, something would have to be done.

Monet had gardeners tending his pond, ripping out the water lilies that would cover the surface of the water if left to their own devices. He made sure that a pleasing proportion of water showed, that the water lilies lay in artfully artless patterns. And then he painted it. I wonder if he looked at his work and thought “There, that’s how it will be for all time.”

She smiled at the thought, then, pulling off her boots, grabbed her pruning shears and pattered down the steps to the pool.
As one of those grand old ladies of gardening— Vita Sackville-West? Gertrude Jekyll?— said, “Hoick ’em out!” At least it’ll be cool in the water.

She was covered in the rank pond mud and the pile of uprooted lotuses and cattails had grown to massive proportions when she heard the telephone ringing. She attempted to ignore it, secure in the knowledge that the voice mail would pick up before she even got to the steps. She pulled herself out of the little pool and picked up the filter in its bucket. It was choked with mud. It would need to be taken apart and its mesh netting sprayed clean with the hose.

The phone was ringing again. She wiped off her hands on the few remaining dry parts of her shirt and hurried for the steps. Too late; the ringing had stopped, but when she picked up, there was a voice mail from Phillip. Quickly she dialed the number.

“Hi, I was cleaning out the fish pond,” she said when he answered on the first ring. “Did you call twice?”

“Only once,” he replied. “I wondered how your painting class went. Did you make friends with the second Mrs. Peterson?”

“I sat next to her.”
Jesuitical again, Elizabeth,
she scolded herself. “And she was driving her husband’s car— a white SUV.”

“Interesting but not conclusive” was the reply. “We don’t want to start making assumptions.”

“How right you are,” she agreed, remembering Blondie. “Phillip, a weird thing happened this morning….” and she recounted the story of the man in the black car and the advice that wasn’t a threat.

He listened without comment, then said at last, “Tricky. Warning Ben off is just going to make him stick all the closer to that little girl. By the way, Aidan and his mother have dropped off the map entirely and his court date is coming up. It’s looking more and more like there’s not going to be sufficient evidence for a murder charge but they’ll still forfeit a big wad of money if they don’t show. On the other hand,” he went on in a thoughtful tone, “maybe they just feel safer staying out of sight till time for the hearing.

“And
just to complicate things a little more,” he added with a note of satisfaction, “when I went back to what’s-her-name, Willow’s house, I asked the girl who’s taking care of the cats what kind of car Aidan was driving that last time she saw him, the same afternoon you found Kyra in the corncrib…”

Elizabeth noted that he had carefully
not
said “the afternoon Kyra was attacked.” “Oh, let me guess, was it a white SUV?”

The rich chuckle filled the earpiece. “Got it in one, Sherlock.”

Suddenly, inspiration struck. “Phillip, there’s a studio stroll in the River District tomorrow. Laurel’s studio will be open and Kyra’s and probably Rafiq’s. It might be a good chance to, I don’t know, hear what’s being said about Boz. We could just kind of troll— and see what we catch.”

“And maybe keep an eye on Ben?”

“That too.”

It was almost five. The sun had finally dropped behind Pinnacle Mountain and the air was cooler. Elizabeth was hauling the last of the evicted lotuses to her compost pile at the edge of the garden when she heard a car coming slowly up the road. With a rueful look at her filthy clothes, she stood and waited.

The vehicle was out of sight below the barn and it didn’t sound like Ben’s truck. Neighbors rarely visited at this time of day and it was too late for the meter reader. She wiped her dirty face on the filthy tail of her T-shirt.

The white SUV came into view on the curve below the barn. Majestically and effortlessly it negotiated the newly deepened water breaks, moving relentlessly toward her. She stood there as if hypnotized, unable to move as the big vehicle stopped by the compost pile. The window slid down and a harsh voice said, “Ms. Goodweather, I presume? Marvin Peterson. We have a problem.”

…
A
ND THERE
I
STOOD, COVERED IN MUD
and pond scum, my mouth hanging open, while this very handsome, very suave silver-haired guy, in a navy blue blazer with monogrammed gold
buttons,
for god’s sake, is telling me that we have a problem. He’d said ‘Marvin Peterson’ but it simply did not register at first. I mean, after my phone conversation with Marvin Peterson the night Kyra’s house burned, I had a totally different picture of the guy— more…what can I say without being offensive? More
nouveau riche,
more…more
tacky.
This guy looked like a bloody British aristocrat! Or at least, my idea of one.” Elizabeth slumped back in the car seat. “I suppose if I ever
met
an actual British aristocrat, he’d turn out to look like one of the made men on
The Sopranos.”

“So what happened?” Phillip’s eyes were fixed on the road as he pulled into the passing lane. They were on their way to the studio stroll in the River District with a planned stop at the junkyard where Boz’s body had been found. Elizabeth had driven in to Phillip’s rented house in Weaverville— the first time she’d ever seen his place, a somewhat shabby Arts and Crafts–style bungalow— and he had insisted on taking his car.

She always found it a little disconcerting being a passenger; since Sam’s death it was a rare occurrence for her and she was trying hard to relax. As Phillip slid the car into a marginal gap between two speeding eighteen-wheelers, she had to bite her lips to avoid making that sound dear to all backseat drivers: the long, slurping intake of breath between clinched teeth that said one would die, horribly mangled in a car crash, rather than give driving advice, no matter how badly needed.