Death Mask (16 page)
"That's easily fixed. Here." Molly took down a ladle from the rack above the hob and held it up close to the card. Inside the concave bowl of the ladle, the image of the hooded man's face was turned upside-down, but his features appeared almost normal.
She turned the card around, and now they could clearly see who the hooded man was.
"My God," said Sissy. She felt as if the floor had dropped away beneath her feet. She stared at the hooded man's face in disbelief and then she stared at Molly. "It can't be."
Molly shook her head. "It is him, isn't it? But how could it be?"
The hooded man's forehead was slightly too prominent, and his chin was too small, but Sissy had recognized him at once. The face reflected in the dish cover in les Amis de la table, a card that had been devised and drawn nearly two hundred and fifty years ago, was her late husband, Frank.
They tried it again, this time using a shiny silver bowl that Trevor had won last August at the Blue Ash Golf Tournament, so that the image of the hooded man's face was much larger.
"It's Frank, isn't it?" said Sissy. Her heart was beating so fast that it actually hurt. "It doesn't just look like him. It is him. He even has that diamond-shaped scar on his cheek. He got that when some punk threw a screw-driver at him."
"I totally can't understand how it could be him," said Molly.
"How do people's faces appear on windows, or slices of bread? How did the image of Christ appear on a ten-dollar bill, instead of Alexander Hamilton?"
Molly put her arm around her and gave her a comforting squeeze. "You're not upset, are you?"
"Yes. I am a little. I am a lot. I feel like crying, but I don't think I can."
"How about another drink?"
"No, I'm fine. I think I need to sit down, is all."
"At least the cards are starting to give you some answers."
"Yes, I think they are. But I'm not so sure I like what they're telling me."
"What do you think they are telling you?"
Sissy sat on the end of the couch and took out her Marlboros, although she didn't light one. "The real police can find the real Red Mask, can't they? He has to have an address that they can trace, and DNA that they can check up on. But when you think about it-what kind of cop is going to be able to hunt down a couple of painted Red Masks?"
"You're not suggesting what I think you're suggesting? You can't be serious."
"Oh, no? What else do you think this card is showing us? There are four people sitting at this table. The young man represents Trevor. The girl represents you. The older woman, that's me. But look at the older woman's face. I thought she was worried at first, or frightened, but she's not. She's asking him the hooded man for help. Please, she's saying. Look at the way her left hand is pressed flat against her chest. Please, I'm begging you. Help me."
"Sissy, I can't!"
"Why not? You can do it with roses, and police composites. I have plenty of photographs you can use for reference."
"Sissy, how old was Frank when he got killed?"
"Forty-seven. Why?"
"Forty-seven. So what's going to happen if I draw him and he comes to life and he's only forty-seven and you're seventy-one? I mean, how are you going to deal with that? How are you going to deal with seeing him at all, talking to him, even though he's dead? How is Trevor going to deal with it? And Victoria?"
Sissy took a deep breath. She knew that what she was thinking was deeply unnatural, and probably wrong. These days, she wasn't religious. After Frank had been killed, she had stopped attending church. But she did believe in greater powers, and a moral order, and to bring Frank back to life did seem like flying in the face of God. She thought of all of those stories-like "The Monkey's Paw," in which a grieving father resurrects his horribly injured son. Deals with the devil always carried a price that was far too much to pay. In fiction they did, anyway. She didn't know whether the same was true of real life.
"I don't honestly know how I'm going to deal with it," she admitted. "How do you think he's going to deal with seeing me? But we're not even sure that you can do it yet, are we?"
"Sissy-"
"We have to try, Molly. If there's one thing the cards are quite certain about, there's going to be a massacre. How are we going to live with ourselves if we don't try everything we can to stop it?"
"It's too scary."
Sissy reached out and took hold of her hand. "Come on, Molly, Frank was never scary. He was tough, yes, and a very good cop. But he was always fair, and he was always kind, and he always had a terrific sense of humor."
"Yes, but he's dead, Sissy. He died over twenty years ago, and we're talking about bringing him back to life. That's what frightens me."
Sissy said nothing for a while, but looked down at Molly's hand as if it held the answer to everything. Then she said, "Would you at least try?"
"I have to ask Trevor. Frank was Trevor's father, after all. He may want him left in peace."
"You can't let any more innocent people get killed, Molly. I know you didn't bring those drawings to life on purpose. Those murders weren't your fault. But you have to face the fact that you're the only person who has the ability to turn them back into drawings again and destroy them."
Molly stood up and went to the window. "I think I need to find out more about this necklace first. I don't want to start bringing any more drawings to life until I'm sure of what the consequences are going to be. I'm sorry, Sissy, but this really creeps me out."
"Can you remember who sold you the necklace?"
"She gave me her card. She said she had a small antiques store, out near the country club."
Molly went through to her studio to find her purse. She was gone for only a moment before she called out, "Sissy! Come here, quick!"
Sissy followed her. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing. Nothing at all. But look."
She pointed toward her desk. The roses had gone. The "real" roses, anyway. But on the sheets of paper on which she had rested them, they had reappeared as paintings.
"Well, I'll be damned."
Sissy picked up the painting of the red Mr. Lincoln rose and sniffed it. It had no fragrance at all, only the smell of cartridge paper.
"We can do it," she said. "I'm sure we can do it."
Molly said, "I'm still frightened, Sissy."
"All right. I know you are. So let's find out more about your necklace."
Molly reached into her embroidered bag and took out her purse. "Here it is…Dorothy Carven, Persimmon Antiques, Madison Road. Why don't I give her a call?"
At that moment, they heard the front door open and Trevor call out, "Hi, Molly! Hi, Mom! We're home!"
Persimmon Antiques turned out to be a fussy, high-class antiques store with a single Sheraton chair in the window and thick brown carpeting inside. A little bell jingled as Sissy and Molly walked in through the front door.
"Classy," said Sissy. There were fewer than a dozen pieces of furniture in the store-two chaise longues, a pair of armchairs, two bureaus, and a gilded desk. On one of the tables stood some eighteenth-century figurines of shepherds and shepherdesses, as well as a Meissen dinner service. The walls were hung with oil paintings, mostly landscapes and views of the Ohio River.
A woman appeared from the back of the store with her mouth full. She was tall, fiftyish, with rimless half-glasses and a wing of white hair. She was wearing a purple silk pantsuit and at least twenty gold bracelets.
"May I help you, ladies?" she asked, and immediately pressed her fingers to her lips. "Do forgive me! I just picked up some strawberry cheesecake from the Bonbonnerie, and I couldn't wait until I got home. Have you tried their cherry trifle? To die for, I promise."
Molly said, "Ms. Carven? You may not remember, but I bought this necklace from you at the Peddlers Flea Market."
The woman peered at the necklace over her glasses, and then took hold of it and lifted it up. "Yes, of course I remember. It's very unusual, isn't it? I mean, it's only glass, but I don't think I've ever seen another one quite like it."
"Do you know anything about its provenance?" asked Sissy.
"Provenance? I don't think it has any kind of provenance. It's just a costume piece, that's all. I pick up quite a few interesting bits and bobs when I'm clearing houses. I wouldn't sell them here, so now and again I take them down to the flea market to see what I can get for them."
"So you don't know anything about it? Where it came from, or who collected all of these mascots?"
"Well, I bought it from an elderly woman in Hyde Park. Her husband had died and she wanted to get rid of everything. He had one or two very fine paintings, as I remember, and a wonderful longcase clock. But he also had an awful lot of junk. Boxes and boxes of newspapers and old theater programs and buttons and coins. I think he was one of these people who never throw anything away."
"You don't have the woman's name?"
"May I ask why you want to know?"
"Oh, I'm writing a book about jewelry and superstition," Sissy lied. "You know, charm bracelets and birth-stones and things like that. And, as you say, this necklace is very unusual, isn't it? I'm sure it must have a story."
Ms. Carven went over to the gilded desk, opened the top drawer, and took out a leather-bound book. She licked her thumb and leafed through it until she came to the page she wanted. "Here you are… Mrs. Edwina Branson, 1556 Observatory Road. There's a telephone number, too, if you want it."
Mrs. Edwina Branson was well into her eighties. She was white haired, small, and stooped, and was dressed in a smart cream blouse with a pearl pin at the collar and a green plaid skirt. She obviously took good care of herself.
She lived in a ground-floor apartment overlooking a small courtyard. Her ginger cat was sleeping on the bricks outside her window. The apartment was furnished entirely with modern furniture-a beige couch, two beige chairs, and an oak-topped coffee table. The only pictures on the walls were photographs of her children and grandchildren.
"I have some iced tea if you'd care for some," she told them.
"Thanks all the same," said Sissy. "We don't want to take up too much of your time."
"But I enjoy having visitors. When you get to my age, most of your friends are dead, and your children are all too busy."
She turned toward Molly and said, "It suits you, dear-the necklace. I think I only wore it once. I never liked it. Too flamboyant for me."
"So it wasn't yours, originally?" Sissy asked her.
Edwina Branson shook her head. "My late husband Felix gave it to me. He brought it back from France after World War II. I used to teach Europe an history, you see, at Miami University in Oxford, and Felix thought that I would find it interesting."
"Do you know anything about it? Who it used to belong to?"
"He said that some woman in Paris gave it to him, in exchange for chocolate. Well, I hope it was in exchange for chocolate. She said that it was called a 'necklace of fortune.' None of the charms on it are worth very much, but every one of them is supposed to have belonged to somebody famous."
"Such as?"
"The woman didn't know who all of them were. But the little crocodile allegedly came from Alexandre Dumas, who wrote The Three Musketeers. He used to wear it on his watch chain. And those earrings were brought back from Devil's Island by Alfred Dreyfus, after he was pardoned. This ring here, with the small red stone, that used to belong to Vincent van Gogh."
"Surely this is worth a fortune," said Molly.
"Not really. None of the charms are particularly valuable, and there's no proof at all that any of them are genuine. Felix and I did quite a lot of research into them, but we couldn't find any way to authenticate them. No certificates, no letters. No bills of sale. All we had was the word of a French woman who wanted chocolate."
She was silent for a moment, and then she said, "These days, I don't take much of an interest in history, not like I used to. History does nothing but take away the ones you love."
"You say this ring was supposed to have belonged to Vincent van Gogh?"
Edwina Branson lifted up the ring between finger and thumb. "It's only brass, and the stone is only a garnet. But if it really is Van Gogh's ring, there's quite an interesting story behind it. You know that Van Gogh shot himself, don't you?"
Molly nodded. "I learned all about him at art college."
"I'm afraid I only saw the Kirk Douglas movie," Sissy confessed.
"Well, Van Gogh went out into the countryside one day and shot himself in the chest with a revolver. But he didn't die straight away. He managed to walk back to the inn where he was staying, and it was two more days before he finally passed away. I looked all this up on the Internet, and I came across a letter from Van Gogh's brother, Theo. Apparently-because he had no money-Vincent gave his ring to the serving girl at the inn who took care of him while he was dying.
"Vincent told the girl that, whatever she did, she must never give the ring to another artist, because it had madness in it. He said something like, 'je suis deux personnes…there are two of me, the good and the evil, and this ring can separate us, and allow my evil self to walk where it will.' He had a split personality, didn't he? And I guess that this was his way of describing how he felt.
"Funny thing, though. According to Theo, a local farmer saw Vincent propping up his easel before he went around to the back of this château where he shot himself. But only a few seconds afterward, he saw Vincent for a second time, with his pistol in his hand, 'almost as if there was another Vincent following the first, intent on shooting him.'"
Sissy gave Molly a meaningful look but raised her fingertip to her lips to indicate that Molly should say nothing.
Edwina Branson picked up another charm, a tiny citrine brooch with a single pearl dangling from it. "I can tell you the story behind this one, too. This used to belong to Marie Curie. It was given to her by her first boyfriend, just before she left Warsaw to go to Paris. He hoped that she would be persuaded to stay in Poland and marry him. Think what a different world it might have been if she had! No radioactivity! But then-no X-rays, either."