After Dessie left Saturday night—or, actually, it was early Sunday—I fell into bed and slept hard.
The next morning I studied the back of the cereal box and made no comment on Jackie’s snide remark about the little frogs and other beasties that Tessa and I had scattered about the garden. I didn’t even comment when Jackie said that maybe Dessie could make a frog with a mouth big enough that Tessa and I could hide inside it. I started to say that that was a great idea, but I knew Jackie was baiting me and trying to get me to—to what? I wondered. Not go to Dessie’s house that afternoon? Did Jackie want me to stay home and try out some of the new camera equipment we’d ordered together?
Jackie and I had talked about how to open her business and we’d decided she needed to photograph some kids for free. We could use those pictures to publicize her work. She’d be able to get some people to drive to Cole Creek, but she was also going to need to do a lot of location shooting.
We’d decided that Jackie could start her photography career by taking photos of Tessa. “And Nate,” Jackie said. “Don’t forget that he’s a kid, too. And pictures of him would certainly sell a lot of portraits.” As I was supposed to, I grimaced and pretended I thought Jackie was after young Nate. But, actually, I thought photographing him was a good idea. The art director of my publishing house knew some photographers in the fashion industry. Maybe they’d like to see pictures of beautiful Nate. If the camera loved him, he had a chance at a career that would support him and his arthritis-crippled grandmother.
His grandmother had done well at selling the junk from the house. It seemed that there were people in the U.S.—and Europe, which surprised me—who wanted old Statues of Liberty, and they were willing to pay for them. When Nate returned from a day of hacking away at the man-eating jungle around my house, he packaged what his grandmother had sold and took them to the post office.
On Sunday morning I was thinking of helping Jackie photograph both Tessa and Nate, and I knew I’d rather do that than spend the day with Dessie and be hit up for some giant bronze statue. Of what? Truthfully, after hearing Dessie’s descriptions of her previous sculptures, I liked Jackie’s big-mouthed frog idea the best.
When it was time to go to Dessie’s, I just left. I started to say goodbye to Jackie, but I didn’t. What was I supposed to say? “Bye, hon, see you later”? And, also, I didn’t want to hear any more sarcastic remarks. I especially didn’t want to hear Jackie tell me about whatever I was going to miss that afternoon. Part of me wanted to tell her that if she had a vision to be sure and call me. But that was like telling an epileptic that if he had a seizure he should call.
I took the car, leaving Jackie with the truck. It wasn’t until I got to Dessie’s that I realized I had the truck keys. I flipped open my cell phone to tell Jackie I had them, but then I closed the phone. I knew it was wrong of me to leave her with no transportation. I even knew I was being a throwback to a caveman for doing it. On the other hand, who could fight centuries of tradition?
I dredged up a smile and knocked on Dessie’s door. She had a pretty house, even if it was a little artsy for my taste. All those wind chimes on the porch would drive me mad.
When Dessie opened the door, I let out my breath. I hadn’t been aware of it, but I’d been dreading what she’d wear. Would it be cut down to her belt buckle? But she had on tan pants, fairly loose, and a big pink sweater with a high neck.
“Hi,” I said, handing her the bottle of wine Jackie told me I was to take, and following her into the house.
Right away I saw that Dessie seemed nervous about something. She had a table set up in her small dining room that was off her kitchen, with big double glass doors leading onto a brick-floored, covered patio. It was a beautiful day and I wondered why we didn’t eat outside.
“Mosquitoes,” Dessie said quickly when I asked.
“But I thought—” I began, but stopped. There were so few mosquitoes in the Appalachians that they weren’t a problem.
She seated me with my back to the glass door, which made me feel jittery. As a kid, I’d learned to sit with my back to the wall because cousins tended to leap in through windows. All too often I’d been jolted when frogs, snakes, and various colors and textures of pond slime were dropped down my back through the open window behind me.
We had just sat down to eat when a lawn mower was started just outside the door. The resulting noise made it impossible to speak.
“Gardener!” Dessie shouted across the table.
“On Sunday?” I shouted back.
As she started to answer, she looked to the left of my head and out the glass doors, her eyes widening in horror.
I twisted around just in time to see a young man push a mower across a bed of tulips. When he got to the end, the grass littered with chopped-up tulips, he turned to look straight at Dessie and smiled. A malicious smile. A jealous, angry-lover smile.
It was that smile that made me relax. Maybe I should have been angry to realize that Dessie had been flirting with me because she was having a fight with her boyfriend, but I wasn’t. When I saw that she was attached, more or less, to a guy who was obviously quite jealous, all I felt was relief.
I pressed the napkin to my lips, said, “Excuse me,” then went outside and spoke to the young man. I didn’t take time for small talk. I just told him that I wasn’t a rival, that it was business only between Dessie and me, and that he could stop razing the tulips.
When he didn’t seem to believe that I wasn’t insane with lust and love for Dessie, I understood. To me, Pat had been the most beautiful woman on earth, and I never understood why other people didn’t think so, too. But Dessie’s gardener was young and I wasn’t, so he eventually believed me and pushed the mower back into the little shed at the end of the garden. I stayed outside for a few moments while he went inside. After a while, an embarrassed-looking Dessie opened the glass door. I noticed that her lipstick was gone so I guess she and the Lawn Mower Man had made up.
“You can come in now,” she said and I smiled. Gone was the aggressive-salesman tone in her voice and gone was the flirt.
I said, “Now can we eat outside?” and she laughed.
“You’re a nice man,” she said and that made me feel good.
We moved food and dishes outside, and we both relaxed and enjoyed each other’s company. Unfortunately for me, she’d read all my books so there was nothing new I could tell her about myself. But Dessie was full of stories about her life, both in L.A. and in Cole Creek. She made me laugh about what she’d been through when she was on a soap because the viewers thought she was the tramp she portrayed.
I sipped beer, munched on little puffy, cheesy things she seemed to have an unlimited supply of, and watched her as I listened. The stories she told were hilarious, but they had an often-repeated quality to them, and there was a sadness in her eyes that I couldn’t figure out. I’d heard that she’d decided to stay in Cole Creek to pursue her real love, sculpture.
I’m not sure what it was, but something wasn’t ringing true. There was a look of longing in her eyes that I couldn’t figure out. From the sound of her voice as she told the stories, she’d loved L.A., and loved her job. So why did she give it up? Couldn’t she have combined sculpting and acting?
When I asked her that, she just offered me more of the little cheesy things. I said no, but she still jumped up to go get them. When she returned, she told me another funny soap opera story. By three I was getting bored and wondered if it was too early to leave. She must have sensed my restlessness because she suggested I see her studio. It was a separate building, big, modern, beautiful. Through a carved wooden door, we entered a small office, and on the desk was a photograph of two teenage girls laughing and hugging each other. They were Dessie and Rebecca.
I’d almost forgotten that Rebecca worked for Dessie. I started to ask about her, but Dessie opened two wide doors and we went into a marvelous room. It was the size and height of a six stall barn, with light everywhere. Windows ran along one
long wall, enormous cabinets along the other. The ceiling had rows of skylights, and at both ends of the building were tall, wide, sliding doors.
Dessie had several big projects going, and in one cabinet were a dozen small clays of projects she hadn’t yet made. Most of her sculptures were of people. She had a nice one of old men sitting on a park bench that appealed to me. Life-size, I thought, it could be kind of interesting in my garden. Tessa and I could play checkers with the old men.
But before I could ask about it, she reached behind a cabinet frame, withdrew a key, and unlocked a cabinet door. “I only show these to very special people,” she said, her eyes twinkling.
Uh oh, I thought. The erotica. The “collection” of porno.
But when Dessie opened the cabinet and the automatic light came on, I laughed. Actually, I snorted at first, then I let out a real laugh. I looked at Dessie. Could I pick them up? Eyes twinkling even brighter, she nodded yes.
Inside the cabinet were small bronzes of nearly everyone I’d met in Cole Creek. But they weren’t exact likenesses; they were caricatures. They looked like the people, but they also showed their personalities.
The one my hand went to first was a six-inch-tall Mayor. Dessie had exaggerated his strange body and facial features. “Pompous windbag” were the words that came to mind. Dessie had shown him rocking back on his heels, his belly stuck out, his hands clasped behind his back. “You should name it ‘Little Emperor,’” I said, and Dessie agreed.
Next I picked up Miss Essie Lee and gave a low whistle. Dessie had shown her as a skeleton. Not a real skeleton, but it was as though Dessie had covered a figure with skin—no muscle or fat—and put Miss Essie Lee’s vintage clothes on her.
There were several other statues of people I didn’t know, but I could guess their personalities. She told me one was of a former client, an odious man who’d wanted a fawning, self-loving sculpture made of himself. She’d done it, but she’d also made a small one that showed the man with long, narrow teeth and eyes that exuded greed.
“Remind me never to ask you to do a portrait of me,” I said.
Dessie was about to close the door when her cell phone rang. She grabbed it out of her belt holster so fast she reminded me of an Old West gunslinger. When she looked at the caller ID, her face lit up, so I was sure it was Lawn Mower Man.
“Go on,” I said, giving her permission to leave her guest alone.
After she was out of the room, I shut the cabinet door, but then I saw that below it was another cabinet door that was also locked. On a hunch, I reached behind the door frame where the other key had been hidden and, sure enough, another key was there.
I knew I was snooping, but I could no more have stopped myself than if I were an alcoholic locked overnight in a liquor store. Quickly, I inserted the key and opened the door.
Inside were two items. One was a small bronze of seven people standing in a line: five men and two women. These weren’t caricatures; they were realistic. Three of the men were older, one of them quite old, while one was a kid who didn’t look too smart. He looked like someone who if you said, “Let’s go rob a bank,” he’d say, “Sure, why not?”
The two women were both young, but one was as ugly as the other was beautiful. The women stood in the middle of the group, side by side, but not touching. It was easy to see that these two women were not friends.
And what was easier to see was that the ugly one was either a younger version of Miss Essie Lee or a close relative of hers.
When I heard Dessie laugh in the other room, I started to close the cabinet door. But there was another item in the cabinet with a cloth covering over it.
Maybe it was the writer in me that made me jump to conclusions, but I was sure the seven people in the bronze were the ones who put stones on that poor woman back in 1979. And my writer’s mind was spinning with the thought that under that cloth was a casting of the woman who’d been crushed.
As I heard Dessie’s returning footsteps, I yanked off the cover—only to reveal a little bronze of Rebecca. She was young and smiling, but it was indeed Rebecca.
Superman would have envied the speed with which I closed those cabinet doors and put the key back in its hiding place. When Dessie returned, I was placidly looking out the glass doors at the shattered tulips.
After her phone call, she got rid of me pretty quickly, so I guessed she and her jealous boyfriend were ready to finish making up. I was glad to go. Maybe Jackie and I could still do something today, I thought.
But as I pulled out of Dessie’s driveway, it began to rain and by the time I got home, it was a downpour. I can’t describe my disappointment when I found the house was empty. Jackie’s big camera bag was gone from the hall closet so I knew where she’d gone.
Without me, I thought. She went on a hike without me.
Or with someone? I thought, and that annoyed me even more. I called Nate’s house and his grandmother told me Jackie had called and left a message, but that Jackie wasn’t there. I called Allie, but Jackie wasn’t there either.
I didn’t know who else in Cole Creek to call, so I sat down to wait. When I got hungry, I started making spaghetti—which consisted of dumping a jar of sauce into a pan and turning on the gas.
The pasta was done and the rain was coming down hard, but, still, there was no Jackie. A couple of times the lights flickered in the house, so I got out candles and two flashlights, then made myself a small plate of spaghetti. I’d eat more when Jackie got back and we could eat together and tell each other about our day—as we usually did.
Finally, when it was nearly dark outside, I heard the front door open. I jumped up from the table and ran to the door. When I saw Jackie—and registered that she was safe and unhurt—I put on my best angry-father look and prepared to dump an ocean liner full of guilt on her. How dare she not let me know where she was? She could have been hurt or had a vision. Obviously, I needed to know where she was at all times.
But Jackie never even looked at me. She was covered in her giant yellow poncho, her big pack on her back, just her face peeping out, and her eyes were…Well, if I were writing a bad novel, I would have said her eyes were “full of stars.”
Whatever her eyes were full of, they certainly were blind. She looked straight ahead, without seeing me, and I’m certainly no small item easily missed. She went toward the stairs—dare I say “as though she were floating”—then up the stairs to her room.
Standing at the bottom, I looked up in wonder. Jackie didn’t usually “float.” No, she ran and she jumped, and she had an unnatural inclination to climb on rocks and ladders, but she never, ever “floated.”
I went up the stairs and stood outside her door for a few moments, contemplating knocking and telling her I’d cooked something. For a moment I allowed myself the pleasure of imagining Jackie’s remarks about my cooking, and my ensuing witty replies. And for a few seconds I let myself remember my little fantasy about the black rings of olives on Jackie’s pale skin.
I raised my hand to knock, but when I heard her humming and the bathwater running, I put my hand down and went back downstairs. I tried to watch TV, but I was restless and went into the library to search for something fabulous to read instead. Nothing interested me so I went upstairs to my office and turned on my computer.
I’m not sure why I did it, but I logged onto the Internet and went to a search service to see what I could find out about the people who had been alive in Cole Creek in 1979.
I typed in the names of anyone in Cole Creek I could think of, including Miss Essie Lee, and all the names of the seven founding families that I could remember.
What came up on the screen were obituaries—and what I saw shocked me. The head of the Cole family, Abraham, had died in 1980 in a freak accident. He’d been on the highway just outside Cole Creek and had a flat tire. A man driving a truck carrying a load of gravel had stopped to help the old man. But the mechanism that made the bed dump had malfunctioned and the entire load of gravel had dropped onto A
braham Cole and killed him.
I leaned back from the screen, trying to comprehend what I was seeing. Abraham Cole had been crushed to death. By rocks.
Edward Belcher had also died in 1980, when a Wells Fargo truck went around a corner too fast. They had just picked up a load of gold and the weight, combined with the nervousness of the driver, had made him misjudge the angle of the curve. Edward had been waiting for the light to change, and the truck had toppled over on him.
In other words, he’d been crushed to death.
“By money,” I said aloud. “As he lived.”
I found an article describing the death of Harriet Cole Landreth in a car wreck. Before I read the newspaper account about what had happened, I made a little prediction, and, unfortunately, I was right. She’d been trapped under the weight of her automobile when it tumbled down the side of a mountain. The car wasn’t found for two days so Harriet had had a long, slow, lingering death.
Getting up, I walked away from the computer. Revenge? I wondered. Had some relative of the crushed woman’s taken revenge and seen to it that her murderers died as she had? But how had he done it? I wondered. How could a person arrange for a dump truck to discharge its load? A truck full of gold to tip over? A car to plunge down a mountain and not burn but to crush its passenger?
I went back to the computer and read the end of the article on Harriet Cole’s car wreck. She was survived by her husband, her daughter, and her mother, who had been in the car with her. “Mrs. Abraham Cole is in the hospital in critical condition,” it said.
Taking a deep breath, I pulled up Harriet Cole’s obituary. She’d been only twenty-six years old when she’d died. There were four paragraphs about her family being one of the founders of Cole Creek, and it said that her father had predeceased her. Her mother’s name was Mary Hattalene Cole, but there was nothing about her condition at the time of her daughter’s funeral. Harriet’s husband was listed as Reece Landreth, and her daughter was—
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