Color Me Dead

by Mary Bowers

  She had treated Ellen like a dead fish that had washed up on her doorstep, and fawned all over Michael, repeatedly telling him how striking his ice-blue eyes were. Simply couldn’t get over them. She had even gone way over the line and asked Ellen if she and Michael didn’t make a perfect pair, since Michael was just the right height for her: 5’9”.

  “My husband Grant was a giant,” she had said. “Six foot five, and not nearly as fit as you are, Michael. We looked like father and daughter instead of husband and wife.”

  “Uh huh,” I said, looking at him sitting on the end of the bed, stroking Bastet. She never draped herself across my lap the way she was doing for Michael, and she was even allowing him to play with her ears. “Maida does go for men who are old enough to be her father. Like you, for instance,” I added, glaring, “but maybe she mistook your ice-white hair for Norwegian blond instead of old-guy gray. You put her in her place, right? You told her you were mine and mine alone?”

  “You came up, of course,” he said. “Not in the context of being the one to beat her up in an alley if she tried to seduce me.”

  “You think I wouldn’t?”

  “I’m hoping it won’t arise. No, actually, Ronnie was working the counter at Perks, and she mentioned you as soon as we went in together.” He shrugged. “Maida said she was dying for a latte.”

  I arched my eyebrows. “And somehow she managed to ditch Ellen first?”

  He smiled. “She’s good at manipulation, you’re right about that. She manages to move people around to wherever she wants them. Ronnie had your back, though. The first thing she said when we came in was, ‘Where’s your girlfriend, Taylor?’ I’m surprised she didn’t add, ‘The one you live with.’”

  “Good old Ronnie.”

  “But I take it Maida doesn’t want to cross swords with the boss, and as soon as she figured out that you and I were together, she settled down and behaved like a lady. She’s having a ball over at Girlfriend’s, by the way. Is she actually much help to Florence?”

  “Florence tells me she’s not into heavy lifting or dusting the knick-knacks, but she’s good with the customers. She’s actually been good for business, too, since everyone in town wants to meet the widow of Grant Rosewood. And she’s surprisingly good at pushing sales, and even upping the sales with trinkets at the check-out counter.”

  “Well, tell her hi when you see her today. She works mornings, right?”

  “Right. First stop, Girlfriend’s and the bank deposit. I’ll be sure to take Florence along to the bank with me so I can talk to her and see if she still wants Maida underfoot all morning.”

  But when I got to Girlfriend’s, Maida wasn’t there.

  It had been a long time since Wicked had pranked me with a flying leap when I least expected it, and he managed to launch himself the moment I breasted the curtains this time.

  When I got my breath back, I asked the cat, “Are you happy now?”

  He was.

  “Got that out of your system for a while?”

  Not on your life. He lounged off to a purple beanbag chair in the corner under the bookshelves and settled down to sleep after a good day’s work.

  I looked around and said, “Where’s Maida?”

  “She had to take the morning off,” Florence told me. “She said she’d be in this afternoon to make up the time. If you want to know the truth, I think she just wants to come in and tell me all about it afterwards. She’s having a cleansing.”

  I stopped in my tracks. “I’m guessing you’re not talking about a cleaning lady.”

  She shook her head. “Edson Darby-Deaver and Dobbs.”

  “Why am I not surprised? And on a Monday morning at 9:00, when Ed knows I’ll be here in town, making up the weekly deposit.”

  “Why not just go along with it?” Florence said. “It can’t do any harm, and then maybe Maida will stop talking about every creak and drip she hears in that old house. She never stops complaining about it. It’s to the point where I wonder why she even bought that house.”

  “I think she likes to give the impression that she’s used to finer things,” I said. “Maybe that house was actually all she and her husband could afford. An artist’s income stream must be uneven at best. Feast or famine. Maybe Grant Rosewood got despondent because he was in the middle of a famine.”

  “The house was a bargain, in my opinion, but there’s nothing wrong with it. Why don’t you go along and see for yourself? After all, Ed may actually be right about you. You’ve always been what I call a really good guesser.”

  “There’s a big difference between making a good guess and having ESP.”

  At that moment, a handsome, vigorous young man came striding into Girlfriend’s, looked around, located me and said, “Oh, good. You’re here.”

  “I have business to take care of this morning, Dobbs.”

  “You don’t know the half of it. The EMF readings – off the charts. Even Ed is impressed.”

  “I’m going to the bank.”

  “Yeah, I mean afterwards. In the meantime, I’ll walk you to the bank, and then we gotta get over there. Ed’s not exactly a people person, and I left him alone with the client.”

  “You’re right. Ed and Maida should not be left alone together. If she’s staying true to form, she’s probably batting her eyelashes at him by now, and if so, there’s no telling what he’ll do.” I fixed Dobbs with a penetrating stare. “So you’d better get back there. Ed’s going to be a basket case if she starts rubbing herself up against him.”

  While I held the stare, Florence said, “Go ahead, Taylor. The deposit will only take you ten minutes. Think of it as doing a good deed for a volunteer.”

  I dropped my head, bowing to the inevitable, and turned to go into the back room and make up the deposit slip. As I went past the curtains, I heard Dobbs ask Florence, “You got anything to eat in here?”

  * * *

  He was hungry, because he hadn’t eaten breakfast, of course – he’d been too wired up about Paranormal SWAT’s very first investigation to bother with breakfast. But he was a fast calorie-burner and quickly ran out of fuel, so he was always scrounging for food. I suggested a stop at Perks before we walked down to the bank and then got tangled up in whatever Ed was doing at Maida’s house.

  Inside the coffee shop, the display case was stacked with piles of empty calories from the one food group necessary to sustain Dobbs. Also of course, he didn’t have any money. I treated him to a large black coffee and a bear claw the size of an actual bear’s.

  Ronnie Hart, the owner of Perks, was behind the counter, and when she saw me, she asked how the new celebrity was working out at Girlfriend’s.

  “According to Florence, she’s doing all right,” I told Ronnie. “More of a hostess than a stockroom worker, but we expected that. I hear you’ve met her?”

  Ronnie gave me an under-the-eyelids look. “Just what Tropical Breeze needs,” she said grimly. “Another good-looking tramp, flirting with other women’s husbands. And boyfriends,” she added, with a significant look at me.

  “I heard about that,” I told her. “Thanks for the slam-dunk.”

  I dropped a couple of bucks into the tip jar, told her to have a good day, and walked out the door with Dobbs. He had already finished the bear claw, and he balled up the napkin he’d used and threw it away on the way out.

  His only comment was, “She hit on Michael?”

  “I’m beginning to think it’s kind of like breathing for her.”

  “Huh. She hasn’t hit on me.”

  “That’s because she’s too busy being dazzled by Ed and all his manly charms.”

  We both had a good laugh and walked down to the bank together.

  Chapter 6 – The Cleansing

  Maida’s house was a restful shade of green, sort of sage, with buff-colored trim. It had a beautiful terra cotta roof, unusual in that neighborhood, and a pair of empty flowerboxes painted the same color. The pavers leading up to the front door were also a terra co
tta hue. It had a clean, prim look about it.

  It was a typical Florida bungalow, nice and square, with a tough-looking lawn and a pathetically neglected butterfly garden. In the unforgiving sun, the plants were flat on the ground, brown, crispy, almost smoldering. That garden must have been the pride and joy of a previous owner, and I felt a little sad, looking at it.

  Florence would have known that previous owner; she’d grown up in the house next door, where she currently lived. I hadn’t asked her about them, though. Florence would have known too much about them, and then I wouldn’t have been able to keep myself detached. I would have gotten emotional, and I didn’t want to invest that much of myself into a quick sweep of somebody else’s house.

  People put a lot of love into their homes and yards. When they leave, it’s best to just let the property go, emotionally, and never look back. Whatever the next owner does with it, it won’t be the same, but that doesn’t matter. The gardens that the former owners once slaved over and the trees they gave names to are not under their protection anymore. This prim little house was now in the hands of a woman who hadn’t learned to love it yet, but I wasn’t going to make an abandoned child of it. I wouldn’t dwell on those who had passed through it, loved it, let it go and moved on.

  Somehow I felt as if I knew, though, and there had not been a letting-go. I sensed a shimmer of some definite personality hovering near me as I looked at that garden. When I murmured, “She could at least water it,” something washed over me like a hot wave. I became heavier, somehow.

  I hadn’t yet moved up the walkway to the front door when Ed thrust it open wildly and said, “Finally! What took you so long?”

  That snapped me out of my reverie. It was only 9:46, and I hadn’t wanted to be there at all. Instead of thanking me . . . .

  I walked into Maida’s house eyeball-to-eyeball with Ed, getting testy already. It was going to be a very long morning.

  The woman who had recently been drooling on my lover came forward with pleading purple eyes and said, “Taylor, dear. I simply don’t know how to thank you for coming. I had no idea you worked with Dr. Darby-Dudder. How fascinating to be psychic, on top of all your other talents.”

  “I’m not,” I said, looking around and deliberately not correcting her about Ed’s name. I was horribly uneasy, and the absolute ordinariness of Maida’s house made me feel even more irritable. It simply didn’t look the way it really was, if that makes sense. I felt as if the house were being as phony as its owner.

  Maida’s furniture had an Empire look that didn’t work with the lines of the room or the 1960s semi-bay window overlooking Palmetto Street. The only thing that did fit was one of her husband’s smaller sculptures, a stylized tree stump with a cascade of carved flowers, not very original, but pleasing. It wasn’t at all the same style as the work that had made him famous, and I figured it must have been one of his early works. Maybe that was why it fit into this dated bungalow.

  Before I could turn and look his way, Ed was right in front of me, five inches from my face, peering through his granny glasses and saying, “What’s wrong?”

  Ridiculous, I thought, nothing’s wrong. But I didn’t bother to say it. Instead, I walked across and out of the room, went into a short hallway and stopped when I got to the middle of a pleasant kitchen. Ahead of me was a small, round breakfast table with two sage-painted chairs, inside a window nook. A yellow laminate counter formed an ell against the walls to my left, with a dull, stainless-steel sink under a small window.

  “Wallpaper,” Maida said, coming up beside me. “I’m having it stripped, of course.”

  I wanted to claw her eyes out. I didn’t even know why. I just did.

  “I like it,” I tried to say, but it came out muddled, and behind me, Ed made me angrier still by saying, “Be quiet, Maida. She’s going into a trance.”

  No I wasn’t.

  It was just that . . . the wallpaper . . . Pete had put it up, all by himself. Well, with a little help from me, but I felt like I was mostly just getting in the way. We shopped all over the place before we found that pale yellow gingham stripe, just happy little lines up and down and across, wide-spaced, with those particular primroses climbing along. We couldn’t believe it. They were just like the ones in the window boxes. Not too red, not too orange. Perfect for a cozy kitchen where we spend so much time. Only Pete’s not here now. It’s only me, and I can’t find him.

  I used all my force of will to take myself back and said, “She’s stuck.” I rotated around and looked at Ed. “Go ahead. Do your thing.”

  He understood and got busy. “Luckily,” he said, “I brought the Sensitainer along, just in case.”

  I nearly screamed, “NO!” Then, with three shocked faces gawking at me, I lowered my voice and said, “No taking the easy way out, Ed. You’re not putting her in a box. She’s a nice lady. She likes flowers. The flowers . . . .” I gestured at the wallpaper, because surely they would understand about the primroses.

  Dobbs came and took me by the arm, saying, “I think you’ve had just about enough for one day, young lady,” and guiding me out the back door to sit me down on a patio chair within the shade of the house.

  I tried to regather my defiance, and looking up at him, I said, “Who you calling young lady, kiddo?”

  “That’s the spirit,” he said, taking the seat beside me at the round patio table.

  After a few minutes, I said, “Aren’t you going back inside to help Ed?”

  “He told me to get you out of the house and watch you for a while. Don’t you remember?”

  “Of course I remember,” I said stiffly, though I don’t know why I said it. Just stubbornness, I guess. “What are you going to do about Sandy?”

  “Sandy? Oh, the ghost?”

  “Don’t call her that.”

  “Oh, right, sure. We don’t stigmatize the living-impaired. Ed’s calling somebody in who specializes in, like you said, doing it the hard way. An empath. Don’t worry; his methods are very gentle. He should be here in a day or so. Sandy will be all right until then. It’s going to cost Maida a bundle to fly him in from California, but she said to go ahead.”

  I was feeling better by that time, and I muttered something about spending a few more days with Maida being anything but all right for poor Sandy, and he gave me one of his dazzling grins.

  “So how much is she paying the two of you?”

  He winked at me. “Another bundle.”

  Well, I wasn’t that far gone. “Tell her she can make a donation to Orphans of the Storm at the same time.”

  That made him laugh, but I was dead serious.

  * * *

  I had left my SUV behind Girlfriend’s, so I started slowly walking towards Locust Street. I didn’t really need to go back into the resale shop that day, but somehow when I left Maida’s house, I found myself walking in the back door again. When I went through the curtains from the back room, Florence looked up at me tensely.

  “Everything okay in here?” I asked. It’s not like Florence to be tense. There were no customers; it was just Florence, Wicked and me, and even Wicked seemed a little reserved. Animals are so quick to pick up on the emotions of the humans around them.

  “What did you find over there?” she asked, ignoring my question.

  The answer got stuck in my throat, and I found myself staring at Florence from across the shop.

  Finally, she said, “You found her. Is she going to be all right?”

  All I could say was, “Sandy.”

  “I knew it.” Florence went to a little red-painted wooden chair that was part of a table-for-two breakfast set and sat down as if her legs were getting shaky. “And?”

  “She’ll be all right. A man is coming from California. He knows what to do.”

  She nodded and looked away. “I’ve known Sandy and Pete since they first moved in, fifteen years ago. They came to Tropical Breeze after they retired. They’re such nice people. Were such nice people. It was a car wreck. He was pronounced
at the accident scene, but she was in a coma for a few days. I guess she just . . . got lost.” She took in a sharp breath and then let it out again heavily. “I asked Maida if I could replant the butterfly garden, and she said don’t be silly, she’s having the whole front lawn ripped up and done over in xeriscape. Ripped. That’s the very word she used.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said vaguely. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  “Really? Why not?”

  I hesitated, feeling like I was just groping around blindly inside my own mind, not really knowing what I was saying. Then I shook my head. “I don’t think I can talk about it right now, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course not.” She got up from the breakfast set briskly. “Thank you, Taylor. I’ve been so worried.”

  “So that’s why you encouraged me to go help Ed this morning.”

  Knowing my uneasiness with the subject, she only said, “I thought it couldn’t hurt.”

  We left it at that.

  * * *

  I meant to leave the shop before Maida came in for her afternoon make-up shift. I really didn’t want to see her. I figured I had plenty of time, though, and when you do that, you always lose track of the time and end up getting caught.

  I was just about to go over to Don’s Diner for my grilled cheese sandwich. It was a chilly day, and I was hoping Don had made tomato soup. He usually did, on chilly days, and he’d send it out to the dining room with a dollop of sour cream in it, sprinkled with dill.

  As it was, I almost made it. I actually had my hand on the doorknob of the shop door but before I turn it, Maida called to me as she came in from the back room. She’d taken the shortcut through the alley.

  Then I made my second mistake. I told her I was just leaving.

  “Are you going over to the diner for lunch?”

  I couldn’t lie. I was still in a suppressed state, and lying takes a certain amount of self-possession. Besides, the diner was right across the street from Girlfriend’s, and she was going to be able to watch me cross Locust and go in. When I said yes, she quickly invited herself along.