Color Me Dead

by Mary Bowers

  Feeling around the bed I confirmed what I already knew; Bastet wasn’t there. Sometimes she slept with us, sometimes she didn’t, but when I was sure she hadn’t come to me, I felt cold and alone. I got up and went to look for her.

  In the balcony of the gallery, I stared down into the great room and saw her eyes watching for me. Unblinking, fiery and green, she was staring. She had been waiting.

  I didn’t move. And below me, within a column of thick blackness, the eyes began to rise before me. Staring at me the whole time, they rose and grew larger, wider and wider apart, until finally they were just above me, looking down at me. A form terrifyingly large began to coalesce, standing below near the floor of the great room and reaching all the way to the ceiling over the gallery. In my fear of its sheer size, I refused to look for the outlines of it and kept forcing myself to stare at those eyes. They never changed, eyelids never lowered, direction never changed. She stared at me, and she spoke into me.

  Will you obey now?

  “Have you been punishing me?” I said aloud. I trembled, but my voice didn’t waver.

  Only waiting.

  My knees began to weaken, but still, I refused to grasp the bannister for support. I stood my ground and stared, refusing to blink, refusing to move back.

  Go, she said into my mind, lie down again. I will come to you. Go back to your bed now. Lie down and wait.

  I turned like a dead thing and walked, my legs icy and weightless, my body like a pillar that couldn’t bend without breaking. At the bedside, I folded and lay myself down, and finally, the dream came.

  * * *

  “I hope I didn’t bother you when I got out of bed last night,” I said to Michael over coffee the next morning. “Did you hear me talking in the gallery?”

  He stared at me with bleary eyes and said, “You slept like a rock last night. I’m the one who was tossing and turning. I was afraid I was keeping you up. I don’t think I ever did get to sleep. You never got out of bed. You must have been dreaming. You said you were talking in your sleep? Who were you talking to?” he asked, expecting it to be funny, something from a crazy mixed-up dream. When he saw the look on my face, he changed his manner. “What kind of a dream did you have, Taylor? A nightmare?”

  I paused, and said, “This time, I think it was a nightmare. I was afraid.”

  “Can you tell me about it?”

  “Sometimes, I have dreams about another time and place,” I began.

  “A recurring dream? Does it scare you?”

  “It never did before, but then I never tried to block it before. Actually, I don’t think I want to talk about it now.” I had turned slowly in my seat, and Michael turned to follow my gaze. Bastet was standing with her back arched, at the far end of the great room, near the French doors. Against the morning sun blazing in through the windows, she was very hard to look at, almost impossible to see, but she was there. All I could really make out were her staring green eyes and the high arch of her back. While she was staring at me, it was hard for me to even speak.

  Michael glanced between Bastet and me a few times, then said, “Maybe it’s just as well. I think you need something to eat. How about an English muffin?”

  “Okay.”

  He got up and moved about the kitchen, and after a few minutes, I said, “The dreams are mine.”

  He spun around and stared at me, but didn’t ask any questions.

  He looked back into the great room, and I turned for a look, too, but Bastet wasn’t there anymore.

  But she didn’t need to be, I mused idly.

  I understood.

  * * *

  “So what are you going to do with yourself today?” Michael asked, breaking the silence a little while later. I was done with the English muffin by then, and I felt more like myself.

  It was a Wednesday, which was a golf day for him, so we both knew what he’d be doing.

  “I have to go downtown,” I said.

  “Oh? Really? You usually only go there on Mondays, unless you’re meeting somebody.”

  “I want to check on Florence, and I’ve got a feeling I might run into somebody,” I said vaguely. “It’s a good idea you’ve got there, though.”

  He shook his head as if to clear it. “I don’t have any ideas. Who are you talking about?”

  “Joy. I’m sorry, I guess I’m still half asleep. I think it’s time I had a talk with Joy, but I don’t have her phone number.”

  “The one with the giant catapult? Why?”

  “So she can fill in some blanks. And she doesn’t have a catapult. The thing she’s building represents the hope of mankind; she doesn’t want to launch it. She may as well, though. Nobody’s going to understand it.”

  He gave up. “Well, good luck with that, whatever you’re talking about.”

  He left for his golf game and I sat by myself, quietly thinking. Before I went into town and started asking questions, I needed to sharpen my focus a little. Getting what I needed out of Joy was going to take a little finesse, and I didn’t want to come off as either nosey or crazy. Michael loves me; he listens to me ramble on and thinks nothing of it. Other people might not be so kind.

  Chapter 18 – Cast Out of the Nest

  I was winging it, so I followed the established pattern I always followed when I went into Tropical Breeze. I went straight to Girlfriend’s and parked in my usual spot behind the store.

  Since Maida’s death, I’d been double-teaming the shifts at Girlfriend’s. Florence usually only needed help on Fridays and Saturdays, when the shop was busier, but I didn’t want her to be alone. Maida had been taking the morning shift, and if the shop wasn’t busy enough to keep Florence occupied, she might have time to brood about things. Also, Breezers were sure to come in and want to talk about the murder, and I didn’t want Florence to be subjected to any more questions about that.

  So I called Bob Norton, explained the situation, and before I could even ask, he volunteered to come in for the morning shift for a while. He was a retiree who usually managed to keep himself pretty busy, but he understood right away and stepped up to help.

  When I walked in the back door, Bob was in the back room sorting through donated items and trying to price them. He looked up guiltily and said, “There’s only one customer in the showroom, and Florence seems to be fine this morning. I haven’t heard either one of them talking. The customer isn’t even a Breezer, so there won’t be an inquisition. At least, I’ve never seen this woman before, and Florence didn’t seem to know her, so I came back here to see if I could work my way through some of the new stuff.”

  “Good. We’ve always got so much to try to organize, it never really gets done. I just wanted to talk to Florence for a minute. You go ahead and keep doing what you’re doing, Bob. And thanks.”

  “Sure thing.”

  I still wasn’t sure of my plan of attack. I had an open invitation to drop by the studio, of course, but I didn’t think Carmen meant for me to come right over the very next morning. I wanted to stay on good terms with her, so I didn’t want her to think I was going to be a nuisance. Besides, the one I really wanted to see was Joy, and at the studio, it might be tricky to get her alone for an extended chat.

  Still thinking it over, I walked into the salesroom. Florence was behind the front counter, as usual, and over by the fancy glass display, critically eyeing an unusual vase, was Joy Hardy.

  I’d been so involved in working out a devious plan to talk to this very person, I could only skid to a complete stop and gape at her. It was like I’d conjured her up, somehow. It felt creepy. Before I could think of anything to say, Joy put the vase down and walked toward me.

  “I was hoping I’d find you here,” she said.

  “Oh? I don’t usually come in on Wednesdays. Why did you want to find me?”

  “I want to talk to you, and I didn’t want to ask Carmen for your number. I forgot the name of your charity, but I knew this was your resale shop. So I just came in, and if I didn’t see you, I was goin
g to ask about your organization and call you there.”

  Florence was hesitating by the cash register, and I said to Joy, “You remember Florence? You were in her house, the day Maida . . . was found. You came looking for Carmen and found her there.”

  “Oh, right. I didn’t recognize you at first. You’re the one who found Maida, that morning. Are you okay?” Something about the way Joy rushed the question told me she wasn’t really interested in how Florence was taking it. Something else was on her mind.

  “I’ll be fine,” Florence said. “It was a shock, but I’m getting over it. Thank you for asking.”

  “You don’t mind if I steal Taylor for a little while, do you?” Joy said with a phony cheeriness.

  “Not at all. I wasn’t even expecting to see her today.”

  “Oh? Then this must be my lucky day. There’s a coffee shop right next-door, isn’t there? Let me buy you a cup of coffee, Taylor.”

  The last thing I needed was another cup of coffee, but I was ready to hear whatever it was she wanted to say to me. Things were coming into focus fast. I had the feeling that all the facts were already before me, and now it was just a matter of stitching them up in the right order and then snipping off the things that didn’t matter. I had a very strong feeling that talking to Joy was the best way to begin.

  * * *

  Perks was having its mid-morning lull. There was only the owner, Ronnie Hart, behind the counter, and across the café were three college students, two women and one man, talking quietly over an open laptop. They were in their own little world, and Joy and I took a table a comfortable distance away from them.

  “You’ve lived in Tropical Breeze for a long time, haven’t you?” Joy began briskly.

  “Over thirty years.”

  “So you know everybody pretty well. It’s a typical small town, right? There are the insiders, who have lived here a long time, and the outsiders – vacationers and snowbirds, escaping the weather up north. Aside from loving the tourist dollars of the outsiders, there’s not much real contact between the two groups, is there?”

  “I like to think we’re a friendly town. We have all the charm and warmth of the traditional American South.”

  She smiled a tight, impatient smile, and moved her hand slightly to wave that away. “But you don’t share the local gossip with outsiders.”

  “Why would they even be interested?”

  “I mean, you don’t share any of the local gossip with just anybody, even with people who live here, if they haven’t been here for that long.”

  I regarded her quietly while I took a sip of the foam atop my cappuccino.

  “You’re the only local I’ve really met so far,” she said in a rush. “You know, the kind of person who would be in the know.”

  “You know Carmen.”

  “Well, I can’t ask Carmen.”

  “Ask her what?”

  ‘What’s going on about Maida.”

  “I’m sorry, Joy, but I’m not privy to the death investigation on Maida.”

  “I don’t care about that,” she said irritably. “I mean about what’s going to happen now. You know what I mean. Grant’s estate. His studio. The artwork he left behind, unfinished. Nobody’s been allowed inside his studio since he died except for Maida, and I’m not even sure she went in there. Who’s going to have the right to go in there now? Carmen? Or will the court appoint some stranger, like an art appraiser?”

  “Why do you think I’d know something like that?”

  “Because all the Tropical Breezers know things like that. It’s a small town. Everybody knows everything, especially if it’s none of their business. You do know, don’t you?” She made a move closer to me across the tiny table. “It’s everything to me, Taylor. I need to know, before I go out of my mind. What’s going to happen to the things in Grant’s studio? You know, there’s some of my own work locked up in there, too, and I haven’t been able to get at it, and it just seems so unfair. It’s my own stuff! When am I going to be able to get it? Carmen just keeps telling me we have to wait for the lawyers to work it out, but she seems awfully smug about it. She knows – I’m sure she does – but she just won’t tell me.”

  “Well, you’re right about the Tropical Breeze grapevine, but it’s not that efficient,” I said. I was not about to betray Michael’s trust, and besides, he only knew what his legal friends had told him, not what the probate court was going to decide. “As a matter of fact, the grapevine hasn’t come up with any information about that yet. It’s far more interested in whodunit and why. What do you think? Why would anybody have wanted to kill Maida?”

  Joy sniffed and said, “Because they knew her. Anybody who really got to know Maida would end up wanting to kill her. I know I did.”

  “Why? You couldn’t have known her that well. She was just the wife of your teacher and the mother of your roommate.”

  “He was more than just my teacher. I told you that.”

  “Right. He was your mentor. And . . . you loved him.”

  “If you knew him, you loved him. I guess it was the same as with Maida, only the opposite.”

  “And he loved you.”

  She gazed at me without answering.

  “He was an artist,” I said. “I understand that. They have a different perspective on the world. I once heard an artist say that as he was learning to draw, he was learning to see, and that once he was able to see, there was nothing in the world that wasn’t beautiful, and no face that was ugly. And nobody needs to be an artist to see that you are beautiful, Joy. You’re young and eager and talented. At the very least, he loved you for your beauty, but you also had talent.”

  As I spoke, her eyes glazed over with tears, and when I stopped she looked down and wiped quickly across her eyes with trembling fingers.

  Then she looked up, her eyes shining. “Sure. You’re right. Everybody knew. He loved me. I loved him. Those nights when he slept at the studio because he’d worked too late and didn’t want to drive back to St. Augustine, he wasn’t sleeping alone. Those were our nights. Maida knew. She didn’t even care, as long as he kept producing art that kept her at the top of the food chain in the right circles. She used him. I loved him. And I drew breath from him, I drew life. Every moment I was with him, I was growing. Maida spent most of her life with him, and she never managed to learn a thing from him.”

  “And right up until the end, he was your mentor, with so much left to teach you.”

  “That’s right. Right up until the end.” She said it with unnecessary force, as if she were trying to convince herself.

  “How old were you when you first became his student?”

  “When he first recognized my talent? He came to my high school and gave us what my art teacher grandly called a master class. I think he singled me out then.”

  I nodded. At the time, when Joy was a teenager, she must have looked exactly the way Maida had when he’d married her. I cradled my cappuccino cup and didn’t make any comment.

  “I had been working in oils at the time, and Grant was still doing some paintings back then. That was the subject of the class, but he was already beginning to break out of that medium. He finally made the full transition into sculpture while I was at college, and right away he began to make a name for himself. And it was in college that I gravitated to metal sculpting and casting. You see? We were transitioning together, even while we were apart. When I got my BFA – ”

  “Your BFA?”

  “Bachelor of Fine Arts. I attended the Art Institute of Chicago, but I always knew that Grant and I would come together again. I knew about the work he was doing, and I got in touch with him after graduation. He remembered me. After he reviewed my portfolio, he accepted me as his student. That’s when I moved here. I have an oceanfront condo just north of Daytona, but obviously I can’t work there. It’s just a pied-à-terre. In fact I’m beginning to wonder why I bothered to buy it. I never go there. My whole life has been between the two studios – Carmen’s and Grant’s.”<
br />
  “And only Carmen’s now, since you can’t get into Grant’s. It’s a good thing you started your current project at Carmen’s place. How did that happen, if you were working so closely with Grant at the time?”

  “I got the commission for this work just before he died. We were still going over my plans for the work together when . . . I suddenly lost him.”

  “He must have been proud, to have a student of his get such an important commission so early in her career.”

  “Oh, he wasn’t all for it, really. He kept looking at my drawings and saying he couldn’t find the soul within it. That’s when he called it a trebuchet – a war machine. He didn’t understand my concept, for once. We had long discussions about soul vs. environment. My stance was that Peace is a representation of environment. He kept saying every work of art should have a soul. Those were wonderful nights, talking and talking, getting into the guts of the thing. I miss that more than anything else about him – just talking to him. And then, suddenly, when I was ready to get to work, he was gone.” She was stock-still for a moment, then she gathered herself up. “That’s when I contacted Carmen about renting workspace from her. The project needed to go forward.”

  “I see. How many other students did Grant have over the years you knew him?”

  “Not many. Once his work started selling well, he wanted to focus on his own projects. Back when I started with him there were two other students, but they were in and out. At the time of his death, it was just the two of us. Just him and me. Somehow, we were a perfect team.”

  “How long does a student usually remain with a teacher?”

  “There’s no time limit. As long as you continue to grow with your instruction, you stay with your master.” She gave me a look and said, “People who aren’t in the arts don’t understand. I know what you’re thinking. That it was just about sex.”

  My eyebrows went up and I started to deny thinking anything that graphic, but she wouldn’t let me. She kept right on talking.

  “Sex is an artform too, you know. But in and of itself, it doesn’t matter. It’s simply acting out. What matters is the inner bond that is expressed by the sex act.”