Palatino for the Painter

by Jessa Archer

  Cassie laughed. “You’re thinking of hiring me to run a coffee bar? I’ve never even touched an espresso machine, so you might want to reconsider that whole miracle thing. How many employees would we have?”

  Dean smiled, and his entire face lit up like a Christmas tree. I think it might have been her casual use of the word we, which made it clear that she was giving his proposition serious consideration.

  “Just you at first,” Dean said. “Although we may need to pull in a teenager to help during the season, especially with the gaming section.”

  Cassie looked across the table. I could tell from her startled expression that she’d pretty much forgotten Wren and I were even here. The light in her eyes dimmed, and I knew she was remembering about Tanya. Maybe feeling a little guilty about being excited about this when we were still feeling bruised. That was silly, though. We weren’t even supposed to be talking about it to anyone yet. And unlike Patsy, Dean didn’t seem to have his ears to the grapevine.

  Dean must have noticed Cassie’s change of mood, because he quickly added, “You don’t have to answer right now. Just think about it, okay?”

  I reached across the table and squeezed Cassie’s hand. “It sounds like it’s right up your alley, hon.”

  Wren agreed. “If you’re going to stay in Thistlewood, I doubt you’ll find anything else that would be as perfect for you. And I just realized that I need to take off.” She pushed her partially eaten pie aside. “The two of you talking about books reminded me that I still need to pick up the ones I bought at the estate sale.”

  I told Wren that I’d cover her pie and coffee, and once she was gone, I said, “I really need to get back to work, too. Just take the Jeep home. You can pick me up later or I’ll catch a ride with Ed.”

  Patsy arrived with the four plates that contained Dean’s cholesterol extravaganza and, at my request, fished my check out of her apron pocket. As I headed off to the cash register, Cassie and Dean were already talking about the new venture again, and I smiled. I hadn’t seen her that excited about anything in a long time, even though she was trying to play it a little bit cool in front of Dean.

  As usual, there was a line at the register. An elderly couple was just finishing up, and the two brothers I’d noticed earlier were ahead of me. The younger one was looking at something on his phone, which reminded me that I might as well check my emails while I was waiting.

  “Do not text her, Jack,” the older boy said. “I’m serious. They probably just got to Cherokee, and we’re not going to hear the end of it from Dad and Aunt Carrie if they have to turn around and come back to deal with this.”

  “I just keep seeing it,” the younger one said as they paid their bill.

  The logo on his T-shirt clicked then. Buckeye Nation. Ohio State. Ed had said that the boys were from Ohio, and I had a good idea what it was the kid couldn’t stop seeing.

  I walked back over to our booth and handed the check to Cassie, along with some cash. “Can you take care of this please? I need to run.”

  And I kind of did need to run, since they were already heading out the door toward the parking lot.

  “Hey,” I called out. “Wait up!”

  They turned around, and the older one frowned. “What? We already paid. I even left a tip.”

  “No. I don’t work here.” I held out my hand. “I’m Ruth Townsend.”

  “Rich Smith,” he said, ignoring my hand. “This is Jack.”

  Pulling my hand back down to my side, I said, “I own the newspaper here in town. The Thistlewood Star. I was just down at the river, and then I couldn’t help but overhear you two talking a moment ago—”

  Rich’s frown turned into an all-out scowl. “No comment. We’re not talking to you.”

  “Please, it’ll just take a minute.” I gave him my best smile, but it didn’t make a dent. Mentioning that I was a reporter had clearly been a mistake.

  Rich opened the driver’s-side door of his truck and got in. “We already gave our story to the sheriff, and we’re not repeating it. Get in, Jack.”

  Jack opened the door as his brother started the truck. The engine was loud, and I had to yell to be heard over the roar. “I knew her, okay? She was my friend.”

  When his younger brother hesitated, Rich said, “C’mon, Jack. Now.”

  Jack did as he was told, and they roared out of the parking lot, kicking up a fine spray of dust and gravel in their wake.

  Well, I thought, that could have gone better.

  ✰ Chapter Six ✰

  I’d just uploaded the pictures I took at the river to the images folder at the Star’s website when I glanced up and saw Steve Blevins in dark aviator sunglasses, watching me through the plate-glass window of the Star’s front office. I cocked my head to one side and stared back until he opened the door and stepped inside.

  “Townsend,” he said.

  “Blevins,” I replied. “Are you here for a reason or just trying to brighten up my day with your sparkling personality and witty conversation?”

  I was glad that the images were on the server now, since I was a little worried that Blevins might demand my camera, and maybe even my computer. That would be illegal, and I’d eventually get them back, but I really didn’t want to go through the hassle of hauling the county sheriff into court.

  Blevins took his sunglasses off, and I expected to see his trademark smirk. But he looked exhausted. His eyes were red, and while it might have been due to allergies, I was pretty sure he’d been crying. As much as I disliked the man, I felt bad for not realizing that finding Tanya in that car couldn’t have been easy for him, either. The Blevins family was definitely from-here. Our senior yearbook had included a kindergarten classroom photo from the mid-seventies with thirty-five bright, shiny from-here faces. Steve Blevins had been one of those faces. So had Tanya Blackburn. He might not have been as close to her in high school as Wren and I were, but he’d known her much longer. Probably even had a crush on her, since pretty much every guy I knew at Thistlewood High had been crushing on her at some point.

  Something in my expression must have shifted. Blevins looked away, seemingly uncomfortable with his vulnerability. In search of a distraction, his eyes fell on the box leaning against the brick wall.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “Just some artwork I bought this morning at Lucy McBride’s estate sale.” That wasn’t entirely true, since Cassie hadn’t been able to convince Kenneth to take my money. She said he’d seemed a little confused, but he insisted that his mom must have meant for me to have the paintings if my name was on the box.

  “They any good?” Blevins asked.

  “I bought them, didn’t I?”

  He gave a little point-taken nod, then sat down in the chair across from my desk. I really didn’t want to be petty, but that was Ed’s chair. When Ed visits, he heads straight for that chair, because my office is the last stop on the daily walk that he takes, rain or shine. He’s hurting by the time he gets here, and he sinks down into that chair with a major sigh of relief. And there’s little doubt in Ed’s mind that the person who put that hurt on him was Derrick Blevins, Steve’s then seventeen-year-old son. But family members had circled the wagons around the kid, including Blevins’s father-in-law, who was a county judge. Derrick had an ironclad alibi. Couldn’t have been him, or so they claimed.

  “What do you want, Steve? It must be something. You’re not in the habit of just dropping by to shoot the breeze. If it’s about the pictures I took, I already told you. I’m not going to publish anything inappropriate.”

  His shoulders slumped. “I know, okay? It ain’t about that. I need to ask you a favor.”

  I didn’t say anything. Just looked at him, waiting for him to go on. And yes, I was kind of enjoying his discomfort. It was petty, perhaps, but back in high school, Blevins had been the kind of guy who—despite having a cool car and good hair—had to ask a freshman girl to senior prom because the girls his own age were tired of him bragging about sexua
l conquests, most of which we knew hadn’t happened. One of which I personally knew for an absolute fact hadn’t happened. I guess he still had the cool car in a way, since he was the only one in the county who had SHERIFF on the side in big green letters and he could pull over any driver he wanted on the slimmest of pretexts. Time and karma had taken care of the good-hair situation, however, which is why you rarely see him without a hat.

  After a full twenty seconds of uncomfortable silence, he sighed. “Look, I’ll just get right down to it.”

  “Please do.”

  “Someone needs to tell Tanya Blackburn’s family that we found her car and we might have found her remains. I stress might have because we don’t know for sure. There’s a bit of a…complication.”

  “What sort of complication?”

  “A complication that I can’t explain right now,” he continued. “But that’s the angle this someone needs to approach this from—we might have found her body.”

  “And why on God’s green earth do you think that someone should be me?”

  He shrugged. “You were her best friend.”

  “One of them,” I said. “Given Wren’s line of work…”

  “Wren’s line of work is precisely why I’m not asking her.”

  Okay, he had a point there. If you’re going with the whole we-don’t-know-for-certain angle, Wren shouldn’t be involved. Funeral directors are generally only involved once you know. I suspected, however, that there were other reasons for his dismissal of Wren.

  “Why can’t you tell them, Steve?” I sat back in my chair, the leather blessedly cool against my bare neck. “Isn’t that part of your job?”

  “Yes. But you remember Bud, right?”

  “Tanya’s brother. Of course I do.”

  “Well, I’ve arrested him a few times. Mostly drunk and disorderly. Nothing too major…at least not yet. Needless to say, though, the family doesn’t care for me much.” He gave a short bark of laughter. “I’m not even sure they would open the door if they saw me coming up the driveway.”

  “And you think they’ll open it for me? I’m a reporter.”

  “But you”—he corrected with a point of his sunglasses—“are also a family friend.”

  That was stretching things more than a little. “I was Tanya’s friend.” I cleared my throat. “When Tanya went missing, I had a falling out with her mom.”

  “Why?” Blevins seemed genuinely interested, which struck me as odd. He’d never been the curious type, which was one reason, according to Ed, that Blevins was a lousy deputy and an even worse sheriff.

  “Because I was the only one, aside from Wren, who questioned their nonsense explanation that Tanya had skipped town. Everyone else just nodded their heads and bought the lie.”

  “Well, there was a reason for that. You hadn’t known her as long as most of us. Maybe you didn’t realize that Tanya had been talking about leaving Thistlewood since elementary school. She was going to—”

  “Nashville. Yeah, Steve. No duh. Tanya and I had been going through classified ads in the Nashville News-Journal for months, looking for apartments close to Vanderbilt. But leaving that aside, why would Tanya take her clothes but not her songwriting notebook? Why pack all of her clothes, even the ones she’d outgrown years ago?”

  He looked a little surprised at that, and I again mentally kicked myself for not realizing this thirty-two years ago. The sheriff back then, according to Ed, had been smarter than Blevins.

  “So yeah, I didn’t buy it,” I continued. “But no one listened.”

  “Okay. Okay, I get it.” Blevins dropped his hands into his lap. “But would you please do this for me, Ruth? I’m asking nicely.”

  I almost laughed, and I guess he could tell he was losing traction, because he quickly shifted to a different strategy.

  “Fine. Do it for Tanya, then. Do you really want the news getting back to her family next time they walk into the diner, or on freaking Facebook, for crying out loud?”

  He had a point. I also didn’t want them finding out from the article and photos I’d be publishing online shortly. I sighed. So did Blevins, but he knew he had won.

  “When?”

  “It needs to be soon,” he said. “We’re trying to keep everything as quiet as possible. I haven’t even let them haul the car to the impound lot yet. There’s no way to get there without going through town, and Tanya’s plate on the front was…unique.”

  “It’s also removable.”

  “Not after thirty-two years at the bottom of Freedom River.” He started for the door. “I owe you one, Ruthie—”

  I’m pretty sure he was about to add the word baby. That was his standard snarky name for me back in the day…Ruthie baby or that tired old standby, Babe Ruth. Luckily for him, he caught himself in time because I was already reaching for the stapler on my desk and wondering if I could throw it hard enough to hit him in the back of the head before the door closed. I mean, it wasn’t as if he could arrest me.

  Not if he wanted me to do him a favor.

  After he left, I reluctantly closed the laptop and flipped the sign on the office door to closed. It was only about a ten-minute walk from here to the Blackburn house. I had to walk past Wren’s Memory Grove Funeral Home to get there. If she was looking out the window, she’d probably wonder why I didn’t stop. But I knew that if I did stop, she’d probably say this wasn’t something I should have to do on my own. And I’d have been sorely tempted to let her come along, since I really, really didn’t want to do this.

  When I reached the Blackburn house, I walked up the stone pathway and raised my hand to knock on the blue door, just as I’d done so many times as a teenager. My knuckles were about to make contact when the door was suddenly yanked open.

  The change in Sally Blackburn was breathtaking. Her hair, always wrapped in a tight bun behind her head, was almost entirely gray now, and her face was heavily lined, especially around her mouth. I thought it very likely that she’d taken up smoking over the past three decades.

  “Mrs. Blackburn,” I said, “it’s Ruth Townsend.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I know who you are, Ruth. I may be old, but my mind is still sharp. What do you want?”

  I took a deep breath of the hot, muggy air. “I just need to speak with you for a moment. Won’t take long.”

  She stepped aside. “Come on in, then. No point in me air-conditioning the whole dang neighborhood while you speak your piece.”

  Entering the Blackburn house was like stepping through a time machine. Nothing, as far as I could tell, had changed, aside from the lighting. It seemed much dimmer than I remembered, but that was probably because the curtains were drawn, despite the fact that it was a bright sunny day. Two rather wimpy lamps burned on either side of the living room sofa, which separated the living room and dining room. I stopped and placed my hand on the floral print fabric. I could be wrong, but I’d swear it was the very same couch.

  When I closed my eyes, I saw Tanya. We’d been goofing around one day when I’d stayed over. I’d been sitting sideways on the couch with my feet up. She came running downstairs and flipped over the back of the sofa, intending to end up next to me. But she’d pushed off a little too hard. Her bottom skidded off the cushion, and she’d landed on the carpet with a soft thud and a scream of laughter.

  I opened my eyes and blinked away tears. Mrs. Blackburn was now seated on the sofa, in the same spot I’d been all those years ago. It was all a little too much, and for a moment, I just stood there, swaying on my feet.

  “Don’t just stand there. Sit down.”

  The words were congenial enough, but the tone wasn’t friendly in the slightest.

  “This is about Tanya, isn’t it?” she said as soon as I sat at the opposite end of the couch. “I can’t think of any other reason you’d be here. Going to do a story on her? See if there are any more skeletons in people’s closets you can unearth like you did with Edie Morton?” She raised her eyebrows sarcastically at me.

  I
ignored the jab and asked, “Is Bud here, Mrs. Blackburn?”

  “It’s Sally,” she said, waving her hand dismissively in the air. “If I think there’s something Bud needs to hear, I’ll be sure to pass it along. So whatever you’ve got to say, spit it out.”

  What was it with mothers in this town trying to control their full-grown sons’ lives? I was tempted to remind her that if Edith had let Clarence out from under her thumb a bit, the skeletons she’d been hiding might have stayed safely buried. She might even still be alive. But I suspected that Mrs. Blackburn wouldn’t appreciate my unsolicited advice.

  Fine, then. I would do as I was told. I would just spit it out.

  “Tanya’s car was found in the river today.”

  Sally Blackburn’s expression didn’t change, but her entire body went rigid. Her hands were white and clenched next to her on the sofa.

  “Where?” she croaked.

  “Down near Jolly’s Marina. A couple of teenagers were snorkeling, and they found the car. It’s definitely her car. I recognized the novelty tag.”

  “B TYLER,” she said absently.

  I nodded. “But they haven’t identified the body yet. They’re taking the remains to a lab in Knoxville to be identified. The car is definitely hers, but it might not…be her.”

  As much as I tried to sound hopeful, the words sounded utterly ridiculous, especially coming from me. I was the one who had been worried all those years ago, that something like this had happened. Who had refused to believe the happy little fiction that Mrs. Blackburn tried to sell me.

  The woman was completely silent, staring at something invisible on the carpet. A good thirty seconds ticked by, while I waited for her to say or do something. She looked brittle, and I had the strangest sense that anything I said might shatter her into a million jagged bits.

  Finally, when I simply couldn’t bear the silence any longer, I said, “Are you okay, Mrs. Blackburn?”

  “It’s Sally,” she screamed, leaping to her feet. “Sally. Sally. Sally.”