Painted Truth

by Lise McClendon

  He tried to say something. His lips twitched, then his eyes closed. I panicked. “Go get an ambulance!” I shouted at Eden, kneeling on the other side of him, weeping. “Quick, run to the highway!”

  But I had forgotten about Pete. Eden rose to her feet, ready to run but on the verge of hysteria. Pete stepped up to her. “Stay where you are. Get in the car, Eden.”

  “You killer! Murderer! How could you do this?!” She screamed, flailing at his chest. She lurched forward, catching Pete off guard as she scratched his face. She was no match for him. Pete outweighed her by a hundred pounds. But Eden was mad, and she clung to him, pulling and clawing while he tried to get her off. They moved around the Saab toward the river, Pete swearing, Eden screaming.

  I watched Paolo’s chest for breathing. The movement was very slight, but still there. My hands had disappeared into a puddle of blood on his abdomen, drenching his best gray flannel slacks. Later I would always remember his clothes, his black Italian shoes dusty with road grime, his exotic Swiss watch that never stopped, even the five o’clock shadow that graced his strong jaw. The fine, sweet line of his lips and his mink-dark lashes.

  Pete shook Eden loose in the shadow of a fir that stood on the high bank above the river. She groaned, rolling to the ground. Lying on her back, she came up on her elbows, grimacing until she saw Pete’s gun.

  “Pete, don’t. It’s me,” she cried.

  “Yeah, you. Worthless twat.” He raised the gun a little more, aiming for her chest.

  “Please, Pete. I—I—I won’t tell. Honest.” Tears streamed down her face.

  He laughed. Starting with a small chuckle, he looked down the barrel of his gun and laughed at her. That laugh was what got me. I was kneeling only twelve or fifteen feet behind him, trying to keep my friend alive. Life came and went so casually, on a whim. Before I could think, my blood was in my ears again and I was on him in the kind of football tackle that my big brother used on me all the time, an ankle strangle.

  Pete toppled toward the river, still laughing, then making a gulping, drowning noise. His arms began to windmill wildly, out of control. His legs slipped out of my bloody grasp. The gun went off as he fell, tumbling down the steep bank. Head over heels, over weeds and wildflowers and boulders, flailing, bones against rock. The gun was knocked from his hand as he bounced off three trees before coming to rest fifty feet down on the sand.

  Eden pulled me up and clung to me as we watched him. He lay at an awkward angle, facedown, a leg and arm pinned under him, the others sprawled. We waited for him to get up. But he was still.

  Over my shoulder Paolo wasn’t moving. I ran to him, cradling his head in my bloody hands. His eyes were closed, his deep, black eyes, hot with the passion of life.

  “It’s over, Pao. Stay with me.” I leaned down and kissed his forehead. “Stay, love.”

  His eyelids fluttered. “Alix,” he whispered. “Mañana.”

  I closed my eyes, laying my cheek on his. Eden began a wail that expressed all the regret, all the pain, all the grief deep in my Nordic heart.

  22

  THERE WAS NO wind. The sky was azure, perfectly clear. The scent of flowers from bouquets and roses blooming nearby hung in the air. Behind us the Tetons scraped the blue, pyramids of granite carved by glaciers. So close you could reach out and touch them. Tombstones for the prairie. Their silence, their permanence, comforted me in an odd, irrational way that I would always remember and associate with the spirit of my friend.

  My dark-haired Thor, who faced death for me. There was nothing rational about Paolo’s death. Of all of us involved in Pete Rotondi’s twisted scheme, he was the least likely. He had nothing to do with it except through me. Of course, I blamed myself. If not for my incessant curiosity and snapping-turtle sense of justice, Paolo would be alive. Justice seemed such a hollow motive today.

  Eden stood beside me, dressed in my black blazer and khaki pants. Her dark curls shone in the sun. On her face pain was a live thing to be tamed. How different we were. Her shoulders shook with sobs through the service, especially when she tried to sing a hymn.

  Paolo had specified in his will that he wanted to be buried here in Jackson. He had named me executor, among other things. I was left with the duties of selecting a plot at the local cemetery and making funeral arrangements. For the last three days I had few moments of rest, never more than an hour or two at a time. I had so much to do. And my dreams were not happy ones.

  Carl came down right after the shooting and was a comfort. One night I even told him so. It was hard to let him hold me in his arms; the pain seemed to multiply inside me at the touch of a male. But Carl persevered, and understood in his own way the unbearable pain of losing someone you love. I would have liked to have Carl Mendez here beside me under the Teton sky, but there was a murder in Missoula and he was needed.

  Only now that Paolo was gone could I admit to myself my unchanging fondness that burst into passion at times, and at other times, into boundless pleasure at his company. I remembered his apartment in New York that he had painted the color of the sea. I remembered sitting on a rock by Taggart Lake, kissing his salty neck in the wind. I remembered the feel of his fingers on my face. The realization of how deeply I cared for him, now when it was too late, made me crazy if I thought too long about it. So I concentrated on details, meetings with lawyers and undertakers, and kept the sink clean.

  Paolo’s mother and sister came from Costa Rica, where they had been living in exile. They were handsome women, just as he had been, with golden skin and long, dark hair. His mother, who had never come to Jackson until now, let silent tears run down her round face as she tugged on a black crocheted shawl. Death had come to many in their family before their time. But that was Argentina. She thought in America her boy was safe from crazy pistoleros.

  A priest Señora Segundo had found led the service. Paolo had not been a practicing Catholic, but she was. And I was more than willing to let her arrange things. I felt so very tired, standing in the still, silent cemetery with the bees humming in the field.

  As the priest droned on, some in English, some in Latin, my mind wandered. I thought about the man I knew as Pete Rotondi. The FBI identified him posthumously as Daniel Holland, a promising art student at the Rhode Island School of Design at the same time as Ray Tantro. He had dropped out of RISD and made a living in forgery, along with odd legitimate jobs. The FBI’s Art Unit in Chicago had already linked him to two other major forgery cases over the last fifteen years, maybe several more, it always being convenient to pin unsolved cases on dead guys.

  It was difficult to imagine the man I had dismissed as a dim-witted ski-and-kayak bum with a trust fund as a forger and killer. I had trusted my life to him on the river. I could think of that first debacle on the Snake impassively now, underwater in a panic, trying to roll. My nose still needed to be tweaked back into shape. But it didn’t matter. The vision of Paolo with his life oozing away before my eyes while I could do nothing—that feeling of helpless terror superseded all others. My enthusiasm for kayaking, what was left, had evaporated. When I thought of it, I thought of Pete and how much I hated what he had done to Paolo.

  In the stillness Ray’s voice from the dream came back. Everybody wants it. What did he want that we all wanted? Now I understood. Immortality. If only I could have it today for Paolo. But even heroes die. Thor taught me that once, years before. In case I’d forgotten, he’d taught me again today.

  Paolo’s sister, Luca, touched my arm. When I looked up I saw the service had ended. Paolo’s friends were milling in groups, holding each other. The turnout wasn’t large, not more than thirty or forty, but Paolo was well liked. A number of former girlfriends were in attendance, all blond, lissome, and teary.

  “Come to the house with us, please?” Luca was well educated and spoke decent English. Her mother did not, so Luca did all the talking for them. His sister was so pretty, so like him. “We make some dinner for everybody.”

  “That’s not necessary, Luca. W
e can just—” Just what? My mind was blank.

  “No, is made, all ready. Mama and me spend yesterday making traditional food. Paolo would like that,” she said earnestly.

  My eyes began to sting. I thought of my last meal with Paolo, and how it had felt like a last meal, how I had begun missing him that night. I hadn’t cried at the service, or all day, but it seemed there was a time each day that I couldn’t hold back the tears. It was unlike me to cry in public. I remembered my mother again, at my father’s funeral, dry-eyed and spine of steel.

  I took a breath. “Sure, okay.”

  I SPENT AS long as I had to at the supper. It was no Irish wake, no jovial recounting of the exploits of the departed. Just good food and lots of it, and plenty of shoulders to cry on. I couldn’t stand being in his house, seeing his things. His garden was at its peak, blue-violet delphiniums six feet tall, Shasta daisies in starry multitude, the empty stepping-stones. The only thing missing was Paolo. It didn’t help that he had left the house to me. I intended to remedy that by giving it to Luca and her mother. I didn’t want Paolo’s house where his spirit was everywhere, smiling as if nothing had happened.

  Nothing but a fire that started it all. The man in the fire was identified as a rodeo cowboy named Toby Dubs, who had disappeared from the circuit on July 23 after a rodeo in Worland. He was a drifter, no ties, family unknown, an acquaintance of Gil Taylor, the cowboy Pete had recruited to be Ray Tantro. Gil asked Toby to watch his place. Between Eden’s and Esther’s insurance and Wally and Pete’s profits, there was plenty of money at stake. Hiring Toby was only one of Gil’s mistakes.

  WHEN THE GALLERY reopened after the funeral, I took up my post as chief salesman to the masses with the enthusiasm of Job. But the funny thing was, I didn’t mind the tourists anymore. I cleaned up bloody noses and bubblegum, broke up marital spats, gave directions to the public rest room, and recommended more restaurants than you could shake a stick at. Sold some art too. And it felt good. I missed Paolo awfully but was too busy to dwell on it. If I did, I cleaned. Second Sun Gallery had never been cleaner. But the strangest thing was I enjoyed it. All of it. It was as if Paolo’s love of the great, unpredictable mishmash of humanity had been left behind like a suit of clothes for me to try on for size. The clothes may not have fit, but they were warm. Comforting and warm like an old friend.

  

  Read more about Alix Thorssen in Nordic Nights and Blue Wolf. An excerpt of Lise McClendon’s suspense novel Blackbird Fly is one forward click away. Enjoy!

  BLACKBIRD FLY

  1

  On the day Harold Strachie died New York City struggled to slough off the lingering chill of winter and he struggled with his spare tire. Twenty pounds had crept up on him, without his consent. He gulped down the usual double-double espresso to get the juices flowing. The early morning was dark and echoing, his only company garbage trucks and young people jogging, their feet slapping the sidewalk, oblivious to middle age.

  Getting fit was a bitch. Walking from the train or subway was the extent of his exercise up until now. The extra pounds made Harry feel old at 54, someone who had lost control of his own fate. He refused to let his champagne belly keep him down. He would be muscular, strong, a master of his universe. Confidence was everything.

  He’d spent the night in the City as he often did when his deals were soft. For several hours before the markets opened he would work while the office was quiet, researching trends and companies, so he was ready to pounce. But he didn’t feel too cat-like climbing the seven flights of stairs to his office, his new daily workout. He stopped on each landing to catch his breath.

  In the empty lobby, he fumbled for the light switch and swayed on his feet, woozy. Cold sweat ran into his collar. He blinked, hung up his coat, and sat down. If he’d had a picture of his family on his desk, which he didn’t, he would have picked it up. His boy — so smart and tough and, yes, awkward at 15, but he’d grow out of that and be better for it. And his darling girl who looked so much like him with dark curls and mournful eyes. He wished he’d stolen into her bedroom this morning and ruffled her sweet hair.

  A horrible squeeze of his chest made him grab his shirt. He gasped, waiting. As the tightness eased, he saw his daughter again, ten years from now, in makeup and mini-skirts and all her innocence lost, and he felt the pain again, harder.

  Black spots floated before his eyes. He sat back in his chair, trying to relax. Christ, this wasn’t good. He shouldn’t have had that espresso. If this was heartburn he’d be buying antacids.

  The squeezing lessened. He’d get an appointment with his doctor for later in the week. He could already see the smirk on the doctor’s face when he told him to stop being such a nervous nelly. A moment of calm. The office quiet was soothing. He took a light breath and blew it out.

  Harry clicked on his computer. As the reports streamed in he clicked through prices, checking analysis. The sweat on his forehead began to dry. Just another day, he thought. Then, the last, the worst — the pain seized him again, and the black spots grew and merged into one.

  2

  When something shatters, when whatever you’re attached to ends, definitely, the moment rises up like it’s been hanging there for years, a lead balloon waiting to drop with a heavy thud into your life. All that living leading to this exact moment in time. Where has fate been hiding? Doesn’t matter. Here it is. Here it is, by God.

  Merle stared at the phone, heavy, institutional beige. She’d arrived at the Legal Aid offices in Harlem a few minutes before. She was still wearing her boots. She hadn’t touched her coffee.

  He was dead. Harry. Husband. Deceased.

  She felt the air move around her, solemnly, gently, as if she was a pile of ash a strong breath might blow away. Outside her office voices filtered in, the chatting of colleagues, the insistent tone of an angry client evicted from her apartment. The sounds grounded her, the endless litany of troubles to be untangled, emotions to be soothed, hands to be held. Just the name Legal Aid — aid was so basic, so important in this hard world — made her warm.

  Here she was necessary. Here she did good in the world.

  Her little world, so ordered and sane. Her nest, every twig in place. The selfless lawyer, fighting for the homeless and disenfranchised. The charity work on her days off, boring or annoying at times but always fulfilling in the end. Tomorrow there was another luncheon, a benefit for African orphans organized by her sister. Francie was so excited about the celebrities, a baseball player, a talk show host, that she had lined up.

  No luncheon now. Merle knew she should make a list of what tomorrow would look like but the murmur of the office captivated her, the buzzing like a hive, as if she’d never really listened before, never felt the ordinary blessing of her colleagues and their routine.

  “Merle?” One of the law fellows stood in front of her with a quizzical look on her face.

  The receiver was still in Merle’s hand, making a noise. Laura took the phone and replaced it on the cradle. Merle swallowed, frowned, and stood up.

  “I have to go.”

  “Oh,” Laura said, fluttering the way young people did. When had she started thinking of new graduates that way? “Your appointments? Mrs. Elliot is waiting, then — ” She stopped, seeing Merle’s face. “Sorry. I don’t need to tell you that.”

  “I’m sure you can handle them, ” Merle said, putting her coat back on. It was still damp with morning rain. “I have an emergency. I must go.”

  “Oh,” Laura said again. “Can I help?”

  Not unless you can bring a man back from the dead.

  Of her four sisters, the one she wanted at the hospital was Annie. It was sad, really, that Stasia was her second choice because she was so strong and capable. A magazine editor these days — not the lawyer she’d trained to be but no one blamed her for that — and damn good at it. An organizer, a do-everything gal. She and Merle lived close together in Connecticut but they were so different. Merle and Annie, her oldest sister, shared a
n intangible something. In this emergency Merle never thought of Francie or Elise; they were younger and if she had to say so, a bit shallow, despite going to Whitman Law like their older sisters. Someday they would lean on Merle, the middle child. They would need her like she needed Annie. But Annie lived too far, in western Pennsylvania. You had to be practical.

  Stasia came, promptly, and held Merle until she didn’t want to be held. Dried her tears, called everyone. She made the lists that stubbornly jumbled up in Merle’s head. She was so efficient.

  In the end Stasia arranged the funeral, wrote the obituary, talked to everyone for Merle. Arranged flowers, watered flowers, threw away flowers. Arranged meals, heated up meals, threw away meals. And so, when it was time, two weeks later, for the visit to Harry’s lawyers to hear his will, there was no question which sister went with Merle.

  Deep rugs, old oak, leather-bound tales of mishaps and bad decisions and the appalling nature of life: The Law Office. With eyes closed Merle caught the smell of the time crumbling, the fruitlessness of human endeavor, of — mortality. Well, it was on her mind.

  In the law you could change lives, you could make a difference. You learned the rules then you bent them. But justice was a slippery devil. Hard to quantify, impossible to hang on to. She concentrated on the endless rows of dusty books, not justice, searching the shelves for the earliest court records. New York District Court, 1878. Harry’s lawyers, and his father’s before him, were a very old, very white-shoe firm, not unlike Byrne & Loveless, firm of her misguided youth.

  Harry. She couldn’t stop thinking about him, now that he was gone. Trying to remember little things, it was hard. She hadn’t really noticed him recently, besides his dry-cleaning and a cocktail party or two. She stared at his suits in his closet, lined up the oxfords he would never wear. He wasn’t in the best of shape, never had been, with that paunch and double chin. He hadn’t told her but apparently he had a plan to get healthy by exercising, or at least climbing stairs.