The Color of Wounds

by Frank Martorana

  “A few. But why would they blow up the Covington statue?”

  “I’m just looking for weird angles.”

  “Of course,” Kent said.

  There was a long break in the conversation. Finally, Kent asked, “So where do we go from here?”

  MacKinnon slowly pushed himself up out of his chair, signaling an end to the meeting. “We mostly wait and see what happens.”

  Kent looked at Merrill. “That sounds familiar.”

  MacKinnon gave him an understanding look. “Yeah, well, the one thing we will be doing is trying to find the blond lady.” He hesitated, then said, “You know, it wouldn’t surprise me if we never see or hear another word from whoever it is. Lots of times after nuts like this have stirred up some trouble, done their ego thing by making the cops scramble, they crawl back under their rocks and are never heard from again.”

  Kent gave him a dubious look. “You really think so?”

  MacKinnon didn’t look too sure. “We can hope?”

  “You know what you should do for now, Kent?” Merrill said.

  “What?”

  “Go home and get a shower.”

  CHAPTER 17

  The cottage sat next to the mansion house at VinChaRo Farm. Although it was dwarfed by the mansion, it was a substantial two-story Victorian in its own right, with crisp white clapboards, several gables, and a wraparound veranda. It was reserved for VinChaRo’s manager. That was Aubrey Fairbanks.

  Aubrey and Barry had lived there since they moved to Jefferson. Kent frequently pointed out that the two of them rattled around in the place and that Pine Holt, his home, could easily accommodate two more. Each time, Aubrey refused his offer. He knew she was committed to him, but she was also fiercely independent, and having her own place was a big part of that. Kent respected her choice, so they rationalized it. It was more convenient for Aubrey to live close to the horses she was so dedicated to.

  Earlier in the day, Kent had run into Barry in one of the CVC’s treatment rooms. Barry was holding a sad-eyed beagle that wanted to be someplace else while one of the doctors stared into its sore-looking ear with an otoscope.

  “You guys doing anything for dinner tonight?” he asked, when the dog offered a moment’s cooperation. “Mom’s been a nervous wreck ever since yesterday’s backpack bust. I think she could use some company.”

  Kent ignored the snickers from doctors and techs within earshot. For him it was an easy call. He and Aubrey had both been crazy busy, and he was ashamed that their only discussion of the incident had been over the phone. Not cool. Barry had given her a blow-by-blow description of what happened, and seeing Barry with her own eyes had reassured Aubrey that her son was fine—but Kent should have been there, period.

  “Sounds great to me. I’ll check with Em. If she hasn’t got something going, she’ll want to be included, I’m sure.”

  “Okay, cool.”

  “Do you know if your mom’s cooking?”

  “This morning she mentioned something about catch-as-catch-can. As usual, she’s going crazy with all the foals. She doesn’t have time for much else.”

  “Tell her I’ll pick up some wings for us and something green for her, and we’ll be over. She’ll have one less thing to worry about.”

  “Nice. See you later,” Barry managed to say as he spun to grab the beagle who had decided enough was enough and was attempting to jump off the table.

  It was long past the usual dinner hour when they all finally made it to Aubrey’s kitchen. Kent, Emily, and Barry sat around the table, ripping apart chicken wings like hyenas on a kill. Aubrey, the gazelle, grazed from a bowl overflowing with mixed greens. She was long past being judgmental. She had come a long way since her radical animal activist days. And so had Kent.

  They chatted, as families do, about what each was up to. Of course, Barry’s run-in with the police was the hot topic. Thankfully, he kept it light. As they were finishing off a carton of sherbet, Barry made an announcement.

  “You guys have to come into the TV room and see the game I invented.”

  Emily’s face creased into a dubious expression. “What kind of game?”

  “With the kittens,” he said.

  As a major concession to her once adamant objection to pet ownership, Aubrey had allowed Barry to bring two orphan kittens in from the horse barn. The original plan was for them to be returned to the barn when they were old enough, but that was eight months ago and now, neutered, vaccinated, and housebroken, they seemed like pretty permanent fixtures.

  Barry rounded up his two feline co-stars while the others took seats for the show. Lucinda focused on the kittens, ears perked. When everyone was set, Barry flipped off the lights with dramatic flair. “Now watch this,” he said. He snapped on a flashlight and beamed it at the baseboard on the far wall. Like bullets the two kittens bolted toward the spot of light, but Barry shifted the beam to the arm of Emily’s chair, and with the sound of toenails grabbing for traction, the kittens wheeled toward Emily. Just as she screamed, Barry moved the light again, redirecting his duo over the coffee table and across the wood stove, which, to Kent’s relief, was cold. A lamp tumbled. “Sorry, Mom,” Barry said, as he waved the beam in circles on the floor, kittens in hot pursuit.

  Lucinda ditched to the kitchen.

  “Turn that flashlight off,” Aubrey ordered. “That’s why this room has been such a mess lately.” She felt her way to the wall and turned on the room lights.

  Emily and Barry were in stitches. Kent was trying to maintain some parental dignity. It was definitely a funny stunt.

  “If you want to play that game, you take it outside,” Aubrey said. “You’re wrecking the house.”

  “Mom, it’s fun. And the kittens love it.”

  “Outside, I said. And you straighten this place up. Now.”

  Kent let a chuckle escape.

  Aubrey turned to him, gave him a thin-lipped glare, which, of course, made Emily crack up.

  “Both of you clean this up!” he said, smothering a laugh. “We’ll be in the other room and we’re going to inspect when you’re done.”

  Lucinda crept cautiously back into the room.

  When Kent and Aubrey had settled on the living room sofa with a cup of coffee, he said, “That really was funny the way the kittens went nuts for that light.”

  “Don’t you start again,” Aubrey warned, but she was smiling.

  Kent silently sipped his coffee and massaged Lucinda’s scruff. Finally, he said, “Barry told me you were really upset about what happened at the school and the CVC.”

  “Shouldn’t I have been?”

  “Of course, you had every right. Actually, it surprised me that you took it so calmly when I told you about it over the phone.”

  “It took a while to sink in. At first it was, ‘Thank God he’s safe.’ After that wore off, I got around to ‘Where the hell does this person get off endangering my kid?’”

  “If it makes you feel any better, today Merrill and I met with the state police detective assigned to our case. They’ve made some headway. You want to hear about it?”

  She topped up their coffee from an insulated pot. “I’ve had twenty-four hours to get my head around it. I suppose I’m ready.”

  “His name is Norm MacKinnon. He’s got the usual budget limitations and he’s short on personnel, but I think he’s doing a good job.”

  Kent told her about the plastic explosive theory and how they figured it was located up high, the disguised handwriting, and the blond woman seen at the school, and maybe the bomb site. He wanted to finish on an optimistic note, so he said, “MacKinnon figures there’s a good chance the creep who did this today will be satisfied with the chaos—you know, stirred up the police and the town. All that stuff. He says in a lot of cases like this they never hear another thing. Problem goes away all by itself.”

&nb
sp; “I don’t believe that. And I can tell from your tone, you don’t either.”

  He did not speak.

  Aubrey’s voice quivered. “This is my kid we’re talking about. My only kid. Nothing on this planet matters more to me. What if that were Emily?”

  “I’d never let anything bad happen to her. And I promise you I won’t let anything happen to Barry, either.”

  “You can’t promise that. The bomber knows Jefferson. He knows you. You can bet he knows you have a daughter. He obviously knows that you have a relationship with Barry. And if you try to tell me it was just coincidence that Barry was picked, I’ll scream.”

  She leaned her head against his shoulder and they were quiet. Kent thought she might be crying.

  Finally she sniffed, raised her head, and said, “Kids. They are worse than foals.”

  Kent didn’t laugh.

  After another stretch of silence, he said, “What would you think about moving over to Pine Holt for a while?”

  “No, I’m okay,” she said.

  “I had to ask.”

  She kissed his cheek. “I do love you, though.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  More silence.

  Eventually, Aubrey pushed herself to her feet.

  “Where are you going?” Kent asked.

  “Something came in the mail today with both our names on it. Looks like an invitation to something. I figured we could open it together.”

  She retrieved an envelope and handed it to Kent as she eased back down on the couch. It was smaller than legal size, good-grade paper with a brocaded flap typical of a wedding or graduation announcement.

  Kent glanced at it casually, then focused on the handwritten address. “Uh-oh.”

  Aubrey saw his face darken. “What’s the matter?”

  He turned it so she could see. “That looks like the handwriting on the Covington postcard.”

  She took it from him, looked closely. “Are you sure?”

  “I think so.”

  “Dr. Kent Stephenson and Ms. Aubrey Fairbanks,” she read their names aloud as if they had been stolen. Then she looked at him.

  “Should I open it?”

  “Yes, but get some gloves first. Just in case there’s something the police can use.”

  Aubrey pulled on a pair of dish gloves, then peeled back the flap and withdrew a picture postcard. She held it toward the light and stared at a quiet winter scene of the Ledyard Estate, Jefferson’s most famous historical site, home of the annual carriage driving competition. She flipped it over, read a short message, then handed it to Kent.

  “So you and Detective MacKinnon figure the creep is just going to go away. Explain that to me again.”

  Kent took the postcard with a napkin and read aloud the now familiar hen scratching: Since you did not take me seriously, I will give you another demonstration. Tomorrow, nine a.m., Ledyard Estate. Hold on to your hats.

  “Is he going to blow up the Ledyard Mansion?”

  Kent grabbed the phone at the end of the couch. “Not if I can help it.”

  When the chief answered, Kent filled him in and ended by looking at his watch. “It’s eleven o’clock now. We’ve got ten hours.”

  “I’ll call MacKinnon, and meet you there in twenty minutes,” Merrill said. “Don’t go inside.”

  “I’ll be out front.”

  Aubrey said, “You can add to your list that the son-of-bitch knows about you and me, my address, and the Ledyard Estate.”

  “I’m beginning to think it’s the mayor?”

  Aubrey stood up. “I’m going to check on the kids.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Kent pulled his Cherokee up the curved driveway of the Ledyard Estate, and parked in the pale illumination of a security light. He rolled down his window and listened to peepers in the pond behind the mansion ratcheting their approval of the damp night. The Ledyard Estate was the most historic of historic buildings in Jefferson, home of Thomas Ledyard, land baron extraordinaire—the man who came after Willard Covington and called the shots, often literally, as he amassed great wealth by stealing land from the heathen Iroquois and foisting white man’s values upon them. The people of Jefferson—more or less proud of Ledyard’s accomplishments—had seen to his estates’ restoration, and now it was on the state registry of historic sites.

  Its architecture was Federal style, three stories, stark in its perfect symmetry of windows and entry, roofs and chimneys, softened by a lawn full of ancient oak trees with trunks like barrels. There was a hexagonal widow’s watch dead center on top. The place reminded Kent of an Edgar Allan Poe setting. Not a sign of life. The LED on his dashboard glowed eleven-thirty. Merrill and the bomb squad would arrive soon.

  “Doesn’t look like something that’s about to explode, does it?” he asked Lucinda, and even though he had spoken softly, his voice was loud in the night.

  She stared out at the mansion sensing Kent’s nervousness. Night trips meant one of two things to Lucinda—emergency veterinary calls, or coon hunting. What were they doing here?

  He stroked her ears and soothed her by thinking out loud.

  “I bet I’ve been through that old place fifty times. Every history class made a field trip. They used to do an Early American Christmas thing that Mom would drag us to every year. Any time we had out-of-town company that we didn’t know what to do with, there was always the Ledyard Estate. Lots of memories.”

  His thoughts were interrupted by Lucinda’s soft bark. Kent turned to see Merrill’s black-and-white cruiser easing up the driveway. A step van with a police insignia on its side followed. He climbed out of the Cherokee to greet them.

  Merrill unfolded out onto the cinders in his usual slow, controlled way. He stared at the mansion as Kent had done.

  “That old place could tell a lot of stories.”

  “Yeah. Let’s see that it stays around to collect a few more.”

  Merrill kept his gaze fixed on the building. “I remember racing to be the first one up in the widow’s watch. Every boy in the class would run for it. Do they still let visitors up there?”

  “I think so. The only time I’m over here now is for the carriage driving competition. I think people are allowed to go up there then.”

  Merrill laughed softly in the dark. “Used to be pigeon shit all over the place. Remember that?”

  Before he could answer, Kent heard a door slam and looked over to see three men coming toward them from the van. One was MacKinnon, still wearing his trench coat. The other two policemen wore uniforms.

  “That it?” MacKinnon asked, pointing at the mansion.

  “That’s it.”

  MacKinnon panned the building, then sighed. “Big sucker. It’s going to take a while.”

  He was introducing the other two policemen when another set of headlights probed their way up the driveway.

  “That’ll be Nigel,” Merrill said. “I called him to let us in, get the lights on, and all that stuff.”

  Kent had known Nigel Hoffman, curator of the estate, since he arrived from a museum managing job in New York City twelve years ago. He also knew Nigel, likable a guardian as he was, would be a basket case over this whole thing.

  “Good,” MacKinnon said. “If you get everybody together, I’ll only have to explain things once.”

  Hoffman approached, jittery, ready for an explosion at any second. His tall frame was compressed, bent at the shoulders, long white fingers woven together across his chest. Kent knew he was in his fifties, but his effeminate face made him appear forty. He looked like he might cry.

  He kept repeating “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”

  “Take it easy, Nigel,” Kent said. He took the man’s hand and shook it firmly, hoping to calm him.

  Hoffman clasped Kent’s sleeve. “The mansion? Oh, my God. They’re going to
blow up the mansion?”

  “No, they’re not! That’s why we’re here—to stop them.”

  “It’ll be my fault. They’ll all blame me.”

  “Who? Who’ll blame you?”

  Nigel threw up his arms. “Everybody!”

  “Which is really nobody.”

  “Everyone in Jefferson. The historical society. I’ll go down in history as the one who lost the Ledyard Estate.”

  Kent blew out a breath. “Nigel, relax. This is not your fault. Besides, nothing is going to happen.”

  Hoffman’s eyes were wild. “They’ll hate me. It happened on my watch. The mansion has stood here for two centuries. It was my responsibility to keep it safe.”

  Kent spoke to the distraught caretaker with the tone he used on frightened horses. “Nigel, everyone realizes this is out of your control.”

  “A curator who loses his charge becomes a professional pariah,” Hoffman said. “No one asks why.”

  “You are not going to lose your estate.”

  Hoffman suddenly straightened, threw his shoulders back, and jutted his chin.

  “A captain goes down with his ship. A curator goes down with his museum,” he said, with a tone of deep resignation. “And so shall I.”

  He marched toward the mansion, head held high.

  Kent was glad the darkness hid his smile. “Hold on, Nigel,” he said and slid his arm across the man’s shoulder, turning him with a hip. “Maybe you better sit in your car for a while. Get yourself together. You can just give me the key.”

  Relieved of his self-imposed moral obligation, Nigel took a ring of keys from his pocket, sorted through them, and handed them to Kent by the one he’d selected.

  “East door. The main light panel is in the closet to the left.”

  As if going to the gallows, Nigel trudged to his car.

  “Wow. I’m glad he’s out of the picture,” MacKinnon said. “Let’s get started.”