by Tom Lowe
“Good, I don’t do any of those things very well.” O’Brien smiled. “My name’s Sean O’Brien. A man who owns an antique store in DeLand, Florida, gave me your contact information. Are you Ellen Heartwell?”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to talk with you briefly.”
“What about.”
“A painting.”
“What painting?”
“It’s one that was done around the time of the Civil War.” O’Brien opened the folder he carried and showed her a copy of the picture. “This old photo was donated to the Confederate Museum in Virginia, and no one knows the identity of the woman. The fellow who owns the antique store said he bought the matching painting from you. I was hoping you might know who this woman was…or maybe shed some light about the painting.”
“Is it still in his store?”
“No, it was sold, and we can’t locate the buyer.”
The woman looked away, her eyes following purple martins flying in and out of the gourds hanging from the pole near a massive live oak tree. “It was here at the house for a long time. This was my grandmother’s house. She passed last year. My husband and I moved in, it’s the way she wanted it, in her will and whatnot.”
O’Brien nodded.
“Anyway, Mike and I had to get rid of a lot of clutter. We took an ad out in one of those Civil war re-enactor magazines and had a garage sale of sorts. It’s amazing at how many people showed up. One man in particular was very angry we sold the painting. But it was first come, first serve.”
“Did he tell you his name or where he lived?”
“No, and I didn’t ask. Not after his snarky attitude. I’m glad he didn’t buy it. Grandma wouldn’t have approved.”
“What do yon mean?”
She smiled. “Grandma was a great person, she had a hard time letting go of stuff. Not that she was a hoarder, she just kinda had a personal relationship with her things…especially that old painting.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Grandma had always been active in the Daughters of the Confederacy. The Civil War was still fought, in spirited debates, when she and Granddaddy had family and friends over for a party, especially in the summer when the azaleas were in bloom. They’d grill a pig on a spit, drink beer—mint julep’s if it was near the runnin’ of the Kentucky Derby. It was after one of those parties when I first heard Grandma talking to the painting.”
“Talking?”
“Yes, and sort of listening too. I remember, even as a little girl, standing in the foyer and hearing Grandma speak to the painting like she was chatting with a real person. She’d even pause and carry on. Like I said, she had some kind of connection with the things she collected, especially that painting.”
“Was there anything written behind the painting, on the other side?”
“I don’t recall ever looking, and Grandma or my parents never mentioned it.”
“Any idea where your grandmother got the painting?”
“I believe she bought it from an estate sale many years ago. It came with some old magazines, Saturday Evening Post and Colliers. Grandma kept them stacked neatly in an armoire under the painting, and it hung on a wall near the fireplace for about as long as I can remember. I’d ask my parents if they were still alive. Mama might have known.”
“Did you ever glance through any of the old magazines?”
“Not that I can remember. Why?”
“Just curious.”
“I’m sorry, but I have to run. Mike and I are entertaining friends soon.”
“Okay, but one last question…do you know the name of the woman in the painting?”
She inhaled deeply, her eyes shifting back to the purple martins in flight. She exhaled and said, “I remember one time, I was about eleven…I believe Grandma had consumed a couple of glasses of wine. I hid in the foyer behind a tall vase when I heard her talking to the painting. She said the name Angelina. I never forgot that. So I always assumed that was the name of the woman in the painting, but I don’t know for sure. Oh, something else, she said the secret of the river would always be a family secret. I never knew what Grandma meant by that, and I never had the courage to ask her.”
O’Brien walked down L dock toward his boat, Jupiter, thinking about his conversation with Ellen Heartwell. He watched the setting sun begin to turn the Halifax River and inlet into an inland sea of sparkling copper, gold, and deep reds. The tide was receding, creating exposed sandbar islands in the bay, the brackish scent of mangrove roots blowing across the tidal pools from the soft nudge of a western breeze.
He walked past a twenty-year-old Hatteras that had a long string of Japanese lanterns draped and glowing over its cockpit. A woman’s laughter came from the open salon doors mixing with Willie Nelson’s singing of Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain on her indoor speakers.
O’Brien approached Nick Cronus’s boat, St. Michael, looking to see if Max was on the boat. Nick’s salon door was open, the scent of a crab boil—garlic and bay leaves, coming from the galley. O’Brien stepped onto the cockpit and stood by the screened-in open salon door. “Hey Nick, something smells great. Is Max on your boat?”
Nick stepped up from the galley, wearing a white apron, wooden spoon in one hand, a Corona in the other. He opened the screen. “She’s hangin’ with Dave. I had to run up to the store. I was outta Old Bay and garlic. I pulled forty pounds of crabs from my traps, sold thirty pounds, kept the rest for a couple of dinners. I’m shuckin’ oysters, too.” Nick was fresh from the shower; his dark hair combed back, moustache trimmed, and a bounce in his step. O’Brien picked up on it.
“You have company coming, Nick?”
“How’d you know?”
“St. Michael looks a little more…well dressed.”
Nick grinned, rolling his sleeves up to his beefy forearms. “Yeah, my old boat cleans up good, and I picked up the beer bottles. Her name’s Marlena. Met her at a flea market in Sanford. She was working the craft beer tent. Gotta love a woman who enjoys a fine brew. She said she really likes seafood. So, of course, I invite her to the best floating seafood restaurant in all of Daytona, and Ponce Inlet, my boat. She’s due here in about a half hour. Dave is coming over to get a bowl to go. You want some, too?”
“No thanks. Save it for your guest.”
“I have plenty in the pot. Always do, it’s the Greek way. Speaking of flea markets, how’d you do at the antique shop? Find the painting?”
Max barked. O’Brien turned around and watched her scampering across the dock, Dave following, the revolving beam from the Ponce Lighthouse making its first sweep of the night across the low-lying clouds. Dave inhaled deeply through his nose and grinned. “Ahhh, the aroma of a fine crab boil. Smells great, Nick.”
“I got blue crabs, stone crabs—but no she crabs.” Nick raised his arms like a maestro and laughed. “Lemme fix you fellas a couple of takeout bowls. Not that I don’t enjoy your company. Come in. Sean was just about to tell me how he did at the antique shop.”
Dave grunted. “Tell us the painting was there, and you have it.” He eased his frame down on a barstool.
Nick held up a paring knife and shouted, “Found a pearl! Hot damn! That’s a good sign.” He came up from the galley with a platter filled with shucked oysters in a bed of shaved ice. He set the platter down on his wicker coffee table and used a small fork to lift a bluish-white pearl from the tissue of a fresh oyster. “Look at that.” Nick grinned, his dark moustache rising. He held the pearl in the palm of his large hand. “A gift from Poseidon. I will re-gift it and give to Marlena…when the moment is right.” He winked. “Eat fellas. I squeezed fresh lemon juice, a dusting of white pepper, and a touch of tabasco over these babies.”
Dave chuckled and reached for the pearl. “Most people devour oysters for their alleged libido-enhancing properties. However, Nick finds a lucky charm, a perfectly round pearl, in the belly of the bivalve.”
Nick shook his head, eyes animated. “It’s not an alleged lib
ido pick-me-up. For centuries, the Greeks used this as their Viagra. Eating oysters with a beautiful woman was part of the mating ritual. The Greek way is no forks. Lips to shells, look the woman in the eye, together they suck in the oyster and instantly inspire the mouth on its way past the heart to stomach…to central station. That’s the libido, gents.”
Dave set the pearl in the center of a rubber coaster that read: Bottoms down here. He picked up a half shell, letting the oyster slide into his mouth. He closed his eyes, savoring the tastes. “Ah, Nicky…these are delicious. Come to think about it, goddess Aphrodite rose from the sea in the half shell of a mollusk. At this moment, let’s assume it was that of an oyster. Sean, you were about to update us on the painting. Was it in the antique shop?”
“It was there, at least at one time, but not now.”
Dave downed another oyster. “So you didn’t find it.”
“That’s correct. But I did find a trail, a rather cold one.” O’Brien told them what happened and then added, “The house and all its belongings was inherited by a granddaughter and her husband who began selling off what they considered to be leftover clutter, the painting being a good example. They sold it and a stack of old Saturday Evening Post magazines to the guy that owns the antique store in DeLand. He sold those months ago to a couple—man and a woman—who paid cash. No name. No address.”
Nick untied the apron and hung it on a hook in the galley. He said, “Cash is king at swap-shops and antique stores. It’s like bidding in an auction. The price for something old, and often not working, is what the collector is willing to pay for it. That stuff’s hard to track.”
Dave pushed his bifocals up and on his head. “Well, Sean, if you’ve reached a dead-end, maybe the option now is that your client can advertise in art or Civil War memorabilia magazines and blogs to see if someone has seen it. If he can find the buyers, in this case the unknown couple, maybe they’d be willing to sell. Excuse the pun, but perhaps the old painting is simply gone with the wind.”
O’Brien smiled. He slid the copy of the photograph from the folder and studied the picture. “The granddaughter, Ellen Heartwell, mentioned that her grandmother, a woman who was a long-time member of the Daughters of the Confederacy, used to stand in front of the painting, especially after a couple of glasses of wine, and speak to it.”
Nick’s thick eyebrows arched. “Whoa…so grandma’s having a conversation with the dead lady in the painting. I told you that thing might be cursed.” He ladled the hot crabs into two plastic bowls, popped on the tops, and set them on the bar. “Take out’s ready.”
Dave said, “Did the granddaughter indicate what the lady of the house said to the painting?”
“She overheard her say the secret of the river will always be their family secret.”
“What secret of the river?” Nick asked.
O’Brien looked down at the copy of the photo, the unidentified woman standing in the long white dress, a live oak near her, Spanish moss draping from its limbs, the expanse of a wide river in the backdrop, the woman beautiful—full smile, her eyes connecting beyond the lens of the camera—connecting with the photographer. “Whoever took this photo managed to bring out the spontaneity and inner beauty of this woman. Maybe whoever it was, he could have shared the secret of the river with her.”
Dave nodded. “But how would, decades later, the old woman who used to live in the house you visited today, know about that secret…whatever it was?”
O’Brien looked up from the photo to Dave and said, “Because something other than the painting must have been left behind.”
He waited for her. Waiting patiently. Sat in his truck parked on the side of the road in the dark and watched her house. The floodlights came on one corner of Kim Davis’ small home, illuminating her driveway. The man squinted in the night. Watching. And there she was.
Dressed in a bathrobe, rolling a garbage can to the end of her driveway. She did it every Thursday night. Like clockwork. Usually around 9:00. Same blue bathrobe. He watched her closely, his face hidden in the dark. The robe was loosely tied. It opened slightly as she rolled the can not far from her mailbox.
From the floodlights, he could see her body in silhouette under the robe.
She had a fine body. Sculpted from good genes. Good stock.
He felt and erection growing as she turned and walked back to her home.
And then the lights went out.
He waited a few minutes, shut off the dome light in the truck, got out and walked toward Kim Davis’ home. There was no moon. Clouds covered light from stars. Crickets chirped and a mosquito whined in his ear as he opened her garbage can. He liked that she had a large rubber can. It made no noise when he removed the top. This was the third Thursday he’d done so.
He pulled a small pin light from his jeans pocket. Only turning it on when he reached inside the trashcan. She always used black garbage bags. Neatly tied. He removed a serrated knife from the sheath on his belt, slashing the two bags, his hands clawing through the trash like a scavenger. Coffee grounds. Paper towels. Cardboard packages that had held frozen dinners. The woman needs to learn to cook. He grinned. That would be one of the things he’d teach her. She’d learn to cook better than ma…a harsh woman, but one of the best cooks the South had ever known.
There it was. Wrapped in toilet paper. He unwrapped the toilet paper and stared at a blood-soaked tampon. The man smiled.
Sean O’Brien and Dave Collins sat in deck chairs on the cockpit of Gibraltar, Max between them, Dave pouring Jameson over ice. O’Brien sipped a cabernet and removed the photo again, placing it on a small white table in front of him. Dave lit a cigar, blew smoke out of the side of his mouth and said, “Are you going to call your client and hang it up, or try to find that ever so elusive and now secretive painting?”
“One part of me is saying let it be. The trail is cold. But the former detective part of me says there’s somebody out there who knows where to find this painting…have to admit, I’m intrigued. To locate that person is often a long process of elimination, knocking on doors, following leads. I’d feel bad, though, cashing the old gent’s check if I can’t produce a result.”
Dave sipped his drink, the stern line moaning against the pull of a retreating tide. “You want to produce a positive result, but not finding the painting is still a result. Not the one he wants, but a result because it will prove the painting is probably lost in the corner of somebody’s garage, or hanging in some Civil War re-enactor’s man-cave, where it’ll never be found because the painting to a guy like that is his Mona Lisa. After knocking back three-finger’s worth of straight bourbon, the guy will look at the woman’s haunting face and make a promise he’ll never forget the legacy of the South, its traditions, and all the reasons his ancestor wore a gray uniform. It’s all part of the fantasy, the double life. It’s the chivalrous dichotomy of working weekdays as an accountant from a cubical, and then changing into a uniform and spanning 160 years over the weekend—sleeping in tents, brewing coffee from creek water, leading a platoon of like-minded men, and placing ladies like that woman in the picture on pedestals of divine femininity.”
O’Brien smiled and swirled his wine. “There’s something to be said for that last part, you know.”
Dave puffed his cigar and looked over to Nick’s boat. “Yeah, I know. Nick tries to do that. Says it’s the old Greek way. Too bad his taste in women lean towards the ones who look like strip club employees.”
O’Brien pulled out his cell phone and turned on the flashlight app, examining the photo. Dave said, “I have a marine flashlight if you need more light.”
“This is fine.”
“Did you drop something on it?”
“No. I’m thinking about what Ellen Heartwell told me when she said her grandmother and the woman in this painting shared a secret of the river. I believe this is the St. Johns River. I think I’ve seen this section…I just can’t recall where.”
“I can see why. The river is more than 310
miles long. And it’s a good bet the old river has changed in 160 years—new twists and turns carved out from flooding and hurricanes.”
“No doubt, but the secret of the river is probably the secret of the St. Johns. So this mysterious woman, probably, at one time in her life, lived near the river or visited it during a family vacation.”
“You think if you can find this section of the river, this oxbow, you’ll be a little closer to this mysterious secret and the ID of the woman?”
“Could be.”
“The whole topography, the foliage, the terrain have to be vastly changed in a century and a half. How in the hell could you find that?”
“I probably can’t, but I know someone who can.”
Dave grinned, clenching the cigar between his teeth. “I presume that’s your Seminole friend, Joe Billie. And I surmise that this means you’re taking the case.”
O’Brien’s cell rang. He didn’t recognize the in-coming number. He answered, and a man said, “Mr. O’Brien?”
“Yes.”
“This is Carl Crawford. You visited my antique store…asked me to call you if I came up with a name of the person who bought the old painting.”
“Yes, what do you have?”
“Well, the only reason I remembered his name is ‘cause I just saw his face on the TV news.”
“I’m listening.”
“Damn shame, really. That fella was killed in an accidental shooting while they were filming a movie. He’s the one that was in here eight months ago and bought the painting. He was in with his wife. They seemed like a real happy couple, now that I think back. He’d left his card, and I filed it under C rather than his last name. I filed it under C as in Civil War ‘cause he’d asked me to let him know if I ever got any stuff in from the Civil War. His name is…or was…Jack Jordan. You want the number on the card?”