Drawing Blood

by Deirdre Verne

  I pulled up an artist’s stool for Frank and cracked the window. In seconds, the room filled with salty breezes moving south off Long Island Sound. I glanced at the farm below, knowing full well we were completely behind schedule. Up until this year, Katrina, her boyfriend Jonathan, and Charlie and I had been able to maintain the rows of vegetables and fruits entirely on our own. Jonathan’s decision to return to medical school, Katrina’s upcoming birth, and my relationship with Frank had left the fields sadly underfarmed over the last few months.

  During the winter, Charlie and I had built a portable greenhouse out of recycled plastic tarp and PVC piping. At one hundred pounds, the eight-by-ten-foot house could be lifted by two people and rotated over in-ground crops to extend the growing season. We were testing sweet potatoes this year, which required the painstaking process of cultivating slips, or shoots from existing potatoes. The leggy shoots, soaking in water, should have been in the ground and under the protective sheath of the new greenhouse a week ago. If we let the farm go any longer, we’d be fully dependent on Dumpster diving, a total turnoff to Frank. Worse, I’d have to get a job to generate cash for the basics, like food.

  My mother studied the diorama. She pulled it close to her face and then slid it back like the arm of a trombone. I heard her counting. Then she asked Frank to advance the frames so she could look at more photos from different angles. Again, she counted.

  “It’s The Last Supper,” she said matter-of-factly. “At least I think it’s Bob’s version of The Last Supper.”

  My mother’s revelation was enough motivation for Katrina to sit up again. She grabbed the iPad and counted out loud. “She’s right. There are twelve people in this picture, plus this one guy who seems to be the focal point.”

  My mother laid her finger on the man in the velvet cape. “See how his arms are stretched open on the table, and he’s staring into the distance. Now, look at the other twelve people. They all seem to be in clustered discussions, except for this man here.”

  We crowded around Frank’s iPad. Frank used the tips of his fingers to enlarge Bob’s rendering of the unknown man. Close up, his face had been sculpted in a wry, almost shit-eating grin. It reminded me of a chess player uttering the fatal word: checkmate.

  Frank poked at the photo. “He’s got some pounds on him.”

  “Damn,” I said. “What if he’s the doughy man? What if he’s Bob’s betrayer, and Bob knew it?”

  Frank panned over to the man in the velvet cape, his palms pointing to heaven. He narrowed in on the figure’s exposed arms, but the photo blurred. “If the one in the cape is Bob, then maybe the other people in the picture are real too. I wonder how close Bob came to depicting their actual features.”

  “I feel like Bob wanted this diorama discovered,” I said. “I feel like there are answers in this piece of art.”

  Frank stood up too quickly and beaned his head on the tilted ceiling. He pointed to Katrina. “Please don’t have this baby in the next few days. Give me another week of CeCe’s undivided attention.” Then he turned to my mother. “Are you free for an afternoon of culture?”

  My mother smiled at her newfound freedom. “Let’s go.”

  thirty-three

  Sunday afternoon at the storage facility turned out to be a circus side show. The tuba lady honked away at an endless tribute to John Philip Sousa while a body builder with skin-splitting muscles pumped iron in a unit only slightly larger than his shoulder span.

  “He seems fit,” I said as the rippled man bounced a medicine ball against his unit’s metal interior. For his neighbor’s sake, I hoped grandma’s china wasn’t in a box against the shared wall.

  Frank smirked. “Sure, now your vision returns.”

  “I never said I was blind.”

  We walked down the storage row and watched as a half dozen renters puttered about their units, shoving cardboard boxes into the airless spaces. My mother, a snob at heart, tilted her nose so high I thought she might flip over backward. This was not her idea of an adventure.

  “It’s like a trailer park without running water,” she commented. “How long will this take? Norma is taking me shopping later.”

  Frank fiddled with the lock on unit 125. A wad of stale air seeped out when the unit opened. My mother, desperate to cut the visit short, walked up to Bob’s diorama, grabbed a figure off its chair, and turned it over.

  “Mom,” I yelled. “What are you doing?”

  “Maybe Bob labeled the dolls.”

  Frank moved quickly to the table following my mother’s lead. It seemed sacrilegious to dismantle Bob’s art, but at the end of the day, Bob was dead. If his art contained clues, then he’d left them for a reason.

  Frank picked up a young girl with long braids who looked to be about twelve. He tilted the little girl to the floor and looked at the bottom of her feet. “T. First initial?” Frank pondered.

  My mother picked up the man with the cape. “No letter,” she said. “Makes sense if this one is Bob. He wouldn’t need to label himself.”

  I leaned over Bob’s shoulder and pointed to the braided girl’s chair. “Look, her chair also has a T on it. That’s probably how he coded the layout.”

  Frank took out his iPad and started snapping pics of the figurines’ faces, feet, and chairs. Sure enough, each doll had a single letter on their foot that corresponded to the one on their chair. I looked carefully at each of the dolls. None looked like the woman with black hair and skinny jeans.

  Frank lifted the doughy man. “If we’re right about the first letter corresponding to the person’s name, then this guy’s name starts with an L.”

  I stared closely at the doughy man’s face. “He bothers me,” I said. His face, no bigger than a half dollar, was unlikable. “In the photo he appeared to be gloating, but now that I’m looking at him, he seems weak.”

  My mother sidled up to us. “It’s his mouth. Look how chin is set back into his face. It’s crumbling, like a baby’s shivering lip.”

  I nodded. “Let’s put him back in his seat and see what his body language says.”

  Frank placed the doughy man back in his assigned chair. Unlike some of the other dolls, whose legs were casually crossed or stretched, this man’s feet were planted firmly on the floor. His left hand, hidden under the tablecloth, was balled in a fist.

  “What do you think, Mom?”

  “I feel like I’m stating the obvious, but if Bob placed this man at the table, it means he was part of Bob’s inner circle, and all of these people were Bob’s followers.”

  Frank lapped the table. “If they followed Bob that means they all had something in common.”

  “Garbage?” I said, but it didn’t sound convincing. “I don’t see a little girl or the doughy man Dumpster diving. Also, we know that Bob was connected to the skinny jeans lady, but there’s no one at the table with short black hair.”

  I stepped outside the metal box for some fresh air and an unobstructed view of the warehouse.

  “Hey, Charlie’s here,” I said. “Let’s take a break.”

  We walked over to the warehouse accompanied by the tuba lady’s music. I felt an urge to swing my legs and march in formation. My mother rolled her eyes and jabbed at her watch.

  “Soon,” I whispered.

  “Hey,” Charlie said, giving my mother a peck on the cheek. “This is a nice surprise.” Charlie’s flattery provided just enough attention to buy a few more minutes from my mother. “Frank, I’m glad you’re here. There’s something I want to show you.”

  “Did you find something?”

  “Maybe,” Charlie said as he started to unscrew a panel on one of the computers. “You know how we’re using the extra computers from the warehouse and the bin at the recycling center to beef up the scavenger hunt?”

  Frank nodded. “I’m assuming you’ve been cherry picking the pieces most valuable to the sc
avengers.”

  “I have,” Charlie started, “but I’m noticing something different between the two sets of computers. I’m not sure if it’s relevant.”

  “Let’s hear it,” I said.

  “Well, to pick the best computers for the scavengers, I had to pop the backs off to make sure they hadn’t been stripped. I’ll show you.” Charlie started to unscrew and remove components from a computer.

  “I’m guessing these warehouse computers were already stripped for the good stuff,” Frank said. “It would make sense given the miraculous disappearance of the waste. Someone must have considered the computers valuable.”

  “Right? That’s what I thought. Except the warehouse computers are completely intact.” Charlie pointed to the interior of the computer he had just dismantled. It could have been filled with parts from a Mr. Coffee machine for all I knew about computers.

  “See?” he said.

  We all shook our heads. We were lost.

  “These computers,” Charlie said patiently as he pointed to various pieces of plastic and metal with a small screwdriver, “have all the parts needed to run. If we plugged them in, they’d probably be usable. However, the computers from the recycling center were all missing their C drives.”

  “Well, then I guess they’d been picked through,” I said.

  Charlie shook his head. “If you’re interested in recycling the parts of a computer, you go for the motherboard. That’s the electrical panel that connects the computer’s devices, and it’s the part with the most amount of copper wire. The C drive is useless to a scavenger.”

  “So someone opened the back on all of the computers at the recycling center and pulled out the C drive, but left the motherboards?” Frank confirmed.

  “That’s correct.”

  “I can’t stand it any longer,” my mother whined. “What’s a sea drive?”

  “A leisurely car ride along the coast.” Charlie laughed at his own joke.

  My mother pouted.

  “The C drive,” Charlie said, making a C shape with his hand, “is the computer’s main storage device. When you hit Save, that’s where the information goes, like a virtual file cabinet.”

  “Okay,” Frank said slowly. “Isn’t it recommended that an owner remove the main storage device before recycling so their personal information is not compromised?”

  “Sure,” Charlie replied. “But no one ever does it. It’s the same thing with shredders. Shredding machines sell like hotcakes, but I’ll bet half are still in their boxes while people stupidly load their garbage pails with everything from their bank account numbers to their credit card statements. That’s why the missing drives caught my attention. I went through seventy computers from the recycling center and every single one was missing a C drive. That’s not typical. People are lazy. I thought maybe Bob removed the drives to protect the users, but then where did the C drives go?”

  “Did you ask Jimmy?” Frank said.

  “I did, but he didn’t know anything about it.”

  I remembered Bob’s tool kit, the one Jimmy had retrieved from the garbage heap. Was Bob removing the C drives from the recycling bin? And if so, why?

  Frank nodded his head a few more times and then said, “So I show up at the recycling center with a computer. I hand it over to Bob, and because I’m not a techie, Bob volunteers to remove my C drive and then hands it to me for safekeeping. I go home with the C drive.”

  My mother raised her hand. “May I?”

  “Be my guest,” Frank replied. “Maybe someone with absolutely no computer knowledge can explain this.”

  “People don’t leave a recycling center with garbage,” my mother said. “Only my daughter takes stuff home. For the rest of us, the whole point is to leave the garbage at the recycling center. I’d be furious is someone handed me back a hunk of useless metal and told me to take it home after I’d gone out of my way to dispose of it properly. Not that I’d actually go to a recycling center, but you get the idea.”

  I smiled at my mother. It was amazing how logical she could be when she wasn’t looped.

  “Maybe Bob smashed them,” I suggested. “I thought you were supposed to take a hammer to your drives.”

  “You can,” Charlie replied. “And some people do, literally, smash them, but don’t you think Jimmy would remember Bob taking a sledge hammer to a bunch of computer components? Plus you have to clean up the crushed pieces, or it just makes more garbage.”

  “Jimmy said that nonprofits picked through the computers bins for secondhand use.”

  “Well, if they did,” Charlie said, “they’d be lugging back a useless shell, because none of Bob’s computers had C drives.”

  Frank rubbed his face so hard I could hear the stubble on his cheeks scratching the palms of his hands. “Ten years ago I would have immediately accused Bob of involvement in an identity theft scam, but I’m fairly confident that’s not the case.”

  “How do you know?” Charlie asked.

  “Because nowadays, people are more aware of identity theft. If there was a localized uptick in identity theft, the police department would know by now.”

  “Shouldn’t we confirm with the people who dropped off their computers?” I said. “We’ve got Bob’s receipt pad.”

  Frank’s eyes slid to mine. “That we do,” he said as he lifted his phone.

  thirty-four

  We returned my mother home in time for her and Norma to do some serious damage at the stores in town. It was a beautiful afternoon for window shopping, and a beautiful day for a stroll. Although I had spent most of my life embarrassed at my parents’ wealth, I couldn’t hide my love for the grounds of the Prentice estate, especially enticing in the spring.

  “How about a walk?” I asked Frank. “It’ll clear our heads.”

  Frank took my hand, and we headed to the back of the house. A lovely stone patio surrounding an intricately tiled pool showcased the well-groomed yard. About half an acre of perfectly manicured grass stretched north to the Long Island Sound and ended in a densely wooded area with miles of horse trails connecting to the next estate.

  “Come on. I’ll show you where I used to hang out to plot my escape from the Prentice prison.”

  “Some escape. You ended up a few miles from your parents’ house.”

  “Pretty lame, huh?” I admitted as I led Frank toward the trails. We chatted for about twenty minutes along a winding path until we came to an enclave of pine trees. Years of fallen needles covered the ground like a carpet. In the middle of the area was a circle of tree stumps and the remnants of a fort built from reclaimed plywood.

  “A witch’s coven?”

  “Not quite,” I said as I sat down on the stump I had always considered mine. Teddy, Charlie, and I each had our own chunks of wood. It somehow didn’t surprise me that Frank unknowingly chose Teddy’s stump.

  We sat quietly for a few minutes. My thoughts ping-ponged between Bob’s bizarre diorama featuring the doughy man and Frank’s upcoming surprise meeting with Dr. Carolyn Corey. Although he seemed encouraged on both fronts, I wondered if our leads were long shots. Did Bob really feel threatened by the doughy man, and did he actually leave prescient clues in his artwork? And then there was Dr. Corey, a high-end obstetrician. Even if she knew what my father had done with my genetic samples, what was the chance that a baby had been born and that this doctor knew the child’s whereabouts now?

  “Is this whole thing nutty?”

  “There’s always a point in an investigation where nothing and everything makes sense.”

  “I guess we’re there now.”

  “That’s why we can’t lose sight of the facts.”

  I liked facts. Although I was an artist, I had always chosen to draw reality. I didn’t have a head for dreamy landscapes, but I certainly had an eye for faces, and the doughy man’s expression got under my skin. �
��From what we learned this morning, Bob knew the doughy man, and most likely he was aware the doughy man was trouble.”

  “But if your mother is right, then the people at the table all had something in common with Bob, and that would include the doughy man.” Frank contorted his brow. “But as you said, they can’t all be Dumpster divers.”

  “Or Olympic swimmers.”

  “Or famous chefs.”

  “Or strippers,” I added. My last comment made me think of Lizzy James, the failed surrogate of my would-be baby. “Hey,” I said. “What if the people at the table were all related to Bob? Like extended family?”

  Frank’s mouth dropped while he considered my observation. “Now that’s an interesting thought. What if they weren’t family, but had something in common that made them like a family? Maybe that’s why they were sharing a meal.”

  “And how about that meal?” I asked. “Why was there so much food?”

  “Well, we know Bob liked food.”

  “True, but this seemed excessive.”

  “No,” Frank corrected. “It seemed hopeful. Remember the harpoon? It was enlarged, like the food. I wonder if hope is an artistic theme for Bob.”

  “I like the theme of hope. It’s consistent with Bob’s upbeat personality. Maybe the people at the table were all hoping for the same thing?”

  “See what happens when you focus on the facts?” Frank said. “I think I’d like to go back to Bob’s house to see if we can get something out of the other dioramas.”

  “That’s a good idea,” I said. “Let’s keep going. What else do we know for sure?”

  “We know Harry Goldberg is a liar,” Frank said without hesitation. “He knew Bob, and he mostly likely knew Bob was dead before we did. He also found a way to empty those warehouses.”

  “Hence, the warehouses are connected to Bob’s death.”

  “That sounds about right.”

  “How about Dr. Corey?”

  Frank rose, walked over to Charlie’s stump, and sat down. “Different case, different seat.”