Burnt Sienna

by David Morrell

  “I don’t … How on earth do you know this?”

  “Some of it I heard from the other artists,” Malone lied. “The rest of it … We don’t have time for me to explain. There’s a room on the third level. In the middle hallway. About halfway along on the left.”

  Sienna concentrated, trying to get over her shock. “Yes, where Derek keeps his business documents.”

  “You’ve been in the room? You’ve seen the documents?”

  “No, it’s always locked. When I first came here, I asked what was in there, and that’s what he told me.”

  “That’s where the portraits of the other wives are.”

  “This can’t —”

  “There’s one way to prove it.”

  3

  Trying to hide her fear, Sienna reached the top floor. Her legs in pain, she walked along the middle corridor and almost flinched when the door to Derek’s bedroom opened. But it wasn’t Derek who came out, only a servant. After a cursory nod, Sienna continued toward her own room, entered, left a slight gap when she shut the door, and listened for the servant to go away.

  The moment the receding footsteps became so soft that they couldn’t be heard, she eased the door open, peered out, and assured herself that the corridor was deserted. Immediately, she went back down the hall and tried the door Chase had mentioned. As she expected, it was locked, but she had needed to make the attempt on the chance that it might not have been. She went one door farther along, to the one from which the servant had just left, slipped inside, and shut the door.

  She had been in Derek’s room only once before, five years earlier. Repressing her memories of that night, she saw that nothing seemed to have changed. The place was still decorated with antiques from the Italian Renaissance, including a canopied bed, its four posts intricately carved. The sight of the bed increased her anxiety. She shifted her attention to a door on the right, which led to the room she was interested in. Although it, too, was probably locked, she allowed herself to hope when she tried it, only to lower her head in discouragement when the door didn’t budge. I need a key, she thought.

  Derek was scrupulously thorough. Anything important had to have a backup, sometimes more than one. Didn’t it make sense that he’d want to have a spare key hidden within easy reach?

  Allowing herself to hope again, she turned to face the room. Across from her, a five-hundred-year-old Medici bureau brought back more memories of the only other time she had been in this room. Derek had waited to marry her until the bandages had come off her face and her beauty had been re-created, as he phrased it. The wedding had occurred in a rose garden on the property, just the two of them, a minister, and Potter as the witness. She had been so grateful to have been rescued from her former life that she hadn’t regretted not having a bigger celebration. In the dining hall, a string quartet had played waltzes. She and Derek had danced. They had cut the wedding cake and given pieces of it to the staff. Her wedding gift had been a diamond necklace. She remembered how heavy it had felt as Derek had escorted her up to his room.

  There, the loneliness of her marriage had begun. Wanting more than anything to make love to the man she had married three hours previously, she had reached for him, then became dismayed when his ardor changed to hesitancy, then to frustration, and then to anger. She had tried everything to arouse him. Her final attempt had made him push her to the floor.

  “Derek, it’s okay,” she had tried to assure him. “These things happen. It’s the excitement of the wedding. All we need is a little time.”

  “Get out of here.”

  She’d been sure she hadn’t heard correctly. “What?”

  “Get out. There’s a room at the end of the hall. Take it. Sleep there.”

  “But aren’t we going to share —”

  “Damn it, I told you to get out!”

  He had thrown a robe at her, barely giving her a chance to put it on before he shoved her into the corridor. In her room, she had wept, trying to understand what had happened. She had hoped to sleep, but her turmoil had kept her awake, until finally she had walked down the hall and opened his door, saying, “Derek, if there’s a problem, let’s talk about it. Whatever it is, we can —”

  Slamming a drawer shut, he had spun toward her, his face twisted with more fury than she had ever seen. “Don’t ever come in this room again!”

  Stunned by the emotion of his outburst, she had retreated into the corridor. He had slammed the door, making her realize that she had exchanged one hell for another. The next morning, wary about what would happen next, she had waited a long time before going downstairs, only to be surprised by the gracious way Derek greeted her, as if the previous night had been a fabulous beginning to their marriage. They never discussed what had come between them. They never again tried to have sex. And she never again went into his room. It was so much wiser not to, so much better when Derek wasn’t displeased.

  But she never forgot the abrupt way Derek had slammed the drawer.

  As if he had been hiding something.

  Now she crossed the room toward the Medici bureau. She opened its hinged panels and pulled out the middle drawer. It revealed cashmere sweaters. Nothing else.

  I was wrong.

  Disheartened, she turned to leave the room. But he looked like he was hiding something, she insisted to herself. Where?

  Maybe it isn’t something in the drawer.

  Maybe …

  She knocked on the drawer’s bottom. It sounded hollow. She ran her fingers along the inside, did the same thing underneath, and tensed when she felt a catch at the back. When she pushed it, the inside bottom of the drawer came loose. Hand trembling, she tilted it up. A shallow compartment contained passports for various countries, a pistol, and a single key on a gold chain.

  Reaching for the key, she frowned at how the trembling in her hand increased. She pressed down on the bottom, shut the drawer, closed the bureau, and whirled toward the sound of someone approaching along the hallway. As the doorknob turned, she hurriedly crouched behind a large upholstered chair. She held her breath. If Derek came in … If he found her …

  The door opened. Whoever it was crossed the room and entered the bathroom. A moment later, the person came out, passed the chair, and left, shutting the door.

  Sienna exhaled. It was probably a servant putting fresh towels or something in the bathroom, she thought. Her crouched position aggravated the pain from her bruises. Straightening stiffly, she listened for more movement in the hallway. When she heard nothing, she moved quickly toward the door, tried the key, and felt her breathing quicken when it worked. With a harrowing sense that this was the most significant threshold she would ever cross, she eased the door open, stepped inside, closed the door, and found herself staring at what seemed like ghosts.

  4

  The murkiness of the room enhanced the illusion. Thick draperies filtered most of the outdoor light. Across from her, the faces of several women seemed to float in dense twilight. More disturbing, while Sienna recognized the portrait Chase had done of her, she had the sensation of seeing herself reflected in mirrors, so closely did the other portraits resemble her. But how could that be if she had never sat for them? She flicked an electrical switch on her left, blinked from the assault of light, and stared with growing shock at the wall of portraits.

  There were seven — the one devoted to her, and three sets of two, each composed of a face and a full-length nude. Each set had the style of a different artist. But the faces were unnervingly similar, sharing the same shape and proportion. Definitely, the flowing hairstyle was the same; it was one that Derek had always insisted on. From a distance or in shadow, the other women could have been mistaken for Sienna. Sienna could have been mistaken for the other women. My God, she thought. Shivering, she approached the paintings. Some had been done in oil, others in watercolor. The signatures on them confirmed that each of the three sets had been done by a different artist. Their names were in the pantheon of late-twentieth-century artists, so fa
mous that even people unfamiliar with art would recognize them.

  The dates next to the signatures had unnerving implications. The first was fifteen years previously, the second seven years later, the third three years after that. But the faces in the portraits remained the same age — thirty or so — proving that unless the portraits weren’t true likenesses, a different model had been used for each set. More unnerved, Sienna noticed that the date on the third set was the same year Derek had rescued her in Milan. Jesus, she thought. He got tired of the woman before me when she started showing the slightest signs of age. He got rid of her and chose someone younger who looked like her, like all of them — me.

  But when Derek had come to her hotel five years ago, why hadn’t he been turned off by her haggard look and the bruises on her face? She shivered as she remembered the plastic surgeon who had been waiting at the estate. He had said that he was going to hide the scars from the beating she had received. After the bandages had been removed, she had noticed that she looked slightly different — not better or worse, just different, her cheekbones slightly more pronounced, for example — but she had attributed that to an unavoidable consequence of hiding the scars. Now she realized, My God, Derek told the surgeon to make me look more like those other women.

  In dismay, she peered around the room, so cold now that her teeth chattered when she saw photographs on the other walls. Some were in black and white, others in color. Some were close-ups, others group shots. Some were taken in outdoor settings, others in palatial interiors. But they all had one common denominator: The same woman was in all of them. Although the younger shots of her made her somewhat hard to identify, there was no mistaking her features as she became a teenager and then a young adult.

  She looks like me, Sienna thought. Like the other women in the portraits. No, that’s wrong. I’ve got it backward. We look like her. That’s why Derek chose us.

  But who in God’s name was she? Women’s shoes had been arranged on shelves. Her shoes, Sienna thought. Mannequins supported festive dresses. Her dresses, Sienna thought. She reached for a leather-bound scrapbook, opened it, and shuddered when she stared at a birth certificate for Christina Gabriela Bellasar. Derek’s sister?

  Born in Rome on May 14, 1939.

  One year after Derek was born.

  Glancing with greater distress toward the photographs on the wall, Sienna confirmed another common factor — in none of the photos was the woman ever seen as old. Pulse rushing, Sienna flipped to the back of the scrapbook and found the document that would logically end a scrapbook that began with a birth certificate: a death certificate. On the final page, there was a yellowed clipping from a Rome newspaper. Her parents had insisted that Sienna learn Italian. She had no trouble reading the small item.

  Christina Gabriela Bellasar (the last name suggested she had never married) had died in Rome on June 10, 1969, as a consequence of a fall from a balcony on the twentieth floor of a hotel. Sienna subtracted 1939 from 1969. Christina had been thirty.

  As old as I am, Sienna thought. As old as the women in the portraits seemed. With soul-numbing dread, she felt compelled to turn toward a corner of the room, where she saw an antique table, upon which sat an urn. The urn seemed centuries old, its faded paint showing maidens lying beside a stream in an idyllic forest. Sienna had no doubt whose ashes were in that urn, just as she had no doubt what Derek would do to her if he discovered that she had violated this shrine. He wouldn’t wait for the second portrait to be completed. He would kill her now.

  5

  Descending the stairs, she was certain that every servant and guard she passed must be sensing the fear she struggled to conceal. Despite the pain in her thighs, she felt a panicked need to run, but no one looked at her strangely, and her body obeyed her fierce will, maintaining an apparently untroubled pace.

  When she entered the sunroom, she saw that Chase had rejected tempera paint in favor of oil. Having attached a canvas to a frame, he was sketching on it. Her angle of approach prevented her from seeing the image. She didn’t care. All that mattered was getting him where they could talk without fear of microphones.

  Chase looked at her, troubled by the stark expression on her face.

  “I’ve been thinking this should be set outdoors,” Sienna said for the benefit of anyone who might be eavesdropping.

  “Oh?”

  “The first portrait was inside. The second ought to have a different setting. There’s a place on the terrace I think might work.”

  “Why don’t you show me.”

  When she took his arm, leading him, her trembling fingers made him frown.

  They emerged onto the sun-bright terrace, Sienna guiding him toward a corner of its stone railing. “Here,” she said. “Like this.” She pretended to show him a pose, at the same time lowering her voice. “Do you think we can be overheard?”

  A machine gun rattled in the distance.

  “No. But if we stay outside too long, we might attract suspicion. What did you find?”

  “Were you serious about taking me out of here?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You honestly think there’s a chance?”

  “I wouldn’t try it otherwise. But if you stay here, there’s no chance.”

  The words rushed out of her. “Do it.”

  “What you saw was that bad?”

  “As soon as possible.”

  “This afternoon,” Chase said.

  The sense that everything was speeding up made her light-headed. “How?”

  When he told her and explained what she was going to need, her dizziness intensified.

  6

  Time had never seemed so swift and yet so slow. She felt pushed forward and shoved back. Suddenly it was lunch hour, but as quickly as the morning had passed, the meal itself seemed to last forever. Derek stopped by to express his enthusiasm for how much work had been accomplished that morning, and Sienna tried not to look puzzled, wondering what on earth he was talking about. Work? No work had been done. But when she and Chase returned to the sunroom, she realized she had been too preoccupied all morning to pay attention to how much Chase had accomplished.

  The sketch had been completed. It showed her only from the waist up, naked, standing against a blank background, her back straight, her arms behind her, a defiant gaze directed toward anyone viewing the canvas. The lack of detail in the background gave the impression that she was so furious about being forced on display that she had detached herself from her surroundings, her body here but her mind miles away.

  That wasn’t an exaggeration. She felt so apprehensive about what they would soon try that everything around her was a haze. Even Chase seemed as insubstantial as smoke, and as for her half-naked body before him, she was hardly conscious of it. The only reality was in her imagination as she brooded about the future. She shivered, but not at all because her skin was uncovered.

  Maybe this isn’t a good idea, she thought. Maybe we shouldn’t try it.

  But I have to. It’s my only chance.

  But maybe we should think about it more. Maybe this isn’t the right time. Maybe we should wait for a better — From the testing range, a burst of machine-gun fire brought her back to the moment. The sunroom seemed to materialize before her. The haze dispersed. She became aware of Chase studying her, darting his brush toward the canvas.

  A distant explosion rattled windows. Immediately another sound rattled windows, the din of an approaching helicopter.

  7

  Pressing the bridge of his spectacles against his nose, Potter stared down toward the estate’s walls, trees, ponds, and gardens. They seemed to enlarge as the helicopter descended. Specks of figures became distinct, guards watching the entrances, others patrolling, gardeners tending the grounds, servants going about their business. Smoke from an explosion rose from the testing area.

  But there was no sign of activity at the landing area. No guards converged; no one waited in greeting. Derek would long ago have heard the helicopter approaching
. He would have had ample time to stop what he was doing and walk to the landing area to welcome him. But that isn’t Derek’s way, Potter thought, burning with resentment. No, Derek likes others to come to him. No matter how interested he was in what Potter had to report, he would never stoop to do anything that implied how dependent he was on Potter’s help. He had to treat everyone as inferior.

  Except for the artist, Potter thought angrily. Oh, Derek was eager enough to make allowances for Malone all right. Potter had seen Derek order men shot for showing half the insolence that Malone did, and still Derek put up with Malone’s behavior because he wanted the portraits. Why Derek wanted the portraits so badly, Potter had no idea. If Derek felt like getting rid of his wives, fine. Take some snapshots for old times’ sake, then arrange an accident. But his obsession about the portraits was puzzling and dangerous. This morning, when Potter had made a preliminary report to Derek on a scrambler-protected phone, he had learned about the incident the previous night, about Malone’s disappearance and Derek’s suspicion that Malone had tried to find out what was in the Cloister. A false alarm, Derek had said.

  Wrong, Potter thought. The incident had happened too conveniently while they were away. The explanation had been too complicated. Potter intended to conduct a painstaking investigation and trap Malone in inconsistencies. For example, if the artist had been suddenly inspired to do some late-night sketching in his workroom, he would have had to turn on a light, but had the guards been asked if any of them had seen that light?

  I’ll expose the flaws in his story, Potter vowed. We should never have gotten involved with him. After we punished him for refusing to accept the commission, that should have been the end. I haven’t forgotten how he manipulated Derek into criticizing me at the shooting range. I’ve been made to look like a fool a dozen times over. Well, not any longer. Now it’s my turn.