2 Landscape in Scarlet

by Melanie Jackson

  Her first bite demonstrated that there was something crueler than a chunkin that could be done to vegetables.

  “You’re making a terrible face,” Raphael said.

  “I am not sure what processes were applied to these poor tubers—”

  “Reconstitution.”

  “What?”

  “It’s been whipped, extruded, dehydrated, and then fried. No plant has ever been deader.”

  “Savages,” she said and let the greasy plate slide into the trash can. “How do you know so much about them?”

  “I made the mistake of trying them yesterday. That i-e on the end of sweet should have clued me in but I was suckered.” Raphael glanced up at her. “So are you discovering lots of interesting things?”

  They turned and started for her booth.

  “Yes, but nothing conclusive. Darby didn’t see much since she and Harrison were watching the chunkin, and Lulu Weston was out of her tent at the time that Comstock died.”

  “It’s a start.”

  “Yes, and I’d be elated if the little voice inside was whispering that Lulu did it.”

  “But the little voice says no?”

  “The little voice says nothing. Not so far.”

  “Let’s go find something edible. You can’t detect properly if you’re hungry.”

  “Hm. Let’s hope that’s my problem because so far it’s a wash.”

  Chapter 6

  Fortified with a Cajun hotlink and armed with a notepad in which she occasionally sketched something or made notes, Juliet made the rounds with grim determination, speaking to everyone who had a booth on the square, even Carrie Simmons. Not that it did her much good. No one saw anything and apparently the balloon man had been everywhere distributing his balloons even when almost everyone else had left for the chunkin. Everyone agreed that his balloons were art but said that they had immediately given them away to passing kids since they found them disturbing.

  No one admitted to knowing Michael Comstock and Juliet believed them. Like her, they had seen him as nothing more than one of the creepy street performers hired to entertain the fairgoers. He had visited every vendor on the square, leaving his balloons as a calling card. Everyone agreed that the balloons were brilliant, but too graphic to have hanging anywhere near their products and/or services. Carrie insisted that he came around several times to visit her but she was too busy to bother with him and instead of waiting until she was available, he had finally gone off to talk to Lulu’s assistant. Maybe to find out where the scrawny mouse was hiding since some men will settle for anything when they are desperate.

  Juliet nodded but took all this with a grain of salt. It seemed doubtful that Comstock was trying to ask Lulu for a date, though he might well have asked Vinnie when his employer would be back.

  Juliet continued to ask her questions, but the answer was the same at every tent, even the unfriendly goats had nothing to add and Juliet sensed that they liked to speak ill of all humans who didn’t bring them alfalfa treats.

  Samuel Levy was friendly enough, but conversation was hard because he was gulping his lunch while making notes on some kind of tablet. Juliet liked some of his whimsical pieces but couldn’t imagine when she would need a gnome cookie jar or a dragon incense burner, nor could she find a good way to introduce the subject of seeing the drunken and dying Comstock after the potter had admitted impatiently that the balloon man stopped by but that he couldn’t remember what he wanted.

  “You have a great view of the giant pumpkins,” Juliet said. That was about all he had a view of. Unless he had been standing on the chair, he wouldn’t have been able to see if anyone was following Comstock. If this were her booth, she would be annoyed at having it blocked from view.

  “Uh-huh.”

  She turned the other way, trying for inspiration.

  “Did you get to watch the chunkin? It sure was exciting.”

  “Yep.” He shoved more gyro in his mouth, yogurt dribbled onto his chin. Juliet resisted the urge to mop his face with one of his many scrunched-up napkins.

  “I thought that Sheriff Garret had it in the bag. You know, before they found the body. After that he had to withdraw.”

  “Uh-huh.” Chomp. Chomp, chomp. Slurp, slurp on a soda.

  Juliet forced a smile and left. Levy hadn’t seen anything and hadn’t reacted at all when she mentioned the body. Or maybe he had reacted and she just hadn’t noticed any change of expression because of his food-distended cheeks being stretched to full capacity.

  People! Everything was easier when you dealt with written words.

  Juliet saved Xander Lawson and Madame Mimm for last and knew she had to get moving or the fair would be over and they would move on. Juliet didn’t like to admit it, but she felt nervous about meeting the two of them. One of them—or maybe both of them—could be a killer. If they were guilty, or blessed with even half a brain, they would probably guess what she was doing when she began asking questions. Going to speak to them felt a bit like poking a wasps’ nest with a stick.

  The lady or the tiger? As she recalled, neither choice had led to happiness.

  Juliet began with Madame Mimm. She had to wait a couple minutes for her tent to clear of giggling customers, but by then she was ready and marched herself inside without any shilly-shallying. A kerosene heater at the side of the flap made the place unpleasantly warm and the light filtering through the vivid fabric did very little to illuminate in a helpful manner. That was probably the point. Mumbo jumbo didn’t look as realistic in bright light.

  The first stare she encountered was not that of the tarot reader, but of some poor relic from a medical school classroom. It had red LEDs in its sockets.

  “Poor Yorick.” He had come down in the world. Actually, the skull had probably belonged to a woman, an old one, if the teeth were anything to go by.

  Juliet was preparing herself to call out when a figure emerged from the back of the tent. It looked rather ghostly at first, with its trailing robe and shawls, but shed its eeriness along with the shadows and took a seat at the small round table covered in a tatty piano scarf. In the light of the candles her nose looked long and her mouth bitter. Her eyes had a hard glitter. She was a gypsy full of curses.

  “I’d like a reading,” Juliet heard herself say, quelling the incipient feeling of alarm.

  “The palm is ten, the cards are twenty,” Madame Mimm said, wasting no time in seeing that silver crossed her own palm.

  “Let’s start with the palm,” Juliet said and then cursed herself for being frugal. She didn’t really want this woman touching her. She got out a ten-dollar bill and put it in the glass jar that would have looked more appropriate on a piano in a bed and breakfast.

  “Your hands please.”

  Juliet offered her hands, palms up. It took some effort with the hostile gaze on her face. It was a relief when she finally dropped her eyes.

  Madame Mimm’s hands were small and pleasantly warm and her voice droning, a good combination if you wanted to make your client comfortable. After the usual predictions of long life and good health, Juliet stopped listening to her words and concentrated on her body language. Madame’s voice might be flat and calm as pond water, but her shoulders were not so relaxed. There was also tension in her face, dark circles under her eyes. Something had upset the lady.

  “But am I being haunted?” Juliet asked when Madame paused in her recitation. “Is there a ghost behind me?”

  “What?” The voice was startled out of its monotone.

  “I found Comstock’s body yesterday,” Juliet said, deciding to use blunt force in hopes of getting past the playacting. “I think his ghost is following me.”

  Madame Mimm then did something Juliet hadn’t expected. Her eyes rolled up in her head and she fainted dead away, slumping in her chair and then sliding to the floor in a heap of shawls and beads.

  “Well damn,” Juliet said and then went to the woman’s aid. She hadn’t meant to scare her to the point of passing out. She just
wanted the palm reader to think she was a kook and maybe tell her something about why the dead man couldn’t be a ghost.

  It took splashing her with cold tea from the plastic cup under the table and a few slaps on the face which had aged a decade and gone sickly gray, but Lois Alderman soon came back around and was again looking hostile.

  Juliet offered to fetch someone from the first aid tent, but Madame Mimm adjusted her turban and scattered shawls and then declined outside assistance.

  She also declined to discuss Michael Comstock or his ghost and Juliet didn’t press. It would have been cruel. Though some people might have found it suggestive of a guilty conscience that the woman thought Michael’s ghost could be about, perhaps in her own tent even—ghosts in literature usually only hanging around to accuse the guilty party of murder most foul—Juliet didn’t read it that way. Madame Mimm believed in spirit survival and feared it. Her faint had been deep and real. Given her genuine belief in haunting, it seemed unlikely that she would do anything to attract a ghost. In Juliet’s mind, that probably let her off the hook as Comstock’s killer.

  That left Xander Lawson.

  “Oh goody,” she muttered once outside again, not thrilled with visiting the big man with the large hammer.

  Juliet went immediately to see Xander Lawson, betting that he would be more inclined to talk if Madame Mimm didn’t warn him away from her.

  “Hello,” she said, barely stepping into his booth and half hoping he would keep fussing with the forge. She didn’t care for the smell of the fire which was not made with wood and smelled a little like a car accident.

  “Look around if you like. You’ll have to choose quickly though. I’m packing up.” The voice was gruff and, to Juliet, unpleasant. His profile as he glanced over his bulging shoulder wasn’t ugly, but his face looked like it was made of cured leather, and lit as it was with the glow of embers and with the filtered light bleeding through the red awning, he looked like something out of a horror film. The heavy hammer in his hand also affected her objectivity.

  Juliet pretended to shop. Everything he had for sale was heavy and looked like repurposed weapons. Except for a birdcage. Juliet had never seen one done in wrought iron, but the blackened metal leant itself to the towered castle he had fashioned.

  “Oh, it’s been sold,” Juliet said, half relieved and half regretful. “I’m not surprised. It’s very striking.”

  Xander grunted but turned to face her, lips folding over his large teeth.

  “Was it a commission?” Juliet asked. “Or do you make them from time to time?”

  “It was commissioned,” he said grudgingly and didn’t volunteer anything else.

  “It must get hot working over a forge all day,” Juliet tried doggedly. “Does the fire go out if you take breaks?”

  “No.” He smiled at her suddenly. All those teeth startled her. “You’re the sweatshirt lady. You’ve been around to visit everyone, asking questions.”

  “Yes. That’s me, the social butterfly.”

  Xander shook his head.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, no. I—I’m the one who found the balloon man’s body yesterday.” Juliet looked away from him and studied a garden stake that rather looked like a demon’s sword. “It’s been bothering me that I didn’t see that he was sick. That I just thought he was drunk and was glad when he staggered away. It’s been haunting me a bit. It’s especially bad because no one seems to know much about him. We let a stranger die alone because we didn’t know that he had medical problems and didn’t want to get involved. I’m … ashamed of myself.”

  This was truth, albeit of a very selective kind. It was irrelevant too, but many men expected women to be inane.

  “I knew him. You weren’t missing much. But carry rancor to the grave and no further,” Xander said, startling Juliet by using her own words. “He’s dead now. Let God sort him out.”

  Maybe his face tried to soften as he said this, but with hardened leather it was difficult to tell.

  “I’m not so sure that God was looking either,” she said and then turned to leave. She wasn’t sure how she was going to explain her hunch to Garret, but her gut was saying that Xander Lawson wasn’t the killer either. They had to look for someone else, someone with an unknown motive.

  “Hell’s bells,” she said to the mostly fresh air outside. “Now what?”

  In spite of her intention to find out all she could about Comstock and his murderer, Juliet found herself increasingly drawn to her sketch book. Drawing could be therapeutic, a way to reach other parts of the mind that might have noticed something her waking brain was unaware of.

  The trees especially called to her once the afternoon advanced and the shadows grew long and twisted away from their makers. Unable to resist the pull of a new shirt design she began to draw. She considered cedars and redwoods but found herself drawn to an old oak. It was creepy without having any of the genuine horror she felt for the yew with its grasping branches and poisonous foliage.

  Chapter 7

  Juliet’s car drove itself around most of the potholes in the private road and accepted the rest without complaining out loud. This was good because its owner was distracted and slightly depressed.

  She reached the compound and rejoined the present when she found two news automobiles in the lot and people already gathered at Robbie Sykes cottage where 80s music was playing. The caretaker was throwing a party for the two latest arrivals to the art colony.

  Juliet examined the cars. One was a new hybrid, the other was a very old, multicolored Volkswagen Bug slowly bleeding oil onto the gravel. She grabbed one of the many oil trays leaning against the trees that ringed the lot. They looked like giant cookie sheets. Finding one that wasn’t too disgusting, she slid it under the blue-yellow-red car. Robbie kept a supply of oil trays because many of the residents had leaky cars and he didn’t want petroleum products getting into the groundwater.

  Juliet gathered up her sweater, purse, and sketch pad. She felt a bit naked, not having anything else to carry. She was used to having a fair amount left over after shows.

  “Damn.” All she wanted was to go to her cottage, share some tuna with Marley, and go to bed and brood in peace and quiet. But that wouldn’t be polite, so she strapped on her professional smile as she closed the car door and forced her feet toward Robbie’s bungalow.

  The two strangers were easy enough to spot since it was a small gathering and Elizabeth and Asher were missing. The younger of the two arrivals was trapped in a corner and being breathed on by Carrie Simmons. He seemed less flattered than frightened by the attention. Juliet decided that she would do one last kind thing and went to rescue the man. Carrie surrendered without a fight, leaving only her perfume behind.

  As so often happens, Juliet’s good impulse was rewarded with less than what it deserved. Once Carrie was vanquished, Juliet soon found that the new glassblower was always inarticulate and deadly boring. He might have had a fine mind, but if there were any thoughts in there he was keeping it a secret. He also smelled rather heavily of citronella. If he was trying to avoid mosquito bites, it was too late. He was covered in them. Which was odd because Juliet hadn’t seen any mosquitos for a week.

  Rose floated over. She was glad to leave him to her neighbor who looked genuinely happy at being introduced to a new resident. Perhaps he would relax more around their diminutive neighbor.

  Gritting her teeth, Juliet moved on. Thomas Jones, a stuttering potter, was more interesting and talkative, but his tripping consonants grew more pronounced the more excited he became and the thought of meeting other artists had him very, very excited.

  “I don’t suppose you knew Michael Comstock,” she said abruptly and got sudden silence and a blank owlish stare for her troubles.

  “W-who?”

  “No one. Well, welcome to the Wood.” Juliet smiled for as long as she could and then fled to the familiar comfort of Raphael and Esteban who were near the door, ready to make a fast escape.r />
  “Done doing your duty?” Raphael asked softly. His dark eyes laughed at her.

  “Yeah—and where is the wine? Robbie can’t be throwing a party without liquor. Doesn’t he know that we are artists and that we need help facing other people?”

  “Alas, he is doing just that. Both of our new tenants are teetotalers. One—the rabbitty-looking fellow with Rose—is currently a vegan but originally a fruitarian. That means that he only ate fruits and vegetables that had fallen to the ground naturally. Both belong to PETA.”

  “Of course they do,” Juliet muttered. “Oh well, I don’t have time to like anyone right now anyway. I am completely out of sweatshirts and thoughtless people persist in dying around me where I can’t ignore them.”

  Esteban grinned at her exasperation, his teeth very sharp and white in his tanned face.

  “Come with me,” he suggested. “I have discovered the great American pastime of making bathtub gin.”

  “Is that what you’ve been doing with all those glass tubes?” Juliet asked, diverted.

  “Yes,” Raphael said dryly. “That’s what he’s been doing. And so far he has managed to brew up an effective mosquito repellant and paint stripper. If you must numb your brain come down to my cottage. I have some lovely scotch that wasn’t bottled yesterday.”

  “Okay. But I can only stay for a bit. Marley and I have a date to enjoy a tuna fish sandwich.”

  “You sound depressed. No joy in White Oaks this afternoon?”

  “Lots of joy. Lots of suspects, but I don’t buy any one of them as the killer. And not a single definite feeling about what really happened to Comstock. Oh no,” she whispered. “Run for your lives!”

  The two men looked in the direction of her gaze and saw Carrie bearing down on them. Her heels sounded annoyed as she tapped her way over, enveloping them in a cloud of some recently reapplied perfume whose base was rancid patchouli. Carrie was attractive to most men but not to Raphael who tended to speak to her like she was a rather dense child.