Framed and Burning (Dreamslippers Book 2)

by Lisa Brunette

He looked contrite. “Oh, I did not mean to give offense. My apologies.”

  His response took the edge off her feeling toward him. She did not want to argue sexual politics at the wake, especially when she was supposed to be investigating. So she segued into teasing him instead. “I should ask you, Mr. Ruíz, what exactly are your intentions with my grandmother?”

  “Oh, I intend to give her memories of her trip to Miami that will eclipse this sadness and tragedy.” He waved his drink at the crowd, indicating the wake.

  “That’s a tall order,” Cat said. “But I’ll note my grandmother’s perfectly made bed this morning. As if she’d stayed out all night!”

  “Scandalous,” said Ernesto, chuckling. “And also none of your business.”

  “Sorry,” Cat said, taking an apologetic sip of the wine he’d given her. “I couldn’t resist.”

  “That’s one of the differences between our generations, chica.” Ernesto winked. “We old ones always resist such things.” And then, changing topics, he said, “Will you return to Seattle soon, now that the case is solved?”

  “Oh, we’re not in a hurry or anything,” she said. And glancing around to make sure the coast was clear, she added, “Besides, I’m not sure it is.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Cat regretted divulging her hunch. “Oh, I’m just kidding.”

  “Well, if the investigation does go on, that means I am blessed with your grandmother’s presence a bit longer.”

  Cat resisted telling him more. “I better check on my uncle,” she said, excusing herself from Ernesto’s company.

  Mick was standing by himself in front of one of Donnie’s pieces. Cat caught herself looking at the painting deeply, really understanding it in a new way. And that surprised her. Gray crystal fractals emerged from the white canvas center and radiated outward and off the edges of the canvas as if to suggest that they would never end.

  As she moved closer to her uncle, she realized tears were streaming down his face. She touched his shoulder. “It’s a stunning piece,” she whispered.

  “Yes,” Mick said. “It really is.”

  “He painted that the night of our first date,” said a voice behind Cat. She turned to find a middle-aged Goth with black lips and raccoon eyes. She looked as if she’d toned down a bit of the Goth appearance for the wake, the many holes in her ears empty of adornment.

  “I was blown away by Donnie,” the woman continued, stepping on clunky platform heels closer to Mick. “Such a pure soul. His art—it was like things I’d only seen when I was…tripping.”

  “I remember how excited Donnie was,” Mick said. Cat thought his voice sounded conciliatory. This must be Jenny Baines, she realized.

  “He’d been going to that club hoping he’d run into you again. And there you were. And you liked him, too.”

  “I told him my Goth name at first.”

  Mick laughed, tears in his eyes. “Donnie came home bragging that he had a date with Dark Moon.”

  Jenny held out her hand to Mick. “Thanks for inviting me. I would have understood if you hadn’t.”

  Mick took her hand, and then, motioning toward Cat, he said, “Jenny, this is my grandniece, Cat. Cat, this is Jenny.”

  “Nice to meet you, Dark Moon.” Cat shook her hand.

  Bryson asked those gathered to sit, motioning to rows of folding chairs in the middle of the gallery. Jenny floated toward the back. Cat noticed Mick quickly dried his tears on his shirtsleeve. She reached into her purse and fetched him a tissue, which he took. They remained in the rear, standing, and Granny Grace sidled up to Cat.

  “See that glamour puss in the third row?” her grandmother whispered.

  “Mick introduced me,” Cat whispered back, “but she had more important people to see.”

  “I bet she did. That’s Serena Jones. She’s a neighbor to the Langholms, on Star Island.”

  “Star Island!” It was the most exclusive island in South Florida. “Where’d she get that kind of dough?”

  “You ever hear of La Luz beauty products?”

  “Yes,” Cat said. “They’re everywhere down here.”

  “That’s her. She’s someone else you might want to talk to, by the way.”

  Cat did a double take in her grandmother’s direction. “What?”

  “As you continue to investigate.”

  Cat dragged her grandmother further away from the crowd. “What makes you think I’m investigating?”

  “Oh, please. I wasn’t born in a barn, you know. Wait, I take that back. Actually, I guess you could say I was—”

  “Don’t you think it’s a good idea?”

  “Yes. But that Jerry O’Connell—he’s not the one. You don’t like the sanctimonious types. But sanctimony is not a crime.”

  “Will you help?”

  “Of course. I was waiting for you to ask. But let’s not be rude. We’re at a wake, after all.”

  Following her grandmother back to the cluster of chairs, she noticed Sergeant Luisa Alvarez, who must have just come in, sitting near the back row next to Ernesto and Rose de la Crem. Rose had saved a seat next to herself, likely hoping that Roy Roy would still make it.

  “…Donnie had a vision that was informed by a love of science and nature,” Bryson was saying. He showed early examples of Donnie’s work on slides, and then he traced Donnie’s artistic path using the paintings hanging in the gallery around them.

  It was Mick’s turn next, and Cat saw Granny Grace give his hand a squeeze before he walked to the front of the room. Mick told the story of how he met Donnie when the man applied to be his assistant.

  “I was very lucky to have someone with his experience helping me,” Mick said. “I liked him right off, but I didn’t realize we’d end up becoming best friends.” Mick choked up a bit, and Cat felt the urge to hug him but stayed by Granny Grace’s side.

  Rose spoke through tears. “I never once felt judged by Donnie,” she said. “Not as an artist, and not for being…who I really am.”

  Donnie’s parents had not planned on speaking, but his father stood.

  “Donnie and I weren’t very close here in his middle age, my old age,” he said. “But you have helped me know who he was, as an artist, and to feel closer to him. Thank you so much, for loving my son and for sharing your memory of him with us.” He choked up, and his wife rose to take his hand.

  It was at that point that Roy Roy chose to make his entrance.

  The door burst open, and in walked a white man, or more accurately, Cat thought, a white boy, wearing a black nylon track suit with neon green high-tops and a matching hat. Trailing after him were two similarly attired young men, also white.

  “Yo yo yo yo yo,” said Roy Roy, presumably the ringleader. The entire room turned in his direction.

  “What?” he said, as if he hadn’t just interrupted a wake. “Why you all looking at me like that?”

  Cat glanced at Rose, whose gloved hand was poised over her mouth. She looked as if she either wanted to die, or kill her boyfriend. Probably both.

  Chapter Twelve

  Mick was sitting in a high chair, and he had a sense that the pink fuzzy boots on his feet were his favorite item of clothing, and quite possibly the most beautiful things he’d ever owned. His mama was standing above him, waving a fudge pudding Popsicle in front of his face. “What a pretty baby,” she cooed at him. “Now give mama a kiss, and she’ll give you a treat!”

  He puckered up his lips real good. He wanted that pudding pop. In came Mama’s face, her cherry red lipstick bleeding into the cracks around her mouth. Mick could smell the cooking sherry on her breath. It made him worry that she was going to have one of her spells. The smell of sherry always accompanied Mama’s spells.

  She relinquished the cherished pudding pop, and Mick stuck the gooey lovey dove treat in his mouth, letting the fudge slip down his throat. He was in heaven. His mama loved him.

  But then she turned into a pink bird like the ones in the white cage in the parlor and began f
lying around the room. She swooped down and took his pudding pop from him, devouring it in her beak. He began to cry.

  Mama the bird cackled. He threw a rattle at her, and she flew up and then straight for his eyes. He screamed from the pain and struggled to pry the bird off his face. But he was only a baby, so everything he did felt thick and awkward. He fell down out of the high chair, and then blood dripped out of his eye. He tasted it with his tongue, his own salty blood mingling with the taste of chocolate still in his mouth.

  Finally he wrested himself free of the bird and broke its neck in his hands. He could see with only one eye, but he cried again. He hadn’t meant to do it.

  But then the pink fuzzy boots came alive as wriggling caterpillars and were crawling up his pants legs. He jumped up and down and tried to get free of them, even stripping off his clothes. He was naked and noticed he did not have the dangling piece of boy flesh he knew should be there, and that’s when Mick Travers realized he had slipped into one of Candace’s dreams.

  After all these years.

  He woke with a start, looking for her in the room. But she wasn’t there. He walked down the hallway to Cat’s room, and it was empty. So was his sister’s. They must still be out at that woo-woo yoga thing on the beach, he told himself, but he suddenly felt afraid. Why had he slipped into Candace’s dream? It was a recurring one, a variation on a dream of hers he’d slipped into when they lived together.

  It was these dreams that both made her more interesting than some of the other women with whom he’d shared a bed and also made her more dangerous. Her nightmares had always been overwhelming and weird like this and always featured her mother, whom Mick had met in person and couldn’t figure for a child abuser, so why the attack dreams?

  Now Mick wondered if Candace had maybe killed her own mother, like the bird in the dream. But where was she? She’d have to be nearby, but as far as he knew, she was in a jail cell downtown.

  He grabbed a decorative boat paddle off the wall in the foyer and went to inspect his makeshift studio in the lanai. As he opened one of the double glass doors, he heard something fall. His heart pounding, he flipped the overhead light on and raised the boat paddle.

  “Candace,” he called. “If you’re hiding out in here, it’s time to come clean.”

  But there was no one in the room. He realized a paint can set precariously on the edge of an easel was what had fallen. He’d left the lid off, but, luckily, the paint was dry, so there was no mess on the floor to clean up. He was alone.

  And the rest of the house was vacant as well. Mick sat down in the living room, puzzled. This had never happened to him before.

  Then he got an idea. He went outside and walked the perimeter around the house, checking the cars to see if Candace could be sleeping inside one of them. But they were empty. The neighborhood was as quiet as it could be, with only distant highway noise to be heard.

  He began to panic and felt himself sweating. Suddenly everything seemed topsy-turvy to him. He jogged as far as he could, peeking into every car. Nothing.

  About seven blocks away from Ernesto’s cottage, a cop car pulled up, and the officer inside asked him what he was doing.

  “Sorry, Sir,” Mick said, flustered. “I’m looking for someone. I thought she was out here.”

  The officer shined a flashlight in Mick’s face. “You been drinking? We got a complaint from the neighbors that someone was casing the cars out here.”

  “Nope,” Mick said. “Just looking for someone. Sorry, Officer. I thought she’d be out here.”

  “And who is that?”

  Mick smiled, shaking his head. “My attempted killer.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Yeah, I’m Mick Travers. The artist someone tried to set fire to. Twice.”

  “Oh, I know about you, Mick. I think I saw your killer, too, when they brought her in. Is that who you thought was out here?”

  Mick gave an embarrassed laugh. “I guess so.”

  “Oh, man. Don’t worry. She’s locked up tight. We’ll throw the book at her, believe me.”

  “Sure you will,” Mick said. “Sorry to cause any trouble. I’ll head home now.”

  “Good idea,” said the cop.

  Mick returned to the cottage, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that everything had flipped upside down on him. The fabric of reality had unraveled, and he didn’t know why.

  It took him a long time to go back to sleep, which was a shame, as he really needed it. He hadn’t been getting much since Donnie died.

  As soon as he hit the REM cycle, he realized he was dreamslipping again.

  “Such a pretty girl,” her mama cooed. She was sitting in front of a mirror, with her mama standing behind her, brushing her curly blonde hair. Mama’s hair was tied up in curlers with a bandana over them. Mama’s hair was naturally straight, while Candy’s was naturally curly. She didn’t need any curlers, and this made mama jealous sometimes, but she was being nice right now, brushing Candy’s hair, making it fluff out around her face like a halo.

  “Some day a boy will ask you to marry him,” Mama said. “And you’ll wear a veil trailing over your pretty hair, and you’ll walk down the aisle, and he’ll be there. Your husband. A man to love you forever, like your daddy loves me.”

  Mick couldn’t stand it anymore, so he forced himself to imagine Candace in the real world, in some jail cell, and he tore himself away from her. He was so fused with Candace’s consciousness, however, that this took some struggle. It was as if he could hear the ripping sound as he separated his mind from hers. But it worked. He was out.

  There was nothing to do but watch as little Candace sat in the chair, her mother brushing her hair. The moment seemed frozen in time.

  But then everything shifted. Now Candace was about the age she was when she lived with him, and she was wearing a wedding dress. There was a dream version of himself here, too, waiting for her at the end of the aisle. But they were in a life-sized painting, and Candace’s mother was a giantess, standing there, her brush poised over Dream Mick’s head. She painted a smile on his face, and painted his hand extending toward Candace.

  “No!!!” Mick yelled. “You can’t trap us here.”

  But neither Candace nor her mother could hear him. For once he wished he’d paid more attention to his sister’s advice to hone his dreamslipping skills. There wasn’t much he could do now but watch the painful show.

  Candace’s mother spoke, but her words came out as if in slow motion, and her voice sounded deep and echoey, as if her tremendous size had altered the sound waves carrying her voice. “All… you have to do…” she boomed, “is be pretty for him…”

  “You’re lying, Mama,” Candace said, but she was putting lipstick on as if she still wanted to believe it. Dream Mick took the lipstick out of her hand and began to draw with it over Candace’s face.

  “Be pretty for me,” he kept saying over and over as he painted her face with the lipstick. Mick watched his dream self, painfully aware that his characteristic painting gestures were captured well by Candace’s imagination.

  Things shifted again, and they were at Coral Castle, a real place in Homestead, Florida, that Mick had taken Candace to once. The story of the castle was that some quirky Latvian midget—Mick mentally corrected himself—little person, built the castle by hand out of large slabs of limestone coral rock, and locals claimed he’d used supernatural powers to achieve such a feat. It had been featured in a couple of Billy Idol music videos, which explained the sudden look of an Eighties rock video that Candace’s dream had taken on. Mick shook his head, feeling judgmental that even in her dreams, Candace couldn’t come up with her own original material.

  She was wearing a bikini, and he recognized it as the red one she often wore down in the Keys in those days. Just the sight of Candace in that bikini used to fill him with lust. But the body in the bikini was the one Candace walked around in now, in all its middle-aged splendor, the pouchy belly, the cellulite, the sagging breasts. But in the
dream, Candace carried herself with great confidence, strutting around in that bikini as if she still looked like she had in her late twenties. She was still strong, with nice, defined calf muscles, and her ass was larger, which to him was not a bad thing at all, and it was the same general shape, which he’d always admired. Her big blue eyes were the same, too, large and too expectant, like a baby bird’s. Something about the way she moved began to awaken his lustful impulses…

  Till he stopped himself, shaking it off. This woman wanted to kill him, after all.

  Candace began to giggle. “Silly Mick,” she said. “I didn’t try to kill you!”

  “You didn’t?” he heard himself say before he realized he’d voiced his thought and it would be futile to speak.

  But Candace startled, as if she’d heard him. She hid behind a rock carved into the shape of a moon. “Mick?” she asked, peeking out carefully. “Are you butting into my dreams again?”

  “Candace?”

  “Mick! You get out of here! You’re invading my privacy!”

  “Can you hear me?” He moved toward her.

  “Yes. Now get out of here.”

  He moved closer, unsure what he was doing. “Can you see me?”

  She laughed. “No, Mick. I’ve never seen you. But I always know you’re there.”

  Mick woke up screaming, “Ah!” His sheets were soaking wet from apparent night sweats. Once his breathing slowed down, he got up and turned on the shower.

  Standing in the cooling stream, he tried to make sense of what had just happened.

  But he could not.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Grace firmly believed that you couldn’t stay too much in your head on any investigation. Besides the need for “boots on the ground” work to interview witnesses and suspects, she also knew that the best ideas came to an investigator when she wasn’t actively working on the case.

  That’s why she insisted Cat accompany her to a class called “Midnight Moonlight Yoga.”

  Of course, it took some convincing. Cat wanted to stay home with her face glued to that laptop of hers, as if it held the answers. But Grace had persevered, which is why the two of them were standing in mountain pose on the beach beneath the full moon and open stars.