“I wonder why she didn’t call on my cell phone.”
“Said she tried but you didn’t answer.”
I wiped a hand on my shirt and retrieved the phone from my pocket to see that it was dead. Pressing buttons did not bring it to life, and I knew that I had gone too long without charging it yet again.
With a surge of guilt, I realized that AJ might have been trying to call me after all but simply hadn’t been able to get through.
“Did anyone else call?” I asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.
“Yeah, the maid that did all that cleaning today. Said she was here for four and a half hours total so you owed her forty-five dollars, and you could just give it to Miz Kroft. I said that was highway robbery, but she said that was none of my business and between you and her.”
“Forty-five dollars?” I smiled. “Gosh Deena, where I come from that’s what it costs for about one hour of cleaning, not four.”
“What a stupid waste of good money.”
“Speaking of money,” I said as I set the last plate in the dish drainer, “do you want me to go shopping for replacements on the things I owe you? Or since you’re moving out, would you rather just have cash?”
“Cash would be fine. I’m trying to get rid of things as it is, not accumulate more.”
I went to my bedroom, retrieved my purse, and dug out forty bucks. Coming back into the kitchen, I handed it over and said for her to let me know if she thought it had come to more than that.
She tucked the two twenties into her bra, a twinkle in her eye, and then carried her own full plate to the trash can and scraped the food away, adding the plate to the dishwater so I could wash it too.
After that, Deena went down the hall in the general direction of Lisa’s room. I thought she might be going down to talk to her, but as I watched she turned short and went into the living room area instead. After a moment, I heard the television click on.
I finished with the dishes and then hurried to my own room in the opposite direction, packed my suitcase, and lugged everything to the door to the front of the house. Leaving it there, I headed toward Lisa’s room. I spotted Deena on the way, watching TV as she packed up a box from the shelves.
Continuing onward, I knocked on Lisa’s door.
“Just a minute,” she said in a muffled voice, and as I waited for her to open it, I glanced toward the door to Willy’s room at the end of the hall. I hadn’t been in there since he died, but I was glad they were keeping the door closed. Last night Deena had complained that not all of the medical equipment had yet been removed by the medical supply company, and though I didn’t know if they had yet taken away the bed or not, I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing it there, now empty, and remembering the sight of Willy’s final gasping breaths.
“Yeah?” Lisa demanded, swinging open the door, though when she saw my face, her features softened. “What’s up?”
She held her cell phone in one hand and held the fingers of the other over the mouthpiece.
“You’re on the phone,” I said, “I didn’t mean to bother you.”
“What do you need?”
“Come upstairs and find me when you’re finished,” I said. Then I lowered my voice to a whisper and, thinking of Colline d’Or, added, “I have something big to tell you.”
I took my things upstairs and settled into one of the front bedrooms, plugging my phone into the charger before I did anything else. By the time I finished getting organized, Lisa still hadn’t come up, so I thought I would use the time while I was waiting for her to take a quick look at Livvy’s painting. I brought the tote bag down the hall and around the corner to the room that held my grandmother’s art supplies. It had a completely different feel tonight with the sheets gone and wood gleaming from the gorgeous antique furniture. Lovely.
In the corner was a drafting table with a work lamp clamped on the side, so I turned it on and carefully unwrapped the painting, for some reason expecting to see a hideous nineteenth century scene of vendors selling fruit and vegetables in a town square, the bell-and-cross symbol painted onto someone’s cape.
Instead, I caught my breath as I realized that it was a gorgeous original Horace Pippin, a homey scene of a family gathered around a wood stove. Sadly, the damage was significant. The worst problem that I could see was that the varnish had softened at some point, a result of high temperatures. Once that happened, the dirt on the surface had become permanently attached to the painting.
Beyond that, there were dots of mildew along the bottom, and the canvas had also come loose from its stretcher in several places. Moving the lamp to get some raking light, I was glad that the surface showed no rippling or folds. I didn’t have a light box to check for splits or small tears, so I took out the UV light instead, turned off the overhead light and the lamp, and studied the resulting picture in the uniquely illuminated darkness. Slowly pointing the unit across the surface, I didn’t spot any other irregularities or surprises other than some cleavage which reflected brightly near the top.
I formed the words of my evaluation in my mind, mentally listing my recommendations for Livvy. The picture could be improved but not returned to its original state. Considering the value and beauty of the work itself, I thought it would certainly be worth the expense of trying, though she had several choices about how to proceed and to what extent she’d be willing to go.
Glad at least that I had had the chance to take a look, I crossed the room to turn on the wall switch, the glowing UV light still in my hand. As I reached up, I hesitated, a strange white glow reflecting back at me from around the switch plate. Looking closer, I saw that the enamel wall paint had simple peeled off a bit, probably worn down and scratched by the repeated motions of people turning on and off the overhead light. The UV lamp was picking up whatever had been underneath that paint. Curious, I moved it closer, shining it on the wall from different angles. Sure enough, there was definitely something there.
Flipping on the overhead light, I turned off the UV light and set it on the floor and then used my fingernails to scrape at the peeling wall paint around the light switch plate. There was something uniquely colored underneath, but it wasn’t wallpaper and it wasn’t regular house paint.
It was a picture of some kind, and when I had peeled off several inches of the easily-flaking enamel, I was stunned to see that I had revealed the face of something small and white, a little dog.
“What are you doing?” Lisa’s voice said from the doorway.
Instead of answering, I merely shook my head and asked her if she would mind going to get Deena.
“You want me to bring that selfish witch up here? No thanks.”
“Please,” I said. “It’s important.”
I continued to scrape in every direction that it would let me, breaking two nails in the process. I had gotten as far as I could when Lisa returned to the room, trailed by Deena.
“What do you want? I’m missing my show.”
“Deena, what is this on the wall?” I asked.
She looked at the picture my scrapings had revealed, which now included two dogs walking alongside a wooden fence.
“That’s one of your grandmother’s paintings,” Deena said, summarily unimpressed.
“On the wall?” I asked.
“I told you she was nuts. She painted all over the place.”
“But I thought you meant on canvas. I thought you said she made a bunch of paintings and you didn’t know what Willy had done with them.”
“No,” Deena replied, looking at me strangely, probably confused by the urgency in my voice. “I told you she made a bunch of paintings and I didn’t know what he had done about them. I knew they was here, I just didn’t know what he used to cover them up.”
Stunned, I took a step back and waved my arms in a circle, indicating the whole room.
“Did she paint every wall in here?” I demanded.
“Every wall in here plus practically every wall in the whole upstairs hallway, plus halfw
ay down the stairs.”
I wanted to scream! Here I had been searching for a few meager canvases, when the paintings were so much more than that—and all right here under my nose, hidden in plain sight.
“Deena, this is important,” I said, stepping forward to look her right in the eyes. “I need you to show me every place my grandmother painted.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m going to recover them, and I don’t want to waste any time or miss a single one.”
Obviously thinking I was also nuts but willing to humor me, Deena walked around, pointing out various places where she thought she could recall having heard my grandmother had painted. I could tell she wasn’t happy at the thought that I was going to take down the enamel paint her husband had so carefully put up.
“They had some big fights about this,” Deena said after she showed me the final area. “Willy was so upset he could barely talk about it sometimes.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, glancing at Lisa, who seemed bored by the whole thing.
“Your grandmother was driven to keep painting, and Willy was just as driven to come up here every night and cover it up. That’s why she did it in so many different areas. He’d cover one up so she’d move to some new place and try again. Finally—”
Deena stopped talking, a blush creeping into her cheeks.
“What? Finally what?”
“I hate to say it, because it so wasn’t like him.”
“Please, Deena. What?”
“Finally, Mr. Fairmont, he heard Willy yelling at your grandmother. Got so mad he told Willy to leave her alone and that he wasn’t allowed upstairs again. Drove Willy crazy that she was up here messing up the walls with all her stupid painting. But he had to wait ‘til she died before he could get back up here to cover it all up one last time.”
TWENTY-NINE
Silently one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.
I got right to work, using a variety of tools that Deena was able to rustle up for me, including sandpaper, putty knives, kitchen knives, emery boards, a flathead screwdriver, and even occasionally a blow drier.
Lisa offered to help but I wouldn’t let her, afraid that too aggressive of a hand would cause irreparable damage to the paintings. She stayed for a while anyway as I worked, keeping me company and listening to what I had learned about Colline d’Or, and describing her own fruitless adventures asking around about Jimmy Smith. We both agreed that we weren’t quite sure what tactic to try next, though secretly I hoped that this painting might give us some direction. Finally, she went on to bed, saying that she was tired and she’d see me in the morning.
By midnight, I had managed to get the enamel paint off of one third of one wall while causing only minimal damage to the artwork underneath. Feeling exhausted and vaguely nauseous, I thought it might be a good time to stop for the night. Before I did, though, I wanted to take a step back and observe in its full scope what I had managed to reveal. I walked across the room, turned, and took it all in.
My grandmother was a talented lady, that was for certain. Her painting style was quite charming, though I hadn’t uncovered enough of the scene for it to make much sense. Mostly, it looked like a quaint little countryside filled with wood-and-thatch houses, fields in the distance, and thus far no living creatures except for the two dogs.
Though I loved the picture itself, in a way, I was disappointed. After hearing Deena’s story about Willy getting so upset, I had hoped perhaps my grandmother had been up here painting out the secrets of the myth of the angelus or something. If that were indeed the case, I had a lot of work left to do before it would make much sense.
I gathered my tools and put them in the cabinet, deciding to clean up the chips of paint that littered the floor in the morning. I didn’t feel very well, and as I got ready for bed I was mad at myself for working too long and too hard on an evening when I should have forced myself to take it easy, considering the bump on my head. In the bathroom, after brushing my teeth, I studied the lump on my head in the mirror, glad at least that the swelling was almost gone, though the bruise had taken on a mottled blue tinge around the edges.
I climbed into the bed and turned out the light, only then thinking about how far away I was from anyone else in this big old house. As the wind blew outside I could hear all sorts of creaks and moans, and as I was falling asleep I could almost swear I had heard someone walking around on the floor above me. My nerves on edge, I didn’t sleep well, and around two a.m. I sat up, my heart pounding. I had to throw up.
There wasn’t time to make it to the bathroom, so I ran for the trash can instead, violently emptying the contents of my stomach. The episode repeated itself several times over the next hour, until there was nothing left to bring up and I merely heaved.
By that point, I was genuinely frightened. Deena’s doctor had said to watch for nausea as one of the signs of a concussion. This was far beyond mere nausea, thus I could only conclude that this was far beyond a normal concussion. I was angry at the doctor for not being more aggressive in his suggestions. My biggest concern at this point was being able to get down the stairs and to the back of the house to ask Lisa to take me to the hospital.
I didn’t even bother to get dressed but simply pulled on my robe and slipped into my shoes. Borrowing an empty trashcan from the room next door, I carried it with me as I went down, just in case I felt another episode coming on.
By the time I reached Lisa’s room, my legs were wobbly and I was sweating profusely. I started to knock on her door when I realized that it was half open. Peeking inside, I could see that her bed was empty. That’s when I heard her in the bathroom, running the water. I waited but she didn’t come out, so finally I wobbled my way up the hall and knocked on the bathroom door. When it opened, my nostrils were assaulted by the smell of vomit, her vomit.
She and I just looked at each other, and I realized that she was as sick as I was. Though I was comforted by the thought that this obviously wasn’t the result of a concussion, that left me to conclude that either we had some horrible stomach bug or we were suffering from food poisoning.
Suddenly, I pictured Deena as she had been this morning, cleaning out the refrigerator and determined to cook up all the food so it wouldn’t go to waste. Apparently, she had cooked up all the food, even that which should have gone straight into the trash.
“I knew there was something wrong with that goulash,” Lisa said.
“Yeah, me too,” I agreed.
I explained about my mistaken assumption of the concussion.
“Since I obviously don’t need the hospital,” I said, “I’m going back to bed and try to get some sleep.”
It was a long night, however, and sleep was in short supply.
Mostly, I dozed on the floor next to the trash can, waking every hour or so to go through dry heaves. I tried to drink water, but anything more than a sip would set me off again. I was miserable.
By morning I was at least able to climb back into the bed. There, I slept fitfully, the stomach spasms lessening to once every several hours rather than every hour. I knew I would never make it to Willy’s viewing that evening, and I hoped that Lisa was faring better than I was. When I had seen her last, she’d been lucky to make it to the bathroom, much less to the funeral home.
I awoke in the late morning hearing sounds in the room next to mine. Feeling wobbly, I made my way to the door and looked inside to see Lisa slowly making the bed there.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
She looked at me with the wan face and messy hair that said her night had been as bad as mine was.
“Deena refuses to believe it’s food poisoning. She thinks we’ve got the flu. Made me move out of the downstairs so I don’t give her my germs.”
“I don’t blame her,” I said. “If I had done this to someone I wouldn’t want to take responsibility, either.”
Back in bed, I sl
ept until noon, at least when I wasn’t throwing up again. At one point, I considered whether I should call my uncle and ask him to pray for me. Somebody needed to because I felt pretty sure that at any moment I was going to die.
My first period of normalcy came after two p.m., when I awoke without the need to vomit. I felt shaky and weak and dehydrated, in need of more than just water, but I knew I was in no condition to go downstairs to the kitchen to get something to drink. I did think I’d give a trip to the bathroom a try, but as I walked out of my room I saw a tray at the top of the stairs. On it was a thermos, a pack of crackers, two bowls and spoons, and two cans of ginger ale. Obviously, Deena had made us some lunch. Judging by the soup in the thermos, it looked like Campbell’s from a can, so I decided to risk it. I shared our bounty with Lisa, who managed to keep hers down about as long as I did. At four p.m., I wondered just how much one person should have to suffer before they were simply allowed to die. I didn’t think I could take much more—that is, until the police detective came up the stairs and told us that the death of Willy Pedreaux had not been from natural causes.
Willy had been murdered.
THIRTY
Nodding and mocking along the wall, with gestures fantastic,
Darted his own huge shadow, and vanished away into darkness.
At first, I thought maybe I was asleep and had been dreaming. But this guy didn’t leave and soon he was joined by another. They needed to interview each of us, they said, though neither man ventured much farther into our rooms than a few feet. Even when Lisa told them it was more than likely food poisoning and not a stomach virus, they still kept their distance.
When it was my turn to be interviewed, they asked me to describe my entire day on Saturday. I was just glad they let me do it from a prone position on the bed. Closing my eyes, I retraced all of my steps, beginning with the arrival of our limo at the house and ending with the sight of Willy lying dead in his bed. They interrupted a lot with questions, trying to pinpoint the comings and goings of all the people in and out of Willy’s room. Only when I finished my story did it occur to me to ask how on earth he had been murdered.
Whispers of the Bayou Page 24