The Color of Bee Larkham's Murder

by Sarah J. Harris

  “I’m sorry, Jasper! I’m sorry. Please believe me. I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that. Or shouted at you.”

  I dial 999. Dad’s changed his password to stop me from using his phone, but I don’t need it for emergency calls.

  I’m connected to the operator.

  “Please help me. My dad’s trying to kill me. Hurry!”

  “Jasper!” Dad bangs harder on the door. “Don’t! Open up now! I didn’t mean to hurt you. Open up or I’ll have to break down the door.”

  This time, the operator doesn’t waste time asking me dumb personal questions. They must have this information on file.

  “We’re on our way, love,” the woman says. “Don’t open the door until a police officer tells you it’s safe. Hang tight. They won’t be long.”

  My legs won’t hold me up any longer. I slump to the floor. Bee Larkham had warned me about Dad.

  She said he’d killed people.

  I think she was right.

  He’s proved time and time again he can’t be trusted.

  He tells lies all the time.

  He duped me into thinking he shared my interest in the baby parakeets and that he’d protect them and me from harm.

  I don’t believe a word he says.

  I’m going to tell the police every single thing he’s done.

  40

  March 31, 8:01 A.M.

  Baby Parakeets on paper

  My first glimpse of a baby parakeet should have been thrilling, but its colors were far too muted, dusted with the lightest of pastels and unconfident, tiny circular shapes.

  Dad and me watched two tiny green faces poking out of the hole in Bee Larkham’s oak tree.

  “Nature’s amazing,” he said. “It blows my mind. It’s such a pity David doesn’t appreciate how lucky we are on this street. But you mustn’t worry about him, Jasper. I’ll never let David harm the baby parakeets, I promise.”

  “Shush,” I replied. “I can’t hear them properly.”

  “Sorry.”

  I was too. Even when I opened my window and half–hung out, I was too far away to hear properly.

  If I returned to Bee Larkham’s bedroom, everything would be different.

  That couldn’t happen. I didn’t want to think about short lines of black with blood orange shadows.

  Seeing those colors had made me sick and kept me off school for days. I had trouble blocking them out. Dad hadn’t seen them. He wouldn’t understand.

  I had stayed in my den and pulled the forget-me-not blue blanket tightly shut when I wasn’t watching the baby parakeets.

  I tried to forget, but however many blankets I piled up at the entrance, the repulsive shades and tints from Bee Larkham’s bedroom managed to drift inside.

  April 2, 11:01 A.M.

  Electric Blue Dots and Speckles of Soft Yellow on canvas

  The day of Mrs. Watkins’s funeral, those appalling tones and textures finally disappeared along with the coffin.

  “Is the body inside?” I asked Dad.

  We watched the black hearse pull up opposite 18 Vincent Gardens from our sitting room window on Saturday (Turquoise) morning. I shuddered when I saw the light marshmallow pink and white flowers. I’ve never much liked sweets that maliciously jam my teeth together. I watched Bee Larkham’s oak tree instead, hoping for another glimpse of the baby parakeets.

  “Yes, Son. Mrs. Watkins was taken to a funeral parlor after the doctor pronounced her dead a week ago on Friday.”

  The day after the baby parakeet died.

  “She’s been there ever since?” I shivered. “On her own?”

  “Well, her body was there. She wouldn’t have known anything about it because she . . .” He forgot what he was trying to say and started again. “Her soul wasn’t in her body. It had left and gone to heaven.”

  “Where Mum’s soul is?”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “That sounds nice if you want to believe it. I don’t believe Mum’s in heaven because I don’t believe in God.”

  “Well, that’s your choice, Son.”

  I hadn’t expressed myself well. I meant to say I refused to believe in God.

  A man wearing a black suit walked out of 22 Vincent Gardens. He joined another man wearing a black suit who came out of number 18. They stopped and talked on the pavement across the road.

  “I should go and pay my respects to Ollie,” Dad said. “Since I couldn’t make it to the funeral.”

  “Because of me.”

  “Funerals aren’t the place for children and there’s no one to leave you with. Unless you’ve changed your mind about spending time with Bee?”

  I hadn’t spoken to her since short lines of black with blood orange shadows.

  I hadn’t seen her either, except from a safe distance. She’d waved at me from her bedroom window. I didn’t wave back. She mistakenly thought I was looking at her, but I only wanted to see the baby parakeets’ colors.

  The mention of Bee Larkham’s name pushed the bedroom’s hues from my mind, and all I could see was sky blue.

  “Have you spoken to her?” I asked.

  “Bee? Yes. Yesterday, actually.”

  “What was she doing?” I quizzed Dad as I followed him to the front door. “What was she up to? Did she ask about me?” I bit my tongue. I’d repeated exactly the same questions Dad asked me about Bee Larkham after her party for the neighbors that wasn’t really for the neighbors.

  “Let me see, she was saying goodbye to a music pupil. It was a bit awkward at first after our quarrel, but she apologized for not being there for you when the baby parakeet died and for getting het up with me that night. She said it was a big misunderstanding. She hasn’t been herself lately and she’s sorry for upsetting us both. I think she meant it. We agreed to draw a line under everything.”

  I stared at the battle line, which stretched across the street. It still existed because David Gilbert wasn’t in the coffin. Mrs. Watkins had died of cancer. It was possible my wish the night of the party had gone haywire and struck the wrong person by accident, making me a murderer.

  “Bee Larkham was most probably giving an electric green and exploding purple guitar lesson to Lee Drury.”

  “I’ve no idea,” Dad admitted, stepping into the road first. “The lesson was over when I got there.”

  As we reached the two men on the opposite pavement, the bedroom window at 20 Vincent Gardens swung open and Saint-Saëns, Carnival of the Animals, streamed out. I recognized the colors of the pianos and strings: “Introduction and Royal March of the Lion.”

  Dad had magically summoned Bee Larkham, and she’d responded with the loudest, most vibrant colors she could conjure up. Two dancing china ladies watched the display from her bedroom window.

  “Disrespectful,” one of the men muttered in soft gray lines.

  I couldn’t tell the two men apart in their black suits and the muted colors of their hushed voices.

  He was wrong anyway, whoever he was.

  I knew straightaway this music was meant for me—Bee Larkham’s way of saying sorry because she knew how much I loved these colors, the parakeets too. They shrieked with joy and joined in with the choruses. A baby poked its head out of the hole in the tree.

  Light cornflower blue with speckles of soft yellow.

  Another baby parakeet appeared in a gap in the eaves.

  Trembling forget-me-not blobs and light desert-sand speckles.

  I didn’t need to hear Bee speak.

  I’d seen the true color of the baby parakeets for the first time.

  I recognized Bee’s remorse in the music’s electric blue dots and wood-paneling red-browns. She was begging forgiveness because she’d missed me. I hadn’t visited her house over the last nine days. I hadn’t delivered any notes to Lucas Drury. I hadn’t seen a shade that came close to sky blue.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” I told Dad. “You can go to the funeral. I want to go to Bee Larkham’s house. I want to see the color of the baby parakeets up cl
ose in her bedroom.”

  “Are you sure? Because if you’re happy with that, I can nip back in and change into something more suitable.”

  “Something black,” I said, “which is a sign of respect to the dead.”

  The front door opened and a woman stepped out in a dazzling cerulean blue, long dress. Her obsidian pendant swung from her neck.

  “Good God,” Dad muttered. “Bee couldn’t have known.”

  “Oh yes, she did.” The man in black had a dull grainy red voice. This had to be David Gilbert. “I put a note through her door, telling her the time the hearse was arriving.”

  “Bee likes notes, so I’m sure she read it,” I said. “She says they’re more personal than emails or texts.”

  She waved at me, but the vividness of the blue and the music’s shimmering hues had glued my arms to my body. It erased the palette of colors I’d seen in her bedroom, expunging Lucas Drury’s shades. They mingled pleasurably with the sapphire blues and fuchsias of the parakeets.

  I focused on the musical colors twisting and dancing in front of me. The whitish gray murmur of voices remained in the background.

  Ignore her.

  What is she playing at?

  She’s deliberately goading you.

  Let’s go.

  A car door slammed shut. Dark brown oval shape and shimmering black and gray lines.

  “Jasper? Jasper! Did you hear me?”

  I dragged myself away from the colors of the music and focused on the muddy ocher voice.

  “I said I’m not sure this is such a good idea after all. Maybe I should stay home with you?”

  “No, Dad. You should go and bury Mrs. Watkins with the men in black. I don’t like their colors. I prefer sky blue. I want sky blue and the color of the baby parakeets. I have to paint their genuine colors. I owe them that.”

  • • •

  “First of all, I want to say how sorry I am about the death of the baby parakeet,” Bee Larkham said, as she led me into her sitting room. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot. It’s made me sad, terribly sad we couldn’t grieve together, which is totally my fault. I was wrong to ask you to leave when I was busy. I apologize, Jasper.”

  Had she? I didn’t remember her speaking to me, only to Lucas Drury. He had to get his clothes on. Quickly.

  Because I’d seen his alien flesh. Hers too.

  “The music lessons and house DIY use up so much of my energy,” she continued. “I’m rushed off my feet, but I should have made time for you when you needed me.”

  I was glad she’d mentioned music. She’d painted a new scene in her head, with shades I didn’t recognize. Yet I much preferred this picture to the one from her bedroom. I accepted it unquestioningly, grateful the old colors were gone. They’d been a terrible mistake, which she was sorry about.

  “I buried the baby parakeet in our back garden and recited a poem because I don’t accept there’s a God who lets good people die,” I said. “Or parakeets. Would you like to see the grave?”

  “That’s thoughtful of you, Jasper. Yes, I’d like to pay my respects. Perhaps I can recite something too. Your dad’s left, hasn’t he? Is it safe to go over there now?”

  I walked to the window. The poppy red car, usually parked directly outside our house, had gone. Dad was on his way to the crematorium, following the men in black.

  “Safe,” I repeated, glancing at her reflection in the glass before looking up at the tree. I caught a snatch of powder blue color from the baby parakeets. “Your dress is cerulean blue.”

  “I knew you’d like this shade. Wait here, while I grab my things.”

  I’d hoped she’d invite me upstairs to see the baby parakeets, but we hadn’t got back to normal yet. She went up by herself and came back down again, carrying the white rabbit notebook. She slipped it into her handbag as she slung it over her shoulder.

  “Let’s do this, Jasper.” Bee held out her hand, and I took it. She didn’t mention the unmentionable ever again.

  Neither did I.

  • • •

  Bee cried a lot when she saw the tiny cross. I’d told her the baby parakeet was almost four weeks old. She said it was unspeakably sad for something so small to suffer; it was wrong for the young to be hurt.

  Where were its parents? Why didn’t they protect it?

  I put my arms around her waist to comfort her after she placed a jasper healing stone on the grave.

  “Thank you,” she said, rubbing her necklace. “This is an emotional day for me. I thought I could go through with all of this, being back here, but I’m not sure I’m strong enough. It’s too hard. I think I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

  This was the only time she acknowledged that what had happened between her and Lucas Drury was wrong. It was enough for me. I was glad she regretted it.

  She pulled the notebook out of her handbag and leafed through the pages while I stared at the white rabbit on the cover.

  “I hope you don’t mind, Jasper, but I’m not going to recite a poem. I want to read from a book I used to love and was made to hate as a kid. It’s from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.”

  “Dad read it to me when I was small,” I said. “I didn’t like it either. The White Rabbit was worryingly late and I was scared of the Mad Hatter.”

  “Me too. He talked in riddles, and riddles can be hard to understand. Most people have trouble with them.” She brushed away tears from her cheek. “Anyway, I wrote down this quotation from Alice in Wonderland. I used to read it over and over again. Are you ready?”

  I confirmed I was.

  She took hold of my hand. “Remember, this story is about what it was like being Alice. This is her story, no one else’s. They’re her words.”

  She began:

  First, however, she waited for a few minutes to see if she was going to shrink any further: she felt a little nervous about this; “for it might end, you know,” said Alice to herself, “in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder what I should be like then?” And she tried to fancy what the flame of a candle looks like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember ever having seen such a thing.

  I couldn’t remember Alice in Wonderland saying this. It didn’t sound significant to me. I wouldn’t have written it down. “I don’t like it. I think Alice is sad.”

  “She is sad,” Bee replied, “but she tries hard to get back to normal, and that’s what counts. Remember, she had to do it on her own. That’s tough for any child.”

  “I try hard to be normal too,” I admitted. “It doesn’t always work for me either.”

  • • •

  Bee Larkham cheered up after we went inside and I showed her the baby parakeet paintings in my bedroom. She was particularly interested in my records of the movements of people on our street. I pulled out all my boxes from the bottom of the wardrobe and showed her the most recent notebooks.

  Leafing through them one by one, she eventually looked up.

  “Well done, Jasper. These are incredibly detailed about the times of my music lessons. Did you name any of my pupils? Or any of my visitors, like, say, Lucas or his brother, Lee?”

  “No,” I replied. “I’m not interested in them. I’ve named David Gilbert, when I’m sure it’s him, when he’s walked back inside number twenty-two. That’s one hundred percent verified.”

  “Great stuff. This should help our case against David. You know, his threats and the shotgun. If we ever need to go to the police again.”

  I moved my head up and down. “Your journal will help our case too.”

  “This?” Bee’s hand dipped into her bag and pulled out the steel blue book, which contained her favorite Alice in Wonderland excerpt. I stared at the white rabbit on the cover again. I wasn’t sure I could trust him. If it hadn’t been for the rabbit, Alice would never have crawled down the hole and got into all that trouble.

  “Yes, I think you could be right. It’s all here in black and white. Everything that’s happened.” Bee touched
her forehead. “Jasper. Can I beg a huge favor?”

  “Yeeess. I think so. Because we’re friends again.”

  “Can you fetch me a glass of water? I’m feeling nauseous and light-headed. I’ve been throwing up all morning and can’t keep anything down. I have no idea what’s wrong with me today.”

  “Nausea can be caused by many things, such as gastroenteritis or food poisoning. Maybe you ate some uncooked meat or fish that was out of date.” I watched Bee Larkham’s face take on a faint tone of Key lime pie. “Sometimes it’s other things, like a tapeworm, an ulcer, an eating disorder, or a pregnancy.”

  Bee Larkham’s face changed to the color of curdled cream.

  “Jasper,” she said faintly, “I really could use that glass of water.”

  I was glad to be useful again. I poured her a drink in the kitchen, using the bottled water from the fridge I’d asked Dad to buy after her warning about tap water.

  “Thank you,” she said, when I returned to the bedroom. She’d put her notebook away and was perched on the edge of the bed. “It’s deliciously cold, the way I like it.” She placed the glass down and walked over to the window, holding her handbag. She looked more like herself again, although her cheeks were raspberry ripple. “So this is what my tree looks like from over here. I’ve often wondered.”

  “Yes.”

  “You can see the baby parakeets fairly well from here, but it’s a much better view from my bedroom window. I’m lucky. I can see the babies so close, I don’t need to use binoculars.”

  “I’ve missed seeing the parakeets from over there,” I admitted. “I’ve missed seeing you, Bee Larkham.”

  “Me too. This whole situation has made us both sad. Why don’t we both try hard not to be unhappy again?”

  She turned around and walked across the room. “Come back to me, Jasper. Come back to the parakeets. They’ve missed you too.”

  Her hand dipped into the handbag again. She pulled out a violet-blue envelope.

  I stepped backwards; neither of us said a word.

  She never mentioned Lucas Drury. She didn’t need to. His name was written in black ink on the envelope.