Besides, I’d drunk all that lovely wine and it was Christmas, and my friends had given me the wonderful present of having Kyle here.
“What happened in New Orleans?”
“What do you mean?” He was washing a knife, and his tone sliced with the same sharp edge.
“You left after Hurricane Katrina, right?”
He rinsed it, then ran his finger along the edge of the blade, as if to test it. “Yes.”
“But your family’s still there?”
“My mother and sister.”
“Married? kids? Tell me about her.”
“No.”
“Okay,”I said, drawing out the O and the K.
He handed me another knife to dry. I slid the towel down the blade and inserted it into the knife block.
He grumbled to himself, then lifted his hands from the water and rested them on my shoulders, suds and all. “Clara, you’re not ready.”
I leaned forward and kissed him. I blame it on the wine.
He didn’t pull away immediately. Maybe things would turn around in my life and this nice man would like me and we could settle down and—the lips were gone.
“Look at your behavior over the past few days.” He pulled his hands away, leaving foamy damp spots.
“I am a rule-breaker.”
He shook his head, as if I didn’t get it and handed me another knife.
“You’re worried that my knowing a little about you and your sister will impact the town’s perception of your objectivity?”
“As far as my judgment goes, this town needs to perceive me as unimpeachable. I’m a black man in a white town in a position of leadership. I’m a target. It’s not that you’re a rule-breaker, Clara. You’re a loose cannon.”
The criticism stung. “Loose cannon” implied I didn’t know what I was doing. I set down the dishtowel. “I would think you’d want to hear our suppositions, just in case. Meanwhile, it’s fine if you don’t want to talk about your family. All you have to do is say so.”
Kyle started on the pots. I could hear the sponge scratching at the metal, the laughter from the other room, the Christmas carols that had replaced disco, even the snap of the fire. The kitchen was warm and cozy, the pile of dirty dishes and pans shrinking, the lingering smells of the dinner in the air. Kyle’s reflection in the window over the sink was fuzzed by the rising steam.
“I love red beans and rice. I miss the warmth and the sudden rain showers that come from nowhere and disappear just as fast. I miss the smell of the river and the lush landscape, the way smells are heavy in the heat and humidity. New Orleans was my home, until the hurricane took that away. I can’t go back, and it’s an ache, Clara. I did something that’s got me blacklisted, and while I can visit my family, I can never live there again, at least not…for now.”
A peace offering.
I leaned a hip against the counter. “Okay, then. How about a pact? When this is over—because it will be over—I’ll take you to dinner, and we’ll talk about the stuff that matters. In the meantime, I’ll try to keep you in the loop for everything else. Deal?” I held out the hand covered in towel.
He grinned, the first, full out grin I’d seen on him that night. “Deal.” He put his hand into the towel and shook. Then, he leaned over and, very gently, gave me a kiss on the cheek.
Woo hoo.
Chapter 21
Richard wobbled into the room, his champagne glass held aloft, queen-style. “Hey you two! You’re taking an awfully long time to do the dishes!” He giggled a little and collapsed into a chair at the kitchen table. Morrie followed, putting his arms around Richard’s shoulders and hugging him hard. He laid his cheek on Richard’s head. “Hey, old man. What do the doctors say about you these days?”
Richard rolled his eyes. “Not much. Turns out I’ve got Lyme, so that’s antibiotics up the wazoo.” He snorted. “Whoopee. More drugs.”
The stereo snapped off in the other room, and a round of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” started up.
Kyle finished the last pot and handed it to me before turning from the sink and drying his hands. “Does that affect your HIV?”
“Who knows?” Richard threw up his hands, unintentionally heaving Morrie off. Morrie smiled quietly and leaned on the wall behind Richard. “Everything pretty much does, it’s alllll immune system. Maybe I should just cross my fingers. That should work, right? Yup. Just cross my fingers. More champagne?” He stood up and wobbled vaguely in the direction of the refrigerator. Kyle gently steered him back to the table and got the bottle. He sent a questioning glance toward me, but I didn’t know what to do. I’d never seen Richard this plastered.
It didn’t matter, because he forgot almost immediately.
“Morrie, my friend, this sucks. When we’re young, we think everything is reversible. But some stuff, you never see coming and then you don’t know what the hell you’re supposed to do next.” He squitched sideways in his chair and looked at Kyle. “Bet that’s what Katrina did to you, huh?” He slumped forward again, tapping the table with his forefinger. “These days, they say HIV isn’t a death sentence, but they don’t tell you how to live with it. They don’t tell you that people will still be scared of you, that you have to change how you think and eat and organize your life. Lucky days are when you forget about it for a while.”
Richard plopped his elbows onto the table and dropped his chin into his palms. “Paul, now Paul. What would I do without him? That man loves me so much, and I don’t deserve any of it. He keeps fighting for us, but sometimes, I just wanna give up, you know? Just put me in one of those flaming boats and float me out to sea like a Viking. That’d be the way to be sent off, right?”
I put my hand on his shoulder, and he rested his head in the curve of my hip. “Clara, sweetie, you’ve gotta find someone who loves you like Paul loves me. Dying is a bitch, and if you haven’t shared whatever you get in this world with someone then who cares what you get? All those experiences go with you to the grave unless someone else carries the memory.”
Morrie looked absolutely stricken. Kyle was still. I had a huge knot in my throat like a scarf tied too tight. The song finished in the living room, and the chatter started up again.
“What did I come in here for?” Richard muttered, looking around vaguely.
“This, I believe.” Kyle held up the champagne. “How about we bring it into the other room?”
Paul caught my eye as we entered. He rose quickly to help Richard to a seat, relieving Kyle of the champagne, and placing it safely out of reach on the sideboard. “Sorry,” he whispered. “He’s been like that recently. The pressure at work is getting to him.”
I chastised myself for not being here to notice or to help, then felt overwhelmed by all the competing priorities. I turned away and saw Ernie helping Mother on with her coat. “Are you leaving?” I said. “I thought Bailey…I thought we were going to talk.”
“I’m going to stay again with Ernie and Loretta tonight,” she said. “We’ll talk tomorrow.” She tipped her head at Kyle, as if in warning.
I was too hurt by her leaving to pay attention. “It’s Christmas. I’m your family.”
She had the grace to look startled. “Yes, you are, although I’ve not heard you say that before. Tonight, though, Loretta and Ernie have lost their family, and they need someone with them. Loretta is my oldest friend.” She started to reach for me, then paused, as if unsure of my reaction. “Loretta was here when you weren’t, Clara. I owe her.”
“Join us, Clara,” Ernie suggested. “We have room.” But Loretta’s exhausted face and my own petulance stopped me.
“We’ll have other Christmases,” Mother said. Then, in the sort of strange turnabout that was her trademark, she gestured like the mother of my childhood, and like a good daughter, I stepped toward her. She kissed my cheek. “Merry Christmas, Clara.”
Paul saw my face. “Why don’t you stay here? You can run home for clothes tomorrow. We’ve got the space, it’s late, and anyway, we could use the company.” My first instinct was to demure, but then I reconsidered. I imagined that, when the person you loved was dying, being with him was the only place you wanted to be. It would also be a hard and lonely place. Maybe my presence would act as a buffer against the fear that this would be their last Christmas together, a fear—I suddenly realized—they must carry through every holiday, no matter how well Richard was doing.
After that, the party broke up. It was nearly one o’clock before they all drifted out the door, with kisses and promises to be back by early afternoon of the following day, even Kyle. At least I had that to look forward to, sort of. Paul banked the fire, and I helped him shepherd Richard off to bed after a large glass of water and three aspirin.
He came to find me after Richard was tucked in. I had crawled happily between the guest room bed’s clean sheets and was leafing through a book of Mark Doty’s poetry I’d found on the bedside table. Without saying a word, he sat down, put his arms around me, and began to cry.
Christmas dawned snowy. Everyone appeared earlier than expected to beat the storm. Paul, Richard and I were still in pajamas when the guests started arriving around eleven, so Paul made another batch of biscuits and more coffee and we opened gifts by the fire, listening to Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring and Handel’s Messiah. Richard, unchastised by his night of drinking, and Paul’s remonstrance about alcohol’s effects on his immune system, started on the champagne again when he started cooking, but promised to take it slower. It was unclear if he remembered the conversation in the kitchen the night before.
Mother arrived with Loretta and Ernie, on time of course. I still felt stung over her leaving me last night, even though I knew it was completely irrational, so I left the room and went into the kitchen to help Richard stir, chop, or sauté. He set me up at the kitchen table with a wooden board and let me hack at a stack of onions. Kyle wandered in a few moments later. Richard set up another board.
“Avoiding your mother?” Kyle asked.
“I’m a three-year-old.”
“She’s good at it,” said Richard. “One of her specialties.”
The onions started doing their good work and I swiped at my eyes. “Shut up, you. Your mother loves you.”
“And your mother loves you,” said my mother from the doorway.
Richard intervened. “Constance, you look lovely this afternoon.” Mother’s dark green suit and cream silk blouse were perfect. “They’ve already got me locked up in the kitchen, can you believe it? Do you need a glass of champagne? Some orange juice? No? Well, go grab yourself a chair and warm your toes by the fire. Hors d’oeuvres will be out in fifteen minutes.” He gave her a big kiss and gently led her out the door.
I wasn’t off the hook, only reprieved.
Paul came into the kitchen to pick up Richard’s cooking duties while Richard schmoozed guests. My vision near Hetty’s murder site still nagged at me, and if Mother wouldn’t discuss it, at least I could talk to Paul. Kyle would get an earful, but better to shock him now.
“Um, Paul.” Something in my tone of voice caused him to turn sharply. I nodded. He shrugged, in that way people do when they mean it’s your funeral.
“I’ve started getting daylight dreams,” our code for visions.
“Like what?”
“Like colors. Like a preview of a murder. Like lots of burning images. The sound of white noise.”
“A preview of a murder?” Kyle stopped chopping, the knife suspended.
“I saw Hetty’s attacker.”
“Why haven’t you told me?” He dropped the knife, and it clattered onto the board.
“It’s a vision, Kyle, not an eyewitness account.”
“Vision. Like voodoo and séances?”
“I’m not practicing it for money, but, yes, sort of.”
He narrowed his eyes, sat back in his chair. “How long have you had these, uh, visions?”
“How often are you having them, Clara?” Paul asked.
“Maybe one every couple of days. Not often.” For the moment, at least, fewer than I had before I ended up in Switzerland. “I’m not sleeping well, and I’m still having that, uh, same recurring dream.” Kyle probably wasn’t ready for visions of a bloody wave coming for me.”
“So…things aren’t improving.”
“No.”
Paul put down his wooden spoon and turned off the flame under the pot he’d been stirring. “What else?”
“I brought the last vision on deliberately.”
Paul’s eyebrows rose. “You did?”
“I wanted to see if I could come up with something about Hetty’s murder, something that might give me a sense of her. I got the color green.”
Kyle’s skepticism glowered at me across a haze of onion fumes.
Paul said, “Olive green? Neon green? Blue green?”
“Forest green. With a thin line of yellow green going through it.”
“Did you see Hetty herself?”
“The color swirled around her, like ink in water or smoke in air. But the color strands were intense, not diluted.”
He leaned a hip against the counter and frowned. I knew what the colors meant; I’d looked them up, but I wanted him to confirm it. Finally, he said, “Both dark green and yellow-green indicate jealousy, but you already knew she was jealous of you. Dark green is often related to ambition and greed; yellow-green, to sickness, cowardice and discord. What kind of sense does that make to you?”
“She was ambitious about her farm—and maybe a little social climbing. Loretta said Hetty was having an affair, someone from the campaign. Did you know that?” I asked Kyle.
“An affair?” Kyle picked up the knife. He sliced an onion in half and placed the halves flat-side down on the cutting board. “Or a relationship?”
“Loretta said ‘affair.’ You should ask her.”
“I intend to. Thank you. Later.” He severed the halves into fine little slices, swept the pieces into a bowl.
Paul slid his eyes in Kyle’s direction. He said to me, “Maybe the ambition and greed had to do with harming you.”
“You mean Hetty saw me as an impediment to her social climbing? And she killed Hugh to…do what? How did that help her cause?”
“She was jealous when you were children, right? Maybe her ‘affair’ from the campaign used her jealousy and social ambitions to manipulate her. That could cause the intensity in the colors you saw.”
“But what did Hugh have to do with the campaign? I think Hetty killed Hugh because he rejected her.”
I told Paul about the photographs I’d seen in Hetty’s cottage, and how the colors matched Mother’s cottage. “Whatever’s going on at the campaign is unrelated.”
Kyle rubbed his hand across his eyes. He said, “Aren’t you going in circles? Didn’t you say to me last night that you thought they were connected?”
I brushed him off, confused, still wrapped in my remembered images from the vision.
“Clara, I think you need to let this go,” said Paul. “I’m impressed at the images you’ve gotten, but it’s easy to lose perspective—think you’re acting logically when you’re not. Hetty is dead because someone has a secret to hide, and whoever it is, they’ve targeted you and Constance, too. You’re an intuitive, not an investigator. Use your gifts where they apply.” He turned back to the stove.
“My point, exactly,” Kyle chimed in.
I turned on him, furious, pent up with weeks of sleeplessness, blood-filled dreams, my mother’s silence. “What have you learned? Do you know who killed Hetty? Who killed Hugh? Do you know who’s targeting my mother and why?”
He remained unperturbed. “I can’t share anything from the investigation. There’s too much at stake. I know yo
u wouldn’t mean to tell anyone, but it still happens.”
“Right. You won’t help me, and now even my friends are against me.” Furious, I walked out of the kitchen, put on my coat and boots, and grabbed my car keys. “I’m going home for clean clothes,” I said to whoever was listening. “I’ll be back in time for dinner. If I’m delayed, go ahead without me.” I felt childish, but if I stayed in this house, I would say something I regretted.
The snow wasn’t too heavy yet, the road crews had plowed recently, and the ride home was easy. I pulled the Land Rover up by the front door, figuring I’d only be a few minutes. The door swung open silently, and I closed it just as silently behind me. Something about the house’s emptiness was a balm to my anger. It bothered me that I’d told the chief last night that Hetty’s and Hugh’s murders connected to the campaign, but had forgotten it today. Just sleep deprivation, right? And how could a person think clearly when there were so many different threads to weave into an explicable pattern? Nothing fit. Not one thing. Hetty was so harmless. Why would anyone kill her? And how could I have known her all these years and not known she had a gift like mine?
Maybe her death had nothing to do with Hugh. Maybe some crazy client who didn’t like her intuitive readings lured her to that country road. But I didn’t believe that. This was a small town and two murders in two weeks had to be related. And what did the Winters know, and why would Mary Ellen threaten me to get Mother to do her bidding?
Paul and Kyle were right. I was thinking in circles, maybe making connections where there were none and ignoring the connections that were really there—but I couldn’t stop.
I wandered through the living and dining rooms where we’d celebrated holidays when Father was alive. I missed him. I didn’t think about him as much as I used to, which saddened me, but his voice echoed in my thoughts and his presence was strong in this house. For a moment, I even thought I smelled a bit of his aftershave. I shook my head. Olfactory hallucinations I could do without, but the scent lingered.
Shadow Notes Page 21