An Illustrated Death (5 page)

C
HAPTER
T
EN

A
S
IMPRESSED AS
I was by Rosa’s plates, I was happy to be out of her cottage. It was too claustrophobic, too intense. The clutter reminded me of the times I had to go with my mother on visits to ancient parishioners and sit in dust-filled parlors where yellowed antimacassars gave the rooms their only color. Rosa also gave me the feeling I had had as that child of having to choose my words carefully to not give offense.

I took in a deep breath of salt air. Rosa’s accumulation was not on the scale of the Collier brothers yet, but if there was ever a fire . . .

Bianca was waiting for me on her porch, motionless in a yellow rocker.

“So you survived Rosa’s clutter.” She said it flatly, as if I had defied her by going down there.

“Her work is amazing. Why didn’t Claude want me to see it?”

“It was her environment he didn’t want you to see.” Then she reconsidered. “No, it was both. It galls him that someone that ditzy can make so much money and he can’t.”

“You think she’s ditzy?” Unusual certainly, maybe bordering on idiot savant, but “ditzy” seemed a mean-spirited label.

“Let’s just say she’s one of a kind.”

“Aren’t we all.” I wondered why Bianca seemed so hard on her sister. “Did she always have so much stuff?”

“It’s gotten worse. The mess drove my father crazy. He loved her work, he was the one who introduced her to the galleries, but hated the way she lived . . . In fact—” She broke off and slid her eyes in the direction of Rosa’s cottage, as if deciding how much she should share with me. “Right before he died, he gave her an ultimatum. Either she clean up the cottage, get rid of everything, or she would have to leave. He even threatened to have her committed.”

“To a mental hospital? How could he do that?”

“He was Nate Erikson.”

“But still.”

“Delhi, he wouldn’t have really done it.” She looked amused. “It was only a threat, to try and get her to act normal. I don’t know why he cared so much.”

I leaned against one of the porch posts. “He was her father.”

Instead of answering, Bianca stood up to walk me back to the studio. When we were nearly to the door, she said, “Rosa’s real father was our groundskeeper and driver. He and his wife did the grocery shopping, and she was our cook. But then they were hit by a train. Rosa was in the backseat, she was only five. There were no gates or warning lights out here back then, trains never came this far out.”

The image of a screeching metal collision, a car tossed and crumpled, bleeding bodies and terror spread across my mind, and I couldn’t wish it away. “How
terrible
. Is that where she got the scar?”

“I guess. I was only three, I didn’t really understand. Rosa was in the hospital a long time with a head injury and lacerations and when she came out, my parents adopted her. But people can tell she isn’t one of us.”

I hadn’t been sure. When she’d said she didn’t use the, name Erikson, I’d assumed she didn’t want to be confused with Nate or Regan. If Nate had been threatening to evict her or have her committed . . . or worse, been trying to make her discard items that were emotionally dependent on her for their survival . . . had it come down to a choice between them—or him?

A
S
I
DROVE
home, I cast about for someone besides Colin I could take to the concert. The thought of my bookseller friends made me laugh. Marty would show up in his red Cadillac T-shirt, Susie Pevney in her Mets baseball gear. For a fleeting moment I considered Colin’s colleague, Bruce Adair, a critical presence in the poetry world. Bianca would be happy enough with Bruce. But in our latest encounters, he had started propositioning me, and I didn’t want to give him any hope. No, I would have to ask Colin. He even had a tux.

When I got home and checked my messages, I saw Marty had called wanting to know what I had decided to do about the Old Frigate, a message I ignored. Instead I dialed Colin’s cell phone.

Four rings, then “Hey-lo.”

“Hi, it’s me. Do you want to go to a benefit concert at Guild Hall Saturday night? It’s formal, but I have two tickets. It’s honoring the Eriksons.”

“Delhi, what are you talking about?”

I slowed down and explained.

“Of course I’ll go,” he said when I finished talking. He made it sound as if he were doing me a favor, like going to a wake or picking someone up at the train station.

“In a tux.”

“I get that. The question is, what are you wearing?”

“Oh, I’ll find something.”

“Delhi, do me a favor. At least go to a department store.”

“Um.”

“No thrift shop getup! Promise me.”

“Not even a tiara?”

“
Delhi.
”

“Okay, okay.”

“We’ll eat out first,” he decided. “We need to talk.”

We need to talk.
The words I least liked to hear, no matter who was saying them to me. Coming from a husband, you knew the conversation would not be how to best celebrate Valentine’s Day.

On the other hand, the food would probably be good.

C
HA
PTER
E
LEVEN

W
HEN
I
O
PENED
the studio door on Wednesday morning, I smelled burnt paper.

Not the books! Dear God, not the books!

Without putting down my coffee or computer case, I rushed to the center of the room and looked around. It seemed exactly as I’d left it, down to the pad I used for notes still open on the table. Gradually I realized the smell seemed stronger in the direction of the fireplace. But why would someone have made a fire? Last night had been a typical September evening, brisk, but not cool enough to need any heat. Summer clung frantically to Long Island like an aging crone, unable to admit her heyday had passed, until one morning the trees were all vivid oranges and golds and rimmed by frost.

But that day was far away.

Puzzled, I moved over to the hearth and looked in. A blackened page curled like a cringing hand on top of the bed of ancient ashes. I didn’t need the glossy white corner and darkened faces to tell me it was the photograph of Morgan and Nate that had been on the worktable. I touched the edge with one finger and the darkness it gave off coated my throat and nostrils.

My God.
Someone had come in, seen the photo, and struck a match to the edge. They had deliberately set fire to the photograph of Nate and his squirming granddaughter and left the evidence in plain view.
Wicked.
That is what my parents would have called it and for once I agreed with them. Who could be so cruel? The smoky air made my eyes tear and I stumbled back to the worktable. The destruction made me even more certain that the drownings had been no accident.

Shaken, I sat down in the metal chair and scrolled through my e-mail messages without reading them. Finally I stood up.

I needed to breathe. Nobody had told me I couldn’t walk around the grounds. I padlocked the door and set off.

That was how I found the pool.

I had just passed Rosa’s chalet on my right when I noticed a rectangular group of cedars. The shrubs were the upright variety planted as windbreaks. As I drew closer, I saw that a gap had been left and the pool just beyond. All along I had been picturing the pool out in the open, centrally located in front of the cottages. But it had been hidden here.

The cedars were tall, over my head. I walked through the opening and stared down. The pool must have been emptied after it happened but it wasn’t empty now. A foot of water had collected in the deep end, water so dirty and unappealing that I didn’t want to get any closer. Friezes of mermaids and water sprites had been painted on the sides of the pool. When I reached the center I looked back and saw Triton—or was it Neptune?— blowing his horn at the deep end. Under my feet the blue-and-white pattern of tiles was grimy.

I realized something else. No one would have been able to see what was happening in the pool from outside.

“Don’t jump,” a voice begged me, and I whirled around. Aunt Gretchen was standing on the tier of ground above me, looking down.

“Don’t worry, I forgot my towel,” I called back, then climbed a set of stone steps to reach her.

She was taller than I had realized, wearing dirt-stained jeans and a red windbreaker, a navy calico bandana covering her bright hair. She had the boniness of someone who had been fleshy but lost weight. Behind her was a lush, end-of-season garden planted in perfect rows. Crimson balls of tomatoes hung heavily against dark leaves, and I spotted more of the beans we had eaten the day before. Pumpkin and melon vines snaked over the ground like connecting cords. The garden was protected by a high fence and netting.

“What a gorgeous garden. Do you do it yourself?”

“Every last leaf. We had a gardener once, but he—” She stopped then, as if that story had an unhappy ending. “By the way, I’m Gretchen Erikson, Nate’s cousin. He grew up with my family.” She put out a weathered hand and smiled at me. “Aunt Gretchen to everyone else.”

“You’re his cousin? But—you do all the cooking!”

She laughed. “It keeps me busy. There’s nothing worse than an idle old lady.”

I was about to protest that she wasn’t that old when I heard a scraping on the steps behind me and turned around.

“What’s going on here?” Bianca sounded tense. To get here so quickly she would have had to have been following me.

“Your friend was admiring my garden,” Gretchen said. “I can’t think why, when it’s such a fright. They’ll be bringing me the straw to mulch it next week.” She sighed. “Sometimes I wonder why I bother.”

“Because you love to see everything grow.”

“I do. But it’s not the same without Nate.”

“Nothing is.” Bianca poked at an errant root with her toe.

“And my precious angel. I can’t believe she’s not here either, jumping up and down to see how big the pumpkins are getting.”

“
Don’t.
”

“I never realized how blessed we were. You expect it will go on forever.” Then Gretchen seemed to pull herself together. “Maybe once the garden’s bedded down, I’ll do some traveling. It’s been too long since I’ve been to Italy.”

“But we’ll starve to death!”

“Oh, you’ll manage. What will you do when I can no longer cook at all?”

“Put you on an ice floe, I guess.” Then Bianca gave my back a jab. “Come on. You have work to do.”

“Ow!” I reached around and rubbed the spot. I followed her with ill grace down the stone steps.

“What
will
you do when she can’t cook anymore?”

Bianca’s pale eyes widened and she gave me a scornful smirk. “Starve to death, probably.”

I laughed. It had been a silly question.

“I can’t imagine Gretchen not being around. She took care of us when we were little, while my parents were working.”

“Your parents worked?” I couldn’t imagine it. That would be like Queen Elizabeth helping out at her local deli.

“Not at jobs. Mama painted watercolors, mostly flowers, and you know what my father did. We’d have lunch, the way we still do, then my father would play classical music and read to us. After that we’d sit around the table drawing or painting.
Life
magazine came and took pictures of us when I was seven.”

“Who was the best artist?”

“Not me! Rosa was good at making things look realistic.” We were passing her cottage and Bianca gave a censorious look at the clutter. “Regan only wanted to draw fairies and princesses, and Claude drew a lot of battle scenes with stick figures. They were awful.”

“What about Puck?”

“I’d like to say he was awful too, but he wasn’t. He inherited the family gift and my parents pinned their hopes on him to carry on the family tradition. The trouble was, his passion was music but he didn’t get any encouragement.” She laughed. “What’s the opposite of encouragement? Since my father died, he hasn’t picked up a brush. The concert Saturday night is his first public appearance. He’s nervous as a goat in a kid glove factory.”

I laughed.

“One of my father’s pet expressions. Pardon the pun.”

By my calculations, Puck was in his early thirties. How excruciating had the pressure been to set aside his dreams and become another Nate? Excruciating enough for him to end the situation and save his own life?

I shook away that thought. First Rosa and now Puck. Since I had decided that Nate and Morgan’s deaths were not accidental, I had been fitting people out for prison garb. There was nothing to suggest that a family member had been involved.

Then I remembered the burnt photograph in the fireplace.

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE

I
MADE SURE
that I left the studio by twelve-thirty so I wouldn’t have to have lunch with the family. I was out of sorts and wanted to be alone. There was no way I could still be feeling Bianca’s poke in my back except metaphorically, but the more I thought about it, the more outrageous it seemed. Giving a friend a playful prod was one thing—but Bianca and I weren’t yet friends. If we would ever be. Maybe she had meant to be teasing, maybe Gretchen’s comment about Morgan had upset her, but coming from an employer it was out of line.

I picked up my bag while enumerating her offenses: She had decided I was her “collaborator” without even asking me. She hadn’t thought I was good enough to be invited to Puck’s concert. She—

Oh, come on
.
She just lost her father and her only child. Cut her some slack.

Fair enough. But I still wanted to have lunch on my own.

I made a clean getaway Wednesday. Thursday I was nearly to my van when Lynn, Claude’s wife, climbed out of a dark green Toyota. “Am I late?” she asked breathlessly. “I got held up at the shelter. Are you going in to lunch?”

“No, I have some errands. What shelter?”

“A Safe Haven. It’s for victims of domestic violence and their children. My job is to get the women happily settled into new homes with all the furnishings they need. I’m sorry you won’t be at lunch. We missed you yesterday too.”

“I know. Gretchen’s a good cook.”

“I was so afraid she wouldn’t stay on.”

“You mean after Nate?”

“There was so much bad feeling after it happened. Gretchen and Morgan had gone for a walk in the back woods, but Morgan ran ahead to the house and Gretchen couldn’t keep up with her. When she didn’t see Morgan, she didn’t think to look in the pool. Claude and Puck felt that if she had, or if she had kept Morgan under control, none of this would have happened.”

“Where was Bianca?”

Lynn’s face turned blank as an unprimed canvas. “I’m not sure. She was used to having Morgan’s au pair take care of her in the mornings, but that day she wasn’t— Anyway, it doesn’t matter. All I know is, when my son was little,
I
was the one who took care of him and got him ready for school.”

“I thought Eriksons didn’t go to school.”

She rolled her eyes. “Peter did. I threatened to take him and leave, otherwise, I’d seen what growing up wild did to the others. Nate and Eve finally agreed he could go to Hampton Day School. Now he’s at Deerfield.”

“Why were they so against education?”

“The usual reasons. They felt that rote learning stifled creativity and that they could do a better job.
I
think it was a mistake. They didn’t do my husband any favors.” She gave an anxious glance at the house. “I’d better go wash up. Sure you won’t stay?”

“Maybe tomorrow.” I opened the van door thoughtfully. No one had mentioned an au pair.