Art's Blood (46 page)

“But Reba…was it all lies about my father? You made it all up?”

“Kyra honey, you got to see you’d be better off with him gone. With that young wife, long as he has his functions, he’s like to git him another heir. Another one to take from you. I don’t aim to see that happen.”

The slight blonde figure in the mirror fixed her captor with a horrified stare. “And my mother? Was that…”

The housekeeper’s dark reflection nodded slowly, all the while keeping a firm grip on Kyra’s thin wrist.

“Weren’t nothin’ else I could do. She called me in that afternoon and said she was aimin’ to let me go. Said the work was too much fer me. Her what had never done a lick in her life. Layin’ there in that fancy bed with all the lace and silk, smilin’ up at me. ‘You’ll have a good pension, Reba,’ she told me. ‘Won’t you enjoy a little rest?’

“She thought I didn’t know she was breedin’ again. I believe that’s why she was so set on seein’ the last of me. I knowed that child she was carryin’ was a little bastard fer she’d told me yore daddy wouldn’t lay with her no more— even asked me about potions to help him thataway. But I didn’t want there to be no more babies. I’d thought they was both over the notion with that un they brought in when you was little.”

Reba’s grim smile sent a chill through Elizabeth’s body as she remembered the scar on Aidan’s arm.

“I scared ’em into gittin’ rid of that un. And then, after all these years, fer him to turn up again—”

Kyra tugged at the restraining hand.
“You
set the fire in the nursery? I thought…I always thought I did it. I remember the smell and the little baby crying and how I hid in the closet till GeeGee came for me.”

“I didn’t know you was in there till the fire was already goin’. I didn’t want you to be scared. But don’t you see, honey, I had to let them think hit was you so they’d know there couldn’t be no other child in the house.”

“But he was my real brother! And we’re going to find him again; my father’s promised.”

Reba shook her head and drew the reluctant Kyra closer. “You done found him already, honey. At first I didn’t know but a few days ago I seen that scarred arm and hit all come clear to me. That feller you’d been layin’ up with was yore own brother, the one I thought we’d seen the last of all those years ago. Hit weren’t fittin’ fer folks to know he was yore kin. I knowed you’d be here, along of the river risin’, and I figgered you’d have ’em fellers a-helpin’ you, so I come along too. I come upon that Ben on the stairs and give him a cold drink and told him you was going to meet him in that room with all them dirty lights. He drank hit down and headed off with a big foolish grin on his face.

“Then I found Aidan and told him you was in the kitchen. He took off but I was behind him. He was lookin’ for you when I come in. Didn’t pay no mind atall as I slipped round behind him.”

The black-haired woman’s face was set in grim satisfaction. “Don’t any of ’em pay no mind to me— just an old woman and a servant. Like the copperhead, just blendin’ in with the ground and you don’t see him till hit’s too late.”

“Aidan?
Aidan
is my brother?” Kyra’s anguished cry rang out. “Reba! You haven’t—”

“Hit was fer you, Miss Kyra. All fer you.”

The housekeeper’s crooning voice was louder now, trying to drown out Kyra’s wailing. “Hush now, baby. Soon all that money’ll be yourn and you and me’ll live off in some fine house somewhere. And I’ll be there all the time, keeping you safe from everwhat might harm you…. Come here, Miss Kyra…come to yore old Reba…let me take you home.”

There was a moment of silence and in the mirror’s distorted reflection Elizabeth could see Kyra seemingly slumping and relaxing into Reba’s arms. Then, with a maniac shriek of rage and pain, the slender blonde tore herself free, stepped to the mirror, and shattered it with her fist. From the center of the spiderweb of cracks, thin veils of blood began to creep down the crazed surface in which were reflected numberless tiny images of Kyra and Reba.

Phillip rushed through the doorway with Elizabeth just behind him, just in time to see Kyra, her right hand covered in blood, pluck a long triangular shard of glass from the shattered mirror. She held it like a dagger, turning it this way and that, catching the light of the single bare overhead bulb and sending random flashes about the room. Then, with a haunted half-smile that hinted of irredeemable loss, Kyra turned and lunged at her old nurse, knocking the unresisting Reba down and burying the cruel sliver deep in her stringy neck.

“No! Kyra, don’t!” At Elizabeth’s shout Kyra pulled out the deadly sliver of mirror and threw it across the room to break against the wall. A guttural keening sound escaped her lips as she sank to the floor beside the gasping Reba. Phillip was on his knees, trying vainly to stop the red fountain that pulsed from the severed blood vessels.

Kyra crouched there in the housekeeper’s blood, whispering frantically. “She told me she had the Sight— she said that things were going to happen— that people would fall aside and I would emerge. That’s why I did that piece,
Entelechy.
She
told
me she could see the future, and she could— she
could—
because she was making it
happen.”

Reba lay still, the color draining from her face, her dimming eyes fixed on Kyra. Slowly she lifted her blood-wet hand to Kyra’s face and, with a look of infinite longing, began to wipe away the flowing tears. For one last moment, she caressed the young woman who had been her life. Then her arm fell and Reba was gone.

B
EFORE
M
ARVIN
P
ETERSON LEFT TO FOLLOW THE
squad car carrying his daughter to the police station, he went to his SUV and brought out an envelope, which he thrust at Elizabeth. “Buckley brought me this today. Miss Lily had left it for me to read. You know everything else about our family; you might as well see this too.”

The fire engines that had arrived just behind Phillip and the others had done their work. The flames had remained confined to Kyra’s studio and, though still smoldering, had not spread beyond. The door had been hacked down and the last vestiges of fire extinguished. Ben had been roused and, supported between Hank and Phillip, moved to the back of Phillip’s car, where once again he was asleep.

Elizabeth and Phillip sat in his car and, by the light of her flashlight, she read him Lily Gordon’s final letter.

Elizabeth slowly folded the pages and returned them to the envelope, offering it to Phillip.

“Mrs. Gordon was fooled, just like we all were. No one noticed Reba— the perfect servant, invisible in the background. But always there, always knowing what was going on, and able to manipulate events. She was like the negative space Daphne was telling us about.”

Phillip shot a puzzled look at her, then took the envelope. “Hank said there was a sample of that tea Buckley had brought in. It had a strong concentration of hawthorn, not harmful to most people but, in time, lethal to an old woman on digoxin.”

“But this letter— she said she didn’t drink any more after that first cup.”

“That’s right, that’s what Buckley said. He said that Mrs. Gordon had avoided the tea but that she had died anyway— of a broken heart.”

I
T WAS GOING TO BE A NEAR PERFECT DAY.
T
HE HEAT AND
thunderstorms of the previous week had given way to bright, unusually cool, autumnal weather. During the night the thermometer on the back porch had dropped into the fifties and, rather than close the windows, Elizabeth had pulled out the fluffy winter comforter for her bed. She had awakened to the pinks and lavenders of a foggy sunrise and realized that the warm body pressed against her back was James, a pudgy canine substitute for a hot water bottle.
Or a man.

She rolled over and sat up to enjoy the dawn. The three big windows framed what could have been a delicate Japanese ink drawing— all muted colors and simple lines, with the hazy mountaintops poking through the low-lying fog like islands in a pale gray sea of mist.

And Phillip Hawkins was just across the hall in her guest room. She considered this fact, then turned her thoughts to the previous evening.

Phillip had tried starting the jeep, looked under the hood, had even gotten down behind the car and shone his flashlight at the underside. Finally he announced that he was baffled, and insisted on driving her home. “You’ll need help getting Ben over to his cabin— it’s going to take a while for that stuff to wear off.”

“What stuff?” she had asked. “He seems drunk to me.”

“I don’t think so. Hank found a plastic bag of Rope in that kitchen where Aidan was—”

“What are you talking about?”

“Remember? I told you about the date-rape drug the autopsy found in Boz? Rohypnol— same stuff. Just little white tablets.”

He had glanced back at Ben. “As far as he’s concerned, a lot of tonight never happened. It may take a while to explain it all to him.”

“So that’s what Reba was talking about when she said she gave Ben a cold drink. She could knock them out with that stuff and…” The image of Aidan’s helpless body and blood-soaked hair haunted her.

“I’d say you’re probably right, Sherlock.”

“And it was all about Kyra being the star, the only one. That was what Lily meant by the cowbird. But it wasn’t Kyra— it was Reba who wanted Kyra to have it all. So Kyra could do what Carter Dixon called the ‘Yoko Ono/Courtney Love shtick.’ ” Elizabeth considered. “Not that I think Reba would have had the slightest idea who those people were, but you know what I mean—”

Phillip nodded. “Reba might have been content just to have Aidan in jail and out of Kyra’s way on the art scene, but when she found out who he really was—”

“She had to get rid of him permanently. I think, in the end, it was to do with the money— Marvin’s and Lily’s money. Reba wanted Kyra to be the last man standing. I really believe that she felt she could kill Aidan and Ben and blame it, as well as Boz, on Marvin Peterson. He’d be put away and her Miss Kyra would end up with everything. And she’d have Kyra.”

Elizabeth could smell the fresh coffee as she left her bedroom. Through the kitchen window she could see Phillip, sitting in a rocking chair, Molly and Ursa at his feet. She poured herself a cup and went out to the porch.

“What a way to start the morning!” He lifted his cup to her and nodded at the view. “You’re a lucky woman, Ms. Goodweather.”

“I know it.” She took the chair beside him.

“Mum, what’s happened? There’s a rumor going around that…that something’s happened to Aidan…that he’s dead…and that Kyra’s flipped out and she’s been arrested! Have you talked to Phillip? Do you know anything about this?”