Black River (8 page)

Nick’s thick eyebrows arched. “Whoa…so grandma’s having a conversation with the dead lady in the painting. I told you that thing might be cursed.” He ladled the hot crabs into two plastic bowls, popped on the tops, and set them on the bar. “Take out’s ready.”

Dave said, “Did the granddaughter indicate what the lady of the house said to the painting?”

“She overheard her say the secret of the river will always be their family secret.”

“What secret of the river?” Nick asked.

O’Brien looked down at the copy of the photo, the unidentified woman standing in the long white dress, a live oak near her, Spanish moss draping from its limbs, the expanse of a wide river in the backdrop, the woman beautiful—full smile, her eyes connecting beyond the lens of the camera—connecting with the photographer. “Whoever took this photo managed to bring out the spontaneity and inner beauty of this woman. Maybe whoever it was, he could have shared the secret of the river with her.”

Dave nodded. “But how would, decades later, the old woman who used to live in the house you visited today, know about that secret…whatever it was?”

O’Brien looked up from the photo to Dave and said, “Because something other than the painting must have been left behind.”

H
e waited for her. Waiting patiently. Sat in his truck parked on the side of the road in the dark and watched her house. The floodlights came on one corner of Kim Davis’ small home, illuminating her driveway. The man squinted in the night. Watching. And there she was.

Dressed in a bathrobe, rolling a garbage can to the end of her driveway. She did it every Thursday night. Like clockwork. Usually around 9:00. Same blue bathrobe. He watched her closely, his face hidden in the dark. The robe was loosely tied. It opened slightly as she rolled the can not far from her mailbox.

From the floodlights, he could see her body in silhouette under the robe.

She had a fine body. Sculpted from good genes. Good stock.

He felt and erection growing as she turned and walked back to her home.

And then the lights went out.

He waited a few minutes, shut off the dome light in the truck, got out and walked toward Kim Davis’ home. There was no moon. Clouds covered light from stars. Crickets chirped and a mosquito whined in his ear as he opened her garbage can. He liked that she had a large rubber can. It made no noise when he removed the top. This was the third Thursday he’d done so.

He pulled a small pin light from his jeans pocket. Only turning it on when he reached inside the trashcan. She always used black garbage bags.
Neatly tied. He removed a serrated knife from the sheath on his belt, slashing the two bags, his hands clawing through the trash like a scavenger. Coffee grounds. Paper towels. Cardboard packages that had held frozen dinners.
The woman needs to learn to coo
k. He grinned. That would be one of the things he’d teach her.
She’d learn to cook better than ma…a harsh woman, but one of the best cooks the South had ever known
.

There it was. Wrapped in toilet paper. He unwrapped the toilet paper and stared at a blood-soaked tampon. The man smiled.

Sean O’Brien and Dave Collins sat in deck chairs on the cockpit of
Gibraltar
, Max between them, Dave pouring Jameson over ice. O’Brien sipped a cabernet and removed the photo again, placing it on a small white table in front of him. Dave lit a cigar, blew smoke out of the side of his mouth and said, “Are you going to call your client and hang it up, or try to find that ever so elusive and now secretive painting?”

“One part of me is saying let it be. The trail is cold. But the former detective part of me says there’s somebody out there who knows where to find this painting…have to admit, I’m intrigued. To locate that person is often a long process of elimination, knocking on doors, following leads. I’d feel bad, though, cashing the old gent’s check if I can’t produce a result.”

Dave sipped his drink, the stern line moaning against the pull of a retreating tide. “You want to produce a positive result, but not finding the painting is still a result. Not the one he wants, but a result because it will prove the painting is probably lost in the corner of somebody’s garage, or hanging in some Civil War re-enactor’s man-cave, where it’ll never be found because the painting to a guy like that is his Mona Lisa. After knocking back three-finger’s worth of straight bourbon, the guy will look at the woman’s haunting face and make a promise he’ll never forget the legacy of the South, its traditions, and all the reasons his ancestor wore a gray uniform. It’s all part of the fantasy, the double life. It’s the chivalrous dichotomy of working weekdays as an accountant from a cubical, and then changing into a uniform and spanning 160 years over the weekend—sleeping in tents, brewing coffee
from creek water, leading a platoon of like-minded men, and placing ladies like that woman in the picture on pedestals of divine femininity.”

O’Brien smiled and swirled his wine. “There’s something to be said for that last part, you know.”

Dave puffed his cigar and looked over to Nick’s boat. “Yeah, I know. Nick tries to do that. Says it’s the old Greek way. Too bad his taste in women lean towards the ones who look like strip club employees.”

O’Brien pulled out his cell phone and turned on the flashlight app, examining the photo. Dave said, “I have a marine flashlight if you need more light.”

“This is fine.”

“Did you drop something on it?”

“No. I’m thinking about what Ellen Heartwell told me when she said her grandmother and the woman in this painting shared a secret of the river. I believe this is the St. Johns River. I think I’ve seen this section…I just can’t recall where.”

“I can see why. The river is more than 310 miles long. And it’s a good bet the old river has changed in 160 years—new twists and turns carved out from flooding and hurricanes.”

“No doubt, but the secret of the river is probably the secret of the St. Johns. So this mysterious woman, probably, at one time in her life, lived near the river or visited it during a family vacation.”

“You think if you can find this section of the river, this oxbow, you’ll be a little closer to this mysterious secret and the ID of the woman?”

“Could be.”

“The whole topography, the foliage, the terrain have to be vastly changed in a century and a half. How in the hell could you find that?”

“I probably can’t, but I know someone who can.”

Dave grinned, clenching the cigar between his teeth. “I presume that’s your Seminole friend, Joe Billie. And I surmise that this means you’re taking the case.”

O’Brien’s cell rang. He didn’t recognize the in-coming number. He answered, and a man said, “Mr. O’Brien?”

“Yes.”

“This is Carl Crawford. You visited my antique store…asked me to call you if I came up with a name of the person who bought the old painting.”

“Yes, what do you have?”

“Well, the only reason I remembered his name is ‘cause I just saw his face on the TV news.”

“I’m listening.”

“Damn shame, really. That fella was killed in an accidental shooting while they were filming a movie. He’s the one that was in here eight months ago and bought the painting. He was in with his wife. They seemed like a real happy couple, now that I think back. He’d left his card, and I filed it under C rather than his last name. I filed it under C as in Civil War ‘cause he’d asked me to let him know if I ever got any stuff in from the Civil War. His name is…or was…Jack Jordan. You want the number on the card?”

A
sixty-four-foot Bertram sport fishing yacht cut through the marina, running lights ablaze, big diesels rumbling, a party of five mixing cocktails on the deck, the captain pushing the throttle a little beyond the courtesy, no wake zone. Within thirty seconds the rollers spread across the waterfront, causing moored boats to rock, tugging at their spring lines. Max barked one time, the yelp more of a protest than a bark.

Dave lifted his drink off the table and said, “I’d like to think that guy’s a new boat owner and he hasn’t learned the easy touch of getting in and out of the marina, but more likely it’s someone who can’t spell the word consideration.”

O’Brien had just disconnected from the call, jotting down the phone number at the bottom of the picture. He stared at the photo and said nothing. Dave puffed his cigar and studied O’Brien for a moment. “I’ve seen that look on your face too many times, Sean. Something’s happened or happening, and it’s beginning to suck you into the wormhole. Do you mind me asking who was on the other end of the line? If it was your stock broker, I’d infer that you lost a bundle.”

“It was the antique dealer, the guy who couldn’t place the name or face of the man who bought the painting of this woman.” O’Brien motioned to the picture on the table.

“What’d he say? Did he say how he suddenly remembered the buyer’s face?”

“He saw it on television, on the news. It was a picture of the man wearing a Confederate uniform.”

Dave’s eyebrows rose. He sipped his whiskey, cracking a piece of ice between his back teeth. “Was the unlucky fella, the guy who was shot and killed on the movie set, the buyer of the painting?”

“One and the same. The dead guy’s name is Jack Jordan. The antique dealer said the man came in the shop a few months ago with his wife and they bought the original oil painting of the woman in the photo and a stack of old magazines.”

Dave blew air out of his cheeks, his eyes watching the lighthouse. “This is unsettling, maybe a game-changer. It might be a good point in time for you to call your client and politely decline his open offer for you to find and retrieve the painting.”

“Why? Police are saying the shooting appears accidental. The deceased man’s widow may have the painting. Maybe, at some point, my client could buy it from her.”

“That’s possible. However, if you accept the job, your journey could take a fork in the road that may lead you to some murky places. I don’t say that without duly considering the hypothesis. What begins as a lost-and-found may reverse itself and turn into something found and lost. You’re helping an old man find something lost, and by doing so you find the evidence that proves his relative wasn’t a coward in battle…this noble effort may lead to a mystery better left in the past. Why? Well, ask yourself this question: is this chain of events coincidental or are there other forces, darker forces, at play here?”

O’Brien said nothing for a long moment,
Gibraltar
, rocking slightly in the changing tide. “It could be a fluke, nothing more or less. Like you suggested, if this guy, Jack Jordan, had a man-cave, maybe the painting is there.”

Dave finished his Irish whiskey, lifting Max to his lap, scratching her behind the ears. A salty breeze puffing across the harbor from the ocean, the moving beam from the lighthouse piercing a hole into the dark far out over the Atlantic. “And there could be a hibernating grizzly bear in that abandoned man-cave. You know, Sean, most of reason and deductive logic in life begins with a given—a postulate that can’t be proved or disproved, but the preponderance of reason sets the outer perimeter and everything works
inward from there, sort of like working in from the borders of a known circle. That doesn’t exist in the shadowy world you often find yourself in because evil has no borders, no limits, and no presumed axiom from which to start. It’s just there, my friend. And your circle can grow outward because the criminal mind is without conventional reason. So you fight the fight, but never define the undefinable because it’s always just over the horizon…in any and every direction. And there lies evil.”