Murder in Pastel (17 page)

“…Vouchsafe to us, who are yet alive, and still have opportunity of reconciliation with Thee, the grace so as to watch over all our actions…”

Mayor Cobb cleared his throat noisily. The minister paused, his eyes leaving the page briefly, and then his voice flowed on, consigning Brett to dust and ashes and memory.

When the service was over we walked back to Adam’s for a buffet of cold cuts and noodle casseroles. The baked funeral meats came courtesy of Irene who seemed to be working from the hypothesis that full stomachs left little room for grief. But no one ate much. Murder has that effect. The knowledge that one of us might have put an end to Brett cast its own pall.

The mayor gave an impromptu speech about the overall safety of life in a small town, and then popped open a beer. Miss Irene circulated a tray of homemade cookies, urging us all to eat up.

After I choked down a ham sandwich, I joined Jack Cobb out on the verandah. He was staring moodily out toward the treeline.

“Hey, Jack.”

He barely turned his head. “Kyle.”

“It was good of you to come to Brett’s funeral.”

“The old man insisted.”

“You didn’t really even know Brett did you?”

“No.”

“And you didn’t like him.”

Jack gave me a direct stare like the glare of oncoming headlights. “No.” After a pause he said deliberately, “Fucking faggot.”

I already had it figured, but the hair on the back of my neck stood up all the same. I reached in my wallet and pulled out the battered note I’d found in Brett’s bathroom drawer.

“I recognized the writing from the bill for firewood pinned on Adam’s refrigerator door.”

Jack stared at the note as though it were in hieroglyphics. Then he snatched at it.

I yanked my hand back, shoving the note in my pocket as I stepped out of his reach. “I don’t think so,” I said like somebody in a book I would never write.

“Give me that note or I’ll kick your ass.”

“That defeats the purpose of getting the note back, doesn’t it?” Not a swerve of his single-track mind. I hooked a thumb over my shoulder pointing toward the house. I clarified, “They’ll ask why we’re fighting.”

Jack’s face twitched in pain like Frankenstein at the first volt of electricity.

“Why did you want Brett to meet you?”

“To kick his ass.”
Duh!

“Why?”

“He needed it.”

It’s hard to escape that kind of logic. I said, “That was me in the cemetery.”

“Yeah. I noticed.” He nodded his head in the direction of my cottage, by which I gathered he had deduced the rabbit’s identity by the hole it bolted into.

“What did I ever do to you?”

“I don’t care about you. I wanted to kick
his
ass.”

I scrutinized Jack. He was twenty-seven (my age), unmarried, no steady girlfriend that I knew of, and had a fixation on Brett’s ass.

“What did Brett ever do to you?”

“Came on to me.”

“Ever heard of Just Say No?”

“He didn’t take no for an answer.”

“So you killed him?”

He seemed to find this funny. “Me?”

The screen door opened and Miss Irene stepped out on the verandah. “Did you boys want some pie?”

“I do, Auntie,” Jack said. He gave me a sort of smirk and followed her back into the house.

After a bit I went back inside and shook hands with Adam.

“Thank you for coming, Kyle,” he said politely, as to a stranger.

A truly improper thought went through my unruly brain. I said automatically, “Call me if there’s anything I can do.”

For a moment there was a gleam of irony in his baby-blues. “I’ll do that.”

* * * * *

My much-postponed doctor’s appointment was at three. I went home, changed and headed into town.

The yellow sun blazed overhead, like a Van Gogh star. Pewter-edged clouds shape-shifted across empty blue canvas. The grassy hills rippled beneath the undulating strokes of an invisible paintbrush. The day shimmered with life and energy, and it was hard to accept that Brett was gone forever. That Brett was now just a memory.

There were living people who were less disruptive than Brett’s memory.

Twenty minutes later I lay on the examining table, staring at the two pencil sketches on the wall while Dr. Hicks moved the cold cap of the stethoscope over my ribs.

“Inhale.”

I sucked in. One of the sketches was of Main Street. Main Street a quarter of a century ago. Beneath a drooping American flag, old men sat outside the VFW on benches. The other sketch was of the park. More old men on benches. Interesting theme going there.

“Exhale.”

I exhaled. “Who did those sketches?”

“Hmm?” Dr. Hicks glanced at me over his glasses and then looked behind himself as though to refresh his memory. “Your mother.”

“My mother?” I stared at those sketches as though for the first time, as though I hadn’t lain here hiding from Dr. Hicks’ x-ray (literally) vision in those penciled streets for much of my life. “I didn’t know my mother could draw.”

“Sure she could. Kyria was a good little artist.”

“Was she?” How come I never knew? “When did she do those?”

“When she was in college. She used to work here in my office on Saturdays.”

There was something funny in Doctor Hicks’ voice. Something neutral. Too neutral.

“You can get dressed,” he told me briskly, turning away.

I unstuck myself from the tissue and leather and hopped down, reaching for my shirt. “You must have known my mother pretty well,” I said, watching Dr. Hicks note something on my chart.

“Hmm? Yes. She was a nice girl. Very nice girl.”

Again, too neutral. Too careful. Either Hicks hadn’t liked my mother—or he’d liked her a lot. He’d kept her sketches. I thought he must have liked her a lot.

“How long did she work for you?”

Silence. A pen scratching away and then Dr. Hicks said, “Off and on, about eight years. Then Cosmo came home from New York. They got married.” He shrugged, still not looking at me.

Eight years?
Ma had not gone to college for eight years; something told me she had put in more than four Saturdays a month for the good doctor. Well, she had to do something during the fourteen years my old man had been sowing his wild oats. Was this one of those Turner Classic Movie moments? I sussed Hicks still found it hard to talk about her nearly thirty years later. He had never married either.

This was a new perspective on my mother. I would have liked to know more, but was it my business? Not hardly.

I finished buttoning my shirt. “Did I use to walk in my sleep?”

Dr. Hicks did look at me then. “When you were small. You outgrew it. Why? Has it started again?”

“Is that possible?” I was startled.

“I suppose it is. Do you have reason to—?”

“No. Not at all. I was surprised to hear that I ever had.”

“It’s not so unusual in children. It isn’t dangerous, although Cosmo worried about you taking a tumble down those stairs to the beach. He used to hang a bell on your bedroom door.”

“You’re kidding.” It didn’t sound like Cosmo; he had always leaned toward the survival-of-the-fittest philosophy. I thought it over. “Why would someone sleepwalk?”

“There are different theories. Somnambulism isn’t necessarily a sign of psychological distress, not in children. Even an adult can have an isolated episode of sleepwalking because of unusual stress. But if it’s a recurring event it could be something more serious, the side effect of certain drugs perhaps.”

“What about nightmares?”

“What about them?”

Now I had Dr. Hicks’ full frowning attention.

“What could be the cause of having the same recurring nightmare?”

“A psychological disturbance perhaps. Are we discussing nightmares or night terrors?”

“What’s the difference?”

“A nightmare is a bad dream. The patient generally wakes up frightened but alert. He remembers what happened in the dream. A night terror is more like a panic attack. The patient wakes up confused and terrified. He might remember nothing more than a single, vivid image. He might not remember anything. Again, it’s not so unusual in children.”

“But in adults?”

Dr. Hicks asked bluntly, “Is there something you want to tell me, Kyle?”

“No. No, it’s for a book I’m working on.”

Dr. Hicks subjected me to a microscopic gaze. “Sit down, Kyle.”

I sat down. Folded up actually. That grave tone petrifies me. Always has.

“I’m scheduling you for a full series of tests at St. Andrew’s next week.”

“Why?” My mouth was so dry the words felt like crumbles.

“Because you haven’t had a complete physical in a couple of years.”

“Is my heart worse?”

Did he hesitate before answering? “I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. I am going to adjust your prescription.”

“If there’s nothing wrong, why the change in my meds?”

“There’s nothing unusual about that. We’ve adjusted your prescription before. You’ve been under some strain. Had a couple of flutters this past week. Better to be safe than sorry.”

“Right.”

His thin mouth quirked briefly. “No need to look like that. Your blood pressure is good, heart rate normal. No need to panic.”

I nodded. Heart illness isn’t static. You’re either getting better or getting worse.

Doctor Hicks added dryly, “And if the nightmares persist, let me know. We can prescribe for those too.”

The next four days were uneventful. Life seemed to be settling back into the ruts.

Adam chased off a reporter from the
Steeple Hill Gazette
and endured two visits from Sheriff Rankin, all observed by me mowing my lawn. He made no move to contact me. I made no move toward him either, but I developed a sudden passion for yard work.

One evening while I was pruning my rose bushes I watched him on his verandah, drinking a bottle of wine, staring out at the trees; staring through the trees, I was sure, to the graveyard where Brett slept in the shadow of the stone angel’s sword.

Now and then I caught a snatch of Miles Davis’
Live-Evil
on the wind off the sea. Safe behind my clipping shears, I watched and told myself that the distance I had erected between us was for Adam’s protection; that the sheriff could never understand our relationship. That seemed reasonable, since I didn’t understand it myself.

* * * * *

On Monday I drove to St. Andrew’s Hospital in the neighboring township of Kelsburgh to spend the morning and most of the afternoon being weighed and measured, x-rayed and scanned. I ran a couple of theoretical miles under the unimpressed gaze of a technician. They must train nurses and technicians like secret agents; you have to go code blue before they start looking interested.

I’d brought a copy of
Greenwich Time
with me, and once more I tried to understand who my father was from other people’s reminiscences while taped up to the machine that counted out my heartbeats.

Joel quoted Cosmo on the subject of “Feelings.”

Experience taught me it’s a hell of a lot more important to have two colors in correct composition than to have a vast confusion of emotional exuberance in the guise of ecstatic fullness or poetical revelation—both overrated qualities in art. For myself, I would rather be intellectually correct than emotionally fulfilled. That’s true of my art and all other aspects of my life.

I’d read Joel’s bio of Cosmo when it first came out, but it seemed to me now that I had missed all the stuff between the lines. Or had not known what I was looking for. While Joel did infer he and my father had been closer than friends, there was no mention of Cosmo’s relationship with Micky, or with any woman besides my mother. Joel surmised that Cosmo had a Madonna fixation on his small-town sweetheart, but that his true nature had lain elsewhere. It was stupid to find this irritating. For all I knew, Joel was right. I have no memories of my parents together.

Nearly every quote of Cosmo’s related to his work.

I’m only interested in the exercise of painting. Of technique and composition. I have no wish to express emotion or personal life; I prefer to have no personal life.

Joel rambled on and on about painting, art theory and the art scene in the ’50s. (Oh, the Dilemma of Being Modern!) He rambled even more about Joel. But how much was Joel and how much was a pose? I read into Joel’s narrative an ambivalence I had not perceived before. References to Cosmo’s boozing, fighting and fornicating struck me now as bitchy in tone. I suspected Joel’s feelings for his legendary chum were a love-hate mix. The memoir ended with Cosmo’s return to Steeple Hill and marriage. Not Joel’s idea of Happily Ever After.

* * * * *

It was around ten o’clock that same night when Jenny showed up at my door.

“Can I stay here tonight, Kyle?” She was white and tense, but calm.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Jenny.”

“I’m leaving Vince.”

That threw me but I said, “I don’t need more trouble with Vince.”

Her eyes welled with tears. She said, “I don’t have any place else to go, Kyle. Please let me stay.” One tear spilled over and trickled down her cheek.

Well hell. I should have sent her to Micky or given her money for a hotel. I pushed open the screen and said, “Only for tonight, Jen.”

She came inside lugging a bulging, flowered tote bag.

“I need a drink,” she said.

I was thinking warm milk. Maybe the last of the dusty Ovaltine. Jen added, “Something strong.”

Adam had finished off the brandy and I had never known Jen to drink beer. I decanted a bottle of red wine and brought her a glass. She downed it in three gulps, giggled and pointed at me.

“I like it when you do that. Raise one eyebrow. It’s cute.” She handed her glass to me.

“You’re scaring the hell out of me, Jen.”

She laughed again, unsteadily. “That makes two of us. Kyle, I think Vince might have killed Brett.”

“What are you saying?”

“He’s changed. He’s different.”