Bad Blood (19 page)

“I promise.”

She looked at me for a few moments. Then she walked back around the couch, over to the stove. Leo jumped to his feet, followed her. I stood, too.

“Trouble or not,” she said, “there’s still beef stew. Why don’t you pour more wine?” She put the enameled pot on the table. “And you can change the music, or turn it off, if you want. I should have said that before.”

The nocturnes had given way to Chopin mazurkas. “No,” I said. “It’s fine. I haven’t heard these pieces in a long time.”

“You know this music?”

“Yes.”

She smiled. “I’m intrigued. I suppose I always thought of the detective business as rather sordid.”

“It is. But I’m not sure it’s any dirtier than cows and chickens.”

She brought a round, crusty loaf out of the oven, set it on the table next to a dish of butter flecked with herbs. “Cows are much more decent than people,” she said.

“Well, maybe. But not chickens. My grandmother kept
chickens
in our backyard in Louisville. I know all their secrets.”

“Is that where you grew up? Louisville?”

“We left there when I was nine, but yes, until then.”

“Where did you go then?”

“Thailand,” I said. “South Korea, West Germany, the Philippines, Holland. My father was an army quartermaster. We lived in a lot of exotic places; when I was fifteen we moved to Brooklyn.”

She nodded. “Exotic.”

The last thing she did before sitting was to feed two more logs into the iron stove on the hearth.

“Well, it’s not fancy,” she said. “But you won’t be hungry.”

It wasn’t fancy, but it was great. The stew was thick with beef, and the beef was tender. Chunks of carrots, potatoes, onions, and stewed tomatoes glistened in a garlicky broth. The bread was dense and slightly sour, the butter sweet.

Eve Colgate and I drank more wine, and we talked, and in the silences we listened to Chopin and to the wind.

I admired her house, the spare completeness of it.

“I’ve been here thirty years. Things get completed, over time.”

“Not always.”

She poured wine for me, some for herself. “Where do you live, when you’re in the city?”

“Downtown. Laight Street.”

“What’s it like?”

“The neighborhood? Changing.”

“Your place, I meant.”

“A friend of mine owns the building, and the bar
downstairs
. Years ago I helped him fix up the bar and the two upstairs floors. He has storerooms and an office on the second floor and I live on the third.”

“You have no neighbors?”

“It’s better that way.”

“Why do you come here?” she asked me.

I sipped my wine. “Even fewer neighbors.”

That was true, and in some ways the real reason; and in some ways, about as evasive an answer as I’d ever given to any question. Eve looked at me. She smiled, and in her smile it seemed to me she understood both the truth and the evasion.

I buttered a last piece of bread. “Why did you choose this place, Eve? When you left New York, why come here?”

She didn’t answer right away. “Henri and I had come here for three summers, renting a cabin, the way you did Tony’s father’s. I suppose I wanted to be where I’d been happy. With him.”

She rose, went to the kitchen, put water on for coffee. I started to clear the dishes. “I’ll wash,” I said.

“No,” she said. “There’s almost nothing. I’ll do it later.”

“It’s my only domestic talent. Let me exercise it.”

“I doubt that that’s true. I think you’re capable of being quite domestic, in your way.”

“In my way,” I agreed. I did the dishes.

We drank coffee, ate pears and some Gorgonzola cheese that looked older than I was. We talked some more. Then the Chopin was over, and the coffee was gone, and I had work to do.

* * *

I called Lydia before I left. It must have been both my night and not my night: she answered the phone herself.

“Where’s your mom?” I asked her.

“Playing mah-jongg at Mrs. Lee’s. Don’t try to make up by being solicitous about my mother.”

“Still mad?”

“Why wouldn’t I be? Has something changed? Are you about to tell me what’s going on?”

I looked over at Eve putting dishes in cabinets. “Not here,” I said. “Not now.”

“Uh-huh. Well, good-bye. I have to go to the Port Authority to collect your package. I assume I still work for you?”

“God,” I said. “Yeah, uh-huh, sure. And there’s something else I want you to do.”

“You’re lucky I don’t have another case right now. But I’m raising my rates.”

“I’ll pay anything.” I had a feeling that was truer than I knew. “You know Appleseed Baby Foods?”

“Baby food’s not exactly my specialty. Is that the one with the babies and fruits all over the label?”

“Yes. It’s owned by a guy named Mark Sanderson. He lives up here; I’m not sure where. The Appleseed plant is up here, too,” I added, realizing she probably didn’t know that. “I want dirt. Get a skip tracer, someone with a computer who can chase paper for us.”

“Us?”

I let that one drop. “Get Velez, he’s good.”

“Are
we
looking for anything specific?” she asked.

“No, and there may not be anything at all. It’s just a
hunch
. But whatever there is, I want it. Tell Velez sooner is better than later. You have anything new on the other thing?”

“The paintings? I would have told you if I had,” she said. “You’re sure they were stolen? You’re sure they exist?”

The woodstove clanged as Eve opened it, fed another log into the fire. “Yes,” I told Lydia.

“Well, I’ll keep looking. But if they do, I think they’re on ice.”

“I think you’re right. I’ll call you in the morning.”

“Lucky me.”

We both hung up. Eve brought my jacket and shoulder rig in from the hook where I’d left them. “What are you going to do now?” she asked.

“I’m going to talk to Ginny Sanderson again.”

“At her father’s?”

“No, she’s not there. He told me this afternoon she hadn’t been home for a few days. But Grice lives in Coble skill. I’m going there.”

She caught my eyes with hers. “If these people are what you say, if they’re involved in murder . . . Be careful, Bill. My paintings aren’t that important.”

“To you they are.”

“Not that important.”

We walked together across the porch, down the steps. “Thanks for dinner,” I said.

She smiled. “I don’t have guests very often. I’m glad you came.”

Leo bounded down the steps and sniffed circles in the driveway. The cold wind tossed the tops of the trees around
as
yellow light spilled from the windows of the house. I took her hand, squeezed it lightly; then, feeling suddenly unsure, I let it go. I turned up my collar against the wind, walked down the driveway toward my car.

12

I HEADED ALONG
10 in the direction of Cobleskill, but I didn’t get that far.

After the driveway there was a wide curve around the wooded slope where Eve’s land came up to meet the road. The other side of the road was flat farmland, and my eyes traveled restlessly over the fields and down the slope, for no reason I could name. In the deep emptiness of the wind-swept night there was nothing to see.

But there was: off to my right, way down the slope, lights. Headlights, double, one set white, one piercing yellow, spaced widely, the way they would be on a truck. And near them, a paler glow, light through a window.

I stopped the car. This was Eve’s land. Her studio stood at the end of a road, a road from the valley. I wasn’t sure that clearing was what I was looking at now, but as I watched the headlights swing around and start to move off, it suddenly seemed like something I wanted to know more about.

I didn’t know where the road came out down in the valley and it would have taken me twenty minutes to get there anyway. The truck would have to do without me. But the paler light still shone, and there might be something in that. I pulled off, parked, started down the slope on foot.

The darkness and winter brush made it slow going. Wind swept through the trees, swirled leaves, shook branches. It carried on it the scent of rain. There was no moon to help me; my footing was uncertain. I could have used the flashlight, but there might be someone still down there, and getting myself noticed wasn’t the point.

From the bottom of the slope across thirty feet of clearing I saw my hunch was right: the building with the lit windows was Eve’s studio. The glow was gentle and even, the light diffused through the frosted glass. The door was open a few inches, throwing a rod of light across the clearing toward where I’d stopped at the edge of the woods.

I began to inch around the clearing, keeping behind the trees, to where I could approach the building from the rear. There was only the one door, but I could work my way back to it against the wall of the building, which seemed a better idea than strolling across thirty feet of empty space.

It might have been, too; or it might have worked out the same in either case. I never had time to think about that. The only thought I had, as a shadowed figure rose suddenly at the edge of my vision, pain exploded in the back of my head, and the world turned red for an instant and then softly black, was that my woodsmanship wasn’t what it ought to be.

I was dreaming of a dark beach, late night, winter. Billowing sheets of rain, gray-green water folded into sludgy, pounding waves. I shivered on the wet sand; icy spray broke over me.

In the shelter of a dune was a house with golden
windows
. Music came softly from it. Schubert, I thought, but I wasn’t sure. It would be warm inside; someone kind would be there. I tried to head toward it, but my feet wouldn’t move.

I turned my back on the house, walked slowly down the beach into the cold, thick water, looking for something I knew I wouldn’t find.

There was water everywhere, cold water, rushing past me, sweeping over me. I opened my eyes, saw nothing. I was lying face down in water, tasting it in the mud in my open mouth. But this wasn’t the ocean, and the dream was over.

I tried to look around. A pounding in my head made it harder. There was darkness, there were trees. There was rain, lashing through the trees and darkness, racing over the ground where I was.

I was soaked through. The skin on my thighs was numb where I lay in the cold water. My scalp was tight with the cold and I felt my back trying to pull away from the heavy weight of my sodden jacket. I started to shiver.

I pushed my shoulders off the ground, to get up, but hot nausea rose in me and I collapsed back onto the leaves and twigs and icy water. I lay there, listening to my breath rasping in and out, as the dizzying pain in the back of my head faded.

I tried, very slowly, to get up again. I became aware of noise: wind shrieking through the trees, branches creaking and cracking against each other, the percussion of rain pounding the ground around me. The duller, desolate sound
of
the drops as they hit my jacket. My own voice, wordless and hoarse.

I made myself stand.

Water ran down my neck, oozed inside my sleeves. I shook uncontrollably. My body tried to fold in on itself, to escape the icy, burning bitterness. The wind changed directions, blasted me from the front; my eyes began to tear, but they hadn’t been clear anyway.

I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t know anything at all, except the agony of the cold and the dazedness I couldn’t clear. Finally I took a clumsy step, then another, because movement was better than standing still and anywhere was better than here.

After a time that was not long, or maybe a thousand years, I had to rest. I leaned against a tree, tried to catch my breath. All the world was in motion. The wind screamed and the rain drummed and I was shaking and unsure. I looked up, around.

Above me, up a slope through the trees: light. Yellow light. I blinked, passed a hand over my eyes. The light was still there. Lights, maybe; or maybe that was me. But something was there and I headed for it, crashing through what I could, going around what I had to, always my eyes fixed on the light.

It was uphill and I climbed. I pushed my feet into the mud, strained against tree roots and branches. My legs were sluggish, slow to respond, as though they were only half listening.

There was a searing flash and a bone-splitting thunder crack. Negative became positive and then black again and
what
I’d reached for wasn’t there. I slipped and fell. The pain in my head wouldn’t quit, and needles of rain swept across my face as I lay listening to rushing water and the pounding of my heart.

I wanted to stop trying then, to stay where I was, to wait for the cold and the pain and the noise to end.

But there was light; I could see it. Where the light was maybe it was warm and maybe it was quiet.

Better than quiet: maybe there was music.

With a groan I rolled to my feet. Slowly, as though with glue in my veins, some steps forward; then some more.

The trees ended.

I held onto the last one, looking. The space before me was dark and full of rain, but nothing else. Nothing to hold onto; but nothing, anymore, between me and the light.

It was harder, without the trees and brush. Each step had to be sure. The ground still sloped uphill and the wind was hard. But the light was closer now, I could tell that. It was golden and square and must come from windows. from someplace warm, a house, someone’s home. It had to.

And then it was gone. I blinked, stared, tried to bore through the darkness with my eyes. Maybe I was wrong about the trees. Maybe something was standing between me and the light, something I could go around.

I took some more steps; my knees became rubbery. There were no trees. There was nothing there, nothing hiding the light. It was gone.

Like a puppet whose string had been cut, I sank slowly
to
the ground. The water rushed past me, splattered over me, pushed by a screaming wind. As I was swallowed by darkness and cold, I was sorry that I hadn’t reached the glowing house, because I’d wanted to hear the music.