Heart to Heart: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (23 page)

So call me dumb or insensitive or
overreactive or whatever; I was doing what I think any sane man
would do in the circumstances: I wanted to get my love out of that
insanity.

She still seemed a bit
confused, not exactly sure where she was and what was happening,
but she was intelligently discussing the paintings with Alvarez and
seemed to be maintaining a grip on her own identity. One of her
problems I think was that she did not recognize those others
present—or maybe she did and that was causing the confusion,
because she kept looking from John the Ascetic to his painting
while discussing it with Alvarez.

I stepped up behind them and put an arm on
her, asked her, "Do you remember painting that?"

She encircled my waist with an arm and drew
close, like a little girl seeking comfort from Daddy as she
replied, "Oh yes, I remember it well, but I didn't realize that I
was painting from memory. I thought it just came to me. Several of
these, Ash—look at these down here..." She was pointing toward the
canvases of Karl and Catherine. She glanced about and located the
real subjects. "See, these are actual people. And I'm sure I've
never seen—oh well, maybe I could have if..."

I said, "It's okay. How would you like to
get out of here for a while?"

She gave a weak smile to Alvarez and said,
"The sergeant just suggested the same thing a moment ago. Are you
guys taking turns, drawing lots, or what?"

Alvarez turned beet red.

I tried to cover for him,
telling her, "Well Bob is prettier than me, but I'm more constant.
Don't ever date a cop, Francesca, unless you need a ticket fixed or
he first introduces you to his mom. On second thought maybe Bob is
the exception. He titled your double portrait Soul
Mates."

She smiled at him and
said, "How nice. That's my title too."

He gruffly said, "That's what I
figured."

I told him, "I think we really should get
her out of here. Something's going down, and I don't like the smell
of it."

He said, "Me neither. Any time you're ready,
I'm ready."

But Valentinius obviously was not ready.

He joined us, smiling all around, took
Francesca's hand and said to her, "It is time for the unveiling, my
dear."

I quickly said, "Val...wait...can we put
this off a while? I'd like to—"

"It requires but a
moment," he demurred. "Do not hasten to judgment, dear Ashton. It
is the moment we have all been working toward. Trust your heart, my
brother."

"How old are you, sir?"
Alvarez ventured bluntly.

"As old as the hairs on your grandfather's
grandfather, my son, and then some," Valentinius replied without
breaking smile.

"Somehow you just don't look it," the cop
growled.

"Thank you," said the angel. "Nor do I feel
it. Now look, the exhibition is ready and we shall down with the
veils."

He led us all to the opposite wall and
positioned Francesca where she had the full exhibition in
view.

John the Ascetic stood beside his portrait,
Hilary and

Pierre, Karl and Rosary
and Catherine beside theirs, solemn in their sacred duty and
staring at Francesca with an expression I could characterize only
as transcending love. That accounted for only six of the forty or
so portraits, but subtle changes were occurring in those others—it
was happening right before our astonished eyes and Alvarez was
holding his breath again.

I said, "Francesca, don't—"

"Now now," said the angel,
his tone lightly chastising. "This is Francesca's moment, Ashton.
Let her have it."

He stepped back to stand
about midway between Francesca and the exhibit, smiling with
approval and reassurance and love and God I don't know what all
was in that smile, but I suddenly lost all reservations about the
thing.

Francesca gave me an uncertain look. I
nodded reassuringly and smiled at her.

All the paintings had
changed subtly.

It was obvious now that all depicted the
same subject.

The subject was Francesca herself.

Even John and Hilary, Pierre and Karl—they
too were now Francesca.

Suddenly I knew why.

Francesca took a tentative
step forward. In a strangled little voice she asked, "What does
this mean, Father Medici?"

He replied, "The veils are down, my dear. Go
to yourself."

"But..." She took a step closer. "All are
myself."

"Go to the all then my dear."

She cried, "Ohhhh!" and I
feared for an instant that she would faint, but then she quickly
reasserted herself and looked back at me.

I was absolutely rooted to my spot, could
not move, could hardly breathe.

Valentinius went over to stand inside the
exhibit, held out a hand to her, said, "Come."

She looked uncertainly from him to me, and I
knew what she was up against; this guy had raised a hand to me a
short while earlier and said "come" and I had gone like a robot at
his command.

But this was not a command.

There was a decision to be made here, and
only Francesca herself could make it; I understood that.

She cried, "Ashton! Help me!"

I sent her all my love and adoration in a
look that perhaps would have to last an eternity and told her, "I
release you, Francesca. Do as you must."

I heard it in my head from the angel: "Good,
good! Thank you, brother."

She had turned and was walking toward
them.

There was a strange shift
or something in the fabric of that room; the walls seemed to
dissolve, and the whole scene in front of me was like suspended in
celestial air. The whole thing was shrinking, receding into the
distance so that when Francesca reached Valentinius and turned back
to look at me, it was as though from a great distance.

The whole company—the entire cast of
characters— were smiling at me, and there was triumph in those
smiles, though perhaps triumph tinged with a touch of pathos.

The picture kept receding
until it was a mere point away off into nowhere—but just before
that moment, a fleeting second before that moment, there was some
sort of shift and all the figures except Valentinius blended
together into a single image, then that image blended with
Valentinius and collapsed into nothingness, and then the fabric
restored itself—time and space reasserted its domain and raised
the walls—and Alvarez and I were alone in the room.

The cop was thunderstruck.
He cried, “Good God, where'd she go?”

I said, "Home I guess," and put a hand to my
face to conceal the tears.

But she'd gone farther than that I
think.

I believe that my soul mate had just
returned to the One.

Alvarez was walking the outside wall in a
daze, probing it with both hands and tossing me an occasional quick
look as though to maintain touch with something real. The
paintings were gone, the heads were gone, all was gone as though
it had never existed—and maybe it had not in this particular corner
of reality.

Hai Tsu appeared before me then with her
handmaidens, and all were naked bodies of light.

I noted poor Alvarez as he
clapped a hand to his head and slid down the wall to seat himself
on the floor, peering fearfully at the apparitions that stood
between him and me.

Hai Tsu spoke within my head to tell me,
'Time is come, Ash Shen, to say good-bye. Please remember this
servant with love."

I answered the same way,
telling her, "Thank you Hai Tsu. In truth you are not the servant
but the mistress of the court. I regret that I have caused you
distress. I could never forget you, and all my memories will touch
you with love. Bon voyage, my sister."

That electric body was pulsing with
unrestrained joy as it dimmed and faded and disappeared. The other
two remained behind for one electric second, darted to either end
of the great room as though taking a last look around, then they
too winked out.

Poor Alvarez wailed "Jesus Christ!" from his
side of the room and began crawling toward me.

I went to help him—though Lord knows I
needed some help myself—and I told him, "You may not be too far off
at that, my son."

"Don't you start it!" he growled, then he
flopped onto his back and laughed his way back to sanity.

I recommend laughter as a good antidote for
terror, but terror was not my problem and I did not feel like
laughing.

I sat down on the floor beside my friend,
the cop, and wept as he laughed.

I recommend tears as a
good antidote for sorrow.

And I guess I was about
the sorriest bastard you would ever care to meet.

It is I think entirely possible to die of a
broken heart.

Chapter Thirty: Casefile Wrap-Up

Everything was gone—the
booze, the food, even the dirty dishes were gone. I left Alvarez
recovering on the floor from his laughing fit and went to check the
rest of the house. And, yeah, all that was gone too—all the stuff
from my suite except the stuff I'd brought in the overnight kit and
the freshly cleaned clothing I'd worn down from Malibu. The other
suites had been cleaned out too; there was nothing left, not even
lint to mark the scene with evidence of human
habitation.

Francesca's studio was
clean as a whistle—not a canvas or brush or dab of paint, no
modeling clay or framing or tools of any kind to mark her sojourn
there.

I ran outside to check the
cottages and, yeah—deserted, abandoned—the entire habitation had
vanished like the last rays of light from a dead bulb; there was
not even an odor of life left behind.

I paused at the carport as I came back to
the house, wondering what was disturbing me there—then realized
that Francesca's VW was missing.

I went on inside and up to the lounge.
Alvarez was just hanging up the phone. He seemed to have himself in
hand again. He told me, "I called the hospital. They say Miss
Amalie died a few minutes ago."

I was not that much in hand myself yet.

I snarled at him, "What the hell are you
talking about?"

He said, "Give me one of your damned coffin
nails, will you?"

I gave him a cigarette and took one for
myself, lit them both, glared at him, said, "What's this about a
hospital?"

He said, "Okay, I haven't been entirely
up-front with you."

I said, "Sorry, I can't really believe that
coming from an officer of the law."

He said, "Okay, I deserve that. Just
remember that I've been investigating a very weird situation. Knew
it was weird soon as I saw her car. It—"

"It's missing," I told him. "Everything is
missing, gone, kaput. Nothing is here, pal, but you and me. And I'm
not sure about me."

He brushed that aside to
say, "I assisted a traffic investigation last year. Little VW bug
lost it on a bad curve in the canyon. It's sitting right now in the
storage yard of a body shop, waiting disposition. Torn to shit. I
mean totaled in any sense of the word. The driver got pretty nearly
totaled too. Never regained consciousness, been in a coma ail this
part year. Well she lost her coma a few minutes ago. Francesca
Amalie was just declared officially dead by the resident on duty
at Irvine."

I thought I had already bottomed out, but I
suddenly found a new bottom of despair. I said to Alvarez, "Let me
get this straight..."

"Knew something was weird when I saw that VW
parked out there this morning. Exact duplicate, except this one
wasn't torn up. I checked my notes from the accident investigation.
Even the license tags checked out. I went down to the body shop
after I left here this morning to see if the wreck was still there.
It was. But, see, I figured some kind of game, especially when she
gave me her name and background this morning. I thought, shit, what
scam is this? I thought I'd seen 'em all. I hadn't seen the victim
since right after the accident, and she was all in bandages then.
So I went to Irvine again this morning and I saw her, and shit it
was the same face except maybe a little wasted from a year in
coma."

I found strength somewhere to feel sympathy
for the guy. I told him, "You've had a rough day."

"Say that again, friend. Then when I found
the guy at Newport wearing the same death mask as the guy on the
beach here, well then I figured...shit, I didn't know what to
figure. So when you called and invited me to dinner, I ran all the
way here."

I said, "And then it really started getting
rough."

"Amen to that, amen and amen. You say the VW
is not down there now?"

"That's where it's not," I
replied. "It was another part of the set, and it's been broken down
and packed up and taken away in the same bag as the rest of the
set. None of this stuff was real, not any of it."

He said, "Now wait a minute..."

I said, "You may as well just buy it and
save yourself a lot of mental strain. The staff never existed, at
least not in this domain. Where was Francesca living at the time of
the accident?"

He withdrew a notebook, flipped through it,
found the entry he sought, told me, "She shared a loft with three
other girls down in town, near the pottery shack."

I said, "Okay, that
checks. She told me—
some
body told me that she was living
there when Valentinius approached her and brought her here. Come
to think of it though, she was a bit vague about that."

"Wait a minute. You said
none of it existed. Now you're talking like it did."