Mourning Dove (4 page)

“It’s my favorite
tablecloth. And it fits my mood. Let’s eat.”

“
This
is what I
need, Cass; peace and quiet and a new direction for my life.”

Later, when the real
estate agent had come and gone, they were mellowing in a pair of bentwood
rockers with two mugs of Constant Comment tea.  Eyes closed, Sara inhaled the
spicy scent, pondering the twists and turns of the last year of her life.
Thoughts turned to her friend as they listened to the sweet sounds of their old
favorites from Simon and Garfunkel. Their voices joined in harmony with the
disk, “Old friends, old friends sit on their park bench like bookends.”

 “Cass, are you still
dating the science teacher?”

“Ben and I go out once or
twice a month. He’d like the relationship to be more but I like things the way
they are.”

“How are your boys? You
didn’t mention them all evening.” Sara asked without opening her eyes.

“Oh they’re fine. I
didn’t bring them up because you needed to decompress. I’ll vent on you another
time.”

“Nonsense, what’s Rusty
doing?”

“He’s out in Seattle near his dad; they spend a lot of time fishing together.”

“And?”

“Rusty was always closer
to his dad. He’s getting married in April.”

“Mike or Rusty?”

“Rusty.”

“Are you flying out?”

“Yeah, but I’m not
looking forward to being forced into a social situation with Mike. He married
the last bimbo he played with. She came up with an acute case of pregnancy.
God, she’s two years younger than Rusty. Mike will never grow up.”

“That’s going to be a
tough visit. Have you met Rusty’s intended?”

“We’ve talked by phone,
and she’s sent pictures of the two of them together. She’s a nice girl, teaches
second grade in Everett.”

“What about Jordie? Is he
still painting?”

“He’s still in Newburyport getting ready for a show. Jordie is my gifted prize. See that picture over the
sofa?  That’s one of his.”

The seascape was of a
quiet cove. In the shallows of the surf, a young woman wearing a white sarong
appeared to be spinning in the sand with her arms uplifted to the sun. “Jordie
is so gifted, Cass. You can feel the warmth of the sun and gentle breeze.  It
has a calming affect.”

“That’s why I placed it
there. It was a gift last Christmas. He’s also been working on the technique of
imbedding one scene within another.  I have one of those in my spare room. 
Although, it’s an unusual technique, the piece is too violent.”

“Will you show it to me?”

Cass looked back at her,
“Are you sure?  I don’t want to cause more nightmares.”

“It’s just a painting; it
can’t hurt me. I want to see what he’s done with the technique.” Sara placed
her tea mug on the glass top of the driftwood coffee table that’d been part of
Cass’s scavenger collection for a long time.

In the spare room, Cass
turned on the switch to some indirect lighting and then to a spotlight focused
on the center of the far wall.

“Wow! This is really
intense,” Sara whispered. “This one commands a hushed presence. It should be in
a show or a gallery somewhere.”

“I told you. We’ll go
back into the other room.”

“No not yet. Show me the
dimensions of the picture within.”

“Stand in front of it.
What do you see?”

Moving to the opposite
wall directly in front of the painting, Sara studied the large canvas, “Violent
sea; crashing on jagged rocks, storm clouds menacing.”

“Now squint and tilt your
head to the right. See anything else?”

“Oh! It looks like a
ship. A phantom ship imbedded in the gray clouds, just moving from around the
rock cliff.”

“Jordie has taken it one
step further,” Cass added. “He has a third scene imbedded. Sit on the floor and
look up at the picture. What do you see?”

“Oh God!” Sara covered
her face and bent over her knees. “Turn off the light!”

“Sara, what’s wrong? I
know it’s a violent painting but the third image is just a jolly roger from the
pirate ship with a bloody sword through its skull.”

“That isn’t the third
image at all. It’s Carl with blood flowing from his eyes. I can’t look
anymore.” Scrambling up from the floor, Sara ran for the bathroom and dumped
her stomach into Cass’s toilet.

“Sara, are you all right?
Can I come in?”

“Wait a minute, Cass. I’m
sorry; I lost that wonderful dinner you made.”  Sara flushed, and turned to
wash up and rinse her mouth.

“What happened back
there?” Cass asked when she walked through the unlocked door.

“You said it was a pirate
flag with a sword through the skull?”

“That’s not what you saw,
is it?”

“No, I guess all these
nightmares have been wreaking havoc with my sanity.”

“Let’s not forget Carl
died on the rocks at Odiorne Point. Your mind saw the first picture and
superimposed your nightmare on the third. It’s understandable with the pressure
you’ve been under.  I’m going to give the painting back to Jordie. I knew it
was bad karma.”

“He’s a talented artist.
There’s no doubt about that. I would like to have one of his paintings in my
new place once I get settled, something with the soothing affect of the lady in
the shallows you have in your living room.”

“It’s funny you say it
that way. That’s the title of the painting,
Lady in the Shallows
.”

“When he has his show,
I’ll come down and pick something out. I should get on the road.”

“Are you sure you’re okay
to drive? I’m worried about you.”

“I’m fine. I just need
some decent rest. The sleeping pills I picked up from the pharmacy should
work.”

“Well, let me pack up
some of the stuffed shells and half of the cheesecake for you to take along.”

“Cass, I’m in a hotel.
How am I going to keep that stuff cold? And where would I heat up the pasta?”

“I’ll loan you my small
cooler with ice packs in it. When you get to the new place tomorrow you’ll have
a fridge for the food and a place to heat it up. You said you’re moving to a
suite, right? You’re going to be hungry when your stomach settles down.”

“Thanks for everything,
Cass.”

“Thank you for being my
friend. I’m just sorry I ever showed you that painting.”

“It’s not the painting.
I’ve been spooked for several months. With lack of sleep, I’m starting to feel
like I’m being stalked in my dreams and now during the day. I could swear I’m
being followed everywhere. My reaction to the painting is just another example
of how stressed I’ve been. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Drive careful; sleep
well.”

***

I’m sorry I scared you.
I didn’t mean to. I just wanted you to know I’m still here. You saw me awake.
That’s good. I guess I need to fix my appearance before I try that again. I
love you, Mom.

“Wait! Don’t go!”

Eyes wide open, Sara
thought, okay just another dream. Good one this time. If they were all like
this, she could deal with it. Carl said, ‘I love you, mom.’ HE SAID, ‘I LOVE
YOU, MOM.’ He said it in her head.

“Carl? Are you here? Or
have I finally gone over the edge?”

Silence.

“Carl? Can you hear me?”

Silence.

“Okay, I’m certifiable.
It’s two a.m. and I’m talking to an empty room.”

“Break off tailing the Stafford woman,” the boss man spoke into his phone while he looked through his office
window at the heavy traffic down below. “She’s a smart bird, and if she hasn’t
realized she’s being followed, she’s seen enough of your vehicle to become
suspicious.”

 “When she went to Ocean Park,” the man on the other end said, “she walked around a vacant house with a for sale
sign out front. She appears chummy with a woman living next to it.”

“I’ll get a second team
dogging the Dove. I want you back in Massachusetts. The disk has to be down
there somewhere. Search the shop.”

“It ain’t in the girl’s
flat or the art shop. And, I already searched the house in Greenland, New Hampshire.”

“It’s not going to be
obvious, you know. It’s probably in a hidden space or compartment, or maybe a
safety deposit box or locker somewhere. Search the shop and get back to me.”

“I was five minutes
behind him after he blew up the lab in Toronto,” his subordinate told him. “I
know he didn’t have time to stop at a bank. It was the middle of the night by
the time he got to the coast. He drove through Newburyport and Portsmouth; I caught up with him at Odiorne. I told you before he hid it somewhere he could
get to with me hot on his trail.”

The boss man was silent.
He pulled the cord to extend the vertical blinds across the windows in his
office but continued to look through the gray slats.

“There’s somethin’ else,”
the man on the other end added. “She checked out of the Sheraton.”

“What makes you think
that?”

“She pulled her luggage
behind her when she left this morning.”

“I’ll find her with the
GPS. Go search the shop and no mistakes this time.”

“Yes sir.”

The boss man hung up the
receiver and continued to watch the traffic move up Payne Road toward The Maine
Mall. This search should have been over months ago. Nothing was ever as it
seemed.

***

In an isolated office on
the top floor of the federal building in Portsmouth, Matthew Farrell paced in
front of a gray metal desk. The computer could give him just so much. He needed
to think things through, analyze the connections again. Each time he turned, he
paused to stare at the white board across the room. Carl’s contacts, circled in
black, radiated from the center like spokes on a wagon wheel. The frustrated
agent asked his questions to the empty room.

“Why weren’t you careful?
You said something about doubles. Double what? What did you find?”

He thought about the
months of going around in circles and began again drawing lines from the center
of the board.  Each circle, a person or place connected to the last few weeks
of Carl Stafford’s life. “Who snuffed you?”

The center, a circle
within a circle, Carl at the core, his apartment, his car, safety deposit box –
he added a question mark beside it. “Did you have one? Where’s the key?” His
personal effects were in storage at his parents’ house. “Is that all of them?
What did you find in that lab? Were you the one who blew it up? If you found
something, where did you hide it? Help me complete your assignment, damn it!”

Above the center circle
he drew a black line to the place of death. “I need to recheck the crime scene.
Finding your phone last week gave me more options.”

He connected another line
to the upper right corner of the board labeled family.  Two circles fanned out:
father, mother. Until last week, his parents were living together working at a
family owned company. “Why the breakup?” he asked himself. “Have they found
anything suspicious? Would you have left them a clue?” He pulled the cap off a
red marker and circled Sara Stafford’s name several times.

On the board right of the
center was the name, Allen Cook, employee in the family business. He had access
to the storage area in the company offices; his name was in Carl’s cell phone.
“Was he more than a friend?” The agent picked up the battered phone, walked
three steps, put it down again, and turned back to the board.

He circled the name on
the left, Jordan O’Brien, artist, childhood friend, maybe more.  He showed up
at the funeral. Carl’s parents seemed to know him well. “His number was also in
your cell phone.”

Beside him, he added a
circle for Stacey Braun. Love interest? Contact in cult definitely, with
pictures to back it up from company files. She ran an art supply store in Newburyport. Maybe she’s a connection to the artist, same area code in the cell. He drew a
connecting line and another question mark.

O.S., no name, no number,
it was just a partial entry. Why? Cult member? Back at the desk he unlocked the
right hand drawer and pulled out a file. It was a long shot. He sifted through
the documents marked with red security warnings and picked out a gray printout
of names. No title to the alphabetized list, just several pages of it stapled
together. Flipping almost to the last page he moved his finger down to the
middle of the column, Schmidt, Stauer, Stolt, Strent, Swarsky, Tabor, Taggart.
Stop. Back up. Arthur Schmidt, Raymond Stauer, Otto Stolt, Carla Strent,
Kenneth Swarsky. OTTO STOLT “Are you O.S.?” Marker in hand, the name Otto Stolt
went on the board – in red.

To the left of center
were
company
contacts. There weren’t many, lives were more secure that
way. Two circles: “J.T. and me.”

In the lower left corner
of the whiteboard, he wrote in red: Talk to me!  Then he slammed the cap over
the felt tip and hurled the marker across the floor.

***

Early Sunday afternoon,
Matthew Farrell watched through the peephole of his new hotel room as the
O’Brien woman knocked on the door across the hall. Five minutes later both
women left the suite, leather purses slung over their shoulders. He
eavesdropped on their conversation when they stopped in the woman’s doorway.
The Mourning Dove was searching in the bottom of her bag. He hoped she wouldn’t
find the slit he’d made.

“You lucked out, Sara.
That’s a great suite, nice space. What do you want to do first? Eat? Or shop?”

“Let’s shop before we
eat, as soon as I find my car keys.”

“Do you want to take the
elevator or the stairs?”

“The stairs, I need the
exercise.” Sara finally pulled a set of keys from of her bag.

“Okay then, let’s go.”

He watched them turn the
corner to the stairs and slipped into the Stafford woman’s suite before the
door could close. He positioned one listening bug on the under side of the desk
and another in the lamp by the phone in the bedroom.

He heard voices at the
door. The women were back.

“I can’t believe I spent
the whole morning working on my list, and then left it behind.” 

Slipping into the closet
off the bedroom he listened to them re-enter the suite. Through a crack in the
bi-fold door he saw them walk across the living room space.

“Where’s the list, Sara?”

“It’s over here on the
kitchen counter.  Let’s see, is there anything else I forgot?”

“Do you want to take a
jacket or sweater?  It’s a little chilly out. I can get it if it’s in the closet.”
The O’Brien woman moved toward the bedroom. Fading further back into the
closet, he held his breath.

“No, I don’t think so.
This long sleeve top will do. It’s like a juggling act in the changing room
when you carry too much with you. I’ve got the list. Let’s go before we run out
of time.”

After hearing the door
close, he waited five minutes, and then left the suite.

The women were climbing
into a dark green convertible when he looked out his window facing the parking
lot.

***

Later that afternoon at the
Macaroni Grill, Cass and Sara slid into a corner table.

“We made quite a dent in
your Visa Card, my friend.”

“But Cass, Macy’s was
having great sales. I have enough work clothes in my trunk to last three weeks
without duplicating.”

“You’re going to need a
closet just for the shoes. You better put a few shoe racks on your list for the
house.”

“That’s not a bad idea.”
Sara dug into her purse for a pen.

“Do you know this hunk
who’s heading straight for us?”

Sara looked up and
smiled. “That’s my prospective new boss.”

“Hi there, little lady.
Grabbin’ a bite to eat?”

“Mr. Pierce, good to see
you again.” Sara reached out to shake his hand and was charmed by his old world
manners when he raised her hand to his lips in tribute. It was a good thing he
hadn’t done that in the office.

With her face flushed,
she turned to Cass, pushed her friend’s chin up with her index finger to close
her mouth, and introduced her. “Cass, this is Jonathon Pierce, CFO of Star
Shine Communications.  Jonathon Pierce, my closest friend, Cass O’Brien.”

Cass stuttered over her
response, “W...would you like to join us, Mr. Pierce?”

“I don’t want to intrude
on your meal. It’s my pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”  He reached out to take
Cass’s hand and repeated the elegant tribute.

Jonathon turned back to
Sara. “I understand you’ll meet with Robert on Monday. I believe I’ll make
myself available at that time, too.” With a wink at Cass he sauntered off
toward a table set for three on the terrace. She thought he must have been
meeting some people.

“What do you think of
him, Cass?”

“Texan drawl and old
world charm. My goodness, I’m having a hot flash.”

“Now you know how I felt
the first time I met him.”

“He reminds me of an
actor.”

“Sam Elliot, he’s a dead
ringer.”

“Wow, I need another
glass of water. You lucky dog you.”

“Cass, the connoisseur of
chocolate, what do you suggest for dessert?” Sara teased as they scanned
through the options on the menu.

“Chocolate lover’s tort,
it’s to die for.”

“Let’s order two. I
wanted to tell you Friday night that I was impressed with Jordie’s concern and
thoughtfulness the day of the funeral. Your son drove up from Massachusetts to
remove a foot of new snow from our driveway. I remember looking out the window
to a shuffling sound. There he was with a snow shovel clearing the drive.”

“That’s my boy. Oh, I was
talking to him last night. You know that little art supply shop I told you
about down in Newburyport? They had a burglary night before last – made a real
mess of the place. Jordie walked down to pick up some supplies yesterday and
the police were there. Stacey, the owner, was shook up, but okay. Luckily she
wasn’t there when it happened.”

“Stacey Braun?”

“You know her?”

“She had a soft spot for
both Jordie and Carl. I saw her with the boys quite a few times. She was in the
hospital recovering from an accident when Carl died and said she wished she
could have been with us. She sent us a lovely condolence note. I didn’t know
art supply stores were a hotbed of crime. How much was taken?”

“Jordie says they trashed
the place and took the office safe from the back room, about fifteen hundred in
checks and some legal papers. He stayed until the police and insurance adjuster
left then helped her clean the place up.”

“What could possibly be
so valuable in a little shop like that?  I don’t understand kids today.”