The Dirty Secret (11 page)

Secret Weapon may have misfired. Is this a better recalibration?

Killian wasn’t sure if he liked this version of the room better or not. The bathroom now seemed barren, empty, missing the naked girl.

Back downstairs, he watered Vessa’s plant. Some of the leaves had turned an odd chartreuse color.

He poured a liberal shot of alcohol into a plastic cup and swallowed it down, and then brought the boxes from the builder’s supply house in from the garage. The cabinet doors were plain white wood framing beveled glass, with reproduction icebox hinges and latches taped to the front of each one. The drawer fronts had knobs of a similar time period—the smallest’s pull was a retro bottle opener.

Killian grabbed some tools from his pickup and mounted the hardware, following the builder’s template included with the screws. He drilled the holes in the cabinet bases and attached the doors, and then set the matching fronts on the drawer bodies. When he was finished, he gathered up the packaging and set it in the garage. The job was done in less time than it would have taken him to fill out a work order and send it to Seth—and Killian didn’t want anything to take priority over the damned squeak upstairs.

Coming back inside, he noticed the scent of fresh paint again. He followed it like a bloodhound, sniffing the air as he found his way into the master bedroom. He frowned at the untouched walls, until finally, he opened the door to the walk-in closet.

He’d redesigned the room twice at Mara Bjorn’s insistence, making it bigger each time, and now he understood why. The storage lining the walls on each side took up most of the space. Hanger rods held canvas shelves and bags with pockets for shoes, and cloth wardrobe boxes with zippers down their centers.

Against the back wall was a tri-fold mirror angled around an old tailor’s dress form, a macabre life-sized doll torso without limbs or a head. Next to it was a vanity table with bare lights flanking each side. Around the perimeter, masks leered down from the edge of the ceiling: painted Mexican sugar skulls, Mardi Gras feather dominoes, animal faces with ears and whiskers and coquette eyes.

It was the dressing room of a horror movie star, or the backstage tent of a shady circus performer. A feather boa hung from a hook beside an oversized tuxedo jacket and a fedora. Two fake mustaches were pinned to the mirror frame like insect specimens.

The whole effect was eerie and viciously lonely—he wouldn’t recognize the woman who came back out of that closet. She could be anyone she wanted, disappear into any crowd. He backed out of the room like he had invaded her privacy, embarrassed and defensive.

Killian staggered back to the living room, vaguely aware that he was drunk. The rug called to him with her whispers—where he’d taken her the first time, during the rainstorm—and he swallowed down another shot to silence her breathy voice saying his name. The bourbon warmed his chest and dulled the echoes in the empty house. He stretched out on the carpet and stared at the dragonfly wings on the ceiling fan, unsure if they were spinning or the house was.

Killian woke in the morning with a stiff neck and a stiffer headache. He drove back to Bengt’s to shower and change, arriving at the office a half hour late. The sun had him wincing but the fluorescents were worse, a mosquito whine digging into his skull.

He made a phone call and worked through his emails, kneading his temples as he watched the clock numbers change. Finally, he shut his computer off and stowed it in his backpack.

“Where are you going?” The accounts manager shoved a printout at his chest. “We have a meeting in fifteen minutes. Full staff required.”

His tone rattled Killian’s teeth. He forced his eyes in the accountant’s direction, and took the page of numbers.

“I have an appointment,” he said. The man opened his mouth, then shut it with a huff. Killian waited until he blustered off before looking at the sheet.

“When did you grow a set of balls?” Bengt asked. “‘Ah hahve an appoyintment,’” he drawled, deepening his voice.

Killian gave him the numbers breakdown. “I’ve got to go. Your numbers are in blue. If anyone notices I’m not there, mine are in the yellow column.”

“You okay, man?”

Nodding was not a good idea, Killian discovered. He headed across town, and parked in front of a brick gingerbread house. The button by the door was low, and he had to crane his neck down to the lens above it. The lock clicked open and he stepped into the building.

The jellyfish undulated in the tank, trailing pink and yellow viscera, like animated mushrooms with transparent tentacles. A man with salt-and-red-pepper hair sat in the corner of the room reading a book, taking up more space than he needed, legs splayed, one arm on the back of another chair, as if he owned the place or at least protected it. He had been in that same spot the last time Killian had been there, too.

The receptionist was blond and had an upturned nose and long pale eyelashes. Her office, with its window, looked like another exhibit in the waiting room, a glass cage for an albino bat with a pink lipstick smile. She gestured for him to go inside.

Donna Edith’s office had been repainted since he’d been there. The walls were cool bone white halfway down with a wash of copper that warmed the corners and glinted in the light. Below the oak chair railing was wainscoting that could have been dark brown or deep green or indigo, depending on how the light hit it. He touched the painted surface, but it was cold and held no magic, no heartbeat.

“I see you have a new appreciation for walls, Mr. Fitzroy.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, turning to face her. “When did she do all this?”

“Almost a month ago. Before I sent her to you.” Donna Edith stepped from her kitchenette and considered him over gold-rimmed glasses. “You look awful.”

“Something is wrong,” he said.

“With what, exactly?” She stepped away again. A metal spoon tapped a glass.

“With Vessa. The last two rooms, they’re...off. Like bad feng shui or something. It’s obvious she’s upset.”

“Did you ask her about them?”

“She’s avoiding me, I think. I haven’t seen her and she’s not returning my calls.” He took a deep breath and looked away from Donna Edith’s too-keen eyes. “Have you talked to her? I’m worried.”

The neon fish were in the same place, but the tank was different, heavy and ornate, bronze seahorses holding the aquarium at eye level. The black betta fish’s bowl was now suspended over the desk, the globe lit in a repurposed iron lamp.

“I assume by your pallor and your posture that you were lovers?”

Killian’s neck snapped so fast in the woman’s direction that his ears rang. She raised her glasses to the top of her head. They sat in her hair like a tiara.

He didn’t dare lie. “Yes, ma’am.”

A teakettle hissed, and Donna Edith stepped back into her tea pantry. “And the calls she didn’t respond to—were they professional or personal?”

“Professional,” he said, though they weren’t really, his trumped up excuses to call. “And she responded. I mean, she brought the receipts and moved the boxes, and even answered my note—” He shut up, feeling young and stupid.

Donna Edith set a tea tray on the table in front of the pink sofa, and gestured for him to sit. “So your complaint is that her work is unsatisfactory.”

“I’m
not
complaining. Her work is incredible. And fast.” He glanced at the woman on the other end of the couch.

She waited.

“From the beginning, she’s always been, I don’t know, hesitant? Not slow—at all—more like she’s feeling her way as she goes. But she’s never backed down from anything. She does things her own way, on her own terms. And the results are always great. But the last two rooms, they’re just—”

Hurt? Lonely? Scared?

“Closed off. Like it’s an intrusion, being inside.” He looked at Donna Edith, helpless.

She handed him a mug from the tray, then took the other. The tea was bright green and smelled like a mowed lawn, but the aftertaste was sweet. Donna Edith watched him as he drank, sipping from her own cup.

“I’d ask her what’s wrong,” he said, “but I don’t think she would tell me, even if she did answer her phone.” He stared at the fish in the tank, and the walls only Vessa could have painted, layers of light and colored shadow. “She never talks about herself. I keep waiting for her to start a sentence with an
I
. I am, I like, I think, I wish, I wonder. Nothing. It’s like she gives me everything except who she is. Is Vessa even her real name? No, that’s prying.
Fuck.
” He clapped his hand over his mouth. “I’m sorry. That was rude. I’m at a total loss, here.”

“Ah,” Donna Edith said. “Now I understand.”

“I don’t.” Killian could smell her perfume—spices and flowers and antique wood—rich things.

“She’s delightful in bed, isn’t she?”

Images buzzed through Killian’s head: the curve of Vessa’s left breast, her eyelashes edged with glitter, the pink cleft between her legs. Heat rushed to his face. He swallowed more tea and cleared his throat. She’d asked that to distract him. It’d worked. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Mr. Fitzroy, help me understand. The job is getting done, Vessa
is
responding to your professional requests and you don’t wish to make a complaint about the quality of her work. Why are you here?”

Her voice was a challenge, daring him to admit things he didn’t want to—that it was personal, not professional, that he might have screwed up, that he was in deep.

“Er...” He patted at his pockets, hoping he didn’t look as foolish as he felt. “I wanted to give you this,” he said, smoothing a crumpled corner of a heavy envelope, another trumped up excuse. He laid it on the table in front of the couch. “It’s an invitation to the opening.”

Though his house might not get to show at all, if his upstairs floor didn’t get fixed. Killian’s leg bounced. His joints were hyper, and his skull felt empty and hollow. His headache was completely gone. He looked down at the green dregs in the bottom of his mug. “What
is
this?”

“Ceremonial matcha. A double. To the uninitiated, it’s a fairly effective swift kick in the ass.” She took the envelope, and was kind enough not to mention that he could have just mailed it. “Killian, what did I tell you the last time we spoke?”

“To let her surprise me.”

“Did she?”

“Yes, ma’am.” She’d shocked the shit out of him with everything she did.

“Then I suggest you be patient. Vessa Ratham has many more surprises in store for you, I suspect.”

“I hope so,” he said. She stood and he took his cue to leave, thanking her for her time, his pulse jittery in his veins from her wicked witch brew.

Killian drove to work, his brain spinning faster than the wheels on his pickup. He could wait. He could be professional, and pretend he wasn’t dying to know everything about her, and how she felt about him personally.

And if Vessa couldn’t reveal what she was feeling herself, hopefully his house would.

Chapter Eleven

Blank Stairs

Vessa cleaned the grimy storefront windows inside and out, pretending that she wasn’t watching the street for a green pickup and the tall architect with the messy hair. Manny accused her of trying to blind him with the glare and put on a pair of huge sunglasses. She spent the rest of the day untangling a shipment of marionettes, dusting off their carved faces with a sable paintbrush, so as not to dislodge the flakes of original varnish that clung to their cheeks. The puppets were strange, with oversize hands and perfect joints, carved without a break from a single piece of wood, the grain matching up when their little bodies lay flat.

When her shift was over she drove to the hardware store. She wasted time extending the telescoping painter’s poles, testing their weight and how far she could reach until her neck ached.

In the garden department, two girls, barely teenagers, lips gooey with frosted gloss, giggled and whispered over a table of yellow pansies. The object of their attention—the blond gardener boy—knelt on the concrete slab of the greenhouse, stacking potted plant hangers on a shelf behind a row of rose bushes.

He was cute, Vessa supposed, or he would be in a few years, when he outgrew the baby fat in his cheeks. He wore a Bob Marley T-shirt under his vest, and his fingers and jeans were stained green.

“What does it mean if a plant’s leaves are turning yellow?” she asked, picking up a bracket from his pile. The plant hangers were forged metal in the shape of leaves, ending in a curling hook.

The boy looked up. “Jack? You might be watering him too much.” He nodded, agreeing with himself. “I’m Tony.”

His name tag said Anthony. He had One, Three and Five Years of Great Customer Service buttons on his ID tag, though he looked young enough to still be in high school. He held out his hand. His palm was callused, crescents of black under his fingernails. She set her hand in his, clasping it to shake, but he jumped to his feet with a token tug on her fingers for balance, and made a goofy bow.

“You want to see something neat-o?” he asked.

“Sure.”

He set her hand in the crook of his elbow, a dapper gentleman in stoner duds. He escorted her to the outside greenhouse—past the now pouting girls—where seedlings peeked from flats and the biting scent of tomato plant leaves rose to the sun.

“This is my second favorite person today,” he said, straightening his arm to clasp the pot, like he was cupping a woman’s face. The plastic spike read Aquilegia. The container was filled with grapevine-shaped leaves, only rounder, and a few tall stems with a dark red filigreed teardrop at the end of each, like a heart with chambers, suspended on a green vein. “She has secrets.” He turned the pot around.

“Oh,” Vessa said, touching the open flower with a fingertip, barely brushing the petals. The heart had burst, red unfurling to sunshine yellow, like a ruffled petticoat under a hiked-up skirt.

“She’s a wild columbine,” Tony said.

“In theater, Columbine is the girl clown,” she said. “She’s tricky and seductive and keeps all the secrets.”

“Does she wear a mask, like you?” He pointed to her face, at the bridge of her nose. She pulled her head away, before her eyes crossed. His hand smelled like dirt and hemp. “I’ll be right back.”

Vessa stared down at the delicate plant. Killian had seen her at her most naked, falling apart in his arms, completely vulnerable, and she’d liked it. She’d
reveled
in it, in the way he watched her. She tapped a flower on its stalk. It shivered, like a struck bell. Would he still look at her like that after he knew what she was keeping secret, and why?

Tony reappeared with a terra-cotta pot and a small bag of soil mix. “Repot Jack in this, and don’t water him until he’s bone dry.”

“Have you always wanted to be a gardener?” she asked, picking up the pot of columbine.

“Nope. When I was little I wanted to be an elephant.” He nodded seriously. The flowers in her arms shook on their stems as she laughed, a silent jingle. “Who do you want to be now?” he asked.

She looked at the yellow and red unfurled buds. “Myself, without the mask.”

“So what’s stopping you?” He led her to the register, carrying the empty pot and the soil.

“Fear.” She’d found someone she wanted to trust, to truly open up to, and he was friends—
intimate
friends, sitting alone in a restaurant booth, touching hands—with the one person her livelihood depended on her hiding from. “Money.”

“Those are the worst reasons for anything,” Tony said, the corners of his mouth turning down.

Vessa rolled her lips inward, biting down her shame. She’d disappointed an underage pothead who treated plants like people. She paid for her things and took the long way to the house, stopping at the gas station, then the grocery for more pods for the coffee machine. When she couldn’t come up with more errands to run, she headed north.

The new development was busy with builder’s trucks, cement mixers and electrician’s vans. The house with the slate roof had three semis parked in front, all from different furniture stores. The only vehicle parked at Killian’s house was his green pickup.

Vessa carried the wild columbine to the shaded corner of the house and tucked it up against the brick. There was no movement from the house. She fetched the pot and the bag of dirt Tony had given her for Jack. They weighed twice as much as they had when she left the hardware store. She stood on the stoop, gripping the flowerpot.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

She pushed the door open.

Killian sat at the table, plans laid out, laptop in front of him. He stood when she walked in, snatching his glasses off his nose.

“Hi.” His eyes were shadowed and his hair hung lank in his face. “Do you need any help carrying anything?”

The last time she’d spoken to him, she’d been wearing only an orange-and-pink bit of lingerie. She shook her head, then remembered to say, “Hello.”

He sat back down. The windows were open, exposing the house to the outside world: the noises of the trucks, a crew chief calling from a roof and the scent of summer on the ground. She set the pot on the kitchen counter and then stepped out the back door. The rosary plant looked no better, the leaves swollen and sad. Vessa carried it into the house and set it in the sink.

Killian was standing again. “What’s wrong with it?”

His voice pulled at her, low and deep in her belly where the fluttery things hid, unwanted, uninvited. She’d forgotten how tall he was, how much room he took up. She eased the plant out of the plastic pot over the sink.

“Overwatering.” She held up the root ball, and liquid seeped from the soggy potting soil. She squeezed it gently and set it in the sink, then rinsed her fingers on the other side. “It’s a succulent, like a cactus. So the soil needs to dry out between waterings.”

“A succulent?” He said the word slowly, drawing the syllables out, and she gripped the edges of the sink as she nodded.

“What are you going to do with the front yard?” she asked, like they were having a normal conversation, two professional colleagues discussing work.

He stood at the edge of her peripheral vision. She would have to turn her head to see him, but she didn’t give herself that satisfaction. She dumped the bag of dirt from Tony in the bottom of the clay pot.

He sighed. “I don’t know. The grass has come in pretty well. I’ll have to get it cut soon. But all the landscapers I’ve called are booked until fall, and I have no idea what to do at this point.”

The soil mix was sandy, with emerald beads scattered through it. She plopped the sopping plant on top and patted it in place.

“Could you get the door?” She pointed at it with her elbow. One muscled arm reached out, impossibly long, to turn the knob. She set the plant on the concrete patio, in the sun. “He should dry out in a day or two.”

She stepped back in the house. He closed the door behind her.

“What room would you like me to do next?” she asked, hating how tentative her voice sounded.

“I saw the stuff in the walk-in closet. It looks...” He shoved his hands in his pockets and watched her from beneath worried brows.

Vessa wiped the counter down. “Like it was decorated by someone who let a personal issue interfere with her design aesthetic?” She’d done the room in two furtive nights, setting up the shelves like she was building a secret still, or outfitting a speakeasy.

“It looks like the room of someone trying to hide.”

Vessa’s breath caught in her throat. She’d forgotten that under his office clothes and his manners, he was still an artist, a designer with a sharp focus. “Maybe she’s new in town and a little overwhelmed with how fast her life is changing.”

“It’s hard not to be curious,” he said. “I wonder if she’s a bank robber, needing all those disguises.”

Oh, he was clever, with his seductive sentences and flirty grin, leaning a little sideways to look into her eyes.

“Probably nothing that dramatic,” she said. “More likely she’s just trying to figure out how she fits into her own life.” She rinsed the dirt off her hands. “Manny will let me bring the masks back if you don’t like them.”

“Is that the guy from Brass and Bones?”

“Yes. He’s my...” She hesitated. “My antiques dealer. And my friend.”

Killian cleared his throat again. “I went looking for you there. I remembered the name on the delivery van. I wasn’t trying to be creepy.” His hand moved to his throat, like he was about to pull on the tie that was already discarded on the table. “I wanted to make sure you were okay. I was—the closet seemed—and the bathroom upstairs—” He winced. “It was pretty obvious you weren’t happy about something. Did Donna Edith talk to you?”

“No.” Panic drove her voice up high, childish and small. “You talked to her about me?”

“I was worried.”

“What did she say?”

“She basically called me an idiot and gave me the green tea equivalent of methamphetamine.”

“Oh.” She looked away. “You’re not an idiot. It was really unprofessional of me to not reply to your calls. It won’t happen again.”

“Hey.” His voice was soft. He reached out, as if to touch her shoulder, and then pulled back. “Is that what your personal issue was? And why you’ve been avoiding me?” he asked. “Because we were being unprofessional? With the sex?” He shoved his hands into his pockets, and leaned against the fridge. “I’m sorry. I should never have put you in that position.”

The tension caught up to her. Laughter escaped her mouth, a short hiccup, almost painful. “Which position? Missionary? My knees over my elbows? You’re not responsible for my actions, Killian.”

He moved, stepping closer. She could feel the heat from his body, hear his indrawn breath.

“Then could you tell me what I did?” His gaze darted over her face, eyes whispering a somber
hello
, and
do you remember
, and a gray
please
. “So you don’t stop talking to me again.”

A utility truck backed up with a shrill
beep
,
beep
,
beep
, and voices shouted, the outside world intruding on the private sanctuary of the little house.

Vessa’s breathing was shallow, her mouth dry. He was too close, neck bent to see her face. The space that contained him was black and white, transparent and clearly detailed, as easily read as a newspaper, all his thoughts on the surface. He looked at her like she was a magic trick, or a shooting star, or candy he’d never tasted before, but not someone he was hiding. She wanted to believe his eyes—seductive with their sincerity, like his lips when they spilled words of his longing and his lust. Unlike her, he didn’t have secrets. She hoped.

The only way to know could expose her. But shutting him out meant they would no longer be lovers. How much was she willing to risk? She took a step back and he straightened, disappointment stiff on his face.

“I saw you at the Piazza,” Vessa said.

* * *

The significance that Vessa had said the word
I
hit him before her statement made sense. Her eyes were shadowed with smoky powder, soot and coal and heavy lashes, and her hair was brushed forward, curling down over her face, hiding her expression. He made himself focus on her words—the happy hour crew had met for pizza the previous Wednesday, the last day he’d seen her before she’d disappeared.

“You would have been welcome to join us,” he said, keeping still, his voice soft.

Vessa looked away. “That would have gotten a bit complicated.”

“How so?”

“You and me and your date cozied up in a booth, for starters.” She raised one eyebrow at him, and crossed her arms over her chest.

“My date?”

“The mayor’s daughter? Starla Jamison?” She shook her head. “She’s the lieutenant governor’s daughter, now.”

“Y’all know who she is out in California?” Killian’s skull felt thick.

Vessa’s eyes widened. “Of course not,” she said, her voice brittle. “She’s on the local news. And in the Burlington paper. My grandparents get it.”

“I work with her. She’s an intern at the firm.”

“An intern? At Bergman and Bjorn?”

“She wasn’t my date, Vessa. The closest I’ve been on a date in a very long time is the night you and I had pizza. I haven’t had a girlfriend for over two years. Since college.” He hadn’t tried to date a woman since autumn last year, hadn’t kissed a girl since St. Patrick’s Day.

Is that why she’d been avoiding him? She’d gotten upset because she’d thought he had a girlfriend? His chest hurt with how bittersweet that felt. “I wish you’d have said hello. I’d have introduced you.”

Her face paled, and a strange sound came from her mouth, laughter gone sideways.

“They want to meet you,” he said.

“They?”

“My friends. Seth is already half in love with you—it was his crew you sent the pizza to—that’s why we wound up at Piazza. Deb did the sink in the master bath. She took pictures. Did you know plumbers have portfolios?” He rubbed his hand over his mouth to stop the babbling. “We meet on Wednesdays for happy hour.”

“They know about me? Does she know about me?”