A Grave Talent (17 page)

"I saw that look a lot over the next few months, and I didn't know what to do about it. I'd get angry with her, and she'd just look at me. I told her she couldn't have Lewis over any more, and she just said, 'Okay,' and looked at me like I was an interesting kind of insect. I couldn't take her out of school--it was her last semester--and I couldn't force Lewis to stay away from her just because I didn't like the way she looked at me, could I? I should have done something, but I was very busy, we didn't have enough money, and I thought she'd go away to college in the fall, and I couldn't imagine that he would follow her. I should have done something, but I couldn't think what to do, couldn't threaten or bribe her. She had no close friends I could turn to, and I couldn't--God forgive me, I just couldn't reach her."

His voice broke, and he suddenly whirled the chair around and sat staring out the window, his jaws working tightly. In the silence Kate heard a faint sound from outside the door, but no one appeared. In a minute he resumed, his voice calm to the point of dullness.

"I don't believe now that there was anything I could have done. She had to work it out herself, whatever she was doing with him, but I tell you it was like sunshine breaking through when Vaunie began to reappear in April. I'm not a religious man, but Becky went down to church and prayed her thanks, and I knew how she felt. I wanted to sing the first time I saw funny little Vaunie looking out at me again, curious and half smiling and not cold any more. We had three or four weeks of her, before she was arrested."

"Do you think she killed Jemima Brand?" The bald question made him wince, but he turned the chair's wheels to meet her eyes and did not hesitate.

"I did then. I was sure she had. Nothing would have surprised me out of that other Vaun, not even, I had to admit, murder. She just wasn't anyone I knew, and when they said she'd had a flashback of the LSD and done that, I could believe it. I'd seen her in the hospital, when she was going crazy and attacking the nurses and trying to hurt herself. Vaun said she couldn't remember anything but painting that night the child was killed, but she agreed that she must have done it. I was convinced she had."

"And now?"

"Now, I don't know. I've had a lot of time to read and think in the last ten years, since my accident, and I have to admit, I'm no longer so sure of it. If I'd felt then the way I do now, I'd have fought for her a lot harder than I did. It would have meant losing the farm--we nearly did, anyway--but I would have done it, no matter what evidence they had. But that was eighteen years ago, and I was a different man. I have regrets, but I can't change what happened."

"Do you blame her state of mind during those months on the drugs she was taking?"

"No, I blame Andy Lewis. I'm no expert on how the human mind works, or the brain itself, for that matter, but smoking marijuana, and even taking that other poison, doesn't turn a person like Vaun into what she was. It was Lewis. He had control of her, somehow, like some filthy virus that infected everything she did. He was such a big man, claimed to have killed men in Vietnam, you know? He probably spent the time mugging old ladies in Los Angeles. God knows why, but Vaun was susceptible to him. I know he was good-looking and he chose her out of the whole school and she was no longer a leftover but the big man's girl, but it was more than that. Something in him latched onto her and wouldn't let go. Hypnotized her, if that doesn't sound too melodramatic. I think she was breaking free, but whether or not she killed Jemma, and if she did whether it was the chemical in her brain or his hold over her that made her do it, I do not know. I wish to God I did."

Jameson had come to an end, and he stopped and let the silence settle over them. Kate felt drained, and the thought of rousing herself for the next set of questions raised by this extraordinary interview made her residual aches, which were considerably greater than she'd let on to Hawkin, take possession of her will. There were more questions to be asked, but she needed a pause, and Jameson seemed content.

There was a sound of stirring outside, followed by the hollow thump of feet on the wooden steps next to the ramp, and the shed darkened. Kate looked up to see Hawkin outlined dramatically in the light that came streaming in the door, and Vaun's charcoal sketch flashed vividly into her mind.

"Mrs. Jameson asked me to check and see if everything was all right, and to say that lunch would be in half an hour." His eyes took in the room, paused to consider Kate's face, smiled at the metal windows, and went to the pair of paintings resting on the floor. He stepped forward to look at them, and the room brightened.

"Interesting," he said after a few minutes. "I take it that the larger one was done during the time she was with Andrew Lewis?"

"In March," Kate confirmed. "The other one is from the previous October."

"Yes, very interesting," he repeated, his eyes flicking from one to the other. "Do you mind if I take a look at these other ones, Mr. Jameson?"

"Of course not, help yourself. Just so they go back into the same slots. Vaun has them in order."

"Right, we'll keep track of them. I'll put these two out of the way," and he laid them on the bed next to Kate. "No, don't get up, Casey. I just want to have a peep. I spent part of the day yesterday looking at the ones in her studio." And the rest of the day recovering, he added to himself. He walked over to the far end and slid the first of the canvases from its berth. He checked the back before he set it up against the wall, and stepped back.

"Done four months after her parents died. She was thirteen."

The order was chronological, the cumulative effect shattering, an intense, intimate portrait of the artist as a very young woman. There were a few paintings of animals and two landscapes, but most of the forty-odd canvases were Vaun's vision of her neighbors and her family. Three images of a younger, whole Red Jameson jumped out at them, and two of his wife. Jameson kept up a commentary, identifying each figure and most of the locations. Finally there were two canvases left. Hawkin pulled them out together and stood them next to each other.

They formed a pair like the two on the bed behind Kate, though not so striking. The earlier one here, dated early November, was of a young, ginger-haired boy-man of about fourteen, identified by Jameson as his son Ned, Vaun's cousin. He was splitting logs with his shirt off, and she had caught an expression half embarrassed, half proud, on his young face. The second of the pair, dated February, was of a slightly older boy. He was dressed in jeans and an army jacket, and was sprawled back on a bench with an utterly expressionless face. It was a disturbing painting, with that utter blankness, and Kate found herself trying to put some emotion into it--insolence, contempt, disgust--anything human to fill it in.

"That's Timothy Bauer, lived down the road. He was one of Lewis's followers. He died a couple years later, higher'n a kite on something and ran his car off the levee into the canal."

"No paintings of Lewis, then?" asked Hawkin.

"Isn't there one?" Jameson sounded very surprised, and wheeled himself forward to look. "There isn't, is there? Used to be one. Vaun must have taken it," he said doubtfully. Hawkin shot a glance at Kate, who felt her tiredness abruptly leave her.

"Was it in here, Mr. Jameson?" asked Hawkin, sounding only slightly curious.

"Yes, between the one you took out and the one over there. I know, because I used to look at these sometimes, and I used to avoid that slot--I didn't like to see his sleazy face. Maybe Vaun didn't either and finally burned it." He sounded as if he found that a more likely possibility than his niece wanting it. Hawkin knelt down to replace the two he had removed and looked closely at the adjoining two slots. The odd bits of carpet that lined the bottom of the case were indented wherever a painting had rested over the years. The pile was notched clearly in the slot from which he had taken the young man and in the one where the young woman putting on her makeup had rested. Between them was a gap, one of several in the storage wall, and an indentation showed that a canvas had indeed rested here, although a thin layer of dust had had time to drift across the matted pile.

"Pity it's not here, said Hawkin easily. "I'd have liked to see his face, and how she saw it."

"You didn't see it in her studio, then?" asked Jameson.

"Do you remember what it looked like?"

"I sure do. He was sitting in a turned-around chair, his arms along the back of it, his chin on his forearms. Shirtless. He had a tattoo, I remember, on his upper arm, a snake or something. He looked sweaty, and when I first saw it all I could think was, Thank God he put his pants back on before she painted it."

"It had sexual overtones, then?"

"Yes. I don't know why, something in his face, I guess. It was awful. But it wasn't there, then? In her house?"

"I may have missed it; there's a lot of paintings. When did you see it last?"

"Years. It's years since I actually looked at it--like I told you, I didn't like to see him. I think it was here last summer, but I couldn't swear to it."

"No problem--just curiosity. Mr. Jameson, I'd like to borrow a few of these paintings, if I may."

"Which ones?"

"The two final ones, and two or three of the earlier ones. I'd be interested in having someone more knowledgeable than myself look at them and tell me about her state of mind when they were done. It could be very helpful," he added.

"Oh, well, sure, if it'd help you. You'll have to be careful of them."

"We will. I'll get them back to you as soon as I can," he said. He retrieved the last pair, rested them next to the first pair that Jameson had shown Kate, and then went back and unerringly pulled out the second one of Jameson, squinting into the sun from the seat of a tractor. He put it next to the other four, and Jameson turned away, looking slightly embarrassed.

"Write him out a receipt of some kind, would you, Casey?" he asked, but she already had her notebook in her hand. As she finished, a thought occurred to her.

"Mr. Jameson, that painting of the lumberman's daughter? And any others people around here might have--does anyone know what it is they have? An early Eva Vaughn would be a pretty valuable thing, I would have thought."

"Nobody but the family knows. We don't talk about her. She wanted it that way."

Kate could well imagine that. This family's ability to keep their mouths closed was probably the only thing that had stood between Eva Vaughn and a massive influx of vultures, disguised as reporters, onto the dirt of Tyler's Road.

Hawkin moved towards the paintings, but Jameson stopped him.

"Leave them here," he ordered. "You can bring your car over for them later. If we make Becky hold lunch for us, she won't be happy." He turned to the door and then drifted the wheels to a halt against his callused palms. Something else was on his mind. "It's not good," he said finally. "I don't like not knowing just how she is. I want you to have them tell us the truth. You can do that."

Hawkin took out a small notebook and pen, wrote a few words, and then handed the sheet to Jameson.

"This doctor can tell you whatever you want. I'll let him know you'll be calling."

"Thank you." He folded the sheet carefully and buttoned it into a shirt pocket. He took a last look at the studio and shook his head. "I often wonder what Vaun would have been like if she didn't have this... 'gift.' Curse is more like it. It's made her life hell; it tortured her mother. God forgive me, I can't help but think it was also at the back of Jemma's death and now these three--" He stopped, took a long and shaky breath, exhaled carefully, took off his cap and ran a hand across his hair, and put control back on along with the hat. "I remember an essay she wrote once in high school, an English assignment. Becky still has it somewhere. They were supposed to write on a word, any word, to research it and say what it meant to them, that kind of thing. Vaun chose the word
talent
. She started out talking about a talent as a kind of Roman coin and then went on to say that money was a form of energy, neither good nor bad in itself, just energy. 'It's how the talent is spent that makes the difference,' that's how the paper ended. Clever, it was, better than most of her schoolwork. But sad. At that time, she thought she was in charge. She never has been. Her talent has eaten her up, from the time she was a bitty little girl. She can never be normal, never be free and happy, not while this 'gift' has her. I think she knows it, too, now. I'm sure she does. It's a terrible thing to say, but I wasn't all that surprised when I heard she'd tried to kill herself. She's a sad girl, is my Vaunie. Not just sad, I don't mean to say that, but she has very few dreams left. All she has is her 'gift' and the world she paints. All she has is her eyes and her hands, and if one of them fails, that will be the end of her."

He turned his head and looked straight up at Kate, and she was shocked to see tears brimming into his tough eyes. "I love Vaun like a daughter, and this talent of hers is not a happy thing. I wouldn't wish it on an enemy." He blinked, gave the paintings a final glance, and yanked hard at his wheels, disappearing down the ramp at a heart-stopping speed. He was halfway to the house before Kate and Hawkin caught up with him.

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The house smelled of onions and hot cheese and nutmeg. Kate excused herself and ducked into the small bathroom just inside the back door. She was relieved to find that the blood had only reached as far as the lining of her jacket. She took off her blouse, pulled off the soaked bandages, and replaced them with two sterile pads and a plastic-backed six-inch square, held down with lengths of tape. It was awkward, but she got it on. She sponged off her blouse, one chosen that morning for the dark colors and all-over pattern, dried it with toilet paper, and got dressed again. Wrapping the gory evidence in more toilet paper, she thrust it into the waste basket, used the toilet, washed her hands, opened the door, and nearly collided with a tall man with red hair whom she had last seen as a boy on canvas, splitting wood.

His arrogant blue eyes probed lazily over her body from hair to ankles before rising slowly to her own eyes. She felt herself stiffen and blocked it immediately, but she could never do much about the impersonal smile that came to her lips when this happened, the civilized version of the raised-hackle snarl.

"Well, well," he said. "I must say that when Mom told me a police lady was coming today, I didn't expect someone like you. I'm Ned Jameson, and I'll shake your hand when I'm a bit cleaner."

"Casey Martinelli. Isn't the ground a bit wet for turning today?" she asked innocently, and she was unprofessionally gratified to see a flush of anger start up, before he decided that it was the simple question of a female nonfarmer.

"A bit. Not too bad." He turned to put the black rubber boots he carried onto a sheet of newspaper near the door, and she glanced at his clothes. Mud from knee to hips and fingertip to shoulders was probably not normal. She turned away to conceal her smile.

The cat had disappeared from the window seat, Kate noticed, replaced by Hawkin, who was seriously discussing a multicolored, much-jutting Lego construction with a small brown-haired boy in patched jeans, while a toddler with a head of the most stunning red curls Kate had ever seen sat glued to Hawkin's other side, her little round body twisted forward to watch their faces as she followed the conversation with serious concentration.

Kate exchanged an amused look with Red Jameson and moved to one side to let pass a slim woman with darker red curls and a heavy casserole in her hands. She plunked the pot on the table, wiped her hands unnecessarily on her apron, and held out her hand to Kate.

"Joanna Olsen. The two monsters are mine, Teddy and Marta. My neighbor was going to watch them for me but one of hers is coming down with something, so we'll just have to shout over them."

"They'll be fine, Joanna," said her mother's voice from behind Kate. "Let's sit down now, Miss Martinelli there, and Alonzo, you can sit there."

"It's Casey, Mrs. Jameson."

"Then I'm Becky. What's wrong, Teddy? Oh, all right, you can move your chair next to him. Where's Ned?"

"Upstairs changing. He was kind of muddy."

"I told him..." began his father.

"Now, Red, we know you told him not to, but he was anxious to do something and he's gone next week, so he had to try. You'd have done the same thing when you were thirty. We won't wait for him, though. Some salad, Casey?" Her voice was almost sharp and she thrust the bowl to her guest in an emphatic change of topic. "I hope you like tomatoes. Ned grows them year-round in his greenhouse."

Lunch was a full farmhouse meal, a hot dish of chicken and herbed rice, hot mixed vegetables and a salad, two kinds of bread rolls, three jams, and bottled spiced peaches for dessert. Kate ate more than she usually ate in an entire day, and when after the meal Joanna carried a heavy-lidded Marta off upstairs, she wished she could join the child, thumb in mouth and all.

Ned Jameson had come in halfway through the meal and dug into the food with great concentration, answering direct questions without looking up from his plate. The conversation eddied around him, his sister juggling admonitions to her offspring with tales of her cousin Vaun, of whom she was obviously very fond and very proud. Red and Becky Jameson contributed, and even Teddy piped up.

"Auntie Vaun is teaching me to paint. She said that if I like it I can have my own paints maybe for Christmas. She painted a picture of me. I had to sit very still, and she gave me a Lego space cruiser to put together so I'd sit still enough, but Matty's too little to do that, so she just makes drawings of her."

"I've seen that painting," said Hawkin. "It looks just like you."

"Was that in her studio?" asked Kate.

"When I was there yesterday," he said, nodding.

"Did you see Auntie Vaun?" Teddy asked quickly. "She's sick, isn't she? Is she going to be all right?"

Spoons around the table stopped in midair. Ned Jameson's jaws went still as he awaited Hawkin's pronouncement, oddly intent.

"You like your Auntie Vaun, don't you?" Hawkin asked the child.

"I love her," he said simply. "And she loves me."

"I could see that in the painting. I hope she'll be okay. I'm not a doctor, but some good doctors are taking care of her."

"She's in the hospital."

"I know. I've seen her."

"I can't visit her, I'm too young," he said, disgusted.

"Maybe you could make her a drawing, so she knows you were thinking about her." It was the suggestion of an experienced father, Kate realized, and wondered why she always forgot that side of him.

The child tipped his head, thinking.

"She likes my drawings. May I be excused, Mommy, so I can make a picture for her?"

"You don't want the rest of your peaches? Okay, you come up with me and we'll find your crayons."

Becky Jameson brought in coffee and began to clear the dishes, refusing any help. Kate and Hawkin were left alone with Red and his son, who had not yet spoken to each other. Hawkin stirred sugar into his cup and opened a polite topic of conversation.

"You grow hothouse tomatoes, Ned?"

"Not commercially, it's too expensive, but it's nice to have a few of the summer vegetables in winter."

"What do you do, then?"

"Farm this place, some experimental stuff I'm doing with the local organic farmers' organization. Fruit mostly, but the last year or so I've been growing those tiny vegetables that fancy restaurants like. Inch-long carrots, beets the size of marbles, that kind of thing. I don't think they have much flavor, myself, but people buy 'em, so I grow 'em."

"Can you make a living out of that? You hear a lot about farms closing down these days."

Kate wondered where Hawkin's sudden interest in agriculture came from, or was going to. Ned seemed reluctant to answer.

"Oh, yes. Well, not a great living. Farmers don't drive Rolls Royces, but the bills get paid. Course, a lot of us have other jobs, too, just to help out, during the slack times."

"What do you do? Your other job?"

"I make deliveries." Red was looking oddly at his son.

"Truck driving, then? Long distance?"

"Sometimes."

"Yes, I think your mother mentioned that you were going away next week. Must be hard on your wife."

"Oh, she doesn't mind; it doesn't happen that often." Here Red interrupted with a snort, and when his son shot him a look of barely controlled rage, Kate realized what Hawkin was after, though she was not at all sure how he had known it was there.

"It doesn't," he insisted. "And the money's damn good."

Teddy came back into the room, crayons and paper in hand, and climbed into the chair next to Hawkin, who helped him clear a place for the pad, automatically placing a half-full glass of milk to one side without taking his interested gaze from the young man across the table.

"The money's not the reason--" began Red, but Hawkin seemed not to hear him and talked over his words.

"I've always been fascinated by those big rigs--an eighteen wheeler, is it? A refrigerator truck?"

"Usually. It's owned by the local co-op of organic farmers. Three of us have licenses, so we take turns with deliveries. Usually the truck's only half full, so we fill up with stuff for the other growers." The young man spoke easily, but he seemed to be warmer than the room's temperature would account for.

"Mostly California?"

"Yeah, some Oregon."

"And Nevada, and Utah, and Texas," broke in his father. "It's a crazy thing to mix with trying to grow crops."

Several things happened at once. Ned shoved his chair back with a crash just as his mother entered, and the oblivious Teddy reached for a crayon just as Hawkin put his own arm out to place his napkin on the table. The anger from one end of the table and the maternal consternation from the doorway were both drowned by a child's horrified shriek as the contents of the glass shot across the drawing, over the edge of the table and all over the front of the young artist. Only Kate, seated directly across from them, saw that it was Hawkin's hand rather than Teddy's arm that had propelled the glass, and by the time it had been cleared and wiped and the child taken upstairs for dry clothes, the air had cleared.

Hawkin accepted another cup of coffee and sat back, meeting Ned's wary glances with the same benign, almost drowsy look Kate had seen him wear in Tyler's upstairs room, just before the coup de grace.

"Tell me, Ned," he said in the same conversational tone he had started with. "Do
you
think your cousin killed those little girls?"

Ned froze, but with what emotion Kate could not tell. When he spoke he looked slightly ill, nothing more.

"It looks like it, doesn't it? She killed one already, and she's always been a little crazy."

"Ned!" his mother said, horrified.

"Well, it's true, you know it's true, even if you won't say so. Sure she could have killed those girls. Who else would be doing it? Why ask me, anyway?"

"I've already asked your parents about her. I wondered what you had to say. After all, you must have been fairly close as children."

"Vaun was never close to anyone besides herself."

"Not even Andy Lewis?"

"She used Andy and dumped him." He stood up again, this time more gently but with greater finality, and deposited his napkin in his place. "Look, I have work to do this afternoon. If you're through questioning me maybe you'll let me get back to work."

Hawkin smiled up at him, and the smile held the younger man like shackles.

"I wasn't 'questioning' you, Ned," he said gently. "Just talking. If I wanted to question you, you would know you were being questioned. It's been nice talking with you, Ned. Hope to see you again."

He stood up and held his hand out in front of the man, and waited. Ned reached out with reluctance, clasped it briefly, and without another word crashed out through the back door.

Becky Jameson shook her head.

"He's so funny about Vaun. They used to be such good friends, when they were kids, but they had a falling out about something, and before they could patch it up she got involved with Andy Lewis, and then, well, there was never a chance. Sad, really."

"What did you say their age difference was?" asked Hawkin.

"He's three and a half years younger than Vaun, and Joanna's three and a half years younger than he is."

"Kids are funny," he said, as if to himself. "I have two, both in college now, and they're just starting to talk to each other civilly again. Maybe if Vaun comes out of this okay, they'll start to work it out again."

"Maybe," she agreed, "though if anything it's been getting worse lately. They had some kind of a fight about a year ago, but neither of them would say what it was about. The last time she was here, he wouldn't come over until she'd left."

Hawkin shook his head in sympathy.

"Kids are funny," he repeated. He finished his coffee and stood up again. "We must go. I told the principal we'd be there at two-thirty."

"You know how to get there?"

"Yes, no problem. Thank you for lunch, Becky. Good to meet you, Red. I'll be in touch, and feel free to call if I can help with anything."

Mrs. Jameson followed them to the studio and helped them load the canvases into the back of the car. She gave Hawkin an old curtain to cover them and stood watching as they drove off. She looked small, and tired.