Artful Dodger (Maggie Kean Mis-Adventures) (20 page)

I turned at the sound of crunching gravel. Lindsay Burns walked toward me, her head bowed. A shapeless dress hung from her thin shoulders and a pair of old, untied tennis shoes slapped against her heels like the rubber thongs I wore to the beach. She passed me without saying a word, stepping through the high grass as it clung to the hem of her dress.  I followed her through the field and around the lake until she reached the bench and sat down on the far side, leaving room for me. We sat there in silence, listening to the ducks and the birds flapping their wings as they flew off.

“Elizabeth was the first person to ever tell me I could paint.”

“She told you the truth.” I turned and glanced at her profile. It was all lines and sharp angles, from the high cheekbones to the jutting chin. Her forehead was flat and even, her nose a straight smooth plane. I imagined her face as a study of geometric designs, one figure intersecting the other, one continuous flow of interlocking corners, until you reached her mouth. Soft and full, her lips were the stuff of romantic novels. Stuck in the middle of vectors, points and perpendicular lines, her mouth seemed oddly misplaced.

Chewing on her bottom lip, she lifted her shoulders. “She was nice enough to say so, anyway.”

“Elizabeth never said anything just to be nice. If she said it, she meant it.”

She turned slightly. “How do you know about me or my art?”

“It wasn’t hard really, it came to me in a flash.” I explained about the mix-up in paintings, leaving out the stolen appointment book where I’d found her name. “When I went back to my house and studied the picture, it was obviously your work.” Distrust and confusion clouded her eyes. “I probably would have realized it sooner, except I assumed the painting I had taken off Elizabeth’s wall was her work. Once I saw her signature on the second picture, all the pieces came together.”

“I still don’t understand. I never sign my pictures. How would you know—?”

I interrupted her. “The first day I was here, when you opened the door to me, I caught a glimpse of your living room. There were a bunch of plastic toys tucked in a corner and a big-wheel tricycle in the middle of the floor.” I paused a moment before continuing. “And then, before you shut the door, I saw the paintings on the wall. They jumped out at me because of the distinct contrast between the bright toys and the dark colors in the paintings. It was your art I saw hanging on the walls, right?”

She didn’t answer me.  A cool breeze tickled the lake, wrinkling its smooth face. “Your style, the tone, even the mood of your pictures, is very distinctive.  That is your signature.” We continued to look out over the water as clouds floated in front of the sun and the air became rapidly cooler. Colorado’s mountain ranges bred finicky, unstable weather. I untied the sweatshirt at my waist and offered it to her, knowing the thin cotton of her dress was no match for the cold. She shook her head, clenched her hands together, and stared straight ahead.

“So what is it you want?” she asked, almost defiantly, as though I was out to get her somehow.

“Look, I’m sure it’s not easy for you to trust me,” I admitted. Given the clusters of faded bruises marking her face, I doubted she trusted anybody. “I lied about being Elizabeth’s secretary. I was a good friend of hers. Her neighbor, actually.  Her body was found in my yard.”

Lindsay Burns spun around and stared at me, her eyes widened in shock. “How did she die?”

“The police told me she was hit on the back of the head with a heavy object and then carried to my septic tank and dumped.”

“Oh, my God.”  She covered her mouth as tears sprang to her eyes. “The paper said there was a murder but—“

I touched her arm. “Lindsay? Is it okay if I call you by your first name?” She nodded and I went on. “The police are trying to keep back as much information as possible. I’m not sure why, maybe because of copycat killers or things like that.  Even though I identified her body, they haven’t been any more forthcoming with me,” I said, thinking of Villari.  “I don’t have any more specifics than what I just told you.”

Lindsay wiped her eyes on the back of her arm. Then, abruptly, she stood. “I’m sorry about Mrs. Boyer. She was very nice to me. But she’s gone now and I don’t know what you expect or want from me.”  She walked away.

I put one hand over my eyebrows to block the sun as I watched her move to the edge of the lake. She stood on the bank, the water lapping against her feet. For a moment I thought my hunch had been wrong. Maybe there was nothing more to the relationship between Elizabeth and Lindsay than a common interest in art. It wouldn’t be the first time I had jumped to conclusions and fired rapidly before getting all the information. But then I noticed her arms. They were wound tightly around her waist as though she hurt inside and was shielding herself from the pain.  Going on instinct, I followed her.

“Why did Elizabeth come to see you?” I asked softly, now standing beside her.

She shook her head, lifting her face upward to the weakening sun. Then she turned around and faced me. “You’re Maggie Kean.” She smiled at the confusion on my face. “Elizabeth told me about you. I knew who you were the first time you came to see me. You were exactly as she described. I tried to warn you, but you wouldn’t listen.”

“Warn me?”

She ignored my question and turned back to the lake. “Elizabeth described you once. She told me that I’d recognize you anywhere, even without being introduced. She said you were a perfect candidate for a fashion makeover.” Lindsay bent down and grabbed a small flat pebble. She drew her arm back and snapped it forward, sending the rock skipping lightly across the water.

“Sounds like her,” I murmured. “She was always complaining about my style or lack of style. Actually, her complaints weren’t confined to my clothing. Elizabeth managed to zero in on a whole bunch of weaknesses she felt needed to be addressed. It wasn’t until after she died that I realized how much I had come to depend on her.”

Lindsay didn’t respond. She just stood still; staring out over the lake as though the answers she sought would rise up out of the water like a white swan and soar through the air. She was an odd combination of pride and fear, stubbornness and docility. It was easy to imagine her facing down the Loch Ness monster with one scathing look, but it was just as easy to imagine her cringing and whimpering in its shadow.

“Elizabeth never came to see me, Maggie.” She said my name with a bit of a question behind it, as though wondering if I really meant for her to call me by it. And then she looked at me with a look so wistful and sad that I suddenly realized I was not looking at pride or fear or any of those things I had thought I’d seen before. I was looking at loneliness. Sheer loneliness in all its shapes and sizes.

“How did you meet her?”

“I went to see her.”

“You went to see Elizabeth?  But why?”

“Because of my children. Because I was desperate.”

“I don’t understand.”

She unwrapped her arms and rubbed her palms up and down both sides of her dress. With   her   skinny   arms and legs, she reminded me of the stick figures I had drawn in kindergarten. I was tempted to drag Lindsay over to Villari’s parents’ house and beg Mamacita to put some meat on her bones.

“Walk with me?”

I nodded and we began walking around the perimeter of the lake, staying close enough for her to pick up a rock now and then and pitch it across the water.

“My mother died ten years ago, when I was twenty. It was very painful, and I guess I lost my balance or sense of where I was going. So I dropped out of college with no real place to go or any idea of what to do next.” She glanced at me, clearly expecting a negative reaction. But I was the last person to judge someone’s response to grief. My own mother’s death had taught me that much.

“My mom died when I was young,” I told her. “It changed my life.”

She was quiet for a few moments and then started talking. I kept silent to give her the time and room to establish her own pace.

“I know it sounds strange—I mean, I was on my own and I really didn’t depend on my mother for anything anymore, but—” She trailed off for a moment before clearing her throat and continuing. “But her death completely unhinged me. I was an only child and my father...well, I never knew him.  As long as I can remember, it was my mother and myself, just the two of us. And that was okay with me.  We loved each other. We had enough money.  We were never rich, but we weren’t starving or out on the streets or anything like that. Mom and I had a lot of fun together.  And I know it sounds odd, but I was never really curious about my father. My life was fine and I didn’t see any reason to complicate it looking for a man who had never cared enough to stick around in the first place.”

We made our way through the tall grass, the cool air fanning our faces.

“Anyway... Mom and I took care of each other and things went along fine until I turned eighteen and I graduated from high school.” She bent down and picked up a long thin branch that had fallen to the ground. “Mom really wanted me to go to college. Insisted on it, actually. I didn’t care one way or the other, but Mom was determined that I would have more choices in life than she did. She wanted me to be in charge of my life and she was positive that an education would give me that chance. Of course, I really had mixed feelings about going away. I mean, the idea of complete freedom was heady, like it is for any teenager, and I was your typical teenager, ready to go off and drink beer and all that stuff, but I felt terrible about leaving my mother alone. For too many years, we were all each other had.” She turned and smiled at me. “I guess you weren’t really expecting an autobiography, were you?”

“Trust me, Lindsay. No one can draw out an answer longer than I can,” I reassured her. “Believe me, compared to my rambling style, you’re practically mute.”

Her smiled deepened. “Elizabeth said you had a great sense of humor.”

“That’s nice to know considering her rather nasty comments about my lack of fashion sense,” I replied dryly. “She never did appreciate the work it took to maintain this casual, nonchalant style.”

“Maggie, don’t take offense,” she said, laughing, “but I doubt you spend more than twenty minutes putting that look together. And if you do, then something is terribly wrong.”

“Fifteen minutes,” I replied. And then I laughed with her. “It used to drive Elizabeth nuts. She’d come waltzing into my studio wearing Chanel’s latest and stand over me, impatiently tapping her foot like a metronome, demanding to know why I insisted on looking like a starving artist.”

“That sounds just like her.” She pushed her hair out of her face and tilted it to the waning sun. “She reminded me of my mother. Not so much physically—Elizabeth was a more attractive woman. But emotionally. She had that same capacity to just up and love someone without weighing the consequences.”

It was true. Elizabeth had an astounding capacity to love. Maybe Lindsay was right, though. Maybe Elizabeth’s capacity wasn’t any greater than anyone else’s; maybe she just wasn’t afraid to use it.

“Anyway, after a lot of tears, I made the break and went to college.” She took a deep breath and sighed, looking off into the distance as the memories washed over her. “It was everything I hoped it would be. I drank beer until I threw up, stayed out until all hours, and then crammed for tests at the last minute. I even paid my roommate, who happened to be the resident genius, to write a two-page essay discussing the theme of Dylan’s Thomas’ poem ‘Do Not Go Gently Into that Good Night’ while I went to a frat party.  It wasn’t exactly what Mom had in mind when she sent me off to school, but I loved every crazy moment of it until—” Lindsay paused almost imperceptibly, “Mom died. And then my world crashed around me.”

Pale orange tendrils slipped through the long wispy clouds cloaking the sun. Grass fluttered beneath the cool breeze skating across the water, and in the background, dark gray skies threatened to swallow the lake. Once again, I silently offered my sweatshirt to Lindsay, but she shook her head. She seemed oblivious to the changing weather.  But apparently I came from much more feeble stock and pulled the sweatshirt on, glad for its protection.

“I didn’t know what to do, where to turn, how to survive. Mom died of breast cancer. She’d found a lump before I went to college and didn’t say anything to me... or to a doctor.   She let it go until it killed her. I don’t know if she was in denial and thought it would go away if she ignored it long enough, or whether she was simply too tired to fight her own loneliness anymore. Somehow I think it was the loneliness.” Lindsay looked at me. “And there are some days when I think of doing the same thing and joining her. Of giving up.”

“Is that when you met Elizabeth?”

She shook her head. “No, we didn’t meet until fairly recently, actually. Not until after I had been beaten to within an inch of my life. And even then, I don’t think I would have done anything if Tom hadn’t slapped my son for the first time. That was when I snapped.”

“What happened?” I asked softly.

A tall willow tree stood several feet from the water’s edge, the leaves rippling in the breeze. Long droopy branches calmly rearranged themselves, the perfect picture of a Southern lady shaking out her hoop skirt. Lindsay pushed aside a clump of branches and sat down with her back against the trunk, her knees pulled up to her chest. I took a seat next to her and waited.

“He wasn’t always like this.” She lifted her shoulders and smiled a very small smile, one that never quite reached her eyes. “I’m sure I sound like a typical victim, someone who can’t admit the truth.”

I reached out and touched the hand clenched in a death grip on her knee. “Lindsay. I’m here to listen to your story, no one else’s.”

“I met Tom at the store where I was bagging groceries.  It was the first job I got when I quit school and moved back home into Mom’s house.  I simply didn’t have the will or the energy to go back to school after the funeral.  Anyway, he used to come in while I was working, putting out the produce or stocking shelves or sometimes bringing in the carts from outside. It seemed like we had this eerie connection from the first time we met.  I’d be busy in the store, and then suddenly I’d get this strange feeling and I’d look up and he’d be standing there. He didn’t say much, just looked at me and smiled, said hello, and walked away. And it happened all the time.” She gazed past me unseeingly. “I thought it was so romantic at the time. He’d stare at me with those clear blues eyes and I imagined he could see straight into my soul. And with Mom so recently gone, I desperately needed someone to care.” She shuddered. “We went on like that for a few weeks and it was perfect. It felt like I was being courted. After a while, everyone in the store noticed and started teasing me, nothing bad, just kidding around about the guy who was sweet on me.  It all seemed so old-fashioned and proper. And finally, he asked me out to dinner. By this time I was practically in love with a man I’d hardly spoken to.”