Duma Key (65 page)

I understood everything, and I didn't need any phantom arm to tell me, either. There was something Perse wanted, because she was angry with me. Angry?
Furious
. Only Tom had had a moment of sanity—a moment of
courage
—and had taken a quick detour into a concrete cliff.

Wireman was making crazy what's-going-on gestures in front of my face. I turned away from him.

“Panda, he saved your life.”

“
What?
”

“I know what I know,” I said. “The sketch he was showing off in the plane . . . it was one of mine, right?”

“Yes . . . he was so proud . . . Edgar,
what are you
—”

“Did it have a name? Did the sketch have a name? Do you know?”

“It was called
Hello
. He kept saying, ‘Don't look much like Minnesota dere' . . . doing that dumb Yooper thing of his . . .” A pause, and I didn't break in because I was trying to think. Then: “This is your special kind of knowing. Isn't it?”

Hello,
I was thinking. Yes, of course. The first sketch I'd done in Big Pink had also been one of the powerful ones. And Tom had bought it.

Goddamned
Hello
.

Wireman took the phone from me, gently but firmly.

“Pam? It's Wireman. Is Tom Riley . . . ?” He listened, nodding. His voice was very calm, very soothing. It was a voice I'd heard him use with Elizabeth. “All right . . . yes . . . yes, Edgar's fine, I'm fine, we're all fine down here. Sorry about Mr. Riley, of course. Only you need to do something for us, and it's extremely important. I'm going to put you on speaker.” He pushed a button I hadn't even noticed before. “Are you still there?”

“Yes . . .” Her voice was tinny but clear. And she was getting herself under control.

“How many of Edgar's family and friends bought pictures?”

She considered. “Nobody in the family bought any of the actual
paintings,
I'm sure of that.”

I breathed a sigh of relief.

“I think they were sort of hoping—or maybe expecting's the word—that in time . . . on the right birthday, or maybe at Christmas . . .”

“I understand. So they didn't get anything.”

“I didn't say that. Melinda's boyfriend also bought one of the sketches. What's this about?
What's wrong with the pictures?
”

Ric. My heart jumped. “Pam, this is Edgar. Did Melinda and Ric take the sketch with them?”

“With all those airplanes, including transatlantic? He asked that it be framed and shipped. I don't think she knows. It was of flowers done in colored pencils.”

“So that one's still at the Scoto.”

“Yes.”

“And you're sure nobody else in the family bought paintings.”

She took maybe ten seconds to consider. It was agony. At last she said, “No. I'm positive.”
You better be, Panda,
I thought. “But Angel and Helen Slobotnik bought one.
Mailbox with Flowers,
I believe it's called.”

I knew the one she was talking about. It was actually titled
Mailbox with Oxeyes
. And I thought that one was harmless, I thought that one was probably all mine, but still . . .

“They didn't take it, did they?”

“No, because they were going to Orlando first, fly home from there. They also asked that it be framed and shipped.” No questions now, only answers. She sounded younger—like the Pam I had married, the one who'd kept my books back in those pre-Tom days. “Your surgeon—can't remember his name—”

“Todd Jamieson.” I said it automatically. If I'd paused to think, I wouldn't have been able to remember.

“Yes, him. He also bought a painting, and arranged for shipment. He wanted one of those spooky
Girl and Ship
ones, but they were spoken for. He settled for a conch-shell floating on the water.”

Which could be trouble. All the surreal ones could be trouble.

“Bozie bought two of the sketches, and Kamen bought one. Kathi Green wanted one, but said she couldn't afford it.” A pause. “I thought her husband was sort of a dork.”

I would have given her one if she'd asked,
I thought.

Wireman spoke up again. “Listen to me now, Pam. You've got work to do.”

“All right.” A little fog still in her voice, but mostly sharp. Mostly right there.

“You need to call Bozeman and Kamen. Do it right away.”

“Okay.”

“Tell them to burn those sketches.”

A slight pause, then: “Burn the sketches, okay, got it.”

“As soon as we're off the phone,” I put in.

A touch of annoyance: “I said I got that, Eddie.”

“Tell them I'll reimburse them their purchase price times two, or give them different sketches, whichever they want, but that those sketches aren't safe. They
are not safe
. Have you got that?”

“Yep, I'll do it right now.” And she finally asked a question.
The
question. “Eddie, did that
Hello
picture kill Tom?”

“Yes. I need a callback.”

I gave her the phone number. Pam sounded like she was crying again, but still repeated it back perfectly.

“Pam, thank you,” Wireman said.

“Yeah,” Jack added. “Thanks, Mrs. Freemantle.”

I thought she'd ask who that was, but she didn't. “Edgar, do you promise the girls will be okay?”

“If they didn't take any of my pictures with them, they'll be fine.”

“Yes,” she said. “Your goddamned pictures. I'll call back.”

And she was gone, without a goodbye.

“Better?” Wireman asked when I hung up.

“I don't know,” I said. “I hope to God it is.” I pressed the heel of my hand first against my left eye, then against my right. “But it doesn't
feel
better. It doesn't feel
fixed
.”

xiii

We were quiet for a minute. Then Wireman asked, “Was Elizabeth falling out of that pony-trap really an accident? What's your best guess?”

I tried to clear my mind. This stuff was important, too.

“My best guess is that it was. When she woke up, she suffered from amnesia, aphasia, and God knows what else as a result of brain injuries that were beyond diagnosis in 1925. Painting was more than her therapy; she was a genuine prodigy, and she was her own first great artwork. The housekeeper—Nan Melda—was also amazed. There was that story in the paper, and presumably everyone who read it was
amazed over breakfast . . . but you know how people are—”

“What amazes you at breakfast is forgotten by lunch,” Wireman said.

“Jesus,” Jack said, “if I'm as cynical as you two when I get old, I think I'll turn in my badge.”

“That's Jesus-
Krispies
to you, son,” Wireman said, and actually laughed. It was a stunned sound, but
there
. And that was good.

“Everyone's interest began to wane,” I said. “And that was probably true for Elizabeth, as well. I mean, who gets bored quicker than a three-year-old?”

“Only puppies and parakeets,” Wireman said.

“A creative burn at three,” Jack said, bemused. “Fucking awesome concept.”

“So she started to . . . to . . .” I stopped, for a moment unable to go on.

“Edgar?” Wireman asked quietly. “All right?”

I wasn't, but I had to be. If I wasn't, Tom would only be the beginning. “It's just that he looked good at the gallery.
Good,
you know? Like he'd put it all together again. If not for
her
meddling—”

“I know,” Wireman said. “Drink some of your water,
muchacho
.”

I drank some of my water, and forced myself back to the business at hand. “She started to experiment. She went from pencils to fingerpaints to watercolors in—I think—a period of
weeks
. Plus some of the pictures in the picnic basket were done in fountain-pen, and I'm pretty sure some were done with house-paint, which I'd been meaning to try myself. It has a look when it dries—”

“Save it for your art-class,
muchacho,
” Wireman said.

“Yeah. Yeah.” I drank some more water. I was starting to get back on track. “She started to experiment with different media, too. If that's the right word; I think it is. Chalk on brick. Sand-drawings on the beach. One day she painted Tessie's face on the kitchen counter in melted ice cream.”

Jack was leaning forward, hands clasped between his muscular thighs, frowning. “Edgar . . . this isn't just blue-sky? You
saw
this?”

“In a way. Sometimes it
was
actual seeing. Sometimes it was more like a . . . a wave that came out of her pictures, and from using her pencils.”

“But you know it's true.”

“I know.”

“She didn't care if the pictures lasted or not?” Wireman asked.

“No. The
doing
mattered more. She experimented with media, and then she started to experiment with reality. To change it. And
that's
when Perse heard her, I think, when she started messing with reality. Heard her and woke up. Woke up and started calling.”

“Perse was with the rest of that junk Eastlake found, wasn't she?” Wireman asked.

“Elizabeth thought it was a doll. The best doll ever. But they couldn't be together until she was strong enough.”

“Which
she
are you talking about?” Jack asked. “Perse or the little girl?”

“Probably both. Elizabeth was just a kid. And Perse . . . Perse had been asleep for a long time. Sleeping under the sand, full fathom five.”

“Very poetic,” Jack said, “but I don't know exactly what you're talking about.”

“Neither do I,” I said. “Because
her
I don't see. If
Elizabeth drew pictures of Perse, she destroyed them. I find it suggestive that she turned to collecting china figures in her old age, but maybe that's just a coincidence. What I know is that Perse established a line of communication with the child, first through her drawings, then through her up-to-then favorite doll, Noveen. And Perse instituted a kind of . . . well, exercise program. I don't know what else you'd call it. She persuaded Elizabeth to draw things, and those things would happen in the real world.”

“She's been playing the same game with you, then,” Jack said. “Candy Brown.”

“And my eye,” Wireman said. “Don't forget fixing my eye.”

“I'd like to think that was all me,” I said . . . but had it been? “There
have
been other things, though. Small things, mostly . . . using some of my pictures as a crystal ball . . .” I trailed off. I didn't really want to go there, because that road led back to Tom. Tom who should have been fixed.

“Tell us the rest of what you found out from her pictures,” Wireman said.

“All right. Start with that out-of-season hurricane. Elizabeth summoned it up, probably with help from Perse.”

“You've
got
to be shitting me,” Jack said.

“Perse told Elizabeth where the debris was, and Elizabeth told her father. Among the litter was a . . . let's say there was a china figure, maybe a foot high, of a beautiful woman.” Yes, I could see that. Not the details, but the figure. And the empty, pupil-less pearls that were her eyes. “It was Elizabeth's prize, her fair salvage, and once it was out of the water, it
really
went to work.”

Jack spoke very softly. “Where would a thing like that have come from to begin with, Edgar?”

A phrase rose to my lips, from where I don't know, only that it wasn't my own:
There were elder gods in those days; kings and queens they were.
I didn't say it. I didn't want to hear it, not even in that well-lighted room, so I only shook my head.

“I don't know. And I don't know what country's flag that ship might have been flying when it blew in here, maybe scraping its hull open on the top of Kitt Reef and spilling some of its cargo. I don't know much of anything for sure . . . but I think that Perse has a ship of her own, and once she was free of the water and completely welded to Elizabeth Eastlake's powerful child's mind, she was able to call it.”

“A ship of the dead,” Wireman said. His face was childlike with fear and wonder. Outside, a wind shook the massed foliage in the courtyard; the rhododendrons nodded their heads and we could hear the steady, sleepy sound of the waves pounding the shore. I had loved that sound ever since coming to Duma Key, and I still loved it, but now it frightened me, too. “A ship called . . . what?
Persephone
?”

“If you like,” I said. “It's certainly crossed my mind that Perse was Elizabeth's way of trying to say that. It doesn't matter; we're not talking Greek mythology here. We're talking about something far older and more monstrous. Hungry, too. That much it does have in common with vampires. Only hungry for souls, not blood. At least that's what I think. Elizabeth had her new ‘doll' for no more than a month, and God knows what life was like at the first Heron's Roost during that time, but it couldn't have been good.”

“Did Eastlake have the silver harpoons made then?” Wireman asked.

“I can't tell you. There's so much I don't know, because what I do know comes from Elizabeth, and she was little more than an infant. I have no sense of what happened in
her
other life, because by then she'd quit drawing. And if she remembered the time when she did—”

“She was doing her best to forget it,” Jack finished.

Wireman looked glum. “By the end, she was well on her way to forgetting everything.”