Whispers of the Bayou (34 page)

“Oh, please,” Lisa snapped. “You live in a freakin’ mansion. You’ll complain about anything.”

With that, Lisa dropped her fork onto her plate with a clank and pushed away from the table.

Deena did not look offended, merely amused.

Lisa carried her plate and glass to the sink, dropped them in with just enough force to make a statement, and stomped out of the kitchen.

“We need to talk later,” I called to her as she went.

“Come knock on my door as soon as you finish eating Deena’s poison.”

I joined Deena at the table, apologizing for the interruption.

“She’s just being ornery. Eat up, won’t you?”

I wasn’t very hungry, but I scooped out some of the stew just to be polite. Next to it I added a scoop from the casserole Livvy had brought over. It was tasty, but Deena’s stew was terrible. After Lisa’s remark about the food being poison, however, I was embarrassed for Deena’s sake not to eat both with equal enthusiasm.

“You’ve barely touched your food,” I said.

Deena put down her fork, slowly shaking her head.

“The viewing’s in the morning. I just don’t know how I’ll get through this.”

I nodded, recognizing her pain not just in her words but in the defeated slump of her shoulders.

“Uncle Holt says he takes everything one day at a time, sometimes one hour at a time or even one minute at a time. He says when someone has to face something difficult, that’s the only way to get through.”

“Guess he’s right.”

I invited her to talk about Willy, asking how they met to get her started. As she reminisced, I continued to eat just enough to make it look as though I had enjoyed the meal.

While her story of he said/I said/he did/I did romance was no doubt fascinating to her, I found myself growing bored and restless and eager to get upstairs and search that third floor for my grandmother’s paintings. Finally, when her story drew to a close, I thanked her for sharing and then seized the opportunity to make my exit.

“I think I’m going to move to one of the bedrooms on the second floor,” I said as I got up and carried my dishes to the sink. “There’s a little more room up there.”

“Suit yourself,” she replied, watching as I took a few minutes to squeeze out some dish soap, fill the pan with warm water, and wash my dishes along with the others that were there. “I’ll get you some sheets for the bed.”

“Thanks.”

She left the room and came back with a pile of crisply folded sheets, which she set on the end of the table.

“And you got some phone calls,” Deena said. “Miz Kroft nex’ door, said she was just checking to see if you’d had a chance to look at her paintings, whatever that means.”

“I wonder why she didn’t call on my cell phone.”

“Said she tried but you didn’t answer.”

I wiped a hand on my shirt and retrieved the phone from my pocket to see that it was dead. Pressing buttons did not bring it to life, and I knew that I had gone too long without charging it yet again.

With a surge of guilt, I realized that AJ might have been trying to call me after all but simply hadn’t been able to get through.

“Did anyone else call?” I asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

“Yeah, the maid that did all that cleaning today. Said she was here for four and a half hours total so you owed her forty-five dollars, and you could just give it to Miz Kroft. I said that was highway robbery, but she said that was none of my business and between you and her.”

“Forty-five dollars?” I smiled. “Gosh Deena, where I come from that’s what it costs for about one hour of cleaning, not four.”

“What a stupid waste of good money.”

“Speaking of money,” I said as I set the last plate in the dish drainer, “do you want me to go shopping for replacements on the things I owe you? Or since you’re moving out, would you rather just have cash?”

“Cash would be fine. I’m trying to get rid of things as it is, not accumulate more.”

I went to my bedroom, retrieved my purse, and dug out forty bucks. Coming back into the kitchen, I handed it over and said for her to let me know if she thought it had come to more than that.

She tucked the two twenties into her bra, a twinkle in her eye, and then carried her own full plate to the trash can and scraped the food away, adding the plate to the dishwater so I could wash it too.

After that, Deena went down the hall in the general direction of Lisa’s room. I thought she might be going down to talk to her, but as I watched
she turned short and went into the living room area instead. After a moment, I heard the television click on.

I finished with the dishes and then hurried to my own room in the opposite direction, packed my suitcase, and lugged everything to the door to the front of the house. Leaving it there, I headed toward Lisa’s room. I spotted Deena on the way, watching TV as she packed up a box from the shelves.

Continuing onward, I knocked on Lisa’s door.

“Just a minute,” she said in a muffled voice, and as I waited for her to open it, I glanced toward the door to Willy’s room at the end of the hall. I hadn’t been in there since he died, but I was glad they were keeping the door closed. Last night Deena had complained that not all of the medical equipment had yet been removed by the medical supply company, and though I didn’t know if they had yet taken away the bed or not, I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing it there, now empty, and remembering the sight of Willy’s final gasping breaths.

“Yeah?” Lisa demanded, swinging open the door, though when she saw my face, her features softened. “What’s up?”

She held her cell phone in one hand and held the fingers of the other over the mouthpiece.

“You’re on the phone,” I said, “I didn’t mean to bother you.”

“What do you need?”

“Come upstairs and find me when you’re finished,” I said. Then I lowered my voice to a whisper and, thinking of Colline d’Or, added, “I have something big to tell you.”

I took my things upstairs and settled into one of the front bedrooms, plugging my phone into the charger before I did anything else. By the time I finished getting organized, Lisa still hadn’t come up, so I thought I would use the time while I was waiting for her to take a quick look at Livvy’s painting. I brought the tote bag down the hall and around the corner to the room that held my grandmother’s art supplies. It had a completely different feel tonight with the sheets gone and wood gleaming from the gorgeous antique furniture. Lovely.

In the corner was a drafting table with a work lamp clamped on the
side, so I turned it on and carefully unwrapped the painting, for some reason expecting to see a hideous nineteenth century scene of vendors selling fruit and vegetables in a town square, the bell-and-cross symbol painted onto someone’s cape.

Instead, I caught my breath as I realized that it was a gorgeous original Horace Pippin, a homey scene of a family gathered around a wood stove. Sadly, the damage was significant. The worst problem that I could see was that the varnish had softened at some point, a result of high temperatures. Once that happened, the dirt on the surface had become permanently attached to the painting.

Beyond that, there were dots of mildew along the bottom, and the canvas had also come loose from its stretcher in several places. Moving the lamp to get some raking light, I was glad that the surface showed no rippling or folds. I didn’t have a light box to check for splits or small tears, so I took out the UV light instead, turned off the overhead light and the lamp, and studied the resulting picture in the uniquely illuminated darkness. Slowly pointing the unit across the surface, I didn’t spot any other irregularities or surprises other than some cleavage which reflected brightly near the top.

I formed the words of my evaluation in my mind, mentally listing my recommendations for Livvy. The picture could be improved but not returned to its original state. Considering the value and beauty of the work itself, I thought it would certainly be worth the expense of trying, though she had several choices about how to proceed and to what extent she’d be willing to go.

Glad at least that I had had the chance to take a look, I crossed the room to turn on the wall switch, the glowing UV light still in my hand. As I reached up, I hesitated, a strange white glow reflecting back at me from around the switch plate. Looking closer, I saw that the enamel wall paint had simple peeled off a bit, probably worn down and scratched by the repeated motions of people turning on and off the overhead light. The UV lamp was picking up whatever had been underneath that paint. Curious, I moved it closer, shining it on the wall from different angles. Sure enough, there was definitely something there.

Flipping on the overhead light, I turned off the UV light and set it on the floor and then used my fingernails to scrape at the peeling wall paint around the light switch plate. There was something uniquely colored underneath, but it wasn’t wallpaper and it wasn’t regular house paint.

It was a picture of some kind, and when I had peeled off several inches of the easily-flaking enamel, I was stunned to see that I had revealed the face of something small and white, a little dog.

“What are you doing?” Lisa’s voice said from the doorway.

Instead of answering, I merely shook my head and asked her if she would mind going to get Deena.

“You want me to bring that selfish witch up here? No thanks.”

“Please,” I said. “It’s important.”

I continued to scrape in every direction that it would let me, breaking two nails in the process. I had gotten as far as I could when Lisa returned to the room, trailed by Deena.

“What do you want? I’m missing my show.”

“Deena, what is this on the wall?” I asked.

She looked at the picture my scrapings had revealed, which now included two dogs walking alongside a wooden fence.

“That’s one of your grandmother’s paintings,” Deena said, summarily unimpressed.

“On the wall?” I asked.

“I told you she was nuts. She painted all over the place.”

“But I thought you meant on canvas. I thought you said she made a bunch of paintings and you didn’t know what Willy had done with them.”

“No,” Deena replied, looking at me strangely, probably confused by the urgency in my voice. “I told you she made a bunch of paintings and I didn’t know what he had done
about
them. I knew they was here, I just didn’t know what he used to cover them up.”

Stunned, I took a step back and waved my arms in a circle, indicating the whole room.

“Did she paint every wall in here?” I demanded.

“Every wall in here plus practically every wall in the whole upstairs hallway, plus halfway down the stairs.”

I wanted to scream! Here I had been searching for a few meager canvases, when the paintings were so much more than that—and all right here under my nose, hidden in plain sight.

“Deena, this is important,” I said, stepping forward to look her right in the eyes. “I need you to show me every place my grandmother painted.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to recover them, and I don’t want to waste any time or miss a single one.”

Obviously thinking I was also nuts but willing to humor me, Deena walked around, pointing out various places where she thought she could recall having heard my grandmother had painted. I could tell she wasn’t happy at the thought that I was going to take down the enamel paint her husband had so carefully put up.

“They had some big fights about this,” Deena said after she showed me the final area. “Willy was so upset he could barely talk about it sometimes.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, glancing at Lisa, who seemed bored by the whole thing.

“Your grandmother was driven to keep painting, and Willy was just as driven to come up here every night and cover it up. That’s why she did it in so many different areas. He’d cover one up so she’d move to some new place and try again. Finally—”

Deena stopped talking, a blush creeping into her cheeks.

“What? Finally what?”

“I hate to say it, because it so wasn’t like him.”

“Please, Deena. What?”

“Finally, Mr. Fairmont, he heard Willy yelling at your grandmother. Got so mad he told Willy to leave her alone and that he wasn’t allowed upstairs again. Drove Willy crazy that she was up here messing up the walls with all her stupid painting. But he had to wait ‘til she died before he could get back up here to cover it all up one last time.”

Silently one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.

I got right to work, using a variety of tools that Deena was able to rustle up for me, including sandpaper, putty knives, kitchen knives, emery boards, a flathead screwdriver, and even occasionally a blow drier.