The Best Revenge Page 20

  “The gallery had found five pieces in this upstairs storage room they have. The pictures weren’t even framed. Two acrylics, three watercolors. The watercolors were small, maybe each about the size of a book. The two acrylics were larger—they were square, maybe thirty inches on a side. Something like that.” She exhaled audibly. The sound was almost a sigh.

  “In each of the five paintings in that storage room, there was an ‘Oh my God, I’m in Hawaii quality’ to it. You know, ocean vistas, palm trees, old churches, Haleakala—that’s the name of the volcano on Maui. The person who showed us her pictures at the gallery said that painting that stuff was like a rite of passage for newly arrived artists in Hawaii. The good ones, she said, are the ones who get past it. The artists who don’t get past it end up smoking weed and selling thirty-dollar prints to tourists. She said that Jones—she called her Joan, of course—she said that it was clear from the start that Jones was technically good—you know, that she had talent—but that these early pieces never sold in the gallery because they were just Hawaiian clichés—the sort of thing you could find at every souvenir shop on the island.”

  Kelda laughed. “I remember thinking during the conversation,The early pieces? What are we talking? The first week? Ten days? ” She shook her head. “The woman in the gallery said that once Jones started putting herself—her feelings, her life, her spirit, whatever Oprah’s calling it these days—into her work, she’d immediately started selling paintings. At first the other artists at the gallery thought it was just because Jones was pricing her stuff for less than they were, but soon it was clear to everybody in the co-op that Jones was doing something special, and that the customers were responding to it.”

  I watched Kelda dab at the corner of her left eye with the tip of her finger. Evidence of a tear? It would have been the first I’d seen from her. But it was a speck of something less poignant than a tear that she was clearing from her eye.

  “The woman said that once word got around that Jones had died, the remaining paintings sold within days, but that everybody had forgotten about the five that were in storage because Jones had pulled them from the gallery and hadn’t wanted them displayed.

  “I asked her if there was any way that I could see any of the paintings that the gallery had sold. Any of the later ones. The ones with Jones’s spirit.” Kelda smiled as she said “spirit.” I couldn’t read the grin and wondered whether she was being sardonic or sarcastic. “The woman said she didn’t know, excused herself to go check some records, and joined us again in a few minutes. ‘The invoices show that they went to people from the mainland, mostly,’ she said. ‘A couple of large ones went to a designer who was decorating a condo at Ka’anapali. We have the designer’s name, but not the clients’. Mainlanders are our typical customers. And there is a local collector who lives in Makawao’—that’s a little cowboy town up on the side of the volcano—’who has two paintings. And Joan traded one to her landlord for rent. So if M’loo—that’s her landlord—didn’t sell it, she has one.’ She told us how to find M’loo, and Jones’s mother made arrangements to have the five remaining pictures shipped to her home. We thanked the woman in the gallery and we turned to leave.

  “The woman touched Jones’s mother on her shoulder and said, ‘I almost forgot. I have her kit, too. It has her sketchpad in it and some paints and brushes. A little journal she kept. Should I include those when I ship the paintings?’

  “Mrs. Winslett said she would like that, and we started to go.

  “‘And I have one,’ the woman in the gallery called after us. ‘I have one of the chasing pictures, too. I didn’t want to tell you because I was afraid you’d ask to take it with you and I don’t think . . . I can give it up.’

  “Jones’s mother—Mrs. Winslett—went back to New Hampshire a couple of days later. Jones’s brother and I decided to stay and try to see if we could find some of the paintings that Jones had sold. He wanted to see if he could get somebody to sell one to him. It was really important to him.”

  I spoke for the first time since I had greeted Kelda that day. “The woman in the gallery called them the ‘chasing pictures’? Did you and Jones’s brother discover what that meant?”

  Kelda nodded. “Over the next few days we ended up seeing some of the paintings. Jones’s old landlord turned out to be an absolutely obese Indonesian woman with this huge smile and a laugh that made your eyes quiver. She still had the painting that she’d traded for rent for the little shack where Jones had been living. And the woman at the gallery let us see the one she had. And . . . the collector she told us about, a guy who owns a protea farm on the side of the volcano up near Makawao, he had two. The ones in the condo in Ka’anapali we never got to see. We tracked down the designer who’d bought them, but the owners of the condo weren’t on the island while we were there.”

  Kelda crossed her legs. “The paintings were very different from the ones we’d seen in the storeroom at the gallery. The Hawaiian landscape aspects were more abstract—more impressionistic is probably a better way to put it—than in the first paintings we saw. I’m no art critic, but that’s the way it seemed to me.

  “But the main difference was that in the later pictures there was always a figure, you know, a person. The paintings weren’t just landscapes, but the person wasn’t the focus, either. The person was secondary, not front and center, and in each painting there is always some force at her back. In every painting, it’s always a woman. The force in one is the wind, almost blowing her over. In another, she’s on a beach and the force is a big wave crashing unevenly against some rocks behind her. You know that the water is about to wash over her. In another one that’s set on one of the two main roads in Paia, it’s a car that’s after her as she’s trying to cross a street. It’s clear she’s not going to make it out of the way.”

  Stating the obvious, I said, “Something is always after her? The woman in the pictures? Chasing her?”

  “Yes. The last one we saw? It’s the one that her landlord has. It’s the most disturbing of all of them. In that one it’s the darkness that’s chasing her. The woman in the painting is facing west at sunset in a field near the ocean. M’loo said the plants in the field are pineapples; she even offered to take us to see the field where Jones had painted it. It’s outside of Paia on the road to Hana. The darkness is creeping up on the woman from behind. It’s sneaking right out of the sugarcane fields like a thief.”

  Words entered my head an instant before Kelda spoke again. It turned out that the words that came out of her mouth were the exact same ones that had just materialized in my head.

  She said, “Or a killer.”

  I felt as though I were mouthing the words as she spoke them, and I wondered what that meant.

  “A killer?” I repeated.

  “The painting felt . . . dangerous. They all did. The darkness wasn’t going to surround her. It was going to consume her. That’s how it looked to me.”

  “What are you saying, Kelda?”

  “I’m not sure. She wasn’t feeling safe. I know she wasn’t feeling safe. I could see it in her art.”

  “Were the Hawaii paintings that different from the work she did in Colorado?”

  “They were better, that’s for sure. But the biggest difference was the tone. Her work here was light, energetic. The chasing pictures are dark, ominous. She was frightened.”

  I stated the obvious. It was my job. “Jones never felt safe, though, did she?”

  “Of course she didn’t, but . . . this was different. The Hawaii paintings told us she was in danger.”

  “From what?”

  “I don’t know. I just know she felt she was in danger.”

  “She suffered from multiple phobias, Kelda. She spent a good chunk of her life frightened.”

  “I have her journal, Alan. The one that she left in the gallery? I have it. She was afraid. That’s what the darkness represents in the painting that M’loo has. That’s what all the chasing pictures are about. Her fear of
someone.”

  “Not something?”

  “She was always afraid of something. But never someone. Jones loved people. That’s not how her fears worked.”

  A suspicion was developing in my mind. It came into shape slowly, erratically, like a web page loading from a recalcitrant server. When I had enough pieces to identify it, I followed the hunch. “How do you feel about darkness, Kelda?”

  “No,” she said immediately. She swallowed and shook her head, looking down at her hands in her lap. “I’ve covered enough rough ground today, Alan. That will have to wait for another time.”

  Kelda sat in that same position for a minute or two after finishing her tale about Jones and the chasing pictures and evading my question about the darkness. The silence wasn’t awkward. It wasn’t even particularly poignant. Kelda seemed to be like a runner catching her breath, surprised that she was still standing after a race she hadn’t been sure she could even complete.

  Typically, I wouldn’t end a protracted silence like that one—I would leave that choice up to my patient. But in this case, the stillness of Kelda’s posture was a clue about something I felt was worth a little exploration. Finally, I asked, “How’s your pain right now?”

  Her eyes brightened a little. “Aren’t you supposed to call it ‘my discomfort,’ Alan? Isn’t that what shrinks are supposed to say? You don’t want to be guilty of suggestion, do you?”

  Kelda wasn’t usually playful with me.

  Rather than get sidetracked by her remark, which is what I suspected she intended and what would have been most comfortable for her, I rephrased my question. “So how is your discomfort right now?”

  Her features softened. The little wrinkles in her forehead and at the corners of her eyes disappeared as though some recent Botox injections had just magically kicked in.

  She said, “I don’t hurt right now.”

  “What do you make of that?”

  She closed her eyes. I could see her eyeballs moving below her eyelids. It reminded me of watching Lauren while she was dreaming.

  “I don’t see what this has to do with Jones.” She opened her eyes.

  “Neither do I. Together we may be able to find out, though. I think that’s the point.”

  “Usually by this time of day, I’m in a lot of pain.”

  I nodded.

  “I don’t see what this has to do with Jones, Alan.”

  I repeated, “Neither do I.”

  I really didn’t. I didn’t have a clue.

  She stood to leave a minute later. I was very aware that she hadn’t mentioned Tom Clone or the assault on his grandfather or the fact that she and Tom had been spending time together.

  Usually, as I proceed in psychotherapy with my patients I remain ignorant of their omissions. During the course of treatment I am able to observe the continuity of their thoughts and even recognize the nature of the associations that they make, consciously or unconsciously, as they move from one topic to another. I can chart the process of their behavior as though I’m taking notes on a piece of music. But I typically have no way to observe the exclusionary choices that they make.

  That means that I have no way to know the important topics that they arenot discussing.

  With Kelda, because of Tom Clone’s revelations and because of Sam Purdy’s updates, I had a narrow channel by which to chance a look in the rearview mirror of Kelda’s life. And in that narrow tunnel of vision I could see what she’d chosen to drive right on by.

  I reminded myself, however, that Tom Clone, not Kelda James, was holding the mirror I was looking in, and that Tom was undoubtedly pointing it precisely where he wished.

  Still.

  Kelda stopped at the door and turned. Her eyes were aimed down near my abdomen. “How’s your arm?” she asked.

  “Good,” I said. “Fine.”

  “Great. I’m glad. Next week regular time then?”

  “Yes.”

  CHAPTER 27

  I was out the door less than a minute after Kelda left my office. I considered it propitious that the sky was mottled gray and that I could hear the rumble of distant thunder. Maybe the monsoons were finally coming. But a moment’s reflection told me that the early evening air was still quite warm and it was obvious that it didn’t contain enough humidity to allow me the luxury of forgetting my lip balm.

  A glance confirmed that no raindrops dotted the dust that coated the surface of my car.

  So maybe the monsoons weren’t arriving after all.

  I climbed into my car, opened all the windows to air it out, and checked my rearview mirror a second time when I was about halfway down the driveway. I looked just in time to see Sam Purdy pulling into the driveway from Walnut Street. He saw me coming, stopped, and got out of his car. I shut off the engine and got out of mine.

  I wondered if he’d seen Kelda leaving my office, wondered if he knew what Kelda looked like. Then I thought,Of course he does. Everyone knows what Kelda looks like. They know because of Rosa Alija.

  “Your arm’s still broken,” he said.

  “Imagine that. Hey, Sam, how are you doing?”

  “You don’t want to know how I’m doing. And a few seconds from now you’re not going to be happy to see me.”

  “What makes you think I’m happy to see you now?”

  “Cute.”

  He closed the distance between us until he was close enough that I could examine the stains from food he’d spilled on his tie. The spots weren’t recent; as far as I knew, Sam owned only three ties and this one was the oldest in the collection. One particular spot had been there as long as we’d been friends. The stain was shaped like Idaho and was about the size of a healthy fava bean.

  “Why won’t I be happy to see you?”

  Lowering his voice to a melodramatic whisper, he said, “Because I need to talk to you about Tom Clone.”

  I winced. “I can’t. You know that.”

  “By telling me you can’t, you’re already telling me something you’re not supposed to tell me. So why don’t you just go ahead and tell me one or two other things that you’re not supposed to tell me. That way I don’t have to make threats and impugn your character and we can still be friends.”

  Damn.I consoled myself with the fact that Sam’s tone was civil, so far. I held out hope he was willing to be playful. Otherwise this was going to degenerate into confrontation as quickly as Grace’s naptime whimpers became tears. I said, “I don’t know what you mean.”

  He sighed. “Okay, I’ll explain it to you then. You just told me you can’t talk about Clone. If you can’t talk about him, that means he’s your patient or your client or whatever the hell you’re calling the unfortunate schmucks you work with these days. Well, the fact is you weren’t even supposed to tell methat . So we’ve already crossed the line about you not telling me things. You’ve lost your confidentiality virginity, so to speak.”

  His deduction was, as always, sound. I smiled at him as a boom of thunder shook the air all around us.

  Sam ducked. Why did he duck? I don’t know. I would guess that he felt as though the heavens were getting ready to swat him upside the head. I wasn’t at all sure he didn’t deserve it.

  I asked, “And in your mind that means I should just become a confidentiality slut?”

  “Yeah, exactly. That would sure make my life easier.” He turned and gazed at the western sky. “Why don’t you come get in my car with me before we get fried by lightning?”

  “No, you come down here and get in mine. If I get in your car, you’ll take me hostage until I agree to sacrifice my chastity.”

  “It’s not your chastity I’m after.”

  “We’ve been down this road before, Sam. You know I’m not going to tell you what you want to know.”

  “We’ll see. Just sit with me for a minute.”

  He followed me back down the driveway to my car. As he settled on the seat he said, “I don’t think it’s really going to rain. The air is too dry. It’ll just be thunder and mo
re virga. The lightning will probably start a fire up there somewhere.” He gestured to the west, up toward the mountains.

  “You’re probably right.” I had enough things to argue with Sam about. I didn’t need to argue with him about the weather.

  “I can’t find Tom Clone,” he said.

  “Really?” At his unexpected change of focus, I switched over to my parent voice. “Do you remember if you put him back where he belonged the last time you used him?”

  He didn’t bite. “He’s gone missing. He hasn’t been by the hospital to visit his grandfather for over twenty-four hours, and he’s not at home. Neighbors haven’t seen him. He’s vanished. What I need to know from you is whether he has a job and if he does, where he works.”

  “That’s it?”

  Sam laughed. “No, but it’s all I’m allowing myself to hope for.”

  “Have you tried his attorney?”

  “Yeah, as a matter of fact, I have. He’s in Kenya. I wish I were in Kenya. I could do a month or two in Kenya communing with the animals without a problem. But it’ll never happen. Want to know why? Fancy attorneys go to Kenya; cops go to Disneyland, if we’re lucky. And then we spend two years making payments on our Visa to cover the trip. By the time we’re done with the interest payments, we’ve paid enough that we realize we should have just gone to Kenya after all.”

  “Why do you want to talk with Tom Clone?”

  “Come on, Alan, don’t ask me stuff like that. Don’t take advantage of the fact that I pretend to like you.”

  I sighed. “Just tell me if you want to arrest him or just want to talk to him.”

  Sam looked out the car window at the house that contained my office. “You own this place or do you rent?”

  “I own it with Diane and Raoul and General Electric.”

  He continued to gaze on the little brick Victorian wistfully. Diane and I had been prescient enough, or savvy enough, or, most likely, just damn lucky enough, to buy a building that was in the center of downtown on a good-sized piece of land with enviable zoning just before Boulder’s property values went through the roof.