Lisa Miscione - Twice

All four of them stood there looking.

“What did she say about it?” Lydia asked finally.

“Nothing. She had it sent by messenger. I called her and she never returned my call,” he said, and sounded bitter.

“Who is it?”

“Look closely.”

She examined the detailed facial features of the man and at the woman reflected in the green pools of his eyes.

“It’s her,” said Lydia. “It’s Julian Ross.”

“The woman?” asked Jeffrey, looking more closely at the reflection in the monster’s eyes.

“Both,” answered Lydia. She walked over to the desk and picked up the picture she had seen there. Orlando looked uncomfortable but didn’t protest. She held the picture up for Jeffrey and the features were undeniably similar to the man in the painting.

“What did she call it?”

“He Has Come for Me,” he said, shaking his head. “I think it’s her most disturbing work. Though I can’t say why. There’s just something so fearful about it.”

“How well do you know her?” Lydia asked.

Orlando reached out and took the photo gently from Lydia’s hand. “Who are you?” he asked, suspicion creeping into his voice. “You’re not here to buy art.”

“No,” said Jeffrey, holding out his private investigator’s identification. “Eleanor Ross has asked us to find out what happened to Julian’s husband. I’m Jeffrey Mark and this is Lydia Strong. This is our associate Dax Chicago.”

Orlando nodded, as if he weren’t surprised. Most people would have been at least annoyed, but he looked suddenly tired. Lydia saw him retreat into himself. He got that glazed-over look that people get when their thoughts have turned inward. He walked back over to his desk, placed the frame back in its place, and sat in the chair behind his desk.

“We have worked together for over twenty years. We were… we are friends,” he said, still looking at the photograph, and Lydia saw so much more than feelings of friendship there in his face.

“So you knew her when her first husband was murdered,” said Lydia.

He nodded. “She was acquitted,” he said, a little defensively. “She’s innocent… of that and of this. I’m sure of it.”

“How can you be so certain?”

He sat forward and looked directly at Lydia. She walked closer to him, while Dax and Jeffrey hung back a bit. Lydia sat down across from Orlando, returned his gaze. He sounded positive, as though there were not a doubt in his mind. But Lydia had to wonder, wouldn’t even the most loyal friend have his suspicions after the second murder?

“Because I know her,” he said, sitting back.

“So then, any thoughts on who would be motivated to murder Julian Ross’s husbands?” she asked, keeping her voice light and even. Here she saw his eyes shift, as if he were remembering something. Whatever it was, he didn’t share it.

“Someone who was stalking her, someone who wanted to hurt her, an enemy?” Lydia pressed. “Was there anyone she feared?”

Orlando shook his head slowly. “No,” he said, his voice harder, more certain than his eyes.

Lydia nodded now, thoughtful. She was reaching, probing, looking for something that might give her a map of Julian’s life, something that might lead her eventually to find out how it had fallen so horribly apart.

“You said she was happy. She was happy with her husband?” said Lydia. “She loved him?”

He shrugged. Again the shade of something across his face.

“Yes, she loved him. He gave her the thing she wanted most in life, her children,” he said quietly. “Lola and Nathaniel-she loved them more than her art. She would never do anything that would take her away from them.”

It was an interesting answer. Interesting because of what he didn’t say. She had expected to hear how wonderful Richard and Julian were together, that she loved him more than life, that she could never hurt him. But he didn’t say any of those things.

“Was there trouble in her marriage? Were they having problems?”

He raised his hands and stood. His face had flushed and now there was anger in his eyes. “That’s enough. What you are looking for here, you will not find. She’s innocent. This I know for a fact.”

“You could only know that for certain if you know who killed Richard Stratton.”

Orlando looked stricken for just a second. But then he just shook his head and grew quiet.

“I don’t need to know that. I know Julian.”

Lydia looked back at the monstrous face on Julian’s canvas.

“But her art is so violent. Is it possible that there’s a side of her you never saw?”

He followed her eyes to the canvas and didn’t answer for a second. “I suppose,” he said, looking from the canvas to the photo in his hand. “There’s a side to all of us that no one ever sees.”

The basketball courts on West Fourth Street were packed as usual with mostly young black guys and a couple of white guys either playing hard or hanging on the fence watching. Most of the players had their shirts off and were sweating like it was July even though the air was cool going on cold. The bouncing ball and the short shrieks of rubber soles on the asphalt echoed off the concrete buildings and an occasional cheer rose up like a wave over the traffic of Sixth Avenue. Jeffrey watched a young man fall hard on the concrete with a groan trying to block another player’s shot and then bounce right up like he was made out of rubber. He was back on his feet and running across the court.

“I remember what it was like to be young and in shape like that,” said Jeffrey.

“You’re not ready for life support yet, Grandpa,” said Lydia, patting his hard, flat abs.

“I’m just saying… you don’t get up from a fall like that and run a mile after forty, you know.”

“I wouldn’t know,” she said with a smile. She liked to rub in their ten-year age difference whenever possible. He gave her a look.

Dax had left them suddenly after he received a mysterious call on his cell, so Lydia and Jeffrey proceeded to their meeting with Ford McKirdy alone. They entered the Yum Yum Diner on the corner and found a table toward the back of the converted trailer that stood next to a playground under the shade of trees. They slid into the same side of a red leather booth and Lydia started to flip through the mini-jukebox at the end of the table. The smell of coffee, grease, and cigarettes had worked its way into the walls and the leather seats. Lydia was suddenly ravenous, lost interest in the jukebox, and eyed the pie case, where cakes and pastries rotated enticingly on plastic shelves. The Yum Yum Diner was the kind of place that was just as packed at three A.M. when people were heading home from the clubs as it was on a weekday at lunchtime.

Jeffrey waved to Ford as he watched his old friend make his way through the crowd that was forming for lunch. Jeffrey stood up to shake Ford’s hand.

“It’s been too long, man,” Jeffrey said. “How’re you doing?”

“You look good, Jeff. You, too, Lydia. How are you?” said Ford, taking Lydia’s hand.

He sat down across from them, and placed on the table a manila envelope he had carried in his left hand. Ford McKirdy looked soft and pasty to Lydia. She knew him to be a little over fifty and he looked every second of it. The late nights, high stress level, and bad diet of a cop’s life were taking their toll. He had a light sheen of perspiration on his forehead and she noticed that his belly grazed the edge of the table as he slid with effort into the booth.

“How was your meeting with Eleanor Ross?” asked Lydia.

“Chilly,” said Ford, wiping his brow with a napkin. “That woman is a real piece of work. She was supposed to come with the nanny. But she claimed not to have anyone else to leave the children with; I’ll have to catch up with Geneva Stout later.”