Graham Masterton: Death Mask

“Ex-marine. Served in Iraq. You get plenty of practice out there, I can tell you, patching up people with various kinds of holes in them.”

“Shit!” said Newton. “Whoever did this, he’s still in the building, right? He didn’t come down the stairs, did he? So there’s no way he could have gotten out.”

“Not unless he jumped from the fifteenth floor,” said the shirtsleeved accountant grimly.

It was evening by the time Detective Kunzel rang the doorbell, and most of the garden was in shadow. But Sissy and Molly were still sitting under the vine trellis, drinking wine and looking at the terra-cotta pots with a mixture of awe and disbelief — but with delight, too, because what had happened was so magical.

During the afternoon, Molly had painted five more roses, of varying colors, from buttery yellow to darkest crimson. She had also painted a purple hollyhock and a sunflower and a ragged white Shasta daisy. And here they were, nodding in the breeze, as real as if she had grown them from cuttings and seeds.

“How do you think it happens?” asked Molly. “Do you think it’s some kind of mirage ? You know, like an optical illusion, except that you can touch it, too?”

Sissy blew out smoke. “If you ask me, sweetheart, it’s more important to find out why it happens, rather than how . Nothing like this ever happens for no reason. Never did in my lengthy experience, anyhow.”

They had witnessed the miracle as it happened, right in front of their eyes. After Molly had painted a rose, they had stood back and seen it gradually fade from her sketchbook, as if the paper had been bleached by the sunlight. At the same time, they had looked out of the window and seen the same rose materialize in one of the pots — only the ghost of a rose to begin with, but then more and more solid, until it was real enough to be picked, and its thorns actually pricked their fingers and drew blood.

They had watched it happen with every flower, and a Japanese beetle, too. Molly had been reluctant to paint a bird, though, in case it wasn’t anatomically correct and couldn’t fly.

Sissy had dealt out the DeVane cards yet again, and asked them to explain the miracle in more detail. This time, however, the cards were unusually obscure, and difficult to interpret. When they behaved like this, Sissy always complained that they were muttering .

The last card was le Sourd-muet , the Deaf-Mute. It showed a young woman wearing nothing but a garland of pink roses around her hips. She had one finger raised to her lips, and one hand cupped to her right ear, as if she were straining to hear. She was standing close to a dark lake on which three mute swans were swimming. On the far side of the lake, there was a grove of trees in which a naked man was hiding. His skin was very white, as if he were made of marble, but both of his hands were scarlet.

“What on God’s earth does this mean?” Molly had asked her.

“I don’t know. Maybe it means that we shouldn’t ask too many questions. Not for a while, anyhow. Swans are a symbol of patience, but they’re a symbol of tragic death, too. And look. There’s that figure again — like that statue in the sculptor’s studio. And more roses. This is all very odd.”

“I thought the cards were supposed to explain things, not make them even more confusing than they are already.”

“Not always,” said Sissy. “Now and then they simply tell you that they can’t tell you anything. That usually means that you have six or seven possible futures waiting for you, and the cards can’t decide which one of those futures is actually going to happen.”

“But I thought my life was all mapped out, every second, right from the moment I was born? You know, like karma.”

“Oh, no , not at all! You always have choices! But there are certain critical moments in your life when your entire future can be altered by a single random event — like whether you overslept and missed that bus, or whether it was raining and your shopping bag broke and some really attractive stranger helped you to pick up your shopping. Look at the way you met Trevor at the Chidlaw Gallery. He was only going there to give them a quote on their insurance.”

Molly nodded, and smiled. “The first time I talked to him, I thought, ‘What a good-looking guy — but what a stuffed shirt.’ But then he looked at my painting and said, ‘That’s amazing. that really comes alive.’ And he didn’t even know it was mine.”

“Exactly,” said Sissy. “At moments like that, the cards seem to be waiting for one more piece of the jigsaw to fall into place before they’re ready to tell you what’s going to happen to you next.”

She finished her glass of wine and said, “The DeVane cards are not just for fortune-telling, though. They’re like a key to all of the inexplicable things that happen in life. Why are we born? What are we here for? That red-haired woman I saw in Fountain Square last week — why was she crying? Why did Frank die so young and leave me widowed for so long?”

“How come I can paint roses and they appear for real in my garden?”

Sissy picked up her glass but it was empty. “Ha! I wish I could tell you. But maybe you could paint us another bottle of Zinfandel.”

The doorbell rang. “You’re not expecting anybody, are you?” asked Sissy.

“It’s probably Sheila, bringing my cake ring back. I don’t know why she doesn’t keep it. I’m worse than you when it comes to baking.”

“My dear — nobody is worse than me when it comes to baking. Whenever I used to bake, I got answering smoke signals from the Comanche.”

Molly went inside. Sissy took out another cigarette, but Mr. Boots tilted his head on one side in disapproval, so she tucked it back into the pack.

“You don’t have the spirit of Frank hiding inside of you, do you?” she asked him. She leaned forward so that her nose was only an inch away from his and said, “If you’re in there, Frank, I promise to cut down. I’ll even try the nicotine gum.”

Molly came back out into the yard, accompanied by two men. One of them was broad shouldered and bulky, with brush-cut salt-and-pepper hair and eyes as deep set as currants in Pillsbury’s dough. He wore a tan-colored suit that was far too tight for him under the arms and a green shirt that looked as if it was buttoned up wrong, and his belly bulged over his belt.

Behind him came a thin, snappy-looking individual with deliberately mussed-up hair and the face of a handsome rodent. He wore a black designer shirt and he had a pair of D&G sunglasses hooked into his breast pocket.

Molly led the two men down to the arbor. “Sissy. this is Detective Mike Kunzel and this is Detective — What did you say your name was?”

“Bellman, Freddie Bellman.”

“You caught me talking to my late husband,” said Sissy. “You must think I’m going doolally.”

Detective Kunzel looked down at Mr. Boots and said, “Not at all, ma’am. I used to have the worst-tempered Labrador bitch you ever met, and I was one hundred percent sure that she was possessed by the spirit of my late motherin-law, may she rest in peace.”

Molly said, “How have you been, Mike? How’s Betty? Still singing for the Footlighters?”

“Betty’s great, thanks for asking. They just gave her the part of Milly in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers . I’ve had ‘Goin’ Courtin’ stuck on my brain for weeks.”

“Jesus — you and me both,” said Detective Bellman, but then gave a quick, sly grin to show that he meant no offense.

“So what can I do for you, Mike?” asked Molly. “How about some refreshment? Limeade? Cranberry juice? Ale-8-One?”