Thomas Cook - Sacrificial Ground

“Yes,” Philip said. “I saw her off and on before she died.”

“Where?”

“Here in the gallery,” Philip told him. “She would come in and walk around for a while. I hadn’t seen her since she was a very little girl, and I’m sure she didn’t recognize me. I could tell she was going through a stage, so I didn’t introduce myself.”

“What do you mean?” Frank asked, as he showed the man his badge.

“Well, by the way she was dressed,” Philip explained. “Always something different. It was like she was in costume.” He looked back at Karen. “I really can’t tell you how sorry I am about what happened to her.”

“Did she come alone?” Frank asked.

“Yes.”

“And left alone?”

“Always left alone, as far as I can remember,” Philip said. “Are you making any progress in the investigation?”

“Some.”

Philip shook his head despairingly. “It’s terrible what can happen in this world, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Frank said, then suddenly realized that Karen had left the room.

He found her standing alone on the front porch of the gallery. She was staring up at the steadily darkening sky. “I’d like to believe that Angelica was up there somewhere, but I don’t.”

Frank draped his arm gently over her shoulder. “There’s only one more gallery, Karen. Then you can go to New York. You won’t hear from me again until I’ve found the man who killed her.”

Karen nodded slowly. “All right,” she said.

It was called the Broken Frame, and it was a small, neatly painted building, white with lavender shutters. Inside, the rooms were bright and well-lighted. A young woman in a wildly colored peasant dress greeted them at the door.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hello,” Frank said. He glanced about the room. The paintings were carefully arranged on the wall so as not to be crowded together. The colors were pastels, and they added their own delicate light to the interior of the room.

“Just browse all you want,” the woman said. “No pressure at the Broken Frame.”

Frank drew out his badge, then a picture of Angelica Devereaux. “Have you ever seen this girl?” he asked.

“Yes,” the woman said. “This is the girl who was found dead not far from here.”

“Her name was Angelica,” Frank said.

The woman continued to gaze at the photograph. “She never mentioned her name. She would just stand around. She never spoke to anyone.”

“Did she ever talk to you?”

“No,” the woman said. She looked at Karen. “You must be her sister. I can see the resemblance.”

Frank pointed to the picture. “Did she look like this in the picture?”

“Yes, just like this,” the woman told him. “Very fresh and beautiful. She wore lots of lace. High collars. She sometimes looked as if she’d walked right out of Gone With the Wind .”

“Did you ever see her with anyone?”

“No.”

“She was always alone?”

“Yes.”

“Did she ever leave with anyone?”

The woman smiled. “Lots of people tried to get her to leave with them. And, you know, sometimes, I think she liked that. She would sometimes throw one of those ‘come hither’ looks. But only at other women.”

“Other women?”

“Yes,” the woman said. “She didn’t seem interested in men at all.”

Frank took out his notebook. “Did you ever see her talking to other women in the gallery?”

“No,” the woman said determinedly. “As I told you, she never talked to anyone.”

“But she seemed to concentrate on women?” Frank asked again.

“Absolutely,” the woman said. “It was strange. She would look at them with this odd glance, shy, but not really shy, if you know what I mean.”

Frank wrote it down. “How many times did you see her in here?”

“Three, maybe, four,” the woman said. She turned suddenly to Karen. “It’s just hit me, you must be Karen Devereaux.”

“Yes,” Karen said.

“We have two of your paintings,” the woman said happily. “I liked them so much, I bought them from another gallery.” She tugged Karen cheerfully into the adjoining room. “See,” she said. She pointed to a small, delicately rendered portrait of a man sitting in a wing chair, his hands folded neatly in his lap, a look of terrible, wounded concentration in his eyes.

“My father,” Karen said, almost in a whisper.

“And that one,” the woman added. She turned Karen slowly around to face the opposite wall.

“Oh, yes,” Karen said. A smile suddenly struggled to her lips.

The painting was of a vase of flowers. It was done in muted colors with a light, feathery brushstroke, and as Frank looked at it he could feel a kind of solemn pleasure flourishing in it, rising, against all odds, to claim its own bright space.

“I’ll take it,” he said, before he could stop himself.

Karen turned to him. “Don’t be silly, Frank,” she said. “I’ll give you a painting.”

He looked at her somberly. “But I want this one,” he said.

The woman wrapped the painting while Frank asked her a few remaining questions. Then he picked it up carefully and took it to the car.

“Where are you going to hang it?” Karen asked.

“My apartment,” Frank told her, “it could use a touch of something nice.”

“Is it one of those drab, broken-down, private-eye sort of places?” Karen asked with a light smile.

“That’s about right.”

“How long have you lived there?”

“It feels like my whole life.”

She looked at him tenderly. “Take me there, and I’ll help you hang the painting.”

The dinginess of his apartment seemed even greater with Karen standing in the middle of it, but she didn’t seem to mind.

“It really is one of those private-eye places,” she said with a laugh.

“I told you.”

She walked to the middle of the room, then turned slowly, examining the walls. “Over there,” she said at last, “that would be the best place for it.”

Frank rifled through several cabinets before he found a nail. Then he hammered it into the wall, and together he and Karen lifted the painting onto it, then stepped back to take in the effect.

“Very nice,” Karen said. She looked at him. “It brightens the room.”

“Yes, it does.”

Karen continued to look at it for a moment, then walked over to the window, parted the blinds and peered out. “I was happy when I painted that,” she said.

Frank walked over to her. “You can tell you were,” he said.

The first wave of rain suddenly swept down over the city, and a gust blew it forcefully against the window pane.

“I want a storm,” Karen said, “I want a wild, booming storm.”

“Maybe you should paint one,” Frank said.

She turned toward him. “Do you think a single afternoon can make a difference?”

“For that afternoon, yes,” Frank said. And then he drew her into his arms.

24

It was late in the evening before Karen left, and as Frank sat on his sofa, staring at her painting, he could still feel the warmth of her body as it had clung to him hungrily hour after hour. She had talked once again of leaving this city full of ghosts, and as he continued to gaze at the painting, it struck him that she had not painted the flowers themselves, or the almost translucent blue vase that held them, but the airy ghosts of these things. It was as if she had been able to feel the slowly fading pulse of each leaf and petal, and it was this overall sense of steadily departing life which she had captured.

He had bought the painting because it was hers, and because he thought it might brighten the space around him. But now he could see nothing but its sorrowfulness, its mournful sense of departure and farewell.