Death Mask

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT Bad Memories

Frank followed Sissy into the kitchen as if he were concussed. He looked around, taking in the flowery red and yellow drapes and the hutch with its decorative pottery plates and jugs. He peered closely at the family photographs on the wall beside the fridge.

“Is this —?” he asked, pointing at a picture of Trevor.

Sissy nodded. “That’s right. Looks so much like you, don’t you think?”

“And this is his wife? And his daughter?”

“Molly and Victoria. Molly’s an artist. Well — you can see by all of these flower paintings. They’re all hers. This landscape, too. Do you recognize it? New Milford Green. She painted it when she and Trevor came to visit last fall.”

Frank pulled out a chair and sat down at the kitchen table. “I’m finding this real hard to take in, Sissy. The way you look, everything. You’re still just as pretty as you ever were. But I’ve missed out on so many years, haven’t I? How could that happen?”

Sissy sat down opposite him and took hold of his hands. “It’s so wonderful to have you back. You don’t have any idea how much I’ve missed you.”

“Is Trevor here? Aren’t you going to tell him I’m back?”

“Of course I am. But there’s something you need to know. It’s going to be very difficult for you to understand, and if it makes you angry with me, then I won’t be at all surprised.”

“You’ve found somebody else. Is that it? After twenty-four years, darling, I can’t say that I blame you.”

Sissy said, “I have had plenty of men friends, yes. Good ones, some of them. But nobody serious. And nobody who could ever replace you.”

“So why am I going to be angry?”

Sissy stood up again and went over to the sink. She took down a small mirror with a frame made of ceramic daisies. She handed it to Frank and said, “Take a look at yourself, Frank. Tell me what you see.”

Frank frowned into the mirror. Then he touched his forehead and prodded his cheeks. “I don’t look old, do I?” he said. “I mean, I don’t look as old as you do. How come?”

“The last twenty-four years, Frank — well, let’s put it this way, they just passed you by.”

“They passed me by? How in God’s name did that happen?”

“Do you remember a kid named Laurence Stepney?”

“Sure I do. A real tearaway, that boy, but if I can straighten him out, I reckon that he could go far. Heck — listen to me. If twenty-four years have gone by, then Laurence Stepney must be nearly forty by now.”

“Do you remember him trying to steal a car from the Big Bear Supermarket?”

Frank thought for a while. Then he slowly nodded. “Kind of. Him and some other kid named Thomas Cusack.”

“You tried to stop him, Frank. Can you remember that?”

Frank’s eyes, which always looked as if he were long-sighted, seemed to focus even further away, into the past. He reached out his hand as if he were trying to take hold of somebody’s shoulder.

“Yes — yes, I do remember. I said, ‘You’re not letting me down, Laurence. Only yourself, and your parents.’ ”

“Then what happened?”

Frank lowered his hand and looked up at Sissy in bewilderment. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. What did happen?”

“Laurence Stepney shot you, Frank. He shot you without any warning at point-blank range.”

Frank looked down at his chest, almost as if he expected to see his shirt soaked in blood. “Is that what put me into a coma?”

“No, Frank.” Sissy had to stop for a moment, because she was so choked up. “That’s what killed you.”

Frank sat in complete silence while Sissy explained about the roses, and the ring, and Red Mask, and what the DeVane cards had predicted.

“That’s why we called you back, Frank. It’s the only way I could think of to save scores more people from being murdered. But Trevor and I agreed that if you didn’t want to help us, if you wanted to rest in peace, then we’d honor your wishes and let you go back to sleep.”

Frank lifted his left hand and stared at it. “So what you’re telling me is that I’m dead, and this is a dead man’s hand?”

“The Frank Sawyer I was married to, the actual Frank Sawyer, he’s dead, yes, and his remains are lying in the Morningside Cemetery in New Milford. But you are Frank Sawyer’s likeness. You have Frank Sawyer’s memories, and Frank Sawyer’s character, and hopefully you have Frank Sawyer’s talent for hunting down criminals.”

“I’m a painting?”

“You were recreated as a painting, yes. We don’t know for sure how it happens, but we think that the ring on Molly’s necklace has the power to bring her paintings to life.”

Frank stood up. He touched Sissy’s hair and wound one of her silver curls around his finger. “Wild as ever,” he told her. “Never known a woman whose hair was always so flyaway.”

“I loved you, Frank. I loved you so much. When you were killed, it was like I was killed, too.”

“How can I be a painting?” Frank asked her. He traced her eyebrow with his fingertip, and touched her cheek, and then her lips. “How can a painting walk, and talk, and wind your hair around his finger?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know. But there are so many stories about paintings and drawings that come to life.”

“Crazy,” said Frank, and shook his head. “I always said you were crazy, didn’t I? That’s why I love you so much.”

Sissy said, “Do you think you want to stay and help us, my darling? Or do you want to go back?”

“I was dead. Now I’m alive again. Maybe I’m only a painting, but I still feel like me. So what do you think?”

“Let me wake up Trevor and Molly.”

She turned toward the corridor that led to their bedroom, but she didn’t have to go to rouse them. Trevor and Molly were standing in the doorway, staring at Frank as if they were two children who had surprised Santa putting out their presents.

“Dad,” said Trevor, with a catch in his throat. “Dad, I don’t believe it!”

He came forward. The two of them looked at each other for a moment, long-lost father and grown-up son. Then they embraced each other tightly, as if they never wanted to let go, ever again.

“It is a miracle,” said Trevor. “It really works. It is a miracle.”

Sissy turned to Molly and smiled. Molly was wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her stripy nightshirt. “You did wonderful work tonight, Molly. He’s just like the Frank that I remember.”

Molly was holding her necklace in her hand, and she held it up. “Look,” she said. “I could see it glowing on my dressing table, and I knew that something must be happening.”

The stone in Van Gogh’s ring was shining so brightly that it looked as if it had a red light in it.

Molly said, “It must be like your ring, Sissy — except that your ring goes dark to show that people are telling lies.”

“Yes,” said Sissy. She took the necklace and held it up in front of Frank’s face, so that the ring was reflected in his eyes, like twin red sparks. “It can sense that you’re alive,” she told him. “And — look — the closer it gets to you, the brighter it shines.”

“How about a drink to celebrate?” Trevor suggested.

“Trevor, it’s three o’clock in the morning.”

“So what? I have a bottle of Cuvée Napa in the fridge if anybody fancies some. This is something that’s really worth celebrating, don’t you think?” He hesitated, and then he said, “Dad? You do drink, don’t you? What I mean is, you can drink?”

Frank shrugged. “So far as I know. I feel real enough, don’t I? I expect I can eat, too. You still make that corned-beef hash, Sissy?”

They sat in the living room talking until it began to grow light outside. Even though Sissy knew that “Frank” wasn’t the real Frank whom she had buried, the experience of seeing him again and sitting next to him again made her feel so young and happy that she couldn’t stop herself from smiling.

It was only when she caught sight of the two of them in the mirror that she grew quieter, because he was so much younger than her. Twenty-four years had etched their marks around her eyes and around her mouth, and these days she usually wore a silk scarf or a large enameled necklace to hide her neck.

“So what happens next?” asked Frank. “How do I locate these two Red Mask characters?”

“I think the best place to start is the Giley Building,” said Sissy. “That was where Red Mask first attacked George Woods and Jane Becker. Like I told you, I couldn’t sense him at all, and the police tracker dogs couldn’t pick up any kind of scent. But that was where Molly first drew him, and I think there’s a very strong possibility that he’s hiding out there.”

“And if we find them? What do we do then?”

“Summary justice,” said Sissy. “There’s no point in trying to arrest them and put them in jail. They would simply disappear. When we find them, we have to destroy them. It’s as simple as that.”

Frank finished his glass of sparkling wine. “That was good,” he said. “Never tasted nothing like that before. Who would have thought twenty-four years ago that young Trevor would be educating his own daddy in sophisticated tastes?”

Sissy said, “I’m going to start by seeing if you can sense where the Red Masks are hiding. After all, you’re the same as they are, a painting, and you can follow them into places that nobody else can.”

“I’m not psychic like you, Sissy. I never could understand how you knew there was somebody coming to pay us a visit about an hour before they showed up, or how you could tell when something bad was going to happen.”

“I know, darling. But you always had an intuition for hunting down the bad guys, didn’t you? And I think you’ll find that you have new abilities now.”

Frank turned his head around. “I can hear something,” he said. “I’ve been hearing it ever since I got here.”

He stood up and approached Molly’s painting of New Milford Green, with its Colonial houses and its band-stand and its scattering of leaves on the grass. He lifted his hand toward it, and said, “I can feel the wind, Sissy. I can hear the cars going by, and the people talking.”

He turned back toward her, but as he did so he staggered, and his knees gave way. He seized the back of one of the kitchen chairs, but he collapsed onto the floor, with the chair on top of him.

“Frank!” said Sissy, kneeling down beside him. “Frank, are you okay?”

Frank looked up at her. The pupils of his eyes were very small, as if he had been staring into an intensely bright light.

“I’m okay, I think. Funny turn, that’s all. For one second. I didn’t know where I was.”

Sissy took hold of his hand, lifted it toward her lips, and kissed his wedding band. “Wherever you are, Frank, you’ll always be with me. Always.”

She helped Frank into bed and went into the kitchen for two glasses of water. As she passed Molly’s study, however, she paused, and then she went in, setting the glasses of water down on the table.

There lay the sketchbook in which Molly had painted Frank. The page was blank. She touched it with her fingertips, almost regretfully. It had been such a vivid portrait. But of course she had the “real” Frank now — a Frank she could talk to, and kiss, and share so many memories with.

As she was about to leave, however, she noticed the sheet of paper with the painting of the roses on it. She picked it up and examined it, frowning. The rose petals were tinged with brown, and the leaves had turned dry and curly. Not only that, the painting was very much fainter. Now that Molly had cut them, they were dying, and because they were dying, their image was fading. Molly’s paintings took on a life of their own, but it seemed to Sissy that even on paper they could wither and die, and disappear.

She went back to her bedroom. Frank was asleep, and steadily breathing.

She leaned over and kissed his hair. “Please don’t disappear,” she whispered. “I don’t think I could bear it, not a second time.”