Death Mask

CHAPTER FOUR The Garden of the Inexplicable

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?”

“If I wasn’t on duty, Crayola, I could do righteous justice to an ice-cold Hud. But I’m good, thanks. I came to ask you if you could come over to the University Hospital and do your forensic artist stuff.”

Molly looked across at Sissy, and the expression on her face said, My God, your sculptor card predicted this only hours ago. But she turned back to Detective Kunzel and said, “Thought you were all computerized these days.”

“Well, pretty much. But Lieutenant Booker thought you were the right person for this particular job, on account of your interview technique. We have a young woman in the trauma center who was attacked in the Giley Building round about lunchtime today. Some knife-wielding crazy trapped her in an elevator and stabbed her three times in the back. She survived, but there was another guy in the elevator with her who wasn’t so lucky.

“She’s very shocked, very distressed, but the elevators in the Giley Building don’t have CCTV, and obviously we need a composite of the perpetrator as quick as we can get it. That’s why Lieutenant Booker wanted somebody with real sensitivity when it comes to asking questions, and there isn’t nobody with more real sensitivity than you.”

“Nice of you to say so. I’d be glad to do it. Do you want me to go over there right now?”

“Give you a ride, if you like. I can give you all the grisly details on the way.”

Sissy said, “Did anybody else see the killer?”

“No, ma’am. The young woman who was stabbed was the only eyewitness. We searched that building top to bottom, all twenty-three floors, and we’re still not sure how the perpetrator managed to escape. But over seven hundred seventy-five people still work there, and so it couldn’t have been too difficult for him to mingle with the crowds.”

“Or her,” Sissy corrected him.

“Well, sure. But this is not the type of attack that I would normally associate with a female perpetrator.”

“Not unless the young woman and the dead man were having an affair, and she was a jealous wife.”

“You sure have some imagination, ma’am,” said Detective Kunzel. “But right now I think we’d better stick to the empirical facts.”

“Sometimes the facts can be very deceptive,” Sissy countered him. “It’s insight, that’s what you need.”

“My motherin-law tells fortunes,” Molly explained. “She’s very good. She can practically tell you what you’re going to choose for dessert tomorrow.”

Detective Kunzel tried to look impressed. “Wow. We could use a talent like that. Maybe I can call on you, ma’am, if this cases reaches any kind of an impasse. Or if I need to find out a surefire winner for the Kentucky Derby.”

“You’re being sarcastic, Detective. But don’t worry, I’m used to it. My late husband was a detective in the Connecticut State Police, and he was a skeptic, too, when it came to fortune-telling. But I would be more than happy to help if you want me to. So long as you say please.”

“Please?”

Sissy was quite aware that “Please?” was the distinctively Cincinnati way of saying “Pardon?” or “Excuse me?” but she pretended that she didn’t.

“There,” she said. “You’ve managed to choke it out already.”

At that moment, Trevor came out into the yard holding Victoria by the hand. Sissy’s first and only granddaughter was nine years old now, very skinny, with huge brown eyes like her mother and long, dark hair that was braided into plaits. She wore a pink sleeveless top, and white shorts, and sparkly pink sneakers.

Trevor was so much like his late father, with a wave of black hair and clear blue eyes, although his face was rounder and not so sharply chiseled as Frank’s had been, and he hadn’t inherited Frank’s quick and infectious grin. He had shown no inclination to join the police force like his father, either. He was much more introspective and cautious, and he believed in calculating risks, rather than taking them. He was wearing a blue checkered Timberland shirt and sharply pressed khakis.

“Hey, Mike!” he said. “What are you doing here, feller?”

Detective Kunzel clapped him on the shoulder. “Hi, Trevor. Sorry about this, but we’ve come to borrow your talented young wife for an hour or two.”

“What is it? Missing person?”

“Homicide. We had a stabbing this afternoon, down at the Giley Building. One dead, one serious.”

“I heard about it while I was going to bring Victoria home from her party. Jeez.”

Sissy said, “Why don’t I take Victoria inside and give her a drink? How was your dance class, Victoria?”

“I was terrible. I kept do-si-do-ing round the wrong way.”

Sissy took her hand and led her into the kitchen. “I used to dance like that, too. Always do-si-do-ing round the wrong way. In fact I think I’ve spent my whole life do-si-do-ing round the wrong way.”

Victoria sat down at the large pine table, and Sissy poured her a glass of strawberry milk. “You want cookies?”

“I’m not really allowed, not before supper.”

“Well, your mom has to do some work for the police this evening, so I think what I’ll do is, I’ll take us all out for supper, and when you go out for supper you’re allowed cookies to keep your strength up while you’re waiting for your order to arrive. How would you like to go to the Blue Ash Chili and have one of those great big chicken sandwiches with all the cheese on it?”

Victoria’s eyes widened. “Can we really?”

“Sure we can. It’s about time we ate something unhealthy around here.”

Sissy was about to go to her room to fetch her wrap when Victoria said, “Grandma — you just dropped one of your cards.”

She looked down. One of the DeVane cards had slipped out of the pack — but somehow it had fallen edgewise, and it was standing upright in the crack between two of the wide pine planks that made up the tabletop.

“Well, that’s pretty neat, isn’t it? I’ll bet I couldn’t do that again, not in a million years!”

She hesitated for a moment, but then she plucked the card out of the crack and peered at it through her spectacles.

Une Jeune fille tombante, a Young Girl, Falling. It showed a girl in a yellow dress falling down a well. Her arms were upraised as if somebody had just released their hold on her, and her expression was one of absolute terror. Up above her, a man in a strange lopsided beret was grinning down at her as she fell and throwing roses after her, as if her falling were some kind of dramatic performance.

Below her, half submerged in the darkest depths of the well, a black creature was looking up at her expectantly, its teeth bared and its claws ready to snatch at her dress.

Sissy frowned at the card for a while, and then she tucked it firmly back into the middle of the deck. You’re just a card. Don’t try to get smart with me.

“Grandma?” asked Victoria.

“What is it, sweetheart?”

“What’s the matter, Grandma? That wasn’t a horrible card, was it?”

“No, of course not. It was a very nice card, as a matter of fact. It was a little girl, jumping into some water. Hey — maybe it means that Mommy and Daddy will take you on vacation.”

But Sissy suspected that the card was yet another warning, especially since it had been brought to her attention in such an extraordinary way. How could a card fall edgewise like that and stick in the table? It was a warning that something bloody and violent was very close at hand, and that it was going to arrive amongst them sooner rather than later. The girl, falling down the well. The black creature, waiting to tear her to pieces.

“Daddy promised he would to take us to Disney World,” said Victoria, with a mouthful of Toll House cookie.

“That would be wonderful, wouldn’t it?” smiled Sissy. She rested her hand on top of Victoria’s head. Une Jeune fille tombante.

The world at the bottom of the well was another world altogether, in which creatures could breathe, but humans would drown. The cards were telling her that whatever was coming, it was coming from someplace different and strange — a place of reflections, and shadows, where everything was back to front, and voices argued very late at night, in empty rooms.

Molly came in from the yard, followed by Trevor and Detectives Kunzel and Bellman.

“I’ll see you later, Sissy,” she said. She picked up a green crochet shrug from the back of one of the kitchen chairs and pulled it on. “I don’t know how long I’m going to be — maybe two to three hours, depending. You’ll take care of these two for me, won’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” Sissy assured her. “I’ll take care of them good. I’ll feed them and I’ll read them a story and I’ll make sure that they wash their teeth before I tuck them into bed.”

“Ha!” laughed Detective Kunzel.

“Momma,” Trevor protested. “For Christ’s sake, already.”