Being The Steel Drummer Part 21

"If it doesn't get in the way of your plans."

"I believe I can work around it," she said in a low voice.

Inside the bag was a small rubber mold for the kind of clay that always stays soft until you fire it in a kitchen oven. There was also a set of wooden clay tools.

Kathryn said, "Can you use that clay I gave you before in this?"

"Yes!" I went to a drawer in the kitchen and pulled out the set of small blocks of clay. I took the porcelain-colored one back to the table and began to knead it to make it soft.

Kathryn watched me, her eyes bright, her breathing deep. I pressed the ball of clay into the flexible mold and then popped the face out. It was detailed but not an expression I would choose. So I tore open the clay tools and began to reform the face.

After a few moments I looked up at her thinking at first that it would be fun to make this face look like Kathryn. Then I realized I'd been absorbed in this task for several minutes.

I said, "I'm sorry. I'm not paying attention to you. But you know what art supplies do to me!"

"Yes, they make you excited. I was counting on that."

"It's a science experiment?"

"In a way. But also the little mold reminded me of those decorated faces that Victoria made. I like to watch you. May we talk while you work?"

"Yes, always, but I think I'd like to work on something else now." I'd noticed Kathryn's s.h.i.+rt was open an extra b.u.t.ton and it was giving me a different kind of artistic impulse that I didn't want to waste.

"Which do you think is more life affirming? Making love or falling asleep in each other's arms?" I asked.

"Does this have to be an either or decision?"

"No, it doesn't. You can also select all of the above."

The doorbell rang.

"Rats," said Kathryn. "Maybe whoever it is will just go away."

The bell rang again, continuously for the next twenty seconds. I knew who it was. "Betcha a backrub it's Lois Henshaw," I sighed.

"Lois is your client. If it is she, you must talk to her." Kathryn looked at her watch. "My dear, getting up before 5 a.m. has taken its toll on me. I'm going to have to go to bed. But I don't have any obligations tomorrow, so I'm available for a breakfast date."

"Will you be available for a pre-breakfast date?"

"Mmmmm, yes, even better."

"It's Samson. He hasn't come home for almost two days," said Lois.

I had let Lois Henshaw into the building and taken her to my office, because I was afraid if I took her up to the loft, I'd never get her out of it. She was wearing a goofy hat. It was actually in the shape of Goofy the Dog's head. She lifted it off by the ear-flap ears and plopped it on my desk. It stared at us as we talked.

"Lois, isn't the big problem between you and Samson that you never know where he is?"

"No, no, no, au contraire. Like I told you before Maggie, I always know where he is. See, he has one of those GPS things on his phone."

"You mean you put one of those GPS things on his phone... Does he know?"

"About the GPS? Well not exactly. See, I'm of the what you don't know won't hurt you school of thought."

"Uh, no, if you were really of that school, you wouldn't have hired me."

Lois's brows knit together in profound concentration. Finally she said, "I love him, Maggie. I've never loved anyone else. He's my everything."

"OK, so...."

"So, the GPS says he's in the cemetery and he hasn't moved. I even went to look for him, but he's not there. He disappeared and I'm very worried about him. I think something has happened to him."

"Maybe he went for a walk in there and lost it or something."

"Maggie, you said you'd find out about him. Right now I'd settle for you just finding him. I have a bad feeling about this. It's killing me."

It was nearly midnight, and my patience had worn thin, no thanks to unquenched randiness and lack of sleep. I wanted to yell at Lois that maybe Samson was tired of a relations.h.i.+p that included twenty-four hour satellite tracking. But one look at her face showed me that would have crushed her. Clearly she really did love him, and sometimes love makes people do desperate things. Right now, Lois Henshaw looked as desperate as a teenaged tech addict in a power failure.

"Lois, I did talk to Samson and he said he would clear this up in a few more days. He asked me not to tell you any more than that. But I'm working for you, so I'll tell you if you want."

"Yes, tell. No, don't. Yes... wait do, no... No don't tell me, no, I'd rather hear it from him... But... he's never been gone this long."

"Maybe he went away for a few days to figure things out." This might really be true, but I also wondered if Samson had just taken the chicken's way out and left town or if maybe he'd finally found Suzanne Carbondale and his dreams had actually come true. Either way, he was really being a weasel about Lois.

I added softly, "Look, I'll check around for him in the morning. Don't worry. Go home now and I'll call you tomorrow."

Lois left reluctantly and I went back to Kathryn in the loft.

Kathryn was nearly asleep when I came in. But she turned over and said drowsily, "What did she want? I guess you can tell me now that I'm your intern. I think I'm going to add this to my resume," she yawned.

I said, as I changed into a long t-s.h.i.+rt, "Samson didn't come home and the creepy little stalking program that Lois put on his phone says he's in Skeleton Park and hasn't moved for forty hours. She looked for him but there was no sign of him."

"He must have lost his phone."

"That's what I told her."

I got in bed and stared up at the ceiling, trying to work out something elusive. I said, "Lois said Samson disappeared in the cemetery, but really it's his phone, right? But I wonder why?"

"Why what?" whispered Kathryn.

"Why do so many people seem to be disappearing? I can't figure it out. I'm sorry Kathryn. I'm supposed to be paying attention to you."

She opened her arms and I settled into them. She whispered in my ear, "Before-breakfast-date." And then we fell asleep.

Chapter 15.

On Thursday morning at 5 a.m. I woke with a start, already struggling to figure things out. When I'd spoken to Samson Henshaw last, it had been late at night and he was on Hazel Street. Obviously he had his phone then. Where was he now? If he actually met up with Suzanne Carbondale and finally ran away with her, why would he have gone into the cemetery?

I went up the spiral stairs to my studio and found a large block of white oven-bake clay and a box of seash.e.l.ls and brought them back to the dining room table.

I took out the little rubber face mold and formed six two-inch-tall faces. I went and got the bigger molded faces Victoria had made, unwrapped them, and lined them up on the big table. The sh.e.l.ls Victoria had used with them didn't just decorate them; they acted as part of the form like hats and earrings and scarves.

I pressed some sh.e.l.ls into the soft clay of the little faces I'd just made and then realized I wanted to change the nose, because it looked too cartoonish. I used the clay tools to do this. I molded some more faces and altered the features on each one, adding different sh.e.l.ls, changing each face accordingly.

Victoria's molded faces watched me. I was struck by their similarity and the differences of each one as well. Obviously Victoria had also used one mold and then altered the features to make each face look different, just as I was doing.

"So, Victoria, I wonder how many variations you made of your angel," I said softly. "Whether she fell for you or not, when she disappeared from your life, it must have stung you for the rest of your days."

I thought about Frankie's murder. How the heck did Frankie's shooter get out of Skeleton Park without anyone seeing? I tore a large piece of drawing paper out of a pad I had next to the couch and laid it evenly on the large dining room table. Then I stared at it for a long time, visualizing the civil war cemetery from several angles. I drew the view I'd had from the top of the vault: The Lost Bride, the crypt behind her, the headstones, bushes, and trees. I drew the entrance gate, the ground, the shadows. It took an hour. I kept a very open mind as I did it. I was trying to remember everything.

I got up and walked away from it. I went to the kitchen and got a gla.s.s of orange juice; then I went back to the drawing and looked at it with fresh eyes. This is the way I work. It helps me see things from different points of view.

I thought about the other statues of Evangeline and sketched them into my drawing, and a bold symbol emerged. I stared at it and then into s.p.a.ce. What about the parts I couldn't see?

I got my laptop and brought it back to the drawing. I booted up an aerial map program, the kind that shows satellite photos of most of the United States. I zoomed in to Fenchester, and then in to the two square blocks of the Civil War Cemetery north of Was.h.i.+ngton Mews. I magnified the image until I could clearly see a white dot that was the top of The Lost Bride's head with the crypt beyond it. Zooming out one click, I could see the other five Evangeline statues, like a connect-the-dots picture-The Lost Bride to the east, the three others forming a perfect line to her, and the other two to the right and left. I rose and got a piece of tracing paper. I held it over the laptop screen and connected the dots of the five sculptures. They made a perfect arrow with The Lost Bride at its point. An aerial treasure map pointing to something else that I couldn't have seen from the ground. In a tight circle of yews behind The Lost Bride was another white dot, and a white square beyond that, big enough to be a small crypt. The arrow was pointing to it.

Now I knew why when both I and Nora were facing each other, we had both seen Red run behind a group of yews. He hadn't run behind them, he'd run into them, and hidden in the crypt in their center.

The Lost Bride beckoned me now. I stowed a strong flashlight in my small backpack, got my Beretta from the gun safe and tucked it into my shoulder harness, slipped on my warmest jacket, and went out into the pre-dawn February morning. I figured I'd just have a look around and be back long before Kathryn woke up.

Farrel, who not only shops but occasionally sets up at early morning antique markets, always says that dawn or even a few minutes after it is the coldest part of the day. But I couldn't imagine how it could get any colder. My breath didn't just condense; it made frozen clouds that seemed to fall from the air and crack on the sidewalk.

The Mews was deserted. A frigid city wind whipped down the alleys, making small cyclones of frost-covered leaves in corners and doorways.

The wrought iron fence around the cemetery loomed. I followed it to the gate. It's funny how things look so different in the dark. The blackness of this s.p.a.ce felt heavy but I didn't mind; it felt safer to me. I held my eyes shut tight for a count of sixty, to adjust.

I stood still and let all my senses send me signals. I thought about the sounds I was hearing, the shadows I could see, the smells, the feeling of the wind against my cheek. I opened my mouth and tasted the cold air. OK, gra.s.shopper, roll.

Instead of taking the gravel road through the center, I went right and skirted the fence for a while. No one could have seen me. I was in the shadows whenever the moon peeked out. I made my way along the south side until I came to the corner; then I followed the east fence north until I was about three quarters of the way through the field of stones. I stopped and looked around, breathing softly as I patiently waited for the moon to come out again and show me the way. It did, and by now my eyes were so used to the dark I could see everything. I'll have to thank Jessie for all those carrots she froze for me from her victory garden.

I skipped using my flashlight. It would dim my night vision. I scanned about for any sign of Samson Henshaw, or his phone for that matter. I took out my own phone and called him. I could hear it ringing through my phone but not anywhere nearby. It was so quiet in the boneyard I could have heard it, even if it was only on vibrate.

I moved along the outer wall until I got a glimpse of The Lost Bride. There was no direct path to the statue from where I stood, but that didn't bother me. It was better to stay off the paths right now.

I moved carefully, staying low, weaving my own way through the stones, keeping undercover whenever I could. Finally I drew behind Evangeline's main statue. Tension had crept into my shoulders and neck the way it had that time in college when I realized I'd studied the wrong section of the text book in the middle of a major exam. Then, like now, I was flying by the seat of my pants. But why was I so edgy? There didn't seem to be anyone around; it was quiet. On the other hand, I was in a pitch-black graveyard where a guy had been shot just a few days before and the killer had magically disappeared. OK, yeah, I guess there was a reason to be nervous.

Butch up, I told myself.

A sliver of moon shone through the clouds again and cast a dim eerie light on Evangeline floating above the ground, waving me to her. She seemed more animated in the blue-gray moonlight. It was remarkable. I wished Kathryn was here to see her. Farrel once told me that soon after she met Jessie she stopped being able to fully enjoy things without her. "Now, I want to share everything with her," Farrel had said.

At the time it seemed a little too codependent to be completely legit, but I understood it now. Funny how you never question someone's motives when you share them.

I moved east toward the dark shadows that were the yew circle I'd seen in the satellite photo. The yew trees were p.r.i.c.kly and nearly thirty feet high.

I walked around the sweeping branches to the right. They were like the ones in our yard when I was a child. Fan-like branches brushed the ground. As a kid I'd found the perfect hideouts underneath them. When I needed to get away, no one had ever found me. Finally I'd shown the secret s.p.a.ce to Sara and we'd used it as an exclusive hideout and clubhouse for years.

Suddenly I knew there was someone nearby. Before I even heard the other person's footsteps, I noticed a scent. I stood stock still as the other neared, stepping quietly but certainly not noiselessly. I'd be all the more visible if I tried to duck away. So I just waited. The element of surprise was on my side.

The footsteps neared. I stepped swiftly out and circled the person's body with one arm as I clamped my hand over her mouth. She tensed and took a breath to scream but I stopped her by saying, "It's me. It's me, Don't scream. It's all right."

It was Kathryn.

"Oh, you scared me," she said.

"Shhhhh. What the heck are you doing here?" I whispered.

"I wanted to call you but your phone is off. I didn't know how to project the Batwoman symbol on the clouds so I just came out to look for you," she said in a strained voice. "Maggie, I'm surprised you didn't pummel me," she whispered.

"I knew it was you," I said simply.

"How could you know?"

"Your perfume. I a.s.sociate that lovely smell with the nape of your neck," I whispered back still holding her in my arms but facing her now.

"I'm not the only one who wears Chanel, Maggie. You could have had your arms around some other woman."

"Who else would be wearing Chanel in this graveyard just before dawn?" I asked. "How did you know I was here?"

"I went to look for you and found your laptop open on the table. I just looked at the browser history and saw the satellite photo. I could see the arrow, so I took a chance that you were out here. I'm honing my detective skills. Remember the Tommy and Tuppence plan?"

"You checked my laptop history? Geez. Good thing I erased the Lesbian p.o.r.n sites."

"I can't believe you came out here without telling me. It could be dangerous."

"I have a flashlight."

"Oh, well, if you have a flashlight."

"I have a gun, too. But I'd rather not have to use it so let's keep our voices down. I might point out that you coming out here completely on your own could have been quite a bit more dangerous than my being here."

"Have you found anything? Do you really think there's someone else lurking around?" said Kathryn, ignoring my concern.

"I'm still looking for an entrance to this yew ring and so no, I haven't found anything, and I don't know if there's anyone else around. Shall we go home?"

"I didn't come out here to take you away from your work. I'm here to be Harriet Vane." She whispered that in my ear too.

"Are you sure? It's very cold."

"I bet the opening is back there," she said pointing in the direction I'd come. We circled back beyond where I'd started and Kathryn stopped at a s.p.a.ce where the branches wove less tightly together.