The Artist Colony

by Joanna FitzPatrick

  “I’m sorry I’m such a mess. I was painting.”

  Rosie was pleased. “That’s good to hear. I can see that by the color in your cheeks.”

  “Sirena said you wanted me to meet someone,” said Sarah, rubbing off some of the blue and red pigments that had stained her hands violet.

  Rosie removed her spectacles and rubbed her nose. “Abigail Cutcliffe is coming for tea. The Cutcliffes are my dear neighbors. They don’t enjoy our summer fog like I do and their dog Buster is frightened by the annual fireworks, so every year, like clockwork, on the Fourth of July before the fireworks start they go to their cabin in the Sierras. They just got back yesterday.”

  “And . . .” said Sarah.

  “Patience, my dear,” said Rosie. “The Cutcliffes have been isolated in their cabin and they only just heard the terrible news about Ada from me. Can you imagine wanting to live that remotely?”

  Before Sarah could ask what any of this had to with her, there was a tap at the front door and Albert went to see who it was. The guest paused briefly in the entryway to say hello to Albert who instead of barking led the guest into the parlor.

  Miss Cutcliffe was an elderly, athletic woman with a boyish haircut and a tan, weathered face. She was dressed in overalls and a red flannel lumberjack shirt as if she had just come in from cutting wood.

  Her hand was out to meet Sarah’s before her swift feet had crossed the parlor rug. “Sorry I’m late,” she said, and introduced herself.

  Sarah stood up and shook the firm, callused hand. Abigail sat on the edge of a chair facing Sarah and Albert jumped into her lap.

  “He smells our dog Buster, a close friend of his.” She patted Albert’s head. “You must be miserable without your Ada.”

  She looked up at Sarah. “I’m so sorry. You’re way too young to be faced with the loss of your sister.”

  A respectful silence followed while Rosie poured the tea.

  “Abigail, please tell Sarah what you told me,” said Rosie.

  “Ada and I would often chat when we saw each other in front of our neighboring cottages, but on the evening of the fourth, she was in a terrible hurry. She was about to take off on her bicycle. Albert seated up in the front basket as usual.

  “Something changed her mind and she came over to me and said she’d been running late all day and was in a terrible rush. She looked up and down the street as if expecting someone and then unstrapped her sketch box from the back of her bike and said, ‘Will you keep this for me?’”

  Abigail stopped to take a sip of tea. “The poor dear looked so worried I would’ve done anything for her at that moment. I told her we were leaving on our holiday but I would put the box in the coat closet and leave a key for her under the doormat. She thanked me, jumped on her bike, and pedaled off.”

  Abigail shook her head. “To think that was the last time I saw my dear friend—her flaming red hair blowing in the wind and Albert in the basket, his nose up in the air, as proud as he could be.”

  “And the sketch box?” asked Sarah anxiously.

  Abigail, seemingly embarrassed, looked over at Rosie. “I’d forgotten all about it until this morning when I went to the closet to put away our suitcases. It was right where I’d left it on the fourth. I was walking over to her cottage to return it when I saw Rosie in her garden and heard the sad news.”

  Sarah was on her feet. “Where is it now?”

  “In the entryway.”

  Sarah recognized the box immediately by the ABD engraved plaque. Albert was sniffing around the box and growled at Sarah when she reached for it. “It’s all right, Albert,” she said, picking him up and carrying the box into the parlor.

  Abigail stood up, her mission accomplished. “I must be off.”

  Sarah put Albert down, placed the sketch box on the coffee table, and dropped down on the couch in front of it. She held her breath in anticipation and felt for the dent. Both women jumped when the secret drawer sprang open. Albert barked.

  “Jiminy Cricket!” exclaimed Rosie. “How did you possibly know to do that!”

  Sarah quickly explained that she had the sketch box especially made for Ada and had the secret drawer added. In the drawer was a folded sheet of Ada’s pale blue stationary and a sealed white envelope.

  Her hand shaking, she unfolded the delicate paper and read out loud:

  July 4, 1924

  Dearest Little Sis,

  My life has taken such a bizarre turn since I last saw you in New York, but I couldn’t be happier than I am at this moment. I just found out that I’m going to have a baby and I’m going to get married. Yes, me! Your big sister. You know how independent I am, but the father of my child is someone I really love, so I’m leaving tomorrow morning to join him in Los Angeles. He loves me, Sarah, and not because I’m famous but because of me. Imagine that. Isn’t it glorious? You two will get along famously.

  We thought of getting married right away in Carmel, but when I got your letter confirming you would come to New York in October for my exhibition . . . we decided to wait so you could be the maid of honor. Don’t worry, I won’t wear white and it’ll be a loose-fitting gown so I won’t embarrass you.

  Oh, Little Sis, I’m so excited about your one-woman show in Paris. You so deserve it after all your hard work. Isn’t life wonderful. So full of fabulous surprises!

  Ada must’ve been interrupted, because the next paragraph was written so fast that it was almost illegible and the tone was no longer one of joy and hope.

  I’ve just received an unexpected message from someone who could destroy my happiness. I don’t want to meet him tonight at Whalers Cove but I have no choice. If I’m successful, I’ll be released from a promise I foolishly made. If I fail my past indiscretions might end up being the cause of my ruin.

  I’m putting my will in this secret drawer where you’ll know to find it. The safe deposit box wasn’t safe.

  If you’re reading this now, my darling Little Sis, be brave, be careful, and trust no one.

  Your loving sister, Ada Belle

  Sarah felt her body crash against a wall of sorrow and regret. This was the mess Ada had written about in her telegram, the telegram that she had heartlessly ignored. The one saving grace was that she now knew for sure that Ada had received her last letter.

  Just then the two sisters, Hallie and Jeanette, came into the entryway giggling. Rosie went out and asked them to hush. After they retreated up the stairs to their rooms, she returned to the parlor and did her best to console Sarah.

  Sarah asked Rosie to open the envelope. Folded inside was another blue sheet in Ada’s handwriting. Sarah, still reeling from her sister’s letter, asked Rosie to read it.

  I name my sister, Sarah Cunningham-Davenport, to be the Executor and sole Beneficiary of my Estate. An inventory of my work, including all unsold artwork in Paul deVrais’s possession, is attached. It is my wish that Paul deVrais desist from selling or representing my work as stated in my contract termination letter to him, dated July 1, 1924, and that he transfer all listed artwork to my Executor.

  As to my other assets, bonds, shares and any depository bank balance, it is my wish that all these assets, including the Sketch Box cottage and all that it contains, be transferred over to the Executor of my Estate.

  My last request is that my dear sister take responsibility for the care of my loyal, loving canine companion, Albert Davenport.

  It was signed Ada Belle Davenport and dated July 1, 1924. Two witnesses had signed underneath:

  Henry Champlin

  Sirena Silver

  Night had fallen when Sarah woke up on Rosie’s parlor couch with Albert cuddling at her side, the parlor dimly lit by one lamp. Woozy and unsteady, she picked up Ada’s sketch box and stepped out into the dark with Albert leading the way.

  WEDNESDAY, JULY 30

  —17—

  Sarah screaming in frustration sent Albert under the kitchen table. She was seated at Ada’s kitchen nook having just read through Ada’s list of pa
intings and was feeling the magnitude of her sister’s legacy that she was now responsible for.

  But it was the sixteen missing portraits listed separately under “Crocker Exhibition” and marked for shipment to New York that made her scream. Who or what prevented Ada from sending them? And where were they?

  She frowned at Sirena’s signature on the bottom page of the will before placing the documents back in Ada’s sketch box drawer and hiding the box in Ada’s closet. She told Albert she needed to talk to Sirena and would be back soon.

  Elizabeth answered the door and told her that Sirena had gone to Salinas to visit a sick friend for several days and wouldn’t be back until Friday. Sarah was disappointed but took the opportunity to ask Elizabeth about her testimony at the inquest.

  “Oh yes, I’m definitely sure that I saw Ada take off on her bicycle at eight o’clock on the evening of the fourth.”

  “How did you remember the exact time?” asked Sarah.

  “I was worried that I’d get my watch wet while I was watering Rosie’s garden and I had just looked at the time before taking it off. That’s when Ada passed by on her red bicycle with Albert in the front basket.”

  Sarah returned to the cottage feeling a bit less frustrated having confirmed the hour Ada was last seen alive.

  With a working phone, she had no further excuse not to place a call to Eric Crocker. It was a relief when his secretary answered and said he was out of the office. Sarah gave her phone number, Carmel 4155, and asked him to call. Her next call was to Mr. Peabody’s secretary, Miss Honeysuckle. Sarah made arrangements to drop off the will tomorrow morning.

  Sarah felt there was nothing more she could do, and seeing it was a damp, dreary morning, she made a fire using some logs and kindling she found on the side of the cottage.

  Soothed by the warmth of the crackling wood, she curled up on the living room couch. A burning log falling off the grate interrupted her reading of Jefferson’s Tamar. She picked up a poker and crouched down to push the log farther back into the fireplace when something red glimmered in the far corner.

  With the help of the fireplace trowel and iron tongs, she pulled out the ruby from Ada’s Book of Quotables still glued to the last scrap of her burned leather journal. Sarah was so excited to find it she almost burned her hand grasping it.

  In her mind, there was no doubt now that someone had burned Ada’s journal after tearing out her excerpt from Katherine’s letter to John Murry. She was certain that whoever Ada went to meet at Whalers Cover that night had sat where she sat now and burned Ada’s journal to cover his tracks. Tracks that she would now follow.

  She put the iron screen back in front of the fireplace, went into the kitchen, and hurriedly packed a lunch for herself and dog biscuits for Albert. Into her knapsack she added his orange rubber ball, her drawing pad, and the framed photograph of Ada and herself that she’d found on Ada’s dresser.

  She and Albert set off walking south on Camino Real, climbed down the staircase to the wide, sandy shore of River Beach, and continued southward. The sun had broken through the fog and painted the sky in cobalt blue.

  At the far end of the beach, she put her shoes back on, climbed up the granite boulders, and stepped over and around shallow tide pools drained by the morning tide. They took a trail winding along the coast, with Albert running ahead to chase rabbits and squirrels.

  Half an hour later they reached an attractive white, shingled, two-story house surrounded by several smaller cottages situated on a promontory jutting out into the Pacific. Across the wide cove below her, she could see a huge warehouse next to a dock. PT. LOBOS CANNING COMPANY was painted in red above the entrance.

  On the promontory, many Japanese women were wearing black rubber aprons to protect their clothes as they laid the shucked mollusks out on wooden racks to sun-dry. Albert showed no interest in the pungent abalone and kept his sensitive nose to the ground, sniffing more important trails that only he could detect.

  As Sarah drew nearer, the women made side-glances at her, and between shy giggles, spoke to one another in their own language. Sarah nodded her head in deference and followed Albert down a path to the cove where men and women carrying heavy wooden crates scuttled back and forth between the Point Lobos Cannery and the dock where boats were waiting to be filled.

  Up from the beach was a weathered board-and-batten cabin where several men sat eating at a rustic picnic table. A man greeted Albert in Japanese and patted his head. When Albert spun around on his hind legs some of the men laughed and rewarded him with scraps from their lunches. Albert didn’t have a language problem to get what he wanted, but Sarah wondered how she could ask them if they knew Ada when she didn’t speak any Japanese?

  Unsure what to do next, she sat down on a flat rock on the beach. A spot where she felt least conspicuous, if that was possible, but near enough to the tideline where the sea air pushed back the fishy odor of the drying abalone.

  Children came down on the beach to play. They called to Albert, tossed his ball in the air, and rewarded him with a pat on the head each time he fetched it. If Albert was so well known here, Sarah thought hopefully, then so was Ada.

  Though Albert and the children played without a care, Sarah felt like an unwanted gatecrasher. She knew suspicious eyes were watching her, but when she turned around to look, the villagers turned back to their work.

  After she ate her sandwich, she took out her drawing pad and started making sketches of the fishing boats bumping against one another in the crowded harbor. She then shifted her gaze to a three-masted schooner anchored farther out in deeper water. An interesting subject but difficult to draw as it bobbed up and down in the rolling swells.

  The horizontal glare of the sun’s slow descent started to sting her eyes. The workers at the cannery began to finish up their work packing boxes of abalone. Several were climbing up the hill toward their village. The children were no longer playing on the beach.

  It’s now or never, she decided, and packed up her knapsack.

  In front of the old cabin, she approached a few older men and some boys standing under the canopy of a weather-beaten old cedar. White skullcaps on their heads. White baggy shorts. White cloth wrapped around their feet. Even white goggles around their necks. Rosie had said the traditional abalone divers wear white to ward off the sharks and to bring good fortune.

  She saw fishnets hanging from their waists and stone weights like the ones found in Ada’s pockets tied to their belts. The tools of abalone divers. Her heart sped up.

  One of the boys smiled at her, and feeling encouraged, she introduced herself. He said his name was Tajuro and, yes, he lived here at Whalers Cove.

  “Here?” she asked pointing at the old cabin behind them.

  He laughed. “That’s where we keep our diving equipment. I live up there.” He pointed upward to the village and asked if she was lost.

  “Not exactly,” she said, impressed by his perfect English.

  She brought out the photograph and showed it to him, trying not to appear anxious. “Did you ever see this lady on the beach?”

  “Nice lady,” said Tajuro. “I still have the sketch she drew of me and Albert playing catch on the beach.

  “She used to meet—” Before the boy could continue, one of the men standing nearby, who had been glancing sideways at the photograph, put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and spoke to him in Japanese.

  Tajuro said goodbye and began walking toward the shoreline where several divers had already boarded their skiffs.

  Sarah realized Albert was no longer chasing birds on the beach. “Did you see where Albert went?” she called out to Tajuro.

  “He ran off behind the cabin around ten minutes ago. He was chasing a squirrel.”

  Sarah hurried down the trail behind the cabin. After crossing through a grass meadow blanketed with orange and purple wildflowers, she reached a narrow country road and thought she recognized Albert’s insistent bark somewhere in the dense pine forest on the other side. She
held back, afraid to enter the deep, shadowy maze. When his barking became more frantic she forgot her fear and sprinted into the darkness.

  She found Albert standing in a dwindling patch of late afternoon sunlight. He was panting heavily and his pink tongue was hanging from his mouth. His eyes were wild. She was about to scold him when he took off again farther into the woods. When she finally caught up to him, his white tail was pointing straight up to the sky and with one foot bent, his nose pointed at his prey—a red Schwinn bicycle on the ground, half buried under brown pine needles.

  Albert sniffed its rear-rack panniers, one of which held a canvas knapsack. Sarah pulled out the mildewed sack and sat down on the soft ground beneath the tree, gripping the sack in her hands. Hands that shook as she fumbled with the leather straps. Inside there was a drawing pad, its front cover damp and warped from being outdoors. She recognized the quick shorthand pencil lines and detailed images. Studies that Ada might have painted later in her studio, if there had been a later.

  Albert jumped up and put his paws on her shoulders. She patted his head, consolingly. “You were with Ada when she came here on her bike, weren’t you, Albert? No one saw her that night at River Beach because she wasn’t there. At least, not alive. She came to meet someone here at Whalers Cove.” He yapped twice, hopped off her lap. “Oh Albert, you are the smartest hunting dog in the world!”

  She stood up and brushed pine needles off herself and her canine companion. After placing both hers and Ada’s knapsacks in the two rear panniers, she walked the bike out of the forest.

  She felt an urgency to get back to the cottage. The straight dirt road looked like a faster route back to Carmel with the bicycle. With Albert in the front basket, she raised her right leg over the center bar and put her feet on the pedals. Remembering the determination on the faces of the bicyclists in the Tour de France as they raced toward the Parc des Princes in Paris, she imagined herself on a similar course and took off under the growing shadows.