Palatino for the Painter

by Jessa Archer

  She was right in my face, screaming. I leaned away from the onslaught, actually worried for a moment that I was going to have to physically defend myself against a woman in her seventies.

  But the wind seemed to be fading from her sails rather quickly. “You need to leave,” she said in a much lower voice. “Get out of here. Please. Just go.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Sheriff Blevins thought it would be better if I told you.”

  Sally laughed bitterly. “What on earth gave him that fool-headed idea?”

  As I turned to go, I saw a man on the stairs. At first, I thought it was Mr. Blackburn, because the guy looked too old to be only forty-eight. But judging from what Wren and Blevins had said, Bud Blackburn had been living pretty hard for the past few decades. And even as bloodshot as they were now, his eyes were unmistakable. They wore the same sad expression they had the night his mother had sent me upstairs to inspect Tanya’s totally empty closet.

  “Hey, Ruth,” he said with a shy smile. “I heard you were back in town.” He moved across the small foyer quickly and hugged me. Awkwardly, I returned the gesture, trying hard not to wrinkle my nose. His clothes smelled sour, like they’d been left in the washer for days on end. There were flecks of something on his shirt. Purple and black. Paint, most likely. Wren had said he did handyman work, so maybe he just hadn’t changed out of his work clothes yet…or ever.

  Okay, that wasn’t nice, but the guy desperately needed a shower.

  “It’s good to see you, Bud,” I said, gently pulling away from his embrace. I had always liked him, even though he was still in the annoying-little-brother stage when Tanya and I first became friends. Later, though, he’d generally left us alone. He’d yell down into the basement sometimes and ask if we wanted popcorn. And he’d occasionally come down to watch a movie we’d rented. The Goonies. Ferris Bueller. Otherwise, we didn’t see much of him. He cut lawns for two entire summers so he could buy a motorcycle when he was fifteen, and generally ran with a different crowd. An older, rougher crowd, for the most part. I’d had the sense Tanya wasn’t exactly happy with his choices in that regard. But it was probably kind of tough living in her shadow.

  Mrs. Blackburn—and I would never, ever be able to think of her as Sally, no matter how many times she screamed the name at me—moved around the side of the couch. For a moment, I’d forgotten she was even in the room.

  “Ruth was just leaving. She’s going back to her office now to write up a real nice story about Tanya for the paper. Because they found her car. In the river. Her body was in it. I’m going to make iced tea now.”

  Without another word, she turned on her heel and headed for the kitchen. That was probably a good thing, since I would have had the urge to smack her if she’d still been within reach. How could she have been so callous as to just drop the news on the poor guy like that?

  Bud stood frozen, watching his mother’s retreating back.

  “I’m sorry, Bud. But she’s right. They found Tanya’s car this morning in the river. A driver was at the wheel, and…they think it’s her. But they don’t know for sure yet.”

  He stumbled backward, and for a moment, I was terrified he was going to pass out. Instead, he sat down heavily on the bottom step.

  I sat down next to Bud and squeezed his hand. He still smelled like moldy laundry, but all I could see was the gangly boy who’d brought down a bowl of popcorn and plopped onto the beanbag to watch Teen Wolf with us. Who, despite their typical sibling squabbles, had loved his sister.

  “I’m sorry you had to find out that way, Bud. I really am.”

  “So am I,” he said. “But…you’d probably better go now. You know what she’s like.”

  I nodded. “I’ll let you know if I hear anything else. Calls to the Star transfer to my cell if I’m not there. Call if you need anything, okay?”

  ✰ Chapter Seven ✰

  Cassie cracked the sliding glass door and stuck her head through. “You want pepper jack or Gouda, Mom? And a toasted bun?”

  I debated for a moment. “Pepper jack. And definitely toasted.”

  She and Ed were out on the deck grilling burgers while I made a chopped salad. As she closed the door, Cassie laughed at a comment from Ed. I couldn’t make out what he’d said over the sound of the faucet as I rinsed the vegetables, but I smiled at the sight of them. Ed was quickly becoming an integral part of our day-to-day life in Thistlewood—more so than I would ever have imagined a few months before when we met at his book signing. I didn’t know where our relationship was headed, but a day with Ed in it was always brighter, and it warmed my heart that the two of them were getting along so well.

  That hadn’t always been the case with Cassie and her father. She loved Joe, and vice versa, but once she’d hit the age where she had her own opinions and interests, their relationship had begun to show signs of stress. Joe seemed to think that kids were these malleable creatures that you could shape into your own image. But Cassie had always been her own person, and instead of celebrating that, he’d spent most of their time together trying to change her. Joe had wanted Cassie to play baseball as a kid, and she gave it a try, but she’d had a strong preference for soccer. He’d bought her a dirt bike, but she really wasn’t a daredevil and was more comfortable riding on sidewalks. He’d agreed to pay for college, but only if she chose a “practical” major, which for him meant business or nursing. He and I argued about that. I’d eventually won, partly because I pointed out that most of the contributions to her college account had come from my salary, not his. And the point had been moot since Cassie had dropped out after a year, saying she wasn’t really ready yet.

  The divorce had strained their relationship even further. I hated that, but there wasn’t much I could do to change it. Cassie said she’d kind of felt like he ran me out of town, and I wondered if that wasn’t part of the reason she’d decided not to go back to Nashville. Had she felt that living there, four hours away, was somehow taking his side over mine?

  I hoped not. It wasn’t true that he’d run me off. I could have stayed in Nashville. I could have fought him for the house. Could have found another job there, something to keep me busy after taking the offer of early retirement from my old employer, the Nashville News-Journal, when they had a round of cutbacks. Life would have eventually felt normal again. But Cassie had seemed happy in Nashville, content with her circle of friends, a job she enjoyed, and two roommates that she alternately loved to pieces and wanted to strangle. I’d had the cabin here in Thistlewood. Wren was here and so was the Star, which had been shuttered after Mr. Dealey died. The paper had desperately needed someone willing to breathe new life into it, and I’d desperately needed a project. And Ed had been here, although I hadn’t known that would be an important factor at the time.

  With the late afternoon sun glinting off the purple highlights in her dark hair, there was no escaping the fact that Cassie looked far more like the tourists, many of whom came from places like Nashville, than a Thistlewood native. Anyone would guess that she was not from-here. But maybe that didn’t matter so much once you were out of the crucible of high school. Cassie seemed happy here. She’d even mused about taking some college courses again, either in Knoxville or online. And now it sounded like she might have found a job that would challenge her.

  Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d felt like I was abandoning her when I moved to Thistlewood. My thoughts flashed back to Bud Blackburn’s face—the younger Bud, in the hallway that night thirty-two years ago. Looking like he was all alone. And, of course, that brought my mind right back to finding Tanya’s car, which was the very thing I’d been trying not to think about.

  I’d posted the article online moments before Ed arrived to drive me home from the office. It was brief and vague. Breaking news. Police investigating. Nothing about Tanya or the make of the car. Just the location where it was found and the fact that divers had located it, along with a murky photograph of the tow truck with the chain vanishing into the river.
I didn’t even mention that the divers were tourists.

  A comment had popped up at almost the same instant that the little bell above the door had jingled, signaling Ed’s arrival. Just someone asking if there were more details yet, which was kind of ridiculous since I’d posted the story less than five minutes earlier. I’d stared at the comment with very mixed feelings. Yes, it was kind of cool to see that someone had actually signed up for the Star’s local news alerts feature. On the other hand, by the time there were two or three people posting, there was a very good chance that the discussion thread would devolve into sheer gossip.

  I’d been wanting to check the story since we walked in the door, but I held off, not wanting to seem like I was obsessing. The salad was made now, however, and Ed and Cassie seemed to have the burger situation well in hand, so I decided it was as good a time as any to go upstairs to my computer and check the activity on the site.

  Sure enough, there were new comments. Seven of them now. No one had any additional information to offer, but they were all eager to speculate. One said the car belonged to the former mayor, who vanished about ten years back. Another claimed that he or she had seen the car, and it had out-of-state tags. Someone else said she’d heard it was a station wagon and there was an entire family inside. The most outrageous of the responses speculated, without any sort of evidence or explanation, that the vehicle was an ice-cream truck.

  And one said there was a body in the trunk.

  That settled it. I logged in to the admin screen, scrolled down, and disabled the comments section, something I’d never done in the past. While I firmly believe that people have the right to voice their opinions—whatever they may be, and no matter how ill-informed they may be—about news stories, I had no intention of allowing the Star’s webpage to become host to a tangled mess of gossip and lies. Maybe once we had all of the facts, I’d change the setting, but for now, this story was a one-way street.

  I set the laptop back on my nightstand and went to the window. Outside, the sun was going down, and the wide Tennessee sky was alive with a fireworks show of deep red and vibrant orange. The mountains glimmered in this pulsing glow. I felt myself relaxing a bit for the first time since we left the river. Then I thought of Tanya and how she had been waiting all those years for someone to find her car, and the calming effect of the beautiful May sunset outside began to slip.

  Stop it, Tanya’s voice said inside my head. I wasn’t waiting. I moved on long ago, Ruth. You know that.

  And I really didn’t think she’d been waiting. All that they pulled out of the river today was her car and whatever remained of her body. The thing that made her Tanya had moved on thirty-two years ago.

  But knowing where Tanya ended up still left so many questions wide open. I needed closure. So did Wren, and so did Tanya’s brother. And we’d never get that until we knew how Tanya’s car wound up at the bottom of the river. I had given up thirty-two years ago because I was fresh out of high school and no one, not even Mr. Dealey, had really believed me. That wouldn’t happen again. This time, I wouldn’t let her down.

  I pushed the curtains all the way open to let the last light of the sunset in and told the little smart speaker next to my bed to play something by Bonnie Tyler. A smile spread across my face as “Holding Out for a Hero” began.

  The hardwood floor was warm against my bare feet. I closed my eyes. It was sophomore year again, and I was dancing in the basement with Tanya and Wren. Moving through the room to the beat of our then-favorite song. Happy. Laughing. Being a bit too silly, but we were fifteen and had our whole lives stretched out in front of us.

  I moved to the music, trying to recapture just a bit of that feeling. And for a few minutes, I did.

  When the song ended, I opened my eyes and found Cassie standing in my open doorway.

  “Supper is ready,” she said with a smile.

  I brushed a strand of hair out of my now-flushed face. “Be right down.”

  Cassie started toward the stairs, then leaned back inside and gave me a thumbs-up. “Not half bad for fifty. Go Mom.”

  ✰ Chapter Eight ✰

  I rarely work on Sundays, especially now that Cassie has moved in with me. My usual pattern is a half day on Saturday, and then I take the rest of the weekend off, maybe working a little from home. But the previous day hadn’t been a normal Saturday, and I had way too much pent-up energy on Sunday morning to just putter around the house. I’d taken the binoculars onto the deck with my cat, Cronkite, and tried some bird-watching therapy. It’s usually pretty effective for getting my head to a happy place. But even though I’d spotted a goldfinch—one of my favorites—I’d been too jittery to sit still for long. So I’d jotted a note to Cassie, poured some extra coffee into a travel mug to be sure I wouldn’t have to fight the brunch crowd at the diner, and was behind my desk by a quarter of eight.

  My main goal for the day was to get a more detailed article written so that when the ID came back positive, as I was sure it would, I’d have all of my ducks in a row, along with some ideas about where to begin my investigation. The Star’s morgue, which is reporter lingo for the room where all the past editions are shelved, was my first stop. I’d never particularly liked hanging out in the morgue, partly because it was called the morgue and I have a morbid imagination, but mostly because it was dimly lit and dusty. Cleaning it didn’t help much because most of the dust was from slowly degrading newspapers.

  Shelves that resembled giant mail slots lined two walls of the room. There were forty-eight in all—eight rows of six. One hundred and seventeen binders were stored here, one for each year since the Star began publication. Five of the binders were empty, since the Star had been closed between the time Mr. Dealey died and my relaunch of the paper the previous January. I’d felt a little silly writing the year on the spine of binders that would never be filled. But one day I’d like to pull together at least a rudimentary overview of key events during that time from papers in neighboring towns and from the memories of those who lived here, so that the paper can serve as a relatively uninterrupted historical archive for Thistlewood.

  A fine lattice of cobwebs covered the opening like an early winter frost. I cleared it away, removed the 1987 binder, and placed it on the worktable in the corner. An odd sense of déjà vu hit me as I looked at two sheets of paper, torn from a spiral notebook, and affixed to the inside cover. When I’d started working here after school in the early 1980s, I’d convinced Mr. Dealey to let me add a rudimentary table of contents. Every year after that had a handwritten index numbered 1-52, with a very brief description of the main stories that week. It was one of the first tasks that he’d turned over to me. The index for this volume was in my own adolescent hand, complete with loops and flourishes that I’d abandoned by the time I finished college.

  The first week of January had been all about the weather in 1987, based on my notes. Ice Storm. Power Outage. Wreck on Main Damages Lamppost. I’d only vaguely remembered that storm before I opened the binder, but little tidbits began rushing back, including the bent lamppost in front of the drugstore. An elderly driver had hit a patch of ice and skidded, her car spinning round and round until the rear bumper connected with the post and knocked it off kilter.

  I sneezed loudly, not once or twice, but three times. This was not the place to continue reading if I also wanted to continue breathing freely. So I carried the book upstairs, where I found Ed waiting in his usual chair in front of my desk. As glad as I was to see him, I was also a bit surprised. He usually wrote in the mornings and again for a few hours in the afternoon, seven days a week, including holidays. His second mystery, Even in Death, was slated for publication later this summer, and he was hard at work on the third. Most afternoons, he ended up here at the conclusion of his daily walk, and I either invited him for dinner or we called Cassie to meet us at the diner.

  “Have they heard back from the lab?” I asked him.

  “Not yet. Billy told me they towed her car out to the impound lot late
last night. Still had a few looky-loos hanging out to see it, so it’s probably a good thing you talked to Tanya’s mom beforehand.” He frowned slightly. “There’s something Billy’s not telling me, though. I worked with that boy for seven years, and I can tell when he’s keeping secrets.”

  I fought back a smile. That boy is in his mid-forties. “What do you think it is?” I asked.

  Ed shrugged. “I don’t know. And I can’t really push him. He works for Blevins now, even if he’s not exactly happy about it. Anyway, I figure we’ll know soon enough. That’s not why I’m here, though. In case you’ve forgotten, I promised to help you with something.”

  He glanced pointedly at the box with the canvases, which had now been joined by an electric drill case.

  “Oh, Ed! I didn’t mean you needed to rush over first thing! I haven’t even been to the hardware store yet to get the stuff to hang them.”

  Ed grinned. “Good thing, too. Otherwise, I’d have to go to the trouble of returning all of this.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small paper bag. “Cassie said there are four of them, right? Should be enough wire, hooks, and wall anchors here.”

  I put the binder down on my desk, then walked over and pressed a quick kiss to his lips. “Thank you. But you really shouldn’t have made a special trip. I didn’t want this to cut into your writing time.”

  “It’s not. I’ll make it up later. I didn’t feel much like writing, anyway. Kept thinking about how awful that was for you and Wren yesterday. Have you talked to her?”

  “Not since last night. I left her a text earlier. Told her I was here in the office if she wanted to stop in.”

  “Good. Anyway, I have to admit I’m a little curious to see Lucy McBride’s work. She always struck me more as the type to paint with words, not on a canvas.” He laughed. “I’m not sure she knew what to make out of me becoming a writer. I was kind of a late bloomer in that regard. She painted a sea of red on my papers in her class.”