1 Death on Canvas

by Mary Ann Cherry

  She stared at it. The drawing had a childlike spontaneity she didn't think any adult could pull off. It had definitely been done by a youngster. And it was fabulous.

  She thought back to the drawings she'd made at the same age, drawings her parents still kept. Somewhere. Probably still in the box up in the attic. Hundreds of horses, she remembered, because she had wanted to be a cowgirl back then.

  Still smiling, and now curious, she carefully slipped the other pages out of the submission folder. Besides the llama sketch, the child had submitted a fire hydrant with a large smile and feet, and a vivid drawing of three dancing chickens, feathers fluttering in sure strokes of red, green and blue marker. All three drawings had the same quirky style, meticulous accuracy, and tons of personality. And all done with colored markers. Not even erasable. She put them back in the folder.

  Jessie thumbed through the completed "done at the gallery" still life entries until she found the numbered drawing that corresponded to the llama sketch.

  Entry 22 had removed all of the fruit except the lemons, scattering them on the table in front of the flowers. Then the young artist had drawn each lemon a face with a puckered, sour expression. Several of the flowers in the vase appeared to be winking. She threw her head back and erupted in laughter. The little drawing was darling, and it showed an advanced grasp of realistic shading and light, tossed together with the twist of childlike imagination. And I bet this child is filled to the gills with good old downright joy of living.

  The envelope paper-clipped to the entry taunted her. Jessie knew it would include the artist's name and information. She carefully opened the envelope and saw it also contained a photo. The picture was of a smiling, red-headed boy proudly holding the llama drawing. He bore a marked resemblance to Kevin O'Bourne when Jessie's brother was five.

  Her eyes swam with tears.

  The child had printed his own name on the form. Kevin Daniel Bonham. K.D.

  Chapter 46

  Bonham's home, present day

  Russell placed the pizza and breadsticks in the oven to warm. He was listening to the radio, waiting for the six o'clock news and weather report as he washed a head of lettuce and tore pieces into a bowl. He'd have to throw together a side salad before supper, or serve the pepperoni pie with a huge helping of guilt. K.D. had been getting fed too much fast food this month.

  Who was he kidding? This month? Every month. Man, he needed to buy a couple cook books and maybe stock the small freezer in the garage with healthier stuff.

  Russell grated a carrot, diced a stick of celery, and tossed both onto the torn lettuce. He placed K.D.'s portion on a bright yellow plate, adding a dollop of ranch dressing. He set a glass of chocolate milk by the plate and was heading toward the stairway to call K.D. down to dinner when he saw the beat up Ford pull in and park in his driveway. Jessie stepped out. As she headed up the walk, a resolute expression on her face, she lugged a huge box. When she reached the top step, she plunked it down.

  Russell's mind went blank. From the kitchen radio, he heard Koot Lundgren's deep voice say "Expect a thunderstorm this evening in Sage County." Man, Koot finally hit a home run. Storm, heck, she looks mad as a tornado.

  He took a deep breath and opened the door.

  "Jessie. Uh . . ." He turned his head to stare apprehensively up the stairs towards K.D.'s open door. Then he turned back to face Jessie.

  "Why, Russell?" Jessie's face was stony, her voice quiet. Quiet like the eye of a hurricane.

  "Why what?" Oh, no, no, no, no, he thought. Not this too, after the day I've had.

  "WHY, Russell? I want to know why you kept Kevin's son from Dad and me. And I want to see him." Her lip quivered and her eyes were dark with anger. She set the heavy box down with a thump. "I would like to see him. Now."

  "Oh, Jess. It's complicated."

  "So simplify it, Russell."

  "I wouldn't have let you leave Sage Bluff without telling you. I planned to talk to you. That's why I came over the other day."

  "You've had about six years to tell me, Russ. Was there just not the right—gee, I don't know—moment? One moment, in six years? You know, sixty-some months?"

  "Seventy two. There's seventy two months in six years, Jess."

  "Seventy two blasted months?" She roared. "And not one right moment?"

  "Daddy? Daddy?" A small voice came from the stairway landing. "What's wrong, Daddy?"

  "It's okay, K.D.," Russell yelled up the steps.

  "But . . . who's yelling?"

  "It's your aunt Jess, K.D.. She yells a lot, but you'll like her. I promise."

  "I gotta aunt?"

  "Come on down. It's about time you met." Russell glanced quickly at Jessie and said in an undertone, "No yelling in front of my son."

  "Your son, huh?"

  "My son."

  "Okay," Jessie breathed, her stony gaze still locked with his. She lowered her voice even more. "We'll do this your way. I'll let you hide behind the boy, you coward. I'll meet K.D., and then we'll talk." She stuck her index finger near his face. "But you hear me, Bonham. It will be a cold day in Hell before I forgive you for this—no matter what explanation you give me."

  "I can explain."

  "A cold day in H – e – double – ell. There can't possibly be a good excuse for this. I hope you realize that, Russell Stewart Bonham."

  He stared at her. He wished he could just erase the six years. But then, he wouldn't have K.D. He turned his face away from hers and chewed on his bottom lip. He shook his right leg nervously, bouncing the knee. Looking with apprehension up the steps, he saw K.D. bounding down.

  Jessie was watching the boy. Her eyes glistened with tears.

  "You want some dinner, Jess?" He cleared his throat. "I . . . um . . .I cooked."

  They sat together on the rickety wicker porch swing. "You were in school, Jess. Kevin would have wanted you to stay in France. What good would it have done if you'd come home?" He spoke softly. He'd tucked K.D. into bed shortly after dinner with the promise the next morning they'd open the big box Jessie had brought and assemble the child's easel it contained.

  "Maybe I could have—"

  "No. You couldn't have. If I had told you K.D. was Kevin's son, you'd have come home and trashed your year at the Paris Academy."

  "But what about Trish? All this time I've thought . . ."

  Jessie let the thought hang in the air like a spider dangling in a web. The swing moved gently forward and back, the rasping metal on metal sound doing its best to fill the silence. Finally, Russell sighed and spoke.

  "Trish has been gone since K.D. was a month old. By that time, we were thinking about making it a real marriage. Instead, she took off."

  "But . . . oh, Russell. That's awful! Why did she—"

  "It isn't a pretty story, but you're determined to hear it, so let me talk. Please. Can you just sit and listen for a minute?"

  Jessie took a deep breath and gestured for Russell to go ahead.

  "Kevin was hooked on Trish, all right. But Trish was hooked on something totally different. Drugs. Mostly Oxycodone. Heck, maybe other drugs, too, but Oxycodone was the big one."

  "Oh, my god." Jessie's foot stopped the movement of the swing as she stiffened. "I didn't know. I had no idea."

  "Nobody did. Her addiction took even Kevin by surprise. He said it seemed like one day she was fine, the next he was engaged to a drug addict. He made the mistake of telling me. Me. A cop. We had a terrific argument over getting her into rehab. I told him if she wouldn't go, I'd eventually catch her out—arrest her for possession."

  She looked up at him, a startled expression on her face. "Oh, please. You're trying to tell me Kevin didn't want her in rehab?"

  "Well, yeah, he did. But he couldn't force her, and she wouldn't go voluntarily. He practically hounded her about it, and she wouldn't budge. Finally, he gave up. Said he would try to handle it. Get her clean himself." Russell snorted. "Yeah, like that was going to work. Oxycodone is horrible, just horrible, to kick. I p
ressed Trish so hard to give up her supplier that she finally agreed to rehab, if I agreed not to haul her in for possession."

  "Oh . . ."

  "But she didn't follow through right away. And she still wouldn't give me the name of her supplier. She was scared, Jessie. Real scared."

  "Afraid? Of going to jail?"

  "No. She thought someone would come after her—hurt her, maybe kill her—if they even suspected she'd turned them in."

  "What about K.D.?"

  "The day after your brother's accident, Trish realized she was pregnant. She was a mess. Terrible withdrawal symptoms, and grief. But that was the turning point. She was determined to stay clean for the health of the unborn baby."

  "So you married her because she was pregnant?"

  "I'm getting to that. After Kevin's funeral, I took personal leave. I drove her directly to a rehab center in Las Vegas and stayed until she got through the worst of the withdrawal." He gave a small grin. "Turned out to be a longer leave than I'd planned. The Sheriff wasn't happy. I was lucky he took me back."

  "Keep talking."

  "The deal was, I would help her every way I could until the baby was born and she'd have time to make some hard decisions. It wasn't a real marriage, but it made me the legal father." He plucked at his shirt cuff with nervous fingers. "The rehab facility wiped out my savings. But Trish didn't have any relatives to help her, or to take K.D."

  "But Kevin did, Russell. He had family."

  "I was raised in your family, too. I felt like part of it. But your dad was a mess, Jessie. He couldn't get past the two deaths so close together - Kevin's, then your mom's. He was depressed. He took lousy care of himself. For a long time, there was no way he could even help take care of a baby. Every time you came home, he pretended to be feeling better than he really did. Then he'd fall apart again, soon as you left. It was only after he met Marty that he started pepping up."

  "But I didn't know things were so bad. I could have . . ."

  "Just listen, okay?" Russell said in irritation. "Will you just listen? This was Trish's baby, too, not just your brother's. I thought what Trish wanted for the baby had to count, and she wanted him with me. But shortly after K. D. was born, she skipped out. No word. No note. Nothing."

  "She left her baby? That's terrible. And no note? Most women, even if they were leaving, would leave a letter behind for that baby. And why would she want her baby left with a man? Why not find a woman? Or even an adoptive family?"

  "Because she thought since I was a policeman, I could protect her and the baby."

  "Oh." Jessie sat in silence for so long Russell thought his heart would stop, waiting to hear what she would ask next.

  "Okay . . . but then why leave without any notice? Could something have happened to her?"

  "Nah. All her makeup. All that crap you women use. And shoes—more shoes than anybody could ever wear—every stitch of clothing she owned—it was all gone. Every ridiculous thing she bought with my money."

  The expression on Jessie's face grew annoyed and Russell waved his hand in the air as though he could make the comment disappear. "You didn't know Trish that well, Jess. A lot of stuff she bought just because she was bored. And I haven't heard from her since. But every birthday, Kevin gets a nice package and a card—no return address—in the mail. It has to be from Trish. It makes me crazy that she can't just call once in a while."

  "Didn't you try to find her, Russell?"

  He snorted. "Try? Heck, I beat every bush with a stick from Vegas to Canada, and got absolutely no leads. Put out inquiries over the internet. Had buddies from other police stations do the same. I didn't turn up a single hint of her. Zip."

  "Still, you should have let me know what was happening."

  "Your dad said you were so happy, Jess. You were putting out fabulous work, and you weren't even out of the Paris Academy yet. I think he might have suspected the baby was Kevin's, but he never asked."

  "Never asked? And you haven't seen fit to tell him? It's his grandson we're talking about. Dad's the kind of guy who would find not telling him a very big lapse, Russell."

  "You know, Dan went into such a depression after losing Hannah he wouldn't even have been grandfather material."

  "Oh, puh-leez," Jessie drawled sarcastically. "He'd be a fabulous grandpa and you know it. Knowing Kevin left a son would have been just the thing to raise his spirits, you dolt. I'm not even going to argue with you over that. And the past few years, I could have been home a lot to help, regardless of my art school. And regardless of the art shows I do."

  He stiffened. "We don't need part-time people in his life, Jessie," he said angrily.

  "Now you're just being ridiculous."

  "Am I? You never wanted to stay in Sage Bluff, but I'm here for the long haul. I wanted a home for K.D. where he never had to wonder if the people he relied on were coming home or flying God knows where following their . . . art." Russell made air quotes with his fingers.

  Jessie glowered at him. "That's a really ignorant thing to say, Russell Bonham. Lots of people do have children and jobs that require travel, and they do make it work. My art is a job. A great job, actually. And it's good for children to have other relatives in their life, not just parents."

  "K.D and I are fine by ourselves. Besides, Kevin was like a brother. Taking care of K.D. and Trish was something I could do for both him and Dan. I owed your dad that. He was the one that raised me, not that sorry excuse for a father that I . . . well, never mind."

  "You think you owed Dad? Really?" Her voice dripped sarcasm. "So you repaid him by not telling him he has a grandson?"

  "It wasn't like that."

  "Then how was it?"

  He heaved a deep sigh. "After K.D. was born, the days just slipped away. The days turned into months and the months into years." He looked down at his feet. "The longer I went without telling him, the harder it seemed to finally come clean. And I guess I got really possessive of K.D. I never really had much of a family of my own, but I hadn't set out to keep him to myself."

  "But my Dad, Russell . . . I don't understand why you didn't at least tell him."

  "Jessie—"

  "Don't 'Jessie' me. You've stolen six years of his grandson's life away from Dad. And six years of knowing I had a nephew, a living part of Kevin, away from me. And it should have been my choice to come home or not and help. Nobody gave me a choice Russell. What is it with men that they think they can just make choices for any woman in their lives? It's going to take me a long time to forgive—"

  "Jessie, hear me out."

  "Then say something worth listening to."

  "I didn't tell you because I was afraid you'd come home."

  Her eyes widened.

  "I was afraid you'd come home out of a sense of duty—or worse—pity." He grimaced. "If I'd told you, what would you have done?"

  "Russell, I don't know. Until today I didn't know K.D. was . . . I thought . . . I didn't expect . . . ."

  "Trish bailed. And she was his mother. His mother. I know what that's like. Good thing he wasn't old enough for it to hurt. I didn't want you to come home, let him get attached to you, and then have you leave again, Jess."

  "Oh for . . . ." Jessie pressed her lips tightly together and crossed her arms across her chest. "I'd have come home to help out."

  "Yeah. For a month? A year?" His leaned forward. "You could come home now, Jessie. Help raise your nephew. Give up the painting. Come home."

  "Russell . . ." She closed her eyes and when she opened them her eyes blazed. "Give up my painting? Gee, how about you give up being a cop? If the shoe were on the other foot, how fair would that sound to you?"

  "That's totally different."

  Jessie gave a rueful chuckle. "No. No, it isn't. You can't ask me to give up my life's work. That's just silly. And it's also unfair."

  "I think it's damn fair, Jess," His voice was as sharp as barbed wire, "You're a butterfly—you're like my mother—can't stay where God put you."

  "A
butterfly? A butterfly? Are you crazy? Do you have any idea how hard I work? Painting is work—every day rain or shine work—and I'm darn good at it. I make a good living."

  "Ah, you make some money, and I know you're good—real good—but work? You just play around with it, Jess. It isn't like a real job."

  "Why you . . . you . . . just because I enjoy it doesn't mean it isn't—"

  "Work. Some work." Russell made a raspberry noise. "And a kid's better off in a stable environment, not with a momma who's gadabouting all over."

  Jessie jumped up from the swing and stood looking down at him, shaking her head. "K.D. would be better off knowing his grandpa—knowing he has other family who care about him, not just one person."

  "I . . . I kept thinking Trish might come back, that we'd tell Dan together. Then he met Marty and he seemed happy for a change. But it was hard for me to see him with someone other than Hannah. And he never seemed to be home. I know K.D. needs his Granddad. And Dan needs to know about Kevin. But, up to now, we've been fine." He leveled his gaze at her. "We're fine."

  "No. You're not. And I want to be part of K.D.'s life whenever I can."

  "Oh, gee. Thanks. Whenever you can? Maybe you can send him postcards from the crazy places you wind up with your . . . work."

  "Why you . . . you sorry sack of egotistical, self-important, selfish, condescending . . ."

  "Well, don't hold back, Jess girl." Russell stood, crossed his arms over his chest, mimicking her stance, and looked down at her with narrowed eyes.

  Swinging her head, she flipped a wave of hair over her shoulder, and uncrossed her arms. "I can't even put how I feel into words, Russ. You might not want my help now, but I guarantee you'll want it later. I've seen the drawings K.D. made for the competition. They're fabulous. He is going to need—and want—the drawing and painting the same way I did. It will obsess him. He's going to be like me."

  "I hope not." He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. "But whatever he does, it's our business." Russell was quiet for several minutes, then admitted quietly, "It's true. He's exactly like you. But you never come home, Jess."