Gold Promise

by Ninie Hammon

  Bund's yaps and occasional whining didn't mask the music, though. She knew no other sound actually masked it, either, but the presence of other sounds made that sound easier to ignore. You couldn't drown out a sound that you weren't hearing with your ears.

  She stood still for a moment, listening.

  … yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away …

  Her mind added the words to the melody. One of the foster mothers in the parade of foster homes from her youth had purchased a vintage "hi-fi" at a yard sale, the old kind that played vinyl records. When she got it home, she discovered it had one record on the turntable. “Yesterday.” Since it was the only record she had, she played it in a continuous loop, all day long, day after day after … Then one day, the record mysteriously vanished. Never did find out what happened to it. Hmmmmmm.

  As she mentally sang along with the music, images from her childhood were washed away by an ache welling up in her belly that she had resolutely consigned to the bag hours ago. That girl, the poor lovely girl. And she had seemed a girl, as a matter of fact. Obviously, prostitutes came in all shapes, sizes and ages like the rest of humanity, were not confined to stereotypical stiletto heels, dress too low-cut, skirt too short, and eyes way too old for the face. This girl had been elegantly dressed, in expensive clothes. Her perfume had been of the thousand-dollar-an-ounce variety. Still, she looked young, almost childlike. There was an innocence Bailey couldn't reconcile with how the girl had decided to live her life.

  “Yesterday” became “I Want To Hold Your Hand.” Then, like smoke from a dying campfire, the music grew fainter and fainter until it was only a remembered echo. Bailey fastened the collar around the puppy's neck and hooked a leash to it and took him out into the yard to do his business.

  She stood there, trying to be encouraging.

  "Go potty!"

  She had a treat ready to pop into his mouth as soon as he complied. But he didn't appear to be the slightest bit interested in bodily functions. He went sniffing away across the yard, pausing only to chase an ant and to start frantically digging a hole — for reasons Bailey could not fathom.

  Finally, she gave up and led him back into the house. He trotted over to the spot on the floor where he had peed the first time and proceeded to unleash the whole load.

  Not good. T.J. had told her about some kind of cleaner that sufficiently removed that kind of odor so the animal wouldn't return to it. She'd buy some tomorrow. That didn't help right now, though. T.J. had also said she would have to take the puppy outside every couple of hours around the clock until he got the hang of things, but he wouldn't soil his bed in his kennel.

  So, she needed to …

  She occupied her mind with all things puppy, picking the little fur ball up every few minutes to nuzzle him, and get her face licked.

  By the time she dropped into bed at well on the south side of one o'clock, she was physically and emotionally wrung out, too tired to dwell on the lovely young girl she had seen tonight, her head full instead of mental to-do lists. And her ears too full of the puppy's pitiful cries from his crate downstairs.

  T.J. had been adamant. She had to let the puppy cry it out. She couldn't give in to it or he'd never learn. But T.J. had not said the little dog's cry would be so pitiful. The poor little thing down there all by himself in a strange place was just a baby, after all. He missed his mother and his litter mates. He was scared! And heartbroken. Finally, she couldn't stand it any longer. She rescued the little beast, took him outside where he actually complied with the go-potty request, and then snuggled up with him beside her on the pillow.

  The puppy licked her face happily, his tail wagging in delight. She didn't mind having her face licked … if she could keep her mind off what he might possibly have been licking with that same tongue only a few minutes before. She watched the dog go to sleep — quickly and innocently, flipping a switch from awake to asleep.

  She'd fallen asleep almost as quickly as the dog.

  When she suddenly bolted upright in the bed, she was totally disoriented.

  What time was it?

  The puppy was snoozing peacefully right where she'd left him, but she was anything but peaceful. Her heart was pounding, her mouth dry and she was breathing like she'd just run the Boston Marathon. She tried to calm herself, steady her breathing. It hadn't been a bad dream, or if it had been, she didn't remember it. But something …

  Then she knew. She didn't know how she knew, but she was certain. The bond, the connection between her and the girl had been broken. She hadn't been nearly as aware of the connection as she was now aware of its absence. Like being in a conversation on the phone and the line suddenly goes dead. And you can sense the emptiness on the other end where someone had been only a moment ago, but now was gone.

  The girl was dead.

  She hadn't heeded their warning and the man with the tattoo had killed her.

  Bailey settled back down in bed and began to cry softly. She buried her face in her pillow so she wouldn't wake the sleeping puppy, then felt the warmth of him, snuggled up to her neck, licking her ear. Not the frantic licking from before, excited, his whole body wiggling. He was licking her slowly, softly. It was soothing. Almost like the little dog knew she needed comforting. And maybe he did.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Bailey tried to tell herself it was just because she hadn't gotten enough sleep last night. But she knew that wasn't it. That wasn’t what had led her here in her robe and slippers in the early dawn hours to stand in front of the door of her studio, behind which was the painting of the girl.

  The nameless girl who died last night.

  She stood looking at the door. Didn't reach for the knob, just stood. On the other side of the door … she didn't want to go there. Oh, how badly she didn't want to go there. This time she had failed. What she'd painted had come to pass. Poor, delusional Jocelyn Farrington was safe in her bed at Forest Hills Sanitarium, but this girl, the stunning beauty who'd sat at the slot machine next to hers last night had been murdered. Just as the portrait had predicted. And nothing Bailey and the others had done could prevent it.

  Destiny had won.

  She turned and walked back into the living room, noticing as she did that the puppy had deposited a little puddle of pee in that same spot beside the couch where he'd done his business yesterday. She had to get that stuff T.J. had told her to get or that was going to become a permanent toilet for Bundy, who now was happily chasing dust motes in the beam of dawn sunshine that shone through the top of the stained glass window in the living room. Yeah, Bundy. Overnight, Bailey's Un-Named Dog had somehow morphed from BUND into Bundy. And that would do just fine.

  She went to the cabinet of cleaning supplies in the hallway, got some paper towels and Windex — it was all she had — and returned to do battle with the puddle on the floor, yawning as she did so, missing the sleep she'd lost courtesy of taking Bundy out every three or four hours … and standing there for ten or fifteen minutes until he was in the mood to do his business. She was not going to tell T.J. that she'd put the puppy in bed with her to sleep so it would stop crying. She knew she would pay for that tonight, and maybe for a whole bunch of nights hence, but she was glad for the company when she woke up knowing, without any idea how she knew, that the beautiful blonde girl with the frightened sapphire eyes was dead.

  She hadn't constantly revisited the painting of Macy Cosgrove after she painted it. Oh, she'd "re-engaged" with it when she'd realized she had to paint the child's face if they were ever to have any hope of finding her. So she'd painted it and then she'd left the painting on an easel in her studio behind a closed door. And there it had sat, with the "matching painting" on the easel beside it.

  She had left the two of them side by side like that — the painting of Macy and her own portrait with a bullet hole in her temple that T.J.'s mother had painted fifty years ago — for a time after the flood. Then one morning, she knew — maybe it was an impulse, maybe the conclusion her mind had re
ached subconsciously. Whatever it was, she'd acted on it. She'd taken Macy's picture out into the back yard and set it on fire. She'd had no gasoline to pour over it, so the burning took a while. But eventually it was nothing but ashes.

  She decided to keep the portrait T.J.'s mother had painted of her with a bullet hole in her temple, because … She wasn't sure exactly why, but she couldn't bring herself to destroy the painting that connected her to Eulalie Hamilton, who had been cursed with the strange "gift" as she had been.

  As soon as her life had returned to some semblance of order after the horror surrounding the kidnappings two months ago, she'd destroyed the portrait she'd not been compelled to paint but had decided to paint. She'd bought charcoal lighting fluid to pour over it because she wanted it to burn hot and fast. And it had.

  So what should she do with the painting that now rested on the easel in her studio?

  She took another sip of her coffee — strong and black — and reached down and picked up Bundy, who had given up on the dust motes and was now sniffing something that appeared to be very interesting on the bottom of her house shoe. She cuddled the dog to her face.

  "Aaron would have liked you, Bundy," she said, and her voice cracked a little, hearing the name of her dead husband spoken out loud like that. It hurt to hear the sound, but it felt good to say it, too. To have "someone" who'd listen to her pour her heart out about all that she had lost.

  "Bethany would have liked you, too." She stopped, firmed her back and said with more determination than sadness. "Bethany will like you when she meets you." And she felt better, somehow, for saying that, too, out loud.

  Then she turned from the door resolutely, went to the kitchen and deposited her cup in the sink. If she allowed herself to start the day thinking about Aaron and Bethany, she could end up wallowing in self-pity for the whole rest of the day. Not. She had to — the scraps of a smile fluttered across her face — put her pain, her self-pity and her grief over the lost girl whose shattered face she'd captured in a portrait into a garbage bag and cinch it up tight.

  She needed to do something with the portrait. The girl was dead, the connection broken, their efforts to intervene a failure, game over. Though she absolutely, one hundred percent, did not want to go anywhere near it, she had to face it. In the sooner-or-later category of tasks, sooner was always better than later. T.J. had told her once, "If you got to eat a frog, don't look at it too long. And if you got to eat two frogs, eat the big 'un first." This was a big frog.

  Maybe if she held the puppy close, it wouldn't be so hard …

  With the puppy snug in her arms, she went to the studio, didn't hesitate at the door. She didn't have to switch on the lights. With the huge windows, the room was well lit anytime the sun was up. She went to the portrait and stood in front of it, discovered that she was gritting her teeth to keep her focus on the portrait itself and not the vision she had gotten when she painted it.

  Running as fast as her legs will carry her down a dark hallway, so much fear, it threatens to burst out her chest, she will explode from it, fly into pieces in every direction.

  A maze of darkened corridors, a rabbit warren of hallways. Soft plush carpet under her bare feet. No sound at all except for her heavy breathing.

  Bailey shook her head. There was no reason to dwell on this. It was only painful, nothing to be gained. The girl was dead—

  The pain in her scalp is …

  Her broken wrist drags along the floor, bouncing down each stair tread.

  Pain is her whole world. She can no longer tell where the stabbing agony comes from. It comes from everywhere, every part of her.

  Then he drags her over a threshold and tosses her into a room. Her basement bedroom, clothes in a pile, the closet door ajar, the shoes she slipped off so she could run silently lying by the bed. Looking along the floor, she sees … Jeni!

  Bailey's eyes yanked to the bed that was partially visible on the right side of the portrait, gazing at the darkness beneath it.

  The subject of the portrait was so riveting, Bailey had noticed nothing at all in the background. Now she studied the wedge of darkness beneath the bed. The girl had looked there and said, "Jeni" before the man kicked her in the mouth, silenced her, beat and kicked and then strangled her.

  But she had said, "Jeni."

  Was there someone there, in the darkness under the bed? Was Jeni there?

  Bailey's heart began to pound and she set the puppy down on the floor, went to the switch beside the door and turned on the lights. They were glaringly bright, or seemed so after only natural light. That was one reason she almost never turned them on, because the light reflected off the glossy surface of the paint. You had to view the picture from just the right angle or the glare made a shiny sheen that obscured the image.

  Returning to the portrait, she moved until the sheen was gone and the right side of the picture was brightly illuminated. The bed hadn't been made. The pale blue bedspread and tangled sheets and blankets didn't reach the floor. There was a slice of darkness beneath them, between the bed and the floor. Was there … a lesser darkness, a dark shape instead of just a blob of black? It was impossible to tell for certain, but Bailey found herself filled with the conviction that there was a shape there under the bed. A face. Jeni's face.

  The longer she stared at the portrait, the more convinced she became. For no rational reason at all — but what was rational about any of this? — Bailey believed that someone, a girl named Jeni, had been watching the scene, peeking out from under the bed, where she'd obviously been hiding.

  Jeni — another "working girl?" Probably.

  Whoever she was, she had seen. Jeni had witnessed the girl's brutal beating and death. And if the guy with the skull tattoo found out she'd seen? If he discovered Jeni had watched him commit murder …

  Bailey began to shake all over. She knew about that kind of thing, oh, how she knew about that. About monsters who masqueraded as human beings, who murdered casually and then massacred anybody who might have been a witness to the carnage.

  This man, the one the girl had called the Beast — he'd done this before — enjoyed it. And bad guys like him didn't get to be professionals by leaving loose ends.

  If the Beast found out Jeni had seen, he'd kill her, too.

  Was there really a Jeni … not just in the room the night the girl was murdered, but in the painting? Was there someone else in this portrait, obscured in the dark, but there?

  There was only one way to find out.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  T.J. stood back a ways, to get the view of the whole painting. Examined it. The pile of clothes, looked like a lady's panties and maybe a camisole. There were shoes beside the bed, another pile of … maybe a towel in front of a closet door that stood slightly ajar. Then he moved forward and examined the right side of it, the part that showed a portion of a bed and bedspread. As far as he could see, there wasn't nothing but black beneath that bed. But Bailey thought there was more than that.

  "So you're sayin' you think they's somebody back there in the darkness under that bed? Is that what you're tellin' me?"

  "I'm not asking if you see it." Bailey shifted the puppy from one arm to the other. She'd hardly set the little fluff ball down the whole time T.J.'d been here, only long enough to spray the Pee Be Gone cleaner he'd brought on a spot on the floor where the dog had decided made a dandy potty place.

  T.J. wasn't a bettin' man. He'd given that up a long time ago, along with most of the rest of his vices — 'cept being ornery, which he held onto with some pride. But he'd have laid down a-hundred-to-one odds Bailey hadn't let that puppy cry in his crate last night.

  "I'm just asking if you think it's possible there could be something there. I don't see it either, but I … I don't know how to explain it. I just know there's somebody there. It's like I can feel her. Did anything like that ever happen to your mother?"

  "Not that she ever told me about." T.J. reached out and took the puppy out of her arms and set it down
on the floor. "God give that puppy legs to walk on and they gonna shrivel up and fall off if you won't let him use 'em."

  "I don't carry—"

  "Occur to you, did it, that you's naming your dog after a serial killer?"

  "I did not! Bundy is just — nooooo."

  The puppy had started to squat and Bailey snatched him up and raced out the back door, holding him out from her like you'd hold a mouse by the tail. She deposited him in the grass.

  "Go potty," she told him, and he sniffed around for a few moments and then complied. Bailey liked to scared the poor thing to death squealing what a "good boy" he was.

  T.J.'d followed her out into the yard, where she was practically choking the poor dog shoving a treat down his throat, and he picked up the conversation where they'd left it.

  "You got to remember I's just a little boy and there was lots of things that went on durin' that time she never talked about."

  Bailey had told him her connection to the girl in the painting had snapped last night, was convinced that meant the girl was dead and he was sure she was right. Today was Halloween, after all, and the monster'd told the girl she wouldn't need a mask to go trick-or-treating tonight.

  When she'd opened her front door to his knock a few minutes earlier she was wearing a look on her face he'd seen so often on his mama's when she'd painted something and then that awful something happened just like she painted it. Bailey was taking it way harder than she let on that this time destiny'd got the gold ring. That's why she was pushing this, sayin' they was somebody else in the painting only they couldn't see her. She wanted to change the future, save somebody, and if not the strangled girl, then …

  Bailey glanced toward the house and it was like he could see the dark shadow that passed over her face. She shivered and it wasn't cold.

  "If you's determined to do it, do it now while I'm here."