1 Portrait of a Gossip

by Melanie Jackson

  “But I think they should be relatively self-sufficient. Plants that require people to go to the ocean and gather seaweed, or to trek into mountain caves to scrape up bat dung for them are weak sisters and maybe should be left to perish to the millions of pests that appear to fly and creep and crawl out of the ground to attack if you don’t wash and dust them constantly.” She paused. “Except asparagus, of course.”

  “Is the asparagus high maintenance? I thought it was some kind of grass.”

  “I have no idea, but given what it costs at the store, my guess would be yes. And basil. That’s expensive too. There must be billions of things trying to eat it. But do you know what is the most expensive herb of all?”

  “No.”

  “Catnip. Six dollars for a lanky little pot of stems that look like anemic parsley. Marley better love it to death.”

  Raphael finally laughed.

  “I can understand your indignation, but you have to let go of it now.”

  “A Divine visitation doesn’t cause indignation?” she guessed.

  “Not in the classical style.”

  Juliet looked up at the window and began to think about her lemon cupcake which she was going to eat for dinner.

  “Very good,” Raphael said and began to paint.

  “Did Esteban say that he’d seen ravens flying upside down?” she asked after a moment of gluttonous thought was interrupted by a stomach rumble.

  “Yes.”

  “Hm.”

  “Do you believe that they are an ill omen?” Raphael asked.

  “N-no. But they were there when Harvey died. And in legend, Hugin and Munin were the god Odin’s ears and eyes. O’er the Earth each day Hugin and Munin set forth to fly….” She thought. “The Arabs called them the Father of Omens, and in Ireland they are believed to have the second sight and to be able to predict death and disaster. The Bible talks about them too, flying over battlefields where they were supposed to be able to foretell who would win and who would be defeated because the scent of death clung to the losers even before battle began.”

  Raphael stared at her thoughtfully, though what was on his mind was more than Juliet could guess.

  “You are interested in ancient lore?” he finally asked.

  “No. It’s just the curse of a mind that doesn’t forget anything. Except to water tomatoes.” After a moment she spoke again. “Raphael, do you have any idea who killed Harvey? Any gut feelings? Or are you also just hoping the killer slides by?”

  “No, I don’t know who did it. But I have wondered if it was a woman.” He didn’t say anything about letting the killer slide.

  “A gun isn’t usually a woman’s first choice of weapons,” she pointed out, not arguing the call but simply thinking aloud.

  “It’s practical when your opponent is stronger than you are. And anyway, I thought that idea was buried with Queen Victoria and we were all equal-opportunity criminals these days. But that isn’t why I have wondered about the women. I think the females here—with a few exceptions—have the ability to hate so much more deeply than the men, and they are far more inclined to get on with things.”

  She thought of Rose, of Carrie, of Jillian and Darby—and even Elizabeth. Could they go out and buy a black market weapon with the idea of killing their nosy neighbor? Or—and this was an inversion of thought—had the gun been Harvey’s? An unregistered handgun was more his style. What if the killing had been self-defense, a struggle over a handgun that went awry and ended up with Harvey being killed?

  “And don’t forget that it might not be that hard to find some man willing to pull the trigger for her,” Raphael added. “Some men, even in this day and age, have a gallant streak.”

  He was right; Jake could have done it for Jillian or for Carrie, and Elizabeth had Asher. Would Harrison Peters kill for Darby? Would someone feel protective enough of Rose to act as her knight if she pleaded for help? Would Hans or Mickey or even Robbie kill for a friend or a lover? And what of Esteban? There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that he was more than capable of killing if he had a good reason.

  “Do you think that I could have killed Harvey?” she asked curiously.

  “I don’t think you did kill him.”

  “But you think that I could have, if I wanted to? You think I am capable of it?”

  “Meaning that you wouldn’t need a man to do it for you? Of course. You would have been better organized though. Come hell or high water or dark of night, Harvey Allen would have disappeared without a trace.”

  “Thank you.” She felt oddly pleased.

  “Think nothing of it. Or anything else except a visit from the Almighty. Not that this has been a bad conversational backdrop, I suppose. It is an Old Testament painting and what it depicts is the Lord’s will, cloaked in the body of a human woman who was chosen to do his bidding.”

  “My boss used to call me Nemesis,” she said softly. “It wasn’t an insult. Originally she was the distributor of fortune, neither good nor bad, simply a fate proportioned to each person according to what was deserved by their deeds. But my work never applied directly to people. It was data and information—and distance. Being this close to a death and the reasons for it is very different.”

  “Unless you’re a sociopath, murder gets real personal, real fast,” Raphael agreed with the faintest touch of sympathy, and Juliet wished that she could ask him what work he had done for the government.

  But she couldn’t cross that line without an invitation, so Juliet went back to dreaming of cupcakes while Raphael painted in silence.

  A few minutes later Marley’s face appeared in the window. He was waiting to escort her home. To the food.

  Chapter 13

  The wind which blew up the draw in the morning and down again at night finally settled and the trees quit clawing at the side of the bungalow. The night was silent.

  After Juliet and the cupcake had become one flesh, and Marley had enjoyed himself digging up the catnip—and then watching while Juliet repotted it, no doubt wondering how many times they could play that game—Juliet decided that it was time to get working on her t-shirts.

  Printing out decals and ironing them on shirts would be faster than silk-screening, but one couldn’t ask anywhere from thirty-nine to fifty-nine dollars for a decal on a cheap shirt. Her shirts were limited-run reproductions of actual paintings, done in high-quality cotton and linen.

  Step one was to set up the drying tables in the studio and then to create the stencils. There was one stencil or screen for each color to be used on the garment. These would be loaded one at a time in to a rotary garment screen which she had bought at auction from a shop that printed bowling jerseys. Sometimes she flat-screened by hand with a squeegee but the machine, with its rubber blanket that the shirt was “glued” to, allowed for better alignment of the stencil layers which was needed if the design was intricate.

  That was only the beginning of the process though. The stencils would provide the basic shapes and colors but she would go in later and add the hand details like shading and delicate veining in leaves. That made each shirt unique and worth an extra twenty to forty dollars. If people didn’t think it was high art, they should blame Andy Warhol who had hybridized textiles with painting.

  She had a number of designs to select from, done in small size and with limited colors, but the lizard Mickey kept presenting himself as the best choice. Giving in, she set to work on translating the painting into a garment stencil.

  Marley was interested in her work, but seemed content to watch from a perch on the sink. Perhaps he mistrusted the strange machine that was sitting on the kitchen table.

  Juliet hummed to herself as she set about making her stencils. It involved cutting a pattern out of a sheet-adhesive which she would adhere to the thin “silk,” which was actually polyester. It was painstaking work, but she had gotten efficient at the task and always used sharp tools. It added to the expense but saved time and headaches.

  Her first run would be on scrap fabr
ic, usually muslin since it was cheap. If that went well and she liked the colors then she would do an apron. They were made of sturdy canvas and cost less than her heavy cotton shirts. Her pile of muslin scraps was building up and she wondered if she shouldn’t try making a quilt from them. Elizabeth would probably lend her a sewing machine.

  Aware of the lack of prestige in that endeavor, Juliet had experimented with doing covers for photo albums, using some of the Nuremberg techniques pioneered by the medieval monks who wished for velvets and precious metals in their tapestries, but who could not afford the expensive textiles from the east. The spreading of wool dust into the wet ink did a fair job on re-creating velvet, and the gold and silver dust sprinkled in the wet paint did look a great deal like genuine gold thread embroidery, but the cost for gold dust was prohibitive and except for a few wedding albums, she wasn’t able to recoup the cost on the projects. It was all down to washable shirts, aprons, and baseball caps. Tourists tended to wear their hearts on their t-shirts. A smart artist provided them with a wide range of sentiments. Art came after eating.

  She worked until her back ached and then just a little more so that the stencils were done. Juliet didn’t mind the gray hairs and “expression lines” that had gotten rather deep around the eyes, but she wished vaguely her back was twenty years younger. Not that she expected her wish to be answered. One got a certificate of birth, not a certificate of health with a guarantee of replacement parts.

  She was startled by a rapping on the window behind her, and even more surprised when the rapper turned out to be Carrie Simmons.

  “Hi, come in,” Juliet said, opening her door. She was subtle about it, but made sure to the best of her abilities that Carrie wasn’t carrying any weapons. Raphael’s suggestion that the killer was a female had wedged in her mind, but Carrie seemed to be armed with nothing more sinister than a flashlight and false eyelashes so luxuriant they might have been fuzzy caterpillars. “I was about to make some tea. Would you like a cup?”

  “If you haven’t anything stronger.” Carrie hadn’t brought her walker and was looking rather flushed from her climb up the hill. The blush was real and extended up from the ample bosom that she had barely tucked into a peasant top. There are some women who have noteworthy figures, but most times they are just sort of there. They don’t flaunt them. Those women were not Carrie Simmons. Juliet admitted that she still had the legs for shorts but wondered why the mosquitoes hadn’t savaged her.

  “Sit down. Sorry, I don’t have much of anything here just now except tea and tuna. I need to go grocery shopping.”

  Carrie was looking at the canvas of lizard Mickey.

  “He’s cute,” she said, sounding surprised. “I didn’t know that you did anything whimsical.”

  “I’m trying out some kids’ shirts,” Juliet said, turning on the electric kettle and wondering what the heck had brought Carrie up the hill. “You’ve met Marley?”

  “Sure. But only at mealtimes.”

  “He’s a cat with an eye to the main chance,” Juliet agreed.

  “You’ve taken him in?”

  “Well, I didn’t exactly invite him. He just kind of moved house. And I’ve had worse roommates.” She didn’t add that he tended to hog the bed. She believed that loyalty was an important part of any successful relationship and wouldn’t dream of criticizing him to an outsider.

  Juliet didn’t bother with the tea ball and loose tea, but she did get out her teapot that had been thrown by a local potter. It looked like a broody robin redbreast. She dropped a teabag in the pot, gathered mugs, and then came to the table. There was barely room for the tea and the printing machine but she didn’t offer to move anything. The machine was heavy and she had gotten it set up just right. Carrie should understand that.

  “I don’t want to appear inhospitable,” Juliet began as she fetched the whistling kettle. The emersion heater was fast even if the water tasted a bit burned.

  “But you’re working?” She was doing her best breathless Marilyn Monroe though the outfit was a cross between Jane Russell and Daisy Duke.

  “Yes. And you needn’t have come all the way up. I would have walked down if you rang me.”

  “Would you? You hadn’t so far, so I wondered.”

  That was surprisingly direct, but then everything always revolved around Carrie and she needed to bring everything into orbit.

  “You feel left out because I haven’t pumped you for information? Well, let’s remedy that now. Did you kill Harvey?”

  “What? No! Of course not. Though some people might think I had a reason,” she added portentously.

  Juliet poured out some tea. It was weak but it probably didn’t matter. Carrie wasn’t a connoisseur.

  “Can you prove you didn’t? Do you have an alibi?”

  “No.” This was said a little sulkily. Juliet wasn’t reacting properly to her performance and asking what the reason was. She pulled out a handkerchief and blotted her face.

  “Do you know who did it?”

  “N-no.”

  “Me either,” Juliet said cheerfully.

  Both women jumped when there was another tap on the door. Before Juliet could rise, the door opened and Esteban stuck his head inside. His hair was powder white. Marley hopped down and sauntered over to the door to investigate.

  “Hello, cat. Sorry to barge in, Juliet, but the water is off at the cottage and I was wondering if I could plead with you for something to wash in. The plaster dust is everywhere.” His eyes also examined Carrie. They didn’t linger on her half-exposed breasts and Juliet thought that he was also looking for weapons.

  “There’s a hose and bucket outside,” Juliet said, and then added for Carrie’s benefit, “There is also the shower if you prefer tepid, softened water to pumice straight from the ground. It wouldn’t be any trouble if you wanted to bathe here.”

  “The hose will do since you have company,” Esteban said and then closed the door, but his eyes might just have had the tiniest of amused gleams.

  “You two are getting on?” Carrie asked. She looked thoroughly put out.

  “Oh yes, but generally I do get on with everyone. It’s so much easier that way.”

  “Elizabeth says that you’re sitting for Raphael. I’m rather glad he didn’t ask me because I’m terribly busy right now. And Asher might want to paint me later.”

  Juliet doubted this. Asher didn’t need a model to paint a big pink cube on top of a purple triangle.

  “You wouldn’t have suited for this one anyway,” Juliet said. Then, when Carrie started to bristle at the implication that she couldn’t hold her own with a college-age model, Juliet added, “It’s some Old Testament matriarch, swaddled in shawls and varicose veins. You’d be wasted on this one.”

  “Oh.” Her face eased a bit. “I guess Raphael needs to paint from life.”

  Juliet almost smiled at the uncalculated bitchiness of this remark.

  “I better fetch a towel for Esteban,” Juliet said, getting up from the table and preparing to deprive her of an audience. “Please stay as long as you like, but I need to get back to work. You know how it is when you have deadlines.”

  “I do,” she admitted. “And I need to be going. I’m having company tonight.”

  She did her best to look coy as she sauntered for the door.

  Juliet waited for her to start down the path before carrying out a towel. Marley followed her. The cat liked the puppet-maker.

  “I don’t think she did it, more is the pity,” she said to Esteban.

  He took the towel and wiped his face. He looked slightly less dusty from the neck up and elbows down.

  “Thanks. I don’t think so either.”

  “Damn. I’m running out of unpleasant people to pin it on. All my hope is on Jake Holmes, the adulterer. You want a tuna fish sandwich?” Juliet asked.

  “I could do with something to eat,” Esteban answered, still looking vaguely amused.

  Juliet chose not to ask him what was funny.

&nb
sp; Chapter 14

  Juliet opened the door to the studio. The air was filled with the smell of ink and fixative so she set up her fan and pointed it toward the open door. The satin finish and the heat lamps had done their job and the aprons and shirts were dry, the colors set and safe for washing machines. She had had only three children’s sized shirts and to those she had added some comical bugs and flowers, which in the light of day she judged to be acceptable. Juliet had worked until exhausted last night and then fallen into bed, not discovering that she had her nightgown on backwards until morning.

  She supposed that she should take the one large shirt to Mickey but decided that instead she would make a gift of it to Sheriff Garret. It would make a nice excuse to call in at his office and find out why he hadn’t invited himself up for sandwiches yet.

  Juliet didn’t fold the other shirts until after breakfast, whose limited gastronomic choices convinced her of the need for at least a little grocery shopping while she was in town. Taking a rare interest in her clothing she decided that it might be nice to wear one of her few sundresses. It was a linen shift from the sixties that she had found in a thrift shop and then block-printed with peonies. It was compromise between the suits she used to wear and the Bohemian draperies that most of her neighbors—male and female—chose to wear. The only difficulty was the side zipper which was a little rusted, but a bit of olive oil and a pair of pliers took care of that problem.

  She gave the ink as long as possible to set and for the smell to dissipate, but by ten o’clock she was feeling restless and decided that the shirts and aprons were safe and sufficiently odorless that she could set about folding them around a cardboard form she kept for that purpose. The folding was a small service, but Marnie at the shop appreciated having shirts that exactly fit their divided shelves. It was a small order, barely a dozen things, but the gift shop would be glad of them with the coming holiday weekend. Perhaps she would be able to do another design that night—something with flowers or maybe a stylized Marley, for those who weren’t fond of reptiles. Three-day weekends brought on a kind of mass brainwave that people in the city simply had to go somewhere and White Oaks was fortunately one of the chosen destinations.