Ghost Sickness

by Amber Foxx

  “Like the church at Acoma,” Alan said. “Corn and parrots on the walls inside. Parrots have been important to all the pueblos for centuries.”

  Niall nodded. “She used to say that owning Violet was the only way she was traditional.”

  Daphne asked, “Are you sure a museum would want something unsigned?”

  Niall bent closer to the painting, studying it. “If I get an authenticator to look at it.”

  Mae glanced back and forth between Niall and Daphne, puzzled. “It’s in her house. In her studio. You’d still have to prove it’s hers?”

  “Ayeh. Unsigned, I would. And it doesn’t look quite finished. Not saying I doubt it’s hers. But...” He straightened, rubbing his back. “I need to make some phone calls. I’ve got a firm lined up for the piece from the Chavez-Mirabal Gallery. I’m sure they’d love to add this to their bill.” He studied the parrot a few more minutes and turned away. “Don’t move it. We have to leave it where we found it.” He left the room, Marty following.

  “The piece from the gallery,” Mae said. “Did Niall get someone to make a purchase there?”

  Daphne perched on the paint-splattered stool and took a picture of the painting with her phone. “He shouldn’t have mentioned that.” She took another picture. “I can’t believe she didn’t tell me how much work she’d actually done on this.”

  Alan studied the painting closely. “No one’s opened this room at all since she moved out?”

  “No.” Daphne frowned, checking something in her phone. “When Chuck installed the alarm, all he did was put a sensor over the studio door.”

  “No wonder it stinks.” Jamie spoke for the first time. “Need some air.” He opened the back door and sat on the floor with his feet out on the steps. The outside temperature was still over ninety, and the fresh air came in with a swath of heat.

  Mae walked over to the painting. There was nothing that told her it was unfinished aside from the lack of a signature, but there had to be some missing final touches Niall would expect of his friend. She must have worked on it up until the last minute, when she literally couldn’t paint anymore.

  Niall and Marty returned and began to examine the color sketches taped to the wall, the drafts of the painting. “These are valuable, too,” Niall said. “Should help a lot with authentication.”

  “I still can’t believe you have to do that,” Marty said.

  “Ayeh. There’ve been some big finds in the art world that had to be authenticated. Craziest one was a Pollock that two women were fighting over—his last lover, his ex-wife or his wife—I can’t remember who they were, but one said he’d painted it for her. The other lady said it was a fake. Authenticators couldn’t agree. The thing that decided it was polar bear DNA from a rug in his house. Can you believe that?”

  Alan said, “And then there was that Kahlo archive a man in Mexico claimed she’d left at his house. That never was authenticated, even though it’s been exhibited in New York. Some people say it’s hers, and some say it’s too rough.”

  Niall shook his head. “That stuff didn’t look much better than Reno’s Kahlo to me. But I guess every artist produces some lesser stuff she doesn’t want to sell.”

  “Reno’s Kahlo?” Mae asked. This conversation was making wheels turn in her head.

  “She loved Kahlo, so he did the memorial to Violet as a Kahlo-esque thing. Too bad it’s missing. She really wanted to be buried with it.”

  “Maybe that’s for the best,” Marty said. “His imitation of another artist would be like burying her with a reminder he was a forger.”

  Everyone but Jamie stared at the unsigned painting. Mae felt a shared unease among them after the mention of Reno. Maybe Niall had another reason besides the lack of signature for getting the pink parrot authenticated. There was one missing piece of the Reno puzzle Mae hadn’t solved yet. The black fabric. If he’d been blacking out windows in Florencia’s house, this could be another forgery.

  She told Niall, “I’ll need to talk to you in a minute,” and then went over to check on Jamie. She rested her hand on his shoulder. “You feeling okay, sugar?”

  He sat up straighter and rubbed his head under his hat. “Yeah. Need time alone with her stuff. I’ll either get rid of the ghost or make peace with it.” He stood. “Too bad everyone quit smoking. I need some tobacco for a ceremony.”

  Mae looked at Niall. “About time you got rid of those cigarettes. That’ll be a good use for ’em.”

  “Cigarettes and lighter in the glove box of the Bug.” Niall tossed Jamie his key ring. “You turning Indian on us? Ceremonial tobacco?”

  “Sort of. Ezra gave me some guidance.” Jamie sorted through the keys. “And Mum’s people do smoking ceremonies. Not smoking smoking. Y’know. Smudging. No worries, I won’t do that part in here.”

  Leaving Jamie to his ritual, Mae went with the others to the living room. Marty drifted to the front window to look outside while Alan studied Florencia’s collection. Niall and Daphne stood facing Mae. “Well?” Niall asked.

  “I hate to say this, but Reno might have painted the pink parrot. Not the whole thing, but I think he came in and finished it over this sort of sketch with dots she did—”

  “A cartoon,” Niall said. “Sketch with dots.” He shook his head. “Why would he do that?”

  “I don’t know. But he was doing something strange a few nights ago.” She described the blow-away pieces of black fabric and his attempt to get it back from her yard. “If he knows about authentication, he might have planned this one to pass the DNA test by doing it here, maybe even wearing some of her clothes while he finished it. When I was packing her stuff to be cleaned, there was long black hair on a couple of her sweaters.”

  “That’s not proof of anything. For crissakes, he could have hugged her. And why would he finish her work? If he thought he was inheriting, it wouldn’t make her estate more valuable.” Niall’s hand went to his pocket as if he still smoked. “In fact, if she left something partly done and he painted the rest of it, that would ruin it.”

  Daphne added, “And if he was really concerned about Niall getting this painting authenticated, Reno would have been much less likely to trigger questions if he’d finished it all the way and signed it.”

  “But he couldn’t. Ghost sickness. He has a taboo on the names of the dead.”

  Niall and Daphne exchanged glances and nodded.

  Mae said, “He could have been in here that night finishing that painting. But the paint was fresh and he didn’t want to move it yet. He might have meant to come back for it and then Chuck put the alarm in.”

  “It’s plausible.” Alan left off examining a painting. “Oils take two weeks or more to dry. But if he did what you think he did, the authenticators are going to split. Morellian analysis will say it’s not hers, DNA will say it is.”

  Daphne folded her arms and paced away. “Damn. This could be a mess. He might have had some collector lined up who doesn’t check the provenance too thoroughly. And he could have taken pictures in her studio like I did, made it look authentic.” She stopped pacing and one foot started tapping. “Mae could authenticate it, I suppose, though no one’s going to take that evidence seriously.”

  “Maybe Florencia really did paint it.” Marty turned to face them. “She could have worked hard right up to the last minute. Like that surge you get toward the finish line in a race. It might not have been Reno.”

  “I hope you’re right.” Mae didn’t like to think Reno might have ruined the last piece of Florencia’s legacy. “You mind if I go check? I know it won’t hold up for anyone else, but will y’all believe me?”

  Niall told her to find out what she could, and Mae walked back to the studio. She hoped Jamie had finished his private ceremony. As troubled as he’d been after witnessing Florencia’s death, she didn’t want to interrupt him.

  Finding the door closed, she listened, heard nothing, then tapped on it and waited. No answer. “Sugar? Are you okay?” Silence. He’d been having s
o many panic attacks lately, she couldn’t help worrying, and let herself in. The back door stood open. Jamie was gone. So was the painting.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Mae’s first thought was that he had wandered off, forgetting to close the door, and someone had stolen the painting. Reminded of Shelli’s story about the parrots flying away, Mae had an image of the pink parrot flying off the canvas and out the door to someone who happened to find it. The idea was absurd—and then it wasn’t. Her original hypothesis about thefts, not forgeries, might have been right. Zak had been—a little too conveniently—right in the neighborhood.

  Picking up litter? Not a very Zak-like behavior. Ezra had helped Jamie create his ceremony. Zak could have probed the boy for Jamie’s plans. If he’d watched Jamie start his ritual on the far side of the yard, Zak could have made a run for it. It was a bold theft, though, and desperately risky. Would he really have done that? And wouldn’t she have heard him if he came into the house? He might have taken his shoes off to be quiet, but that would have taken time.

  More likely, Jamie had carried the painting out for his ceremony. Niall had said not to move it, but in his anxiety-ridden fog, Jamie didn’t always listen.

  The smell of smoke drew her to the side yard beyond the carport. Jamie was kneeling at Violet’s grave. A thin trail of smoke rose from it. Tobacco and some type of evergreen. Had he put the painting on the rocks, in front of a fire? What if it was Florencia’s work and not Reno’s? Mae hurried toward Jamie.

  His back to her, he stood, brushing the smoke over himself. When she saw nothing on the little cairn but a heap of smoldering plant material, she slowed down and let him finish. He rubbed his face, looked up at the sky, and then turned to her with a sad yet radiant smile. His eyes were dark and clear, his lashes wet, as if a cleansing storm had passed through.

  For a second, she almost forgot the painting. Jamie had been healing himself, alone—and it had worked. “You’re feeling a lot better now, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah.” He sniffed loudly and looked down at the rocks. “Zak would kill me, starting a fire—what’s the fire danger level now?” He scooped some dirt onto the embers and watched the smoke diminish. “This is the parrot’s grave, isn’t it?” Mae affirmed that it was, and Jamie added more dirt. “Thought so. Felt like the spot called her.”

  Mae couldn’t believe Jamie had sought out a dead person. “You talked to her spirit?”

  “Not her. Violet. Or the parrot god or something.”

  “The parrot god?”

  “Yeah. Animal spirit helper. Lonnie told me I’d find one. She listened. Helped me out.” He brushed his hands on his pants. “Hope Niall doesn’t mind. I used all the cigarettes.”

  “He’d better not care. But he won’t like you moving the painting. Where’d you put it?”

  Jamie sniffed again. “Fuck. Wish I could cry without snot. Need a tissue.” He headed for the house.

  “Sugar, can you just—”

  “Tell you in a minute.”

  After waiting more than a minute, Mae grew concerned, thinking again about Zak stealing. She began looking for the painting. What place, other than Violet’s grave, would seem symbolic and important to Jamie? The yard was nothing but weedy dirt with no garden spot. She searched the front porch and the juniper shrubs along the side fence, found nothing, and sat on the back steps.

  A scuffed place in the driveway caught her eye, a drag mark in the gravel next to the Beetle. Mae got up to look more closely. A couple of smaller shoved places in the gravel looked like hand marks. Had Jamie fallen? Was that what was taking him so long? Maybe he’d hurt himself and not tended to it until now. She hadn’t heard any kind of thump or tumble, but then, she’d been in the front part of the house and they’d all been talking.

  He finally came out, hat in hand, with his face, shirtfront, and the ends of his hair dripping wet.

  “Sugar? What were you doing?”

  “Drinking from the toilet.” He sat down. “Not really. Felt dizzy. Heat gets to me. Had to drink out of the faucet with my hands and just kept splashing.”

  “You okay now?” He nodded, and she took a seat beside him and rubbed his thigh. It was hot, with little damp spots on his jeans. “Did you fall while you were getting the tobacco?”

  “Weird question. You think I pass out every chance I get?”

  “No. Of course not. It just looked like someone slipped in the gravel near Niall’s car.”

  “Wasn’t me.”

  She should have realized that. The long, deep track suggested someone running fast and skidding. She’d taken some falls like that rounding the bases in softball, and a worse one trail running, sliding on one knee and both hands. What if Zak had grabbed the pink parrot?

  “You’ve got to tell me what you did with the painting.”

  Jamie met her eyes. She wasn’t sure what she saw in his other than the fading of the fresh, deep clarity from his ceremony.

  “It needs some more time.” He dragged his fingers through his hair and put his hat on. “It’s where it is for a reason, all right? Let’s go in.” Jamie rose, fanning his wet shirt away from his body. The parrot print shirt. “I will pass out if I stay out here much longer. And I need to talk to Niall.”

  Mae stood, undecided where to go. She didn’t want to accuse Zak with so little to go on, but if he’d taken the painting, he could already be driving away with it.

  “You go in without me,” she said. “I need to talk to Zak.”

  “No—you have to be with me—”

  Jamie’s protests faded as she sped away. There was no time to lose. She charged down Foch, crossing Main and Broadway, turned right onto Austin, and kept flying for three blocks until she reached Clancy.

  Zak’s Eagle and Refugio’s art-embellished truck were parked in front of the motel-like one-story apartment building where Misty lived. Relieved that Zak hadn’t left town, Mae slowed down to catch her breath.

  On the cement front porch that blended into the sidewalk, a young Latino man sat on a bench watching two little girls play with toy horses. Mae glanced into the Eagle as she approached. The station wagon’s interior had no hiding places. The large suitcase with purple flowers on it had to belong to Ezra, no doubt a hand-me-down from one of his sisters. A battered gym bag gaped open with Zak’s race clothes airing out in it. Misty didn’t normally leave her doors unlocked like Melody did, but she might have done so for her guests. Would Zak have brought the painting into the apartment?

  When Mae knocked on Misty’s door, the neighbor said, “She went off with some friends.”

  “Thanks. None of them came back without her, did they?”

  “Not that I know of. Not by the front door.”

  Mae didn’t want to go in uninvited. On the chance that Zak had come in through the back and was ignoring her, she opened the door and called out from the porch, “Anybody home?”

  In the combined living room-kitchen, Misty’s motorcycle stood by the far wall, surrounded by standard Chino sister housekeeping: dirty dishes, discarded clothes, books and magazines lying open face down. The place was silent.

  As she was closing the door, thudding steps behind told her Zak was on his way, and that he’d come at a gallop. He came to a stop, glaring at her. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  *****

  Alan, Niall, Marty, and Daphne were seated along the living room floor. Jamie felt bad for keeping them—only Marty looked comfortable—and yet things had to be finished. Brought back into balance. What was that word Lonnie used? Gozho. Jamie doubted that he was ever in gozho himself, and yet he was trying to heal this whole miserable mess.

  He stood facing the group, hands at his sides, fingers squirming. Going back and forth between what he thought of as the onstage and backstage parts of the healing was stressing him out. Both parts were necessary, though, the spiritual and the mundane. There were things to be done in both worlds. He scanned his audience and focused on Niall, searching for words.


  Niall spoke first. “So, you’ve finished your ritual. Did it help?”

  “Sort of. Not done yet.” Jamie wished Mae would come back. He had to plunge in without her, though, and hope her absence wouldn’t lead to problems. “You need to forgive Reno.”

  “What does that mean? Did Mae find out he painted it?”

  Fuck. This was not going well. Jamie took his hat off and shook his hair. “Not yet. She ...” If only she’d come in with him. He improvised. “She went home to get her crystals. I didn’t want her to miss this part of the ceremony, but she needed them.”

  “Forgiving Reno is part of your ceremony?”

  “Yeah. He wasn’t always bad to your friend, y’know? We all do stuff that hurts people, but it doesn’t mean we don’t love them. Don’t you think, over two years with her, he made her happy more than he made her unhappy?”

  Niall pushed air out between his teeth. “She liked having a young man around. But she liked a lot of young men. Had flings with six or seven that I know of. Some of them artists. And they all pissed her off in the end. But none of them forged her work. If he did that—”

  “What if he didn’t? Maybe he’s just one more bloke who pissed her off.” Jamie rubbed his beard and began to fidget with the brim of his hat. “All you know is that Reno had a fight with his teacher, and he had a secret he hid from Misty. Mae jumped to conclusions. Hate to say this, because she meant well, but the only thing she ever saw that he was hiding from Misty was ... something romantic. With his teacher.”

  “Mae never told me that.”

  “Didn’t think she had to. She was doing the psychic work for Misty.”

  Niall looked up. Something across the room seemed to hold his attention. Jamie followed his gaze to the Cowboy Angel.

  “I know Reno could have learned to paint like her,” he said, “he was with her for so long. But it doesn’t mean he’d be selling forgeries. Jeezus. What’s more believable? Lovers’ quarrel, if you ask me.”

  “Then what do I need to forgive him for?”