Back Against the Wall

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Seeing her surprised glance, he said, “None of the jewelry will mean anything to me. This job is yours. Tell me if anything that she often wore is missing or there’s something that surprises you.”

  Beth nodded. She picked out the lump of chains that looked like a heap of snakes. Most, from the way they’d blackened, appeared to be sterling silver; a couple might be gold. Pendants...oh! She remembered that tiny bird. And the pearl, which was attached to one of the gold chains.

  “I think... Dad bought her that. Their first Christmas together?”

  She kept going. Lots of earrings. It would take work to pair them up again. Most were costume jewelry, nice enough that Emily might like them or they could be donated to the thrift store. The pearl necklace... I might keep, she thought, now that I know she didn’t choose to leave us.

  In the bottom, amidst a jumble of bangle bracelets, a silver charm bracelet and bead necklaces, she found the other diamond earring. The setting and post could have been silver, except they hadn’t tarnished at all.

  She squinted at the back, looking for a stamp. “I think this is white gold, or even platinum.”

  “We need to have a jeweler look at them,” he said, taking the one from her and fishing for its mate. “Once we know more, I can ask your father about them.”

  Beth dug deeper, setting the cheaper stuff out of the way in pursuit of a glint she’d seen. It was a pendant, an even larger diamond set in a swirl of that same shining silver. Except...not silver. The matching, impossibly delicate chain was almost weightless draped over her hand.

  Beth couldn’t take her eyes off it. “This looks really expensive.”

  Tony’s lawn chair squeaked as he moved. “Yeah, it does.”

  “Mom did make a good income. She might have rewarded herself after a good year. Or...or she and Dad agreed to pick out their own Christmas presents.” Except Dad didn’t own anything comparable, unless you added up an awful lot of books.

  “Then why don’t you remember her wearing these?” Tony asked, his gaze on the necklace, too.

  “I told you.” Her quick response was...defensive? “I might not have noticed.”

  “Your brother or sister might,” he said, soothing.

  She bit her lip, hard enough to sting, before she nodded.

  He accepted the necklace from her and allowed it to slither through his fingers to lie beside the obviously matching earrings. “Have you at least glanced at everything?”

  “Yes.”

  “What should be there but isn’t?”

  Trying to think, Beth frowned. “Nothing. Except...did you find her rings?”

  “Plural?”

  “Engagement ring and wedding band?”

  “Neither were with her body.” He looked and sounded energized. “So what happened to them?”

  “Dad might know. If she left them on the dresser—or, wait, the computer desk would have made more sense—he might have put them away. Her I’m leaving you note would have been more convincing if it looked like she’d taken her rings off, wouldn’t it?”

  “It would.” He sat back, frowning a little and gazing ahead as if not seeing anything in the garage. “But, if so, why wouldn’t he have said she had? Why would he let you all think she would be coming home?”

  “Because...he wanted to let us hold onto hope for a while?”

  Tony looked at her, his eyebrows a little crooked.

  “I guess that doesn’t sound like Dad, does it?” And he was right. Nothing like that would ever occur to her father. “Do you think whoever killed Mom thought she’d be harder to identify without the rings?”

  “Even then, DNA was commonly known,” he pointed out. “And comparing dental work, which is what we did.”

  “If Dad killed her, he’d have made sure she ‘left’ the rings, and that we all saw them. They would have supported his story.”

  “They would have,” Tony agreed, some reluctance in his voice. “Although your dad doesn’t strike me as a great planner.”

  A spike of anger had her dumping jewelry back in the polished wooden box. “You’re convinced that he’s the killer, aren’t you?”

  “He’s still likeliest, Beth.”

  She shook her head, glaring at him. “Do you always go for the easy answer?”

  Some stiffening of his shoulders and a narrowing of those dark eyes were all that gave away his reaction to her jab. “Do I try to turn every crime into a convoluted mystery, when it isn’t? No. Am I as impartial and thorough as I can be? Yes. Why else am I here with you?”

  The backs of her eyes burned, but she wouldn’t let him see that much vulnerability. “Good question.”

  He scooted the plastic tote with the diamond jewelry atop to one side, letting her pack the jewelry box away while he brought the next cardboard box, narrow and tall. The last of those Mom’s things that she’d set aside.

  “This one is all prints or artwork, I think,” she said, stripping everything she felt from her voice.

  Once again, he let her remove them one by one. Most were framed prints, not very interesting. A few looked vaguely familiar; all ran to being pretty or cute. Beth had a niggling memory that this box had once sat on the top shelf of the linen closet. Maybe Mom had traded these out for variety?

  The portfolio, however, she didn’t remember seeing before yesterday. Open, she saw that it contained unframed prints, most matted. Curious, Beth pulled them all out.

  The first couple seemed to be original watercolors, better quality than the framed stuff. The view in one was across a cove of Frenchman Lake at the curving lines of wine grape vines following the contours of the hills that sheltered the lake. The other was a close-up of a vine, heavy with grapes.

  The third she didn’t even see because her gaze was caught by what had lain beneath it. A colored-pencil drawing of a seductively smiling, nude woman, hair spread on a pillow, legs wantonly apart. Beth was vaguely aware that Tony had leaned forward, expression arrested. She couldn’t take her eyes from this beautiful, obscene drawing.

  “That’s—How can it be?” Her stomach lurched, and she clapped a hand to her mouth. “Dear God. That’s my mother!”

  Chapter Seven

  THE INSTANT BETH uncovered the drawing, Tony knew he was looking at Christine Marshall. A Christine very different than she’d appeared in the photographs he’d seen.

  For Beth’s sake, he wanted to whisk the damn thing out of sight. Still, he’d half hoped for a surprise to turn up—although he couldn’t have predicted this one—and he had a job to do.

  “Are you sure it’s your mother?” he asked, with some urgency.

  Her head bobbed. Her hand remained over her mouth. He hoped her stomach wasn’t going to revolt.

  “The face could be hers, the body entirely imaginary,” he suggested.

  She shook her head so vehemently that strands escaped the elastic at her nape.

  He resumed studying the drawing. Okay, this woman was obviously petite, slender, even delicate. Small-breasted, slim-hipped. In fact, she was built a lot like Beth’s sister.

  Beth’s hand dropped to her lap, although her eyes never left the drawing. “We used to go swimming a lot. We showered and changed in the dressing room. I was shy and stayed wrapped in a towel as much as I could, but Mom was confident enough not to be self-conscious.”

  Another way of saying her mother was proud of her body. Rightly, he couldn’t help thinking, given that she’d been forty-two when she disappeared. And that she’d borne three children.

  “See?” In a tone lacking all animation, Beth, pointed to a faint line that could have been a shadow, or a crease. “She had a C-section when Emily was born.”

  “Damn,” he murmured. “Who drew this?”

  “I don’t know.” She looked sick. “Dad can hardly draw a stick figure, in case you were wondering.”


  He actually hadn’t been, even though husbands had been known to commission this kind of drawing or painting of their wives. John Marshall? Tony’s imagination didn’t stretch that far.

  This drawing was both skilled and sensual. It caught the beckoning position of spread arms and legs as well as the heavy-lidded eyes and a teasing smile. If the artist hadn’t also been her lover, Tony would swallow his badge, pointy edges and all.

  “The style doesn’t look familiar?”

  “I—” Beth started to take her head, but stopped. “I don’t know,” she said haltingly. “I mean, I don’t remember seeing anything like this. Why would I have?”

  He watched her for a minute, seeing doubt she didn’t want to acknowledge. Tony thought there was a good chance that, somewhere, sometime, she’d seen a drawing by this same artist. His experience said that pushing her now wouldn’t help. The memory had to make its own labyrinthine way to the surface.

  “We’d better make sure there isn’t another one,” he said.

  Appearing somewhere between numb and horrified, Beth shifted the erotic drawing to one side with a nudge that suggested she didn’t really want to touch it. He couldn’t blame her. Even as he studied the next piece of art, he imagined himself helpfully organizing contents of his mother’s garage or closet and finding something like this... Good God! He repressed a shudder and made himself concentrate.

  He was looking at a watercolor of a basalt rimrock, a natural formation in this volcanic country that resembled the remnants of an ancient castle wall. It was beautifully done, surely by the same artist as the other watercolors.

  Next came a watercolor of a sunset over ocean waves that looked amateurish.

  That was it.

  All five pieces of art were laid out in front of him. Three different artists, he’d swear. The ocean painting verged on generic and lacked a signature. The rimrock—he’d buy that one, if he saw it for sale. He liked the sculptural lines of the vineyard above the lake, but vineyards didn’t do much for him. Those three watercolors were signed, but the scrawl was unreadable.

  He supposed it was conceivable an artist that talented could draw human figures in an entirely different style. Hard to see, though. The lines of the drawing were precise rather than fluid, despite the woman’s erotic sprawl. He pictured the artist—a man? Tony presumed so, but couldn’t be sure—sketching an outline, then coloring within the lines, in a way. Concentrating on each tiny detail.

  The four watercolors were matted, likely by the artists. The erotic drawing hadn’t been. Christine couldn’t have framed and hung it in her house, that was for sure.

  He glanced at Beth, who had hunched forward.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “That I can’t believe my mother let anyone draw this.”

  Let? Her mother had posed for the artist. Nothing involuntary about it.

  “Beth, did you ever have any reason to suspect she had a lover?”

  She shot him an outraged look. “No!” But he’d swear she’d pulled into a tighter ball, like a woman expecting a blow—or sheltering a secret.

  Part of his job was to push and push until whomever he was interviewing broke. Look for the tells, like her current posture, and use them. But he flat could not make himself do that, not to her, not now. She was still part of his job, but she’d triggered completely unprofessional feelings in him. And, damn, he’d have to watch that.

  In this case... Thinking back to her brother’s hostility toward his mother as well as his father, Tony doubted he’d have to get his answers from Beth. Matt knew about the lover, sure as hell, and was hot-tempered enough to spill as soon as he was asked the right question.

  “Okay,” Tony said. “Let’s slide all these into the portfolio, trying not to touch them anymore than we already have.”

  “But...we’re wearing gloves.” Beth looked up at him and wriggled her fingers.

  “Yeah, but we don’t want to smear an underlying fingerprint.”

  “The artist would have had to touch this, wouldn’t he?”

  Oh, yeah. Unfortunately, the texture of the paper was rough enough to make Tony wonder how well a print could be lifted, but he had hope. Not that a fingerprint was likely to do much good until he had a suspect, however. What were the odds Christine’s lover had committed a previous crime and therefore was in the system?

  He glanced at his watch, calculated and said, “Are you able to go on?”

  “On?” Beth followed his gaze to the piles on the far side of the garage, the ones no one had gone through yet. Her sturdy agreement came as no surprise.

  * * *

  THEY WORKED FOR several more hours, finding nothing of interest to Tony. Beth had to go back to making decisions: keep, recycle, throw away or thrift store.

  She came across a tent packed in a long, narrow bag, as well as several sleeping bags. She didn’t remember ever going camping, but Matt might. The sleeping bags they’d taken for overnights at friends’ houses and when friends slept over at their house. Provisionally, she decided to keep those and get rid of the tent.

  Two boxes proved to contain back issues of academic journals: The Harvard Review of Philosophy and Philosopher’s Imprint. Beth had a suspicion her mother had gotten tired of the overflow and packed these up without Dad’s knowledge. She was tempted to either drop them into the recycling or haul them over to the Wakefield library to see if they’d like some extra back issues, but her conscience overcame her. She’d ask him what he wanted to do, even knowing he’d be delighted to recover them and add them to the heaps in the house.

  She’d intended for some time to get someone to turn either her or Matt’s old bedroom into a real library to supplement the built-ins in the family room and the bookcases in Dad’s office. More wall-to-wall shelves, with the books truly organized, would at least get them off the floor. Until her father added too many more.

  Frowning at the periodicals, Tony said, “Your father doesn’t seem like a home improvement guy.”

  She gave a small laugh. “That’s safe to say. What are you thinking?”

  “The piece of wallboard.” He nodded over his shoulder. “How someone could haul it in here unnoticed.”

  “Oh. I think it might have been here.”

  He stared at her.

  “Mom and Dad tried a do-it-yourself job putting shelving in his office. Maybe a year or two before she disappeared? She was getting mad at the piles of books everywhere. I think she’d thought the bookcases in the family room would solve the problem.”

  “Doesn’t sound like she knew him very well.”

  Beth’s smile was sad. “Apparently not. Anyway, they put up those wall-hung tracks, and used some kind of special screws or thingies that are supposed to prevent the whole thing from tearing out of the drywall.”

  “Books are heavy.”

  “They started collapsing almost right away, leaving holes in the walls.” She hesitated. “Mom was not happy. They had to hire someone to replace the drywall and spackle it. Then, instead of custom built-ins, they just bought tall, wood bookcases. I...have this vague memory of a piece of wallboard left over. It was lying on its side over there.” She gestured.

  “So our killer was an opportunist.”

  “You mean, he knew the wallboard was there.”

  “Yeah. It’s been bugging me. Bringing the new sheet in and breaking up the old one and getting it out unseen wouldn’t have been any easier than carrying a body out unnoticed.”

  She shivered. When Tony apologized, she shook her head. “Believe me, I’ve been envisioning all of it already.”

  She went on to the next box in hopes of distracting herself. This one held children’s board games, puzzles and toys, as did the next one, confirming her suspicion that her mother had pack rat tendencies, too. When she said so, Tony laughed.

  “I think my mother doe
s—or did—too. Every time one of my sisters has another kid, Mamá comes up with more baby clothes, or a plastic rattle or a creaky old stroller.”

  “She might be shopping thrift and consignment stores,” Beth suggested. “Wanting to help her kids without them knowing she’s spending money.”

  His gaze sharpened. “I never thought of that. Huh. It sounds like her. I always wondered because wouldn’t you think eight of us would wear everything out?”

  She enjoyed his chagrin. “Yep.”

  “Well, crap. Do I tell my sisters?”

  What an unexpected conversation to be having with the detective investigating her mother’s murder. She said, “Unless your mother is struggling financially, I’d vote no.” As if she had any vote in his decisions.

  He didn’t seem to notice her embarrassment. “Mamá isn’t rich, but she’s okay. We’d take care of her even if she runs through her savings and Social Security. You’re right. I’ll keep my mouth shut. I’ll bet she enjoys the shopping.”

  “Most women do.”

  He lifted his eyebrows. “But not you?”

  “Not especially. If I need something to wear...well, it’s just something everyone has to do. I guess if I ever have children, it might be fun.” To distract herself, she reached for something enveloped in black trash bags, secured with masking tape that was peeling. When she tugged up one edge enough to peer in, she said, “Oh, ugh.”

  Tony took a look, too. “That’s the saddest looking Christmas tree I’ve ever seen.”

  “Well, assembled...” She gave it up. It would still look tattered and fake. “I hated not having a real tree. I can’t remember when we quit using this one.” She stood and dragged it to sit next to the big box labeled Toss. Returning, she said, “I would really like to think I didn’t inherit the frugal gene. At least, not taken too far.”

  Grimacing, he said, “The Depression did this to our grandparents’ generation. Well, not my paternal grandparents. They weren’t able to bring much at all when they came to America. Mamá’s parents, now, they fussed over every penny any of their kids or grandkids spent.”