The savage ceiba tree was everywhere: in the faded tapestries, as trim around the windows and doors, carved into the backs of furniture, even etched into the glass that covered the narrow front windows.
Why did a family home have to have defensible windows?
I sneezed.
The air was musty and there were tiny spots of mould here and there on the edges of the wall hangings.
The place was like a tomb waiting for its body to find a way home.
The entranceway opened into a cavernous foyer with wide archways that led off into a lounge room on the right and a music room, grand piano included, on the left. Straight ahead was a staircase, which rose up to the next floor, each step a single stone block cantilevered on top of the previous one to form a very modern spiral staircase. There was no railing.
First the steep steps, then this. Chilly, musty, damp … How on earth did a sick old lady in a wheelchair function in this mausoleum?
The housekeeper led me into the lounge room. The sound of bubbling water, the kind you usually hear when you’re standing right next to a river, covered our footsteps on the polished wooden floor.
A huge, C-shaped lounge, upholstered with worn turquoise and emerald cushions, took up the centre of the room. It faced into a massive fireplace you could’ve skipped around in, and between the lounge and the fireplace ran a four-foot-wide babbling brook, which appeared out of one end of a trench to the left of the lounge, danced over the rocks in its path and disappeared into the floor on the right.
I glanced into the fast flowing stream as we passed.
They weren’t rocks; they were Mayan stone skulls with long tongues curling out to lick the water as it tumbled past.
Surely Susan Curtis hadn’t spent decades held hostage by this barbaric monument, waiting for Earl to return?
The next room was an alcove painted a deep red. There was a carpeted hallway off to the left leading out to the back garden; I could see the bright green lawn beyond. The alcove held a small round table with a tall vase full of spiky dried flowers and opposite the doorway was a painting.
I came to an abrupt halt.
It was an astounding painting. Modern enough to stand out in the middle of so much faded Mayan splendour, and yet there was something primeval about it.
It made me uneasy.
In the midst of a sunlit desert, a mountain melted into a lake-like mirror. As I moved closer I could see the mountain was made of brown-lipped mouths, each topped by a pencil moustache. Staring out of the mirror was a man wearing a brown tweed tuxedo with a bright green snake as a bow tie.
A chest of drawers pushed out of where his face would’ve been.
In the open drawer a woman’s seductive blue eyes gazed back.
There was something about her irises that I couldn’t quite …
‘Miss Dupree,’ prodded the housekeeper. ‘We really shouldn’t keep Mrs Curtis waiting. She’s due for her next medication soon and when she has that you’ll have to leave …’
I studied the painting. ‘Is that an Alphonse Dada?’
Dada was a French surrealist painter famous for his eerie portraits. Dada said that his portraits were really landscapes, the internal landscape of the sitter. He claimed his talent was in revealing the true nature of their unconscious mind.
‘The painting?’ Her grimace of distaste displayed her opinion. ‘Oh yes, Mr Curtis knew Mr Dada, or so I’m told. He commissioned it from the painter himself.’
‘Mr Curtis commissioned it?’
‘Yes.’
The housekeeper rearranged a spiky flower to avoid gazing at the portrait … as though it repulsed her. ‘That’s supposed to be a portrait of Mr Curtis.’ She darted a glance at it. ‘Though how that could be I don’t exactly know.’
I zoomed in on the signature in the right bottom corner. There was a year next to it: 1939.
‘When exactly did Mr Curtis commission the painting?’
‘Well.’ Mrs Hutch was flustered by the question. ‘It’s been here since before I came. So …’
‘Could you find out before I have to leave? I want to be able to pick and choose what I ask Mrs Curtis … Depending on how fragile she is and how well her memory is still working. Can you do that?’
‘Certainly,’ she said, now determined to oblige. ‘Before you leave.’ Showing consideration to her employer was obviously the way to Mrs Hutch’s grouchy heart.
I searched the painting one last time. Just exactly what truth had Dada painted?
‘Who are you?’ slurred the man now blocking the hallway out to the back garden.
He was slouched against the wall, held an open beer can in one hand and exuded bad-attitude to spare.
‘Mr Troy, I didn’t know you were home,’ said the housekeeper, her back rigid with annoyance.
He didn’t reply.
It was hard to tell Troy’s age. He slouched there like a sulky teenager but there was enough burnished muscle on view for him to be older. All he wore was a pair of low-slung, yellow-and-white board shorts, which framed his well-defined six-pack very nicely.
Troy straightened and padded, with surprising grace, towards me for a closer inspection. He had longish fair hair, thickly lashed grey eyes and a scowl worn like body armour.
The housekeeper watched his dirty bare feet smudge soil and grass into the antique carpet, as though by sheer dint of will she could keep it from happening. But she kept her thin lips firmly shut.
The boy-man pointed his beer can at me; it was a cheap domestic. ‘I said, who are you?’ His pouty lips slurred around a rough-hewn American accent I couldn’t quite pinpoint.
Whatever its origin, he hadn’t picked it up at school.
The housekeeper had stopped eyeballing the stained carpet and was now glowering at Troy as though he was a wild beast about to run amok and she might have to shoot him.
‘Why’s it your business?’ I asked. He was rude.
Troy rubbed his smooth chest provocatively with his free hand … He watched for my reaction.
There wasn’t one.
He was good looking in a surfer-boy kind of way. And was evidently used to using it.
He tried again. ‘You’re here to talk to Suzie and I want to know why.’ ‘Suzie’ was not said in a loving way. ‘I’m her great-grandson.’
Really? Oh, there had to be one hell of a story behind his upbringing … This was Beverly Hills, yet everything about him screamed Trailer Park.
‘I’m Kannon Dupree.’
A flicker of intelligence cut through his sullen features. ‘I’ve heard of you …’
I sighed. Here it comes again …
‘You’re the daughter of that Time Marshal … the one who was lost on a mission in ancient Rome. You went back to save her.’
‘Something like that.’
Going into details just led to more questions and then more details … Usually personal ones I wanted to avoid.
‘Oh, I see what’s going on.’ Troy nodded to himself. ‘Suzie’s going to hire you to find out what happened to Earl. She wants to send you back to 1939.’
‘I can’t discuss my business with you.’
He tried to read my expression … couldn’t … and pushed further. ‘Well be careful because people tend to die around that old woman.’
Mrs Hutch gasped.
I knew Troy was trying to manipulate me but wanted to know why. ‘What exactly do you mean?’
Troy avoided the direct question. ‘Hey, that’s some accent, babe … Wot are yar, Englush?’ He’d faked a lousy accent, which started as Cockney and ended up Scottish.
I sighed again. ‘It’s Australian.’
Troy reached out a muscular hand to stroke the collar of my new suit. ‘Oh you’re hot, aren’t you, babe?’
I grabbed it before he made contact. ‘I’m too old for you, sonny, so back off.’
He gave me a considering glance. ‘You don’t look too old to me.’ Troy mock-batted his long eyelashes.
I f
rowned. Troy knew his way around older women … and it felt like it could’ve been in a semi-professional capacity.
Who the hell was this boy and what was he doing here?
‘Sure, Troy, that’s just what I need … Some underage sex with the relative of a client. How stupid do you think I am?’
That seemed to throw him. ‘I’m eighteen, babe, and …’
‘Yeah, yeah, and I throw anyone under twenty-one back, sonny.’
He narrowed his eyes as though trying to read me. ‘Don’t you want to know why I said that about Suzie? That people die …’
‘I get the feeling you’re going to tell me anyway.’ Troy was certainly fishing for something.
‘I’ll make a deal with you, babe. You answer my questions and I’ll tell you why you need to be careful.’
‘No.’
His face splintered into hurt and then hardened into defiance. He shot Mrs Hutch a swift look; she was barely covering her glee.
Yeah, he was still just a kid.
‘That’s enough, Mr Troy.’ The housekeeper swept past him saying, ‘Mrs Curtis is waiting.’
I gave Troy one last glance then followed. His eyes were bleak.
He was so out of place in this mouldy old tomb … and drowning in a past I could only glimpse.
The boy worried me …
5
THE COLLECTION ROOM
The Collection Room was in the right rear corner of the ground floor. Mrs Hutch opened one side of a pair of wooden doors, allowing me a view of the sizable room.
It glowed with the treasures of Antiquity.
Ivory and gold idols from India … majestic Egyptian mummies … exquisite Renaissance paintings …
They were real ones too, from the look of them, mounted on pedestals, hanging on racks on the walls and in custom-built display cases.
Beyond, the entire external wall was made of glass, inset with double doors. They opened onto a stone back patio and below that was the bright green lawn. The collection continued outside with a sculpture garden directly behind the house. Huge carved stone heads continued the Mesoamerican theme.
There was even some kind of altar …
Susan Curtis waited, enthroned like a warrior queen in the midst of all her booty, at the foot of a bronze statue of a beautiful but equally fierce young woman.
Susan may have melted, by dint of illness or age, into the shape of her own wheelchair, but the vigorous woman above her wielded a lethal-looking sword and grasped a man lying at her feet by his long curly hair.
She was about to decapitate him.
It had to be the Old Testament heroine Judith.
From the details I’d picked up about the Curtis family, Susan was in her nineties and she looked it. I wondered how long she’d been immobile. That had to age anyone. But from her vintage couture dress, perfect make-up and eagle-like expression it occurred to me that Susan didn’t view herself as anywhere near done yet.
And that she’d deliberately posed there, next to the statue of Judith, to send a message to me.
‘Ah, Kannon Dupree? Good, you’re on time … Jane, you may leave us now.’
Mrs Hutch had taken guard-position by the door and was unwilling to shift. She hesitated. ‘But …’
‘No, Jane. That will be all for the moment.’
Mrs Curtis turned back to me, effectively dismissing the housekeeper hovering uncertainly by the door.
‘Yes, madam.’ Mrs Hutch left.
Susan Curtis spoke with a clipped, upper class accent. Not Californian, definitely East Coast. Like nearly everyone else she pronounced my first name the same as the artillery weapon.
I was named for the Japanese Bodhisattva of Compassion and the two syllables are pronounced separately. Kan. Non. But I’d given up correcting people long ago.
‘Shelby Bloom said you wanted to see me, Mrs Curtis.’
She dismissed that with a wave of the hand. ‘What do you think of my husband’s collection?’ She spoke as though Earl Curtis was just in the next room taking a phone call. ‘It’s all authentic. Every single piece.’
I glanced around. ‘It must be the envy of the museums, ma’am.’ Privately, I wanted answers, not a tour.
‘It is,’ she said with deep pride. ‘Earl directed historical epics and each of these pieces was used in one of his films … Do you see that axe on the wall next to you?’
There was only one weapon in the room. A great double-headed axe, at least five feet long. I moved in for a better look. The twin blades were one piece of iron set in a jewelled hilt with leather bound around the handle for a better grip.
It was a weapon, but not for a foot soldier — for a king.
I ran one finger along the leather grip and wondered how it would feel in my hand.
‘That belonged to Attila the Hun,’ said Susan, pleased at my keen interest. ‘He carried it into battle against his bitter enemy, the Romans. But the last man he used it on was a traitor from his own tribe.’
I tested each blade with my thumb. Carefully. They were shiny and sharp enough to slice the Christmas ham.
‘Yes, I keep it honed, Kannon. Weapons are only beautiful when they’re ready to be used.’
I glanced back at Susan Curtis … sitting in her wheelchair at the feet of the sword-wielding woman about to decapitate her captive.
Just what kind of message was my client trying to send me?
‘And that bronze statue, Mrs Curtis, is that Judith, the Old Testament heroine who killed an enemy general to save her people?’
‘Yes, she’s cutting the neck of Holofernes.’ Susan’s eyes shone as she surveyed it. ‘This one’s mine, it’s the only new artefact in the room. Judith’s lesson is simple, my dear. The Bible says “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth …”’
Susan’s voice deepened to a soft growl. ‘Judith may’ve been only a woman … but, in the end, it only takes one slice to do the job …’
Now the message was clear.
‘Come here, girl. Sit with me,’ said Susan lightly … as though we’d just been discussing the weather. She patted the arm of the overstuffed French sofa next to her wheelchair.
I sat with reluctance. Why was I really hired?
Susan Curtis had been talking about more than antiques; she was out for revenge. Blood for blood.
My client wasn’t in her right mind …
‘Of course, the most important part of my husband’s collection is Ceiba House itself. It commemorates Crimson Dawn, Earl’s first big Hollywood hit. Earl made it in 1931, in the midst of the Depression. He wanted to create a film that would uplift as well as teach.’ She paused. ‘But you’ve probably heard that my husband was born into privilege?’
‘Yes.’ I’d done what prep I could before I flew down. ‘Your husband came from the Long Island Curtises … one of his brothers was a senator and the other a Supreme Court judge.’
‘What hasn’t been reported is that my husband also knew intimately what real poverty meant.’ Susan shot me a meaningful look, as if to say no one else knew the true story. ‘At nineteen my husband refused to follow his father’s orders and start his climb into conservative politics. Instead, Earl wanted to vent his creative soul … to find a way to give expression to all the things his family detested: emotions, love, feeling, intellectual freedom.’
‘And his father didn’t take that well?’
‘Earl’s family disowned him!’ she spluttered. ‘But even then they used their lawyers to hound him. He started as an actor … which they absolutely abhorred! But whenever he found work, they always found a way to stop him. So we came out here … so Earl could pursue his artistic vision, so he could say something of importance to the world.’
The picture was a bit too sugary, even for a long-dead spouse. ‘How did you meet your husband, Mrs Curtis?’
‘I’m from Long Island as well and we knew each other’s families. But I first met Earl in 1930, during the Depression, while I was raising money for a soup kitchen in New Yor
k. By then he was living on the streets.’
I hadn’t heard that part of the story. ‘Mr Curtis was actually homeless?’
She touched my arm with one soft, dry hand. ‘America was a different place then, my dear, we’d seen too much in the First World War … soldiers coming home with rotted lungs from gas in the trenches … Then just over a decade later came the 1929 stock market crash. This country capsized.’ Susan paused. ‘But maybe, Kannon, even as young as you are, with your past perhaps you could understand.’
‘Perhaps …’
I hadn’t lived through her particular piece of history. But I knew about suffering and what it does to you.
‘During the Depression the people of America looked to Hollywood for both ease from their misery and for ways to understand what was happening to them. So Earl searched for a story that would encourage people to keep going, no matter what.’ Susan shone with eager pride. ‘So that’s why his first big film was Crimson Dawn, the true story of Obsidian Shield … a courageous Mayan king who saved his people from certain disaster. Do you know the story?’
‘Tell me.’ It might shed some light on why Earl had built this bizarre death temple for his family home.
‘Well, like America, Obsidian Shield’s kingdom was in dire distress … A long drought had been followed by famine and disease. Death Mouth — his father and king — was ruled by the priests, who demanded more and more sacrifices to appease the gods. But Obsidian Shield blamed the priests for the crisis. They’d cleared the jungle so they could build new temples and then launched the kingdom into war so they could stock their altars with fresh sacrifices …’ Susan paused to let that image sink in. ‘Obsidian Shield tried to convince his father, but Death Mouth refused to listen. To intimidate Obsidian Shield, the priests demanded a noble sacrifice. They said they needed royal blood to feed the angry gods.’
It wasn’t hard to see what was coming. ‘So the priests wanted to sacrifice Obsidian Shield?’
She nodded. ‘But instead Death Mouth invaded the neighbouring kingdom, which was ruled by his cousin, Screaming Eagle. He captured the royal family, including Screaming Eagle’s daughter, Orchid Rain. The priests demanded that Obsidian Shield prove his loyalty by personally sacrificing the captured royal family at dawn. Instead, Obsidian Shield led a coup and eliminated his father and the priests …’
Hoodwink Page 4
