Intimate Portraits

by Cheryl B. Dale

  She wouldn’t play his game. “Let’s have one last funnel cake before we leave.”

  “I’ve got to pick up my candle, too.” Laney glanced at her watch. “He was supposed to have it ready by now.”

  The funnel cake tasted flat, and everyone except Autumn ended up with powdered sugar all over their clothes. Laney brushed off John and smeared it all over his jacket front.

  Rennie declined his sister’s help.

  Autumn didn’t offer hers.

  Afterward, they walked over near the tower where they could get a good view of the glockenspiel. After waiting twenty minutes in the cold, the show wasn’t nearly as entertaining as Autumn had imagined.

  She wasn’t the only one disappointed.

  “You mean that’s it?” Laney exclaimed once the people disappeared from their balcony. She huffed and put her hands on her hips in disbelief. “We stood around all afternoon in the cold to watch a bunch of people come out on the porch and wave their trombones or whatever around? And fake trombones, at that. This is disgusting.”

  “Now, Elena,” Rennie chided. “What did you expect? Didn’t you know what a glockenspiel was? What did you think it would be like? I thought it was lovely. The musicians played—or maybe mimed is a better word—their part to perfection. And the dancing was very, very alpine-like. Well worth the trip to Helen and our sojourn in a primitive cabin with few conveniences and not enough hot water for six adults.”

  Autumn tucked her Nikon away in its case. “They were supposed to be French horns. If you didn’t want to stay, Rennie, you should have told me.”

  “And miss the show? Heavens to Murgatroyd! I wouldn’t have dreamed of it.” Rennie exuded a positively saintly air.

  “I think that was a broom the man on the right next to the end was carrying,” John offered. “I mention it because I know Laney would never recognize one otherwise.”

  “You pig.” Taking off her glove, Laney ran her cold hand up beneath her husband’s sweater.

  He yipped and tried to get away.

  “Children, children.” Rennie’s grin glimmered. “Can’t you behave? Here’s a cafe, Autumn. You said you wanted a cup of cappuccino before we start home. Come on, let’s sit down while Laney picks up her candle.”

  Autumn had hoped, after the undeniable evidence he had given of his feelings for her, he would talk to her about his reaction the past night. Instead, he had retreated into his role of big brother and friend.

  What was she going to do? He’d already seen her with all her clothes off, so stripping naked and prancing around in front of him wouldn’t accomplish anything.

  At last they started back to Atlanta, alone, but when they passed the old mill leading out of town and before she could broach the subject uppermost on her mind, Rennie said, “You can’t go back home. Not till we find out what happened to Kiki.”

  Nausea swelled. She refused to think about Kiki in her blood-soaked jacket amid strewn groceries. “You’re being paranoid.”

  “Listen, Autumn, someone tried to stab you last night on the bridge.”

  “No, no, it—”

  “Yes, they did. Anyone looking at your butt pack can see what happened. Those detectives realized it, too. And today a woman wearing a coat like yours was shot to death. Something’s wrong.”

  She didn’t want to believe it, tried not to believe it. But could his taking those things so seriously mean that he cared for her in more than a friendly way?

  If only he would take his eyes off the road.

  No clue from his profile.

  She swallowed. “I’m not a fool. I realize the two things may be connected, but don’t you think the most likely thing is someone mistook me for Kiki last night on the bridge? After all, it was dark and I had on my coat like hers. Kiki told us herself her husband was threatening her. Doesn’t it make sense to think he mistook me for her, before he got a chance today to—”

  Images from that morning flooded, blotting out those of the vivacious woman they’d met Friday. Her stomach flip-flopped.

  Digging into her purse, she found a tissue and blew her nose, then cracked the window to let cold air revive her.

  “Autumn, come to Mom’s, stay there for a few days.”

  “There’s no need. Don’t be silly.”

  “A woman’s dead.” Dark eyes flicked at her and back to the road. “I don’t think I’m being silly.”

  She lay back against the seat and closed her eyes. The fresh air quelled her nausea. “I’m going home.”

  Unless he could give her a far better reason to stay away from her condo than he had given so far. Like he loved her and was afraid something might happen to her. Like he wanted her at Reseda’s because he wanted her close by.

  What might have been a sigh in another man signaled Rennie’s impatience, but he didn’t argue.

  For several miles, they rode along in a chilly silence, until Autumn whipped up her nerve. “Did you mean what you said last night?”

  His hands tightened on the wheel. “What I said last night.”

  “Yes. About… You know.”

  He gave her that Rennie glance again, where his head didn’t move but his eyes darted over to her face and back to the road. The tires made a humming noise. “I said a lot of things.”

  “Rennie.” Had the kiss made so little an impression on him? “You said you wanted me.”

  His profile turned harsh. His hands gripped the steering wheel. “Of course I meant it. You’re a sexy, desirable woman. A man would be a fool not to want you. That doesn’t give him the right to act on his wants.”

  “I see.” If she didn’t speak up, her courage would sift away. She swallowed. “So I’m good enough to have for a friend, but not good enough to have for a lover.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Doing what?”

  “Putting words in my mouth.” His voice was clipped.

  “Rennie, you said you cared for me. Do you?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “As a friend? Or something else?”

  “Leave it, Autumn. Please.” He sounded tired.

  She left it.

  You coward. But how much further could she humiliate herself and him?

  Conversation in the Lexus was nonexistent as they sped down Highway 400. The two of them shared the tiny space but each remained insulated. Both leaned back against the leather seats and let the air become a barrier between them. The tinkle of Scott Joplin’s ragtime broke the silence. The afternoon light touched trees with rusty leaves on bare limbs and gloomy pines and other evergreens. A perfect setting for her mood.

  But when he pulled up to her condominium soon after dusk, after the car was stopped and before they got out, he turned to her. “I’ve been sitting across from you the whole time I’ve been driving, trying to pretend nothing’s changed between us, that you’re the same and I’m the same. But it isn’t going to work. We can’t be friends any more. We’ve gone past that.”

  “I know. I was wondering when you’d catch on.”

  Don’t sound so snippy. He’s giving you an opening.

  Either the shock of falling over the bridge or seeing Kiki’s body made her reckless. “It’s as well we don’t try to be friends, Rennie. Maybe we need to let it go.” Jump in before you lose your courage. “Or maybe there’s something else we can be.” Say it, just say it. “I love you. I always have.”

  The slim hand resting on the wheel tightened into a fist. He stared down at it and away from her.

  She’d gone too far.

  His voice seemed remote. “You told me that once before, after I graduated from UGA. When I left home.”

  She started. “You remember? I thought you’d forgotten, put my emotional collapse down to adolescent hormones.”

  “Of course I remember. You told me you loved me, begged to go with me to California.” The one corner of his mouth she could see, lifted as if he found the memories amusing.

  Heat seared her cheeks as she recalled the sc
ene she had made, the hysterical blubbering of the teenager she had been. “You laughed.”

  Please don’t laugh now.

  The smile vanished. He looked at her. “What else could I do? You were seventeen, and I had an assistantship waiting. I knew by the time I saw you again, you’d have forgotten me and fallen for someone else. Kids change their minds a hundred times before they settle down.” He slapped the wheel. “What kind of scumbag would I have been if I’d encouraged you in thinking you loved me, if I’d taken advantage of you? Give me some credit, Autumn.”

  She covered her eyes. She couldn’t let him see how he’d hurt her. “I thought I’d die when you said I was too young to know what I was saying. But I meant it.”

  “I was right. You were too young, and I was… I shouldn’t have laughed. I’m sorry, Autumn. I should have been more sensitive, more understanding. I wasn’t laughing inside, believe me. Inside I felt pretty awful.”

  So like Rennie. Shouldering the blame for her poor judgment. “No. You were wonderful, so patient and sweet while you explained why I couldn’t go away with you, that I was confused because I was so young, and had lost my mom and dad, and was so unhappy at Uncle Parnell’s. You said that one day I’d find someone I loved. You said we’d always be friends. But you were wrong. I did love you then. I’ve loved you for a long time now, and I can’t seem to stop.”

  “Autumn.”

  “No matter how I try. I don’t want to be friends anymore.” She leaned over. “So if you can’t feel that way about me, too, maybe it’s better if we make a clean break. I don’t think I can take seeing you and being with you as a friend when I want you all the while for a lover.”

  There, she’d said it all. She’d revealed every secret of her soul for him to ridicule.

  Which, being Rennie, he would never do.

  He put an arm over the console and hugged her in a chaste, affectionate fashion. “It wouldn’t work. You and me together. We’re too different. Our families, our backgrounds, everything about us. I’m not what you think I am. In the end you’d be sorry, maybe even despise me. And I couldn’t stand for you to be unhappy.”

  Her heart dropped. She felt cold, like a stone statue that would never come to life. “Don’t you know I could never despise you? Why can’t we at least try it?”

  His arms dropped away. “Come to Mom’s, Autumn. Don’t stay here alone.”

  Hopeless. It was hopeless.

  She opened the car door. “Open the trunk so I can get my bag out, will you?”

  The entire weekend had turned out as terrible as she’d feared.

  ****

  Inside the foyer, welcomed by waxed hardwood floors and the small flower photos her uncle had loved, Autumn took off her jacket and automatically glanced toward the answering machine.

  Squeaky strolled out to its beep.

  Beeping and blinking. Lots of blinks. It didn’t stop.

  Surely she hadn’t received that many calls at home over the weekend. Something must be wrong with the machine.

  “Hey, Squeaky.” A quick pet before she punched the button.

  An excited voice of an acquaintance who waited tables near her studio said, “Autumn, if you’re home, pick up, there’s the most awful fire going on near where your studio is. It’s right there in those shops by your studio. I’ve tried your cell but you don’t answer. Pick up if you’re there.”

  “A fire.” Autumn stared at the machine. Near her studio. Her possessions. She pictured them engulfed in flame. “My cameras, my equipment. No. No!”

  Her heart drummed.

  Rennie came up behind her as a voice she didn’t recognize, awkward and halting, came on. “Um, Ms. Merriwell, this is the manager of Grenokes Walk Plaza where your studio is, um, located. Please get in touch with me. Um, as soon as possible. There’s been a, um, a fire at the Plaza.”

  Rennie touched her back. “Your studio may be all right. Don’t panic yet.”

  But the studio wasn’t all right.

  A third message from the fire department played and then another from a fire investigator. The manager of the shopping center had called several more times, as had people who worked near her studio and others who had heard the news.

  The machine gave out of room in the middle of the last message.

  “The studio. Everything’s in it. Cameras, lights, meters, backgrounds.” Autumn’s heart had settled but she was numb. “Surely everything can’t be gone. The negatives of pictures my aunt and uncle took. My negatives. My CDs.” She put a hand to her suddenly aching head, trying to gather her thoughts. “No, wait. They may be all right. Aunt Laura made Uncle Parnell invest in fireproof filing cabinets to store them in years ago. But everything else… The heat alone would destroy it all. I’ll have to go over right away.”

  She looked around, searching for the minivan keys, finding them on the key rack hanging by the door.

  Rennie’s lean fingers, bronzed with clipped nails, closed over her shaking hand. He quietly removed the keys and returned them to the rack. “I’ll drive you.”

  Squeaky meowed loudly.

  “Let me feed her.” Going into the kitchen, she set out fresh water and food, then scooped the litter box. Squeaky hated a dirty litter box.

  She couldn’t stop talking. “All my aunt and uncle’s cameras were in there. An antique Rolleiflex and an old Graflex. The ones I use every day, my Nikon and the Hasselblad. And last month I invested in a new camera for taking passport pictures.”

  After she washed her hands, she found him holding her jacket, waiting for her to slip into it.

  She couldn’t stop going on about the studio. “My first camera my father got me when I was four is there. Oh, and the Kodak Brownies collection. There’s one my mother got from her father when she was a child, and several cameras Dad and Grandfather and Uncle Parnell had. And some others I’ve bought. I had a display using them and some of Mom and Dad’s old snapshots of their dogs and Mom’s dolls and playmates.” She sniffled.

  “Let’s wait and see what’s happened before you give up on it, shall we?” Rennie adjusted her jacket. “There may be some smoke damage and nothing more. Your cameras may be fine.”

  The bleakness that had overwhelmed her in the cabin returned, stronger than ever, pressing so hard she couldn’t breathe. “No. They aren’t fine.”

  ****

  As Rennie drove, Autumn turned her cell back on and listened to more messages about the fire. Her unusual talking jag was over.

  The silence troubled Rennie, but he let it ride until he pulled up to the strip where the studio had been. Then he cursed at seeing the devastated shops.

  Before the car fully stopped, Autumn was getting out. By the time he joined her, she stood dully in front of the ruins.

  “I knew it.”

  He put his arm around her shoulders.

  She was stiff and unmoving. “When I heard that first message, I knew.”

  He squeezed her.

  No use trying to tell her it would be all right. The fire had destroyed the entire section of the strip shops with the studio. All that remained was a blackened mass of blackened, crooked beams and crumbling walls.

  Her work, her entire career was gone along with the photographs inherited from her aunt and uncle and grandfather.

  She handled the destruction well. No conspicuous tears, not for his Autumn, but her anguish was palpable.

  After a few moments, she pulled out her cell and called the manager of the shopping center. He listened to her side of the conversation, mostly questions, until she frowned. “They do? But why? The fire department? Yes.” Without searching or fumbling, she took a small pad and pen from an organized purse. “Give me the number.”

  When she hung up, her face, drawn from the shock of the damage, had set in stark lines. “They think this was arson.”

  “Arson?” A notion, seeded from the incident on the bridge and Kiki’s murder, sprouted.

  Everything had to be connected. This fire, too.


  Her hands trembled as she put her cell back in her purse. “The manager wasn’t very polite to me. Not like he usually is. I think he believes I set it.”

  “What?” Anger inundated him. He hugged her, not hard; her frame felt fragile against him. “It would have been kind of hard for you to set a fire since you were in Helen all weekend, wouldn’t it?”

  “I guess I could have hired someone.” Her voice was lifeless.

  “That’s ridiculous. It won’t take long for them to see it.”

  Less ridiculous was his conviction that the fire had something to do with Helen. The bridge. Kiki Ballencer.

  And Autumn didn’t even realize there might be a link.

  “Autumn, there may—”

  She drew back. “Will you take me to the firehouse, Rennie? I need to talk to them.”

  Better not say anything yet. “Sure.”

  Despite it being a Sunday evening, they found someone at the fire station willing to talk to them.

  “My negatives and CDs were in there. Are they all right?” was her first question after introducing herself.

  Rennie was proud of her composure. None of his family, with the possible exception of his deceased father, would have been so reasonable.

  She went on, “They were in fireproof cabinets, so they should have been safe.”

  “We did find the cabinets.” The fireman opened and closed a desk drawer. “But the drawers were open.”

  “Open?”

  Autumn and Rennie stared at him.

  “The fire started in front of the cabinets. We suspect the contents were emptied out and the blaze started there.”

  Rennie swore.

  “My negatives? My CDs? Gone?” Her lips quivered, turned into those of a child who watched a dog being run over. “Some of them went back years, decades. Most of the negatives were portraits my grandfather took.” She closed her eyes and rolled her head from side to side. “The stuff on the computer is backed up off-site, but the other… We kept meaning to get them all scanned in but never… I don’t think I can bear this.”

  Rennie took her hand, but she didn’t notice. He rubbed her cold fingers.

  The fireman clucked. “Fires are bad. We don’t know for sure what caused this one, but we’ll have people sifting the ashes soon, Ms. Merriwell. We can tell more then. If you’ll go into our main office tomorrow morning…” He wrote a name on a card, pushed it toward her. “Talk to our investigator there. They should know more by then.”