The Color of Bee Larkham's Murder

by Sarah J. Harris

  Dad doesn’t remember wanting to leave my Darth Sidious rucksack behind. He talks about how we worked together to put up the tent on the first night in pouring rain and later roasted marshmallows on another family’s campfire because we didn’t have any dry wood. He posted the photographs on Facebook.

  “The site of our first adventure!!!” he wrote, with three exclamation marks. One wasn’t enough.

  I remember that camping trip differently.

  I remember how we got lost on a hike in the rain.

  I remember the tent leaked and we woke to find my rucksack in a pool of muddy water, soggy and ruined.

  I remember Dad talking about how much money we’d saved on food after other families asked us to join them around their campfires for dinner.

  “I feel for you,” a woman had said on the first night. “It must be tough being a single dad.”

  His head bobbed up and down.

  These are the other things imprinted in my mind:

  • Not sleeping because the rain hammered purple inkblot shapes on our tent on the first night

  • Sobbing over my wet and muddy rucksack the next morning

  • Throwing my wrecked rucksack into the lake

  • Taking a deep breath and jumping into the water to save it

  • Dad jumping into the lake to save me, but not my rucksack

  Only now do I remember another thing.

  Remember isn’t the right word, because I hadn’t forgotten it. I couldn’t possibly have known this Important Fact back then. I realize now how much Dad sounded like Bee Larkham when we argued over my Darth Sidious rucksack in his bedroom.

  Do it as a favor for me, Jasper. Can you do that for me?

  57

  SUNDAY (APRICOT)

  Morning

  I’m back at the home of my temporary foster carers. My tummy hurts and I don’t want to talk to Skin Tone or Slate Gray. I don’t know them. I have to wait for Dad to come and collect me because he won’t leave me alone in a strange house for another night, not when I have to go home and sort through my notebooks and paintings and say goodbye to the parakeets.

  I still don’t understand what Rusty Chrome Orange told me in the police station yesterday or the way Leo explained it afterwards.

  I didn’t kill Bee Larkham. Someone else did.

  I repeat the words over and over again as I rub the buttons on Mum’s cardigan, but they don’t make any sense.

  Dad was in her kitchen, clearing up the mess: the body and spots of blood. Other things too.

  I asked him if I had killed Bee Larkham.

  Yes, Son.

  Has he forgotten he was there? Has he lied to protect me?

  Could he have blocked out what he did, the way I can’t recall absolutely everything?

  I don’t know what Dad remembers about the night Bee Larkham was murdered. He hasn’t told me because he doesn’t like talking about her.

  I want to paint until Dad gets here. I gave a list of things to Maggie and she’s fetched them from my bedroom. My real bedroom. I’ll be back there tonight. Maggie saw parakeets in the oak tree in Bee Larkham’s front garden. She couldn’t remember how many. She apologized for not counting them.

  She says this is a temporary placement and Children’s Services would need to get a court order to keep me here longer. Dad is cooperating fully with the police and has already provided a DNA sample so they won’t need to do that unless he’s charged with an offense.

  She expects he’ll be bailed later today. If that happens, he’ll be allowed to come home with strict conditions, such as reporting regularly to the police station and handing over his passport.

  I’m glad. I don’t want to go to court. Dad shouldn’t either. He didn’t do anything wrong apart from try to help me.

  Today, I’m going to be especially brave for both of us. We’re the only ones left. Our family has just two members because Mum and Nan died and left us, not to go to heaven but somewhere else. I don’t know where.

  Dad and me.

  Me and Dad.

  For the first time, I will attempt to paint ice blue crystals with glittery edges and jagged silver icicles to help me recall every single detail about that night correctly. I don’t have the right equipment to do it properly. I forgot my impasto gel, which I need to build up the textures of Bee Larkham’s screams, and I only have one large canvas; it’s all Maggie could carry with my other stuff.

  I should have two canvases: one to paint Bee Larkham’s colors as I hurt her with the knife and the other to show the colors when I returned to her kitchen to fetch my notebooks and paintings.

  Two separate scenes.

  Two pictures.

  But I only have one canvas—one chance to get this painting right.

  I prepare my paints in a line—ultramarine, cerulean, and cobalt blue as well as black. I forgot titanium white, which is bright, and have to settle for the duller zinc white. I fill my favorite pot with water, the one Maggie found in the bathroom at home.

  When I can no longer put off the moment, I attempt to paint the color and shape of Bee Larkham’s murder:

  Ice blue crystals with glittery edges and jagged silver icicles.

  I thought the original colors and shapes were correct, but Rusty Chrome Orange insists they’re wrong.

  I didn’t kill Bee Larkham.

  I’m not familiar with this strange, new picture I have to create. I haven’t tried to paint it before.

  I must paint my version of the truth, not anyone else’s.

  I dip my brush into water and white paint, scrubbing it onto the canvas. I flick cerulean blue in spatters on top and mix black and white together to make the color of the silvery jagged spikes. I dab it on with the brush because I can’t use scraps of cardboard to mold the points and icicles into peaks without the impasto gel.

  It’s the best I can do:

  This is Bee Larkham screaming as she fell.

  Her body’s lying on the kitchen floor, near the hallway door.

  Her eyes are shut.

  Blood’s spattered on the tiles and down Bee’s cobalt-blue-that-isn’t-cobalt-blue dress. There’s a puddle of pale red, curdled vomit.

  The parakeet paintings are scattered over the table.

  The parakeet pie is on the table.

  The kitchen’s a mess, pots and pans stacked in the sink.

  The knife’s in my hand.

  I thought I’d finished my painting, but more colors and shapes drift into my brain.

  Pale yellow spots. The kitchen clock was ticking. I add the dots to the top right-hand corner.

  A strange shape came from Bee’s mouth, curly white, with an inconsistent texture as she gasped for breath. I try to re-create it, but again, it’s impossible to do it properly without impasto.

  My paintbrush moves on; it doesn’t want to linger too long on the dead.

  It follows my orangey footsteps into the hallway. I saw the hen suitcase. It stood upright and closed, by the coat rack. I grabbed my anorak from the peg, threw it on, stuck the knife beneath it, and ran out of the house.

  I add a dark brown shape, almost like an elongated broomstick, as the front door banged shut.

  The picture’s finished—an accurate depiction of what happened in Bee Larkham’s kitchen. Why is that misleading me?

  I want Dad to explain where I’ve made the crucial mistake, but he can’t. He’s still explaining things to the police.

  I imagine he’s telling the detectives he believed the colors in my original painting too. He thought I’d killed Bee Larkham and tried to cover up my crime to stop me from going to jail. He put her body in the suitcase in the hallway and drove it to the woodland.

  The colors tricked us both.

  I have to try again.

  This time I will paint over my finished canvas with the new colors to create the scene I saw later that night.

  I rub a button until I feel better about doing this.

  I’m going back to Bee’s kitchen to save my p
arakeet paintings and notebooks. I have to reenter through a new door this time.

  The back door.

  Instinctively, I dab grayish brown in the bottom left-hand corner—me shifting the flamingo statue to reveal Bee Larkham’s spare key. The color bleeds into the white paint beneath and instantly looks wrong.

  It doesn’t belong there.

  I conceal the colored blob with white brushstrokes because it is wrong.

  When I arrived the second time, the back door was already open and the key was in the outside lock. Dad must have left it there.

  Now I’m back in the kitchen.

  I don’t have to add the pale yellow spots of the ticking clock because they’re already on my canvas.

  My brush wavers.

  I’m 75 to 80 percent sure I didn’t see curly white shapes—the sounds coming from Bee Larkham’s mouth when I returned.

  The kitchen looked different, darker too, but I can’t paint the confusing new details flooding my head because I only ever paint sounds, never objects.

  The Dancing China Lady had arrived, and she definitely wasn’t there before. My paintings had leapt back into their portfolio, next to the notebook bag on the table.

  That night had an audience of two: Dad and me.

  Dad wore a dark blue baseball cap and knelt beside the body of Bee Larkham. Maybe he was checking her neck for signs of life, the way Rusty Chrome Orange suggested I might have done.

  I couldn’t watch.

  He sucked in his breath with white pasta spirals and spoke in whitish gray whispers, which I quickly add to the canvas.

  I didn’t see the suitcase this time because I grabbed my case from the table, along with the bag of notebooks, and fled through the back door. It was open. I didn’t close it or return the key to the flamingo. I never looked back as I ran out of the garden and down the alley, rain lashing my face.

  The colors come back quicker the further I get away from Bee Larkham’s house.

  A car beeped musky red blunt-pointed shapes in the distance. A fox ran across the road. Me in pursuit. We parted ways at the creaking petrol green gate.

  I was back in my garden and then our house, in the kitchen; a half-drunk glass of orange juice on the counter where I’d left it earlier.

  I mix a velvety dark chocolate color on my palette and streak lines onto the canvas. A rhythmic pattern.

  The same brown noise I heard when I left the house.

  I ran for my den. Up the stairs, light, blurry pastel yellow.

  There are four more distinct colors I hadn’t remembered until now.

  Dark, overripened banana footsteps came up the stairs as I buried the portfolio under blankets in my den.

  Silence. Except for the egg-yolk circles of my clock.

  A few seconds later, another color and shape: blurry dark gray and shiny clear lines, almost like TV static, but not quite.

  Dad was taking a shower.

  I couldn’t move from my den. I hugged Mum’s cardigan.

  Cobalt blue.

  I wash the color of Mum’s voice over the entire painting to make me feel better. Trying to create this picture today without the right equipment was a mistake. Everything about it feels wrong.

  I don’t trust the colors, not the ice whites or the spirally shapes or the whispers or Dad’s TV static lines.

  I can only trust Mum.

  I can only ever trust cobalt blue.

  Mum and me had different colors for days of the week, numbers, and music, but that didn’t matter.

  We had a shared language. One we could both understand. One that never let Dad in.

  I miss Mum. I want her back.

  She used to love doing jigsaws and crosswords and solving problems.

  I need her to help solve my puzzle. I don’t think I can do it by myself. I’m not clever enough. I don’t have all the pieces and the ones I have make no sense. They’re mixed up and I can’t go home to sort through them.

  Bee Larkham has the missing piece.

  Or Dad.

  Leo, my solicitor, said the police initially believed I was the last person to see Bee Larkham alive.

  Now they think it was someone else.

  I think that person must be Dad.

  It’s definitely Dad.

  58

  SUNDAY (APRICOT)

  Afternoon

  I didn’t like Seb’s bedroom, but now I’m too scared to leave. I’m terrified of returning home to an empty oak tree and eaves. Abandoned nests. The young parakeets could have joined a roost already, without waiting to say farewell.

  I trace the curly S of his name as I lie on the strange boy’s bed. We share that letter in our names.

  S-E-B

  J-A-S-P-E-R

  S and also an E. Nothing else. I don’t know Seb’s hobbies or interests. I don’t know where he is now.

  I dig my nail into the E.

  I can’t let go.

  I’ve packed up my paints and the rest of my stuff. My rucksack’s waiting by the side of the bed. It’s watching the door.

  So am I.

  I’m frightened of leaving this house with Dad.

  Skin Tone and Slate Gray are talking with the social worker, Maggie, downstairs. They’re all talking to Dad because the detectives have allowed him to leave the police station for the time being. He wasn’t charged with assault or murdering Bee Larkham.

  He’s been given bail, as Maggie expected. He may get called back to the police station for further questioning. The detectives will let his solicitor know. Not Leo. A woman called Linda.

  Maggie says Social Services have discussed my case long and hard. They’ve taken into account the fact there are no other relatives I can stay with and that being with strangers is particularly traumatic for someone like me.

  They’re letting me return to Vincent Gardens under strict 24/7 supervision by her department.

  Dad says he’s innocent and it’s time for us both to go home.

  • • •

  In the car, Dad explained the police had to let him go because there is insufficient evidence to place him at the scene of the crime.

  Forensics found dozens of fingerprints in Bee Larkham’s house. Some matched his because he was at her party, along with lots of other people.

  That doesn’t prove anything.

  The police are trying to track down everyone who’s visited the house, including all the music students. They’re doing more door-to-door inquiries along the street and reexamining witness statements. They’re continuing to look at DNA found on Bee’s body and suitcase.

  The initial results have ruled Dad out, which is good news for both of us.

  You have to believe me. I had absolutely nothing to do with any of this.

  I don’t know what or who to believe.

  I know nothing feels right on this street because

  1. The bird feeders are empty. I can’t see a single parakeet in the oak tree or eaves.

  2. The Dancing China Lady hasn’t managed to climb back up the stairs to her usual place in the window. She must have stayed behind in the kitchen.

  3. Police ticker tape flutters around Bee Larkham’s front door.

  4. A man wearing a black hat wouldn’t say hello to Dad as we got out of the car. He refused to reveal the color of his voice. Dad said the man was David Gilbert and he was deliberately snubbing him because of his arrest. David Gilbert probably thought he was guilty too.

  Nothing feels right in my bedroom because

  1. My den’s been torn down and someone’s tried to erect the blankets again. They’ve done it all wrong.

  2. Mum’s cardigan doesn’t smell the same, even though I took it to Skin Tone and Slate Gray’s house. It hadn’t been left alone here.

  3. My paintings look sad, like they don’t want to see me again. I’m not sure I blame them.

  Everything’s off (a dark brownish black word). Light gray dust defiantly smears across my wardrobe, not caring about the streaks. When I look closer, I see the sha
pes of fingerprints. Behind the doors, it’s as bad as I’d suspected. My boxes aren’t in the right order.

  “Someone’s been in my wardrobe when I wasn’t here,” I shout. “They’ve opened up my boxes and messed around with my notebooks. I know they’re not right.”

  Dad’s sitting at the table, holding a hot drink, when I burst into the kitchen.

  “I’m sorry, Jasper. I should have explained in the car. The police searched our house while we were gone. They took a few things away, but they’re all itemized. I can show you the list if you want.”

  “They took my parakeet paintings and I want them back,” I insist. “All of them. Water marks too.”

  “They’re hanging on to those for the time being, along with some of your notebooks. All the others are back in their boxes upstairs.”

  “They’re not right,” I say. “They’re out of order. They’re all wrong.”

  I look across the kitchen. Gray marks stain the cutlery drawer too. More fingerprints.

  “Don’t worry about those.” Dad puts down his cup. “The police were checking for fingerprints. I told them that’s where I put the knife, Bee’s knife, after, you know . . .”

  Is that true? I was sure he’d hidden the knife somewhere secret beyond this house and garden, somewhere he knew I could never find it.

  “I’ll get rid of the knife and your clothes—those were your exact words,” I point out.

  “Yes, you’re right. I did that. I threw all your bloodied clothes away, including your anorak. I knew you’d never wear them again. I put the knife away in the drawer because I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I wanted to forget about it.”

  “You lied then,” I say. “You’re lying to me now.”

  “No, you misunderstood me, Jasper. You misunderstood absolutely everything about me and Bee, right from the start.”

  “You had sex with Bee Larkham. I understand that! I understand she wasn’t Mum. She wasn’t cobalt blue! She was never cobalt blue! She wasn’t even close!”

  I run out of the room and up the stairs. Dad doesn’t try to stop me, not even when I go into his bedroom.

  I find the book he’s hidden beneath the Lee Child cover.

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