Heat Lightning

by Michaela Thompson

  Clara leaned back. She opened her fists and rested her hands on the arms of her chair. She looked out the window at the palm trees, their fronds waving in the warm wind, the rippling dune grasses, the water shimmering in the distance. She said, “Can I offer you something, Aaron? Iced tea? Water?”

  “I’ll take some water, thank you.”

  In the kitchen, as she put ice cubes in glasses, Clara tried to think. She couldn’t. She knew only that she had needed to get up and move. When she returned to the living room she handed Aaron a glass and said, “Aaron, you said, ‘We couldn’t make a case.’ Did you work on the Alice Rhodes murder yourself?”

  Aaron took a long swallow of water. He said, “I did. I had just started at the Department.”

  “Did you meet Ronan then?”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t exactly meet him. I was there when he was questioned one time.”

  “And you didn’t believe his story?”

  “It’s not what I believed, Clara. It’s what the evidence has finally proved.”

  Back in her chair, Clara took a sip of water and put her glass down. In a meditative tone she said, “My husband Ronan was a complicated man. Being married to him was difficult. I thought of divorcing him many times, but we had a strong bond. And tough as it was, he never, ever raised a hand to me or threatened me physically. In fact, I never saw him react violently to a living creature. That he would brutally beat a woman to death— it can’t have happened.”

  Aaron cleared his throat. Gazing at the cubes in his glass, he said, “You didn’t know him back then.”

  “No, I didn’t. But I was married to him for many years. He never mentioned Alice Rhodes. He never even hinted at such a thing.”

  “He didn’t tell you he was questioned for murder, back in the past?”

  “No. Never.”

  “Maybe he changed before he met you. People change. Going through something like that could make a person change.”

  She looked at him steadily for a moment. “I wonder if you really believe that, Aaron,” she said. “Because I don’t. And I don’t believe Ronan killed Alice Rhodes. I never will.”

  – 6 –

  Back in his car, driving toward Tallahassee to visit his mother at the rehab place, Aaron made a private assessment of how his meeting with Clara had gone. Overall, he thought it had been better than he had feared. She said she didn’t believe Ronan killed Alice Rhodes and she never would, but that was a normal reaction. Aaron had not imagined her embracing this shattering news about her late husband, but at least she’d taken it calmly— no sobs, no obvious anger, no abusing the messenger. She seemed to be a smart woman. When she let it sink in, over time, she would come to accept the truth, awful as it was.

  Why? Because her husband Ronan was guilty as sin, and Aaron had known it since nineteen seventy-five. When Aaron was present at his interview, Ronan had struck him as a typical Northerner, patronizing and arrogant, with a harsh accent and no manners. He had been a tall, lanky man with black curly hair and blue eyes, and Aaron could imagine that women found him good-looking.

  Alice Rhodes, living a few doors away from Ronan at Gulf Dream Villas, had been separated from her no-account husband Coby and had given her two children to her parents to raise while she worked as a secretary at the air base. She was rumored to be having a pretty good time, living at the beach while the rest of her family was in town. Ronan had lied, and changed his story more than once, and if they’d been able to prove he was in Alice’s place they’d have had him. As it was, the case petered out. Ronan left the Air Force. Nobody had looked for him in decades, and when Aaron finally did he found him right away, not even that far along the coast in Luna Bay. Married to Clara, living under his own name, all out in the open. Had Ronan ever given any thought to Alice Rhodes? Aaron wondered.

  Of course Aaron had known Alice Rhodes, because everybody in the town of St. Elmo knew everybody else. Alice had graduated from St. Elmo High a few years ahead of Aaron and he had always thought she was sexy, with a tumble of blonde curls, blue eyes, big breasts. Yes, she had been a player in Aaron’s fantasies back then. When he saw her on her living room floor, smashed up like that— even now, Aaron had to swallow to keep his throat from closing.

  It was too bad the case hadn’t been solved before this. Alice’s daughter, Vickie Ann, and her father, Jim Tuttle, were the only family left. At least now they had an answer. Aaron had been determined to give it a shot before he retired, and retirement was looking him in the face.

  What would he do, once he retired? Go fishing, everybody said. Maybe Aaron could get himself a hat like the one Ronan Trent had. Go fishing every day, all day long. That’s what the Sheriff had suggested, when he started hinting that Aaron might want to think about taking his pension. Aaron didn’t have to have that conversation twice. He would go, and if, in fact, he wasn’t all that crazy about fishing— well, maybe he could learn to like it. He would need to do something to get out of the house, now that Stacey wasn’t there.

  Still, he was ending his career with a solution to this long-cold case, and it had come about through his initiative. He had gotten some praise, and there had even been a little article in the weekly St. Elmo Dispatch. So one of his last cases had turned out to be the solution to one of his first cases. He had every reason to be satisfied with this capstone to his career. And he was. He was.

  Except for Clara Trent.

  It was a damned shame. Clara had said Ronan was difficult, complicated. She had thought of leaving him. Why didn’t she leave Ronan, get him out of her life, before all this tragedy came down?

  That painting on her living room wall— maybe it was two crabs tearing each other apart, or maybe it was weasels. Aaron would not have wanted to look at it every day.

  Why hadn’t Clara left Ronan? Stacey had left Aaron easily enough— a tearful confession, a few words about her plans for the divorce, and off she went to Michigan with the snowbird, leaving Aaron feeling like a complete idiot. While Clara Trent’s husband was a lunatic who painted ugly paintings, plus he was a rapist and killer, and Clara had stuck by him through the years and was still sticking by him. Aaron couldn’t figure it out.

  Aaron thought about Clara Trent, about her steady gaze. He thought she had almost started to cry, but she stopped herself. She had shown a flash of anger, but mastered it. She must be going through hell, and one way to look at it was to say it was Aaron’s fault. Couldn’t he have left it alone? Ronan was dead. Ronan couldn’t be punished, but Clara was being punished on his behalf. Clara could have made that argument. Aaron was glad she hadn’t.

  Clara seemed to be a reasonable woman, and she would see reason. Aaron was sure of that. He was relieved that the meeting was over and the case was closed. He hoped he wouldn’t have to deal with Clara Trent again.

  – 7 –

  From the door of her apartment, Clara watched Aaron Malone descend the stairs. She crossed to her front window in time to see him emerge from the gallery, walk to his car in the parking lot, get in, and drive away. When he was gone she turned, let her knees buckle, and lowered herself to the floor. She leaned forward and rested her forehead on her knees. Maybe she should take one of her anxiety pills. But she had promised herself not to do that. She was stockpiling the pills, keeping the growing supply in a small wooden box Ronan had given her long ago— before they were married, even. The box was intricately carved, a riot of vines, leaves, and blossoms.

  At times Clara had thought she was going to faint while Aaron was there, actually believed she would pass out if he didn’t stop talking. That would’ve been quite the scene, getting the vapors and having to have— what?— smelling salts administered? Now it can be told: Ronan Trent, local eccentric and painter, was also a brutal killer. And his wife, Clara Trent, claims not to believe the undeniable evidence of his crime. Furthermore, corny as it sounds, she had loved Ronan better than— yeah, go ahead and say it— better than life itself. But Clara was not going to pass out in front of an
investigator for the St. Elmo County Sheriff’s Department, or in front of anybody else. No, Clara would keep it together until she was ready, and then she would let go in her own way, in her own time. If she had lost everything else, she was not going to lose that.

  When her head cleared, Clara looked up. Her face was awash with tears, but that was nothing new. She got to her feet and walked, a bit shakily, back to the chair she’d been sitting in and picked up the file Aaron had given her. Did she want to read through it? Get all the details he had seen fit to pass along? Maybe not right now. Maybe later.

  Clara wasn’t sure she’d eaten today. Since Ronan’s death both eating and sleeping had become problematical, and recent events didn’t seem likely to reverse that trend. She went to the kitchen and pulled a hunk of cheddar, hardening around the edges, from the refrigerator and discovered in the cabinet some fancy little rice crackers. Standing at the counter she cut a bit of cheese and placed it on a cracker. After looking at the combination for a while, she ate it. OK. That was enough of that.

  The thing was, Clara and Ronan had never really fit in here. They weren’t local. They had no children. And Ronan was demonstrably weird, stalking around the streets in a fog, not answering when people greeted him, taking off for Loggerhead Point and staying there for weeks. All he wanted to do was paint. He painted pictures nobody wanted, but he didn’t care.

  Clara had been, as far as she knew, the only real friend Ronan ever had. The thought of Ronan at a convivial evening with the guys, getting drunk and playing poker, was so far outside Clara’s knowledge of him as to belong in fantasyland. Almost as strange as the notion that Ronan had murdered Alice Rhodes. And yet, according to Aaron Malone, all these things were true, and provable.

  Clara ate another piece of cheese on a cracker and drank a glass of water. After gazing out the kitchen window for a while, she took her straw sun hat from a hook beside the back door. When she stepped out on the deck, she was immediately engulfed in the sultry air.

  She descended the steps to the ground, which was covered with a tangle of coarse grass, blackberry vines, dollar weeds, and beach morning glories. A sandy path led across the dunes to the beach, where the waters of the inlet purled and receded. She took the path and followed the curve of the beach past several houses. Soon the vegetation became thicker and the houses farther apart. After ten minutes’ walk she turned onto another path, this one leading away from the beach into the undergrowth. Insects whirred and a breeze rustled the palmettos crowding the path. Brambles caught on the hem of her dress and scratched her bare ankles and sandaled feet. Normally she would’ve worn sturdier shoes, as the woods were known as a habitat for snakes, but she hadn’t thought of it today.

  She pushed ahead on the rudimentary track until she caught sight of a small weathered house with a tin roof. It was built up on rickety pilings, surrounded by encroaching palmettos and shaded by a stand of pine trees. Clara approached, digging a key chain out of her pocket. A faded sign at the foot of the stairs said, “KEEP OUT.” Ronan had nailed the sign up years ago, the words painted in red on a piece of broken board. Clara climbed the steps, fitted a key into the flimsy lock, and let herself in.

  She was standing in a room with unpainted walls. It was furnished only with a large, long table in the center, a couple of folding lawn chairs, and a closet-sized metal cabinet in a corner. Rough shelves holding an unorganized array of painting supplies lined the walls, and an easel leaned in a corner. The still air was miserably hot, and as she worked to get the windows open Clara could feel perspiration sliding down her body and dampening her brow and upper lip. The windows were stuck because the wood had swelled with the humidity, and when at last she won the struggle and got them open it made little difference.

  She blotted her face and looked around Ronan’s studio. She had dreaded coming here, had not been inside since Ronan died, and rarely before. This place had always been sacrosanct— his workspace, his hideaway, his retreat. He went to Loggerhead Point, and when he returned he came here to paint some more. Home, where he lived with Clara, was a distant third.

  The place was a mess, which was typical. Clara found another, smaller key on her key ring and after a struggle managed to open the large metal cabinet. It was filled with a welter of papers— not really piled up, but stuffed on the shelves in total disorder. She glanced through them, picking at random. They were covered with various marks that might be called sketches, scribbles, designs, none of which had an identifiable subject matter. Some seemed carefully worked on, others were just a squiggle or two. There were pages of blank paper mixed with paper that had been marked in some way. Clara sighed, took out a handful, sat down on the plank floor, and started sorting.

  It was slow and gut-wrenching work. Clara wasn’t even sure why she was doing it, but she had to do something, didn’t she? Dazed by the heat and her distress, she separated the pages into rough piles.

  She worked her way down, accusing herself of masochistic madness. She was surrounded by piles of paper, much of which Ronan should have thrown away. But throwing something away would not have been Ronan. By the time she reached the bottom shelf she was drenched with sweat and ready to quit. She would put the piles back, in some sort of order at least, and get out of here. She could finish another time.

  She stooped and surveyed the bottom shelf. More drifts of papers, more disarray. She made a tentative attempt to neaten one of the drifts, and it tumbled out onto the floor. Not what she had in mind. Fed up, she gathered the pile to shove it back inside.

  Then she saw, pushed into a corner at the back of the bottom shelf, something that was not jumbled paper. She reached for it, unearthed it. It was a large sketchbook, perhaps twelve by sixteen inches, bound in mottled cardboard. It bulged from the damp, and both the cover and the pages were crumbling. Clara pulled out the book and took it over to the table. She opened it gingerly. On the first page was written— in a hand that was unmistakably Ronan’s— The Book of Alice.

  The Book of Alice. She turned a page, and another. The pages were covered with sketches and studies of a woman— a woman with a mass of curly hair. A woman with a pretty face. In some depictions she was naked, in some she was clothed. In some she seemed to be sleeping, her head on a pillow. Clara was numb. None of this bore a resemblance to any drawing Clara had ever known Ronan to do. And yet she recognized his touch in the lines. She had no doubt he had drawn them. The Book of Alice. Clara had come here to search, hadn’t she? And she had found something. It was too late to put it back and un-find it.

  Clara dug around in the cabinet until she found a wadded-up plastic bag. She shook out the bag and put the book in it. After closing and locking the cabinet, she muscled the windows down, and put on her hat. She left, locking Ronan’s studio behind her, and started back the way she had come.

  – 8 –

  The hands on the bedside clock were at three a.m. exactly when Clara leaned back against the pillows and thought about looking through The Book of Alice one more time. She had been through it fast, and she had been through it slow. Would a third try lead her to a different conclusion?

  Before she had started on Ronan’s sketchbook, Clara had read through the file given to her by Aaron Malone. Included was a color copy of a photo of Alice Rhodes. Judging by this likeness, Alice had been a pretty woman with abundant curly blonde hair that fell below her shoulders. She had a generous mouth and eyes that were probably blue. She was standing in a doorway wearing a bright pink blouse, smiling at the camera, and looking well-pleased with herself. When Alice Rhodes was killed she was thirty-five years old, ten years older than Ronan.

  Was she the same woman Ronan had drawn so obsessively in this book? There was little doubt that she was. Ronan’s pictures of a woman with tousled blonde hair, big eyes, a slender body with large breasts looked extremely similar to the woman in the photo. Plus, he had called his work The Book of Alice. Not being one to strain against the obvious, Clara had to assume that Ronan had produced a sketchbook full
of depictions of Alice Rhodes.

  Some of the pages were renderings that were fairly finished, and these Ronan had signed with his initials, an airy RT. On one, a three-quarter view of Alice’s head and shoulders, someone had written across the bottom, in pencil in a roundish script, “This is really good!!!” Clara had studied this, chewing her bottom lip. She could imagine the scene: Alice posing, Ronan drawing, and when the work was done, and he showed the result to Alice, she grabbed his pencil and wrote down her judgment.

  Other pages were filled with studies: Alice’s hands (Clara had to assume), a ring on her right middle finger with a setting that looked like a small carved rose (“My pretty ring!!!!”); Alice’s eyes and eyebrows; her ear, with a dangling earring. She had posed naked on a bed, with an indulgent smile on her face (“Peeky boo!!!!”). He had drawn her while she slept, or pretended to be sleeping. He had drawn her feet a few times, in flip-flops and also bare. On one page she leaned against a wall wearing shorts and a halter top, her hair in a high ponytail.

  The lamp on the bedside table cast a pool of brightness in the dark room. The book, open to the last page, was heavy on Clara’s legs. She breathed deeply, and smelled the musty odor of the pages. She closed her eyes and saw Ronan’s images of Alice, many Alices, with tousled yellow hair and blue eyes. They smiled; they stretched their arms over their heads; they bared their breasts; they laughed flirtatiously. Their mouths were moving, as if they were trying to say something. Their mouths were moving, as if they were screaming.