Color Me Dead (Henry Park Book 1)

by Trent, Teresa

“Isn’t this the perfect example of how the perceptions of two people can be so very different? This one is no better or worse than Nancy’s, but it’s an entirely original take on the same scene.”

  I was just waiting for the tattoo-covered woman to start painting a pack of zombies trudging out of the woods when Marcus moved toward the girl in the wheelchair. The woman I assumed was her caregiver sat patiently by with a paperback romance in her lap. I focused again on the machine next to the wheelchair.

  “This is Gigi, and this is her friend Tobii.”

  I nodded at the woman sitting with the book. “Nice to meet you, Tobi.”

  She smiled. “It’s nice to meet you too, but I’m not Tobi.” She put her hand on the tan box. “This is Tobii. My name is Jane. I’m Gigi’s caregiver.”

  I was so worried about how to act around someone in a wheelchair, and here I had already insulted her caregiver. “I’m sorry,” I uttered in Jane’s direction.

  Jane continued, not seeming to be worried about it. “Tobii is what Gigi uses to paint. It works off her eye movement.”

  “That’s amazing.”

  “What’s more amazing is how talented she is,” Jane beamed.

  I finally gazed at Gigi’s painting, expecting to see a rough cartoon version of the trees. Instead, my breath caught. A chill ran through me. Her computer-generated scene wasn’t like Marcus’s painting. It was better. I was in utter shock at her work.

  “Pretty spectacular, huh?” Marcus asked.

  For the first time, I looked into the alert green eyes of the woman in the wheelchair. Gigi had been waiting for me to acknowledge her. Even though she was unable to speak, we exchanged a message no one else in the room could understand. On the screen, Gigi had painted the required trees, but she also chose to put a body of water in front of them. And sticking out of the water was a woman’s hand.

  “Can she talk?”

  An automated voice came out of the small screen that reminded me of an iPad.

  “Of course, I can.” I was surprised at the attitude a computer-simulated voice could convey. My eyes returned to the woman in the wheelchair.

  “Okay. Sorry. My name is Gabby.”

  “My name is Gigi.” The computer voice responded while Gigi’s eyes pivoted back and forth from the screen while she typed her words.

  “I was wondering if I could ask you about your … art.” I searched for the correct word because what Gigi was doing was so distinctly different from the rest of the class. Everybody else was working with oil paint, canvas, and brushes. Gigi was absorbing the lessons of how to blend colors and create various scenes but was doing it all through the movement of her eyes on the computer screen. There was no mistaking it—Gigi had drawn the same hand I had been drawing for weeks.

  “What’s your inspiration for having a hand on the shore? Don’t you think it’s a little grisly?”

  “I know,” Gigi responded. “A picture in my mind.”

  “What do you mean you have pictures in your mind?”

  As Gigi worked on her response, Jane answered for her. “Gigi may not have the function to walk or even speak, but she does have an extra ability others don’t have. Her family doesn’t tell a lot of people about this, but sometimes Gigi knows what’s going to happen before it actually does.”

  My gaze slipped back to her screen. Gigi had been typing and then backspacing as Jane answered for her. She came out with, “That’s right. I can see this in my brain. Not trying to be grisly.”

  I held up a finger. “Hold on just one minute.” I returned with the sketchbook I always carried in my overstuffed bag. Turning to Gigi, I opened to the page showing the hand on the shore. Jane gasped, and Gigi jerked in her chair.

  “I’ve been drawing this for the last few weeks. It won’t go away. I can’t stop myself.”

  “Yes! That’s it,” Gigi typed furiously.

  We exchanged eye contact again, and for the first time we saw each other for what we really were. Even though I was walking and talking, and she was in a wheelchair and forced to speak through a machine, we shared an ability, a sense of more than what was there on the surface.

  “Do you have any idea who it is?”

  “No.”

  “I can’t tell either. I just wish it would stop.”

  “Yes,” Gigi replied. “Stop. I don’t like it.”

  Jane stood up and reached for my hand. “It is so nice to meet you, Gabby. You’re the first person who’s ever had something similar to Gigi.”

  “I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.”

  Marcus, shook his head in amazement at the two drawings and then finally spoke up. “Gabby is looking into teaching here.”

  Gigi started typing. “I would like to take her class.”

  Jane patted Gigi on the shoulder. “Of course you would.”

  I made the rounds to see the rest of the paintings in the class, but none of them gave me the same jolt as Gigi’s. I agreed to start teaching, but I also decided to keep in contact with Gigi and Jane in case either of us had something new to report. One thing I was learning about coming back to Henry Park—it was full of surprises.

  Chapter 9

  The next day, after eating a piece of toast and having some juice around noon, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I needed a cigarette. I needed one bad. Mitch was still sleeping from his most recent night out, so now was my chance. I was so proud I had made it through the last few days without one. Today was a different story.

  I drove to O’Henry’s store and found only one other car in the parking lot. A woman sat in a battered red Jeep, its spare tire cover adorned with a drawing of a smiley face complete with a day’s growth of beard. In the back was a small child who was watching a video on a handheld device. The Jeep wasn’t parked at the pumps or even in front of the store. Instead, it was parked sideways as if the woman was watching the road. If she was an undercover cop checking the speed of oncoming cars, her disguise was perfect. Maybe the kid wasn’t even real. She was definitely watching the cars on the road. Smoke drifted over to me as she held her cigarette out the window. She was an attractive woman with light-blond hair angled short in a chin-length bob. I would have to call it a mom cut, but if she wore it to her shoulders, she would be stunning. She reached back to check on the little boy, and her eyes found mine. Caught staring, I looked away and exited my car trying to pretend I hadn’t just been gawking at her.

  The bell rang as I opened the door of O’Henry’s. The same two young men I had seen on my first day at Lake Henry were standing at the counter talking to Huck. They held a large grocery bag that they crunched closed when I came closer to them. If I had to guess, the bag held a six-pack and other snacks.

  “Thanks again, Huck.” The young man wore a backward baseball cap and a T-shirt with the arms raggedly ripped off to show off his adolescent biceps. His friend looked to be dressed for a season other than summer, wearing a gray sweatshirt with the hood pulled over his unkempt hair.

  “Anytime.” Huck glanced at me standing behind them. “Have a nice day.”

  I advanced to the glass counter and lay my hands over the colorful array of lottery tickets trapped under the smudged glass. “Good morning. I’d like a pack of Lucky’s.” I was in such a need for nicotine that I would have offered a kidney for that relief wrapped in cellophane.

  “Menthol?”

  “Yes, please,” I answered, feeling like Oliver waiting for his gruel. Huck turned around and pulled out a pack, placed it on the counter, and rang up the sale. The price of the cigarettes was a dollar more than I had been paying in the city, and I wasn’t sure if it was the price he charged all his customers or just the ones with shaking hands.

  Huck eyed me curiously. “Really need these, huh? I hadn’t pegged you as a smoker.”

  I laid the cash on the counter. “That’s because I quit. Or at least my brother thinks I quit, and in all honesty I was trying to quit. Now that we’re living together, it’s a little tougher to pull off.” />
  Huck’s laugh bellowed throughout the store. “I get it. How long ago did you supposedly quit?”

  “Just a few days.”

  “You are hurting, then. The first week is the toughest. Sure you don’t want to hold on just another week?”

  That sounded like an eternity to me, the days stretching out with no relief from the constant cravings. I woke, I wanted a cigarette, I ate, and I wanted a cigarette. All I needed was just one puff. One beautiful inhale … and maybe one more after that.

  “No. I’m tired of trying. This pack will tide me over and then I’m back on track. In fact, I’ll probably just have one cigarette and throw away the rest of the pack. I’m looking at this as a method similar to using the patch. A gradual withdrawal of nicotine from my system.” That sounded good, at least to me.

  “Whatever you say,” Huck gave me the knowing smile of one who sold addiction in shiny little boxes.

  “I was wondering if I could rely on you for your confidence. My brother thinks I’m the perfect kid.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Your secret is safe with me. You’d be amazed what you learn behind this counter.”

  “I’m sure. Thanks,” I said putting the cigarettes into my bag.

  “You bet.” His answer was now a vague sound behind me. All I wanted was to get back to my car and light up a cigarette.

  Whatever. Now that the pleasantries were finished, I hopped in the car and started the motor while simultaneously ripping open the pack. I pulled out a cigarette and lit it, took a long delightful draw, and backed out of O’Henry’s parking lot. The woman and the little boy were already gone. I pulled onto the road and decided to take a short drive around the lake. I couldn’t show up to Clarence’s house this early.

  The lake, which had once been an untouched area of wilderness now had houses around it as well as a boat ramp and a camping area for the tourists. I took another drag on my cigarette and felt my whole body relaxing. My need to smoke was getting ridiculous. It was starting to take over my life. I put my hand up on the top of my steering wheel, the cigarette between my fingers leaving a trail of smoke floating across the cab of the car. I rolled down the window a crack. If Mitch smelled the smoke, I would have to confess to him I was still smoking. I knew I could overcome this addiction. It just wouldn’t be in the time line I had given my brother.

  I pulled into a newer cluster of houses, probably built sometime in the last twenty years. They were modest homes with perhaps three or four bedrooms. None of them were the size of Clarence’s mini-mansion. These were the kinds of houses people bought or rented for a summer home. All of the homes on the lake side of the street had back decks looking out on boat docks. Some were in disrepair. Some needed grass cut. Some had newspapers out front. And to my surprise, one of them had crime scene tape on the door. This must be the site of the latest burglary. I thought they only put crime scene tape up on murder scenes. Maybe it was more than just a break-in.

  I checked my watch. Mitch might be getting up soon. He’d wonder where I was, and I would be hard-pressed to come up with a lie. I stamped out the cigarette in the ashtray, threw it out the window, and hid the pack under my seat. Rolling down my window all the way, I then reached into my glove compartment and pulled out a pack of gum and a bottle of perfume. The movement seemed so natural I knew I had been at this way too long.

  “There you are,” Mitch said just as I was sneaking in the front door. “I wondered where you’d gone off to.”

  “Oh, just taking a drive around the lake.”

  Mitch was sitting at the table with his tablet. “What’s that smell?”

  “Uh, I just put on perfume.”

  “Right.” He nodded. “So, speaking of looking at houses on the lake, Clarence found me a job.”

  “That’s great.”

  “Not really. He has me helping some old man clean up his yard. Clarence said the guy’s house is kind of hard to find—up a side road or something. Do you want to help me look for it after I get dressed?”

  I put my bag on the counter. “Sure. Did you ever get Amelia on the phone?”

  “No. Did I tell you she was wonderful? Marvelous? She could be the one. This woman is funny and bright. And did I tell you she’s beautiful?”

  “I think you did mention that.”

  “This is the kind of girl a guy could think about settling down with someday. Is that crazy?”

  I didn’t know who this girl was, but I wanted to thank her for putting such joy into my brother. He needed to feel good about something right now. “But you can’t get her on the phone? Maybe you should check on her. She was a no-show for a cleaning job this week, too.”

  “I guess I could. I mean, we only had one night together. Oh, and full disclosure, she was married before.”

  “Billy?” I remembered her saying that name at the party.

  “Yeah. Billy. He was killed in a burglary about six months ago.” He rose to get a glass out of the cupboard, humming a little tune. He reached behind him for a light-blue cotton shirt hanging on the back of the chair. “Hey, I hate to be all helpless male on you, but while we were …” he paused, censoring what to share with me. I could fill in the blanks.

  “You were what?” I gave him a sideways look, playing on his discomfort.

  “Oh, you know. Anyway, I lost a button, and this is my favorite shirt. Is there any way you can fix it?”

  I picked up the shirt and checked for an extra button sewn on the inside. After checking both sides, I surmised we would have to put all new buttons on the shirt if we wanted them to match.

  “Sure, but only because it’s your favorite.”

  He surprised me then as he reached over and kissed me on the cheek. “Thanks, Gabby … and thanks for all you’re doing for me. You know, taking me in when the rest of the family thinks I’m a loser.”

  “You’re not a loser. You’re just … lost right now. That’s all. You’ll figure out what you want to do with your life.”

  “Can you promise that?”

  “Nope. All I can do is sew a button on your shirt and remind you to do your breakfast dishes.”

  He snorted. “Had to take our moment and turn it into a chore. Good going, Gorilla Gabby.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  He answered by scratching under his arms and letting out a holler.

  Amelia. The thought clicked in place. Amelia. The recent widow. My brother picked up a widow at her own husband’s wake.

  As we drove around the lake later, I pointed to the house with yellow tape on it located just past O’Henry’s. “There it is.”

  “Whoa. Crime scene tape just like on television. I love that channel with all the crime stuff on it. It’s addicting.”

  Keeping my addictions to myself, I pointed out, “Mom said the people she rented the house from were so grateful to have it occupied they gave her a terrific deal. They’d like to sell it to her because they can no longer afford it.”

  “Oh, wait,” Mitch held up a crumpled piece of paper, “I think that’s the road we turn off on.” Almost passing the road, I veered into the gravel driveway, wishing he had given me just a little more braking time. We climbed a heavily wooded single-lane road until we made it to what felt like a straight vertical park. In front of us was a log cabin with a back deck that hung over a cliff to the lake. The yard on our side, though, was littered with trash and old appliances.

  “Man, you’ve got your work cut out for you here. I think Clarence has a pickup he might let you borrow to haul some of this stuff away.”

  Mitch surveyed the yard. This odd job had to be the hardest work he’d ever done. He was going to have to sweat through some of that expensive sportswear he favored.

  “Do you want to wait here a second while I go and set it up with the old guy?”

  “Okay. Do you mind if I get out of the car? It’s a little stuffy in here.”

  “No prob.”

  I grabbed my sketchbook, scrambled out of the car, and wove my way
through the trash on the lawn. Taking the road less littered, I found a path leading to the shore of the lake. I inhaled not only the oxygen but the very essence of the lake. There was an interesting nook across the water where a long branch extended over the glimmering surface. What a perfect place to jump in for a swim. All it needed was a tire swing. The water was beating against the shore again, and I stared at the ground.

  There was a hand floating along in the water, and now I could plainly see a delicate ring on the finger. The colors of the lake translated it into shades of paint. Raw umber, burnt ochre. Colors of the mud. Colors of the shore. Was it a high school ring? This person was young enough to be wearing a ring from her school years. I heard footsteps in the woods. It was so dark around me now. They were coming closer this time, not going the other direction. The pace picked up. Whoever it was had to be coming back to the water. Back to the person they had killed. I had to hide. I checked around me in a panic looking for a place to hide, but the trees seemed so far away. I had to hide …

  “Gabby? Are you okay?” Mitch’s voice came to me from somewhere out in the woods. Didn’t he understand? The killer was coming back. I had to hide.

  “Gabby, look at me. Look into my eyes.” I stared forward, and in an instant the scene disappeared. The sun was shining and Mitch was standing in front of me, his hands on my shoulders. I let out a breath.

  “What happened to you? You were drawing like crazy and talking about hiding.”

  There it was on my sketchpad—the hand, the water. This time it seemed to be holding something. Something tiny. If I had just focused for another minute, I might have been able to see more. It kept coming back to me.

  Mitch gazed at the drawing, “Looks kind of dark for a kid’s book, don’t you think?”

  I slammed the sketchbook closed.

  “Sorry, must have been the sun getting to me.” I was not oversensitive to the sun, but it was the first thing that came to me. I was the sister who had it all together. I didn’t smoke, and I most certainly didn’t go off in dream states drawing things.