The rain was coming down harder now, and if she hadn’t known where she was going, she might have passed the overgrown drive that lay on the other side of the tall, privacy hedge that formed the eastern boundary of Frenchman’s Bride. The gravel had washed away long ago, and the Volvo’s worn shocks protested the bumpy approach.
The carriage house looked shabbier than she remembered, but its mossy, whitewashed brick, twin gables, and steeply pitched roof still gave it a certain storybook charm. Built at the same time as Frenchman’s Bride, it had never held anything resembling a carriage, but her grandmother had considered the word garage common. Late in the 1950s, the place had been converted into a residence for Sugar Beth’s Aunt Tallulah. She’d lived there for the rest of her life, and when she’d died, the carriage house had been part of her legacy to Sugar Beth, truly a mark of the desperate, since Aunt Tallulah had never approved of her.
“I know you don’t mean to be vain and self-centered, Sugar Beth, bless your heart. I’m sure someday you’ll grow out of it.”
Tallulah believed she could insult her niece however she wanted as long as she blessed her heart while she was doing it.
Sugar Beth leaned across the seat and pushed open the door for Gordon. “Run away, will you?”
The dog disliked getting his paws wet, and the look he gave her indicated he expected to be carried inside.
“Yeah, that’s gonna happen.”
He bared his teeth at her.
She grabbed her purse, what was left of the cheapest bag of dog food she’d been able to find, and a six-pack of Coke. The stuff in the trunk could wait until the rain stopped. She emerged from the car, her short skirt hiking to the top of her thighs and her long, thoroughbred legs leading the way.
Gordon moved fast when he wanted to, and he shot ahead of her up the three steps onto the small porch. The green-and-gold wooden plaque Aunt Tallulah’s handyman had hammered into the brick forty years earlier still held a place of honor next to the front door.
DURING THE SUMMER OF 1954,
THE GREAT AMERICAN ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONIST ARTIST
LINCOLN ASH PAINTED HERE.
And left Tallulah a valuable work of art that now belonged to her niece, Sugar Beth Carey Tharp Zagurski Hooper. A painting that Sugar Beth needed to find as quickly as possible.
She selected a key from the ones Tallulah’s lawyer had sent her, unlocked the door, and stepped inside. Immediately, the smells of her aunt’s world swept over her: Ben Gay, mildew, chicken salad, and disapproval. Gordon took one look, forgot that he didn’t like getting his paws wet, and turned back outside. Sugar Beth set down her packages and looked around.
The living area was stuffed with a cozy horror of family pieces: dusty Sheraton-style chairs, tables with scarred claw and ball feet, a Queen Anne writing desk, and a bentwood hat rack festooned with cobwebs. The mahogany sideboard held a Seth Thomas mantel clock, along with a pair of ugly china pugs and a silver chest emblazoned with a tarnished plaque honoring Tallulah Carey for her many years of dedicated service to the Daughters of the Confederacy.
There was no organized decorating scheme. The room’s threadbare Oriental rug competed with the faded floral chintz sofa. A coral and yellow flame stitch on an armchair peeked out from beneath an assortment of crocheted cushions. The ottoman was worn green leather, the curtains yellowed lace. Still, the colors and patterns, muted by age and wear, had achieved a tired sort of harmony.
Sugar Beth walked over to the sideboard and brushed away a cobweb to open the silver chest. Inside were twelve place settings of Gorham’s Chantilly sterling. Every other month for as long as Sugar Beth could remember, Tallulah had used the iced tea spoons for her Wednesday morning canasta group. Sugar Beth wondered how much twelve place settings of Chantilly sterling could bring on the open market.
Not nearly enough. She needed the painting.
She had to pee, and she was hungry, but she couldn’t wait any longer to see the studio. The rain hadn’t let up, so she grabbed a funky old beige sweater Tallulah had left by the door, draped it around her shoulders, and ducked back outside. Rainwater seeped through the hole in her boot as she followed the paving stones that led around the house to the garage. The old-fashioned wooden doors sagged on their hinges. She used one of the padlock keys she’d been given and dragged them open.
The place looked exactly as Sugar Beth remembered. When the carriage house had been converted into a spinster’s home, Tallulah had refused to let the carpenters destroy this part of the old garage where Lincoln Ash had once set up his studio. Instead, she’d contented herself with a smaller living room and narrow kitchen, and left this as a shrine. The rough wooden shelves still held crusty cans of the paint Ash had dripped and flung from his brushes fifty years earlier to create the works that had become his masterpieces. Since the garage’s single pair of windows admitted only a minimum of light, he’d worked with the garage doors open, laying his canvases out on the floor. Years ago, her aunt had covered the paint-splattered tarp with thick sheets of protective plastic, now so opaque from grime, dead bugs, and dust that the colors beneath were barely visible. A paint-speckled ladder, also draped in plastic, sat at one end near a workbench laid out with a toolbox, a collection of Ash’s ancient brushes, knives, spatulas, all scattered about as though he’d stopped work to have a cigarette. Sugar Beth hadn’t expected her cantankerous aunt to leave the painting propped by the door waiting for her, but still, it would have been nice. She suppressed a sigh. First thing in the morning, she’d start her search for real.
Gordon followed her back inside the house. As she flicked on a floor lamp with a fringed shade, the despair that had been nibbling at her for weeks took a bigger bite. Fifteen years ago she’d left Parrish in perfect arrogance, a foolish, vindictive girl who couldn’t conceive of a universe that didn’t revolve around her. But the universe had gotten the last laugh.
She wandered over to the window and drew back the dusty curtain. Above the row of hedges, she saw the chimneys of Frenchman’s Bride. The name had come from the original homestead. Her grandmother had planned the house, her grandfather had built it, her father had modernized it, and Diddie had lavished it with love. Someday Frenchman’s Bride will be yours, Sugar Baby.
In the old days, she would have given in to tears at life’s unfairness. Now, she dropped the curtain and turned away to feed her disagreeable dog.
Colin Byrne stood at the window of the second-floor master bedroom of Frenchman’s Bride. His appearance conveyed the brooding elegance of a man from another time period, the English Regency perhaps, or any era in which quizzing glasses, snuffboxes, and drawing rooms figured prominently. He had deep-set jade-colored eyes and a long, narrow face broken by sharp cheekbones with comma-shaped hollows beneath. The tails of those commas curled toward a thin, unsmiling mouth. He had the face of a dandy, vaguely effete, or it would have been were it not for his nose, which was huge-long and bony, aristocratic, and vastly ugly, yet perfectly at home on his face.
He wore a purple velvet smoking jacket as casually as another man would have worn a sweatshirt. A pair of black silk drawstring pajama bottoms completed his outfit, along with slippers that had scarlet Chinese symbols across the toes. His clothing had been perfectly tailored to fit his exceptionally tall, wide-shouldered body, but his big workman’s hands-broad across the palm and thick fingered-served notice that everything about Colin Byrne might not be exactly as it seemed.