It made me absolutely sick at my stomach to pretend to flirt with Cyrus Ray, but a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. And it got me inside his house again.
I went with a camera around my neck and told Cyrus I had to take his photo to go along with the recipe.
“I didn’t know you were a photographer, Candace Sue.”
“Anybody can push a button down on a camera.”
If this had been a Nancy Drew book, Cyrus Ray would have gotten rid of the portrait by now, but no, it was still hanging up in the exact same spot over the cutting board and I backed Cyrus up to that. Either Cyrus Ray was innocent or he wasn’t as smart as a Nancy Drew type of crook. Or maybe I was just getting better at this detecting business.
“You want me to hold up a knife or anything?” Cyrus asked.
“That would probably add some realism.”
But where he was standing he blocked too much of the picture. “No. Over to the left. Just a little bit over to the left. Perfect. Perfect.”
I had to wonder how that eerie portrait of Naomi Ray ever won a prize (first prize yet) at the county fair, unless it was just a sympathy vote. Like I said, a lot of people still felt very sorry for Cyrus Ray. I supposed the technique and composition were good, but the rest of the painting was just plain weird. Twilight Zone stuff. One of Cyrus’s painted trees was twisted into the shape of a beautiful woman’s body with what looked to me like a face on it screaming in pain. I was hovering over the photograph with a magnifying glass just like my hero Nancy Drew would have done, but the longer I stared, the more my eyes seemed to play tricks on me.
I’d had Barney, the staff photographer, develop my film as soon as I returned to the office, even though he was kind of ticked at me for borrowing his camera without asking. But he printed up the pictures just like I asked, cutting Cyrus out completely and enlarging Naomi’s portrait in the background.
I had seen those trees before. If only I could remember where, I might find Naomi’s body buried right underneath them. I had nothing else to go on. Where had I seen those trees? You can’t see the forest for the trees. Now what made me think of that? I looked to see what else was in the picture to give me some point of reference. I hadn’t paid much attention to the rest of the picture, the background for the trees, something that looked like a long white arm.
I picked up the telephone and changed my appointment to meet Big Tim McCallister for his Celebrity Chef interview, and then I went down to the county offices. I wanted to look at a geological map. Derrick Seevers, who sat in the map room, was flapping his face with a Chinese restaurant takeout menu.
“Can’t take any more of this hot weather, Candace Sue. I’m putting in a pool. My kids will love it.”
“A big pool?”
“A couple of guys from Rotary had pools put in during that heat wave a couple of years ago. It wasn’t that expensive. They rented a bulldozer, and Cyrus Ray helped them out.”
“Cyrus Ray?”
“He’s good with cement. You done with this map?”
I nodded, and Derrick put it back on the shelf. “You know, while I’m here, there are some other things I’m wondering if you’d help me look up.”
“Sure. It’s a slow day.”
I knew I had seen those trees before. When we were kids, my cousins and I played hide and seek in that very same grove of trees, and it looked just as Cyrus had painted it after Naomi disappeared.
It was nearing five o’clock in the afternoon, which was a pretty time to be in the woods. The sun wasn’t hitting so hard, and it filtered through the branches of the trees and danced on the ground like magic crystals. The freeway overpass just to the north of the grove was new and added a lot of noise to this once secluded area. But still, nothing much had changed, and I hung my arm around the trunk of one of the trees like it was an old friend and wondered if it was time to bring Deputy McCallister in on my discovery.
This had been our very favorite spot to play hide and seek because of the faces on the trees. It was just the way the bark curled and knotted, but the faces we saw added a spooky element to our game that we couldn’t replicate anyplace else. I guessed it was still a good spot for hide and seek, because when I took a deep breath of my past and turned around, Cyrus Ray came out behind the shadow of a tree.
We didn’t say anything for the longest time. Our eyes locked on each other’s, and all this communication just buzzed between us like electricity. I could feel it, but then again, maybe it was my own fear.
“Do you see the faces?” Cyrus Ray said. “The trees have faces, Candace Sue. I knew you would want to come out here to see them again.” He stroked his hand down the side of the tree and then faced me. “I wish you all would just leave me alone. I have nothing to hide, Candace Sue.”
“That’s what you keep saying, but I don’t believe it any more.”
“So I turned the tables and have been following you around, Candace Sue. Except for this afternoon. I knew you would come out here this afternoon. Normally I’d say a pretty girl like you should find better things to do with her life, but I think it’s too late for that.”
It wouldn’t have done any good to scream for help. All the five o’clock traffic heading home on the overpass was making too much noise for anyone to hear me, so instead I started shouting Naomi’s name — don’t ask me why —“Naomi! Naomi!” which unraveled Cyrus enough to give me a little bit of a head start when I started running away from him.
But a little bit of a head start wasn’t enough for someone who had dropped out of her aerobics class. There was a steep hill in the way that would kill me before Cyrus had a chance, but halfway up I tripped over a root in the ground and fell on my face. Cyrus grabbed my ankle, and I kicked his hand away. We started sliding down the hill together, and I was still scrambling to get away, not even caring if my underwear was showing big time. His big hand grabbed my ankle again and twisted it till it hurt.
“Stop it, Cyrus!”
Only when I heard the voice of Deputy Big Tim McCallister did I allow myself to stop clawing at the dirt. I heard two clicks of a gun, and I knew he was pointing it at Cyrus Ray. I turned my head to make sure, and there was Big Tim looking about as surprised as I had ever seen him, looking at me and then at Cyrus and then back at me, and I realized I was an absolute mess.
“Is this why you wanted me to meet you way out here for my pork rind recipe?” Big Tim asked.
He was still pointing the gun at Cyrus, though he wasn’t exactly sure why. He came over to me and put his arm around my shoulders, and I let myself lean against him. “Are you all right, Candace Sue?”
I was still breathing really hard, trying to wipe the dirt off my face while Cyrus Ray hurled every insult in the book at me. “Naomi’s out here,” I said. “Real close.”
“Go ahead,” Cyrus Ray said. “Dig up every tree if you want to. You’ll never find her.”
“He’s right, Big Tim. We could dig up every tree in the county, and I still don’t think we’d find Naomi Ray.” I pointed at the stand of trees, acres and acres of trees. “She’s not buried down here.”
For one moment Cyrus looked relieved, smug even.
“She’s buried up there.” Three heads looked up to where the cars were passing overhead on the freeway overpass, the long white arm of Cyrus’s painting.
“You’re good with cement, aren’t you, Cyrus?”
You might think a body embedded in a freeway overpass would be harder to find than a needle in a haystack. Not to mention more expensive. But it really wasn’t.