Angelina Hopkins
1840 — 1902
O’Brien opened the folder and stared at the women’s face in the picture, remembering what Gus Louden had said his great, great grandfather had written: ‘My Dearest Angelina, I had this painting commissioned from the photograph that I so treasure of you…’ O’Brien said, “Is this your grave? If I find the painting, what will that tell me?”
He placed the photo back in the folder and walked out of the cemetery in the twilight of a copper-colored landscape. O’Brien stood under the tall cottonwood tree and looked back in the direction the man on horseback hand gone. He didn’t match the description Kim gave of the re-enactor who approached her on the film set. ‘He’s tall and thin. A narrow face with a handlebar moustache. Dark Elvis-style sideburns. When he tipped his hat to me, I saw he had a full head of brown hair.’
O’Brien didn’t move for a moment. His mind raced, looking for patterns or contradictions in the people and places he’d recently seen. The older re-enactor didn’t fit Kim’s description. Why the Confederate rose on the grave? Where is the guy with the long sideburns, the man called Silas Jackson? O’Brien stared at the forest in the distance, the trees falling into deep silhouette, the last flickers of a sunset fanning dying embers of cherry in the bellies of clouds as gray as the old soldier’s uniform.
O’Brien turned to walk to his Jeep when he heard a noise in the cottonwood tree. A scratching noise. From the top of the tree, the raven dropped down, branch-to-branch, stopping on a dead limb twenty feet above O’Brien. The bird tilted its black head, one pale blue eye glowing in a drop of disappearing sunlight, unblinking, staring at O’Brien like a diamond emerging from a fist of coal.
TWENTY-FOUR
O’Brien wanted to spend time at his cabin on the river doing physical work. Sweating. Thinking. In four days, he replaced and stained some of the wooden planks on his dock and cut brush around his property. He now was chopping wood near the river, shirtless, sweat rolling off his biceps and down his chest. He thought about the conversations with Professor Ike Kirby, the director and art director on the movie set — the casting agent.
Where was the painting?
Its discovery might provide Gus Louden with what he needed to prove his relative wasn’t a war deserter.
And it may prove why Jack Jordan died on the movie set.
Just let investigators handle it. Move on.
He lifted the ax above his head, his eyes focusing on the top of a log he was about to split in the side yard of his cabin on the river. He stopped, lowered the ax and reached down scooping a ladybug off the log. “It’s your lucky day,” he said, releasing the insect in the grass. Max trotted over and sniffed. “Leave the ladybug alone, Max. She almost lost her tiny head on the chopping block. She has a second chance.”
O’Brien turned and drove the ax into the wood, splitting the log into two pieces. Max followed him as he pushed a wheelbarrow filled with cut firewood. He stacked it in a bin he’d built near his screened-in back porch. He turned to Max and said, “We’ll get a few chilly nights here in Florida. This half cord ought to last ten years. I always heard that wood warms you three ways: when you cut it, when you stack it, and when you burn it. We did two of them today. How about some lunch?”
Max barked and trotted ahead of O’Brien up the path leading to the back porch. O’Brien loved the way Max enjoyed the outdoors — such a trooper, following him from place to place as he did his chores, like it was her job, too. He showered, changed to shorts and a T-shirt, and then turned on the TV in the kitchen as he fixed Max a bowl of food. The news was on the screen. O’Brien muted the sound and began making a turkey, hot mustard and sweet onion sandwich. He picked his phone up from the kitchen counter and made the call. “Mr. Louden, this is Sean O’Brien.”
“Did you find the painting already?”
“No. I did spend some time following a circuitous path. An antique dealer in DeLand bought it at an estate sale and then sold it, more than eight months ago, to a couple — Jack and Laura Jordan.”
“Do they have it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Are you going to check?”
“No.”
“May I ask you why?”
“Jack Jordan’s dead. He was killed on a movie set. Police say it was an accident. He’d lent the painting to the movie producers to be used in a few scenes. It was apparently stolen from the set and the theft was reported to police. You can check with the Volusia County Sheriff’s department if you want to. Or you can call the man’s widow, Laura. I have a number I got from the antique dealer, but I’m not going to intrude on her privacy at this time in her life.”
“I understand. I read about that shooting. My heart goes out to his wife and daughter.”
“How’d you know he had a daughter?”
“It was mentioned in the news story.”
O’Brien said nothing.
“Mr. O’Brien, you did a lot…you managed to track it down this far and fast. I will send you a check. You earned it.”
“But I didn’t finish the job and find it. Just send me a check for gas and lunch money. I wish you luck with the recovery of the painting. One other thing, do you know where the woman in the painting — the photo — is buried?”
“Yes, her grave is in a very small cemetery on the grounds of a place now called the Wind ’n Willows. It’s an old plantation on the National Registry of Historic Places. The property has changed hands many times over the years. But, when my great, great grandmother was alive, it was known as the Hopkins farm. Her maiden name was Anderson, and she married Henry Hopkins, the youngest of the three Hopkins sons. All three boys were killed in the war. Henry is the only one not buried in that little cemetery.”
“I wish you the best in locating the painting. You might want to follow up with police and the antique dealer to gather a few details before speaking with the widow of the man killed on the set. A final question, though: In the photo of the woman in the painting…she’s holding a flower in her left hand…do you know what kind of flower it is?”
“Yes, it’s called a Confederate rose. Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering. Thank you, Mr. Louden. I wish you the best.” O’Brien gave him the phone number he’d received from the antique dealer and then disconnected. He looked at Max. “That’s that, Miss Max. No more looking for a mysterious painting. Let’s take out the canoe and fish for a bass. Perhaps we can find one almost as big as you.” Her tail jiggled. Max cocked her head, listening.
“But I keep thinking about something else. Who sent the Confederate rose and that note to Kim? The re-enactor who left a rose in the old cemetery doesn’t match the description Kim gave me. Maybe it was a one-time-thing, and it won’t happen again.” He looked down at Max. “But we both know better, don’t we?”
Something on the TV screen caught O’Brien’s eye. He reached for the remote, turning up the sound. A reporter stood in the Ocala National Forest, a movie crew adjusting lights and cameras in the background. The reporter said, “Although police are still calling the death on the set of the movie Black River, an accident, Laura Jordan, the widow of the man killed, Jack Jordan, said she does not believe her husband’s death was an accident. She told police that her husband, who was a documentary producer as well as a Civil War re-enactor, was working on a documentary about the last days of the Confederacy. Laura Jordan said her husband had been trying to track down the mystery of what happened to the gold in the Confederate treasury. Jordan says her husband stumbled onto something, perhaps even more valuable, a large diamond.”