A stone staircase led up to the front porch. The porch was surrounded by a waist-high balustrade whose wide rail was completely covered with ferns and spider plants and red geraniums. The simple lines of the house contrasted with the elaborate front door, which featured leaded glass in the door itself, in a pair of sidelights that flanked it, and in a wide transom above. The dozens of panes, beveled at the edges, diffracted the golden light from inside the house, giving each partial image a rainbow-like aura.
I rang the bell, and in a moment glimpsed a fragmented, beveled figure approaching. The door swung wide and there was Jess, unfragmented now, smiling at me. She was wearing a navy Harvard sweatshirt, three sizes too big, whose sleeves were streaked and spattered with putty-colored paint that matched the living room walls. Underneath the shirt she wore gray sweatpants, nearly as baggy as the shirt; their fleece had an odd, nubby nap, like a much-loved teddy bear, or a bowl of oatmeal that had been drying on the kitchen counter for a few hours. Instead of the sharp-toed footwear I was accustomed to seeing on her feet, she wore soft clogs of wool or felt. Her hair was pinned up and damp, as if she’d just gotten out of the shower, and her face had been scrubbed free of makeup. She looked utterly beautiful.
I touched one of the smears of paint on her sleeve. “I like the way you’ve accessorized,” I said. “Picks up the color in your walls.”
She plucked at the sleeve and smiled. “Thanks for noticing. I pulled out all the stops for you. How’d things go at the crime scene-any luck?”
With a flourish, I produced both containers from my pockets. “Eureka,” I said. “Empty puparia, which argue for an earlier death than the maggots you’re incubating at the office. And the grand prize, the skin from one of the hands.”
She clapped. “You are amazing,” she said. “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”
“You mind if I take this skin back to Knoxville and let Art print it? The lab folks here might do fine with it, but Art’s probably got more experience printing degloved hands than all the criminalists in Chattanooga put together.”
“Anything that might help us ID the guy,” she said. “Oh, have you eaten?”
“No. Have you?”
“I picked up pad thai on the way home. I already scarfed some down, but there’s leftovers. You want?”
“Sure, thanks.” Normally I wasn’t an adventurous eater, but I knew pad thai was pretty safe-an Asian version of spaghetti-and I had worked up an appetite traipsing around the woods at the death scene. I followed Jess through an arched doorway and into the kitchen, which was a composition in blond wood, black granite, and stainless steel, lit by small lights with cobalt blue shades. “Jeez, I feel like I’ve just stepped into the pages of Architectural Digest,” I said. “I didn’t realize you had such an eye for style. Guess I should’ve figured, though, from the car and the shoes and all.”
She gestured at her sweatpants and clogs. “Fashionista, that’s me, all right.” She popped a covered bowl into the microwave and hit the one-minute button. “Actually, I wanted to be an architect, but I couldn’t draw worth a damn. I used to dream these great buildings when I was in college-spaces Frank Lloyd Wright would have given his left nut to’ve designed-but when I’d wake up and try to sketch them, they’d look like some kindergartner’s drawing. If I’d had some way to hook a VCR to my brain while I was dreaming, I’d be rich and famous today.”
“Judging by this, I’d say you work pretty well in three dimensions. It’s elegant, but not at all frilly. It suits you.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I never have been much for frills. You know one of my favorite things about this house?” I shook my head. “Guess who created it?”
“Let’s see,” I said. “Surely I can dredge up the name from my encyclopedic knowledge of Chattanooga architects of the early 1900s…”
“Wasn’t a Chattanooga architect,” she grinned. “Sears.”
“Sears? Who Sears? From where-New York?”
“Not ‘Who Sears’; ‘Sears Who.’ Sears Roebuck, the department store,” she said, pointing to a wall. There, she’d hung a framed page from a century-old Sears catalog, showing an ad for the house I was standing in. It bore the catchy name “Modern Home No. 158,” and a price tag of $1,548. “Houses by mail order,” said Jess. “This house came into town on a freight car, in pieces. Probably ran four grand, all told, for the kit plus the caboodle.”
“I’m guessing it’s appreciated some since then.”
“Well, I appreciate it some,” she said.
The microwave beeped, and she pulled out the bowl and handed it to me, then reached into a drawer and fished out a pair of chopsticks. I made a face; I had never mastered the art of using them. “What, you got no forks?” She shook her head and handed me the chopsticks. The noodles, a reddish brown, smelled of garlic and peanuts and scallions and shrimp and hot oil, all swirled together so richly and tantalizingly I’d have eaten with my bare hands if I had to. Clutching the chopsticks awkwardly, I hoisted a wad of pad thai toward my mouth. Halfway there, the sticks went askew and the tangle of noodles plopped back into the bowl.
“Here,” she laughed, “let me show you a better way to hold those.” She took my hand in one of hers, and with the other, she pried the chopsticks from my fist. “Very simple,” she said. “One of them is fixed, the other moves. Sort of like a fencepost and a gate. The fixed one nestles down in the V between your thumb and forefinger, like so, and between the tips of your pinkie and your ring finger.” She demonstrated. “Hold the other one almost like you would a pencil, but not quite so near the point.” She gripped the second chopstick with the tips of her thumb and first two fingers, then made a great show of waving it to and fro, then clicking the tips together like a lobster claw. “Okay, try it.” She laid my hand, palm up, in her own palm, then arranged the two chopsticks for me. I studied them awhile. She looked at me, puzzled. “Still confused?”
“No,” I said. “I think I’ve got the concept. I just don’t want to move my hand right now.”
She laughed, then looked shy, but she stretched up and gave me a quick, warm kiss on the mouth. “Eat,” she said. “You might need your strength.” I looked up at her, hoping she meant what I thought she meant. In response to my quizzical look, she hoisted a suggestive eyebrow at me. Newly inspired, I snagged an enormous clump of noodles with the chopsticks and managed to get most of them into my mouth, with only a few stragglers draping my chin. “Easy, Popeye,” she said. “Take your time. I’m not going anywhere. Be bad for an ME’s career if you choked to death in her kitchen.”
I slowed down slightly but still managed to empty the bowl in about two minutes flat. She rinsed it, put it in the dishwasher, and came back to stand in front of me, close enough that I could feel the breath from her upturned face. I put a hand to her cheek, because she seemed to like that when I did it earlier, at the morgue. She seemed to like it again, so I put my other hand on her other cheek. She didn’t seem to mind that, either-she turned her face slightly and kissed my palm-so then I pulled her face to mine and kissed her. She kissed back, and she kissed me like she meant something by it.