When we got to the outskirts of Rivertown, she asked me to drive down Leo’s block and stop in front of the excavation site.
“Leo heard it’s to be a park,” I said.
“I suppose that’s fitting,” she said. “Two men are buried there.”
I saw no need to correct her.
Sixty-three
“What’s next?” I asked, as I slowed to turn off Thompson Avenue.
“For the story?”
“OK,” I said.
“It isn’t a San Francisco story, and I’m no longer tethered to any station here, but that doesn’t mean I can’t get traction from this.”
“A book deal?”
“Or better, a career-enhancing hour of true crime television. The story’s got the right ingredients.”
“Once it’s out there, they can’t do anything to you. In the meantime, be careful.” Then I said, “The Russians will give up on Rivertown?”
“They may retreat for a time, but they won’t give up.”
“Neither will the lizards.”
“Good deal. More news from Rivertown.”
“Thank goodness I’ve got all that new wood.”
We’d both started to laugh at the cheesy double entrendre, giddy as kids, when I slammed on the brakes.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Why are you stopping so far away?”
A light I’d never owned was shining dimly from my second-floor windows.
“Stay here,” I said, reaching for the door handle.
“Are you nuts?” she asked, getting out.
We went up on foot. The timbered door was locked, but that didn’t mean someone hadn’t picked it. I pulled out the key, twisted it in the lock, and eased the door open.
The kitchen light I’d left on was off. Now only the new light cascaded faintly down the wrought-iron stairs.
“Go back out,” I whispered. “If you hear anything, call the police.”
She followed me up the stairs.
The new light, very dim, spilled out from opposite the kitchen. I tiptoed up the last few steps, stepped carefully onto the second-floor landing, and looked through the doorway.
It was small, brass, and battery operated. It was a gallery light, mounted at the top of a framed painting that hung, wrapped in a wide neon green ribbon, on the wall above the fireplace.
“It’s even uglier than you described,” Jenny said. She stepped close and moved the ribbon to see the artist’s signature. Then she laughed loudly. Of course, that might have been the Scotch.
My cell phone rang.
“You’re nearby, are you?” I asked. “Watching me?”
“Having a giggle in a bar on Thompson Avenue, imagining your consternation,” Leo said.
“I am indeed consterned,” I said, not caring that it wasn’t a word. “I don’t want it here, even for the night.”
“Nobody knows you’ve got it, except me, and I don’t want it either,” he said. I could hear Endora laughing in his background.
“I’m not babysitting it.”
“I went into the city today. A friend I know has equipment that sees through paint. He confirmed that it’s the perfect gift for the next chapter in your life.”
“What next chapter?”
“Are you alone?”
“I’m with the press.”
“I rest my case. Swear her to secrecy.”
I motioned Jenny to lean close as I switched on the cell’s speaker.
“There’s one little detail I neglected to mention,” he said. “You’ll recall, our man Snark painted over the Daisy?”
Jenny’s perfume was light, lilac scented, perhaps.
“Of course,” I managed. She and I were breathing in perfect unison.
“Old Snark used the heavy-duty oil-based stuff that we had lying around the garage. The city used it for pavement, park benches, light poles, and signage before the state outlawed it as being too toxic.”
“Toxic, you say?” I said, between our breaths.
“That old paint will eat through all sorts of things, though, strangely, not canvas.”
“The Velvet Brueghel was dissolved?”
“It’s no longer the Velvet Brueghel; truly it’s now…”
“The Velvet Brumsky,” I said, but by then, it was to myself. I’d clicked Leo away.
Jenny left my side to pick up an armload of wood. At the base of the stairs going up, she turned to arch an eyebrow. She had but to mouth the word.
“Confluence.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JACK FREDRICKSON is the author of Honestly Dearest, You’re Dead, a Nancy Pearl Pick, as well as A Safe Place for Dying, which was nominated for the Shamus Award, and Hunting Sweetie Rose. His short fiction has appeared in the acclaimed Chicago Blues, Michael Connelly’s The Blue Religion, and Charlaine Harris’s Crimes by Moonlight. He lives with his wife, Susan, west of Chicago, where he is president of the Friends of the Hinsdale Library and writes a newspaper column.
