Intimate Portraits (22 page)

So like Rennie. Shouldering the
blame for her poor judgment. “No. You were wonderful, so patient and sweet
while you explained why I couldn’t go away with you, that I was confused
because I was so young, and had lost my mom and dad, and was so unhappy at
Uncle Parnell’s. You said that one day I’d find someone I loved. You said we’d
always be friends. But you were wrong. I did love you then. I’ve loved you for
a long time now, and I can’t seem to stop.”

“Autumn.”

“No matter how I try. I don’t
want to be friends anymore.” She leaned over. “So if you can’t feel that way
about me, too, maybe it’s better if we make a clean break. I don’t think I can
take seeing you and being with you as a friend when I want you all the while
for a lover.”

There, she’d said it all. She’d
revealed every secret of her soul for him to ridicule.

Which, being Rennie, he would
never do.

He put an arm over the console
and hugged her in a chaste, affectionate fashion. “It wouldn’t work. You and me
together. We’re too different. Our families, our backgrounds, everything about
us. I’m not what you think I am. In the end you’d be sorry, maybe even despise
me. And I couldn’t stand for you to be unhappy.”

Her heart dropped. She felt cold,
like a stone statue that would never come to life. “Don’t you know I could
never despise you? Why can’t we at least try it?”

His arms dropped away. “Come to
Mom’s, Autumn. Don’t stay here alone.”

Hopeless. It was hopeless.

She opened the car door. “Open
the trunk so I can get my bag out, will you?”

The entire weekend had turned out
as terrible as she’d feared.

****

Inside the foyer, welcomed by waxed
hardwood floors and the small flower photos her uncle had loved, Autumn took
off her jacket and automatically glanced toward the answering machine.

Squeaky strolled out to its beep.

Beeping and blinking. Lots of
blinks. It didn’t stop.

Surely she hadn’t received that
many calls at home over the weekend. Something must be wrong with the machine.

“Hey, Squeaky.” A quick pet
before she punched the button.

An excited voice of an
acquaintance who waited tables near her studio said, “Autumn, if you’re home,
pick up, there’s the most awful fire going on near where your studio is. It’s
right there in those shops by your studio. I’ve tried your cell but you don’t
answer. Pick up if you’re there.”

“A fire.” Autumn stared at the machine.
Near her studio. Her possessions. She pictured them engulfed in flame. “My
cameras, my equipment. No. No!”

Her heart drummed.

Rennie came up behind her as a
voice she didn’t recognize, awkward and halting, came on. “Um, Ms. Merriwell, this
is the manager of Grenokes Walk Plaza where your studio is, um, located. Please
get in touch with me. Um, as soon as possible. There’s been a, um, a fire at
the Plaza.”

Rennie touched her back. “Your
studio may be all right. Don’t panic yet.”

But the studio wasn’t all right.

A third message from the fire
department played and then another from a fire investigator. The manager of the
shopping center had called several more times, as had people who worked near
her studio and others who had heard the news.

The machine gave out of room in
the middle of the last message.

“The studio. Everything’s in it. Cameras,
lights, meters, backgrounds.” Autumn’s heart had settled but she was numb. “Surely
everything can’t be gone. The negatives of pictures my aunt and uncle took. My
negatives. My CDs.” She put a hand to her suddenly aching head, trying to
gather her thoughts. “No, wait. They may be all right. Aunt Laura made Uncle
Parnell invest in fireproof filing cabinets to store them in years ago. But
everything else… The heat alone would destroy it all. I’ll have to go over
right away.”

She looked around, searching for
the minivan keys, finding them on the key rack hanging by the door.

Rennie’s lean fingers, bronzed
with clipped nails, closed over her shaking hand. He quietly removed the keys
and returned them to the rack. “I’ll drive you.”

Squeaky meowed loudly.

“Let me feed her.” Going into the
kitchen, she set out fresh water and food, then scooped the litter box. Squeaky
hated a dirty litter box.

She couldn’t stop talking. “All
my aunt and uncle’s cameras were in there. An antique Rolleiflex and an old
Graflex. The ones I use every day, my Nikon and the Hasselblad. And last month I
invested in a new camera for taking passport pictures.”

After she washed her hands, she
found him holding her jacket, waiting for her to slip into it.

She couldn’t stop going on about
the studio. “My first camera my father got me when I was four is there. Oh, and
the Kodak Brownies collection. There’s one my mother got from her father when
she was a child, and several cameras Dad and Grandfather and Uncle Parnell had.
And some others I’ve bought. I had a display using them and some of Mom and Dad’s
old snapshots of their dogs and Mom’s dolls and playmates.” She sniffled.

“Let’s wait and see what’s
happened before you give up on it, shall we?” Rennie adjusted her jacket. “There
may be some smoke damage and nothing more. Your cameras may be fine.”

The bleakness that had
overwhelmed her in the cabin returned, stronger than ever, pressing so hard she
couldn’t breathe. “No. They aren’t fine.”

****

As Rennie drove, Autumn turned
her cell back on and listened to more messages about the fire. Her unusual
talking jag was over.

The silence troubled Rennie, but
he let it ride until he pulled up to the strip where the studio had been. Then he
cursed at seeing the devastated shops.

Before the car fully stopped, Autumn
was getting out. By the time he joined her, she stood dully in front of the
ruins.

“I knew it.”

He put his arm around her
shoulders.

She was stiff and unmoving. “When
I heard that first message, I knew.”

He squeezed her.

No use trying to tell her it
would be all right. The fire had destroyed the entire section of the strip
shops with the studio. All that remained was a blackened mass of blackened,
crooked beams and crumbling walls.

Her work, her entire career was
gone along with the photographs inherited from her aunt and uncle and
grandfather.

She handled the destruction well.
No conspicuous tears, not for his Autumn, but her anguish was palpable.

After a few moments, she pulled
out her cell and called the manager of the shopping center. He listened to her
side of the conversation, mostly questions, until she frowned. “They do? But
why? The fire department? Yes.” Without searching or fumbling, she took a small
pad and pen from an organized purse. “Give me the number.”

When she hung up, her face, drawn
from the shock of the damage, had set in stark lines. “They think this was
arson.”

“Arson?” A notion, seeded from
the incident on the bridge and Kiki’s murder, sprouted.

Everything had to be connected.
This fire, too.

Her hands trembled as she put her
cell back in her purse. “The manager wasn’t very polite to me. Not like he
usually is. I think he believes I set it.”

“What?” Anger inundated him. He
hugged her, not hard; her frame felt fragile against him. “It would have been
kind of hard for you to set a fire since you were in Helen all weekend, wouldn’t
it?”

“I guess I could have hired
someone.” Her voice was lifeless.

“That’s ridiculous. It won’t take
long for them to see it.”

Less ridiculous was his conviction
that the fire had something to do with Helen. The bridge. Kiki Ballencer.

And Autumn didn’t even realize
there might be a link.

“Autumn, there may—”

She drew back. “Will you take me
to the firehouse, Rennie? I need to talk to them.”

Better not say anything yet.
“Sure.”

Despite it being a Sunday
evening, they found someone at the fire station willing to talk to them.

“My negatives and CDs were in
there. Are they all right?” was her first question after introducing herself.

Rennie was proud of her
composure. None of his family, with the possible exception of his deceased father,
would have been so reasonable.

She went on, “They were in
fireproof cabinets, so they should have been safe.”

“We did find the cabinets.” The
fireman opened and closed a desk drawer. “But the drawers were open.”

“Open?”

Autumn and Rennie stared at him.

“The fire started in front of the
cabinets. We suspect the contents were emptied out and the blaze started there.”

Rennie swore.

“My negatives? My CDs? Gone?” Her
lips quivered, turned into those of a child who watched a dog being run over. “Some
of them went back years, decades. Most of the negatives were portraits my
grandfather took.” She closed her eyes and rolled her head from side to side. “The
stuff on the computer is backed up off-site, but the other… We kept meaning to
get them all scanned in but never… I don’t think I can bear this.”

Rennie took her hand, but she
didn’t notice. He rubbed her cold fingers.

The fireman clucked. “Fires are
bad. We don’t know for sure what caused this one, but we’ll have people sifting
the ashes soon, Ms. Merriwell. We can tell more then. If you’ll go into our
main office tomorrow morning…” He wrote a name on a card, pushed it toward her.
“Talk to our investigator there. They should know more by then.”

Autumn took the card and looked
at it unseeingly.

Too dazed to function. He was the
one who had to ask, “Was it arson?”

“We can’t say for sure at this
point.” The man fingered his collar.

“But you can guess.”

The man tugged at his collar
hard, like it was way too tight. “Well, from what I understand, the way the
cabinets were open, the way fire burned from the middle area outward, then yes,
I’d guess it was set deliberately.” He turned to Autumn. “I suppose you’ll be
notifying your insurance company, Ms. Merriwell. They’ll want to work with us,
I’m sure. To see that you can collect the insurance as quickly as possible, I
mean.”

Her lips pressed together. Rennie
could almost see her don the regal calm that was her disguise for dismay and
anger. And fear.

“I’m sure they’ll be interested
in working out the insurance payouts. But I’m more interested in catching the
arsonist than I am in collecting the insurance. Besides negatives spanning
sixty years, I had several irreplaceable cameras in there. My Graflex, my Rolleiflex,
my Brownie collection. Some have been—” The crisp tone faltered. “Some had been
in my family for decades. Whoever did this ought to have to pay.”

“Yes, ma’am. He’ll pay all right,”
the fireman assured them.

“If you catch him,” Rennie
murmured.

The man twisted a ballpoint pen
in his hands. “If we can catch him. Or her. Yes.”

On the way back to her condo, Rennie
stopped at a deli. It was nearly deserted at the late hour, but they got sandwiches
and decaf coffee. He wasn’t hungry, but he ate so she would.

It didn’t work. She toyed with stale
chips but mostly held the steaming coffee in both hands. He did get her to take
a few bites of the tuna sandwich, but when she pushed her basket away, he
leaned back in the booth. “Okay. You can either go to Mom’s or I’ll stay with
you. Which would you prefer?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m fine. It
was a fire. Other people have gone through them and survived, and I will, too.”

He didn’t like her pallor or the
taut way the skin stretched across her cheekbones. “Look, Autumn. A knife or
something like it stuck you in the back and pitched you over that bridge last
night. If it hadn’t been for your butt pack, you could be dead. This morning, a
woman wearing a coat like yours was killed. Now we find your studio’s burned to
the ground. That’s a little too much coincidence. I don’t think any ex-husband
shot Kiki. I think someone’s after you.”

Her expression didn’t change. “I've
thought of that.”

So she’d reached the same
conclusion.

She ran a finger around the rim
of the foam cup. “But why? I don’t know anyone who would want to hurt me. And
to burn my studio, destroy my cameras, my photos—” She took a tiny sip.

He followed the pulse in her
throat as she swallowed. “Do you think someone could have taken exception to
the kind of photography you’ve been doing lately?”

“My photography?”

“Erotic stuff. Nudes. You know.” He
ran a hand through his curls. “Maybe some kind of nutty fundamentalist got his
dander up. You know how intolerant they’re getting. Down here in the South we have
our loonies when it comes to Bible-thumpers.”

“In this day and age? Come on, Rennie.
That might be true in rural areas, but we’re on the outskirts of Atlanta. People
are a lot more broad-minded here. Besides, I don’t take photographs for
magazines or newspapers. They’re for individuals. They're personal, private. I
think you’re on the wrong track.”