Art's Blood (42 page)

Cautiously she waded into the midst of the torrent, and began pulling up rocks to deepen the water break. She ignored the water filling her boots and savagely wielded the mattock, digging out the clogged ditch to direct the flood from the water break into the branch. A little muddy water began to fill the ditch, just a trickle at first, making no difference in the galloping flow down the road. She hacked at the mud, deepening the channel, and was heartened to see a stronger stream beginning to scour toward the branch.

She continued robotically, deepening the channel, adding rocks to the lower side of the water break to make a dam, wishing she had sandbags to make a more solid barrier, trying clumps of hay from the nearby mulch pile only to watch them whirl away down the road. Scrabbling in the rushing water to loosen more rocks to deepen the hole and contain the water, adding the rocks to the front of the dam, at last seeing the white water running off the road and back into its proper course, looking up to see Julio, a dark knight, slowly approaching on the tractor, the bucket bouncing gently in front like a jouster’s lance.

It was well past noon before the culvert was cleared and the water completely restored to its usual streambed. Elizabeth wiped her muddy hands on her jeans and surveyed the damage. The road had suffered badly; much of its gravel had been deposited in drifts to either side and in the field below the barn. The rushing water had gouged out deep ruts and exposed jutting rocks, but the road was still passable for her jeep, if only marginally. A bulldozer and many loads of gravel would be needed to restore the road to its previous state.

Julio climbed down from the tractor and shook his head in disgust.
“Dios mio,
the road. It looks like—”

“Come on, Julio,” she said, cutting off the inevitable word, and started for the house. “I’ll fix us something to eat. There’s no more we can do for now.”

When lunch was over and Julio had returned to his work, Elizabeth sat staring at the note Ben had left.
I don’t feel good about this. They told him to stay away. But who…and how could I stop him anyway…he’s a grown man.

Increasingly uneasy, she went into her bedroom to change her clothes and to make up the bed. As she reached for the pillows, instantaneously the dream came back to her.
Daphne on a cell phone. And she told me that I had to deconstruct
entelechy.
Something about negative space. And I knew the answer when I woke up but the dogs’ carrying on made me forget it.

She stood clutching the pillow and staring unseeing at the rumpled sheets.
Okay, say the rose and the white flower, assuming it’s a lily, stand for Kyra’s mother and great-grandmother; the boot could be for Boz….

“And now all of them are dead.” Her voice sounded unfamiliar to her. Still deep in thought, she reached for the phone and dialed Phillip’s number, only to be answered by his voice mail.

“Phillip, this is Elizabeth. I…oh, hell, I wish you were there; I’ve got a kind of idea…but it’s pretty vague. Anyway, I’m going to Kyra’s studio…. Ben’s helping her move some stuff and I want to take another look at the painting that was in the back of her studio. It’s probably not important but…Phillip…”

The words were surprisingly easy to say. “Phillip…I need you.”

T
HE STORM HAD LEFT DOWNED TREE LIMBS ALL
along the pavement of Ridley Branch, forcing her to drive slowly. At the bridge the French Broad was a muddy maelstrom, spilling over its banks and creeping into the low-lying pastures below the road. Elizabeth sped across the deserted span, her mind working furiously.

The same swollen river was glazing the road that threaded the River District. A few cars were moving along the narrow street, fans of water spraying out on either side. Across the river where the faded tents of some of Asheville’s homeless clung to the steep, overgrown banks, there was the busy activity of a disrupted anthill as the tent dwellers moved their fragile shelters to higher ground.

The water stood inches deep in the parking area by the Candlestation.
Messy, but hardly a threat to Kyra’s studio. Still, she may have thought it would get higher. I know there was a bad flood last year that got into a lot of these places.

There were only a few cars in the parking lot, all at the far end of the building. Neither Ben’s truck nor Kyra’s car was anywhere in sight. Two long-haired young men emerged from the far door carrying computer monitors, which they loaded into a waiting van. They stood conferring for a few minutes, then disappeared back into the Candlestation.

Elizabeth opened her door and gingerly stepped into the water. Feeling slightly ridiculous, she slogged toward the fire escape that led to the blue door and Kyra’s studio. She examined the treacherous structure carefully before ascending, step by cautious step. The handrail, she noted, had been reattached with new bolts. Nonetheless, she tested each step before putting her weight on it.

The blue door was slightly ajar and Elizabeth entered the dim interior of the building, wondering if she would be able to remember which turns to take. Hesitantly, she started down the hall to the left but soon realized that she was going the wrong way. There were no studios in this section, just vast rooms whose brick walls were pierced with large unglazed openings. The temperature had been steadily dropping since the rains of the night before, and a chill wind swept through the empty space, knocking an abandoned beer can off a window ledge and sending it rattling across the floor toward Elizabeth.

The clatter was shockingly loud on the bare concrete, and she turned and quickly retraced her steps. “Exit hurriedly, pursued by a beer can,” she muttered as she saw the blue door ahead.

As she continued on down the hall she began to feel on familiar ground. A door painted in a virulent green and bearing a notice that visitors would be severely taunted caught her attention.
I remember that. And now the dog-training area should be right ahead and Kyra’s studio is just a little way beyond that.

The glossy red door was open wide but there was no sign of Kyra. The combination lock hung crookedly from the hasp, and within the room, lights were on and a CD player in the corner was dispensing some variety of loud atonal music.

“Kyra?” Elizabeth peered into the long room, wondering if Kyra could be somewhere out of sight amid the stacks of canvases and supplies in the back half of the studio. “Are you here?”

The front part of the room where the works for sale had hung was stripped bare; the only remaining objects were the table with its green brocade cover and the television and VCR on a stand by the door.
Okay, so maybe Kyra and Ben and Aidan are taking a load of stuff somewhere and will be back soon.
Elizabeth hesitated a moment, then made for the place where the unfinished mixed-media piece had been.
The one she didn’t want us looking at. I’m pretty sure it’s based on that
entelechy
sketch and I’m almost positive it means something.

It was there, still on the big easel. The support was a large piece of masonite— about five feet tall and more than a yard wide— and it had been covered with thick paint
— maybe some plaster?—
and embellished with painted images, as well as actual objects embedded in the surface medium. Six arches were shaped in the impasto within the rectangle— the first in the lower left corner, followed by the rest in a curving progression that swept to the top center of the piece. A fantastic bird with golden plumage and outspread wings dominated the remaining space, its flowing tail and extended pinions of gilded emerald and amethyst partially obscuring the arches. The bird’s eye glowed jade green and its long beak was open in a silent triumphant call. Behind and below the bird, long tongues of flame formed a rhythmic pattern.

It’s the phoenix— the bird that’s reborn from the flames. Does Kyra see herself that way? I guess so, after the fire that destroyed their house…. But she set the fire…a self-made phoenix.

Elizabeth moved closer to study the first arch. Painted on the smooth space within the curve was an old-fashioned wooden cradle on rockers. It was turned on its side, revealing an empty interior.

The second arch framed a black vase in heavy relief, its swelling side marred by a crack from which red liquid oozed. The flowers in the broken vase were roses of the deepest black-red, their heads drooping in death. Elizabeth shuddered and continued her examination of the piece.

The swirls and corrugations of paint that formed the black vase seemed to glitter in one spot. Elizabeth pulled the heavy easel around slightly to catch the light from the window. Yes, there was something deeply embedded in the black paint— bits of mirror perhaps, or a piece of costume jewelry.

She touched the sparkling shape. The paint and the thick plaster were dry and she closed her eyes, trying to let her fingers read the shape of the semi-concealed object.
It
could
be a rose— or just something free-form. I guess it would be really wrong of me to scrape at it.

Two red cowboy boots were the focus of the third arch. One stood, while the other lay on its side.
Okay, so that’s for Boz. And the vase of roses is for her mother. So does that mean this is about the losses she’s had to overcome?

Elizabeth looked back at the empty cradle in the first arch.
Is it possible she remembers that adopted brother who just disappeared out of her life? Her father said she was five…. I can still remember things that happened when I was five…not many, but surely you’d remember a thing like a disappearing brother.

The fourth arch was puzzling. It contained what looked like a skewed oval mask of white and green. The eyeholes,
I guess they’re eyeholes,
were squeezed together in the middle of the oval. The left side was round, while the other was a triangle pointing to the right. Vertical purple stripes bisected each opening and a broad line slashed through the mask,
if it
is
a mask.
Within the line were embedded greenish-brown, fernlike leaves and little yellowish buttonlike objects.

“Dried tansy!” Elizabeth exclaimed, happy to have found something familiar. She leaned in close and could just make out the familiar mintlike aroma.
But what’s the point? And is this a mask or what?

In arch five Kyra had repeated the dead-flowers-in-a-vase theme, but this time the vase was silver and the withered blooms were calla lilies.
Her great-grandmother, obviously. But why did she paint a branch of apple blossoms in the background?
A closer look revealed long sharp thorns on the branch.
No, that’s not right, apple trees don’t have thorns— that’s hawthorn. But why?

At first she thought that the sixth and final arch was empty, but as she moved to the side to study the work from a different angle, the light caught the arch’s interior and revealed a smaller phoenix— a ghostly mirror image of the other, incised on the smooth surface.

The unpleasant music was still playing and still too loud. Elizabeth decided that, as she seemed to be alone, she would turn it down or possibly off. She began to edge out from behind the big easel, trying not to touch the areas of the piece that appeared to be still wet. A movement caught her eye, and she had a glimpse of a shadow in the doorway. Then the red door swung firmly shut.

“Kyra! Wait, I’m in here!” She made for the door, banging into the brocade-covered table in her haste. Grabbing the knob, she pulled, but the door moved no more than a quarter of an inch. Evidently, the combination lock was securing the hasp. “Hey!” she shouted, rattling and pounding on the door. “Hey, I’m in here! Kyra!”

She realized that the music was louder than she was. Quickly she yanked the plug out of the wall and continued to shout, expecting at any moment to hear rapid footsteps hurrying to her rescue.

When she stopped to listen, she could sense rather than hear someone standing at the door. “Hey!” she said, more quietly this time. “Could you let me out, please?”

There was no answer as soft footfalls retreated, diminishing into silence.

A
FTER A FEW MINUTES OF BANGING FRUITLESSLY
on the door and shouting imprecations toward the silent hall, Elizabeth turned to the row of tall windows. They overlooked a desolate area, populated only by a few abandoned vehicles, rusting amid the weeds. Discarded plastic bags hung and shimmied like tattered ghosts in the scrubby sumacs that dotted the field in random clumps. There was no one in sight to call to, nor was there any sign that this wasteland was visited regularly.

She pushed open the metal-framed window and leaned out. This was only a two-story building— jumping would probably not kill her. But it was an old industrial building with soaring ceilings,
more like two and a half stories.
She reconsidered
— How far is it?—
even as she realized that only the direst of threats could send her out that window. A jump would inevitably break bones, at the very least.

Abandoning the windows, she willed herself to calmness, opened one of the folding lawn chairs that was leaning against the wall, and sat down to consider her situation.
Who?
was the first question.
Who locked me in?Was that Kyra out there? Did she see me snooping and decide to teach me a lesson? Or was it someone else— maybe the person responsible for Boz’s death?

She remembered Aidan’s bitter remarks about his childhood. Was his anger somehow related to all this and was it now directed at her?

Or is it all Kyra? I know she faked the corncrib incident; Phillip thinks she set the fire; her great-grandmother hinted that she had set other fires. And her father admits— no,
insists
she’s disturbed. But why would she have killed her mother? Or was her mother’s death what sent her off the deep end?