Electric Blue (4 page)

I had no fears of being too warm this evening, even though the sun had been fierce all day. Fall nights cool down rapidly in the northwest, and as I walked to my car a brisk breeze was blowing leaves across my drive, planting them against my tires. More leaves and branches rustled overhead.

It was still hot in the Volvo, however—greenhouse effect—so I rolled down a window and started the engine. As I headed out of Lake Chinook I noticed pumpkins on people’s porches. None carved yet. Halloween was still a few weeks ahead, but fall was fast taking over. You gotta look out for November 1st in Oregon. September and October can be really nice. Warm. Sometimes
really
warm. But come November it’s like crossing a line. Wind, rain and generally gray nastiness hunch down on you. Darkness in the morning, darkness at noon, darkness at night. In my opinion, the reason hibernation was invented.

I drove up Macadam Avenue toward Military Road and one of the main turnoffs into Dunthorpe. I headed uphill for a mile or two, switchbacking and curving around to a headland. Perched on the eastern edge were the view houses.

Jazz had given me the address but I’m not all that familiar with the winding roads that sometimes are barely wide enough for one car, let alone two. I took a couple of wrong turns, passed by the same lady walking her Pomeranian twice, and finally found myself on a dead-end street named Chrysanthemum Drive. Well, of course. Flowers. It was the Purcell theme. I could see a small metal plaque with the
P
logo tucked into the shrubbery at tire height, so I turned in.

The Purcell mansion stood at the end of a narrow, winding, tree-lined drive, oak and maple limbs creating a canopy above my Volvo that very nearly scratched my roof. This place would be hell on SUVs, but then I guess James Purcell hadn’t really planned for the automobile when the place was built at the turn of the century.

I drove into a clearing. The lane curved in front of the house, which had a slate floor portico that extended outward to cover space for two cars. There were several more uncovered parking spots beyond.

I realized that this was actually the back of the house; the front faced the Willamette River. I gazed up at the second-story windows. The house was built in what’s locally termed “Old Portland” style with shingles and pane windows, rounded pillars and rock facing the entire first floor. A slate path curved off from the portico, presumably toward the front door. On the rear side were two doors, one entering into a funny apse on the left; one on the right that appeared to head into the kitchen. It amazes me that people ever build homes where visitors have to search for their correct entry, but there’s more than a few of them in Dunthorpe and Portland’s West Hills.

I pulled in front of the portico and slotted into a spot beside two low-slung sports cars. Made sense, considering the tree/drive situation. There was also an ancient vanilla-colored Cadillac, possibly “Nana” Purcell’s mode of transportation. I’d neglected to learn what Jazz drove. The idea of entering this family manor without him daunted me.

Stepping out of my car, I slowly locked the doors, taking my time. In the gilding afternoon sun I could see the towering Douglas firs had dropped a carpet of needles atop the house’s slate roof. It looked as if the gutters hadn’t been cleaned in this millennium. Two L-shaped wings jutted from each side. I tried to estimate the rambling mansion’s square footage and failed. Big. Really big. But in a state of long-term neglect that had left its once awesome grace moldering into disrepair.

I swear there was a faint odor of something dying or dead.

Shadows formed where the lowering sun could not reach. I shivered though it wasn’t cold.

After a few minutes I followed the path to the front of the house where sweeping grounds rolled toward the edge of the cliff. In the name of safety a wrought-iron fence had been erected along the perimeter, but spokes and curlicues were broken out in places and briers had climbed inside, tendrils reaching through like thorny fingers.

The lawn was freshly mowed, however, and the path I followed was swept clean. Dead ahead was the front door beneath another, smaller portico. The slate path swooped up into several stairs which were missing pieces of rock. I climbed the steps and stood for a moment looking at twin wrought-iron rings hanging on massive wooden doors. Not exactly in keeping with the architecture. Definitely monastic. I lifted one and let it fall. Its
boom
sounded like a wrecking ball.

Out of my peripheral view I noticed a side building. I turned to look at it and saw that it was a playhouse. Child’s size. Its front door was bright red and freshly painted. The rest of it looked scary and decrepit. Worse than the house, even.

The door in front of me swung slowly inward revealing a gloomy interior. I had a mad desire to sing cheerily, “Avon calling!” but managed to hold myself back.

A figure moved into view. A slight, middle-aged man, his skin wrinkled in that used-up kind of way, blinked at me in the quickly fading light. “Yes?”

“Hi, I’m Jane Kelly. Jasper—Jazz—invited me to meet him here?” I couldn’t help making it sound like a question. I was hoping somehow this skinny guy would help me out.

His expression grew faintly anxious. “Here?”

I wasn’t sure whether to go into the whole thing about Orchid and her mental condition. I thought about trotting out a lie but sensed that might get in my way in the long run. I opted for a nod and a bright smile.

“Jazz doesn’t live here.” He glanced behind him, as if he were afraid of imparting a huge family secret.

“He said his grandmother lived here. Should I wait outside?”

This really threw him off. He clearly didn’t know what to do with me. After a hesitation that lasted long enough to embarrass us both, he finally stepped from the gloom onto the porch. “I’m not sure if I should have you come in. The family’s here.” He tossed another glance to the still open door.

I got my first good look at him. He definitely carried the Purcell gene for attractiveness, even with his dried-up appearance and mannerisms. His eyes were gray-blue and his hair was thick and lustrous, only shot sparsely with gray. If he’d given any thought to physical fitness, which by his stooped posture and generally soft appearance didn’t seem possible, he would be one good-looking man. I pegged him somewhere in his late fifties but it was hard to tell. He could have been much younger. He just
seemed
old.

His worry about “the family” was starting to amuse me. Or, maybe it was just relief that I didn’t have to go inside without Jazz. I leaned forward and whispered, “Should I wait in my car, then?”

“Yes…yes…maybe…”

“James!” a female voice called from the gloomy bowels.

James started as if he’d been goosed. “That’s Dahlia,” he murmured.

So, I was looking at James Purcell the fourth and waiting for his sister Dahlia to appear. I did a quick recap in my head. James was a bachelor. Dahlia was married to…Roderick…that was it. She had given birth to two children. A son and a daughter. I couldn’t recall the son’s name but the daughter was christened Rhoda before she died in infancy from SIDS.

Dahlia clomped onto the porch. Where her brother was slight, Dahlia was large. Everything was—her body and her features. She had huge eyes and lips and there was a wave to her ash blond hair that kept it about a half-inch off her skull, all over. Where James resembled a handsome professor gone to seed, Dahlia was a stevedore whose only real physical attribute was a set of even, white teeth.

She fixed her gaze on me through eyes that were a pale blue like a sky filled with white clouds. I almost felt sorry for her. She’d so clearly missed out on the family’s good looks.

“Who the hell are you?” she asked in a melodious voice that surprised me enough to leave me momentarily speechless.

“Jane Kelly.” I held out my hand.

She shook it firmly. “Yes? And what do you want?”

“She’s here to meet Jazz,” James put in. He’d taken several steps away and was gazing toward the edge of the property.

“What for?”

I suddenly didn’t want to say. Dahlia narrowed her eyes at me, but before I had to confess my reasons, there was a commotion deep inside the house and the sound of voices greeting a newcomer. Dahlia whipped around and headed back the way she’d come without another word. James cast me a worried look and followed. I didn’t wait for an invitation and just took up the rear, hoping to high heaven that Jazz had arrived.

He had. And he had a boy with him. His son, no doubt. Logan, I remembered.

“You have a guest,” Dahlia said in a tight voice.

Jazz saw me and broke into another brilliant smile. It was enough to make me catch my breath.

“You went around to the front door,” he said, coming toward me. “Hey, Logan wait…”

Logan, who’d been making a beeline for the stairs, reluctantly slowed, turning on one designer basketball shoe signed by an NBA player outside of my limited knowledge of the sport. “Yeah?”

“This is Jane Kelly. Jane, my son Logan. Jane’s here to see Nana, so why don’t you wait downstairs with Aunt Dahl—”

“She’s here to see Mother?” Dahlia demanded. “Why?”

We were standing in the entry hall, which rose two stories. A gallery ran overhead between the two wings. Exclamations of surprise or disgust, or both, shot from the open doors to the main salon. Jazz glanced to his left, his expression carefully neutral. I stepped forward and looked inside the salon. A group of people were headed my way. The middle-agers. And, I guessed, Cammie.

They collected in the doorway to the entry hall and gazed at me with varying degrees of alarm. It wasn’t what I would call a warm welcome.

I turned to Jazz expectantly. Instead of explaining my presence to them, he seemed flummoxed by the question. He shot me a “rescue me” look. My heart suddenly went into overdrive. What was this?

“Jazz asked me to meet Orchid,” I said slowly.

“Who are you?” a male middle-ager demanded. I pegged him as Garrett Purcell. He, too, possessed the extraordinary good looks, but he’d let himself go and now was paunchy and soft. An overriding belligerence, which seemed to be a part of his makeup, also took away from his appearance. A few more years and his attractiveness wouldn’t even be an issue. He would just be an older man with an attitude problem.

“I’m a private investigator.”

The man actually reared back. He glared at Jazz. “What the hell are you doing, man?”

“Jane is here to see about Nana’s sanity.”

At least he’d come back to the point, but now all the Purcell gang regarded me with flat-out suspicion. “So, when do private investigators determine someone’s sanity?” another man asked in a really snarky tone. I figured he must be Roderick, Dahlia’s husband.

“I guess when Jazz asks them to,” Dahlia answered, equally snarky.

“Why don’t we all go in and sit down?” Jazz gestured toward the room they’d just exited, and we all trundled back inside.

The salon was furnished in fern green and gold. The Purcell clan took their seats as if they’d been choreographed, apparently reclaiming the ones they’d just vacated. I stayed standing alongside Jazz. Logan flanked him on the left, but it was clear he didn’t want to be anywhere near any of us. I sympathized.

“I know we’ve all been worried about Nana,” Jazz said as an opening salvo.

“You’ve been worried,” the bullish man corrected. He had a barrel chest, a pugnacious chin and salt-and-pepper hair. “The rest of us know what’s wrong with her. Dementia.” The woman seated beside him on the green and gold striped divan—his wife, I was sure—stiffened at the word. Her head was bent and she seemed intent on her fingernails. I watched her play with them. Her hair was coiffed in that flippy style so beloved by Ann Landers, if you could still believe the picture. It was dyed an unnatural black, the scary kind that seems to absorb all light.

“I’m Garrett,” he added, rising again to extend his hand. Steely blue eyes searched my face. “That’s my wife, Satin. Jazz said that you’re…?”

“Jane Kelly.” We shook hands. His grip was one of those crushers. He squeezed my fingers and kept his gaze on my face, watching. I managed to keep my eyes level with his and luckily didn’t tear up from the pain. Abruptly, he released his grip and turned away.

Geez, Louise.

“I’m Roderick,” the other man said with a nod. He was lean with hair an even brown tone that spoke of coloring as well. I smiled at him in acknowledgment, all the time wondering when I could get the hell out of Dodge.

“And this is Benjamin,” Roderick said, gazing at a young man who sat apart from the group, flipping through a magazine. Benjamin’s head stayed bowed. There was something about his slouched posture and desire to be alone in a crowd that made me think he was a teenager, but when he deigned to look at me I was surprised to see he was closer to my age. He alone of the Purcells possessed brown eyes, a light shade, close to my hazel color, a gift from his father.

“Benjamin, say hello,” Dahlia muttered automatically. She must have done it a million times before.

“Huh-low.” Benjamin flicked a sideways glance my way. I got the feeling he wasn’t trying to be rude, he just had no interest in me or anything else going on among us.

Cammie Purcell shifted position in a fawn wingback chair. I assumed it was Cammie because she was the only woman in her thirties in the room and her hair was an icy blond. Dwayne had described her as perennially unhappy. The downward bow of her lips spoke volumes. “So, what’s this all about, Jazz?” she asked. Her gaze briefly touched mine. There was something going on in her eyes. Something manipulative and determined. Dwayne’s admonitions reverberated through my brain.