Framed and Burning (Dreamslippers Book 2) (21 page)

“I’m sorry,” he said, which is how Pris told him to start the conversation. Back in their cottage kitchen, he’d protested, saying he had nothing to be sorry for, but then Pris told him he should say it anyway, that it would take the wind out of Candace’s sails and improve his chances of getting some answers from her.

“What are you sorry for?” Candace scoffed. “I’m the one who set the fires.”

That hadn’t seemed to work, so Mick shifted to his sister’s second suggested concession. “I forgive you,” Mick said, though he followed it with an involuntary cough. It was hard for him to say these things to Candace. Even if she didn’t set the first fire, she’d still destroyed his home. And his burning anger toward her felt like it would never run out of fuel.

Candace glared at him incredulously, her arms crossed in front of her chest. “Did you get religion or something? Shit, that would be the day, wouldn’t it?” She roared with laughter.

“Candace,” Mick said, reaching across the table to try to hold her hand. He noticed her nails had been bitten to the quick.

“Don’t touch me!” she screamed.

The guard tensed, stepped forward.

Mick motioned to him to stay back. “I’m fine, really.”

“Why are you here?” she demanded.

“I-I wanted to see you,” Mick said. “It’s been so long, and…” his words failed him. It was times like these he wished he could paint a picture to illustrate the feeling.

“Aw, did Mickey miss me?” she taunted. “You want a lick of your Candy?”

He winced. The phrase came out of their lovemaking play so many years ago.

This script of Pris’s he was following wasn’t getting him anywhere, so he dropped it, clearing his throat and starting over the way he should have when she’d sat down.

“Candace, look. I know you didn’t kill Donnie, so quit being a damn martyr.”

Her eyes went wide, and she began to shake her head. “No, no, no, no, no! You don’t get to say what the truth is. I do.”

“You’re acting like a crazy woman, C. And this isn’t you. Come on. You’re better than this.”

She fixed him with a look that seemed perfectly lucid. “My lawyer says I’ll be charged with first-degree arson for your precious beach house, Mick. Even though you weren’t even living there! And since you’re so beloved by the art world, I’ll probably get the max, which is thirty years. I’m fifty-seven, so that means I’m locked up till I’m practically dead anyway. Might as well ’fess up to both crimes. It’ll make me famous.”

“You stupid, vain, competitive woman,” Mick spat out. “You know Florida carries the death penalty, right?”

She stared at him, blinking.

“That’s right, the electric chair. You killed an upstanding man in the prime of his life because you’re jealous of the man you were really trying to kill. They’ll think you’re a monster. And you set fire to a building that a whole bunch of other artists lived in, too.” Mick laid it on as thick as he could, even though he was pretty sure even Florida, as enamored as it seemed to be with frying folks, wouldn’t seek the death penalty in her case. But he needed her to think so. “You know my studio was right next to a school, and they were having parent-teacher night? Oh, they’ll fry you, honey, like a piece of candied bacon. This is Florida, remember? They’ll take a lady killer and strap her into Old Sparky toot-sweet.”

She continued to stare at him as if realizing she was a kid playing a grown-up game.

“You don’t want to die for this, C. Besides, if you go down for the crime, we never catch the real killer.”

She kept staring and began to bite one of her fingernails.

Mick let out a heavy, emotion-laden breath. “You would have liked Donnie. Remember how you and I used to watch brown pelicans, diving into the waves? Imagine if you painted the arcing motions of their flights. Yeah, that’s Donnie. A real talent.”

“Not like me,” she finally said. Her voice was dull.

“Is that what this is about? You feeling sorry for yourself because you haven’t made it big? Well, neither had Donnie. He was my assistant.”

“I know that.”

“And you’ve got an eye, Candace. I never told you that, but I should have. You just needed to get out of your own way.”

“Oh, what do you know about it? You hardly even looked at my work.” She uncrossed her arms and leaned forward, staring at him with those big blue eyes he used to wish he could get lost in.

“My sister bought one of your pieces. It’s hanging in the place where I’m staying.”

“Your sister’s too loyal to you.”

“That’s probably true. But that’s not why she bought your piece. She liked it. She had a feeling about it.”

“You just feel sorry for me.”

“Right now, Candace, you’re right that I feel sorry for you. But that’s not it. I don’t want you to waste any more time than you have.”

Candace’s eyes started to fill with tears, but Mick could see her resisting the emotion.

“What if I didn’t set the first fire?” she said in a very quiet voice, and staring across the room, avoiding Mick’s gaze.

“Then we’ll figure out who did,” he said. “And we’ll see if we can get them to go easy on you about the beach house.”

Candace met his gaze, and the tears slipped down her cheeks. “I never thought this would be my life, Mick. Alone, you know…” She stopped, choking up.

He reached for her hand, and this time, she didn’t pull away.

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

She wiped her tears on the sleeve of her orange jumpsuit. “I’m not like you. Making art wasn’t the only thing I ever wanted.”

“You wanted me to make a home with you,” Mick said. “But I’m no good for that. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Candace said, removing her hand from his. Her voice was so quiet, it was almost a whisper. “I know I was never as good as you.”

He didn’t know what to say, and her words made his eyes fill with water.

“I think I need some help,” Candace said, biting her nail again. “This is all…too much for me.”

“Maybe we can get your sentence reduced,” he said. “I mean, you weren’t trying to kill anyone.”

“Yeah,” she said. She looked resigned.

He sat there for a moment longer, but there was nothing left to say. Soon, the guard said “Time,” and Mick got up to leave.

“One last thing,” Candace said, her voice going hard again. “I’d appreciate it if you’d stay the hell out of my dreams.”

The guard gave Mick a knowing look, as if to convey his sympathy for her apparent derangement. Little did he know, thought Mick.

>>>

He returned to Ernesto’s cottage after that hoping to hear from his real estate agent about touring live-work lofts. He was eager to get out from under his sister’s friend’s charity and start painting for real again.

But when he stepped in the door, Pris and Cat were embroiled in an intense conversation about Cat’s findings in New York. He overheard the mention of Chester Canon’s name.

“Don’t tell me Chester the Molester is your primary suspect now,” he said.

His sister and Cat greeted him with hugs, ignoring his comment.

“How’d it go with Candace?” His sister had an expectant, hopeful look.

“She recanted,” he said.
 

His sister clapped her hands together. “Good work! Do you believe us now?”

Mick shrugged. “Deep down, sister, I guess I always knew Candace didn’t kill Donnie. Now what’s this about Chester?”
Cat stepped in and explained what she’d learned in New York.

Mick felt incensed, but this time he resisted the urge to hop in his Fiat and tear up the highway to Fort Lauderdale. “You think this leads him to the murder?”

“It certainly points to an above-average obsession with you,” Cat said. “In person, Canon played it off well, acting as if he barely remembered you. But it’s clear you got under his skin. That might have festered over the years, as you became more and more successful.”

“If he killed Donnie, I swear I’ll…”

Pris reiterated what he already knew. “Don’t do anything rash.”

“So what’s your next move?” he asked the two of them.

They exchanged glances. “We want to reach out to Alvarez,” said Cat. “We bring her in, and we’ll go after Canon.”

“I want to be there when you do,” said Mick.

“Understood,” said Cat.

Mick picked up his laptop and disappeared into his room to check his email. His real estate agent had sent him several links to live-work lofts. He clicked on the first one. It took him to pictures of a brand-new building with stainless steel appliances in the kitchen section of the loft. Instead of the old corner windows he’d had in Brickell, this one had two cement walls, with only the third wall to let in natural light, which would have to come through windows that didn’t look like they opened. There was a view of the neon lights of South Beach. It looked like the kind of place some yuppie would live in, a young stockbroker or software engineer who wanted to feel hip, not a real artist. It disgusted him, so he closed the browser window and opened the next link. It wasn’t any better, and neither were the other three.

His old loft hadn’t been updated since the Fifties. It had the original appliances, a large Frigidaire with a chrome handle and a mammoth stove he had to light every time he used it. The palm tree that had stretched to the top of the loft had come with the place, and all he’d had to do was add a little water whenever he thought about it, and it thrived. The windows were old and rickety, but he had a bank of floor-to-ceiling corner panes, the middle ones louvers that opened with a crank handle on each end to let in fresh air.
 

He couldn’t picture himself in any of the lofts his agent suggested, and he couldn’t picture Donnie in them either, or Rose de la Crem.
 

At the thought of Rose, he realized he hadn’t seen her since the wake and her public embarrassment, courtesy of Roy Roy. Mick missed her. Where had she gone? The fire had closed the Brickell down, since it was no longer secure with half its end wall burned away. He dug into his jeans pocket for his cell phone, which was an old-school version that only took and received calls. It didn’t text or surf the Internet, as he found that business distracting. He thumbed through, looking for Rose’s number. He finally found it under “Rosie,” which was strange, since she didn’t answer to that name. He got her voice mail.

He felt awkward leaving a message and was tempted to push End Call, but he didn’t. “Hi, uh, Rose. This is Mick. Just, uh, wondering how you’re doing. I haven’t seen you, uh, since the wake.”

She called back several hours later, after he’d had a frustrating conversation with his real estate agent, and after Cat and his sister had announced that Sergeant Alvarez—this time without her usual posse—was coming for dinner. He’d protested but was overruled by the two strident women.

“Mickey!” cried Rose. “I’m so glad you called. Where are you now? Did you find a place to live?”

Mick told her what he’d learned.

“You’re lucky you can buy something,” Rose said, her voice flat. “There’s shit to rent out here. I’m staying at Roy Roy’s place for now.”

So they’d made up after his scene at the wake. Mick was sorry to hear that. Leroy was not Mick’s favorite person. Rose’s on-again, off-again boyfriend with the bleach-blond hair and pierced nose, a Roy tattoo on each forearm, had seemed to show up at the Brickell Lofts only long enough to relieve his itch for Rose, as well as score some cash.
 

“It’s to tide him over,” Rose would shrug off when questioned.

“I’m sorry, Rose,” Mick said, in apology for her homeless status but thinking he was sorry for her shitty boyfriend situation as well. “Is there anything I can do to help? After all, it’s my fault. The fire was meant for me.”

Upon hearing Rose’s name, Pris motioned to Mick from the kitchen, where she and Cat were cooking up a storm. His sister held a wooden spoon stained yellow from saffron. She waved it at him. “Invite her to dinner,” she said. He did.

“Oh, you know me, social butterfly that I am…” Rose sounded coquettish. “But for you, Mick, I’ll break my plans.”

“Great, you do that,” he said, playing along. “Looks like we’re eating soon, so let me give you the address.”

Dinner turned into a grand party with Rose, Alvarez, and Ernesto as well joining them for dinner. Rose turned out in a black-and-white polka-dotted cocktail dress cinched at the waist with a wide belt. Her face was made up in a way that exaggerated her lips as wider and more bow-shaped than they really were. She looked like a drag queen doing Fifties pin-up girl, and Mick felt charmed by the effort, especially considering the dark circles he could detect under her eyes, beneath the heavy makeup.

Ernesto had been the first to arrive, and he and Pris had disappeared into her room for awhile for conversation and who knows what else. Mick tried to stay out of his sister’s private life, but he frankly didn’t like her liaison with Ernesto and wondered how Pris could keep it casual over so many years. Ernesto’s smooth ways rankled Mick. But far be it from him to pass judgment on Pris’s choice in men. Now Ernesto eyed Rose with the look of a connoisseur of women, but he didn’t seem to quite know in which category Rose belonged. Even this smidgen of confusion in Ernesto pleased Mick greatly to see.