Paint Me True (5 page)

“Well, I suppose you’re right about that. I don’t want an x-ray.”

“But you’ll get one?”

“I want it on the smallest possible area. The need to zoom in as much as they can.”

“All right, I’ll tell them.”

“The less radiation they put into me, the better.”

I wasn’t sure that her idea would cut the radiation dose, but now wasn’t the time to point that out. “I’ll be right back,” I said.

I found Nurse Radcliffe back out at the nurse’s station with a manila folder in one hand and a pen in the other. “All right?” he said when I approached. He didn’t look up.

“Yes.”

“Mmmm?” Now he did look up with those soulful eyes of his.

I had to remind myself that “All right?” in Britspeak meant, “How are you?” He hadn’t asked me about Aunt Nora at all.

“She’ll have her arm x-rayed.”

He arched an eyebrow. “You didn’t twist her arm too hard, I trust? We’re quite certain it is broken.”

“No, no twisting.”

He put the folder down and turned his whole attention to me. “Then what did you do?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I bribed her.” I tried to keep my tone flat, but it came out flirty anyway. I was tired. My inhibitions were low. Now that I could see both his hands, I saw no wedding band and no CTR ring.

“With what?” he asked.

“With art.” The words should have shut the conversation down, but I said them in a way that invited him to ask.

“Art, eh? You’re going to buy her-”

“Paint for her. I’m a professional artist.”

He blinked with surprise, as most people did when I said that.

I clasped my hands behind my back and tried not to tilt my head and swing my shoulders just so, but my body wouldn’t listen. I was being a fool.

Even worse, it seemed to affect him. He smiled. “You’re quite useful to have around. You got her to switch just like that?”

“You’re welcome. Can you book her x-rays?”

“I’ll give the hospital a ring and we’ll get this sorted.”

I nodded and turned to go. A quick glance over my shoulder let me know he watched me leave. We exchanged another smile.

When I returned to Aunt Nora’s room, she looked agitated again. “Eliza, have you been to my house yet?”

I shook my head.

“I’m worried about Pip.”

Pip was her little Maltese. “I can go check on him, as long as you’re okay?”

“I’ll be fine, now that you’re here.”

I gave her a gentle half-hug, the best I could manage while she lay down. “I’ll go look after him.”

M
y anxiety level ratcheted up as the cab got closer to Nora’s house. It wasn’t far from the hospital, but it was far enough for me to have time to worry my stomach to shreds. What if the paramedics had broken the door down and her house had just been left open? What if Pip had run away? What if the thawed out peas on the floor had attracted in wildlife? Would I find an urban fox in residence?

As the cab turned the corner of Charlbury Road, though, I saw the house and there was no visible damage to the door. It was shut, which meant it was locked. She had one of those front doors, common in England, that had no knob. If it was latched, it was locked.

Many of the upper story windows were shuttered and only the ground floor had lace curtains that allowed light in, but no prying eyes. It was a grand house built of Cotswold stone that had been in the Chesterton family for a hundred years – according to Nora.

“Go ahead and pull into the driveway,” I told the cab driver. The house had a semi-circular drive of gravel that crunched under the cab’s tires.

I got out, paid the driver and thanked her as she helped me carry my bags to the doorstep.

It occurred to me that the paramedics might have used a back door instead, so that signs of their entry wouldn’t be so obvious from the street. My aunt had given me a copy of her key years ago and I used that to let myself in. The lights in the foyer were off. “Pip?” I called out. “Hey boy!” My voice echoed hollowly.

Turning on lights didn’t drive out the empty, abandoned feeling the house had. I made my way to the kitchen first, where I expected to see plates out on the counters and fragments of crockery on the floor, only the floor was clean.

“Pip!” I shouted. “Where are you? Pip!”

He was a shy dog, so I didn’t expect him to come running. I did expect an answering jangle of tags, though. Maybe some barking. He was a dog, after all, and I was encroaching on his territory. “
Pip!
” I yelled.

The kitchen was next to the formal dining room, which had a pair of French doors that opened out into the back yard. No sign of forced entry there. I wondered if the paramedics had used a window, though there was no stirring of breeze in the house that would give that away. “Pip?”

The size of the house meant it had plenty of places for a tiny dog to hide. I decided to start from the top story, which meant I had to climb two flights of stairs. The corridor of the top floor had sea green carpet and slightly crooked doorways to each room. “Pip?”

Just silence.

At the far end of the corridor was my cousin, John’s room, still decorated for a little boy, even though he was now in his twenties. Blue wallpaper and a ship’s wheel on the wall gave it a nautical air. On the windowsill was a flashlight which seemed out of place. Other than that, the room was neat as a pin. I went over to the window and hefted the flashlight. It was an old one with a plastic sliding switch. The window looked out on the back yard. A glint of light on the garden wall caught my eye.

Of course. I was being foolish. Pip had a doggie door that couldn’t be locked. If he didn’t come when I entered the house, he was probably not in the house.

I jogged back downstairs and out the back door. “Pip!” I called out.

A jangle of tags answered me, and I immediately stepped down onto the grass and called his name again. “Where are you, boy?” The jangle had come from a cluster of bushes just to my right. I got down on my hands and knees in the damp grass to peer underneath.

Sure enough, there he was, his back hunched in a sad horseshoe, his tail tucked between his spindly back legs. He looked at me with his silky ears pressed to the sides of his head.

“Hi, Pip,” I said. “I don’t know if you remember me. I’m family. You’re safe. You want to come out?” I held out my hands to invite him to come and sniff me. “Hey boy. Come here.”

My aunt always kept him impeccably brushed, but now he had mud on his legs and belly and even some splashes of it on his back. He shook himself, tags jangling.

“Your fur’s not thick enough to be out here,” I told him. “Come on. Please.”

He tilted his head one way, then the other, then shot forward with a burst of nervous energy. I had him in my arms now, his little body shaking like he’d just gotten out of a freezing river in December. I tucked him under one arm and went back inside.

His fur was dirty and had some snarls, but nothing that wasn’t easy to put right. His paws were whole, no cuts or scratches that I could see. I held onto him as I searched the entire ground floor. There were no broken windows, no broken doors. The kitchen, I now noted, wasn’t just devoid of a broken bowl and peas, it was clean. There was nothing on the counters, no dirty dishes in the sink, nothing on the stove or in the microwave.

I opened the cabinet under the sink and there, in the garbage can, I found the remains of the peas and broken shards of bowl. Well, I thought, there was no reason my aunt couldn’t have swept that up and put things away before letting the paramedics in. But the nurse had told me she’d arrived at the hospital unconscious. Had she passed out on the way?

Pip eyed me curiously as I carried him out the front door and went to the third flowerpot along the driveway, the one that was shielded from view of the road and the other houses by a weeping willow that drooped its long, leaf laden branches all around three sides of the pot. I dug about three inches down in the soil and came up with nothing.

Someone had taken the spare key.

I carried Pip back into the house, shut the door behind me and threw the deadbolt. Unease warred with the rational voice in my head that pointed out that my aunt could have moved the spare key. Aunt Nora’s laptop sat on the dining room table. The china in the glass cabinet still crowded those narrow shelves. The silver tea service was out on the sideboard and her plasma television hung, unmolested, over the fireplace in the sitting room, framed by the two paintings I’d done of pansies that went with the rest of the décor. Her e-reader sat next to a stack of mail on the table in the entryway.

I was jumping at shadows. Odds were, Nora had merely fallen asleep waiting in the emergency room for treatment and someone had put down that she was “unconscious” when she arrived.

I went out onto the service porch and filled the sink with warm water. Pip wriggled with excitement as I lowered him in. His dog shampoo was on the shelf, just as I’d remembered, and I scrubbed the mud out of his coat, which was mercifully short. He was patient as I ran the wire brush through his fur, cleaning away the last of the dirt, though it snarled enough that I had to pick the knots out with my fingers.

After I got him out of the water, I fluffed him with a towel and then blew his fur dry. This he also tolerated; he was accustomed to being spoiled and stood still as I dried his coat and ran the brush through it some more.

“Better?” I said.

He rewarded me with bright eyes and a wag of the tail. I noticed then that his food and water dishes were full. There was wet dog food in the dish that hadn’t congealed too badly yet. It wasn’t three days old. I put Pip down in the kitchen, got a change of clothes from Aunt Nora’s room, and then set out for the hospital again. Since I didn’t have my suitcase to lug, I could walk there.

B
y the time I arrived, Aunt Nora had been moved to the main hospital. I found her in the lobby with a splint on her arm. “There you are,” she said. “They got my x-rays done and put this splint on, but when I asked for a phone, you’d think I’d asked them for a special referral to a holistic care clinic. They said they’d get back to me once they handled all the procedures for my request.” She rolled her eyes as she got to her feet.

“Do you have a housecleaner?” I asked.

“Yes. You don’t see her often, she’s such a quiet little thing, but yes.”

“Would she have come while you were here?”

“Mmmm, I’d have to check. I suppose so, yes. She comes on alternate Fridays.”

“It looks like she fed Pip.”

“Well that’s good. Poor little guy.”

“Also, did you move your spare key?”

“Olivia might not have put it back. I told her to use it to get a package of hers that had been left at my house. She called while I was out shopping a couple of weeks ago and I told her where it was.”

“Oh, okay, because it’s also gone.”

“Well, I trust Olivia. She’s a little forgetful is all. And she’s in Tenerife at the moment, so I’ll just remind her to give me the key back when she flies home.”

I nodded. “Let me call a cab-”

“We’re only eight blocks away. We can walk.”

Normally we would have done so without me having a second thought, but she seemed so frail. But walking would be good for her. I held out my arm, which she took, and we set off.

“By the way, that cute nurse at the other hospital?” she said.

“Mmm hmm?”

“I gave him your phone number.”

“Did he ask for it?”

“He was going to. I just helped him along.”

I laughed. “You give out my number to random men often?”

“Did you see him? He’s adorable.”

“Yeah, I saw him.”

“I bet he calls you.”

“I won’t hold my breath.”

W
hen we got home, my aunt was a little winded, but otherwise fine. I let us into the house and found that day’s mail had arrived. It was scattered on the floor, having been put through the mail slot. I stooped to pick it up as my aunt strode on over to the stack of mail on the table at the far end of the foyer. Pip darted out from the sitting room and stood up on his hind legs, tail wagging furiously.

“Junk, junk, junk,” she said, tossing most of the envelopes in the nearby trash can. “Oh, so honey, do I really get a custom painting?”