Left Field Page 8

  However, this trailer door featured an angled flange, plus a gasket to keep weather out.

  “Screw it,” I said. “Could you find a rock while I tape this window?” If you cover a window with tape before you break it, the only sound will be the impact, not falling glass, and you can shove the tape in and follow it yourself.

  And that’s just how it worked, although I hated to damage such a groovy little house on wheels. The two thuds of the rock on the duct tape sounded almost soft. I was able to reach in through the curtain and turn the doorknob.

  “Well done,” said Jackie. I shrugged modestly, and we went in.

  Jackie shone the light around. We saw some cleaning supplies and wood-refinishing stuff on the dinette table. This could be a cozy, shipshape place someday, I thought. Based on what I’d learned from Mercedes about Abby’s spunk, I already liked her, but now I liked her still more for her taste. How sad that I could never hang out with her.

  We turned to the galley, a little stove and sink. There were just two cupboards. We opened the first one and found stacks of rags and paper towels. The other had been customized with a small lock.

  Fortunately my plastic card easily defeated it, with an assist from the screwdriver.

  My coconspirator and I took simultaneous deep breaths as I flipped open the door.

  The little red flashlight beam sought the corners. There was a paperclip, a broken rubber band, and bits of paper, like the stuff that clings to pages torn from a ring-bound notebook.

  “What in the world?” said Jackie, her voice tight and disappointed in the dark.

  “Somebody’s been here,” I said.

  12

  I was too keyed up to sleep that night. Finally I turned the light on and grabbed my copy of Three Clues in Deadhorse. Calico Jones, searching for the ancient sealskin scrolls that hold the key to Original Peoples’ property rights, gets caught up in a side job helping the Canadian Coast Guard deal with a massive battle between the Ocean Defenders and a fleet of gigantic North Korean sewage ships that are trying to deposit their nefarious cargo over sensitive continental-shelf waters.

  Reading about somebody else’s dangerous adventures made me feel cozier and drowsier in my own bed. I won’t reveal the details, but basically Calico organizes a dive team to disable the discharge ports of the ships, then manages to exercise her own brand of diplomacy over the bisexual female North Korean navigator of the lead ship. I really love those books, and I admire that author so much, though her name continually escapes me.

  And to be honest, I also thought of Jackie Quiller. Gosh, those bright, smart eyes; that smile—what a hell of a strong, wonderful mouth. Easy, girl, I told myself. Now’s not the time for an entanglement.

  On the other hand, when is the time for an entanglement? Eh?

  In the morning I made more comprehensive notes of what had happened last night. Those things are gold when you sit down to write about something. Not that I would describe my own criminal activity—destruction of property, trespassing, breaking and entering—in a story for the public, but there are ways to use details so they inform your eventual story.

  The empty pantry in the trailer was both a blind alley and another clue: who else had access to that trailer? I had no answer for that now, so I turned my attention elsewhere.

  I thought about the house next door to the Pomeroys’, occupied by the bohemian Blair and Donna. I looked up the property records online and found the last sale to have been nine years ago; the names of the buyers were Irwin and Mary McAllester of Toronto, Canada. So Blair and Donna could be renters. I remembered something else Flora had said: “They go to bed and wake up with the chickens. I never see any lights on in there. They love to use the fireplaces, though! This past winter there was always smoke coming from those chimneys.”

  I wondered about that. At nine o’clock, I phoned Flora and said, “Is there any way you could get us inside Blair and Donna’s place?”

  “Oh, yes, I’m sure of it, Madame Detective! Let me call you back.”

  I made my typical breakfast of toast, fried eggs and coffee, and spent some time caring for and playing with Raquel. She was becoming very growly. Still cute but bigger.

  Flora called back and said, “We’re invited for coffee at ten-thirty.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Flora met me at her front door, Chanel purse in hand. “You know Blair and Donna make art, right? I walked up to the door and knocked, and I spoke with Blair. I said I’m interested in seeing some new pieces from new people, and he couldn’t talk fast enough to spit out that invitation.”

  “Who am I supposed to be?”

  “I just said you’re a journalist friend of mine.”

  “Perfect, Flora.”

  “I didn’t specify, but they might infer that you’re an art journalist.”

  “That’s fine.”

  The door swung open as we approached, and Donna and Blair welcomed us in. Blair smiled eagerly as he held the door. They were young, still in their twenties, it appeared, and fashionably scruffy. She was white, a pale gal with brown hair she evidently was trying to coax into dreads, and he was black or maybe mixed, with a cropped reddish natural. He was the one who could have grown some impressive dreads. She had on a short skirt and canvas sneakers so splotched with paint you couldn’t tell their original color. He was wearing torn jeans and a sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off.

  I hadn’t quite expected the scruffiness.

  Let me explain.

  Palmer Woods is like this small town in the middle of a big city. Lots of the top people in government, who by contract must live within the city limits, live here. Black and white, they live here. Doctors who practice at the big hospitals live here. Lawyers who practice downtown live here. Professors and restaurateurs live here. (The professors can handle the mortgage if both halves of the couple work. Even though it’s ritzy, it’s still Detroit.) They all send their kids to private schools.

  So it’s this island of relative wealth and education, bordered by a park that’s dangerous at night, a cemetery, and drug turf, poor turf, fucked-up shitty turf. Keep going a few blocks north, and you hit Eight Mile, beyond which your homeowners and car insurance rates drop by half.

  Palmer Woods is a place where people try very hard. And I mean thank God: there are enough shiftless losers around. People here are conscious of what the neighbors think, and some of them care a lot.

  How to give you the impact of walking into Blair and Donna’s house?

  I’ve never been on a battlefield, and I’ve never been on the scene immediately after a domestic rampage where some guy has butchered his family with a bayonet. So I can’t speak from direct experience. But walking into that house was as close as I’d ever gotten to witnessing the aftermath of violent death and dismemberment.

  Outdoors it had been so bright.

  Of course I immediately understood that blood and wounded bodies weren’t everywhere; it just seemed like it. Felt like it.

  It was the intense, dark redness. Blotchy paintings, mostly red, on canvas, sized to fit the concourses in Versailles or Fenway Park, lined the walls. Their subjects were abstract, suggesting twisted limbs, shrieking mouths, and shredded souls.

  Some kind of heavy spatter clung to the ceilings—darker red, almost black—as if the paintings had originated there then oozed down to the walls, where they’d taken better shape.

  This being the living room, a few pieces of furniture were present. Someone had sawn off the legs of a burnished-wood dining table and made a low coffee table out of it. I’d always wanted to do that.

  The floor was bare, lustrous, original oak. Here and there lay concretions of what looked to be plaster and burlap, stained brown and gray, about the size of kindergarteners. Garish plastic flowers were strewn randomly.

  I apprehended all this in a few seconds. This was art with a capital A.

  We all introduced ourselves, and Flora and I expressed how nice it was to be here.

 
Blair said, “Welcome to our little art factory! Have a seat, and we’ll be out with that coffee. What do you take in it? I’m afraid we’re out of fresh cream but—”

  Donna coughed violently, turning away for a second.

  “But,” Blair added, “we do have Coffee-mate.” He quirked his eyebrows enthusiastically.

  “Black,” I said quickly.

  “Black,” Flora echoed, to Blair’s relief.

  We looked around for chairs, but Donna kicked over a couple of the kindergarteners, and we understood we were to sit on them.

  Flora was totally unfazed; she behaved with the same gracious vivacity as if we were settling down to tea in one of the private rooms at Christie’s.

  “Well, isn’t this lovely?” she remarked, arranging her dahlia-print skirt over her knees.

  My kindergartener was somewhat squishy but comfortable enough. I smelled the dry-grassy aroma of the burlap.

  I wondered what Lieutenant Sorrel had thought of all this.

  Donna returned with a plate of vanilla sandwich cookies, fresh from the cellophane; then Blair followed in a few minutes with mugs of hot coffee. It tasted all right. The mugs were exceptionally hot. I noticed lots of thick cylindrical candles around, unlit. They sat on metal saucers that were probably lids from art materials or something.

  Blair and Donna set their mugs directly on the scarred tabletop, so we did too, though it went against our upbringings, I’m sure. What, no bevnaps?

  Some of the scorch marks on the tabletop looked sooty. I discreetly rubbed one, and my finger came up black.

  Both of these young people showed bones through their clothes, Blair looking especially ascetic, with a Jesus-type face: hollow cheeks, scraggly beard. He was one of those slightly built tall guys, with narrow hips, his pants hanging by a worn leather belt, his shoulders looking broad by comparison. His manner was open, almost earnest. I found him appealing.

  Donna, by contrast, was the quieter one, and I immediately sensed that although Blair steered the ship, she ran the engine room. Her eyes—hazel, they appeared to be, behind wire-rimmed glasses—were wide set, her expression intense, with that artistic edge that comes from being underappreciated, like, “No one can possibly understand me because I’m so extraordinary and brilliant, and since being understood would diminish my specialness, fuck you.”

  Her gaze darted around, checking on everything and everybody.

  Blair knew how to talk to a potential patron. “We’re honored that you’re interested in our work,” he said, directing himself 70 percent to Flora and 30 percent to me. The perfect ratio, given his perception of who we were and how much we could help him.

  “It’s immaterial to us whether you buy anything or not,” said Donna, with a measure of desperation that she hid by talking out of the side of her mouth and looking bored.

  This setup would have made sense almost anywhere else in Detroit—a loft in some crummy warehouse by the rail yards, a budget apartment on Cass Corridor, even some shed in one of the suburbs—but Palmer Woods?

  It seemed our hosts were either dirt poor or playing dirt poor.

  “Tell me about your work,” said Flora, with a warm smile. “I like the paintings in this room. Oil?”

  “Yes, Donna’s an oil purist,” said Blair.

  Flora liked that. “Your studio’s here in the house?”

  Donna answered, “Yes.”

  I said, “I suppose recent events have brought you guys a bit of unwanted attention.”

  They looked at me sharply, then at each other.

  “Hey, I’m the one who discovered the body. I was up on Flora’s roof, and I looked down and there she was! And I’m like, What the hell! I’m still freaked out about it,” I went on. “The police asked me so many questions—I think they thought I did it!”

  That relieved them. Donna’s jaw relaxed, and Blair nodded sympathetically.

  “You guys weren’t home, right?”

  “No, we were out,” said Donna.

  “And you didn’t know her? Do you have any idea why she was here?”

  “No, no,” said Blair, plunging a hand into his hair as if to steady his head. “We’ve been…I guess in a state of shock about it. It doesn’t seem real. I mean, fuck, a dead person out there. The body was gone by the time we got home. All that was here was a police officer, waiting to talk to us.”

  Flora steadily consumed cookies, dipping them in her coffee, which surprised and charmed me.

  I went on, “And you didn’t hear anything, didn’t see anything? The night before? I mean, I’m just trying to piece together, in my own mind…”

  “No, nothing,” Blair said. “To think that she was out there, lying there, while we were sleeping. And then we get up, we go out the front…” He trailed off. “We didn’t even see her.”

  “She must have made a deal,” Donna said.

  “What?” I said.

  “Cosmically speaking,” Blair put in.

  “You know, we all make deals as to when to leave the planet.” Donna let her eyelids droop knowingly. She drank her coffee and munched a cookie carelessly, the crumbs falling wherever.

  “Oh,” Flora and I said together.

  “What sort of deal,” I said, “do you think Abigail Rawson made?”

  Donna swallowed and gave me a level look. “It just seems clear she was ready to leave.”

  “How so?”

  “We all leave when we’re ready.”

  “I see.”

  “You’re patronizing me,” she said, “but that’s all right.”

  I said, “I don’t pretend to know more than you about these things.”

  I understood that psychopaths can act convincingly nonviolent, but I picked up the vibe that these kids were not murderers.

  Something else was going on here, though—something ulterior—and I already was guessing.

  I changed the subject. “What moves you to make a painting, Donna?”

  “My art speaks for itself,” she answered haughtily. “If you don’t get it, that’s not my problem.”

  “I feel compelled to sculpt,” Blair said, leaning forward, his dark eyes shining. “My hands reach out for the materials. It’s like my innermost self—or something beyond myself really—takes over.” He paused, took a gulp of coffee, and set his mug down. “And I serve it.”

  Flora asked, “Are we sitting on some of your art?”

  “Yes, how does it feel?”

  “Fine!”

  Donna nodded. “When I’m not creating, I feel like shit. After I’ve made something, this…peace comes over me. I’ve tried heroin. Have you ever done heroin?”

  Neither Flora nor I had.

  “Heroin’s magnificent, but it’s nothing like this.” She swept her arm at the paintings and sculptures. “Heroin’s like, ‘Everything still sucks, but I don’t care.’ This…this is like…when I’m doing it, nothing sucks. And nothing will ever suck again.”

  This eloquence was lost on Flora. She pointed to a picture. “I like that one a lot. I think it’s my favorite.”

  Blair and Donna restrained themselves from exchanging glances, but anticipation gleamed in their eyes.

  Donna told Flora that the picture was untitled, and it had erupted from deep in her consciousness one night last December. I thought it could be titled, Still Life of a Slaughterhouse Floor, with Bootprint.

  “Your images are all kind of—bloody,” I observed.

  “Bloody times call for bloody art,” said Donna. Her voice was as thin and sharp as she was.

  “You feel these times are bloody?”

  “Detroit is exsanguinating before our eyes.”

  “A lot of people think so.” I liked the medical term.

  When the coffee and cookies ran out, Flora said, “Well, let’s see the studio. May we?” Spoken like a true art patron, I thought.

  Blair hesitated, but Donna rose nimbly and said, “Yes, let’s go.”

  We headed toward a staircase, and I craned into the other
rooms as we passed. Most looked like the living room, crammed with canvases and more dusty, shapeless sculptures. We trooped up a staircase lined with small pictures, unintelligible graffiti painted directly on the walls, and swags of interesting fabric.

  The artists had broken down a wall between two large bedrooms to create a spacious studio full of light from the gorgeous leaded windows. It appeared they had done the demolition work themselves; the raw, sawn edges of timbers and plaster had been left as is.

  Atelier! Work space! Creative space! Paints and canvases and two or three easels. Playfun for grownups. Never before had I actually been in an artist’s studio; never before had I grasped—really felt—the combination of play and serious purpose that art is. The poor, unshielded oak floors! But hey, sacrifices get made for art! There were sketch pads and rolls of burlap and pots of paste and plaster. What a glorious, intelligent mess!

  “Gosh, this is nice,” I said, and meant it deeply.

  Donna and Blair toured Flora around, all of them talking at once, while I wandered. Having a natural interest in cleaning, and developing a theory about what Donna and Blair were doing in this house, I’d been wondering about a sink. Here I saw they’d broken through another wall to a bathroom as well. A strange contraption hung over the sink: a five-gallon bucket with a length of surgical tubing dangling out of it, secured at the lip with duct tape and pinched off by a metal clip on the end. Another five-gallon bucket sat next to the toilet, the lid of which was shut.

  I’d been piecing it together in my mind, but this sealed it. After a little while, there was a pause in my companions’ conversation.

  “That’s ingenious,” I said in a clear voice, indicating the bucket over the sink.

  “Uh,” said Blair, looking to Donna for a cue.

  Flora said, “Oh, what is that? Some kind of cleaning solution?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s water, isn’t it, you guys?”

  They each bit their lower lip in the exact same way, and I almost laughed.

  Blair rubbed his arms. “We’ve had a little trouble with the utility companies.”