Earth Colors Read online

  “Wow. Why try to keep up with the Joneses when the material world isn’t really making the Joneses all that happy? And I thought the Amish were simply quaint.”

  “The lady at Root’s is a Mennonite, but close enough. No, they’ve got their troubles and their own brand of foolishness, but they also have something to teach us.”

  Jenny saw me out to the street and met Faye and the baby. Jenny showed each of her colorful fingernails in turn to Sloane, who shrieked with amusement. Faye let Jenny hold the infant, and I saw that good, strong woman soften with pleasure.

  When we were ready to leave, I said, “I have one last little favor to ask: When you and your cousin take Mrs. Krehbeil to the hospital, would you please relieve her of just a snippet of her hair?”

  “Her hair? Why?”

  “Because the main symptom people will treat will be pneumonia, but it’s probably lung cancer. But perhaps the dose was given only orally. If the lead isn’t in her lungs, it’ll show up in her hair and fingernails. It’s a bit more of a chore for you, but get those samples and make sure you have a witness. Stick it in an envelope and seal it and get your cousin to sign across the seal. Then get it to Fred Petridge. He’ll know what to do with it.”

  Jenny tipped her head, musing. “Van Gogh used to lick his brush,” she said. “How are we going to prove she didn’t do it to herself?”

  Faye said, “Mrs. K doesn’t paint. She married into the family. Her son says she hasn’t a lick of talent, and no real interest in it.”

  I said, “There are some paintings in that house—some truly bad paintings—”

  Faye said, “The word is that Deirdre painted them. I just spent four days listening to Tert cuss about what Deirdre ‘presumes to call art.’”

  We were all buckled up and ready to leave when Jenny tapped on my window. I lowered it.

  “One thing,” she said. “I almost forgot. I phoned a friend at the Nature Conservancy and had him look up your mother’s ranch. Em, there’s something you need to know. Have you been back there recently?”

  “No … . It’s been a couple years, actually.”

  “Well, then, you need to know what’s happened, and why your mother chose to sell rather than leaving it to you. You ready to hear this?”

  I took a deep breath. “Okay …”

  “It’s because the ranches were being bought up by developers. It’s too close to Colorado, Em. He said that folks from Denver used to go up to Fort Collins to go fishing—”

  “The Cache la Poudre River,” I said. “Great trout-fishing.”

  “Yes, but then Fort Collins grew into a city, too. It’s huge now, my friend said. So everybody from there is looking for the next-farthest getaway, and guess where that is?”

  “My part of Wyoming?” I asked.

  “Yes, you’re just over an hour from Fort Collins, right? So the developers are buying up the ranches and selling off your creek bottoms in chunks as ranchettes. They’re fencing off the riparian corridor and calling the prairie on the benches ‘the Commons.’”

  “Shit! That’ll ruin the place! The grasslands and the creek bottoms are one ecosystem! The animals need both to survive, and you’ve got to graze heavy, sharp-hoofed animals in order to break up the soils so the grasses reseed, or the grasses give over to brush!” I bent my head over the steering wheel, embarrassed at my outburst. “That whole ecosystem grew up around the buffalo and the antelope; that’s why it was important to keep the cattle grazing!”

  Jenny waited for me to calm down a bit, then she said, “So your mom had a choice: She could leave the land to you and watch you lose it to inheritance tax, or she could sell it now to a coalition that’s going to keep it a working ranch, and not subject to the turnover of families.”

  I turned in my seat, still holding on to the steering wheel to orient myself in time and space. “But either way I can’t live there,” I said, my voice coming out like a tiny child’s.

  Jenny put a hand on my shoulder. “I know it’s hard to let go of owning the land, Em. We need it so deeply. It’s part of our identity, our security. In loving it, we feel loved. That must be why your mother wrote in into the bill of sale that you’d always be allowed to stay in the ranch house,” Jenny said. “I think you’re a lucky woman. I think your mother took responsibility for what she wanted, and did the best she could for you, too.”

  29

  “WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO WHILE WE WAIT FOR TERT TO COME home so you can get your gear?” I asked Faye, as we headed into Philadelphia.

  She grinned. “No need to wait,” she said, producing a key from her pocket.

  “Does he know you have that?”

  “He didn’t ask, and I didn’t tell him. I found it in a drawer in the kitchen. How else do you think I was able to take the baby for walks?”

  “He wouldn’t even give you a key?”

  “Nope. A real piece of work, that boy. He’s so tight I could hear his asshole squeak. When I saw you standing by the road, I all but tore the steering wheel from his hands to get him to stop.”

  “Sorry you had such a lousy visit.”

  Faye sighed. “I thought it would be good because he had so many things in common with Tom,” she said longingly. “The problem is he has all of the wrong things in common with him!”

  That was good enough for me. Somewhere in Chester County, after I had phoned Fritz to say that we’d see him in Baltimore by five, and he’d said he’d go one better and pick us up at the General Aviation terminal in Philadelphia at four, and when Faye had finally finished venting her spleen, I told her that I was sure there was a man out there who was worth her time and attentions. From there I segued into the plans I had, now that the baby was more or less sleeping through the night (as she put it, “‘Sleeping like a baby’ means in fits and starts”), I would be looking for a job that would make it possible for me to afford my own place while I worked on my thesis at night. Faye allowed as how she’d miss me, but trusted that I would not move very far away.

  About five miles farther down the road, she asked, “Are you mad at me?” “For what, Faye?”

  “For not figuring out how to tell you more gently.”

  I sighed. “I probably wouldn’t have listened.”

  “I thought if I found you a job …”

  I couldn’t help smiling. “Thanks, Faye. But next time you find me hiding under my bed, why not just say, ‘Em, you’re hiding under your bed.’”

  “Em, you were hiding under your bed.”

  “No shit I was hiding under my bed. Can we talk about Tom now?”

  She took in a breath and let it out. “Do I have to?”

  “No, not really. Not until you’re ready. But it’s okay to love me and hate me at the same time.”

  “I didn’t say I blamed you for Tom’s death.”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  She looked out the opposite window for some time. The baby slept.

  As we crossed the Schuylkill River into Philadelphia, I said, “If it’s worth anything to you, I feel guilty as hell about Tom’s death, and so does Jack. I have to believe that’s a big part of why Jack went away to play soldier again, and why I’ve been hiding under my bed.”

  “Let it go, Em. We all have to let it go. Let Tom go.” She reached out and patted me on the shoulder.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I love you, Faye. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”

  “I love you, too, Em.”

  WHILE FAYE PACKED her bags, I took a stroll through Tert’s house and out into the garden, where a large forsythia bush was in full, screaming bloom, a shower of … well, Baltimore yellow. Sloane Renee rode on my hip, giggling and smiling as if we’d never been apart.

  Tert had a pretty classy place, all right; all polished brass doorplates and eighteenth-century brick, with slate pathways leading into the fenced privacy of the yard. Amazing what you can buy with ill-gotten gains.

  Within this tightly manicured splendor, my interest quickly settled upon th
e toolshed. It was just a hair too rickety for the rest of the show. As fastidious as Tert was, I couldn’t imagine he would leave it like that. And sure enough, Faye’s key got me into the shed, and I found the weatherproofed and sealed room inside. I was careful not to leave any fingerprints as I peeked inside to make sure it was filled with paintings. I borrowed Faye’s digital camera and took a couple of artistic snaps.

  Then I let myself into his office (the lock to the office door was appallingly easy to pick; I did it with a credit card, for heaven’s sake) and dug until I found those notes he’d had with him in Utah. I duplicated several pages. Feeling pretty chipper, I “borrowed” an envelope with KREHBEIL GALLERIES letterhead and mailed the copies to Agent Wardlaw at the address printed on his business card. The artistry of the digital photographs I pumped through Faye’s laptop on an Internet connection, figuring that dear old Brucie would enjoy having them to greet him upon his return to the ugliest building in Washington. I copied a few of the file entries into the e-mail just for spice:

  Hey Brucie:

  Your boy is fond of making notes. His handwriting is tiny and cryptic, so I can’t make out every word, or should I say, every term of his code, but maybe you can do better with the copies I’ve sent you. Putting asterisks for each letter or number I can’t make out, and trying to get the spacings between the bits of information accurately, they look like this for the past year:

  May 3rd

  Rem to H*

  Wyo/UPS (spec.)—SAC/will call

  O/*—ridge/hoc

  Pd./ck+cash

  June 8th

  orange—no. 26

  223,000 profit

  split/50.50

  Aug 12th

  Big One—10% to [ ]

  new frame—Rocetti/Boston

  Denver—van/cash

  Split w/GRR/London a/*

  I imagine you’ll have fun comparing these with something like, say, a tax audit for the gallery. Keep your nose clean and I’ll bet you were a real pain in the butt in Kansas City,

  Em H.

  P.S. You’re right, I’m one of the best.

  30

  WE HAD A NICE FLIGHT BACK, CHASING THE SUN AS FAR AS Greenfield, Iowa, where we tucked in for the night. It’s a fun little airport; you have to phone the fire department to come pump the gas, and the lady who rents rooms nearby makes absolutely killer cinnamon rolls in the morning. As we crested the Rockies, I flew for a while, but mostly I slept in the back with the baby cuddled in my arms while her mom sat up front and traded off the controls with Fritz. It had been a long four days for each and every one of us.

  Like I said, I wasn’t done with the Krehbeil project yet, but it’s first things first if you’re trying to have a life. The last weeks of school went by like a stampede of stallions, and before I knew it, I was writing final exams. Next, I took the ten-day short course on stable isotopes offered at the U, because I had an idea it was going to help with the analysis of Tert’s paint chips. That done, I signed up for time on the scanning electron microscope and the electron microprobe and got to work examining those chips.

  I heard from Jenny, Fred, and Nigel frequently. They’d found lead in Mrs. Krehbeil’s hair and fingernails, all right—lots of it—but darned if the medical authorities could figure out where it was coming from. So it seemed that a bit more … er, digging was in order. It was my excellent luck that Fritz happened to be flying back to Baltimore again, and was willing to drop me off at Harrisburg, so I invited Agent Wardlaw to pick me up at the airport and drive me to the Pennsylvania Geologic Survey. When we walked into Fred’s office, Nigel, who was lounging in a side chair, whipped his feet off the desk and stood up, crossing his index fingers in the sign against enchantment. “What ho!” he said. “I was expecting you, Em, but what chimera is this? Have we dog food on the hoof?”

  “Knock it off, Nigel,” I said, grinning. “Wardlaw popped for doughnuts just now, so you could say we’ve kissed and made up.”

  “Oh. Well. Bully. In that case, to what do we owe the incomparable honor?”

  Just then Jenny arrived, and from the way Nigel ran his hands through her hair, I’d say they’d been getting better acquainted. It was hard for me to feature at first, but I noticed that he’d taken to wearing shirts that matched the colors of her fingernails.

  I said, “Nigel, how tight did you say that new color IR coverage for the county was?”

  “One to twenty-four hundred,” he replied.

  “Can you pull up that funny little Krehbeil parcel down in the serpentine barrens again? And show me any disturbed ground?”

  Nigel gave me a lascivious grin. “That would show up on the IR right and proper. The new growth of vegetation wouldn’t match the signature of the old.” He led us down the hall to his office, sat down, and tapped away at his keyboard for a while.

  This time he was on a big desktop computer, and the resolution was magnificent. As Nigel zoomed in on the properties, I could all but count the dogs lined up by the fences barking at passing cars. He narrowed the view down to the Krehbeil parcel, and sure enough, out behind the dwelling structure, about three hundred yards back, tucked in behind a screen of trees, there was a patch of ground that did not match the rest. It was oblong, and approximately three by eight feet.

  Nigel looked at Wardlaw and said, “A nice bit of digging for a man on the eve of his middle age, but not insurmountable. You say Dad and Auntie are already gone, Mum’s on the way, and Elder Sis is having trouble feeling her hands and feet? Well then, this is number five. How many more do we have to go?”

  “One more brother, a nephew, and a niece.”

  “Oh, jolly,” said Nigel. “Serial killing, right here in Lancaster County. And I had feared this would be such a sleepy little corner of creation.”

  Wardlaw got on the phone to some well-placed colleagues, and by dinnertime we had a warrant and several burly sheriff’s deputies with stunners to help deter the dogs. The raid turned up one very irritable tenant with a bright-red neck who spouted slogans concerning what it would take to get him to give up his arms, but Wardlaw pointed out that our interest lay in activities predating his six months’ residency. And the tenant’s common-law wife was only too pleased to point out where the dogs had found Cricket’s little car, deep within a shroud of greenbrier.

  The inquest was scheduled for less than a week later, so I used what was left of Tert’s money to buy a commercial ticket for the return trip and stuck around. By the time the inquest began, there were lab results on Cricket’s bones. Mrs. Krehbeil was still frail, but gathering strength. She was put on the witness stand first, to avoid undue stress, but not surprisingly, she could or would tell them nothing. After she was done testifying, she was shown from the room and returned to the nursing home where she now resided.

  Agent Wardlaw sat in the back of the courtroom with me. “I hope this nails the S.O.B.,” he said, “because he saw that warrant coming, and there was nothing in that little shed back in the garden.”

  “No kidding.” I wasn’t surprised. Faye had insisted on leaving her “borrowed” keys by a note on the dining room table, and if I were Tert, I would have moved my camp, too.

  “Oh, this is good,” he said, as Deirdre took the stand to testify.

  She looked older than the last time I had seen her, as if her fires were banked low, but she held her head up with patrician rigidity the entire time she gave testimony. She won few points for sympathy. There was a bit too much condescension in her tone as she said, “She seemed worse after each of my brother William’s visits. I had become quite concerned. But of course, I thought she was merely pining for him. He so seldom comes around.”

  I’ll bet you thought that, I mused.

  My testimony was requested toward the end. I was sworn in and asked to state my bona fides and how it came to be that I was present the morning that Mrs. Krehbeil first fell out of her wheelchair. I was more than pleased to answer, because it put the evidence in the public record, right where I could ac
cess it for my thesis project. “I was there because Mrs. Krehbeil’s older son, William, had hired me to analyze paint chips from a painting he had collected at his aunt Winifred Krehbeil’s ranch outside of Cody, Wyoming,” I said crisply, speaking into the microphone.

  The judge asked a few questions about how I had come to notice the symptoms of lead poisoning in Mrs. Krehbeil, then seemed ready to excuse me.

  “Wait,” I said. “I have a few more points which I think might have some bearing on the case.”

  The judge nodded, indicating that I should go ahead and make my statement.

  I then explained the rest, about Tert’s suspicion that the painting had been copied and switched, and his assertion that there would be more paintings stored at the house.

  “How does this relate to the case?” asked the judge.

  “It goes to motive,” I explained. “After all, my client is a prime suspect.”

  The corner of the judge’s mouth crimped at my use of terms. I suppose he thought I’d been watching too much TV. “And had the painting been altered?” the judge inquired.

  “If those samples are representative of the entire painting, then it’s my belief that it is entirely a forgery,” I stated.

  “And what is your evidence for that conclusion?”

  I leaned closer to the mike. “First, the green paint used was incorrect. It should have been Hooker’s green, which is a mixture of Prussian blue, a synthetically produced pigment, and gamboge, which is an organic resin from Asia. The Prussian blue was present, all right, but the gamboge was not. In its place, I found a mixture of lead chromate, which is a much paler, less brownish pigment, and several other pigments meant to shift the yellow to the classic mustard tone. While Remington occasionally used lead chromate, his Hooker’s green was purchased premixed, and the yellow used was gamboge.”