Ain't She Sweet?

The carriage house is a registered national landmark. Keep Lincoln’s studio as it is. Otherwise, everything goes to the University. As for the painting . . . You’ll either find it or you won’t.

Cordially,

Tallulah Shelborne Carey

P.S. No matter what your mother told you, Lincoln Ash loved me.

Tallulah’s insistence that she was the great love of Lincoln Ash’s life had driven Diddie wild. Tallulah said Ash had promised to come back to Parrish for her as soon as his one-man show in Manhattan was over, but he’d been hit by a bus the day before it closed. Diddie told everyone the painting was a figment of Tallulah’s imagination, but Griffin said it wasn’t. “Tallulah has that painting, all right. I’ve seen it.” But when Diddie pressed him for details, he’d just laughed.

Tallulah refused to display the painting, saying it was all she had left of him, and she wasn’t going to share it with curiosity seekers or those pompous art critics Ash had despised during his lifetime. They’d only analyze the life right out of it. “The world can gawk all it wants after I’m dead,” she’d said. “For now, I’m keeping what I have to myself.”

Sugar Beth worked the key in the lock. The door was warped, so she had to use her shoulder to push it open. As she stepped inside, something flew at her head. She shrieked and ducked. When her heartbeat returned to normal, she pushed her cowboy hat more firmly down and went the rest of the way inside.

She could see just enough to make her cringe. A putrid crust of bird crap and dirt covered the scarred old benches of what had once been the depot’s small waiting room. Rusty streaks ran down one of the walls, a fetid puddle sat in the middle of the hardwood floor, and pieces of broken furniture lay scattered around like old bones. Beneath the ticket window, a pile of filthy blankets, old newspapers, and empty tin cans indicated that someone had once squatted here. Her dust allergies kicked up, and she started sneezing. When she recovered, she pulled out the flashlight she’d brought along and began to look for the painting.

In addition to the waiting area, the depot had storage rooms, closets, an office behind the ticket window, and public rest rooms that were unspeakably foul repositories of exposed pipes, stained and broken porcelain, and ominous piles of filth. For the next two hours, she unearthed splintered furniture, crates, battered file cabinets, mice droppings, and a dead bird that made her shudder. What she didn’t find was any sign of the painting.

Filthy, sneezing, and grossed out, she finally sank down on a bench. If Tallulah hadn’t hidden the painting in either the carriage house or the depot, where had she put it? Starting tomorrow, she’d have to begin searching out the surviving members of Tallulah’s canasta club. They’d feel duty-bound to cluck their tongues over her, but they’d been her aunt’s closest friends, and they were most likely to know her secrets. Just as dispiriting was the knowledge that she was down to her last fifty dollars. If she intended to keep eating, she had to find a job.

“Charming place you have here.”

She sneezed, then turned to see Colin Byrne standing in the open doorway. He looked as though he might have come in from a stroll across the moors: boots, dark brown slacks, tweed jacket, fashionably rumpled hair. But the cold assessment in his eyes reminded her more of a frontier hunter than a civilized Brit. “If you’re here to assault me again,” she said, “you’d better have your jockstrap fastened up extra tight because I won’t be so polite next time.”

“My body only has a limited tolerance for venom.” He slipped one stem of his designer sunglasses into the open collar of his shirt and took a few steps inside. “Interesting that Tallulah left you the depot, although not surprising, I suppose, considering her feelings about family.”

“I’ll give you a great deal if you want to buy it.”

“No, thank you.”

“It made you a fortune. You could show a little gratitude.”

“Last Whistle-stop was about the town. The depot was a metaphor.”

“I thought metaphor was a weight-loss drink? Do you always dress like a stiff?”

“As frequently as possible, yes.”

“You look stupid.”

“You, of course, being the ultimate fashion arbiter.” He cast a disparaging eye toward her filthy jeans and dirty sweatshirt.

She slipped off her cowboy hat and wiped a cobweb from her cheek. “You were a terrible teacher.”

“Abysmal.” He nudged aside a piece of cable with the toe of his boot.

“Teachers are supposed to build their students’ self-confidence. You called us toads.”

“Only to your faces. Behind your backs, it was a bit worse, I’m afraid.”

He had been a terrible teacher, sarcastic, critical, and impatient. But every once in a while, he’d been glorious, too. She remembered the way he used to read to them, words cascading like dusky music from his tongue. Sometimes the classroom would get so quiet it felt like nighttime, and she’d pretend they were all sitting in the dark together around a campfire someplace. He had a way of inspiring the least likely students, so that the dumbest kids found themselves reading books, the athletes were writing poetry, and shyer students began to speak up, if only to protect themselves from one of his scathing put-downs. She belatedly remembered that he was also the teacher who’d finally shown her how to write a paragraph that made sense.

As she stuck her hat back on, he gazed with distaste at the pool of stagnant water on the floor. “Is it true you didn’t go to your own father’s funeral? That seems ignominious, even for you.”

“He was dead. I’m figuring he didn’t notice.” She pushed herself up off the bench. “I saw you had your book photo taken in front of my property. I want royalties. A few thousand should do it.”

“Sue me.”

She pushed aside a section of pipe. “Exactly what are you doing here?”

“Gloating, of course. What did you think?”

She wanted to snatch up one of the broken chair legs and hit him with it, but he would undoubtedly have hit her back, and she forced herself to be practical instead. “How well did you know my aunt?”

“As well as I wanted to.” He wandered over to investigate the ticket window, not at all put off by the grime. “As a history buff, she was an invaluable source, but narrow-minded. I didn’t like her all that much.”

“I’m sure she lost sleep over that.”

He ran a finger along one of the iron bars, gazed at the dirt he’d picked up, and pulled a snowy white handkerchief from his pocket to wipe it off. “Most people don’t believe the painting exists.”

She didn’t bother asking how he knew she was looking for it. By now, everyone in town was familiar with the terms of Tallulah’s will. “It exists.”

“I think so, too. But how do you know?”

“None of your g.d. business.” She pointed toward a stack of crates. “There’s a dead bird behind there. Make yourself useful and get it out of here.”

He peered around the crates but made no move to do anything with the corpus un-delicti. “Your aunt was barmy.”

“It runs in the family. And don’t expect me to be ashamed. Yankees lock away loony relatives, but down here, we prop ’em up on parade floats and march ’em through the middle of town. Are you married?”

“I used to be. I’m a widower.”

If she hadn’t become a better person, she’d have asked if he’d killed his wife with his keen sense of humor. At the same time, she was curious. What kind of woman would have bound herself to such a critical, impossible man? Then she remembered all the high school girls sighing over him even after he’d stung them with one of his scathing rebukes. Women and difficult men. She was thankful she’d finally broken the habit.

He abandoned his investigation of the ticket window. “Tell me about boycotting your father’s funeral.”