Big Lies in a Small Town - Diane Chamberlain Page 0,64
was in place. “She wanted to move to California, pretty desperately,” Oliver continued. “And I wanted to stay close to my son, also desperately.”
“Are you sad you couldn’t make it work?”
“There were other problems, more minor, but taken all together, it was time to end it.”
“Her loss,” I said, and I meant it.
He smiled across the room at me. “Thank you,” he said. He leaned the painting against the wall near some of the other student work that had come in.
I returned his smile, then popped in my earbuds and went back to cleaning the mural. The spot I’d just worked on revealed drops of tea flying through the air. They were perfect, glistening, a catch light in each one. Not for the first time, I admired Anna Dale’s exquisite work.
“Come look at this, Oliver,” I said, taking my earbuds out again.
Oliver was opening another package, which he set down on the floor before crossing the foyer to the mural.
I pointed to the droplets. “Can you see this?” I asked. “She was so detailed. A huge painting like this and she still paid attention to every little thing. Even the catch lights in the drops of tea.”
I looked down at Oliver to see him craning his neck, studying the image hard, eyes narrowed in concentration.
“Better tea drops than blood, right?” I smiled.
“Move the ladder for a sec,” he said.
I climbed down to the floor and pulled the ladder aside as Oliver stepped closer to the mural. “I think you spoke too soon,” he said, reaching up to touch one of the drops I hadn’t yet cleaned. “Hand me the dowel.”
I gave him the dowel and watched as he carefully smoothed the cotton tip over the spot.
“Oh, no,” I said. The droplet was the same size and shape as the tea drops, but this one was most definitely red. Bloodred. I looked at Oliver in silence, and he met my eyes.
“This woman was not well,” he said quietly.
I thought of the photograph I’d copied from the microfilm machine. The smiling, confident-looking girl standing in front of the huge canvas. “I’m starting to feel sorry for her,” I said. “I think maybe she really was losing her mind and there was probably no treatment for her back then.”
“I wish she hadn’t fallen off the face of the earth,” he said, handing me the dowel again. “I would love to see more of what she could do.”
“I worry she killed herself,” I said. “That’s the only explanation I can think of. Obviously she was messed up.”
Oliver nodded. “Yet for the most part, she still managed to produce a pretty phenomenal mural.”
“I want to find out what really happened to her,” I said. “Why did she turn a perfectly normal painting into a house of horrors?”
He looked at me with amusement. “How do you plan to do that?” he asked. “Find out what really happened to her?”
“I don’t know, but I have to.” I studied the bloody ax blade. The little red-haired man in the mirror. The drops of blood. The motorcycle. “I think Anna Dale is starting to haunt me.”
Chapter 26
ANNA
January 11, 1940
There was a dusting of snow on the ground late that morning, and Anna’s car slid a bit as she turned onto the long dirt road leading to the warehouse. Once inside the warehouse, she turned on the space heaters and pulled them close to her workspace. She was carefully laying out the wood she’d need for the stretcher when Martin Drapple suddenly cracked open the door and shouted, “All right if I come in?”
She jumped, startled. She’d been so engrossed in her work that she hadn’t heard his car.
“Of course,” she said, although he was probably the last person she wanted to see in her private space. She’d won the contest, so she knew she shouldn’t feel intimidated by him, but she did.
Martin stomped off the snow before stepping into the warehouse, where he took off his hat and ran a hand through his thick red hair.
“I just wanted to see if you need any help,” he said. His hands were in his jacket pockets as he took in every inch of the warehouse as though he’d be tested on it later. “A lot more space than I have in my little attic hovel,” he said, good-naturedly, she thought.
“I was fortunate the mayor … your cousin … suggested it,” Anna said, trying to forget how she’d felt the evening before when dark shadows filled the space.