'The truck drove away, but Tony stayed. Frank must've driven right by Tony's car, never saw him. I checked that road up from the valley. You could pull off and hide in the dark, lots of places.
'Tony went to the shed. The lock had been cut through; it was easy to get in.
'And he found Ginny, in a pool of blood on the floor. Your glove beside her. Your truck driving away.
'He bought this frame, too. Just like the other one.'
'He thought I did that?' Jimmy spoke slowly. 'Ginny, like that? He thought I did that?'
I waited before I went on.
'He took her body to his car. Her body, and the glove. He tried to clean up the blood, but there was too much. So he did something else: He covered it up. With paint, which Eve—which she stores there. With anything else he could find. That mess in the shed? It was only the floor. The windows weren't broken, the walls weren't scrawled on. Only the floor.
'But just as he started—probably even before he moved the body—I came along. He heard me coming; he couldn't let anyone see. Couldn't let anyone know what you'd done. So he waited, and he hit me, knocked me out.'
'No, man,' Jimmy said. 'Uh-uh. If that was Tony, even if he thought it was me, he'd've told you. You, man. You saved my butt that other time, he knew that.'
'I also gave your keys to MacGregor. Tony and I had fought about that. He didn't trust me to protect you, Jimmy. Not when it came to hiding a murder, a fifteen-year-old kid.'
Jimmy started to speak, but I stopped him.
'Just before he left he came back to check on me. To make sure I was alive. There was paint on my chin, on my neck, when Eve found me.'
'No!' Jimmy burst out. 'This is crazy! Tony don't even like me! Why the hell would he do this? He thought I did something like that? Hide her body and shit? And you, man, he wouldn't hurt you. You're his best buddy, man.'
'Someone called Eve Colgate that night to tell her I was in trouble. And Tony called her place in the morning.' I said quietly. 'Looking for me, to tell me nothing: I'd gotten a phone call, someone wanted me. He said he'd closed up, gone to my place to find me; when I wasn't there he started calling places I might be. Eighteen years I've been getting phone calls at the bar, Jimmy. When I come in Tony hands me scraps of paper. Did you ever know him to go looking for me before?'
Jimmy shook his head, back and forth, back and forth. 'No, man. You're crazy. You coulda died out there. Tony wouldn't do that shit to you.'
'I'd've been all right, if it hadn't rained. Tony called Eve; then he went up to the quarry, to dump Ginny's body. He may have seen your light; anyway he knew you were there, but probably the last thing in the world he wanted was to talk to you.
'And then what could he do? He couldn't come back and find me. What would he have said? All he could do was wait, and wonder if I was all right. And think about you, and what he thought you'd done. It must have been a hell of a night.'
Jimmy stood motionless. His right arm started a gesture, abandoned it, fell back by his side. 'I. ..' he said, sounding choked; he didn't finish.
I turned, climbed into the cab of Eve Colgate's pickup. I put the key in the ignition. As the engine roared to life I leaned out the window, said, 'He's in room three-oh- nine, the new wing. Go see him.'
I backed the truck around, rolled slowly out of Antonelli's lot. I drove with great care; I was very tired.
Chapter 23
The wind was picking up as I turned the truck up Eve's chestnut-bordered drive. Hard dark clouds pushed through the sky from the north.
I pulled in front of the house, silenced the engine. The front door opened and Leo bounded onto the porch, left Eve framed in the doorway. She waited until I jumped from the cab, then came forward slowly, walked down the steps and around the back of the truck. She looked at the crate. With her eyes still on it, she asked me, 'Are they all right?'
'I didn't open it.'
Together we pulled the crate from the truck bed, carried it inside the house, Leo wriggling through the vestibule along with us. The house had a soft, sweet smell, vanilla and brown sugar.
We laid the crate on the dining table. I waited while Eve brought a screwdriver. She unscrewed the cover, dropped each screw in the wooden bowl on the cedar chest before going on to the next one. When she was finished she used the screwdriver to pry the cover loose. We each took an edge then, lifted the cover, leaned it on the wall.
The canvases were stacked facedown. Eve touched the top one, pulled her hand back as though it were hot to the touch. She stared a moment longer; then, suddenly, she hefted the painting out of the crate, stood it on the floor against the chair without looking directly at it. She repeated the action, her mouth set in a hard, determined line, like a diver forcing herself over and over into icy water to search for something lost.
Then all six paintings were out, spread around the room, and Eve was standing as still as I was, in the center of the storm.
Like other powerful storms, this one was violent, frightening, and heartbreakingly beautiful.
Thin razor-sharp wires of color were stretched across canvas, pulled so taut they broke apart; or, released, they bunched together in choking knots. These were colors other painters never found, colors you recognized instantly from the dreams you could never remember.
But unlike the Eva Nouvels I’d seen before, these paintings were not dark. The colors twisted, tangled, pierced each other, bled; but the field they were on was luminous, and the color wires glowed against it like lightning against the sun.
I was without words, looking from canvas to canvas as the storm raged around me. From the canvases I looked to Eve. She stood silent, her arms wrapped tightly around her chest. Her crystal eyes swept each painting, moved
