Authors: First Impressions
'Nothing,'
Brad said after a few minutes. 'I don't see anything unusual. Eden, you haven't
changed the house at all since you returned, and these pictures show the house
just as it is now.' He looked at Jared. 'Of course it would help if I knew what
I was looking for.'
Jared
didn't open his mouth and didn't look as though he was going to. He cast a
glance at Eden as though to warn her, but she smiled coolly at him in return,
then looked down at the paintings.
She had
no idea what she was looking for either. Why had an FBI agent painted the
interiors of her house? If she wanted to make a record of the place, why not
photograph it? There was the living room with the pale green paneling and the
furniture that nearly matched the color of the walls. The paintings were so
detailed that they even showed six of Tyrrell Farrington's paintings, so
familiar to Eden that she rarely looked at them anymore. The dining room showed
the table and chairs, the windows with the tall burgundy velvet curtains drawn,
and more of Tyrrell's paintings. There was the hall with the big secretary, and
the master bedroom. There was even a painting of Eden's bathroom, with the big
clawfooted tub in the corner. As far as she could tell, the pictures were
photographically correct.
'I see
nothing different,' she said.
Straightening,
Brad looked at Jared. 'Me neither. What is it we're supposed to see?'
Jared
put his hands in his pockets and stepped back. 'I don't know.' He stared at the
fireplace for a moment and seemed to be trying to make a decision. When he
looked back at them he seemed to have softened. Some of his animosity seemed to
have left him. 'I don't know,' he repeated softly. 'We're pretty sure Ms.
Brewster's death was no accident, and we'd like to know who killed her and
why.'
'Can I
assume that Brewster is the real name of my tenant? It's not the name I knew
her by, but that's neither here nor there. And what do you mean by 'we'? Who
are you affiliated with?'
Jared
mumbled, 'Yeah, Tess Brewster.' Then he had a look on his face that said he'd
told all that he was going to.
Brad
looked back at the watercolors. 'Think anything is written on the back of these
pictures?'
Fifteen
minutes later, they'd taken the pictures out of their frames, but there was
nothing written on them. Nor was there a signature at the bottom. No proof that
Ms. Brewster had painted them.
'There
has to be something,' Eden said, frustrated. 'If all she'd wanted to do was
record what was here, she could have taken a roll of film.'
'Or a
thousand photos on one disk,' Jared said.
Brad
sat down on a dining-room chair and kept looking at the pictures. 'Murdered.
She was run down in the wee hours of the morning, so someone knew she was in
here night after night. Someone was watching her. I wonder if they had any idea
what she was doing inside this house?'
'Obviously
not,' Eden said, 'or they would have taken the paintings before she could get
them to the framers.'
Jared
looked at her in
amazement. 'Good point. So someone was watching her, but they
didn't know what she was doing.'
'Maybe
they thought she was doing something else,' Brad said.
'Searching
for those damned jewels,' Jared said and sat down, his fingers on his temples.
'Look, I knew Tess for years. Not well, but we were friendly enough, I guess,
but I never knew she could paint.'
'What
if she was doing this just to kill time?' Eden asked. 'No reason, but just
waiting.'
'For
someone?' Brad asked. 'Or for something to happen?'
'Very
possible,' Jared said, nodding.
'Like a
watchdog,' Brad said.
Eden
walked to the far end of the room. 'So Ms. Brewster sneaked into the house at
night and waited for whatever, or watched for something, and to keep herself
busy, she made watercolors of the house. It wouldn't take much light, a good
flashlight would be enough. Then, one day, when she was leaving or just
arriving, someone hit her with a car and ran off.'
'So
maybe the pictures she was doing had nothing to do with anything,' Brad said.
Jared
glanced at Brad but said nothing. He seemed to be determined to give nothing
more away.
'I've
never been on a stakeout,' Brad said, looking at Jared, 'but from what I've
seen on TV, they're pretty boring.'
'Yeah,'
Eden said. 'In the movies, the men mostly seem to eat fried food. I think
painting watercolors would
be better than
that. A watercolor box is quite portable.'
Jared
leaned forward, his arms on the table. 'I'm not convinced. I feel that there's
something in these pictures. She took them to the framer's for a reason.'
'Yeah,'
Brad said. 'I know what you mean. If you write something down, someone can read
it. And if you make a call, someone can trace it. So how to leave a message
that no one knows
is
a message?'
Jared
looked at Brad with new respect.
'So
what was the message she was trying to leave?' Eden asked, looking at the
pictures. 'She didn't take photos because — ' She looked at the two men, then
her eyes lit up. 'Because something is different in these pictures. You know,
like where they have two pictures and you're supposed to find out what's
different.'
The
three of them looked at one another.
'I'll
take the living room, you take the hall,' Brad said.
'I'll
take the dining room,' Jared said.
'Bed
and bath,' Eden said.
In a
flurry of motion, they grabbed their pictures and separated. Twenty minutes
later, they met back in the dining room.
'Nothing,'
Jared said.
'Nothing,'
Brad and Eden echoed.
'I even
checked ol' Tyrrell's paintings,' Brad said.
'You
mean these paintings that are all over the house?' Jared asked.
'Yeah.
Painted by an angry son of the house,' Eden said, smiling. 'He wanted to live
in Paris, but the family wouldn't allow it, so to get them back, he returned
home and never left. He wouldn't marry and produce babies, wouldn't have
anything to do with the running of the family businesses. He just painted night
and day, and these are the results.' Eden waved her hand about to indicate the
paintings on the walls. 'Mrs. Farrington always said that for talent, they'd
make a good bonfire, but they're family, so they were kept. Personally, I
rather like them.'
'That's
because you like families,' Brad said.
'Yes,
that's true,' Eden said, smiling at him, and their hands inched toward each
other's.
'At
least he got to see that necklace that caused so much fuss,' Jared said.
Eden's
and Brad's hands stopped moving, and they looked at each other, then at Jared.
'What?'
Eden asked.
'Here,'
Jared said, picking up the now-unframed watercolor. It was a picture of the big
hallway in the center of the house. On the wall was a portrait of a woman with
a little white dog. Due to the nature of the medium, it was blurry, but there
was a blue and white necklace around the woman's neck.
After a
moment's stunned hesitation, both Eden and Brad ran for the door of the dining
room, Jared behind them. Two seconds later they were standing in front of the
familiar portrait done by Tyrrell Farrington over a hundred years before.
Around the woman's neck was indeed a sapphire necklace. Gaping, mouths open,
Brad and Eden stared at the portrait.
'Somebody
want to let me in on what's going on?' Jared asked from behind them.
'There
was no picture of the necklace,' Brad said softly. 'The Farringtons said that
if it was ever photographed or reproduced in any way, that . . . ' Brad shook
his head to clear it. 'Who knows what they believed about that cursed necklace?
All I know for sure is that the woman in that picture didn't have on a big,
gaudy sapphire necklace when I used to visit Mrs. Farrington. She loved to keep
me waiting, and I used to spend umpteen hours in this hallway. I could draw the
wallpaper pattern by heart.
There was no necklace.'
While
Brad and Eden were standing there, immobile, staring at the painting, Jared
stepped between them and lifted the big, heavy painting off the wall. 'What do
you say we see what's behind this frame?'
Jared
carried the big painting into the dining room, moved the watercolors aside, and
put it facedown on the table. Taking his pocket knife, he started to cut the
backing, but Eden put her hand on his.
'It's
new,' she said. 'The paper tape is new.'
'And
poorly applied,' Brad said.
'So maybe
it was put on recently,' Jared said as he slit the tape around the edges.
Carefully,
he pulled the painting out of the frame and saw that there was a flat, thin
package taped to the back of it. On the outside, written in a shaky hand, was
'Miss Eden Palmer, spinster.'
'Puts
you in your place, doesn't it?' Jared said to Eden, making a joke to lighten
the air, but Brad and Eden were standing as stiff as statues, their eyes wide
as they watched Jared cut the tape off the package.
Slowly,
Jared cut the paper off the package, and even more slowly, torturously slowly,
he began to unwrap it. 'Sure you want to see what's in here?'
Eden
didn't bother to answer him. Unblinking, her eyes were on that package. She
well knew that it was Mrs. Farrington's handwriting on the outside.
When
Jared had peeled back the paper, the three of them drew in their breaths.
Inside, lying on top of a white envelope, was the necklace. It was the sapphire
and diamond necklace that for over a century people had been looking for.
It was
Eden who recovered first. She put out her hand and touched the big, round, deep
blue sapphire in the center. Two other, smaller, but equally huge,
diamond-surrounded sapphires flanked it. In the light of the dining room
chandelier, the necklace sparkled, with lights dancing off it to send a million
colors through the air. Slowly, reverently, Eden picked up the necklace and
held it, turning it in the light. She was hardly aware when Jared picked up the
white envelope. It too had Eden's name on it.
Brad
took the letter and held it out to her. 'It's something from Mrs. Farrington.
It's private,' he said softly, 'so I'm sure you'll want to read it when you're
alone.'
Eden
heard the tone in his voice and looked up. Both McBride and Brad were looking
at her wistfully, like little children wanting her to read them a bedtime
story. Smiling, Eden handed the necklace to Brad and took the letter, then
carefully opened it. Mrs. Farrington had used her beloved sealing wax on the
back. 'The only thing the hippie culture ever did that was good was to bring
back sealing wax, so it's easy for me to find,' she used to say.
When
Eden saw Mrs. Farrington's handwriting on the letter she pulled from the
envelope, she had to sit back. This is going to be difficult, she thought. The
last words of a woman she'd loved very much.
' 'My
dearest Eden and Melissa,' ' Eden read aloud, then had to wait a moment for her
eyes to clear and her voice to come back. She took a deep breath.
'
'Eden, dear, if you're reading this letter, then you've found the necklace.
Congratulations! You always were the cleverest person! I wonder how long it
took before you saw that the necklace had been painted on one of Tyrrell's
dreadful paintings. I painted the necklace on Great-Aunt Hester's neck and I
think I did a damned fine job of it! Maybe I could have been a painter too. I
certainly have as much talent as Tyrrell did.'
Pausing,
Eden chuckled before she continued. ' 'Oh! How I wish I could hear you laugh at
that witticism. You always did laugh long and hard at my jokes. It was one of
your most endearing qualities.
'Now,
on to business. I found the necklace — and the poor woman who was wearing it —
when we renovated this old house. Toddy — you remember him, don't you? helped
me cover everything up. Or, in
this case, bury it. My great-grandfather Minton said
he'd gone to New York to sell the necklace and had returned to find his
beautiful wife dead on the library floor. On his deathbed he admitted to his
son that he'd killed her lover, but I think he killed his wife too. There's a
stone for her in the family cemetery, but I think the grave is probably empty.
'
'Toddy found a grisly sight when one of the walls of the cellar came down, and
I had to go down there to see it. You know how much I loved doing
that!
Minton
must have disinterred his wife because what we were sure was her body was in a
little stone-lined closet. A wall had been hastily and poorly erected to
conceal the entryway. Inside was a skeleton wearing the tatters of what had
surely been her wedding dress. Around her neck was the necklace that has caused
my family so much misery. It's my guess that Minton killed his wife when he
discovered she was about to run off with her lover. Maybe he thought that a
decent burial in a churchyard was too good for her, so he dug her up and hid
her in the cellar. Or maybe he was so sick of all the unhappiness that necklace
had caused that he let her have it for all eternity.