Shadow Notes by Laurel Peterson (cool books to read txt) 📗

by early afternoon of the following day, even Kyle. At least I had that to look forward to, sort of. Paul banked the fire, and I helped him shepherd Richard off to bed after a large glass of water and three aspirin.

He came to find me after Richard was tucked in. I had crawled happily between the guest room bed’s clean sheets and was leafing through a book of Mark Doty’s poetry I’d found on the bedside table. Without saying a word, he sat down, put his arms around me, and began to cry.

Christmas dawned snowy. Everyone appeared earlier than expected to beat the storm. Paul, Richard and I were still in pajamas when the guests started arriving around eleven, so Paul made another batch of biscuits and more coffee and we opened gifts by the fire, listening to Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring and Handel’s Messiah. Richard, unchastised by his night of drinking, and Paul’s remonstrance about alcohol’s effects on his immune system, started on the champagne again when he started cooking, but promised to take it slower. It was unclear if he remembered the conversation in the kitchen the night before.

Mother arrived with Loretta and Ernie, on time of course. I still felt stung over her leaving me last night, even though I knew it was completely irrational, so I left the room and went into the kitchen to help Richard stir, chop, or sauté. He set me up at the kitchen table with a wooden board and let me hack at a stack of onions. Kyle wandered in a few moments later. Richard set up another board.

“Avoiding your mother?” Kyle asked.

“I’m a three-year-old.”

“She’s good at it,” said Richard. “One of her specialties.”

The onions started doing their good work and I swiped at my eyes. “Shut up, you. Your mother loves you.”

“And your mother loves you,” said my mother from the doorway.

Richard intervened. “Constance, you look lovely this afternoon.” Mother’s dark green suit and cream silk blouse were perfect. “They’ve already got me locked up in the kitchen, can you believe it? Do you need a glass of champagne? Some orange juice? No? Well, go grab yourself a chair and warm your toes by the fire. Hors d’oeuvres will be out in fifteen minutes.” He gave her a big kiss and gently led her out the door.

I wasn’t off the hook, only reprieved.

Paul came into the kitchen to pick up Richard’s cooking duties while Richard schmoozed guests. My vision near Hetty’s murder site still nagged at me, and if Mother wouldn’t discuss it, at least I could talk to Paul. Kyle would get an earful, but better to shock him now.

“Um, Paul.” Something in my tone of voice caused him to turn sharply. I nodded. He shrugged, in that way people do when they mean it’s your funeral.

“I’ve started getting daylight dreams,” our code for visions.

“Like what?”

“Like colors. Like a preview of a murder. Like lots of burning images. The sound of white noise.”

“A preview of a murder?” Kyle stopped chopping, the knife suspended.

“I saw Hetty’s attacker.”

“Why haven’t you told me?” He dropped the knife, and it clattered onto the board.

“It’s a vision, Kyle, not an eyewitness account.”

“Vision. Like voodoo and séances?”

“I’m not practicing it for money, but, yes, sort of.”

He narrowed his eyes, sat back in his chair. “How long have you had these, uh, visions?”

“How often are you having them, Clara?” Paul asked.

“Maybe one every couple of days. Not often.” For the moment, at least, fewer than I had before I ended up in Switzerland. “I’m not sleeping well, and I’m still having that, uh, same recurring dream.” Kyle probably wasn’t ready for visions of a bloody wave coming for me.”

“So…things aren’t improving.”

“No.”

Paul put down his wooden spoon and turned off the flame under the pot he’d been stirring. “What else?”

“I brought the last vision on deliberately.”

Paul’s eyebrows rose. “You did?”

“I wanted to see if I could come up with something about Hetty’s murder, something that might give me a sense of her. I got the color green.”

Kyle’s skepticism glowered at me across a haze of onion fumes.

Paul said, “Olive green? Neon green? Blue green?”

“Forest green. With a thin line of yellow green going through it.”

“Did you see Hetty herself?”

“The color swirled around her, like ink in water or smoke in air. But the color strands were intense, not diluted.”

He leaned a hip against the counter and frowned. I knew what the colors meant; I’d looked them up, but I wanted him to confirm it. Finally, he said, “Both dark green and yellow-green indicate jealousy, but you already knew she was jealous of you. Dark green is often related to ambition and greed; yellow-green, to sickness, cowardice and discord. What kind of sense does that make to you?”

“She was ambitious about her farm—and maybe a little social climbing. Loretta said Hetty was having an affair, someone from the campaign. Did you know that?” I asked Kyle.

“An affair?” Kyle picked up the knife. He sliced an onion in half and placed the halves flat-side down on the cutting board. “Or a relationship?”

“Loretta said ‘affair.’ You should ask her.”

“I intend to. Thank you. Later.” He severed the halves into fine little slices, swept the pieces into a bowl.

Paul slid his eyes in Kyle’s direction. He said to me, “Maybe the ambition and greed had to do with harming you.”

“You mean Hetty saw me as an impediment to her social climbing? And she killed Hugh to…do what? How did that help her cause?”

“She was jealous when you were children, right? Maybe her ‘affair’ from the campaign used her jealousy and social ambitions to manipulate her. That could cause the intensity in the colors you saw.”

“But what did Hugh have to do with the campaign? I think Hetty killed Hugh because he rejected her.”

I told Paul about the photographs I’d seen in Hetty’s cottage, and how the colors matched Mother’s cottage. “Whatever’s going on at the campaign is unrelated.”

Kyle rubbed his hand across his eyes. He said, “Aren’t you