Painting With Fire (7 page)

Chapter 10: Juvenile Trouble

Claudia was still sitting at home the next day. Although she had sent out a couple of resumes and had a couple of interviews, the only thing she had to show for it was a recently dry-cleaned shirt and a freshly polished pair of shoes waiting in the closet. She searched the job sites for hours, trying not to think about Tom’s past or the murder. If she had a job, it would be easier to walk away, if she had to. Did she even want to?

She stared at a freshly painted piece of Tom’s artwork, standing on the easel. She loved the smell of paint.

He had the talent but not the ego to make a career out of it. He was never much for selling his work, just happy to churn out painting after painting and stack them in odd places around the apartment, behind the couch, leaned up against the entertainment center, gathering dust in the closet. More than a dozen hung on bathroom walls alone. With the lack of wall space, they were beyond caring about the moisture anymore. Tom liked to say that soap scum and fogged frames were part of his artistic statement.

Even though it was getting crowded, the pictures seemed like old friends. Claudia loved to walk around and visit with them throughout the apartment.

Tom fiddled with his keys at the back porch door and caught her staring at the latest addition through the glass. It brought a smile to his face.

Once, she asked Tom if he ever thought of giving it up and he said he couldn’t. “A painter is someone who paints,” he said, “And if they don’t paint, the paint just starts to ooze out of their pores.”

It almost seemed like that’s what happened with his latest painting. Red paint had oozed all over the canvas in violent bloody streaks. Tom had painted a picture of pain. Claudia felt a twinge of guilt when she looked at it, like it was her fault he felt that way. He could only paint what he felt, he had once told her.

“It’s too bad I didn’t get stabbed,” Tom said, with a sarcastic smile while he was taking off his muddy shoes. “Then maybe you’d be able to sell some of my work.”

“I could use the money,” she laughed.

They were both pretending like nothing had happened and it seemed to be working for now.
It was an uneasy truce.

Claudia sighed, thinking of her job search. After sitting at home all day, the words were bottled up inside her just waiting to spill out in a long-winded, breathless tirade.
He was still her friend, after all.

“Sometimes, I just wish I’d get a goddamn e-mail telling me the position has already been filled but thanks for your interest,” she ranted
nervously. “Basic courtesy. You shoot off your resume into the online abyss and hope they acknowledge you’re a human being, but everything is automated now and that’s not how things work anymore. Silence. An e-mail inbox you compulsively check 34 times a day, filled with hundreds of messages from stupid websites that force you to sign up and then send you a constant stream of spam.”

She threw up her hands and sighed.

“I’m sorry, Claudia.” He said, patting her arm awkwardly. “I’m sure you’ll hear back from someone soon.”

It was enough to drive her crazy, so she went outside and sat in a plastic patio chair not too far from the dumpsters and read one of her neighbor’s abandoned newspapers. It had been sitting in its wet orange bag on the ground for three days. She listened to the sounds of birds chirping and squeaky car brakes on the street.

She spotted Janice taking out an oozing bag of trash. Her biceps bulged as she carried it down the wooden stairs, plodding down with heavy, angry footsteps. Her black hair was straightened smooth and pulled back in a stiff ponytail.

Her heavy eyebrows pushed down over her squinted brown eyes. Janice mustered a small, halfhearted smile at the sight of her neighbor, but the angry eyes didn’t change.

“Hi, Claude.”

“How are you doing?” Claudia asked her.

“You don’t want to know,” she huffed.

Janice dropped her bag of garbage with a thud into the dumpster and let the plastic lid drop with a bang.

Claudia told herself not to ask her again. It was none of her business, she thought. But somehow the silence was welcoming. Sometimes, silence is ripe for confessions, after all.

“Kevin is being expelled,” Janice said, as she lumbered back toward the stairs. “It wasn’t his fault, damn it.”

She paused by Claudia’s chair.

“Wow, I’m sorry to hear that. That sucks.”

Janice’s upper lip quivered for a moment. “They say they found a gun on him at school,” she said through gritted teeth. “But I know that ain’t the truth.”

“I know a good lawyer if you want the number,” Claudia blurted out, unsure of what to say.

She looked it up in her cell phone. Janice ducked inside her unit and came out with torn-off piece of an envelope. She shook the pen repeatedly before scratching the digits onto the paper against the wall.

“I can’t really afford this,” she said.

When Tom came home, Claudia told him about the conversation, while the two of them sat on opposite sides of the couch.

“That’s an interesting tid
bit,” he said, fingering the TV remote. “That Kevin must be into all sorts of trouble. Has he gone from bludgeoning people to wielding a handgun now? Or is it just a coincidence that he’s started bringing a handgun to school?”

“I still don’t think it was him,” Claudia said. “Maybe there’s a logical explanation for it? Maybe he was set up like his mom said? Maybe it was another kid’s gun?”

“Sure, whatever,” Tom said. “Like that’s likely.”

“You really shouldn’t stereotype people, Tom,” she said. “Didn’t we learn anything from Mrs. Johnson? We always thought it was Dan throwing the punches.”

“Maybe it was Janice then who killed the guy. It was Kevin’s mom then and the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Tom said.

“Maybe it was Mr. Washington,” she said. “Maybe he finally lost it and his wife was having an affair with Steve Jackson.”

“Or maybe it was Alice,” he said. “And she’s got some kind of cult going on.”

“Please, how much speculation a
nd bullshit can we come up with?”

“The thing is any one of us could have done it,” he said. “If the police don’t know, we’ll never know, so we just need to forget it.”

He turned on the TV and took a bite of his Lucky Charms cereal. A small bit of blue milk dribbled from his spoon onto his chest. He wiped it off with his thumb and continued watching the program, transfixed by CSI Miami.

Chapter 11: A Fear of God

Whenever anyone knocked on her door with a handful of pamphlets, Claudia had a tendency to hide as low as she could, far away from any windows. Luckily on the third floor, it had been a few years. But this time, she opened the door, because it was Alice standing there on the other side of the peephole.

Claudia was
still afraid she would hand her one of her religious pamphlets and try to convert her. She was afraid Alice would ask her if she was a sinner, if she had accepted Jesus into her heart. All those terrifying questions that people from religious foundations like to ask before telling her she was doomed to burn in hell forever.

Alice wore a sleek form-fitting sweater and pencil skirt
with black boots up to her knees. Claudia had heard her clip clop up the stairs.

She
slid open the chain and spotted Alice’s blue eyes and soft smile in the cracked open door.

“Sorry to bother you,” Alice said. “I just wanted to tell you about our fundraising drive and pass on some new brochures. Don’t feel like you have to give anything. I’m just kind of excited.”

Claudia led her into the kitchen where she already had a pomegranate sliced in half. She cut it into quarters with a long thin knife and the red juices squirted out, splattering the counter and her hands. It reminded Claudia of a medieval bloodletting with the red liquid pooling at the bottom of a bowl.

“
Would you like some?” she asked. The white cabinet made a sticky noise as she swung it open and pulled out a bowl.

“I love pomegranates,” Claudia
said. “There’s something so relaxing about peeling one. It’s almost like meditation. Do you ever meditate?”

“I do yoga,” she said. “Afterward, I’m so relaxed I sometimes forget to look before crossing the street. One of these days, I’m going to get clobbered. I swear it’s better than drugs. You get such a nice high from a good exercise session.”

How would she know, Claudia wondered.

“
So how is work going?” Claudia asked.

Alice was the director of a non
profit, a religious foundation, in addition to being a psychologist. She was one of those people that made Claudia feel like she was wasting her life.

“Good,” Alice
said. “Check out the new brochures. I’m so excited.”

Claudia repressed a groan and felt her shoulders tighten.
Alice handed her a pamphlet. It was glossy and crisply folded.

“
Hey, I know that church,” she said, looking at the photo. “It’s been vacant and in disrepair for years.”

“We are going to restore it,” she said, “But it’s gonna cost a lot, hundreds of thousands, so it’s gonna take years before we can hold services there.”

“It’s a beautiful building,” Claudia said looking down at the photos of the grand, old building. “Too bad I don’t have any money to donate.”

“That’s OK,” Alice said. “
You can volunteer, if you feel like it. It’s hard preserving something so historic, keeping it the same, while updating it for modern times. We wanna start a school, too. There was no such thing as handicapped accessibility or fire code back in 1895. Do you have any idea what sprinklers cost?”

Claudia shook her head.
             

“It’s pretty ambitious, I know, but we feel it’s important not just for the congregation
but the community.” Alice wound her long, blond hair around a finger.

“What does it look like on the inside?” Claudia asked. She had always wondered while walking by the giant wooden door and ivy-covered stone walls.

“Once you get beneath the layer of pigeon droppings and graffiti, there is some amazing religious art,” she said. “Paintings of Mary and Jesus and all the saints. You should see the colored glass in the dome. It’s broken in spots but gorgeous when the sunlight comes through.”

“I’d like to see that,” Claudia said.
She leaned against the kitchen counter.

“When we first started, we used to hold impromptu services in the courtyard, but the contractors won’t let us anymore because of all the asbestos and lead paint floating around,” she said.

“Where are you working these days?” Alice asked.

“Nowhere,” Claudia said, sighing. “I’m still looking for a job.”

“Really,” Alice said, eyeing her. “Maybe I’ll be able to hook you up with one eventually, if things take off.”

“The worst thing is not having health insurance,” she said.

“What
a world we live in.” Alice patted her on the shoulder. “It seems like everyone’s looking for work, and crime’s on the rise.”

“
I’m still pissed they haven’t caught that murderer,” Claudia said.

“Yeah,” Alice said.

“Pretty terrible to have that happen right below your window,” Claudia said.

“It was,” she said. “I
still pray for that man’s family. I knew him. I still can’t believe it.”

“Did you hear or see anything?” Claudia asked.

“No, I was sound asleep,” she said. “You?”

“We didn’t hear anything
, but the next day we spotted him from our window. Really creeped me out.”

“I don’t think the police are doing a very good job on the investigation,” Alice said, sitting back. “They barely asked me any questions at all. I think my whole interview with them took about five minutes.”

“What was Steve doing here?” Claudia said.

“I don’t know,” Alice said. “All I know is he didn’t come to see me.”

“Was he here to see Sara Johnson?”

“I shouldn’t talk about that,” Alice said. “You know I said too much already after the funeral.”

“He was a dealer. Maybe he had a customer in the building…”

“Maybe,” Alice said.

“Sara was in your rehab group too. Does she still have a drug problem?” Claudia asked. “Do you think he was bringing her drugs?”

Alice shrugged and looked away
, blinking back tears. “I really shouldn’t talk about it, and I really don’t know.”

Claudia wondered if Alice had forgotten their whole conversation the day of the funeral.
Dead men don’t need their privacy anymore.

“What kind of drugs was Steve into?”

“Meth,” Alice said. “I really shouldn’t say anything else.”

There was an awkward silence.

“It bothers me too, not knowing for sure what happened,” Alice said finally.

Claudia poured herself a glass of water.
“The whole thing makes you kind of value your own life a little more, don’t you think?” she said.

“Yeah, it does.” Alice
nodded. “We never know how much time we have left. That’s why faith’s so important.

“I know you’re having a rough time,” she said. “If you’d like, maybe we could attend church together, sometime.”

Claudia looked into her warm, blue eyes and wondered what to say.

“You know, Alice,” Claudia said. “I appreciate your concern, I really do. But let me find God on my own.”

“You’re in my prayers,” Alice said. “I’m just trying to help.”

Claudia gritted her teeth and stared down at the glossy brochures on her kitchen table. She hated pity.