Bones of Contention (7 page)

Chapter Twelve

Bored and at loose ends, Dinah hung around on the veranda thinking about the many twenty-first century amenities, diversions, and time killers not on the menu of services at Crow Hill. She couldn’t zone out in front of a mindless soap opera because there was no TV. She couldn’t pop around the corner to a Baskin Robbins and choose from 31 flavors of brain freeze. She couldn’t read a newspaper or surf the Net or go window-shopping. There was a deck of cards on the bar, but she was too antsy for solitaire. She should go for a jog and work off some of her pent-up nervous energy, but the sun was too hot.

She kicked around the backyard for a few minutes, on the
qui vive
for death adders, and had a closer look at the colorful bands painted on the trees at the edge of the woods. In Native American mythologies, trees were sometimes regarded as ladders to the Sky World. She’d have to ask Mack if there was a similar belief among the Aborigines.

Around the side of the house, partially hidden by brush and trees, she spotted a green shed and went to investigate. The door was padlocked. There was one window, but it had been boarded up. Next to the shed, someone had stacked a hodgepodge of empty wine crates bearing the names of various Australian wineries. Balthazar, Kellermeister, VineCrest. The ones on the ground looked as if they were about to disintegrate. There was an old tabletop, also disintegrating, and a large metal dumpster.

Archaeologists loved middens. You could learn a lot about people by the things they threw away. Mack’s dumpster didn’t rank up there with the middens of ancient Mesopotamia, but it didn’t stink and Dinah’s curiosity was whetted. Using a stick to lift the dumpster’s lid, she stood on one of the sturdier wine crates and peered inside.

She pushed a raggedy cotton throw rug out of the way and dug among the discarded artifacts. A broken cornice, a dried-out bucket of paint, a small lamp in the shape of Michelangelo’s David with a risqué on-off switch, an empty economy size box of Omo Laundry Detergent. If there was a washing machine hidden away in the shed, she’d ask Mack for a cup of Omo and the key. This was probably the detritus of a serious housecleaning as Mack rushed to get ready for his first guests.

Stuffed around the sides was a miscellany of old magazines and newspapers. Since her arrival, she’d seen no evidence of mail delivery to the lodge. She pulled out a not-too-moldy issue of the
Northern Territory News
and noted the label. It was addressed to Mack at a post office box in Katherine. There were also quite a few issues of the
Katherine Times
. She sat down on her wine crate, and dipped into the news that had transpired in the Top End over the last few weeks. Politics, bush fires, power outages. Queensland was teed off at the Top End for letting droves of wild swamp buffalo range into its territory. The Top End was teed off at Queensland for letting a scourge of toxic cane toads overspread its territory.

A report of a suspicious death caught her eye. A young woman had been found dead in her home and her boyfriend was being detained for questioning. But the police wouldn’t name the community or the woman “because of cultural reasons.” Dinah presumed that the culture in question was the Aboriginal culture. Was the
Times
bending over backwards to avoid any imputation that the community was violent or unsafe or did Aboriginal culture inhibit the mention of death? Mack hadn’t been inhibited from talking about the Melville Island murder, but then he was a Brit. His cultural sensitivities weren’t so easily bruised. From what he’d said, there’d been reams of stories about that murder. Of course, the victim was also a Brit and a newspaperman, besides.

With so much coverage, surely one of these papers would have something about the murder. She began to sort through the stack of papers, skimming the front pages for anything about Melville Island. When she finished with one stack, she went back into the dumpster for another. Her fingers were black and her butt tired of the wine crate, but finally she hit pay dirt.

Dinah thought, the poor man’s murder has spawned a national guessing game. There were several other stories about the murder, one or two with photographs of Hambrick. He looked to be in the neighborhood of forty, with a pudgy face, a cumulus of pale, flyaway hair, and pronounced laugh lines around the mouth. Not the staid, censorious Brit she’d imagined.

She stood up and tossed the newspapers back into the dumpster. She was about to close the lid when she noticed a painted pole like the burial poles in Mack’s library. She pulled it out and turned it around and around in her hands. It looked as if it had been whittled by a novice and the painting was careless and only half-finished.

Chapter Thirteen

As the sun dipped behind the enclosing wall of trees, a caravan of dusty cars rolled up in front of the lodge. Dinah looked up from her sixth game of solitaire, which she’d laid out on an itsy-bitsy table on the itsy-bitsy front porch. Wendell, Neesha, the twins and the Aboriginal boy she’d seen lock-picking with Thad piled out of the first car. No doubt this was Tanya’s nephew, Victor. The kids’ hair was wet and the outline of their damp swimsuits showed under their clothes. Thad and K.D. shoved each other and traded insults. Each carried a shopping bag. Victor walked behind them cradling a bag emblazoned “Wizard of Oz Videotronix.” His euphoric smile proclaimed that he was now Podded up or otherwise on his way to becoming a typical adolescent cyborg. Tanya could blame Wen if Victor coveted more expensive toys in the future.

Neesha wore a beige linen pantsuit, an Hermes scarf tied under her chin, and huge, retro-chic white sunglasses. She had a sort of Jackie Kennedy-fleeing-the-paparazzi apprehensiveness about her.

Mack got out of the second car and called out to Victor to help him unload several sacks of groceries and boxes of wine. Victor’s smile drooped. He entrusted his prize to Thad and sulked off to do the servant thing as Neesha and the privileged twins continued into the house.

“What a retard,” sneered Thad, jostling Dinah out of his way. “Like a stupid camera phone is so cool it’s off the chain.”

Dinah sighed. Loathing Thad had been so satisfying before she found out his problems had a clinical cause. As she watched him flaunt his faux-faded, designer-ripped, Abercrombie-jeaned ass up the stairs, she decided that some prejudices were worth the extra guilt.

K.D. and Neesha jogged up onto the porch. Dinah held open the door and K.D. charged in toward the kitchen. Neesha tipped Dinah a small, automatic smile and hurried after K.D.

“Where’s Cantoo?” cried K.D. accusingly. An outbreak of frenetic yipping ensued. “Oh, no! How could you keep her penned up in there all day?”

Dinah was still standing against the open front door as Cantoo spurted outside and disappeared around the side of the house in the tall grass.

K. D. charged out of the kitchen and up the stairs. Before the kitchen door banged shut, Neesha wailed, “Oh, Tanya, you’ve curdled the remoulade!”

Dinah’s heart went out to Tanya, but she didn’t have the stomach or the standing to get between the chatelaine and her cook.

Alone in the third car, Margaret alighted with a testy hauteur and called out to Wendell. He went back to her and they swapped what seemed to be divergent views. He followed her into the house with an uneasy diffidence, as if fearful she might turn and lob a grenade.

“You were smart to stay here,” Margaret said as she swept past Dinah. Over her shoulder, she said, “Wendell, I’d like to see you in my room. Now.”

Wendell’s face was frozen and impassive. He gave Dinah a curt nod and followed his mother meekly up the stairs.

Dinah continued to hold the door open for Mack and Victor as they schlepped in the groceries. She wondered if she should add “doorman” to her resumé.

Mack was chipper and full of pleasantries. “G’day, Dinah. Beautiful day to lay back and bask in the sunshine, isn’t it?”

“Lovely, so long as a cool drink is within reach.”

“It’s normally much cooler at this time of year. After all my years in London, I’m still getting used to calling June winter.” He scurried off to the kitchen after Victor.

Cleon and Dr. Fisher sat talking together in the fourth car. Neither looked as if he were enjoying the fellowship. After a minute or so, the doctor got out and walked toward the house carrying an old-fashioned medical bag. It must have been weighted with rocks because he listed to the side like a mast in a storm. Cleon followed, head down as if lost in thought.

Dinah couldn’t hack another of the doctor’s sermons on death and, after Cleon’s surliness last night, she had no desire to cross his path before she had to. She crept inside, ducked into the great room, and hid behind the bar, remembering too late Cleon’s proclivity for gin.

He strode into the room and stepped behind the bar. “What’re you doin’?”

She grabbed an ice bucket off a shelf. “Getting some ice.”

He reached for the cocktail shaker. “Well, you’re just the gal I want to see.”

“Why’s that? Am I on your list of people in line for a whuppin’ today?”

“Naw. What makes you think that?” He was all surprised innocence.

Now that she’d admitted to herself that she wanted something from him, it was hard to be completely artless. But she couldn’t bring herself to brown-nose or act as if his bullying behavior was hunky-dory. “You weren’t exactly adorable last night, Uncle Cleon. You should be shoring up relationships with your children, not tearing them down.”

“I know, I know. The boys and I got crosswise of each other, but we’ll work things out in the next day or so. It ain’t no biggie. Now let’s you and me mix ourselves some refreshment and go upstairs. I got somethin’ to show you.”

“I was waiting for Lucien. Where is he?”

“Out vulturin’ up the culture, I expect. Dez removed the catheter and changed the dressin’ on his leg this mornin’ and I ain’t seen hide nor hair of him since.” He sprayed a fine mist of Vermouth into the cocktail shaker, added ice, emptied in a pint of gin and shook twice. “You fetch the glasses and that jar of olives there.”

Holding the shaker in front of him like a lantern, he propelled her upstairs to the second floor. He led her down the hall to a numberless room, adjacent to the room she’d seen Thad and Victor burgle, and opened the door. He turned on the overhead light and pushed aside the flowery chintz curtains over the window. She looked around and again thought, why here? The room was larger than hers or Lucien’s, but a far cry from luxe. The bedspread was a tatty blue, the walls a dingy gray, and the furniture oppressively dark and grimy. On the floor next to the bed was a newspaper and a biography of Mark Twain with the edge of a letter poking out. She wondered if it was her mother’s farewell letter.

Cleon set the shaker down on a marble-topped dressing table, dragged a large suitcase from under the bed and pulled out two, bubble-wrapped squares. He ripped the plastic off and propped the Winslow Homer watercolors side by side against the dresser mirror.

“Well, what do you think?”

Most watercolors seemed washed-out and sickly to her, but Homer’s were rich and radiant, almost as intense as oils. “I can almost feel the spray,” she said. “It’s like looking through an open window onto the ocean.”

“They’re fine examples of the master’s oeuvre, I’m told. Did I pronounce that right?”

“You know you did. You only mangle words when you want to. For effect.”

“Now, sugah. I hope I ain’t that transparent, but if I was gonna be, I’d sooner it be you who sees through me than anybody else.” He poured the martinis and they stood together admiring the paintings for a while. “Neesha and your brother gave me a lot of heat for bringin’ ’em, but it was worth it. Lookin’ at ’em bucks me up.”

“They buck me up, too. They’re wondrous.”

“I’m glad you like ’em, doll, ‘cause they’re all yours.”

“What?”

“I’m bequeathin’ ’em to you in my will.”

“Me?” She was blown away. “But they’re worth, I don’t know, maybe millions.”

“I got millions. It’s no skin off anybody else’s nose if that’s what you’re thinkin’. Wen doesn’t know Winslow Homer from Homer Simpson. Lucien’s house is overflowin’ with fine art, his and all his up-and-comin’ artist friends’, and Neesha…” His face twitched as if from pain.

Not sure if the pain was physical or mental, Dinah reached for his hand.

He brushed her comfort aside, looking abashed by the momentary weakness. “Neesha’s gonna open her own art gallery when I’m gone. She’d sell ’em to the first customer that walked in. As for the rest of the family, they want my liquid assets, not my aesthetic ones. Irregardless, nobody deserves these more than you do.”

“I don’t know what to say. I’m knocked out.” She didn’t care how he butchered the language. Irregardless, she threw her arms around him and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you, Uncle Cleon. Thank you millions.”

“If they persuade you to stop gallivantin’ around the world and come to light someplace where you can hang ’em up and enjoy ’em, that’s all the thanks I want. I wish I could’ve seen you married and happy before I go. Leastways now I’ll know you’ll have assets to fall back on. Don’t feel like you can’t sell ’em off if you need to. I sure as shootin’ won’t care where I’m goin’ so it’s strictly up to you. If you sell ’em, the only string is that you get full market value in cash up front.”

He finished his martini and eased himself down on the bed. “You best skedaddle now, doll, and let me nap for an hour or two. Tonight’s dinner’s gonna be a lulu.”