Still Life - Page 95/115

But the single tree trunk idea hadn’t worked. The box had looked unbalanced, off-putting. So she’d added the other legs and what had been a perch, a blind, now looked like a home on great long stilts. But it still wasn’t right. Closer. But there was something she needed to see. As always when faced with this problem Clara tried to clear her mind, and let the work come to her.

Beauvoir and Agent Lacoste were in the process of searching the Malenfant home. Lacoste had been prepared for filth, for a stench so thick she could see it. She hadn’t been prepared for this. She stood in Bernard’s bedroom and felt ill. It was perfect, not a dirty sock, not a plate of congealing food. Her kids were under five and their rooms already looked, and smelled, like the beach at low tide. This kid was, what? Fourteen? And his room smelled of Lemon Pledge. Lacoste felt like retching. As she put on her gloves and began her search she wondered if there wasn’t a coffin in the basement which he slept in.

Ten minutes later she found something, though not what she’d expected. She walked out of Bernard’s room and into the living room, making sure to catch the boy’s eye. Rolling up the document she discreetly put it in her evidence bag. Not so discreetly, though, that Bernard didn’t see. It was the first time she’d seen fear on his face.

‘Well, look what I found.’ Beauvoir came out of the other bedroom holding up a large manila folder. ‘Oddly enough,’ he said into Yolande’s lemon-sucked face and André’s lean leer, ‘it was taped to the back of a picture, in your bedroom.’

Beauvoir opened the folder and flipped through the contents. They were rough sketches, Jane Neal’s rough sketches of the county fair all the way back to 1943.

‘Why did you take these?’

‘Take? Who said anything about take? Aunt Jane gave them to us,’ said Yolande in her most convincing, ‘the roof is nearly new’ real estate agent’s voice.

Beauvoir wasn’t buying. ‘And you taped it behind that print of a lighthouse?’

‘She told us to keep them out of the light,’ said Yolande in her ‘the plumbing isn’t lead’ voice.

‘Why not just wallpaper over them?’ André actually gave a snort of laughter before being silenced by Yolande. ‘All right, take them in,’ said Beauvoir. It was getting close to lunch and he longed for a beer and a sandwich.

‘And the boy?’ asked Lacoste, picking up the cue. ‘He’s a minor. Can’t stay here without parents.’

‘Call Children’s Aid.’

‘No.’ Yolande grabbed Bernard and tried to put her arms around him. They wouldn’t go. Bernard himself didn’t seem all that upset at the thought of a foster home. André looked as though he thought this might be a good idea. Yolande was apoplectic.

‘Or’, said Beauvoir in his best, ‘you’d better make an offer before the owners change their minds’ voice, ‘you can tell us the truth right now.’ He held up the folder. Part of him felt badly about using Bernard but he figured he’d get over it.

The beans spilled. She’d found the folder sitting on the coffee table in Aunt Jane’s home. In full view. Yolande described this as though she’d found an S and M magazine. She was about to toss it on the fire but she decided, out of respect and love for dear Aunt Jane, to keep the pictures.

‘Why did you take them?’ Beauvoir repeated, walking toward the door.

‘OK, OK. I thought maybe they’d be worth something.’

‘I thought you hated your aunt’s work.’

‘Not as art, you great shit,’ said André. ‘I thought I could sell them to her friends, maybe Ben Hadley.’

‘Why would he buy them?’

‘Well, he has lots of money and maybe if I threatened to burn them he’d want to save them.’

‘But why take them out of the house? Why not keep the sketches there?’

‘Because they disgust me,’ Yolande was transformed. All the make-up in the world, and she was pretty close to wearing it all, couldn’t hide the hideous person underneath. In an instant she became a bitter middle-aged woman, twisted and made grotesque like a metalwork sculpture. All rust and sharp edges. Even Bernard edged away from her. ‘I needed them where I knew no one else would see them.’

On a slip of paper Beauvoir wrote a receipt for the folder and gave it to Yolande who took it in her manicured hand as though he’d passed her a sheet of toilet paper.

Clara had given up waiting for her tree house to speak and had gone to Jane’s to do more work. She’d begun to see Jane’s work as a masterpiece. One giant mural, like the Sistine Chapel or Da Vinci’s Last Supper. She didn’t hesitate to make the comparisons. Jane had captured the same elements as those master works. Awe. Creation. Wonderment. Longing. Even logging, in Jane’s case.