Damage Control Page 16

  “My dear lady, do not keep apologizing and thanking me. If I did not want you here, I assure you, you would not be here.” Welles said the words without anger or threat; rather, like the hint of licorice in the tea, with a subtlety that suggested he had somehow been expecting her. He put his cup on a barrel near the chair and scratched an itch on the top of his head. A tabby cat appeared from under a pile of blankets. Welles eased it into his lap. After a moment Dana heard it purring under the gentle strokes of his hand.

  “I received your name from a jewelry store in Lahaina familiar with your designs.”

  “And are you familiar with my designs?” He asked the question without looking up from the cat.

  Dana placed her cup and saucer on a nearby barrel and pulled the earring from her pocket. She handed it to him. “I believe this is one of your designs.”

  In the time it took Welles to adjust the bifocals on the tip of his nose, he had taken the earring and handed it back to her. “Yes.”

  Dana played a hunch. “Would you duplicate it?”

  “Never.” Welles picked up his cup of tea from the barrel and again sipped from the edge.

  “Because you won’t or because you can’t.”

  “Neither and both.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

  “No, you do not.” He made a face and seemed to chastise himself. “Now it is my turn to apologize.” He took a deep breath. “Once it is created, it is created. I have no interest in re-creating what I have already created. Nor can I.”

  “So it’s one of a kind?”

  “If that pleases you. It pleases some that my work is one of a kind. It makes it more valuable—to them, not to me, I assure you.”

  Dana nodded. “Is that why you no longer design jewelry. Because others were selling it for a profit?”

  “I have no knowledge or interest in whether others are selling my pieces or at what prices.”

  “Can I ask, then, why you no longer design jewelry?”

  Welles took a deep breath and continued stroking the cat. “What I design, I design for the person to whom it will belong. A sculpture—be it a piece of jewelry or a piece of metal—-cannot exist on its own. Like each of us, it exists within a particular environment, shaped and molded by that environment. Only then can it be fully appreciated. You could never appreciate my work unless I were to create it for you. Then you would feel its inner beauty as strongly as some see its exterior beauty.”

  “Is that why the sculpture out front sits rusting? Because it hasn’t found a place?”

  Welles nodded. “Without the right place, even the most beautiful things are left to rust. Most people don’t see what I sculpt because they are too busy or have simply chosen to no longer look below the surface to see what beauty lies inside.”

  “People can be superficial,” she said.

  “No. People can be blind.” Welles returned to his tea. “To survive, as we all must, I was required to sell my work. I never intended others to make a living from me.” He allowed a small grin to crease his lips. “Though it is ironic.”

  “What is?”

  “When they sell my work, they do so to extract a profit. Yet in reality, the piece becomes worthless. It has lost its existence and thus its beauty.” He set the teacup back on the barrel. “What brings you all the way from Seattle, Washington, Ms. Hill?”

  She held up the earring. “I found this; it doesn’t belong to me, though you already know that.”

  “Yes,” Welles said. “Though it could.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The tabby had left his lap. Dana found it at her feet, rubbing against her leg. She picked it up and held it, petting it gently until it again purred.

  “Your heart is heavy. You have lost your sense of existence. Animals sense these things. Freud sensed it, which is why you sit here now.” He nodded to the cat. “Leonardo does as well. You are in need of comfort. What burdens your heart and makes it heavy?”

  For reasons she did not know, Dana felt tears well in her eyes. When she spoke, she was filled with a warm but uneasy feeling not unlike the one she’d had as a young girl in the church confessional—relieved to be unburdening her sins, uneasy about the impending consequences. “My brother was killed a week ago. Someone murdered him. I found the earring in his home.”

  “Your brother’s death provides you a reason to express the sorrow you feel within, but you have been filled with that sorrow for many years. Something else burdens your heart, makes you unhappy. You have kept those tears on the inside. Now you are drowning in them and will continue to do so until you do what you know you must.”

  Dana thought of Grant and her marriage. “My brother was not married, Mr. Welles—”

  “William, please. It does bring satisfaction to an old man to have a woman as beautiful as you call me by my first name.”

  She smiled.

  “As does your smile bring joy to another who appreciates it, and who appreciates you.”

  She thought of Michael Logan and his comment about her smile as they drove to Roslyn. “I’m unaware that my brother had a girlfriend. I’m hoping that if I can find out who this belongs to, I might be able to find out who killed him. My brother had no enemies. He was not a wealthy man. He was a teacher. He was quiet and humble, a good man. Now he’s dead. There was no reason for anyone to kill him. I’d like to know why someone did.”

  Welles remained silent, his eyes closed. Dana could hear the low hum of the wind off the ocean through an open crevice somewhere in the structure. Above her, one of the ceiling fans began to turn in the breeze. Metal bars pulled and tugged on one another, causing the ceiling fan in the kitchen to turn as well. Then the billow near the furnace rose and fell in a slow inhale and exhale, stoking the fire.

  “Jealousy.”

  Welles said the word so softly that Dana was uncertain he had spoken. “Excuse me?”

  “You asked why one man kills another. Jealousy.”

  “I asked why my brother was dead.”

  Welles nodded. “It is the same question.”

  Dana stared at the little man, puzzled and intrigued by him. “Do you know who killed my brother?”

  Welles shook his head. “No. Only why.”

  “And you think it was because of… jealousy?” She leaned forward. The cat leaped from her lap. “Do you keep records of who purchases your pieces? Records of who you create them for?”

  He shook his head. “I have no interest in records.” He offered his lap back to the displaced cat.

  “What about bills of sale, records for income tax purposes?”

  Welles grinned. “I keep no records of any kind. Never have. As for your American taxes…” He shrugged and gave an impish grin.

  Dana’s adrenaline dissipated, and with it, her hope. She sat back, suddenly exhausted from the long flight and the anxiety-riddled drive. She had come a long way, as Welles had said. Unfortunately, it had been for nothing. She looked out the window behind Welles and saw that the light was fading. She had no desire to drive back down the narrow, treacherous road at night.

  She finished the last of the tea, placed the cup on the barrel and stood. “I’ve taken up enough of your time. I am sorry to have disturbed your sculpting. Thank you for the tea.”

  Welles stood. “You truly must stop apologizing. The comfort of a beautiful woman is to be treasured.” He winked. “Like sugar in tea.”

  She laughed lightly and took his hand. “Thank you, William.”

  She started across the room, then stopped with a peculiar thought. “You said that you created your pieces with a specific individual in mind, and yet you said this earring could belong to me. How can that be so?”

  “Because the person for whom I created it is very much like you. She loved what you loved and is unhappy for the reasons you are unhappy.”

  Dana stepped closer, the realization making her light-headed. “You remember her, don’t you?” she said softly.

  “Oh, yes,�
�� Welles said. “I do remember her.”

  AN HOUR LATER, Welles walked Dana to the door, accompanied by Freud. The cat, Leonardo, had retreated beneath the blankets. “Freud will see you safely back to your car,” Welles said.

  Dana nodded and stepped outside. The air had chilled. She wrapped her arms around her. The drive back would be cold. She felt the need to make contact with Welles and bent down to kiss him lightly on the cheek. When she did, Welles placed a hand on the back of her arm and handed her a small brown sack.

  “Tea,” he whispered. “Drink it every day with sugar until it is gone.” Then he lowered his eyes, stepped back, and softly closed the wooden door, leaving Freud to escort her back to the Jeep.

  30

  THE DRIVE DOWN the mountain in the fading light had required all of her powers of concentration. When Dana returned the rental car at the airport, she failed to recognize the woman behind the counter as the same attendant who had greeted her that afternoon until the woman expressed surprise that Dana was leaving so soon. Uncertain how much time she would need on the island, Dana had purchased a one-way ticket. Now she thought it was a mistake. She wanted nothing more than to get off the island, but the woman behind the Hawaiian Airlines ticket counter simply shook her head: The flights out that evening were sold out, most overbooked.

  “It’s an emergency,” Dana pleaded. “It’s imperative that I get home tonight.”

  The ticket agent suggested she buy a ticket on a morning flight, then wait to go standby if a spot opened on a flight that evening. The chances were not good, but it was the best the agent could offer. Dana bought a ticket; then, no longer feeling safe, decided it was better to remain in a public place than a hotel room. She sat in the Hawaiian Premier Club, sipping a vodka and orange juice while listening to a computerized voice call out the numbers of flights departing and arriving. Her attempts to reach Michael Logan at work were unsuccessful.

  Sitting by a plate-glass window, Dana watched a plane taxi in the fading daylight and thought of the odd little man who lived on the mountain and what he had told her. The feeling that Welles had somehow expected her grew stronger, as did her feeling that Freud had allowed her to walk through the tunnel because it was inevitable she would do so. But how could Welles have known? It was impossible. And yet… She removed the earring from her pocket, rolling it in the palm of her hand. She had been mesmerized by its beauty—guilty of what Welles had found so distasteful that he had stopped designing jewelry. She had focused on its monetary value. Now she saw the earring differently, and it brought a profound melancholy. Welles had chosen the blue stone not for its beauty but because it reflected the sadness radiating from a young woman’s eyes. The diamond drop beneath it represented one of many tears that woman had and would shed—a woman, Welles had said, who was much like Dana.

  “Why design it at all?” Dana had asked. “Why create a piece that represents sorrow and pain?”

  “Because to not create it would have made me just as blind. To see the world and those who live in it is to see the good as well as the evil. We cannot see beauty if we do not see what is ugly. We cannot feel joy if we do not feel pain. We cannot smile if we do not cry.”

  The earring’s owner had turned to James Hill for comfort. How else could it have found its way into his home? Dana closed her eyes to the enormity of the implication. Her rational side—the side she cultivated as a lawyer—tried to dispute Welles’s recollection of the young woman. Yet each time she tried to convince herself he was mistaken, she knew he wasn’t. The pieces of the puzzle suddenly slipped into place, and the picture they created explained James’s guarded protection of his personal life—the remote cabin in Roslyn, and why Laurence King and Marshall Cole would rob the home of a man who had already sold everything he owned. King and Cole had not chosen James Hill. James Hill had been chosen for them.

  Jealousy.A motive as old as history.

  And Dana had the only piece of evidence to prove who had killed her brother.

  But you’re not the only one who knows who it belongs to or who designed it.

  The realization of her mistake came abruptly. Blinded by her desire to know who had killed her brother, she had not thought through her actions. Now the blindfold had lifted, and the light brought a sense of trepidation. She had used a credit card to purchase her airline ticket and to rent her car. No one had to follow her to know where she was going. All they had to do was consider her actions to know she had the earring. Why else would she have flown to Maui, the home of a man who had designed it ten years earlier? Why else but to find out if Welles still recalled the earring’s owner?

  She grabbed her purse, ran from the club, and hurried down the corridor toward the airport entrance. The woman behind the car rental-counter looked wide-eyed when Dana stepped up to the counter.

  “I need a car,” she said, pulling out her wallet.

  AFTER THE SAME routine, Dana was speeding along the highway. She contemplated calling the Maui police, but what would she tell them? What evidence did she have that William Welles was in danger? What questions would that provoke about her being on the island and asking his whereabouts? She began to climb the switchbacks. With the sun having set below the ocean’s horizon, the temperature continued to drop as she gained altitude. Her hands felt numb gripping the steering wheel. The ascent up the narrow road was more difficult to navigate under the cloak of night. Darkness made everything look foreign. The lava rock formed shadowed lumps and bumps in the Jeep’s cone-shaped lights. She looked for her markers and tried to gauge her distance carefully. Her only solace was that at night she would see headlights of any cars approaching.

  As she drove through Kahakuloa, she tried not to rush, tried not to panic. It would do her and Welles no good if she drove herself off a cliff. She searched for the Bellstone but sensed she’d gone too far. She knew it when she arrived at the intersection of the road with State Route 30.

  “Dammit. ” She made a U-turn and headed back.

  31

  THE GLASS WINDOW of William Welles’s helmet reflected the pinpoint blue flame at the tip of the welding rod in a bright white light. He soldered the joint with precision, a surgeon sewing a thin white line. The ceiling fans spun freely. The furnace burned a white-hot fire. When he had attached the strip of metal, he turned the knob on the pipe, shutting off the flow of gas feeding the flame. It extinguished with a small pop. He flipped up the welding mask, then removed it and wiped the perspiration from his brow on the back of his sleeve. He stepped back to consider his piece, seeing mostly flaws, as always. And yet he knew it was finished. He had no more time to devote to it.

  He placed the welder’s gun on the wooden table and removed his gloves. Freud sat in the corner of the room, head resting between his front paws. Leonardo had curled into a ball on the pile of blankets. Welles bent to open the door of the stove and inserted two pieces of dry wood. “There is no reason to hide,” he said.

  The blond man stepped into the room from the shadows of the doorway. The flames reflected shades of orange and red in his eyes and flickered shadows across his face. Freud did not stir.

  “We have been expecting you.” Welles reached for the kettle on the stove.

  “You’ve been expecting me?” A smile creased the man’s lips.

  “Yes.” Welles filled the kettle with water and placed it on the back burner. He looked up at the man. “Someone like you.”

  The man looked around. “Then why are you so unprepared?”

  Welles shuffled to the shelf and reached for the tea. “Unprepared? To the contrary, we are quite prepared. One’s destiny is one’s destiny, should one choose to accept it. I have chosen to accept mine and have for some time.”

  The man looked at Welles with curiosity. “And what is your destiny?”

  Welles raised the knife from the butcher block and whacked a slice of lemon, the knife embedding in the wood with a thud. He did not answer.

  “The woman was here,” the man said. “Did she show y
ou the earring?”

  Welles dropped a slice of lemon in the cup and pinched a spoonful of tea, the last of the bag, into a small strainer. “I said I knew that you would come. I did not say I had any interest in speaking with you. Why do you delay that which we both know you will do?”

  The man removed the gun from the pocket of his jacket.

  “This piece is yours.” Welles gestured to the sculpture on the table.

  The man considered it. “A gift? And I brought nothing to carry it in.”

  Welles smiled. “You will carry it with you. And in your hour, you will see it clearly, for it is your destiny, and it will bring a pain unlike any that man could inflict in death. Yours shall be an eternal pain.”

  The man snickered. “Aren’t you a strange bird,” he said, and pulled the trigger.

  Freud rose slowly from his bed and walked to where his master lay bleeding. He licked at Welles’s perspiring face, then whimpered and lay down beside him, curling into a ball.

  The man stepped forward. There was no reason to check for a pulse. One shot was all he ever needed. He considered the metal sculpture and its lack of shape or form. “Art to some, junk to others,” he said. Then the metal strips seemed to move, blending together like molten metal. The kettle on the stove whistled, distracting him. When he looked back at the sculpture, he saw a bridge. Though he could make out no human form, in his mind he saw himself standing on it, suspended over what at first appeared to be water but, he realized quickly, was something altogether different. The jagged pieces of metal were not the gently lapping waves of the ocean. They were not waves at all. The bridge traversed a valley of fire, the flames wicking up to burn his flesh and to torment him.

  Then the bridge collapsed.

  32

  DANA DROVE SO slowly, she was certain a car would come around one of the switchbacks at any moment and rear-end her, pushing her off the cliff. She knew she had again missed the road to William Welles’s home when she saw the village below her. Growing more frustrated, and feeling she was running out of time, she backtracked again, one eye on her rearview mirror, one eye searching the edge of the road. This time she saw the boulder, though it looked different at night. She squeezed the Jeep down the narrowing passage. When she neared the clearing, she turned off the headlights and plunged the car into total darkness. She shut off the engine and allowed the car to coast forward beneath the sculpture, which now stood like a darkened monolith.