He took a deep breath. “I have a lot of room. You see, my wife and I separated recently, and well, there are three bedrooms not being used. The trio also rehearses here, so Olivia only had to go down to the basement. It just seemed like a good idea.”
Now Jackie waited a moment, but it was all for effect. “Did she sleep in her own room?”
Curran coloured deeply. “She had her own room.”
His response neatly dodged the question. Jackie decided to move past and circle back later.
“Could I see her bedroom? There might be something there that would give us a clue as to why those men showed up or why she went so willingly.”
“I don’t believe she did go with them willingly. To me it seemed as if she had no choice.”
“That’s splitting hairs. What I meant was that she didn’t put up a fuss. If someone came after you, would you go so docilely?”
He got up. “I’ll show you the room.”
Upstairs, the house was even more devoid of furniture. The absent wife had obviously taken nearly everything. The room at the top of the stairs had nothing in it but dust and empty shelves and a laptop computer on a small table. The next (obviously Curran’s room) had just the bare bones: a double bed, dresser and small square of carpet.
The daughter’s room at least had a couple of stuffed toys and pictures on the walls, mostly her artwork. But the bed and dresser were brand new.
Olivia’s room was at the end of the hall next to the bathroom. Curran swung the door back and Jackie pushed past, but stopped, barely through the door.
What was in front of her was like nothing she’d ever seen, unless it was under the influence of drugs. Every surface but the floor and the wall to her left had been painted by a hand that was childlike but at the same time masterful.“Standing in a clearing in the forest,” Jackie said out loud.
On the wall opposite the window in the unpainted wall, the forest disappeared into darkness. On the wall in front of her, a clearing extended to a spot where a waterfall gushed over a high cliff. Overhead on the ceiling, a night sky glowed with stars and a crescent moon. Stepping farther into the room, she saw on the wall behind her more forest with the shadowy bulk of mountains rising in the distance. It would take hours of study to appreciate every detail that had been painstakingly painted. The whole effect was quite charming – until you noticed what was under the bushes and behind the trees. Everywhere eyes stared out, big eyes, small ones, and all of them filled with menace. Jackie found the effect profoundly disturbing.
“Olivia did this?”
“My daughter helped a bit when she visited, but this is almost all Olivia’s work.”
“Did she ever sleep?”
Andrew Curran actually laughed. “Very little. She was especially prone to staying up all night after gigs when she was really wired, but unless she was singing or listening to music, she was up here working. Sometimes she’d do all three at once.”
The rest of the room was spartan: a mattress on the floor and a lamp on a low table nearby. Jackie went to the closet, where she found five dresses hanging from a rod and shelving stacked with neatly folded underwear, socks, jeans and a few blouses and sweaters.
“Do you mind?” Jackie asked before starting to go through the clothing to see if anything had been hidden among it.
“There’s nothing there,” Curran told her as she searched. “I was the one who kept all her clothes in order, otherwise they’d just be scattered around the room.”
She continued anyway, then asked, “How about under the mattress?”
“I already looked there. I’ve searched the entire house.”
“When Olivia arrived here, what did she have with her?”
“One clean set of clothes besides what she had on, her duffel coat, a toothbrush, and that’s about it.”
“And all that’s still here?”
“In the closet, except for the duffel coat. I threw that out because it was pretty ratty. Tuesday night she had on a dress, boots and a sheepskin coat I bought her about a month ago. The coat was thrown from the car as they drove off. I believe it might have been a signal.”
“What kind of signal?”
“That she wants me to come and find her.”
Chapter 5
The one big sticking point in my relationship with Olivia was her friend Maggie. For some reason, she seemed to hate me from the moment she walked into the Sal.
A tough woman, you knew immediately that she’d been around the block a few times and trusted nothing and no one. She had blonde hair from a bottle done in a sort of mullet cut, and though around five-five in height, she might have weighed a hundred and ten pounds. Life can knock people around, and she gave every impression of having been knocked around a lot. She would have been considered pretty by some, but that edge was draining away quickly as the years passed. I never saw her in anything but tight jeans, high-heeled boots and a fringed leather jacket.
Maggie tagged along to the first rehearsal, held in my basement studio. She plopped herself in a corner, sitting there with her arms folded and a scowl plastered on her face. Occasionally she let out a huge sigh and shook her head, until Ronald had enough and told her to wait upstairs. The stomping footsteps overhead as she paced proved even more annoying.
During a break, Olivia went upstairs, and we could hear raised voices – mostly Maggie’s. Olivia soon came back down looking troubled, and for the rest of the afternoon her work could most kindly be described as distracted.
When we packed it in (Ronald in deep disgust), my two bandmates split pretty quickly, but I kept Olivia back. “Is everything okay?”
Her lip trembled as she shook her head. “Maggie is very, very angry with me.”
“Why?”
“She just is,” was the evasive answer.
“You mean she’d rather see you out panhandling for chump change?”
“I only do that because it’s better than hanging around our room while she’s...”
“What?”
“Never mind. I shouldn’t be saying anything.”
Maggie yelled from the top of the stairs, “O, are we going to get out of here sometime before midnight?”
“I’ll be right along!” Olivia shouted back, then turned to me.“Look, I’ve gotta go.”
“Will you come back tomorrow?”
“Ronald said we’re not rehearsing until Sunday afternoon.”
“I thought we could do some extra work. I play a bit of piano and have a huge CD collection. We can go through it and see if there are any songs that tickle your fancy. That way you’ll be better prepared for our next rehearsal.”
She looked troubled. “I don’t know if I should. Maggie will be even more upset.”
“Hell with Maggie! You need a lot more rehearsing if you’re going to be ready for Tuesday night.”
“I don’t know...”
“Call me in the morning.”
“I don’t have a phone.”
“Does Maggie?”
“A cell. She knows I’d have no good reason to ask for it.”
“Will you come tomorrow?” I pressed.
“I’ll try. I