Page 85 of Bright Lights, Big Christmas
A toothbrush rested on the edge of the bathroom sink, alongside a razor and a can of shaving cream. Another toothbrush was slotted into a wall-mounted toothbrush holder.
The kitchen counter held a Mr. Coffee machine with a half-full pot of blackened sludge alongside a container of dried-up half-and-half.
A narrow door on the far kitchen wall was locked. Kerry jiggled the door handle, her curiosity piqued. She was about to attempt to jimmy the lock when she spotted a single key, dangling from an under-counter mug hook.
The door opened into a smaller room that had obviously been used as a painting studio. The only furniture consisted of a large wooden easel and backless iron stool and a worktable covered withjars of brushes, boxes of watercolors, pastel crayons, and pencils. The rough-planked wooden floor and the walls were spattered with paint. Blank and half-finished canvases were stacked in a crude wall-mounted rack.
Kerry walked around the room, batting away the cobwebs covering everything, touching the canvases and trying to imagine why Heinz would have abandoned this space to move into what Austin had correctly termed a dungeon. She opened another door and discovered it held a tiny bathroom with an old-fashioned claw-foot tub, pedestal sink, and high-backed commode.
She went back to the living area, searching for a source of heat and feeling relief at the sight of a thermostat on the wall near the front door. She slid a knob and was gladdened at the resulting whoosh of power.
Her mind was made up. Somehow, she would have to boss, and yes, bully, Heinz into moving back into this apartment.
chapter 48
The old man was too weak to put up much of a defense. He leaned heavily on Patrick’s arm as he was walked into the seventh-floor apartment. He gazed around the living room and his eyes rested briefly on the portrait that had caught Kerry’s eye, then quickly looked away.
“The bedroom’s this way,” Kerry told Patrick, pointing to the open door. Together, they managed to trundle Heinz into the bed, which Kerry had made up with clean sheets.
Heinz sank back against the pillows, sniffed, and made a face. “What is that awful odor?”
“That’s the smell of Pine-Sol, plus the blood, sweat, and tears I expended scrubbing and disinfecting this place,” Kerry said, holding out her work-reddened hands. “You could at least pretend to be grateful.”
“For what?” Heinz rasped. “For being force-marched back into a past I want to forget?”
His face crumpled as he looked around the room, his eyes focusing on the small framed black-and-white photograph Kerry haddiscovered while cleaning. He closed his eyes as an act of dismissal. “I’m tired. Will you please, for God’s sake, leave me alone in peace?”
“Afraid not,” Patrick said. “We can’t leave you alone until you’re over this pneumonia.”
“I’m going to sleep on the sofa out there,” Kerry told him. “And make sure you eat properly and take your meds.”
Heinz’s eyes flew open again. “Who invited you to move in here? Go away and sell your Christmas trees and sleep in your trailer.”
“It’s me or the hospital,” Kerry said, unimpressed with his acting. “Besides, Murphy had Spammy towed away to the scrapyard today, so now I’m officially homeless. You wouldn’t turn away a homeless friend at Christmas, would you?”
“Is it really Christmas already?” His voice faltered as he rubbed a hand across his chin, bristly with a five days’ growth of snow-white beard. “I must have lost track of time.”
“Tomorrow is Christmas Eve,” Kerry said.
“Time for you to go back home to the mountains,” Heinz said. “To your family.”
“Not until you’re better,” Kerry said firmly. She patted his shoulder. “Now rest.”
Kerry and Patrick tiptoed out of the bedroom, leaving the door ajar.
“This place is… something else,” Patrick said, looking around the living area. “I know this city is full of eccentrics, but how do you suppose someone like Heinz, whom I always just assumed was borderline homeless, came to own an apartment like this, in this neighborhood?”
“Don’t forget he apparently owns the whole building,” Kerry said.
“Maybe he inherited it?” He gestured at the art that surrounded them. “Along with all these paintings?”
“Don’t think so,” Kerry said slowly. “Most of these paintings arethe work of the same person, a fairly famous artist who suddenly, inexplicably, stopped painting back in the early nineties, and dropped out of sight.”
“Heinz? What makes you think that?”
She led him by the hand to a large landscape painting of a verdant forest, and pointed to the bottom left corner, to the tiny imprint of a tree. “That’s his signature.”
“Huh?”
