Chapter Espalier
IV.
ESPALIER
Yates
Sometime later . . .
August 26th, 8:17 am
I GO THROUGH THE HOUSE, erasing every trace of Nolan Rhodes.
I remove his laundry from the dryer. I pack up his toiletry bag in the bathroom. I even take the last bottle of Blackstone St. Charles Porter in the fridge. When I’m done, the only thing left behind of Mr. Rhodes is a single note from the drawer.
I saw this just after I got out of the hospital. It’s the oldest piece of written music—called “The Song of Seikilos.” The words kind of stuck with me, and now they remind me of you:
While you live, shine
Fear no grief at all
Life exists only for a short while
And time demands its toll
~N
I place the note in the freezer where it will stiffen like the skin of a corpse.
I wonder if Autumn will think of Rhodes’s scrapbook when she sees it, of the leathery Memento mori tattoos that he affixed to the pages.
Systematic derangement, I think to myself, and then open the kitchen window that looks out on the back garden.
I breathe in the mist. Cape Carnage is forever shrouded, some days in a veil of rain, like today, others in humidity so thick it chokes you.
Even on the clearest days, it’s draped in the weight of mystery and time.
And throughout it all is the manor house that looms on the hill, and the once-formidable man hidden behind its cold stone walls.
I can just make out the ornate entrance looming in the downpour, a strip of lightning arcing in the clouds high above the manor’s stone turrets.
I glance down at my watch. It’s nearly eight-thirty in the morning.
It won’t be long now until Autumn will discover she needs to head to town for an unexpected trip to the pharmacy on behalf of her elderly benefactor.
I pat the pocket of my jacket where his pills are hidden, pills I broke into his kitchen to steal during the night.
Another brushstroke across my canvas, the picture almost ready to come to life.
Movement draws my attention to the oak tree.
The raven hops down from the branches to land on the garden wall.
He watches me with interest, croaking three times, the shoulders of his wings flaring with each note.
I withdraw a ziplock bag from my pocket and place some cubes of beef onto the windowsill.
Though I wait, he doesn’t move closer. He never does.
Perhaps he can sense something in me that even other people can’t.
“Je hais les testaments et je hais les tombeaux,” I say, reciting Baudelaire’s “The Joyful Corpse” to the raven as I take a step back from the window. “Plut?t que d’implorer une larme du monde.”
I retreat another step. The bird flies through the rain to the peak of his bird feeder, where he can see me in the kitchen more clearly. “Vivant, j’aimerais mieux inviter les corbeaux. à saigner tous les bouts de ma carcasse immonde.”
I back farther away from the window. Only once I’ve crossed the invisible barrier of safety in the bird’s mind does he fly to it for his meal.
“Pretty murder bird,” he says in Autumn’s voice, shaking droplets of rain from his feathers.
“Yes, you are a pretty murder bird,” I coo.
I hear a car rumbling down the driveway over the roar of the wind. The bird croaks in warning as I lean a little closer to spot the Jaguar through the trees, making its way to the main gate of the property. With a growing smile, I take out another piece of beef and toss it toward the raven.
“Now, we’re going to work on something new.”