They passed by the old well, ringed with angel’s-trumpets, their extravagant blooms hanging low and bathing the garden in an intoxicatingly sweet scent. It looked a lot like a scene from one of the paintings at Thomas Kinkade’s gallery.
“Another question,” Harper said. “What’s with the well? Wouldn’t the Perles Mansion be supplied by city water?”
“Oh, a lot of these old places have wells,” said Serrano. “Very common back in the day. Most were closed up years ago, though some folks keep ’em as cute garden features. Like gnomes.”
“Ah. Those plants are poisonous, by the way,” she said, gesturing to the angel’s-trumpets. “As is oleander, for that matter.”
“Meaning?”
“Just pointing out how common poison is.”
As they turned back to the house, the front door stood wide open, the yellow crime scene tape hanging down like a morbid party streamer.
“Goddammit!” Serrano exclaimed. His eyes searched the garden, shrouded in twilight shadows, and called out: “Stollins?”
There was no response. Shaking his head, the detective explained: “There should be an officer here, watching the place. Probably heeding nature’s call.”
A muscle worked in his jaw as Serrano stuck his head in what was left of Delilah Mason’s splintered front door. “Stollins?” he called again. Then he beckoned to Harper, who hesitated but followed him inside.
“Nice raccoon,” Detective Serrano murmured as they passed through the foyer.
As Harper had noted before, the Perles Mansion was stuffed with everything from books to figurines to dried flowers and seashells, but was otherwise quite ordinary. A grandfather clock ticked loudly, and assorted paintings crowded the walls. In many ways it was just an ordinary home of an ordinary woman who died in an extraordinary way, which explained the many surfaces marred by fingerprint dust.
“Basement’s this way,” Serrano said, and started down the hall.
As she trailed after him, Harper began to feel…something. As before. Dreamlike, as if no matter how much she walked, she remained in the same place, the hallway telescoping in front of her. She even glanced down at her feet to confirm they were moving.
“Professor?” came Detective Serrano’s voice, startling her out of her reverie. He was waiting halfway down the hallway, next to the opening that led to the living room.
Harper realized she was still standing in the entryway. She hadn’t moved at all. Now as she walked toward him, it felt as if she had arrived by his side quickly, without fully meaning to. She felt light-headed, her thoughts muddled.
She glanced into the living room, where she noted the grand fireplace with the large gilt-framed mirror hanging above it, still covered in a dark gray cloth. Now that she had seen some of Delilah Mason’s art, she recognized that this fireplace and the mirror were featured repeatedly in her paintings.
Was this the one that had shown her “the wrong face”?
Harper shivered again. There was nothing quite like lookinginto the mirror and seeing something, or someone, that one should not. Seeing something unexpected, unwelcome. Seeing one’s own reflection turn its back, or seeing an unexpected presence superimposed over one’s reflection.
Harper knew, too well, what it felt like to see the wrong face in the mirror.
Fourteen
An array of colorful paintings studded the walls, and two easels held unfinished canvases. Beside the easels, a large worktable held a messy hodgepodge of brushes and paints.
Harper was impressed that Delilah Mason worked without a drop cloth; the jewel-toned Persian carpet seemed spotless. Harper once tried her hand at painting a secondhand desk “Tuscan Red,” and the room—and Harper—wound up wearing half the paint and looking a lot like a crime scene.
All the artwork shared the artist’s distinctive surreal style, with tumbling images in saturated hues. One half-finished painting featured an upside-down woman held in a cocoon of vines among cypress branches, a group of menacing crows overhead, a door cracked open, and a barely-there face appearing in a floating mirror. The other portrayed a lighthouse hanging within the twisting arms of a massive cypress tree, the tree’s bark appearing a streaky black against a bright orange and pink sky. Harper leaned in closer, trying to make outfigures barely visible in the dark bark, nightmarish, distorted faces…
“No offense to Ms. Mason,” said Detective Serrano, “but my six-year-old daughter could do better.”
“In that case you might want to show her work to the galleries in Carmel,” said Harper. “Because these paintings are worth a lot of money. Especially now that she’s gone.”
“Are you a collector?” he asked.
She let out a mirthless laugh. “On a professor’s salary? I wish.” She shook her head. “But apparently Mason’s ex-husband has several canvases.”
“How do you know her ex-husband?”
“I don’t, but our paths crossed earlier today, at Delilah’s gallery in Carmel. He’s very…loud.”
