A Few Good Murders

Kevin Miles was sixteen when he committed what might be considered his first murder. And for over three decades his secret remained hidden. But then, one fateful night, in a room full of strangers who’d just taken Ayahuasca, Kevin’s true identity would be revealed through someone else’s vision. Would Kevin act on his natural impulses or would he remain inconspicuous to the unsuspecting souls around him? Only one person could tell you.  

This story is fictional. Any resemblance to living people is coincidental.

Originally published December 2023 on nicolejeffords.com

Kevin Miles was sixteen when he committed what might be considered his first murder (he himself saw it merely as an act of negligence); this is the way it happened. He was a loner, but he wasn't an only child. There was an older sister who was already in high school and practically out of the house when Kevin was born, so she didn’t really count, at least not as far as Kevin was concerned. He was a frightened child. A shy and wily child. A child who kept to himself, eyes quietly taking in whatever was going on around him without anyone even noticing he was looking. Indeed, from an early age he had developed the gift of melting into the background and making himself so invisible that he appeared to be part of the landscape rather than an actual, living being. He was from a wealthy Houston family, his father an oilman, his mother a flighty, attention-seeking woman who was often written up in the Houston papers for the immaculate dinners she served and the beautiful clothes she wore. The family owned a large property in River Oaks, an elegant mansion on half an acre of perfectly maintained, smooth green lawn – gardens filled with fruit trees, flowers, a badminton court. He wanted for nothing, or at least so it seemed, free to wander around without much supervision, a quiet boy who never caused trouble.

One afternoon he arrived home early from school, tiptoeing into the house, anxious to get to his bedroom unobserved so he could work in private on a chemistry experiment. From his parents’ bedroom he heard voices, his mother’s high-pitched laugh and a male voice that Kevin recognized as a neighbor’s, a Mr. Jimmy Coleman who lived in the mansion across the street. Jimmy and Kevin’s father, Robert, were great friends, so what was the guy doing in the parents’ bedroom? Kevin padded down the thickly carpeted second floor hallway and put his ear to the door. Yes, from inside came a deep male groan accompanied by yelps and his mother’s voice crying, “Keep going! Harder! Ah, yes, just like that!”

Outside the door, Kevin’s face reddened. He felt a cold fury rise within him. How many times had Jimmy, who had his own wife, a good friend of Kevin’s mother’s named Marilyn, been to dinner at their house or hung around drinking scotch and playing word games with Kevin’s father? He was a family friend, a good and reliable friend welcome to drop by whenever he liked. But that didn’t mean he was welcome in the parental bedroom.

Kevin padded back to his own room where he sat down on the floor to think about things.

He had never particularly liked Jimmy – too jovial and blustery, the sort of middle-aged man who winked at his friends’ children to signal an alliance that wasn’t really there. We’re on the same page, the wink said; the cool guys who know more than parents or teachers or housekeepers will ever know. Kevin hated that wink which was false and demeaning and made him want to smash Jimmy’s face in.

He didn’t like Jimmy’s children, either, never played with them or even acknowledged their existence. But Kevin, as noted, was a very reclusive child, so there was nothing strange in that.

His mother, Diana's, indiscretion with their neighbor disturbed Kevin greatly. He had never been close with either parent, but Diana’s behavior, so flagrant and unseemly, disgusted him. How could she cheat on her husband in his own house, his own bedroom? Spread her toned, sun-kissed thighs – thighs Kevin had often witnessed by the pool in a bikini – open wide for a winking, chummy, swaggerer like Jimmy Coleman?

It made Kevin disrespect his mother and that was a cold, lonely feeling he didn’t like. (Made him disrespect his father, too.) So he decided, quite cunningly, to take matters into his own hands.

Because of their wealth and the many valuables in their house, the Miles family through the years had made it a practice to keep a trained guard dog on the premises. The current dog was a thick, frightening-looking Rottweiler named Hawk who had been specially trained to go after intruders with flattened ears and bared teeth that dripped saliva. Hawk was locked away in a chain link dog run during the day, but at night the kennel gate was unlatched so that he could roam the property freely. Kevin was on good terms with Hawk, though he was careful to move slowly and deliberately in his vicinity so as not to arouse the dog’s ferocious tendencies. He would pat the dog’s wide, velvety head, saying, “There, there, it’s only me and I’m your friend, right?”

In truth, he was scared of the dog and had to force himself to stay calm when he was around him. (The only person who could be relaxed with the dog was the groundskeeper, a man named Felix.) But Kevin was determined to find a way to punish Diana and her boyfriend, Jimmy, and so he hatched a plan that would require some bravery on his part. One late October afternoon, when the weather was crisp and beautiful, he returned from school right before lunch, but instead of going into the house, wandered into the garden where he sat down on a bench with an open book in his lap. He couldn’t be sure Jimmy was there – but since Jimmy’s days, by Kevin’s calculations, were Tuesdays and Thursdays (and this was a Thursday), he decided to take his chances. Jimmy always left the house at exactly 12:45, sneaking out the kitchen door, which led directly into the back garden, and then, sticking close to the building like a thief, wending his way to the street where he would cross the pavement very quickly and melt like a shadow through his own front door.

At 12:40 Kevin rose from his bench, holding the hardcover book against his chest for protection, and inched his way across the lawn toward the dog run. “There, there,” he murmured to Hawk who gave a truncated growl, like the squawk of a rubber chew toy, but didn’t show his teeth. Moving as slowly as he could so as not to excite the dog, muttering: soft words of comfort, Kevin cautiously unlatched the kennel gate, opening it about a foot wide and saying “Shoo, shoo,” so Hawk would know he’d been released.

And it worked. As Kevin backed away from the kennel and toward his bench, Hawk joyfully leapt out of the dog run and raced across the garden to sniff at the edges of the property. In the meanwhile, Kevin slunk through the garden gate and hid behind some bushes in front of the house.

Glancing at his watch, he saw it was 12:44. He forced himself to hold still to keep from trembling. His mouth was very dry and he licked nervously at his lips. A moment later, he heard vicious barking and Jimmy’s voice yelling, “Get away! Get off of me!” There was the sound of a scuffle and then a scream.

Kevin knew his mother would be in the shower, so there was no chance of her hearing anything. He pictured the cook racing from the kitchen with a broom, and with that image in mind crept out of the bushes and walked quickly to his car, which was parked a block away.

He missed lunch, but no one noticed. The rest of the day, all he could think of was: Had there been a death? Had Hawk’s sharp teeth sunk themselves into Jimmy Coleman’s jugular?

What he learned when he arrived home that afternoon was that Hawk had somehow gotten loose and attacked Jimmy Coleman. There was a lot of blood, but the cook had indeed raced from the house with a broom and then Felix had appeared from an outbuilding and shot the dog dead.

As for Jimmy, there were bite marks at his throat, but those weren’t what killed him. He was rushed to the hospital where his wounds were stitched and fluids were pumped through his system. Then he was sent home with a thirty day supply of Xanax and recommendations for a trauma specialist who would perform EMDR and other calming tricks on him. The poor man was a nervous wreck, a ghost of himself. Two days after the attack, his wife, Marilyn, found him sprawled lifelessly on the bathroom floor. She felt for a pulse, but there was none to speak of, and the EMT guys who arrived ten minutes later pronounced him dead, probably of a heart attack.

That was Kevin’s first murder, although, technically speaking, it was a murder by proxy since Kevin had never actually laid hands on the guy. Over the years he was able to tell himself that the calamity had been an accident, that perhaps the gate had been carelessly left open. It wasn’t till decades later that a savage anger rose in him once again and he began to entertain thoughts of a second murder.

Kevin didn’t really have to work for a living. In college he majored in mechanical engineering and afterwards had a job with a large aerospace company for a while, but working in close proximity to other people was disagreeable to him, and it didn’t take long before he quit. He had one claim to fame – in tinkering with various materials, he had invented a kind of mesh from the bark of beech trees that could be used in fabric, and from this a constant dribble of money was deposited in his bank account. He bought a house on a quiet street in Austin, and set up a lab in the kitchen. The front door was always kept locked, as were the windows. No one was allowed in, not even to clean, and pretty soon there were rumors about Kevin because he had zero interest in gardening and the front yard was an unruly, overgrown mess. (Eventually, not wanting to draw too much attention to himself, he hired a landscaping service.) Physically, he wasn’t much to look at, a man of average weight and height, with light-colored brown hair, secretive blue eyes that were pale and intelligent, a plump, unsmiling rosebud of a mouth. With a lot of time on his hands, he could do exactly as he pleased and his days were spent researching different projects – what food he should put in his bird feeder to attract the most unusual species, what car he should buy that was both sleek and unnoticeable and would provide the best mileage, what vitamins he should consume to enhance his already considerable brain power. One day, going out to check his mailbox, he tripped on his front step, twisting his ankle. It was probably just soft tissue damage, nothing serious, but the injury was painful and caused a limp, and not wanting to drag his foot around like a ball on a chain Kevin decided to visit a chiropractor. He heard of one who was supposed to be reputable from his neighbor, and this man turned out to be so talented and charming that Kevin began to see him once or twice a month. His name was Victor Goodlove and he had delicate hands and a tousled mane of dirty blond hair that fell in a slant across his forehead.

Victor Goodlove (Oil on Canvas, Nicole Jeffords, 2016)

“Goodlove” was a made up name translated freely from Victor’s actual name, which was Gottlieb. Nobody knew very much about him. One would go for treatments, in-and-out- and-done, with little interaction, as simple as that. Kevin enjoyed the touch of the man’s fingers on his skin. Goodlove would put acupuncture needles into Kevin’s legs and while the needles smarted and made Kevin want to kick the guy in the face, his ankle quickly got better and his body, overall, began to feel robust and healthy. Kevin decided this was the best medicine for him and booked a regular, once-a-week appointment. In time, the two men developed a friendship of sorts. They would talk about art and politics and the healing power of acupuncture, and shockingly (since Kevin was so unsociable) even went out to dinner on a few occasions because their conversation had grown so interesting that neither of them wanted to stop talking.

Goodlove practiced out of his home, a shabby ranch-style building, no receptionist present. One would enter through the unlocked front door and wait in the living room till the previous client was done. The person before Kevin was a middle-aged woman with a thickset, curvy body and a head of wild, stringy blond hair. She would come out of the examination room and flop down tiredly in a chair, fanning pudgy hands sparkling with diamonds and rubies in front of a wide set, attractive face. “Whew, that man has so much power!” she exclaimed to Kevin the third time he saw her. “I can barely feel his hands on me, but I’m so exhausted after each treatment that I’m afraid to drive unless I rest for a little while.”

“I know, right?” said Kevin, secretly inspecting the woman. She wore loose flowy clothes, a pair of wide black trousers and a printed silk blouse that covered most of the upper part of her body. Her face, with smallish bright blue eyes, was round and intelligent with something sly hidden beneath the pretty features. Kevin found himself growing curious about her, though he didn’t really want to involve himself in conversation. But he couldn’t help noticing over the weeks that she had grown slimmer and that her hair was brighter and shinier than it had been the first few times he’d seen her. He wondered if that had to do with Goodlove’s treatments. He himself weighed the same on the bathroom scale, but his body seemed firmer and – was he imagining it? – the balding spot at the crown of his head was suddenly fluffy with a new growth of hair. He seemed to have more energy. Chores that he had always dragged his feet over, such as running a vacuum over the living room carpet or dealing with the dishes, he now accomplished in a few short minutes. He certainly had more vigor. And he caught himself humming quietly behind closed teeth as he moved through the day. That was definitely new. He’d never considered himself a cheerful person, but here he was brimming with new thoughts and ideas, willing, in a way he’d never been before, to take the car to be serviced or to slap a new coat of paint on the garden fence.

He’d been visiting Victor Goodlove for about six weeks, when the chiropractor came out of the exam room with the blond woman and said, “You two have to meet. Kevin, this is Brenda, and she has something important to share with you.”

Oh no, Kevin thought to himself with a sinking feeling.

The woman smiled brightly at him. “Well, this is a little embarrassing, but I took this stuff called ayahuasca and it’s changed my whole life.”

“Aya-what?” said Kevin.

“Aya-huas-ca. It’s a –” her cheeks pinkened – “psychedelic substance from a vine in Peru that makes you have visions. I thought I would die the first time I took it, but after a while this incredibly calm feeling came over me and I realized it was time for me to quit my job.”

“You changed professions?” Kevin asked.

“No, not exactly. I decided to retire. And now I have time to figure out my next step.”

None of this held any appeal for Kevin, but the woman kept talking and when he heard her say that a guide had come to her while she was under the influence of the drug and had promised that something very important would happen if she took some time off, he began listening more carefully. “Well … has anything important happened?” he asked.

“I’ve started taking art classes,” Brenda said. “Suddenly I’m happy.”

“And you weren’t before?”

Brenda shook her head vigorously. “No. I was miserable. Every day was just like the day before, and I had no joy in my life.”

“I think you and I should take the stuff,” interjected Goodlove, who stood right behind Brenda’s chair, hands deep in the pockets of his white doctor’s coat.

Kevin looked at him uncertainly. He couldn’t imagine being drugged and out of control of his thoughts. On the other hand, a guide appearing out of the blue and pointing him in a new direction … that could be interesting.

“If the two of you do it, then I’ll join you and do it again,” Brenda said excitedly.

“But where does one do it?” Kevin asked. “Where does one go for this?”

“That’s the complicated part,” said Brenda. “There’s a group here in town that holds a ceremony every two weeks.” The group, she explained, was actually a religious community that gathered in different houses and took the drug as a sacrament to open one’s eyes to the infinite. “But first,” she said, “you have to be interviewed by this old guy who runs a frame store near Central Market.”

“You could introduce me to him?” Kevin said, even as he thought this was crazy and he wanted no part of it.

“Sure,” said Brenda. “No problem.”

Ayahuasca cooking (Awkipuma, License: CC by 3.0)

***

Elliot Givens was a tough and stringy-looking old man with a stiff hedge of white hair who could have been anywhere from sixty-five to a youthful eighty. Kevin sauntered into his store and said, “A woman named Brenda suggested I set up a meeting with you.”

Elliot squinted at him through dolorous, saggy-rimmed gray eyes. “How do you know Brenda?”

“We go to the same chiropractor,” Kevin said without hesitation.

“What do you do for a living?”

“I’m … an inventor.”

“Yeah? Of what?”

“A fine-meshed material made from beech bark that can be used for window screens and fabric.”

“That’s impressive. Have you ever taken hallucinogenic drugs before?”

Kevin glanced around, although there was no one but him in the store. ‘I … uh … well, not really, although I once put together a concoction derived from nutmeg that made me pretty woozy.”

“Not the same thing,” snapped Elliot. “Ayahuasca is not for the faint of heart.” He squinted again at Kevin. “You strike me as somewhat puny. It takes strength to deal with this drug.”

Kevin, who considered himself extremely fit, was affronted by the older man’s words. “Oh, I’m in terrific shape, believe me,” he said with a hint of anger in his voice. “I’ve had to withstand all sorts of difficult challenges in my life.”

“Ah hah. What kind of challenges?”

Kevin held his breath for a moment, then let it out slowly. “A problem family. Jealous colleagues. A mugging attempt in a parking lot. I’ve learned to keep to myself to avoid tricky situations.”

“Good, good,” said Elliot. “And tell me: why exactly do you want to take this drug?”

“I guess to learn who I am,” said Kevin.

Luckily he had chosen the right answer and Elliot beamed at him, gray eyes suddenly full of light. “Give me your phone number and I’ll be in touch,” he said.

A week later Kevin received a call from Elliot Givens, supplying an address and a date. “Be there at seven sharp,” Elliot said. “Oh, and be sure to dress in white shirt and white trousers.” He also told Kevin not to eat anything for several hours before the ceremony and to keep the whole business scrupulously to himself.

Kevin couldn’t explain exactly how it happened, but somehow, perhaps while under the influence of acupuncture needles, he opened his mouth and asked Goodlove to accompany him to the ceremony. Goodlove was thrilled. “I’ve got just the right clothes,” he said. “Where do we meet?”

When Kevin received the pertinent information, he contacted Goodlove and they went to the house where the ceremony was to take place together. No one seemed to realize that he’d brought an extra person. They were welcomed at the door by a young woman who told them to go upstairs and wait for further instructions. As they waited, a number of excited young women in jeans and sweatshirts arrived, carrying white garments in plastic dry cleaner bags over their elbows. Kevin and Goodlove remained silent as the women discussed who should take the first shower and changed (discreetly, in a separate room) into their ceremonial clothing. Eventually they all went downstairs to the living room where a table with a Caravaca cross had been set up at the front of the room. Arranged in front of the table were several rows of auditorium chairs with a space dividing them into two separate areas. Kevin and Goodlove were told to sit on the right side, the men’s side, but it was hard to follow exactly what was going on. There was a lot of singing, but the words were in Portuguese, impossible to understand. Elliot, who seemed to be the leader, spoke at length, but he, too, was hard to follow. In the dim lighting, his white hedge of hair shone like a beacon and he looked totally unlike himself – stiff and upright as a soldier at arms in a white shirt and navy blue trousers. On his chest was a tin star, like one might buy for children to play with at a Dollar General. To Kevin, the star represented the unreality and ridiculousness of the event. He couldn’t keep his eyes off it until he noticed almost everyone wore stars. And who did he see on the women's side but Brenda, dressed in white, who gave him a little wave. Her stringy hair was loose around her shoulders, and her face, usually filled with consternation, was very serene. She looked almost as if she were in a trance, though nothing had happened yet.

After a while, Elliot announced that it was time to take the medicine. One by one, people rose from their chairs and went to the kitchen, where each was given a dose of foul-tasting liquid served in a special silver cup. The liquid made Kevin gasp, but he forced himself to drink it down. He returned to his seat, feeling slightly queasy. For the next few minutes, there was a lot of singing that made him think of a flurry of birds beating their wings in the air, and then, suddenly, he felt so ill that he bent over to vomit in the plastic receptacle he’d been told to bring with him. After he’d cleared his stomach, he fell into a kind of trance where his mind went blank and he couldn’t seem to control his thoughts.

How much time passed, Kevin didn’t know. But there was one particularly hairraising moment when Elliot began screaming, “THERE’S A MURDERER IN THE HOUSE! THERE’S A KILLER AMONG US!”

Since ayahuasca was known for its ability to bring on visions and prophecy, people began looking around nervously. Kevin felt his face go white. His knee started jerking, something that happened when he was anxious, and he struggled to control it. Beside him, Goodlove put a calming hand on his shoulder. Kevin wanted to fling it off, but forced himself to hold still. He wanted to get the hell out of this house with its chanting voices and vomiting people as fast as he could, but the ceremony would go on for hours, and he couldn't think of a single excuse to leave. Elliot’s outburst lasted only a few seconds and then he fell silent and the singing continued.

While Kevin was more than a little freaked out by Elliot’s eruption, he figured the old man was too befuddled by the drug to remember what he had seen while under its influence. “Who do you think Elliot meant when he said there was a murderer in the house?” Brenda asked over the phone the next day.

Kevin dug his fingernails into his palm. “No one in particular. His imagination was in overdrive. He was just seeing stuff that wasn’t there.”

“I suppose,” said Brenda. “But it kind of alarmed me.” Then she said, “Listen, while I have you on the phone, I have a favor to ask. I’ll be away for a week at the end of the month, and I’m wondering if you could housesit for me.”

There was a moment’s silence, and then Kevin cleared his throat and asked in a dubious voice what housesitting would entail.

“Just looking after my birds,” Brenda said. She had a bunch of parakeets and a twenty-year-old African Gray parrot who could say things like: “It’s a beautiful day!” or “Don’t forget to flush the toilet!”

“All you’d have to do,” Brenda continued, “is give them seeds and fruit a few times a day. It’s just that I can’t leave them alone or they get vengeful and scatter seeds all over the floor.”

“You mean I’d have to stay there in person?” Kevin asked.

“Well, yes. But don’t forget I have a swimming pool and the house is very comfortable and private.”

Kevin didn't especially like the idea, but decided a change of pace would be good for him. “All right,” he said.’

“Oh and there’s one other thing,” Brenda said. “I’m having a studio built in my backyard and the work might begin while you’re there.”

Kevin found himself enjoying his sojourn at Brenda’s house. He particularly liked interacting with the parrot to whom he tried (unsuccessfully) to teach the phrase, “People are idiots!” Over the weekend, he invited Goodlove to come and join him for a swim. “I don’t know how to swim,” Goodlove said off-handedly.

“That’s okay, You can just dip your toes in.”

He fed Goodlove a lunch of egg salad sandwiches and grapes. But before they ate, he insisted they both sample a marijuana cookie a baker friend had given him.

The cookie he gave Goodlove was potent and fast-acting. The cookie he himself ate was a blank – just sugar and butter and some ginger flavoring. He had no ill intent in doing this, just wanted to see how Goodlove would react, whether he’d open up a little, give away some secrets.

After they’d finished their lunch and were sitting under the trees in lawn chairs, Goodlove suddenly said: “You’re not aware of this, but I know a lot of things about you.”

“Really?” Kevin said amiably. “Such as what?”

Goodlove stood and went to the pool, slowly lowering himself into the water. “Whew! I need to cool off,” he said,

“Such as what do you know about me?” Kevin repeated.

Goodlove waded into the water until it was up to his waist. “I looked up your family. I know your father divorced your mother and moved to Florida in 1989.”

“Yeah, so?”

“And I know there was a big lawsuit against him because a man went onto his – your – property and was attacked and killed by a dog.”

“That’s true,” said Kevin, rising from his chair. He scratched at a mosquito bite on his shoulder and glanced up at the sky through the treetops. “Only the man had a heart attack. It wasn’t the dog that killed him.”

“But you were there, weren’t you? You saw the whole thing and didn’t lift a finger to help.”

“How do you know that?” Kevin said, slipping his feet into rubber flip flops.

Goodlove cupped water in his hands and dribbled it over his chest and shoulders. “You’re the murderer Elliot was talking about, aren’t you?”

With a little smile on his face, Kevin stepped out from under the trees. “You can’t prove that. Anyway I didn’t do anything.”

“That’s the point. You didn't do anything. I saw what happened very clearly when we were at the ceremony and I took the medicine. You can say it was a vision, but I think it was the truth.”

Kevin walked slowly over to the steps that led into the shallow end of the pool and stood there, watching Goodlove. His body glistened with sweat in the heavy sunshine. “You’re stoned. You don’t know what you're talking about,” he said in a dangerously quiet voice.

“Oh, but I do. You’re kind of a weird guy, What I saw didn’t surprise me at all.” He splashed more water over himself, wetting his hair so that it appeared far darker than the blondish color it actually was. In the bright sun his body was thin and a little delicate, almost like a large prepubescent boy in the water.

Kevin stood glowering by the steps of the pool. Like a comic book villain, he fisted and unfisted his hands. When Goodlove approached, wanting to get out, he kicked his foot at him.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Goodlove laughed.

“Nothing.” Kevin smiled innocently, but kicked his foot again.

Goodlove’s face shifted from amusement to the beginning of anger. “Hey listen, I need to get out!” he cried. “I actually don’t feel very well.” He attempted to climb the steps again and this time Kevin pushed at his shoulders, sending him backwards. Goodlove got water up his nostrils and started gasping. Then he slumped over. “I’ve got a cramp in my side!” he yelled, trying to message his ribs. “You have to let me out.”

Still, Kevin didn’t do anything, just stood there watching as Goodlove vomited water and made another few feeble attempts to negotiate the steps. Kevin pushed him back each time. The cramp in Goodlove’s side must have been pretty bad because he grew visibly more agitated, his face blotchy and very white as he began to sink beneath the water. His head bobbed back up a few times, eyes filled with shock and horror, before his body went entirely still.

Kevin immediately began planning the best way to cover his tracks. He pulled Goodlove’s body from the water, carried it into the house and laid it out on a sheet he’d fetched from the linen closet. Then he went to the backyard where land had already been cleared to build Brenda’s studio. He knew cement was to be poured on Monday, two days from now, which gave him just enough time to accomplish what was necessary. Humming tunelessly, he rushed to the garage where he grabbed a shovel. Then he hastened back to the area of cleared land and began to dig.

Once Goodlove’s body was safely underground, Kevin had to figure out what to do with the dead man’s car. This was key and Kevin thought about it very carefully. In the end, he decided to do what Goodlove might have decided to do, which was take a few days and drive to Yellowstone. He gathered Goodlove’s keys, wallet and the baseball cap he always wore when he was in the sun, packed an overnight bag and some food, poured a ton of seeds into the various bird cages, plopped the baseball cap on his head and finally, after checking that everything was in order, locked up the house and headed for the dead man’s car.

Several weeks passed. Kevin, who had hitchhiked (not very happily) back from Yellowstone, decided it was time to take up a musical instrument and bought a guitar. He never actually played the instrument, just enjoyed the way it looked sitting on the carpet by the fireplace in the living room. He remained in touch with Brenda, congratulating her when she called to tell him the studio had been completed and she was really enjoying working in there. Both of them lamented the terrible thing that had happened to Goodlove. On the news they’d learned that Goodlove’s car had been abandoned in a parking lot at Yellowstone, that his body hadn’t been found, though that wasn’t surprising since lots of people went missing in the vast park. The only surprising thing was that Brenda, who wasn’t a particularly good painter, became a well-known artist. “I don’t have a jot of talent,” she told Kevin. “I can’t even really draw, but when I’m in the studio I get this tremendous burst of energy and suddenly I can paint like a pro. I think the place must be haunted.”

“Maybe so,” said Kevin.

“There’s a weird feeling in there. Quiet and still. Almost magical.”

“Like there’s a presence, maybe a muse?” suggested Kevin.

“Exactly. Like someone’s there I can’t quite see.”

Kevin gave a laugh that was a little high and shrill. “Everyone’s got ghosts, you know. I guess you’re just going to have to learn to live with that.”

“I guess,” said Brenda, picking up a brush.