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  PORTRAIT

  ON

  WICKER

  The Sequel to Blood on White Wicker

  Peggy Holloway

  This is a work of fiction. Names characters, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and not to be construed as real.

  Cover Design by Patti Roberts of Paradox Book cover Designs and Formatting

  [email protected]

  Copyright 2010 by Peggy Holloway

  Revised 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, without written permission from the author.

  CHAPTER ONE, 1994

  The letter came two days after our 27th birthday. I knew something was wrong before I even opened the letter. Julia always sent an e-mail. She hated to bother with stamps.

  When I opened the letter and read the salutation I really began to panic.

  The letter said, “Dear Judy.”

  Julia knew I hated to be called Judy.

  I turned the letter over and saw her signature. It was simply signed, “Julie.”

  She hated to be called Julie. She would have said love and kisses.

  Before I even read the first paragraph, I knew I would be making a trip to New Orleans.

  My name is Judith McCain. Julia and I are twins. We found each other when we were sixteen. Before that neither of us knew we had a twin.

  I had grown up in foster homes and Julia had grown up believing she was the natural daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds, now deceased.

  When Julia and I found each other, we also found our grandmother whom we call Mimi and our uncle Mark, who is now married to FBI agent Tracy Carr.

  Julia and I had been the victims of a kidnapping that took place when we were three years old.

  Tracy had successfully brought the criminals to justice. During the investigation she met my uncle Mark who was, at the time, one of the suspects.

  Mark is the son of Hannah and my grandfather. Hannah was mine and Julia’s nanny at the time of the kidnapping and was also a suspect.

  After the dust settled and everyone was punished who should be punished, Julia and I ended up living in Houston with Mimi.

  Tracy moved in with Mark in the servant’s quarters after they were married.

  When we finished high school, Julia left to study art in Paris, and I stayed with Mimi. I went to the University of Houston where I studied Psychology.

  I now have a private practice in the Montrose area of Houston. Julia spent three years in Paris and then moved to New Orleans. She has her own art gallery on Royal Street.

  Julia usually comes home on holidays and a couple of other times a year. Sometimes the whole family, including Mark, Tracy and their son Brad, who is six, all go on vacation, together. Last year we went on a cruise for two weeks.

  Julia’s letter said this:

  Dear Judy,

  I have finally found my Romeo. There are some problems we have to work out though. But we will be married. I know we will.

  Come when you can. There may be some trouble.

  Julie

  CHAPTER TWO

  I took the letter upstairs to show Mimi. Mimi had been in bed with a bad chest cold and looked to be dozing when I peeked in.

  She opened her eyes and said, “Judith? What is it? What’s the matter, honey?”

  I handed her the letter without a word and her glasses. She got her first pair last year. She read the letter and looked up at me with a question in her eyes.

  “Is this it, Judith?” I nodded and she continued, “This doesn’t even sound like Julia, the chatter box. She would never sign her name Julie or address you as Judy. Something’s terribly wrong. And who is this Romeo? Has she mentioned him before?”

  “I don’t know, Mimi. I can’t answer any of this. I’m going to New Orleans.”

  After packing my bags, I walked over to talk to Tracy and Mark. Little Brad ran up and greeted me with some of his art work.

  “I painted it for you, Aunt Judith,” he said.

  We were really cousins but he called me aunt and I liked it.

  I kissed him on the cheek and thanked him. “It’s beautiful,” I said. “It looks like a rainbow over a canyon. Where is your mommy?”

  Tracy came out of the kitchen wiping her hands on a dish towel. “Hi, Judith. I was finishing up with the breakfast dishes. You look troubled, what’s wrong? Brad, go paint some more of your beautiful pictures.”

  When he was gone she turned to me. “Sit down. Judith you look white as a sheet.”

  Without a word, I showed her the letter.

  She gasped, “Oh no, something is terribly wrong. I should probably go with you but I can’t leave Brad with Mimi since she’s sick. You keep me posted every day. If I don’t hear from you, I will be on the next plane out of here.”

  We hugged. Arnold, the chauffer, was waiting with the limo in the driveway with the motor running.

  I went straight from the airport to Julia’s apartment. The condo she had bought in the Garden District was beautiful. All the buildings were on one floor and there were paths, and fountains winding between the buildings. The buildings were white trimmed in brown, ranch style.

  Julia’s unit had two bed rooms and two baths separated by a large living room, dining room, and kitchen area. She had a porch that reminded me of the cottage where Mimi and I stayed on the grounds of the psychiatric hospital, where Julia had been a patient.

  She had insisted that I have a key to her apartment, even though she always picked me up at the airport when I visited. I had never used the key before.

  The first thing I noticed was the mess. Julia had never been a neat freak, especially when she was in a painting mood, which was most of time. But it appeared to be beyond the normal mess of Julia’s life. I couldn’t put my finger on it but then I got it. It not only looked messy, but neglected.

  I opened the sliding glass door leading onto the back porch and looked out over the walkway leading to the little storage building. Each unit had one. Julia used hers as her at-home art studio. She also painted in her studio down on Royal Street, in the rear of her art gallery.

  I didn’t have a key to the out building. I was hoping it would be unlocked. It was. It looked like it had when she had so proudly shown it to me. There were completed canvases stacked along the wall. I flipped through them. It looked like she had been painting unicorns and daisies. She had also painted several bloody wicker scenes. This was disturbing to me. I thought we were done with this part of our lives. Julia had gone through much more than I had.

  I walked over to the canvas set up on the easel by the window. It looked like she had started painting the garden outside of the window, but it had been almost completely covered with black paint. I could make out a hand resting on the edge of what looked like an arm of a white wicker chair. The hand had black hair on the back, like a man’s hand.

  The paint brush, loaded with black paint, had been laid on the table. Julia would never have left a brush with paint to dry in the bristles. She was very particular about this. I think this disturbed me more than anything else.

  I had my head down walking back to the condo, looking at the wooden walkway, when someone said, “Julia, Thank God! I’ve been so worried about you.”

  I looked up and saw Jean Pierre. I had first met him at the art gallery which Julia now owned. I had been trying to find out who I was and where I came from, when I happened to see a painting in the window of the art gallery Jean owned at the time. It was a self-portrait of Julia.

  Since we are twins, I thought at first i
t was a portrait of me. Jean had mistaken me for Julia at that time, like he did now.

  He ran up and threw his arms around me and started crying.

  I pulled back. “I’m sorry Jean,” I said. “I’m Judith.”

  I looked down at his hands and noticed they looked like a woman’s. There was no black hair on the back.

  “I want you to come and look at what I found in the studio.”

  “I’ve already seen it. I noticed you looking at my hands. That hand is not mind. Julia has become very secretive since she got back from Houston over the Christmas holidays. She usually confided in me, but not anymore.

  “She has also become combative. I caught her telling off a customer one day and I had to step in between them. She had started coming to the studio in the middle of the day, looking like she had hardly had any sleep or a bath.

  “She was always so classy, but she let her appearance go to pot. I overheard her several times, when she was on her cell phone, telling someone she loved them. But when I started teasing her about it she told me to mind my own business. It was as if she had turned into someone I didn’t know.”

  “How long has it been since you saw her?”

  “Well, she came into the gallery less and less. She told me to mind my own business when I tried to reason with her, that it was her gallery and I wasn’t her boss. Then she quit coming at all last week.”

  “About the time she wrote me the letter.”

  “May I see it?”

  He read it quickly and handed it back to me. He stared off into space while chewing on his bottom lip.

  “This was also about the time I found that messed-up painting in there. It looks almost like she finally completely lost it.”

  He hesitated and then said, “Look, Judith, Julia confided in me a lot. We used to be big buddies. I know all about what happened to her growing up. But I also thought she was doing so well.”

  “Do you know if she’s continued to call Dr. Anna?”

  “I don’t know. I know she talked to her at Christmas, right before leaving for Houston. But I don’t know if she called her since then.”

  Dr. Anna Stevens was Julia’s Psychiatrist in the psychiatric center, Ocean Sands, where she was admitted when she had her breakdown. She was in there for about four months. That was ten years ago. Mimi and I thought she was doing so well. Something must have happened to trigger it all again.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I decided to stay at Julia’s condo in case she turned up. I cleaned her whole apartment and called Mimi to tell her what was going on. It was now 10:30 p.m. I opened the refrigerator to see what there was to eat.

  There was a spoiled carton of milk, half a dozen eggs and sticky bacon. I began tossing everything into the garbage. There were many doggie bags from different restaurants in New Orleans. I opened them to see what she had been eating.

  Some of the packages smelt so bad I almost tossed them without looking inside. I was later glad that I had looked in all of them. One was from the Spaghetti Factory. There was what looked like a baggie under the pasta. Pulling it out, I held it under the running water in the sink. The rest I tossed into the garbage.

  In the bag was a letter that read:

  Dear Judith,

  If you’ve found this letter, then you’re probably thinking how clever I am. The letter I mailed was to get you here. Make yourself at home. I’ll see you soon.

  There is something I need to take care of. I’ve promised myself ever since you helped me that I would pay you back. I’ve thought enough. It’s time to act. It’s taken me a long time to set this up. I am now ready.

  Love Julia

  P.S. Would you throw out all the bad food in the frig? Thanks.

  I read the letter over again and thought I knew what she was talking about, but didn’t know how she would take care of it.

  It had to involve Mr. Lessiter, one of my foster fathers. He had tried to rape me when I was sixteen. I didn’t know if he was still alive since he was old at the time he attacked me.

  I decided to get a good night’s sleep and then decide what direction to take.

  Drifting off to sleep right away, I had the nightmare for the first time in years. It was the nightmare that led me to Julia at age sixteen, the nightmare that sent Julia to the psychiatric hospital.

  Knowing that Julia and I were the two, three year olds being kidnapped in the dream made the nightmare worse and I woke up in a cold sweat. The bedside clock read 3:27a.m.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  After getting less than four hours sleep the night before, I felt like I was in a daze. I made coffee and then remembered that I had thrown out the milk the night before. Chicory coffee doesn’t taste the same without the boiled milk. I decided to skip it.

  After showering and dressing, I got in the rental car and started toward Metairie, where I had lived with the Lessiters and later with Rosa, a fellow nightclub dancer.

  During the sleepless night, I had made up my mind to go to the Lessiter’s house and confront Mr. Lessiter. After stopping for coffee and beignets, I headed there.

  I kept reminding myself that I was now a twenty seven year old grown woman, not the scared lost sixteen year old teenager, who had lived with the Lessiters, because she had no choice. My self-talk did no good. My heart was beating so fast I could hardly breathe.

  The first thing I noticed when I drove up was a girl’s bike parked under the carport. Then I saw a teenage girl sitting on the porch, in the swing.

  She watched me as I got out of the car. She looked furious. She was looking at me like she hated me.

  “What the fuck, are you back here for more lies? You going to tell me you going to help me again?

  I realized she thought I was Julia.

  “I’m her twin sister, Judith” I said as I came up the steps. “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “What kind of shit you trying to pull?”

  She was so cute with a long blond ponytail and blue eyes. She looked angry but underneath, scared. As a psychologist I had seen many teens like this and I can remember myself at this age trying to act tough.

  Without another word, I got out my wallet and showed her my driver’s license. She was looking at my hands. Being an artist, Julia always had some paint on her hands that she had been unable to get off, especially around her nails.

  “I’m worried about my sister,” I said. “I flew into New Orleans last night from Houston to try and find her. I last saw her Christmas. When did you see her last?”

  Now she really looked alarmed, “You’d better get away from here and I mean now. You have no idea what’s going on.”

  On impulse, I reached my hand out to her. “Come with me,” I said. “You don’t have to stay here. What is your name, by the way?”

  “It’s Trudy, but I can’t come with you, they’ll find me.”

  She glanced toward the window. I saw an old lady peering out. It was obviously Mrs. Lessiter. She looked like she had aged much more than eleven years.

  She was screaming but making no sense. Then she came out on the porch. She had a knife. She was ranting and raving and swinging the knife. If she hadn’t been so frail, she could have done some real damage.

  Without even thinking I picked up Trudy and ran to the car. I put her in the passenger seat and ran around to the driver’s side. Without bothering with a seat belt I floor-boarded the gas pedal.

  The frightened little girl next to me suddenly came alive. She looked over her shoulder and gave the old lady the finger while she whooped in a loud voice. Turning toward me, I noticed she was beautiful with the excitement in her eyes.

  “She’s a crazy old bat. I think her husband has driven her crazy. If I had to stay there much longer I’d be crazy too.

  “Thanks,” she said while putting out her hand for me to shake.

  I didn’t even think about where I was going until Trudy asked.

  I looked at my watch. It was 1:12 p.m. “Let’s get some lunch. What would you lik
e?”

  “Are you buying?”

  I remembered when I was a teen in her situation and at the mercy of someone else. I too had to make sure someone else was fitting the bill before I ordered.

  “I’m buying,” I said, “so anything you would like.”

  “What are you going to want in return later? I don’t do women.”

  In a way I wasn’t shocked but to hear it put so bluntly made me pause. As a psychologist working with teens, I’ve learned that sometimes they will say things to shock me. But I didn’t think this was the case.

  “Trudy we’ll talk later. That’s all I want from you. I think we can help each other. Right now, let’s concentrate on food. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. If I can remember where it is, I know a place that serves the best hamburgers in New Orleans.”

  “Is it the Swamp Room?”

  I laughed. “Yes, that’s it. Do you know it?”

  “I love it. Take the next right.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I took Trudy back to Julia’s condo with me after watching her put away two of the large hamburgers at The Swamp Room. I was amazed. I could never finish one. She also ate fries and three cokes. She acted like she was starving to death.

  When I finished showing her around and showed her where she would sleep, I suddenly realized we would need to go shopping for some clothes for her tomorrow. For now she could wear something of Julia’s.

  When she came out, wearing a pair of Julia’s Pajamas, I busted out laughing. Julia and I wear a size six. Trudy must have worn a two. They swallowed her. She ended up wearing a tee shirt.

  I had stopped on the way home to pick up some bare essentials and I made coffee with boiling milk. We settled in on the back deck to talk.

  For some reason, adolescents open up to me. They say I make them feel safe. I was now especially glad for that. This is her story she told me in her own words.