Before I made it out of the living room, a phone rang in the kitchen. Gilroy’s ringtone.
He strode ahead of me, and while he answered his phone I put another coffee pod in the machine.
“Where?” Gilroy was saying. “Who called it in?”
I turned.
“You know what to do, Underhill. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
He punched off, stuck his phone in his back pocket, and reached for his coat. “Laura Patchett’s been murdered.”
“Laura? We just saw her—I can’t believe it! How?”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can. Lock the door behind me.”
CHAPTER 4
Laura Patchett’s death put Mary’s mysterious papers on the back burner. After taking a few minutes to digest what Gilroy had told me and imagine various worst-case murder scenarios, I’d phoned Holly and Julia.
Holly’s husband and son had gone cross-country skiing for the afternoon, leaving her alone with a good book, and Royce Putnam, Julia’s boyfriend—I cringed a little at the word, him being nearly seventy years old—wasn’t expected until dinnertime. They were free, they’d told me, and eager to know the details of the Brunch from Hell and talk about Laura.
Julia arrived first, barreling into the living room, chucking her coat on the back of an armchair. “I knew Laura,” she said ruefully. She coiled a strand of short gray hair around her forefinger. “Not well, but we talked every now and then, and she was kind. A little different, but she was an artist. I bought some of her greeting cards in Blooms. I haven’t even used them yet. She wasn’t the sort of person to be involved with shady people, Rachel. Who would hurt her?”
“That’s what James is trying to figure out right now.”
She smoothed her hair and dropped to the armchair. “How was she murdered?”
“I don’t know how. Or where.”
Holly hit the doorbell for a nanosecond before letting herself in. “Good grief, Julia, you’re already here? Did you two start?”
“Julia’s been here sixty seconds,” I reassured her. “She was just saying she knew Laura a little, and I was saying I don’t know how she died.”
“I knew her from the bakery,” Holly said, taking a seat on the couch. “She was friendly and talkative. She had a thing for ginger-molasses cookies. I don’t make them often, so she used to ask me to put a dozen aside for her when I did. Otherwise, she’d ask for cinnamon cookies.”
“You know, it’s a little scary that you remember in detail what everyone in town orders,” Julia said.
“It’s part of the job,” Holly said with a grin. “Can I bother you for some coffee, Rachel?”
“You got it,” I said, heading for the kitchen.
With two fresh cups down from the cupboard and new coffee brewing in the Keurig, I pondered the coincidence of Laura being killed after seeing something in Dalton’s painting that upset her so dramatically she had to storm from the Blackwells’ home.
After Laura left, we’d all returned to our meal. Then Charlotte and Brodie, the lovebirds, had left, and soon after that, Dalton. He’d probably thought there was no point in staying with three objects of his mockery gone. Besides, with her exit, Laura had become the subject du jour, and Dalton preferred a rapt audience focused solely on him.
Shasta, Isak, and Clay had left next, Shasta in Mary’s car. Clay had told Mary he and Isak were meeting with Dalton in his studio. As if that couldn’t have waited until tomorrow.
In little, compact Juniper Grove, every single one of them could have driven to Laura’s house, killed her, and made it back home in no time.
Coffee made, I passed cups all around, put another log on the fire, and then recapped the brunch, including the four items Mary had stuffed in my coat pocket and Laura’s angry exit.
“I don’t know why she left the table to have a look at the thing in the first place,” I finished. “Wait a minute! She was looking at the painting earlier in the day, before we sat down for brunch. James was talking to her, and she was scouring the painting with her eyes, like she was inspecting it. Why didn’t she explode then? Or why not at the Blackwells’ Christmas party? Isak said she saw it then, too—and even earlier than that. It’s crazy.”
“And she wouldn’t say why she was angry?” Holly asked.
“It was definitely the painting that upset her, but she didn’t point to anything specific,” I said. “She got up, went to the living room, and the next thing we knew she was shouting, ‘Unbelievable!’ A minute later she was out the door.”
“She was repulsed by the painting’s ugliness?” Julia offered. “Go ahead and make a face, Rachel, but I’ve seen Dalton Taylor’s so-called art. And what are these four things Mary put in your coat pocket?”
“I’ll get to that later. Where have you seen Dalton’s art?” I set my cup on the coffee table.
“Oh, somewhere in Fort Collins,” Julia said with an airy wave of her hand. “My nephew dragged me there. Three paintings, big as trucks and worse than wallpaper.”
“Did you happen to see the one that portrays me as a killer?”
“You?” Holly said with a laugh. “No. Wait.” She latched onto her long, dark ponytail. “Seriously?”
I retrieved my phone back from the kitchen and showed Holly the closeup of Dalton’s pompously titled Hidden Little Town Number 7. Then I enlarged the view. “See the name on the mailbox? The book title?”
“Oh my gosh, it is you,” Holly said, “and that’s Maureen Nicholson in the Andersons’ front yard. He has it down exactly. I remember that night.”
“You would, considering you were a suspect,” I said.
She scowled and gave the phone to Julia. “Why would he paint you like that?”
“My impression is he enjoys taking shots at people for the sheer pleasure of it. He likes watching them react, and the more angry or offended they are, the better. This so-called artwork is going to be displayed at Aspen Leaf, a new gallery in Fort Collins owned by Isak Karlsen and Clay Blackwell.”
