“Isak’s extremely proud of his jams and butters,” I replied. “Look at the blue ribbon on one of the jars. Two of his blue ribbons were on display at his table at the Farmers’ Market Festival last year. This has to be him.”
“So Taylor is suggesting that Karlsen—”
“Steals other people’s jam recipes?” I couldn’t help but laugh, yet at the same time I wondered if Isak would find the portrayal humorous.
Holly touched the screen. “Scroll up a bit. The woman.”
“She’s staring out at the viewer.”
“Make her bigger.”
I enlarged the photo. “A gray-haired woman painting an apple—is that an apple? But she’s not looking at the apple, she’s looking at the viewer.”
“Laura had thick gray hair. Always a bit wild. I liked it.”
“There’s no definition to her face, no cheekbones. It’s a circle. And her eyes are totally gray, no whites.” I recalled my first impression of Laura Patchett. Wild gray hair and a round-as-pie face. “Is this Laura?”
“I think so. Her clothing’s gray too.”
“Dalton’s brilliant comment on the dullness of small-town life?”
“Or the dullness of Laura. What’s that in the grass by her feet?”
I enlarged the photo a bit more, stopping as the image pixelated, then reducing it a bit. “A white cane with a red stripe—a walking stick for the blind. That woman is Laura.”
“She’s blind?”
“No, it’s what Dalton said to her at the brunch. Artists observe and truly see the world around them—if they’re capable.” I gestured at the screen. “Laura’s not a real artist. She’s painting a piece of fruit without even looking at it. She can’t really see, the poor, gray, flat woman.”
“Yeah, well Dalton Taylor can’t really paint.”
“Isak and Clay are betting on Dalton Taylor to finance their gallery dream.”
“They’re in for a rough awakening,” Holly said, still perusing the painting.
“If you were opening the mortgage-wrecking gallery of your dreams and featuring paintings by a fairly well known artist, wouldn’t you take the time to examine those paintings? Microscopically, even?”
Holly sat bolt straight, her small, delicate features turning hard and resolute. “That’s my bakery. Sally’s Sweetshop. Look at the people eating donuts out front, jelly running down their clothing. Is that whipped cream on the window? Oh, I can’t wait to see that man. His baguettes are going to be extremely special.”
“Just don’t poison him.”
“I’m not promising anything.” Holly took a long drink of coffee. “Sorry, what were you saying about microscopes?”
“Isak and Clay must know that Dalton skewers Juniper Grove in his artwork, but they love this town. I know they do. And they love most of the people in it. Why create a forum for this work?”
“I think the answer is in the name Dalton Taylor. Even I’ve heard of him. Even Julia has. People sell their principles cheap when they have a dream.” Holly checked the clock on my computer monitor. “Your hubby’s been gone a long time.”
“Hmm.”
“I wonder if he’ll fill you in.”
“I’ll drag it out of him.”
“What is it? What are you thinking?”
I leaned back in my chair, my fingernails rapping my desk. “We believe the gray woman is Laura.”
“It seems likely.”
“So if Laura was the angry, walking-out type, why didn’t she walk out before brunch, after looking at the painting? Instead she ate brunch, then went to the painting and then walked out. She’d heard Dalton’s pretentious garbage before. They all had, probably. But she doesn’t walk out when he insults her in person, during brunch, she walks out when she sees this canvas—and not for the first time.” I shook my head. “It doesn’t add up.”
“You think she saw something besides herself in the painting?”
My mind kept bringing me back to the brunch conversation, as though the answer to that question—and others I’d been puzzling over—could be found there. “There were things Mary and Shasta said that made Clay and Isak very uncomfortable, and they didn’t care that their husbands were uncomfortable, or that they might jeopardize the gallery opening. They don’t like that gallery, and they like Dalton even less.”
Holly stood, yawned, and massaged her temples. “Next year I’m taking all of New Year’s Day off, not just part.”
“You should. Up at four o’clock in the morning on a holiday. It’s madness.” When I made a move to get up, she held up her hand. Stay. Keep working.
“I’ll let myself out. Have a think. Let me know what rises to the top, and send me those photos—and don’t forget to send them to Julia.”
I’d had enough coffee to caffeinate an elephant, so after Holly left I trotted downstairs for a couple of snickerdoodle cookies I’d stored in the fridge after Christmas. As good as coffee, if not better.
I ate while staring out the back-door window, and I found myself thinking of Laura, or whoever the woman was in that painting, moon-faced and gray, not even looking at the simple green apple she was painting. I thought I knew what it meant to Dalton—gray Laura, unobservant, plebian Laura—but Laura had to have seen her figure in his painting before. Why had she abruptly taken such offense at Dalton’s childishness? Or was it, as Holly had suggested, that Laura had seen something else entirely in that painting?
And then there were Mary’s mysterious papers. There was a connection between one of those papers and one of Dalton’s paintings. If you added Connor Morse to the mix, there was another connection between gossip given to Mary and a figure in one of Dalton’s paintings. Could I find still more connections?
Back in my office, I texted Holly and Julia the photos of Dalton’s paintings. Then I set up my whiteboard, cleared a place on my desk, and laid out Mary’s papers and the photo of Shasta and Dalton. Finally, I printed the photos I’d taken of Dalton’s paintings and putty-mounted them to the whiteboard. Organization, that’s what I needed.
And information, of course, because I had precious little of it. On my computer I pulled up a search engine and typed in “Dalton Taylor.”
Wonder of wonders, the Last Artiste on Earth possessed a thoroughly modern website. “Not so Henri Rousseau, are we?” I said aloud.
Twenty-three paintings were pictured on his site, under a “Portfolio” tab, but twelve of them weren’t for sale. For those, potential buyers were instructed to visit the Aspen Leaf Gallery’s website. As expected, Dalton and the gallery had come to an exclusive arrangement.
I scrolled down. It was a clean and bright website, nicely arranged. Not much in the way of text—there was no bio, for instance—but anyone wishing to buy one of Dalton’s works could do so easily.
At the bottom of the home page, a credit line caught my eye: “Website Design by Shasta Studios.” The Shasta? Clay hadn’t said what Shasta did for a living when he’d introduced her, probably thinking that if I knew Isak, I knew her. Was she a website designer?
A quick search revealed that Shasta Studios was a one-woman enterprise run by none other than Shasta Karlsen, freelance IT expert and website designer.
I sat back in my chair. Maybe Shasta and Dalton had struck up an affair when she was working on his website. Maybe she was clever at hiding her affections and, as Gilroy had speculated, the affair was ongoing. To my mind that scenario wasn’t likely, but I wasn’t ready to discount it.
“On to Aspen Leaf,” I said. Now that I was a married woman, I seriously needed to stop talking to myself, but it was a hard habit to break.
Aspen Leaf’s website had also been designed by Shasta, which wasn’t surprising. It featured all twelve of Dalton’s exclusive paintings, six of them in the Hidden Little Town series. Luckily, those six were high-resolution images, which would help in my search for clues. I started with Hidden Little Town Number 3, a four-foot-square oil painting set on what looked like downtown’s Main Street. The word “Sold” was plastered over images for the first, second, and ninth paintings in the series.
I moved on to Number 4, Number 5—the one in the Blackwells’ sunroom—and Number 6. By the time I glanced away from the screen, the juniper trees across the street were throwing long shadows against the office window’s afternoon light. I thought about making dinner, but Gilroy hadn’t come home yet, or called to say when he’d be home.
