“What fun, I must tell my nephew,” Julia deadpanned.
“But Taylor doesn’t even know you,” Holly said.
“He’s a nasty piece of work,” Julia said, handing back my phone. “Sue him. Sue him for every penny he’s got. You can’t let him treat you like that.”
Julia was short in stature but long on a sense of right and wrong—and not shy about putting miscreants in their place. Her “little old lady umbrella” wasn’t literal, but she wielded it with conviction.
“He’d love it if I sued,” I said. “I’m sure he got off on Laura’s reaction to his other painting.”
Now I navigated to the wide shot of the painting that had so disturbed Laura and held up my phone.
Holly bent forward. “Yeah, I don’t see anything.”
“It’s too small.” Setting my phone on the coffee table, I took up my cup. “I’ll download it to my computer later. Or upload it, whatever it is.”
“I kind of wish I’d been there,” Holly said. “To see Dalton Taylor, I mean. He sounds like a prize. He comes to the bakery about once a week, mostly for baguettes, and barely speaks to me.” Her expression turned pensive. “This is quite the mystery. What could Laura have seen in that painting?”
“Maybe she’s portrayed as a murderer in it,” Julia suggested.
“Whatever she saw, does it have anything to do with her death?” Holly asked. “If it doesn’t, we’re wasting our time.”
“No sense wondering.” I got to my feet. “Grab your coffees, and let’s go to my office.”
In my writing office on the second floor, I uploaded the painting photos from my phone and saved them to my computer while Holly and Julia pulled chairs up to my desk.
I found the one that had angered Laura, enlarged it on my monitor, and scrolled slowly, top to bottom.
Holly watched over my shoulder. “Go back to the middle. That’s it. Hold it.”
“What do you see?” I asked.
“There.” She pointed at a two-story purple house with white trim. “That’s the Lilac Lane Bed and Breakfast.”
“Yeah, it is,” I agreed. “Though he calls it Wisteria Road B&B and it’s not on Lilac Lane downtown. That looks like a country road.”
Julia drew closer. “There’s a couple kissing in the bushes at the side of the building.”
The couple were half visible and nondescript, defying identification. I shook my head. “They could be anyone.”
“Look at this.” Now Julia pointed to a barn-red two-story building. “That sign says Wyatt’s Bistro, but it doesn’t look anything like Wyatt’s.”
“Why would he call the building Wyatt’s then not paint Wyatt’s?” Holly asked.
Instantly I knew the answer. “To protect himself while telling the story he wants to tell or leveling the charge he wants to level. If he makes small changes, he can deny that his painting, his story, is based on real people and places. It might be inspired by reality, he can say, but it’s not reality, it’s art. Fiction, not history. He said that at the brunch. He can claim it’s not Wyatt’s because it’s not where the real Wyatt’s is or because it has another name or it’s a different color.”
Holly angled the monitor her way. “I’m looking for Holly’s Sweets. And if I find it, I’ll make very special baguettes for him next time he comes in.”
I settled back in my office chair and sipped my coffee, watching Holly scroll through the painting and replaying what I could recall of the conversation at the Blackwells’ table. The whole brunch I’d felt off kilter, as though Gilroy and I had been excluded from a joke everyone else was in on.
“All the people look flat,” Julia said. “Like in Egyptian paintings.”
“It’s the primitive style,” Holly said.
“Oh, it’s a style, is it?” Julia asked. “And here I was thinking it was a lack of skill.”
I stood and walked to the window. Gazing down on Finch Hill Road, some of the pieces began to fall into place. “Shasta asked if painters had to consider libel laws,” I began, turning back to Holly and Julia. “Then she asked Dalton about fact that was meant to look like fiction. Intended or hidden to look like fiction. She emphasized the word hidden.” I gestured at the monitor. “This painting is part of a series Dalton calls Hidden Little Town.”
“How many of those eyesores are there?” Julia asked.
“Nine in all. Laura asked him how many he’d painted so far, and when he answered she said it was amazing he’d found so much to gossip about. Shasta and Laura knew what Dalton was up to.”
“The painter as town chronicler,” Holly declared. “Town gossip.”
Gossip. The word yanked me back to Mary’s four mysterious items. Was there a connection between them and Dalton’s paintings? Dalton’s gossip, unlike Mary’s, wasn’t in print, but he’d memorialized it in his paintings.
“I don’t believe in coincidences, and neither does James,” I said, retaking my seat.
“You think whatever Laura saw is connected to her death?” Holly asked.
“I think so, yes. But now I wonder if Mary Blackwell’s gossip is also linked.”
I recounted my phone call with Mary and her admission that she’d given Brodie damaging information on Connor Morse. As I began to describe the papers and photo she’d tucked in my coat pocket, I felt more than a twinge of guilt. Wasn’t I spreading gossip? But it wasn’t gossip, it was real. Fact, not art. And if we were going to help Mary, we needed all the facts.
“I remember reading about Connor Morse last month,” Holly said. “His career as a teacher ended, that’s for sure.”
“I read about that,” Julia said. “You can’t blame the high school for firing him.”
“Maybe they didn’t have a choice.” Holly grasped the mouse and scrolled the painting, mumbling, “High school . . . high school. There—yup.” She angled the monitor. “What does that look like to you?”
