But Mary had asked for my help and was almost certainly holding back on me, and now I was hooked on the pursuit for its sake alone. Like a dog digging for a bone. Or a mystery writer. With or without Mary’s help, I was going to find out who sent her the four pieces of gossip. In the process, maybe I could shed light on who killed Laura Patchett.
I needed to talk to Gilroy. Peanut butter cookies.
Back in my Forester, I drove the couple blocks to the police station, parked across the street, and headed inside with my dozen peanut butter cookies.
At the elbow-level front desk, Officer Travis Turner’s eyes shot from me to the box.
I set the box on the desk, untied the twine, and pulled back the top, savoring the aroma of fresh-baked cookies. “I hope you like peanut butter.”
Turner peered inside. “One of my favorites. Thanks, Rachel.”
“Be sure to leave some for James. Where is he, by the way?”
“He’ll be back any sec.” He helped himself to a cookie. “How does Holly do it?”
“I know, right? They’re just plain old peanut butter cookies, only they’re not.”
“And they’re ginormous.” Turner gobbled a third of his ginormous cookie in one bite. “Snowstorm’s moving in,” he mumbled with a full mouth.
“It’s dark over the mountains. It’ll be here in half an hour at most.”
Turner took a sip of coffee and said, “Coming in too fast.”
“So.” I rested my arms on the desk.
“Miss Laura Patchett?” Turner knew me well. He smiled, dimples dotting his cheeks. In his mid-twenties, he’d been an officer with the department for a year. No longer the rookie, except perhaps in Underhill’s opinion.
“Who would murder her?”
“That’s the question of the day. It was someone with a personal grudge, I’ll say that.”
“It was close up, I take it.”
“I wasn’t there, but it was grim from what I hear.”
“You know she was killed soon after she left the New Year’s Day brunch James and I attended.”
“Rachel, cookies or not, you know I can’t tell you much.”
Much. As long as he was willing to tell me something.
“Why, Officer Turner,” I said, straightening my spine, “have I asked you a question?”
“You asked who murdered Patchett.”
“Fact is, I have pertinent information on the case.”
“Yeah?” He laid his cookie on the desk, brushed his hands on his uniform, and grabbed a pen and pad. “Like what?”
“Don’t sound so incredulous. It’s about the painting that angered Laura.”
I heard the door swing open behind me and felt a shaft of cold air enter the station. I turned.
“Rachel.”
Stray snowflakes peppered Gilroy’s shoulders and hair.
“Peanut butter cookies,” I answered.
He eyed me like a man who knew me far better than Turner did.
“I’m here because I have information about the painting Laura was ticked off about. And I got it straight from the painter’s mouth.”
Gilroy stared. “You talked to Taylor? When?”
“A few minutes ago.”
“Where?”
“The point is, Taylor says he made a change to the painting on the twenty-eighth of December. He wouldn’t tell me what it was, but he said it was an addition, and he did it on request. So the painting Laura saw at the brunch wasn’t the same painting she saw at the Blackwells’ Christmas party on the twenty-first.”
That clue, and the smell of peanut butter cookies, won the day. Gilroy’s shoulders unhunched. He took a cookie and asked me and Turner into his office.
“Taylor said someone requested this addition?” he asked, hanging his coat on a hook by the door. He took a bite of cookie and sat on his desk while I sat on a wooden chair facing him.
“Yes, but he refused to say who. He’d promised he wouldn’t.”
Gilroy grunted.
“He’s coming in for an interview this afternoon,” Turner said.
“The Blackwells have had this painting—what’s it called?” Gilroy asked.
“Hidden Little Town Number 8,” I replied.
“They’ve had it a while. At the brunch, Isak Karlsen said Laura saw it two months ago.”
“Mary told me it had been in her house since last October,” I said, “and Taylor painted it last July.”
“So either Mary or Clay, maybe both of them, know Taylor changed it,” Gilroy said.
“Taylor said Clay ‘wouldn’t know’ about the addition, whatever that means,” I said.
“He made the change while Clay was out of the house?” Gilroy shook his head, dismissing the idea. “They had to know. For one thing, Taylor didn’t break into their house, he was let in. For another, it’s oil paint, and you can smell that. The painting was hanging in the living room.”
“The addition might be super small,” Turner said.
“Maybe,” Gilroy said. “But Taylor’s precise and detail-minded. Anything he added would take more than a few seconds. He brought paint, or paints, with him, and at least one brush. What did he do, keep them in his coat pocket, get Clay to make some coffee, then whip them out and set to it?”
