“Tea?” he asked suddenly.
“No, thank you, I’d better get going. Are you sure you want me to have this?”
“Take it. I mean it. You’ll give it a better home than I can. It was only a study of a study. But I have one request. Twice you’ve avoided my question. Why are you studying my Hidden Little Town paintings?”
“Studying is too strong a word.”
“Do me the honor of an honest answer.”
“Fair enough. I want to know why Laura was upset by your painting. Upset enough to walk out on the brunch.”
“She doesn’t like to be depicted as a round-faced woman painting an apple?”
“Do me the honor of not being flippant.”
“That’s the only thing I can think of.”
“But she’d seen your painting before.”
“I suppose she had.”
“So what changed? It’s like she saw something new in it.”
“Ohhh.” Remembering something, he chuckled and rubbed his chin. “That’s right, I did make a small addition about, oh, a week ago. Yeah, December twenty-eighth. Forgot all about it. I’ve never done that kind of thing before, but it was on request.”
I was gobsmacked. He forgot? “Clay said no one touched your painting. He said it in front of you.”
“He wouldn’t know.”
“What addition? Who asked you to make it?”
Dalton grinned. The sneaky little boy had a secret. “I can’t tell you that. But in all seriousness, there’s no way it would make Laura that angry.”
“She was murdered, and the last time anyone saw her, she was at the Blackwells’ house, furious over something in your painting.”
He reared back a bit, his eyes hard. “It has nothing to do with me or my work. You’re barking up the wrong tree.”
“But you—”
“I keep my promises—fini. That’s an end to it.”
CHAPTER 8
I drove south down Oxford Lane, Dalton’s winter fields painting on the backseat of my Forester. After his fini, we’d parted amicably, even though I’d asked him again, just before closing my car door, about his “small addition” to Hidden Little Town Number 8. He’d told me an artist lives by his secrets.
He was so full of it. Full of himself.
Yet his winter painting showed a talent for art. For loveliness—a word and concept for which, it seemed, he had contempt. It was beautiful. Free of spite, free of sinister, lurking figures. It existed for pleasure, and I was going to find pleasure in looking at it. If he’d held the painting in higher regard, I might have felt guilty for accepting it.
Our meeting had been too brief. I hadn’t asked him why he’d painted Connor Morse dealing drugs or how he’d known about Brodie Keegan’s arrest in Idaho. Maybe, like Brodie, Dalton was a professional dirt digger, only while Brodie published his dirt, Dalton painted it. Anyone who got the Juniper Grove Post—that left me out—knew two weeks ago about Morse’s troubles, but how did Dalton know about Brodie so soon after Brodie had moved to Colorado?
I turned onto Main Street, found a vacant space feet from Juniper Grove Town Hall, and headed through the building’s glass front door.
Near the end of the first-floor hallway I readily located the door marked Records. I’d been there before, hunting for clues in another case, and Royce Putnam had talked often enough about the place. Almost a year and a half past his retirement and he still stopped in for coffee and small talk now and then.
A plump woman with red-blonde hair and freckled cheeks looked up from her desk when I walked in.
“I’m Rachel Gilroy. Are you Joan?”
“That’s me. Holly said you’d drop by.” She welcomed me with a smile and pointed me to a chair.
“I hope I’m not interrupting.”
“You are, and bless you.”
I laughed.
Joan took up her coffee mug. “My thoughts on Charlotte Wynn, right?”
“Right.”
“Like I told Holly, that girl is nosy, and it’s my fault for letting her get away with it. She comes in with legit requests or filings from Roche and White, the law firm she works for, but then I find her pawing through other records. I’ve thought about letting them know what she’s doing.”
“What sorts of records does she legitimately handle?”
“She files court and agency documents for her firm, and sometimes she researches town financial records and meeting minutes, land records, birth and death certificates—the usual documents a law firm might need. But she’ll ask for, say, a land survey, and if I’m busy, I’ll point her to the surveys, and three minutes later she’s in petitions or raffle permits or name change certificates.”
