I thought a moment. “No one that I know of.” Then I typed her name into a search engine and scrolled through the paltry results. “Not much here. She sells greeting cards through Blooms and a shop in Loveland. Here’s her website.”
Holly and I perused the site and browsed the cards and stationery Laura sold on it while Royce considered what had prompted Dalton to change his painting. “From what Julia’s told me, the man was antisocial. I do wonder why he showed up at the brunch at all. Maybe to see Laura squirm.”
I piped up. “Everyone was squirming, especially Mary and Clay.”
Royce stood, went to the whiteboard, and studied Mary’s blackmail items. His eyes came to rest on the photo of Shasta and Dalton. “Could this have been more of a business arrangement than an affair?”
“Men are so sweet,” Julia mumbled.
I chuckled. “I don’t think so, Royce.”
“Royce, dear, look at their hands and faces. You don’t carry on business like that.”
“Point taken. But this photograph . . . when I look at it I can’t help but think they’re mismatched. In age if nothing else. Why would they have an affair?”
“A question for the ages,” I replied. “Holly and I wondered if they met while Shasta was working on his website.”
Hands clasped behind his back, Royce pivoted toward me. “Shasta might be the one person at the brunch Dalton would alter his artwork for.”
“Could be,” I said. “Trouble is, they don’t like each other now, and that change was made a week ago.”
“What about this Charlotte Wynn?” Royce asked. “Maybe she was his latest conquest.”
“Charlotte and Brodie are together now,” I said. “If she was with Dalton as late as one week ago, she’s a fast mover.”
Holly clicked off the search engine. “No red flags on Laura’s website.”
“It’s a professional-looking site,” I said.
“Shasta created it.”
“Really?”
“And she created the online store so Laura could sell direct.”
I tilted my head and stared at the ceiling. Shasta, artists, websites. Then it hit me. “Dalton’s website!” I seized my keyboard and started to type in the URL for his site. “He painted his addition three days after Christmas, right? I’ll bet the old version of the painting is still on his website. We can compare the photo I took on New Year’s to that.”
Julia bounded out of her chair and unstuck the printout of the Laura Painting from the whiteboard. “This could be a breakthrough!”
I found the image on the website, enlarged it a little on screen without pixelating it, then printed it out. Julia laid her printout side by side with the new printout, and we gathered on my side of the desk.
“I don’t know what to look for,” Holly said.
“Some small difference. It has to be small.” I took a bite of donut, sending crumbs over the desk.
“Don’t get chocolate on them,” Julia said.
I ignored her and took another bite. Sugar helped me concentrate.
“Let’s start with Laura in both paintings,” Royce said.
Holly pulled a printout closer. “What’s this white stick?” She pulled the other printout closer. “Look, it’s only on the new painting.”
I snapped up both printouts. Annoyed, Julia huffed.
“You’re right,” I said, “it’s a white—no, it’s a cane. White with a red stripe. The kind of cane a blind person would use.”
I flopped back in my seat and Julia snatched the printouts from my hands, holding them up so she and Royce could see.
“What’s the point of that?” I asked. “He’d already portrayed her as an unobservant, pedestrian painter.”
“He wanted to twist the knife,” Holly said. She winced. “Bad choice of words.”
“Dalton just went along with it,” I said. “Someone requested he add the cane.”
Julia sighed and laid the printouts on my desk. “With Dalton dead, we have no way of knowing who that was.”
“Why would a cane flip her out?” Holly asked. “How is that worse than what he’d painted before?”
We fell silent, absorbed in our own thoughts. Royce paced the room, as he often did, and Julia told him to sit and have something to eat, as she often did. Holly stared out the window.
Don’t be literal. That’s what Dalton had said to me when I’d asked him about his portrayal of Laura. All he’d done with the cane was heap on the figurative language.
Or had he? A cane wasn’t quite so figurative as a painter looking away from her canvas while she painted a simple apple. Dalton’s point had been that Laura wasn’t observant. Wasn’t an artist. The cane was a clear statement, a giant leap forward: Laura is blind.
Only she wasn’t blind.
“I need to talk to someone who was close to Laura,” I said, “and I don’t trust Mary Blackwell.”
“Her next-door neighbor, Shelly Todd,” Holly said. “She was at the bakery and told me she found the body.”
“No, seriously?”
“It was awful for her. They were friends.”
“Would she be willing to talk to me?”
“Definitely. Shelly’s sweet and she likes to talk. Half a dozen strawberry muffins every Saturday.”
CHAPTER 12
I was on the couch in the living room, craving sleep and fading fast, when thumping noises at the back of the house stirred me. I padded across the floor to the back door, the cold seeping through my socks. I pulled aside the curtain. Gilroy was on the step, stomping snow from his shoes.
Stating the obvious, I informed him that it was after ten o’clock and he looked beat. Then I kissed him, took his coat, and told him to sit—right now—on the couch.
A few minutes later we were sitting together, Gilroy’s arm around me, both of us sipping hot herbal tea. Neither one of us were the sort who could shut if off just like that and go to bed. We both needed down time before sleep, Gilroy especially. And especially when dealing with two unsolved murders.
