I feigned mild surprise.
“Anyway, I thought we needed more personal photos. Right now it’s just one small profile pic and images of his paintings. I wanted a studio image for the home-page banner or background. He’s got a magnificent studio. So he didn’t answer the door, which was strange because he’s always so scrupulous about time.”
“You’ve been to his house before?”
“I took his profile pic there, discussed the site with him, showed him examples of what I had in mind.”
“He didn’t answer the door.”
She shook her head. “I went round the back so I could knock on the deck doors, and then I noticed one of the doors was wide open. I shouted for him. Then I walked inside and shouted again. I thought maybe he was hurt or sick, so I went up the stairs to his studio. It’s where he spends most of his time.”
“He was there?”
She drew a long, ragged breath and said, “On the floor, dead.”
“How did you know he was dead?”
Her brown eyes glazed with tears and she held a hand to her throat. “Someone stabbed him in the neck. Something with a wood handle was sticking out, and there was blood all around his head and on his hands.”
If Shasta knew Laura had been murdered in the same or a similar manner, she wasn’t letting on.
“His paintings—knocked to the floor, all over, everywhere,” she went on, her sentences disjointed as she relived the horror. “The paintings he stored on the wall—leaning them on the wall—he did that with finished ones—tossed around. Tossed. Vindictive, I think. His stupid Buddha, smashed on the floor. Like there’d been a fight or someone had lost his mind.”
Her memory for detail was impressive, I thought, especially considering the circumstances. My attention would’ve been fixed on the jutting murder weapon. “Did you tell Chief Gilroy all this?”
“Everything. I thought I was going to pass out, so we talked in Dalton’s back yard. He asked a lot of questions.”
Isak wandered into the kitchen, coffee cup in hand, his blond hair as disheveled as short hair got, as though he’d been scuffing it with his fingers. “The chief called me while Shasta was still there,” he said. “He asked me a ton of questions too.”
“He has to do that,” I said.
“I realize.” At the counter, Isak set down his cup and turned back to Shasta. “Harry Davis at Roche and White is unsure about selling Dalton’s paintings. He thinks showing them is okay since Dalton signed a contract, but selling them, now he’s dead, depends on his will and his heirs. We can’t pay Dalton.” Dejected, he slumped into a stool next to Shasta.
She laid her hand on his forearm—the first sign of physical affection I’d seen between the two. “Let Roche and White do their job. You all have time to figure this out. Don’t stress about it now.”
“I’m waiting to hear back from Clay.”
“He’ll call or drop by when he can. Eat something, have some coffee.”
“Does Dalton have heirs?” I asked.
“He doesn’t have kids,” Isak replied, “but he has nephews and nieces in another state. He once said he never sees them, and I got the impression he didn’t get along with them. Maybe his ex-wife is an heir or beneficiary, but it’s not likely. He could’ve left everything to the town of Juniper Grove for all I know.”
“Yeah, I doubt that,” Shasta said. “He didn’t like the town or the people.”
Shasta had given me my opening. “Dalton skewered half of Juniper Grove in his paintings. At first I thought I was the only target, me killing Maureen Nicholson, but now I know Dalton ridiculed and accused others.” I tipped my head toward Isak. “Even you, which surprised me.”
“That,” he said. “Yeah, the labels on the jam.”
So he knew. “Why would he do that to you?”
He forced a smile. “I like to think it’s not me in the painting.”
“But it is you, Isak, and Dalton told me so. I spoke to him not long before he was murdered.”
Shasta’s eyes went wide. “You didn’t say that.”
“He invited me to his studio to give me a painting as a wedding present.”
“That was unusually generous of him,” Isak said.
I was about to comment on the complexity of Dalton’s personality when the doorbell rang and Isak shot out of his seat.
“Probably Clay,” Shasta said. “I’ll make that coffee now.”
A little less shaky than she’d been a few minutes ago, she returned to filling the basket with coffee, and by the time she’d snapped the basket shut, Isak was showing Charlotte Wynn to a stool at the kitchen island.
“An envoy from Roche and White,” Isak said. He handed what appeared to be a typed letter to Shasta.
A hatless Charlotte, her brown hair dusted with snow, laid her executive-style leather briefcase on the island and plopped onto a stool. “Harry—Davis—wanted to put your and Isak’s minds at ease about the gallery opening, so I said I’d bring that by.”
After giving the letter a cursory look, Shasta gave it back to Isak. “I’m not sure what good showing his paintings is if we can’t sell them. Isn’t that the point of the gallery? Isn’t that why we sank our savings into that place?”
“We’re working on sales,” Charlotte said. “At this point Harry thinks it’s doable, with the same percentage as agreed on. The only difference would be where Dalton’s portion of the proceeds go.”
“Really?” Isak said. Animated, and slightly less morose, he sat across from Charlotte.
“He signed a contract,” Charlotte said. “It’s probable that the only thing that changes is who gets the seventy-five percent.”
