“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.
We sat in silence for some time. I felt the soft rise and fall of his chest and thanked God—hoping He hadn’t grown tired of me thanking him for the umpteenth time—that this man was in my life. That he was with me. With me on the couch, with me when I slept at night, with me on dark January mornings, with me when we shoveled snow together and did the thousand mundane things of life that I used to do on my own.
My mind drifted back to our wedding day. It had snowed the night before. The church steps and grounds were dusted in white. White and pale pink roses were ribboned to the pews, and everywhere I looked were milk-colored vases overflowing with white roses, white freesias, and green foliage. Flowers in December.
I wore a long, ivory-colored skirt and beaded ivory top. James wore a dark suit, though Julia, before coming to her senses, had suggested he wear white in order to “match.” Holly had been my maid of honor, with no hard feelings on Julia’s part because, as she’d pointed out, “At my age I refuse to be a maid of anything.” Instead she’d handled the flower duties. And done beautifully.
What’s the protocol? Are brides supposed to take vases of flowers home with them after the ceremony? I did. More than one. Gilroy and I weren’t going on a honeymoon and I wanted to fill the house with flowers. The honeymoon would come in April.
“Any Mystery Gang breakthroughs?” Gilroy suddenly asked.
He was in a mood to talk. Good. I told him everything, starting with our conclusion that Charlotte was snooping in town records for Brodie but that the two lovebirds probably weren’t Mary’s blackmailers. “I talked to Joan Hudson in the Records Section at Town Hall.”
His arm came off my shoulder.
“Town Hall, James. I wasn’t alone in the forest at night. We also found Brodie’s accident and Isak’s so-called misconduct online, so anyone else could have too.”
He nodded. “Turner found both. It’s still unclear exactly what Karlsen did.”
“Misconduct.”
“Eamon Keegan almost died.”
“At the bakery Holly told Brodie about the car accident in the painting and she said he was genuinely shocked. He’d never seen it.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. Even if he’d seen the painting, he wouldn’t have examined it that closely.”
“You know what Turner couldn’t have found but we did? The addition Dalton made to Hidden Little Town Number 8.” I paused briefly to milk the moment. “It was a red and white cane like blind people use, lying in the grass next to Laura.”
“How did you figure that out?”
“We compared the image of the painting on his website with the photo I took of it at the brunch. Holly saw it, actually.”
“Great idea.”
I wrapped my hands around my cup to warm them. One way or another, we were replacing our leaky windows in the spring. “Why add one more visual allegory on Laura’s lack of artistry or inability to observe?”
“Whoever requested the change could tell us that.”
“Holly suggested I talk to Shelly Todd, Laura’s neighbor. She gave me her number.”
