Fatal Brushstroke (An Aurora Anderson Mystery Book 1) Page 2

  “I took a class from her a couple weeks ago.”

  “One class?”

  Rory nodded.

  The detective’s mouth twitched. “After one class you can identify her arm?”

  “It was a tole painting class. I spent an entire weekend staring at her hand while she demonstrated painting techniques. Believe me, I’d know it anywhere.”

  “Toll painting? Somehow, I doubt you’re talking about the fee I paid to get here this morning.”

  “Not t-o-l-l as in roads and bridges, but t-o-l-e as in decorative painting. Painting designs on fabric, wood, tin...just about anything, really. I have some examples in the house if you want to see them.”

  “That’s not necessary. I get the idea.” Detective Green jotted something down before asking the next question. “When was the last time you heard from her?”

  “I haven’t seen her since the seminar the weekend before last.” At least that was true, Rory thought. “As far as I know, she wasn’t planning on stopping by. We weren’t buddies or anything.”

  “But you got along?”

  Rory told herself the phone calls were an aberration. They didn’t count. She didn’t want the detective wasting time on something she knew had nothing to do with Hester’s death when the real culprit was still out there. She turned her attention to the flowerbed where a woman wearing a jacket with the words “Coroner Investigator” emblazoned on the back oversaw the digging out of the remains.

  Almost against her will, Rory’s gaze fixated on what was left of her tole painting teacher, a domineering woman barely five feet tall whose classes were always full even though she hadn’t published any new designs in years. Known for her realistic florals, but adept at all styles of painting, Hester was a fixture at decorative painting conventions, teaching students from all over the country. Rory had seen her in passing at a handful of conventions, but they’d never met until the recent seminar. Her eyes teared up when she remembered how full of life the woman had been.

  “She painted beautifully,” Rory said in a soft voice, more to herself than the policeman.

  Detective Green cleared his throat.

  Rory composed herself. “She conducts—conducted—classes at her home in Malibu in a painting studio separate from the main house. We all arrived Friday evening and left late Sunday afternoon.”

  “How many people are we talking about?”

  “Six.” The image of the six of them, all women, practicing brushstrokes in the studio popped into her mind. She’d had high hopes for the class but, halfway through, she’d wished she’d never signed up for it.

  “Lots of personal attention, then?”

  “A fair amount. That was how she made money. Teaching classes and creating pattern packets.” When the detective appeared confused, she elaborated. “Designs with instructions on how to paint them.”

  The detective raised his eyebrows. “How many of these classes did she teach?”

  “Quite a few. Her family would know the details.” Rory’s head began to pound. She massaged the bump on her head and averted her eyes so she wouldn’t see the progress the diggers were making.

  Detective Green closed his notebook and said in a somewhat reassuring fashion, “That’s all I need for now. Why don’t you go back inside? I’ll let you know if I have any more questions.” He turned his back on Rory and began a discussion with the woman from the coroner’s office.

  As soon as the detective dismissed her, Rory darted inside and went straight to her work area at the front of the house she’d moved into a little over a year ago. Even though she’d been born in Vista Beach, Rory had spent most of her life in the Inland Empire with only occasional trips to the city to visit her grandmother. After Nana died, Rory and her parents had moved back to town. Soon after she’d settled into the twelve hundred square-foot structure, Rory had partitioned the great room that spanned the entire width of the house into office and living areas.

  She slathered her hands with several pumps of antibacterial gel, closed the blinds, settled down in her desk chair, and placed the headphones of her MP3 player over her ears. With Handel’s “Water Music” washing over her, the pounding in her head lessened and, for a moment, she forgot about the morning’s discovery.

  But when Rory stared at her computer screen, her mind refused to focus on mundane programming tasks. All she could think about was the scene unfolding in her backyard. In an effort to get her mind off her painting teacher’s untimely death, Rory flipped through a technical manual, nibbling on mint chocolate candies she kept in a bowl on her desk while she checked out each entry. After she’d read the same paragraph for the tenth time, she decided she needed a more constructive outlet for her nervous energy.

  She moved around the house, straightening papers and picking up discarded dishes, until she found herself in the kitchen, the only room in the place with a window overlooking the backyard.

  While she did more microwaving than actual cooking, Rory still spent a fair amount of time in the kitchen where she not only ate her meals, but also worked on painting projects. The unfinished project that now covered half the table had been in the same state for a while. Ever since she’d returned from Hester’s seminar, she’d been swamped with work and it didn’t look as if her head was going to get above water any time soon. She hadn’t had a chance to paint a single stroke on the project in the last two weeks.

  Rory placed the plates and glasses she’d picked up during her tour of the house into the dishwasher. After she wiped off the empty side of the table with a damp cloth, she glanced outside. Fewer crime scene personnel had invaded her property than she’d originally thought. One bagged and labeled items, while another took measurements and photographs. Two burly men excavated the body while the coroner’s investigator supervised.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Rory glimpsed a movement on the balcony next door. Partially hidden by a potted plant, a gray-haired figure stood near the railing, binoculars trained on the spectacle below.

  Besides family, two things consumed Rory’s neighbor’s life: her campaign against smoking and her Neighborhood Watch duties. As the block captain, Mrs. Griswold took crime prevention very seriously. A recent gift from her favorite grandson, the glasses were the woman’s latest tool in her daily fight against lawlessness. A chill ran through Rory when she thought about what her elderly neighbor must be viewing through the lenses at that moment.

  Suddenly, Mrs. Griswold rested her elbows on the railing and leaned forward.

  Rory studied the mass of activity before her, trying to figure out what had piqued her neighbor’s interest. The woman from the coroner’s office handed Detective Green a black leather purse, then moved to the side, giving Rory her first view of the exposed body. Clad in a royal blue suit, it lay face down in the dirt. Though the suit was vintage Hester, it wasn’t an outfit of her teacher’s Rory recognized. As the workers carefully lifted the corpse out of the ground, she noticed an indentation on the back of Hester’s head. The spot was caked with a mixture of blood and dirt.

  Thankful she wasn’t looking through her neighbor’s binoculars at that moment, Rory turned her attention to Detective Green who was examining the contents of the purse. She couldn’t tell if he’d found anything significant, but something about the way he surveyed the property a minute later made her nervous.

  When the detective’s piercing gaze landed on the house, Rory turned away from the window and started cleaning the nearby granite countertop.

  As she moved a flour canister to wipe underneath it, her hand inadvertently sideswiped a salt shaker, sending it skittering across the floor, scattering salt along the way.

  Rory wasn’t normally superstitious, but after everything that had happened, she wasn’t taking any chances. Since she couldn’t remember which shoulder would ward off bad luck, she tossed a pinch of salt over each one,
then washed the tile floor, starting with the area where the white grains had spilled.

  The now dirt-free floor made everything else look dingy so she moved onto the rest of the room and, before long, she’d cleaned half the kitchen. She was scouring a particularly stubborn stain out of the sink when she heard a knock. At her invitation Detective Green walked into the room, stopping just inside the back door.

  “Careful, I just cleaned the floor. It might be a little slippery,” Rory said.

  Detective Green sniffed the air. “Is that bleach I smell?”

  Rory shifted her body so it blocked the detective’s view of the bottle of bleach-laden cleanser on the countertop. She dropped the brush she was using in the sink and wiped her wet hands on a flour sack towel embroidered with frolicking kittens.

  The man looked around the recently remodeled kitchen. “I’ve been looking for a place like this. How big is it? Two bedrooms?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Must be expensive this close to the beach. You haven’t lived here that long. How can you afford it?”

  “I inherited it from my grandmother,” Rory said. “Did you need something, Detective?”

  “That class you took. Do you have a list of attendees?”

  “I have a phone list around here somewhere.” Rory rummaged around in a drawer reserved for appliance manuals, receipts, and other paperwork she wanted to keep, but the list wasn’t there. “I’m not sure where I put it.”

  “You don’t have to give it to me right now. Just email the list to me as soon as you can.” He dug a business card out of his jacket pocket and handed it to her. “Here’s my card. You can send it to the address on it.”

  “Do you need anything else?”

  “Your gardener. How do I contact him?”

  Rory wrote down her gardener’s name and phone number on a Post-it note. “I don’t know how much help he’ll be. He hasn’t been around in a while.”

  Detective Green glanced at the piece of paper before putting it in his notebook. “When did you last see Javier?”

  “It was a Friday, maybe two weeks ago. He told me he had an emergency and didn’t know how long he’d be gone. He said he’d send someone to pick up his tools, but I guess it slipped his mind.”

  “The wheelbarrow and shovel? We’ll be taking those with us. You haven’t heard from him since?”

  Rory shook her head. “I talked to his wife, but my Spanish is all but nonexistent and her English isn’t much better. The conversation was...confusing. He’s usually very reliable. He’s never been gone this long before without calling. I’m a bit worried about him.”

  Detective Green returned his notebook to his jacket pocket. “We’ll check into it. Mind if we look around? Collect a few samples? It’s routine in cases like this.”

  Rory’s heart beat faster. She didn’t have anything to hide, but the thought of the police pawing through her things unnerved her a little. “Inside the house?”

  “And the garage. Is there a problem?”

  “Do I need a lawyer?”

  “I don’t know. Do you?”

  Rory told herself the search was routine, and she had nothing to worry about. “Go ahead. The garage is unlocked.”

  “We’ll start there, then. I’ll let you know if I need anything else,” the detective said right before he headed outside.

  Not for the first time, Rory wondered if she shouldn’t have invested in a padlock for the side door of the detached garage. It was so full of junk that didn’t fit in the house, the murderer could easily have planted incriminating evidence inside without her noticing it.

  Rory sank down onto a chair by the kitchen table and massaged her temples. The jackhammer she thought she’d banished from her head roared back to life. She didn’t know which frightened her more: a murderer dumping Hester’s body in her garden or Detective Green searching the house for evidence.

  So far he didn’t seem inclined to slap the cuffs on her but, after a run-in with the Vista Beach police department not long after she moved to town, she’d become leery of its members.

  Chief Marshall had arrested Rory when a suspicious fire erupted in downtown Vista Beach, convinced she was responsible for setting it. Even after the real culprit had been found and her name cleared, months had passed before Rory no longer felt inquisitive eyes staring at her when she walked down the street. This time she was determined not to be blindsided by another false accusation.

  Looking for a sympathetic ear, Rory dialed a familiar number and, almost immediately, heard the click of a receiver.

  “Vista Beach Realty. Elizabeth Dexter speaking. How may I be of service?”

  “It’s me. Do you have a minute?” Rory stopped, unsure what to say next.

  “What’s going on?” Liz said, a note of concern in her voice.

  Rory took a deep breath and plunged in. “I found a body in my garden. Hester Bouquet’s body.”

  Rory held the phone away from her ear, bracing herself for a cry of alarm. But, instead of a loud noise, all she heard was a strangled gasp.

  Chapter 3

  “I can’t believe you found Haughty Hester’s body in your garden.”

  The breeze blew in over the Plexiglas walls surrounding the patio of the beachside restaurant where Rory and Liz sat eating lunch. Rory hunched over her food and picked at her mixed green salad, her long hair brushing the tabletop. She barely heard Liz’s comment above the whirs and squeaks coming from the nearby walkway where joggers, walkers, bikers, and skaters crossed paths in an intricate dance of collision avoidance.

  A runaway volleyball slammed against the wall near Rory’s head. Her fork slipped out of her fingers and flew across the patio, skidding to a halt inches from the sandal-clad foot of a startled diner. As if by magic, a clean fork appeared next to Rory’s elbow along with the rest of her order. Her stomach lurched at the sight of the cheeseburger the waitress had just delivered. Somehow, it no longer appealed to her.

  “Have you heard anything I said?”

  Rory looked across the table at her friend, a younger version of TV journalist Ann Curry. Several inches shorter than the woman she considered her role model, Liz shared a similar mixed parentage with the half-Asian, half-Caucasian newscaster.

  “Sorry, I’m just having a hard time believing she’s dead. Thanks for having lunch with me. I appreciate it.”

  Liz reached over and touched Rory’s hand. “Are you okay?”

  Her friend’s graceful fingers and manicured nails reminded Rory of the hand she’d discovered in her garden. She wiped an unexpected tear from the corner of her eye. “It’s just so sad. I can’t imagine what her family is going through right now.”

  “I wonder why she ended up in your garden.” Liz took a small mouthful of brown rice and steamed vegetables.

  Rory leaned forward. “I’ve been asking myself that ever since I found her.”

  “You know, I’ve heard that mayonnaise is good for your hair, but I don’t think that applies to Thousand Island dressing.” Liz wrinkled a delicate nose in the direction of Rory’s place setting.

  “Dang it!” Rory yanked her long hair out of her salad bowl and wiped off the sticky dressing. She was looking for some place out of the way to park the bowl, when the waitress swooped in and took the troublesome salad off her hands.

  “Maybe someone mugged her and dumped her body in your backyard,” Liz said as soon as the waitress was out of earshot.

  Rory considered the idea. “Doubtful. That’s a pretty valuable ring she wore. No mugger would leave that behind.”

  Liz looked around as if to make sure no one was listening to their conversation. In a whisper, she said, “Has the chief...bothered you?”

  Even though Chief Marshall pretended to be on good terms with her parents, he’d never really forgiven
them for taking in Rory, the child of the couple responsible for the fiery deaths of his wife and young daughter. Shortly after the serial arsonists had died in a fire of their own making, when Rory was barely two years old, the Andersons had adopted her when no one else would and foster care seemed all but a certainty. The spitting image of her birth mother, Rory served as a constant reminder of the family the chief had lost.

  “Haven’t seen or heard from him. I’ve only talked to Detective Green so far.”

  “He doesn’t consider you a suspect, does he?”

  “He didn’t come out and accuse me or anything, but I wouldn’t really blame him if he did. Everything seems to point in my direction.” Rory ticked off on her fingers the strikes against her. “I knew the victim. She was found in my garden. I recognized her hand. To top it all off, I cleaned my kitchen. Probably not the smartest move. Cleanliness is not next to godliness when it comes to a murder investigation.”

  “I wish there was some way I could help.”

  Rory took a sip of her Diet Coke. “Maybe there is. You’re good at getting people to talk. Is there anyone in the police department you can ask about the case? See who they’re looking into? Maybe I’m worrying for nothing.”

  “One of my clients is a cop. I’ll see what I can find out.”

  They chewed in silence for a few minutes. Finally, Liz said, “You know your horoscope predicted this would happen.”

  Rory didn’t believe in astrology herself, but Liz was a longtime enthusiast. She’d even cast horoscopes for a while, though the short-lived hobby had lost its appeal after she realized it took up more time than she was willing to give. Now Liz diligently checked the paper every morning for insights into her future as well as those of close friends and family.

  “How did it do that?” Rory asked.

  “‘An unexpected situation could create a lot of tension.’ That’s what it said.”

  “That could mean anything. Somehow, I don’t think whoever wrote that envisioned me finding a body in my garden.”