Romancing the Brush: An Austin, Texas Art Mystery (The Michelle Hodge Series Book 3)

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Romancing the Brush: An Austin, Texas Art Mystery (The Michelle Hodge Series Book 3) Page 11

by Roslyn Woods


  “I’ll be there is twelve minutes,” he answered.

  It actually took a little longer than that. It was rush hour, and despite the fact that Dean knew all the surface streets to make the trip a quick one, it took him a full twenty-five minutes to get to Margie’s house on 16th Street near Chicon. Upon arriving, he reflected that his little sister, Margie, looked as if she were about to pop.

  “Hi, sweetie,” he said, feeling vaguely worried about her.

  “Hi, Dean! I’m so glad you came over. I was going to feel guilty for eating this whole thing, but you’ll eat part of it so, I figure it will keep me from going crazy.”

  “You aren’t saving some for Donald?”

  “I made him a separate pie. It’s cooling over there on the counter, but he won’t be home for a couple of hours.”

  “Well, thanks for asking me over. Are you doing okay?”

  “Yeah. I can’t eat any sugar, and I can’t eat much bread or other starchy stuff. But I feel good. Better than I did before the doc made me start eating better.”

  “Well I’m glad. Pierre doing okay?”

  “Yep. He’s fine. Kicking a lot.”

  “Thanks for feeding me. I was about to get a hamburger. I wasn’t looking forward to going home tonight.”

  “You’re missing Shell.”

  “You think? I didn’t know how ridiculous I’d become. I’m the most dependent man you’ve ever seen.”

  “It’s not so bad being dependent on someone as sweet as Shell. She won’t use it against you the way some people would.”

  “Well, Donald wouldn’t either.”

  “No, he wouldn’t,” she said smiling. “We’re both lucky, Dean. We got good ones. By the way, Donald messaged me a while ago. Are you guys taking Sadie to the Search and Rescue class on Sunday?”

  “I forgot all about it in all this crazy mess at the gallery.”

  “Well, I’d advise you to keep doing normal things if you can. Besides, Donald has really gotten hooked on the way you guys are training Sadie. He says she can smell a shirt or something and go find the person who owns it deep in a crowd. It’s fantastic!”

  “Yes. She’s got enough German Shepherd in her that she’s been easy to train for search and rescue.”

  “Will you ever volunteer with her?”

  “I don’t know. If she’s needed, I guess. I’m really just doing it to keep her working. She needs it. It makes her happy, and Donald and I are enjoying it.”

  “Well, the protection training Sadie did last year is what saved Shell.”

  “I know. She’s just the best dog in the world. And Shell is the best—”

  “The best woman for you, Dean. When are you two going to tie the knot?”

  “Margie!”

  “Well, I’m just asking. You’ve been together for, let’s see—”

  “Just six months. I want her to have time to get over that asshole in Dallas before I ask her.”

  “You think she’s not over him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She’s over him.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She’s my best friend. I know things.”

  “You know things?”

  “Well, I don’t know intimate things. She’s too classy and private for that, but I can tell. She’s completely over him.”

  “I want to take her to California.”

  “What?”

  “Not to live there. Just for a little vacation. I’d like to see her childhood home. Meet some of her friends. Maybe introduce her to some people I know in the Bay Area.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I was thinking it would be kind of neat to go to the winery that made our first bottle of wine.”

  “Now you’re talking! Do something romantic! Us girls love romantic stuff like that.”

  “Yeah? You think she’d like that?”

  “Especially if that’s where you’re planning to pop the question.”

  Dean smiled. Margie had no problem giving him advice about Shell. “I think I hurt her feelings by not going with her to Dallas this morning.”

  “Well, it’s important to her for you to meet her cousin. Jan and her brother are all she’s got.”

  “I know. It was complicated.”

  “Well, she’ll get over it. She was just really shaken up by Garrett’s death and she probably wanted you close, that’s all.”

  “I wanted to be close. It was hard to do on this particular day. Anyway, I’m worried about the gallery now.”

  “What’s happening now?”

  “I saw a red Ford Escape pulling away from the curb in front of Garrett’s house this morning when I went for my run.”

  “They were there?”

  “I think so.”

  “So?”

  “It’s still designated as a crime scene. The tape is still up across the porch and the front door. No one’s supposed to go in.”

  “Maybe they just drove by to see if it was down yet.”

  “At 6:15? Seems more like someone wanted to go by at a time when they’d be unnoticed. If I’d gotten there a minute sooner I’d have seen what they were doing.”

  “Someone?”

  “Who drives that car?”

  “It’s Leonardo’s car. They both drive it, but Billie has a very impractical MG, so they use the Escape most of the time. Billie’s six feet tall! It’s nuts having that little MG.”

  “So maybe it was Leonardo by himself this morning.”

  “Or someone else in a red Ford Escape.”

  “I don’t see ‘em that much.”

  “Okay, look. I’ll say this to you but not to Shell,” she said, leaning forward and lowering her voice conspiratorially even though—except for the little dog, Tabitha—no one else was in the house. “It would worry Shell if I told her what I’d seen, and you know how she gets when there’s a puzzle to solve. She might just go and get herself shot when Sadie isn’t there to save the day.”

  “What have you seen?”

  “I’ve seen looks between Garrett and Leonardo that were weird.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Loving looks. Smiling at each other a little too sweetly. Like maybe they had something going.”

  Dean stared at Margie and she saw his jaw clench for a moment. He ran a hand through his hair before speaking. “Not good. Leonardo is with Billie. Does Billie know?”

  “I don’t know, and I could be wrong, but it looked kind of like they’re pretty emotional about each other.”

  “Well, when I saw the Escape, maybe it just meant Leonardo was missing Garrett and went by to look at the house.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe there was something in the house he needs to get before Billie finds out about it.”

  “What would it be?”

  “I don’t know. Love letters? Pictures? Something Leonardo wouldn’t want Billie to see?”

  “I hate infidelity.”

  “Yeah. Me, too.”

  Dean didn’t want to say that he was thinking that there was another possibility and that maybe one or both of the partners were going by Garrett’s house. It was possible there was something in the house they didn’t want the police to find. He shook his head, trying to think. That didn’t make sense either. The police had already been through the house. But maybe there was something there that would point to one of them and the police hadn’t noticed it yet.

  Margie was talking as she dished up salad and generous helpings of the chicken pot pie for each of them, and Dean’s mind was doing its own thing. “So anyway,” she was continuing, “if you wouldn’t mind looking at the catalogue, I’d really appreciate it. It’s just that I’ve never done a job like this on the computer before, and I hope I’m doing it right.”

  “Sorry, what are you cataloguing?” Dean asked.

  “The paintings! Everything we’ve sold up to now, and everything in our inventory. It’s something Garrett asked me to do, and I told him I would. Billie thinks we need it, too.”
r />   “Sure. Of course I’ll look at it,” said Dean.

  “Billie called today,” she added, “and said he’s going to put the announcement for the memorial in the paper tomorrow.”

  “Are they still planning on this Saturday?”

  “Yeah. We’re all going to be relieved when it’s over, I think.”

  After eating, Dean sat on the sofa with Margie looking at the file on her laptop. She had a few little issues he was able to fix easily, and he spent the next few minutes looking at the paintings in the current inventory. Then he shifted back to looking at the paintings that had been sold.

  “So these are the Travis paintings that were sold at the end of February. They’re kind of amazing, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, they’re really, really good. Shell and I thought these were actually better than some of his older pieces.”

  “Seems odd that these are the ones that were held back for so long.”

  “Garrett thought so, too.”

  “You know, this one…” said Dean, frowning as he looked at a painting of an ancient barn looking down on a field of dried grass and leafy oaks. “This looks…Huh. That’s weird.”

  “What’s weird?”

  “I don’t know. It just looks oddly familiar,” he said. He knew what it looked like, but he wasn’t ready to talk to Margie about it. It looked like the barn on the property behind Estelle Travis’s house. It was the same longish barn with a high peak, and on the right side, as the roof angled toward the ground, the same door. And yet, there was no red handle in that door. Instead there was a sort of implied wooden closure, barely visible. He stared at the photo, remembering Shell’s inexplicable reaction to that door. She had said she knew there would be a red handle, but it didn’t appear in the painting.

  Questions rose in Dean’s mind unbidden. Suppose the painting had been made before the handle had been put in the door. Suppose there was another painting by Travis with the same barn that included the handle. Suppose…He needed to do some research. Hadn’t Wes Travis spent his life in the Houston area? Had he ever been to the location of Estelle’s property?

  “What is it, Dean?” asked Margie.

  “Nothing. Just trying to remember the other Travis paintings I’ve seen.”

  Dean drove by Garrett’s house on his way home. The crime scene tape was still up. He was still trying to figure out why Leonardo and Billie, or either of them alone, had been at Garrett’s house this morning at 6:15. Was it possible they were worried about the Travis painting and just wanted to look in the window to see if it was okay? That would be an understandable reason for going by. Or was there something else? Was Margie right about a relationship between Garrett and Leonardo? If Shell learned about this it was going to make her sick. She really cared about Billie and Leo, especially Billie, and she had begun to feel that Garrett was going to become a close friend.

  Dean stayed up late searching Google Images for a Travis painting of the barn he had seen among the sold paintings on Margie’s file, but he found nothing, and he lay in bed pondering about the murder instead of sleeping. He missed Shell, and her texts, both of them, made him want to be with her more than ever. Beyond just wanting to be near her, he needed to talk to her about the Travis painting he had seen on the file Margie was preparing for the gallery.

  At four he got up and put out fresh food and water for Sadie and Bitsy before taking a shower and locking up the house. Why hadn’t he thought of this before? His work for Melinda’s website was done. He could meet Shell and Jan for brunch. It would please Shell, and it would be good to start building a relationship with her family. She would be sleeping now, so he wouldn’t text. If he was lucky with the traffic, he could get there by 9:15. He decided it would be fun to arrive just in time to go with her to meet Jan. He couldn’t wait to see the happy surprise on her face when she opened the door of room 1017.

  Chapter 17

  Shell threw the comforter over the pillows on the king-sized bed and tossed her empty suitcase on top in preparation for packing to go home. She showered and dressed for brunch. Today, she was looking forward to getting home to Dean. She pulled her long, blond hair into a large silver clip at nape of her neck, and she wore a pair of simple silver hoops at her ears. As always, her make-up was light, with a pale gray eye-shadow, a light coat of mascara on her long lashes, and soft pink lipstick. She wore a purple silk top, and the ensemble was completed with jeans and sandals. No reason to be uncomfortable, she thought, but she couldn’t help but be pleased with the effect as she caught her reflection in the full-length mirror. She thought about Dean’s comment the last time she’d worn her hair in this clip.

  “You are one beautiful lady!” he had said.

  She had smiled and kissed him. This morning, she was missing him. She would get on the road for home as soon as brunch was over and Jan headed for her next presentation.

  At 8:59, Shell got a call from the desk asking her if she was expecting guests.

  “Oh yes, that’s Lisa Falco,” she answered. “Send her up!”

  She had a moment of wondering again how she would behave with Lisa. She really didn’t want to hold her responsible for the past. She just wanted a pleasant exchange. She would get her payment for her sales, and she would have two paintings for the Westside Gallery in a few minutes’ time.

  Shell heard the elevator doors open before she heard the knock. She composed herself and went to the door, determined to be as kind as possible while making it clear she had no interest in reestablishing a friendship with Lisa. But when she opened the door, her heart dropped into her stomach. Brad Bauer was standing there with a broad smile on his face.

  “Hi Shell!” he said as if he expected to be greeted with exclamations of joy.

  Shell stepped back involuntarily, fully taken aback by the surprise arrival of her ex-boyfriend. In a moment she took in the scene before her. Brad was reading her backward steps as an invitation to walk right in. Shell could see that the paintings he held had been carefully wrapped in cardboard crates with carrying handles at the top of each. Behind him, just a step or two, Lisa was smiling like an idiot.

  “I didn’t—I didn’t expect to see you,” Shell stammered. How did he dare? How did they dare?

  “Well, Lisa and I are going to see her mom, so it was the perfect chance to come by here and give you your paintings and your check,” he said, as if it had been his idea. He leaned the paintings against the wall near the desk, and Shell watched him with wide eyes. Suddenly he looked up at her with a slightly embarrassed expression. “Can we talk?”

  “I—I don’t think we have anything to talk about,” said Shell, slowly regaining her composure.

  “No, you probably don’t, but Lisa and I have some things we need to say to you. You see, we’ve been feeling really bad about the way we behaved last year. We want to apologize.”

  “There’s no need,” Shell said, hoping they’d just give her the check for her paintings and go. “I had a business arrangement with the gallery, and I’d like that to end now. This is a good time to end it.”

  “Shell,” said Brad, suddenly looking sad, “can we sit down?” He was looking at the sitting area in the large room. “Please, just for five minutes or so?

  He looked pathetic. He had that pleading sound in his voice she remembered from the past, and Lisa was standing beside him now, the smile gone, and tears in her eyes.

  “Oh, okay. Sit down. What is it you want to say?” She just wanted to get this over with.

  “We know,” said Lisa, finding a spot on the sofa, “that we really mistreated you last year. I don’t want to make excuses, but I knew you and Brad weren’t in love. I was falling in love with him and I know I did everything wrong. I let things happen that were just so utterly unfair to you, and I feel like shit about it. I’ve been feeling horrible about it since it started.”

  “So why did you do it that way? All you had to do is be straight with me. I wouldn’t have tried to stop you. I’d have been relieved. I d
idn’t love Brad. I told him the first week after I moved in with him that it would never work for us. I told him I should move out. And he begged me to stay like I’d broken his heart. He guilted me into staying when I wanted to leave. Then when I’m finally strong enough to pull myself together and tell him I’m leaving, I find out you guys were having an affair for who knows how long. It’s just nuts. Unfair in the extreme.”

  “But we’re sorry,” said Lisa. “We want your forgiveness for what we did.”

  “Why? What difference can it possibly make?”

  “Because, in spite of everything, we both love you,” said Brad. “We want to feel we’ve admitted we were wrong and we want to say we’re sorry. That’s all. You don’t have to forgive us. I just want to say, for myself, you always behaved right. And I didn’t. And I know that. I know I don’t deserve to be your friend. But I want you to know I feel what I did. It’s hard to go forward in my relationship with Lisa knowing this thing I did is hanging over my head.”

  Shell sank into one of the club chairs across from the sofa. “Brad, you behaved like a child who had never been told he couldn’t have something. That’s all. It didn’t hurt me in my heart. It hurt me in terms of getting my life back together after my mother’s death. You used my goodwill, and it was a little humiliating to know that lots of the people I knew in Dallas knew you were cheating on me, but I don’t really care anymore. I have another life now, and I couldn’t care less what any of the people in Dallas think about me. I have no need for you to carry around guilt about what happened. I can see you’re sorry, and I’m glad you realize you weren’t fair to me, but I don’t need you to suffer over it. I’m glad if you guys are happy together. That’s great. I hope you’ll be happy, and I don’t have any ill will toward you.”

  Lisa was wiping her eyes with some tissues she’d found in a box on the side table. “When I met you I thought you and I would be friends forever, Shell,” she said. “I thought we’d always be close.”

  “Well, I liked you too, Lisa. I’m not mad at you. It’s true I feel a little weird about what happened, but you can rest easy if you think your behavior hurt me in any deep way. It didn’t. You guys slowed me down, kept me from moving back to Austin as early as I would have liked to, but that’s it. I have a wonderful life with a man I’m very, very happy with. I love him, and I’m not damaged by what you did.”

 

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