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

by Roslyn Woods

  “…Yes, the judge issued the warrant before we went to the reading,” Gonzalez was saying. “We figured we’d wait till you were home, and we knew you’d be at the reading.”

  “But, I don’t understand,” said Leonardo. “There’s no reason why our house should be searched.”

  “It’s right there on the warrant. Something is missing from the home of Garrett Hall, and the print we found on the key to his house is yours.”

  “I have a lot of things that belonged to Garrett Hall. He was a close friend and he gave me things!”

  “The item we’re looking for was in the house at the time of his death. It was in one of the pictures taken by the crime scene investigators. It’s gone now, which means someone came in and took it. It’s evidence, and it may tell us something we really need to know.” Wilson was signaling the people in the other car to come in, and Shell could see them through the window.

  “I still don’t see—”

  “Your print was on the hidden key in Hall’s backyard. We think it’s possible you used it to—”

  “I’ve used that key many times! Garrett put that key there for me so I could check on Penny when he was out of town!”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Parisi. If the item we’re looking for isn’t here, there’s probably nothing to worry about.”

  “Well, we don’t really want you messing with our stuff,” Leonardo was saying as three people—two men and one woman—arrived at the door and started putting booties over their shoes.

  “I’m sorry. We’ll try to be careful,” Gonzalez said over the fierce barking of the two little dogs as they returned to the entry and tried to protect the house.

  “There are paintings drying in the studio upstairs,” Leonardo offered.

  “We’ll be cautious around the paintings,” he said. “You hear that, folks?” he said loudly, turning in the direction of the investigators. “We’re going to be careful not to touch the paintings in the studio upstairs.”

  “Well, at least let me come with you.”

  “I’m afraid it’s not going to work that way. I need you to sit here in the living room and remain quiet. All of you, actually,” he added, looking at Billie and Shell who were standing in the entry behind Leonardo.

  “You have no right,” Billie began, joining in for the first time.

  “Actually, Mr. Morrison, we do have a right. Please take a seat.” The sergeant gestured toward the living room furniture as if he owned the place.

  Shell, who knew the drill on this one, was already finding a spot on the sofa. She remembered a very similar event at Dean’s house only half a year earlier. This time, the dogs were in the house. Billie turned toward the sofa, giving in. He sat by Shell and watched as the officers started making their way through the living room. Gonzalez stood before them and gestured once again for Leonardo to sit down in the chair opposite Billie.

  “Any way y’all can control your animals?” asked Gonzalez. The two dogs had followed him over to the couch and were nipping at his ankles, and Shell reached down and picked Bitsy up without answering. Billie followed suit with Penny, but he glared at the sergeant as he did so.

  “Do I need a lawyer?” Leonardo asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Gonzalez. “Do you?”

  “Do I?” Leonardo asked again.

  “Probably, if we find what we’re looking for. It depends.”

  Leonardo let his head fall back on chair and he stared at the ceiling. In a minute Shell could see that tears were slowly running down the sides of his face. She felt bad for him. He seemed to be trapped, and she doubted that he had done anything to hurt Garrett. The question was, had he carried on an affair with him, and that was a harder question to answer. When she was overhearing the argument between Billie and Leonardo in the car she had felt real sympathy for Leo. His words sounded so much like her own had only three days earlier, and Billie wasn’t believing Leo any more than Dean had believed her.

  Gonzalez stayed in the living room while the team searched, first there, then in Shell’s room, then in the downstairs office. She knew he had to stay in the room with Leonardo. He was the officer that was making sure his suspect didn’t try to get away should they find what they were looking for.

  After a few minutes, Leonardo started speaking to Billie in a low voice, but everything he said was perfectly clear to Shell. “I’ve failed him. I failed at the one thing he asked of me.”

  “I don’t even know what that means,” Billie answered, disgusted.

  “It means I’ll be arrested and he’ll be contacted. Then his life will be ruined. He’ll be pulled through the mire.”

  “Whose life?”

  “Don’t talk, Leonardo!” Shell said. “You need a lawyer if what you’re saying is true.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I haven’t hurt anyone but the one person I was supposed to protect.”

  “Just stop talking,” Shell repeated. “Let me call someone for you. I know a lawyer.”

  “Don’t bother. Walter Friedman will send someone. You can call him.” He handed his cell phone to Shell, and she checked for Friedman’s number in his contacts. Then she placed the call while Gonzalez appeared to be completely engrossed in examining the painting over the fireplace.

  “Mr. Friedman? This is Michelle Hodge. I’m sorry to call you right now but…Yes…I’m using his phone…He needs a lawyer…A criminal defense lawyer…Probably at the police station in a few minutes to an hour…I’ll tell him…Okay…Okay.” As she ended the call, she looked at Leonardo. “He says don’t say anything at all to the police. He’ll meet you down there if it comes to that. He says he can represent you for the time being. We’re to call him if you’re arrested.

  “Okay,” Leonardo said.

  Billie just sat, silently staring at Leonardo.

  Just then, one of the investigators came down the stairs carrying something in his gloved hands. He headed toward Gonzalez. “This was under the bed in the master bedroom. Is it what we’re looking for, sir?” he asked.

  Gonzalez examined the wooden box with its intricate carving and gold inlay and took it in his own, gloved hands. He carried it over and stood in front of Leonardo. “What would you call this star symbol on the top, Mr. Parisi?” he asked.

  Leonardo groaned but didn’t speak. Gonzalez turned so the top of the box was visible to Shell and Billie. “Have either of you seen it before?”

  Shell shook her head. She hadn’t seen the box before, but she knew the symbol. It was an Enneagram, and this had to be the box Carmen had told her was missing from Garrett’s office. Now Leonardo was going to be arrested, and possibly accused of murdering Garrett. She couldn’t believe this was happening again.

  “Are you arresting me?” asked Leonardo.

  “I could, but I’m not ready for that. I’d like to bring you in for questioning. I’d like some answers. I don’t know what will happen from there.”

  “Okay,” said Leonardo quietly. He looked at Shell and nodded. She was still holding his phone, and she started a text to Walter Friedman, but she was conscious of the continuing conversation in the room.

  “I’m going with you,” said Billie.

  “You are?” Leonardo asked. “I thought you were through.”

  “I thought I was, too,” he answered.

  In a few minutes, all the commotion was over. Shell had hugged Leonardo and Billie before they each left in separate vehicles. Leonardo went with Sergeant Gonzalez and Detective Wilson. Billie took the Ford Escape and followed them.

  She had a feeling Leonardo would be coming home with Billie tonight. She was pretty sure they needed a weapon to arrest Leonardo for murder, and taking something from a crime scene seemed like small potatoes to her. There would be no damning evidence in that box, just some sad story about love gone wrong, either on the part of Leonardo or Garrett. Either way, Billie and his lover were in the middle of a great turmoil, and they didn’t need her to witness any more of it.

  She was in such a hurry to l
eave that even though she was still wearing the black pantsuit and heels she had put on for the reading, she went back into the guestroom and finished packing up the stuff she had brought over without changing. She was going to have to find a hotel for tonight. She went into the kitchen and found the writing pad Billie kept by the telephone and wrote:

  Many thanks to both of you for being so hospitable to me in my time of need! I’m pulling myself together now, and I have a feeling your troubles will work themselves out, too. I need to leave Bitsy with you tonight, but I promise to come over tomorrow after the memorial to get her. I love you guys.

  She tidied up the guestroom and carried her things out to the car. Then she went back in the house and talked to Bitsy. “I’m going to a hotel tonight. I don’t know how to find a place that takes doggies so late at night, so I’m asking you to stay here and take care of everyone. I’m coming back for you tomorrow!” She kissed the top of the little dog’s head and patted Penny before she headed out the front door and locked it, dropping the key Billie had given her in the pocket in her purse with her cell phone.

  It was 10:45 p.m. She drove over to Congress and took it south toward the 290. She figured she could try just about any standard hotel and be better off alone tonight than she would have been at Billie’s on a night like this.

  As she drove along, she realized she was a little nauseated. She had eaten little more than a serving of fruit yogurt at lunchtime today, and she thought she’d better get some crackers and water to take to the hotel. There was an HEB grocery store up ahead on her right at the corner of Oltorf and Congress, and she pulled into the parking lot.

  She was almost too tired to go through with walking into the store, but she knew her nausea would worsen if she didn’t eat a little something. For a moment, she allowed her head to rest on her steering wheel, her long, ash blonde hair falling forward as she rubbed her temples and realized her arms were aching, too. Eating and sleeping too little was catching up with her, and her worries about Billie and Leonardo only added to the heartache that had been her constant companion since Tuesday.

  She took her wallet from her purse—no point in carrying more than her exhausted arms needed to carry right now—and got out of the car. She hit the lock button on her key and headed from a darkish corner of the parking lot toward the store’s entrance.

  Shell was tired, so tired she barely noticed the figure of a man coming up from behind as she hurried along past a parked Smart Car and a Mazda 5. He appeared out of the semi-darkness of the parking lot and bumped into her.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry!” he said, catching her and preventing her fall with a strong arm. “I didn’t see you there,” he added as Shell felt a sting just inside her left elbow. “Are you okay?”

  She was indeed off balance, and the stranger was helping her walk to a van that was parked with its side door open. He seemed kind when he told her to just sit here and catch her breath.

  “I think something stung me just now,” she said, not very sensibly.

  “Oh no, that’s awful!” he replied. “I wonder what it could be?”

  But by then the world was already blurring in front of her, and besides herself and the man who had just assaulted her, not a soul had witnessed the incident.

  Chapter 34

  Dean had barely slept since Monday night, and Margie had given him a sleeping pill for tonight, insisting he promise to take it at bedtime. Dean told her he never took medications, but his little sister Margie was having none of that.

  “Look,” she had said that morning, “it’s Friday, and you haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in four days. You look terrible, and I know you’re going to make yourself sick. Then you’ll be miserable with unhappiness and illness at the same time, and I’m too close to giving birth to come over here and take care of you. You’ve got to sleep!” she had said.

  He had finally agreed to take the sedative and promised he would do so at nine o’clock that evening. When the appointed hour came, he did as he had vowed to do, and he even drank about half of one of the Ensure nutrition shakes that Margie had left in his refrigerator. Then he sat and stared at his chessboard thinking about his week.

  On Wednesday he had picked up Carmen and taken her to meet Sergeant Gonzalez at Garrett’s house. Later, he had scanned some photos for Melinda Gardner’s website while Melinda had offered helpful advice about relationships.

  “You look like a man who’s fussing with his girlfriend,” she had said suddenly while he was trying to get the scanning done as quickly as possible so she could leave and he could go back to staring at his chessboard and being miserable.

  “How can you tell I don’t just have the flu?” he had asked.

  “Well, I think, if you had the flu, you’d have told me on the phone when I asked if I could bring the pictures over.”

  “Maybe I was sick yesterday.”

  “If everything was okay with your girlfriend and you’d been sick yesterday, she wouldn’t let you have a client over here today. She’d have met me at the door and told me how sick you’ve been, and she and I would’ve stood out there on your porch commiserating with each other about what babies men always are when they’re sick. Also, you usually look like a very happy person, and you’re always rather well groomed. Today, you haven’t shaved and your eyes are all hollow. Plus, you didn’t seem very friendly when I got here. You acted like I was really annoying you by showing up.”

  “Sorry,” he had said.

  “And where is she?” she had continued. “You said you guys lived together. I came over here expecting to meet her. I was hoping we’d like each other. You and Steven seemed to have a bunch of stuff in common when you came over to work on the website and I thought it would be so neat if your girlfriend and I—”

  “She’s gone.”

  “Is she coming back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  “I think so.”

  “There’s your problem. You’re just sitting here.”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Do you love her?”

  He had thought about lying or telling Melinda that it was none of her business, but he didn’t. “Yeah.”

  “Have you tried every possible avenue of communication? Have you explained everything to each other and thought it through carefully, because this is your life, isn’t it? If you already know you love her, then you might as well say everything to each other before you decide it’s over. You might as well yell and scream at each other and get all the rage out of your systems so, even if you do decide it’s over, you can be reasonable human beings when you run into each other, as you inevitably will. That’s what Steven and I did. We yelled and screamed at each other till we weren’t mad anymore, and we worked some shit out.”

  “Thanks, Melinda. I think I’m finished with these photos,” he had said, putting the remainder of the pictures back in the rolling case she had carried them in.

  “Anyone who I’ve blessed with my amazing advice has to call me Mindy. Actually, everyone who knows me calls me Mindy.”

  “And I imagine everyone who knows you has been blessed with your amazing advice.”

  “Only if they’ve been very fortunate.”

  “Look, I appreciate your trying to help. I do. It’s just—”

  “Complicated. I know. Everyone thinks it’s complicated when they don’t really understand what’s going on. If they knew what was going on it would seem simple.”

  “I think I know what’s going on, and it’s complicated.”

  “I’ll just tell you one more thing,” she had said as she took the case that held her pictures and started out the front door. “Men never know what’s really going on. They always think it’s complicated.” She was looking back in the door and laughing as if she’d made a very good joke, and Dean had managed a mild smile. She meant well.

  “Thanks, Mindy.”

  He had followed her out onto the porch, imagining how wonde
rful it would be to step into the past and look out onto the street and see Shell driving up. Instead, he had seen the empty street and returned Melinda’s wave before she backed out of the driveway.

  Then he had turned to go in and been surprised by Shell, looking at him from her own porch with blame in her eyes. He had seen it almost immediately, that look of condemnation. At that moment, the image of Shell’s hand on the back of Brad Bauer’s neck had come back unbidden, and with it, his own pain and anger.

  That same night, he had driven over to Billie and Leonardo’s. He had told himself he was worried about Shell’s safety, and that was partly true, but Dean also knew that part of his motivation was seeing who was there at the house, seeing if Brad Bauer was visiting. There had only been one car parked on the curb. It was Shell’s.

  All day Thursday Dean had done nothing other than feed and water Sadie and listen to a lecture from his little sister about what a jerk he was being. She couldn’t know what had happened between Shell and himself, and he wasn’t going to enlighten her. He kept the doggie door open all the time so Sadie could go in and out from the kitchen to the backyard, and he mostly sat on his couch staring at the unmoving pieces on his chessboard, Sadie’s presence his only comfort.

  By late in the evening his anger at Shell was subsiding enough that he had begun to entertain the idea of talking to her about what had happened. He had driven over to Billie and Leonardo’s again, not sure what he intended, and parked well past their house. There was still only one car parked in front. Shell’s. Up the street a ways was a white van, and most of the other homes along Travis Heights had cars in their driveways or garages. He had walked closer, hoping for a chance to see her. There she was, leaving the house with Bitsy, and he had followed her down the side street toward the creek and watched her crying in the darkness. It was all he could do to keep from going to her, gathering her in his arms and carrying her home with him. But the image from the hotel had suddenly come back to him, and it occurred to him that Shell must be crying about Brad Bauer. She must have loved him all along, and he couldn’t bear the thought.