Color Me Murder

by Krista Davis

  I sucked in a deep breath and took a few minutes to call Helen and the other employees to let them know Color Me Read would be closed on Monday. Every single one of them asked how long it would stay closed. I had no idea.

  Fifteen minutes later, I joined my family in a world that seemed far removed from the reality of my day. Mom and Dad made such a fuss that I could feel my face flaming red. I thought they were going overboard, but Veronica actually called them on it, announcing that I would forevermore be the favorite child simply because they thought I might be dead. Our parents were not amused but they must have gotten the message because they toned it down after that. Over tender crab cakes, my family pumped me for information.

  Dad stabbed a French fry with his fork. “Was there any sign that someone broke in?”

  His question surprised me. I hadn’t given it much thought. “Not that I know of. I didn’t notice broken windows or anything like that.”

  “Did you open the store?” asked Mom.

  “Yes. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary.” I told them who else had keys.

  Dad stopped eating, sat back, and mused, “It seems to me that the list of potential suspects is severely limited to those who have the key to the building. We can eliminate you, which means only three suspects.”

  I hated to admit that he was right. “Bob wouldn’t have done it and had no reason to. I don’t know if Helen even knew Delbert.”

  “It’s all going to fall on the shoulders of the professor, then.” Veronica finished the last drop of her wine.

  Mom leaned toward us and whispered, “What about Mr. DuBois? He’s the one who feared being murdered in his bed, and I bet he has easy access to the professor’s keys.”

  It was an interesting observation and a definite possibility. Mr. DuBois had certainly appeared to be more dramatic and emotional than the professor.

  Dad waived his hand. “In any event, I’ll be glad when you’re out of that carriage house. I resent Maxwell involving you in this.”

  “But,” I sputtered, “now that Delbert is dead, I have nothing to fear there.”

  “Only Maxwell,” said Mom.

  “Why would he harm me? I had nothing to do with this. It’s not like he’s a deranged killer running around randomly hacking people up. Besides, he needs me to take care of the bookstore.”

  “Honey!” Mom was aghast. “You can’t stay there.”

  “Once he’s in jail, he’ll lose the bookstore and the house. His sister will kick you out on the street.” Veronica spoke without emotion, as though she were stating fact.

  I did not like where this was going. “You’ve all convicted him! Granted, you don’t know him as well as I do, but there’s no way he killed Delbert. It’s simply impossible.”

  “I believe you mean inconceivable, not impossible,” Dad said dryly. “Not only was it possible, it happened.”

  “There has to be some other explanation,” I insisted.

  Mom’s hand crept over mine. She gave it a squeeze. “Florrie, you have always been the champion of lost causes. I love that about you. But this is murder, not a sick kitten or a wilted, leafless plant.”

  “And everything points to the professor.” Veronica poured part of Dad’s bourbon into her empty glass.

  “Listen to your sister, Florrie. What kind of evil person would use a spear to kill someone?” Mom shuddered.

  “Exactly,” I said with satisfaction. “Not the professor.”

  When Dad paid the check, Mom started a campaign for me to sleep at their house. I declined as kindly as I could, and after a round of hugs, I walked home.

  It was the kind of peaceful Sunday evening when families were out for a walk. Children licked ice cream cones and adults window-shopped.

  I rounded the corner and everything changed. Ahead of me, three police cars were parked on the left side of the street. A lump formed in my throat, and I started an anxious jog. As I feared, they were in front of the Maxwell mansion.

  Just as I reached the house, the front door opened and a uniformed officer escorted a handcuffed Professor Maxwell down the front steps.

  Chapter 8

  Reporters ran toward him. Cameras were pointed at him.

  Professor Maxwell held his head high. He turned and spotted me. “Florrie!”

  I ran to him.

  “The little gray cells, Florrie. Use the little gray cells and the eye of the artiste.”

  He bent to slide into the police car, and a moment later, it pulled away.

  I lingered on the sidewalk, watching the car.

  A male reporter thrust a microphone in my face. “Was that a code? What are the little gray cells?”

  “Seriously?” Clearly not a fan of Agatha Christie. Her sleuth, Inspector Poirot, was always talking about the little gray cells—by which he meant his brain. It was classic Professor Maxwell to plead that I use my brain to figure this out. It was exactly what I fully intended to do. I pushed the mike away and looked back at the Maxwell mansion.

  Mr. DuBois rushed down the stairs and grabbed me by the arm. “What’s wrong with you people?” He escorted me into the house, closed the door behind us, and locked it.

  The strain of Maxwell’s arrest showed in his weary eyes. “Vile police!” he sneered. “They treated Maxwell like a common criminal. I always knew that Delbert would be the death of us. Look what he has done now, that miscreant!”

  Given Delbert’s behavior, it stood to reason that he may have done something that brought on his own death, but blaming the dead guy made me a little uncomfortable.

  He led the way into the kitchen, still muttering about Delbert. Two empty martini glasses stood by the sink. Mr. DuBois proceeded to wash one with a vengeance, scrubbing the delicate crystal with such force that I feared it would explode in his hands from the pressure.

  He rinsed it, and while drying it with a kitchen towel, he turned to me, lifted it up to the light to be sure he had buffed out any potential water spots, and demanded, “So what do you plan to do?”

  I blinked at him for a moment.

  He stashed the gleaming crystal in a cabinet with a glass door. “He’s depending on you.”

  I fully intended to do what I could. Nevertheless, I asked, “Won’t he hire a private investigator or some other professional to find out who murdered Delbert?”

  Mr. DuBois’s lips tightened. “His overpriced attorneys are putting some wet behind the ears lawyer on it. They’re most competent at managing estates and drafting business contracts, but I have little hope that they are crafty enough to uncover the truth about devious Delbert.”

  “But I am?” I seriously doubted that.

  “The professor has great confidence in you.”

  As lovely as that was to hear, I didn’t even know where to begin. I tried to sound casual when I asked, “What did the professor tell you?”

  Mr. DuBois’s eyes widened in surprise. “I have never revealed the confidences of my employer, and I don’t intend to now.”

  Was he kidding? “Mr. DuBois,” I said gently but firmly, “if you want Professor Maxwell to be exonerated, then I need to know everything that pertains to that night and his relationship with Delbert. I don’t care who he might be sleeping with or the details of his private life.”

  DuBois polished the second martini glass, held it to the light, and put it away. “Understood.”

  I tried to get him talking. “The last time I saw the professor, he was in his office at the bookstore. I presume he took his sister and Delbert out to dinner before that?”

  Mr. DuBois appeared to think before responding. He sat down in a kitchen chair. While his back was perfectly straight, his face revealed exhaustion. “That is my understanding. I had the evening to myself. In fact, I did not see him until you phoned about Delbert trying to enter the carriage house.”

  That was a pretty good-sized gap of time. The light in his office was still on when I walked home with my pizza, though in retrospect, that probably didn’t mean anything. He coul
d have been battling Delbert at that very moment. Something had transpired in the hours between the time I left the bookstore and noon the following day. I didn’t know the professor’s whereabouts from approximately ten o’clock on Saturday night until three o’clock in the morning on Sunday. Five hours was plenty of time to kill Delbert, open the trapdoor, dump his body inside, and cover it up again. “Too bad he doesn’t have an alibi for that night.”

  “Perhaps he does. . . .” Mr. DuBois mused. “After all, I was here.”

  “You’re planning to lie for him?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. His bed was slept in. I put the clothes he wore yesterday in the laundry hamper.” He gasped. “Aha! Had the professor killed Delbert, surely there would have been blood on his clothes.”

  Mr. DuBois jumped to his feet and hurried out of the room. He returned momentarily carrying an olive-green shirt and a pair of khakis. He held them up and turned them around, examining them. “There, you see? No blood.”

  “I’m surprised that the police didn’t take those clothes. Do you have a paper bag?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I believe that’s the best way to preserve evidence. At least, that’s what I’ve read. We should turn them over to his lawyers.”

  Mr. DuBois fetched a paper bag, folded the clothes precisely, and inserted them. “I don’t plan to let these out of my possession unless I am forced to do so. I’ve heard about evidence getting lost. I’ll not have some imbecile tossing Maxwell’s clothes with the trash.” He closed his eyes briefly. “There. We have exonerated him.”

  I didn’t think the professor’s clothes would get him off the hook, but if Mr. DuBois was happy to think that, who was I to disabuse him of that notion?

  I suspected he knew a good bit more, and I wanted to pull it out of him. “So who did kill Delbert?”

  “Ordinarily, I would not speak of these things. However, considering that the professor is counting on you to help him, perhaps he would be understanding of my indiscretion this once. Delbert’s favorite method of making money is to, hmm, piggyback, perhaps that’s the best way to describe it, on the hard work of others. For instance, online he booked tours led by the professor and kept the money.”

  “He cheated the professor?” That was very bad news. No wonder Maxwell didn’t like him. The prosecutor would surely bring that up against him.

  “He defrauded Maxwell and the people who signed up for the fake tours. Maxwell had no idea that the worm was using his name to sell nonexistent tours. It tarnished his reputation, of course. Quite the scandal. Maxwell tried to keep it quiet. He refunded the money to those who signed up and forced Delbert to shut down his website. All quite audacious. Delbert had used photos from Maxwell’s trips. It looked completely authentic.”

  “But that was behind them, right? Did Maxwell harbor a grudge?”

  “No time for that. Delbert moved on to his next scam. He stole the contents of books and self-published them as his own.”

  “What?” I’d never heard of such a thing.

  “Indeed. An odious act. As I said, he piggybacks on the success of others. In this case, it came to light because he stupidly stole the books of Maxwell’s second wife, Jacquie Liebhaber.”

  “The women’s fiction author?”

  “The very same.”

  “I didn’t know she had been married to the professor.”

  “It was quite the love affair. Such a pity that they divorced. Apparently, one of her devoted fans bought Delbert’s book and recognized it as Jacquie’s. The reader immediately notified Jacquie. It was verbatim. Delbert didn’t even take the time to modify the books. They weren’t similar, they were exact copies. Of course, it was a huge brouhaha. Once again, Delbert was bailed out. This time his parents paid restitution to the authors affected. He was banned from the self-publishing site that he used and more money exchanged hands to keep them from prosecuting.”

  “So you’re suggesting that a whole lot of angry authors might have reason to kill him? You said restitution was made.”

  “What I’m saying is that a lot of people could have had it in for him. After all, those are the scams we know about. Heaven only knows what else he might have done.”

  Mr. DuBois had a point. An excellent one, in fact. A crumb like Delbert may have cheated, lied, and pilfered his way through life. There was no telling who might be angry enough to kill him.

  With that in mind, I bade Mr. DuBois a good night. I left the mansion through the kitchen door in the back and, passing the garage, crossed the broad driveway to my carriage house. As far as I could tell, not having actually explored the mansion, a sizable garden existed on the east side of the property, blocked from view at the driveway by the two-story garage.

  Peaches must have already acclimated to her new surroundings because she wasn’t waiting at the door like she had in our old home. I found her snoozing, almost upside down in her melon-colored bed.

  I made myself a mug of hibiscus tea and took it out to the garden with a pad and a collection of pencils. I fully intended to draw Professor Maxwell’s face, but once again the roadmap of lines failed me. It wasn’t a bad likeness. I imagined it was how he had looked a decade or so ago. Maybe when he was married to Jacquie. I flipped the page on the pad, and found myself drawing the trapdoor in the stairs. Had they really hidden booze there during Prohibition? I drew the hatch in the open position and the sad figure of Delbert’s corpse lying below on the ground, the spear jutting into the air.

  As I sketched, two things became obvious to me. The killer knew about the trapdoor, and he did not come prepared to kill Delbert. He had taken the spear off the wall.

  Both of those notions posed more questions in my mind. Who knew about the trapdoor? Was it common knowledge? I doubted that. If it were, the professor’s friends would have known about it. Someone would surely have mentioned it during the time that I had worked there.

  But Washington, DC, was packed with historians and history buffs. I could run a quick computer search to find out if it was the kind of thing they would know about. And, of course, anyone whom the professor had told about it could have located it easily.

  Somehow, someone had entered the building. Maybe even Delbert. I didn’t know how he could have gotten the keys, but it wasn’t outside of the realm of possibilities. Had he invited someone to join him?

  The spear posed a different set of problems. Was Delbert engaged in some kind of new scam? Had he sat in the professor’s chair and tried to convince someone that it was his bookstore or his inheritance in order to con someone out of money? Had one of them grabbed the spear in self-defense or to threaten the other person?

  Ugh. I flipped the page. My new sketch took a darker turn. The spear had hung on the wall of the office, so whatever happened that night either happened in the office or close-by. Someone had seen the spear. There might have been an argument in the office and one of them pulled the spear off the wall. Or the killer retrieved the spear and chased Delbert to his death. Had he dragged Delbert into the hatch, or had Delbert already been inside of it?

  No wonder police used fingerprints and DNA to solve crimes. It wasn’t easy to reconstruct what might have happened.

  Two things were certain. Someone, maybe Delbert himself, had keys, and the killer, whoever he was, had not come prepared to murder Delbert.

  Although I had left the door open, Peaches hadn’t bothered to join me. I went inside and found her snoozing again. I stroked her. She didn’t seem sick.

  I walked upstairs, changed into my Crayon nightshirt, and crawled into bed. But unlike Peaches, I just wasn’t ready to sleep. By all rights I should be exhausted, but no matter how I twisted or turned, my mind returned to the professor in jail and Delbert dead on the floor.

  I went downstairs and hit the computer for information on Delbert. They say money talks, and as far as I could tell, it had done a great job of keeping Delbert’s shenanigans quiet. Not a word about the authors he defrauded or about the fake tour
s he promoted. If that information had ever been on the web, someone had cleaned it up pretty well.

  There was quite a bit about the Maxwell family and their wealth. I was happy to see enthusiastic reviews of Color Me Read, but found no mention of the trapdoor in the building, even on historic building sites.

  I finally dragged up to bed, anticipating a restless night. Peaches woke long enough to race up the stairs after me.

  Sad as it was, I fell asleep thinking I no longer had to fear Delbert.

  * * *

  In the morning, a brilliant goldenrod sun shone in a sky as clear and blue as Sergeant Jonquille’s eyes. A beautiful day that neither the professor nor Delbert would see.

  Delbert’s poor mother would probably spend the day picking out a casket and making arrangements for his funeral. I couldn’t imagine how torn she must feel that her own brother had been arrested for the murder of her only child. How could anyone cope with that scenario?

  I probably could have slept in since the store would be closed. It was because of the yellow police tape, but it seemed fitting out of respect for Delbert.

  I had no idea what the day might hold, but I had a sneaking suspicion I would be seeing Sergeant Jonquille again. I dressed in a simple white blouse with black trousers and a silver cuff bracelet. I didn’t want to look flashy or too bright when Delbert had just been murdered. The blouse could be fairly sexy, but I pinned it so no cleavage showed.

  I lazily walked downstairs, fed Peaches, made coffee, and called my landlord to officially give up my old apartment in Reston.

  I drifted out to the garden to enjoy the morning air. I had been wanting to sketch a coloring book featuring plants and gardens. It seemed like every corner of my little paradise could be a page all its own.

  But my phone rang inside, and I had a bad feeling I wouldn’t get much drawing done, even if the store was closed. I fetched my cell phone and answered it.