The Girl With the Dragonfly Tattoo: An Austin, Texas Art Mystery (The Michelle Hodge Series Book 4)

by Roslyn Woods

“You aren’t going back?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “What about the guy?”

  “Chad is an old boyfriend, and he asks me out once in a while, but there’s nothing there.”

  “Well, I don’t like him.”

  “You would. He’s a nice guy.”

  “I still don’t like him.”

  “Okay,” she answered, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

  “And I want you to stay here. Right here,” he said, drawing her close again.

  “I think I might just do that.”

  Chapter 67

  Saturday, August 15, 7 p.m.—Shell

  The reunion of Shell and Dean was more than a reunion of three days’ absence. He was waiting in the J section of the pick up area, anxious to see her as she pulled up to the curb. He kissed her when she got out of the car.

  “I missed you,” he said.

  “I missed you, too.”

  He tossed his bag in the back seat of the Corolla.

  “I’m sorta surprised you didn’t bring the dogs!”

  “Sadie is resting at home after a big day, and Bitsy is still at Billie and Leo’s.”

  “Big day? What happened?”

  “Tell me about California first,” she said, getting back into the Corolla.

  “Okay,” he said, smiling as he got in the passenger seat and Shell put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb. “I’ve got good news.”

  He had sold the program to Apple, just as Shell had expected he would. He had seen some friends while he was there. California looked dryer than he remembered, but he still wanted to go there again soon. Together.

  They were home by the time he finished telling her about everything.

  “Now tell me about Sadie’s big day,” he said after greeting the big dog who was more than happy to see him, and Shell poured glasses of wine for the two of them.

  She handed him a glass before she answered. “Okay, but you have to sit down first.”

  “Okay,” he said, looking at her doubtfully as he sank onto the couch and Sadie lay down at his feet.

  Shell sat down beside him. “First, let me just say that everything is okay and the bad guy is in jail.”

  “I thought the bad guy was in jail on Thursday night,” he answered, confused.

  “No. That was Armen. Apparently, he wasn’t the bad guy.”

  “But he broke in—”

  “He just wanted paintings, Dean.”

  He ran a hand through his hair and his jaw clenched. “What happened?”

  So Shell told him about the day she and Tavy had been through.

  “So,” he said, when she’d finished her narrative, “when I tried to call you this morning before I got on my flight and I couldn’t get an answer, it was because you’d lost your phone? I thought you might have been out of area for a signal up at the lake. I made up all kinds of reasons so I wouldn’t worry. But I should have been worried.”

  “No, I was okay. I lost my phone for a while. Sadie found it for me—and only a few tooth marks to show for it!”

  “I should never have left you!”

  “I have to learn to take care of myself, Dean,” she argued, “and it went great except for Tavy getting hurt. I was able to defend myself! That part was good for me. And I realized something.”

  “What?” he asked, tears in his eyes now.

  “I think we should get married. Soon.”

  “You do?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What changed?”

  “I was worried about something, and I’m just not worried about it anymore.”

  “What were you worried about?”

  “I thought you might not have come after me—that night after you learned about the kidnapping. I thought that if Lisa hadn’t called and told you I hadn’t been with Brad—I thought you might have just left matters to the police.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “No, but it’s okay. I love you too much to worry about it anymore. It just matters that we’re together, taking care of each other.”

  “Shell, the night before I learned you hadn’t cheated on me, I’d come over here. I missed you so much I thought I was going to die. I’d taken a sedative, remember? Margie was worried because I hadn’t slept in four days. So she made me agree to take a strong sleeping pill, and I had. Then I came over here to get food for Sadie, and the house smelled like your perfume, and I thought I’d just lie on your pillow in our room and die right there. Only, as I was drifting off, I decided I would talk to you the next day at the memorial for Garrett. I’d talk to you, and as I was half asleep, I was dreaming of how I would try to convince you to come back to me. I was dreaming of making you see that I’d be a better husband to you than he would.”

  “I wish you’d told me! I wish I’d had the courage to ask you!”

  “I’d have died before giving up trying to find you, Shell,” he said, drawing her into his arms.

  She rested her head on his chest and listened to the rhythm of his heart for a few moments. “How does October sound?”

  “For our wedding?”

  “Yes.”

  “I like October,” he said. “That’s when I met you.”

  “I know. It’s when I met you.”

  Chapter 68

  Tuesday, September 1, 11 a.m.—Tavy

  By the time the will was read, Tavy knew that Armen and Cecelia were the people who had cared for her father after his pancreatic surgery. Harris Melburn had been quietly selling his paintings, one at a time, to private collectors, keeping Edwin with enough income to support Minerva, himself, collect art, and to secretly pay a few of the bills that cropped up for Tavy. When those had been paid in the past, she had always assumed her mother or Mia and Tio had come through for her.

  Rand read her father’s words in the hearing of everyone present at the reading: Colleen Bishop, Armen and Cecelia Hanoian, Harris Melburn, Florencia and Omar Capello, Angus Kerr, Amelia Coronado, and Tavy herself.

  “I leave, with a grateful heart, the Edgar Payne and the Guy Rose paintings so marked in my studio on Burleson Road, to Armen and Cecelia Hanoian. Thank you, Armen, for your cherished friendship. Thank you, Cecelia, for all your kindness through the years.”

  Cecelia sat beside Armen, silently weeping. Armen, after his recent arrest, had come to his senses about taking his medication.

  “For Harris Melburn, I leave the Granville Redmond, so marked, which you helped me to acquire. I know you admired it, and I’m grateful for the way you helped me through the years. Thank you.

  “For Florencia and Omar, my dear friends, I leave the Franz Bischoff. I hope you will be able to help your son with graduate school. Thank you for your kindness these past five years. I did not know how much I needed your friendship until you were here for me.

  “For Angus Kerr, I leave the painting of Madison, the charcoal drawing of you, Gus, and the Edgar Payne with your name on the back. Thank you for being my closest friend these past six years. You are a good man and I feel as if Madison is my own grandchild.

  “For Colleen Bishop, I leave the charcoal drawings of Vincent.

  “For my stepson, Vincent Bishop, I leave the painting I did of you at seven.

  “For Amelia Coronado, I leave three paintings of Octavia, so marked. Thank you for loving my little girl.

  “All other worldly goods of mine, including my homes, my art collection, my bank account, and the contents of my safety deposit box, I leave to my daughter, Octavia Bishop.”

  There were a few other issues to be dealt with. Rand asked Gus and Tavy to speak with him in his office for a few minutes as the gathering broke up. He handed the keys to the safety deposit box to Tavy and offered to drive her to the bank.

  “That won’t be necessary,” she said. “But thank you for everything.”

  “Do you know how to get there?” he asked.

  “I know how to get there,” Gus said.

  “You’ll call me if you need
anything?” Rand asked.

  “Yes,” Tavy answered. “And I’m sure there will be questions about a few things. Right now, would you mind telling me how the will would have changed if I hadn’t been here?”

  “In Austin?”

  “In this world.”

  “Ah,” Rand Miller answered. “Everything would have gone to Angus Kerr and his daughter.”

  “Oh! Not Vincent?”

  “No, but he didn’t know that. Neither did his mother.”

  “Do you know any reason why she would have followed me and Shell one day?”

  “Hmm. It’s just a theory, but I think she may have had Vincent stealing pottery for her. She collects, you know, and Edwin told me she’s a very acquisitive woman. Sergeant Gonzalez tells me there are some things I need to see in Vincent Bishop’s house. They may be yours, though I’m not sure I can prove it.”

  “So, she wasn’t trying to help him kill me?”

  “I doubt she knew the extent of his hatred,” Rand said. “Anything else?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about my father’s cancer?”

  “I thought I did. I told you he thought he might be dying.”

  “Yes, I guess you did,” she admitted. “And the gallery? Why do you think he approached Shell Hodge about selling that portfolio?”

  “I don’t know. Do you have a theory, Dr. Kerr?” he asked, looking at Gus. “His best friend ought to have more insight than I.”

  “I think,” Gus answered slowly, “he wanted one last exhibition before he died. It must have been hard for an artist of his caliber to hide his life’s work all these years.”

  “All right, then,” Rand said, shaking Gus’s hand, then Tavy’s. “It occurs to me there could be more answers for you in that safety deposit box.”

  Chapter 69

  Tuesday, September 1, 4 p.m.—Tavy

  Rand Miller was right about the safely deposit box. There was a some jewelry—Lois Osborne Bishop’s wedding ring and a few necklaces, carefully labeled. And there was a hand-written letter to Tavy from her father.

  My Darling Octavia,

  I have attempted many times to write this letter, and the fact that you are reading this means I have failed in my ambition to see you and explain everything before my death. I cherish the hope that I matter enough to you that you will read my explanation, and eventually that you will find it in your heart to forgive me.

  All those years ago when you were only two, things happened that I felt—at the time—forced my hand in a way that was brutal for both of us, and I will say that only the knowledge that you were in the hands of two loving people all these years has kept me sane. Those two years after your birth have remained in my heart as the most wonderful of my life, despite my disappointing marriage to your mother, for I loved being your father.

  I must explain what happened.

  I suppose you know that I was an artist—at least that is what I wanted to be and how I thought of myself. I realize now, after so many years of painting, that I was an imitator. When I was in San Francisco I met Hanson Puthuff, a fine Impressionist and a good man, and I came under his influence. He taught me things I never knew before about paint, and I learned to replicate his style. He once told me he couldn’t tell my paintings from his own! I painted a whole series under his instruction. I left them unsigned, for they were in no way my own. I was stunned when Hanson suddenly died.

  I kept the paintings and went on with my life and the pursuit of a career. For some reason I did well. I even won a few awards which enabled me to secure a position when I applied to teach at Reed. By then I had been married to your mother for one year, and you were born just after I was hired.

  I was already aware of the fact that your mother and I were incompatible, but I had you, and I was actually a very happy man. I had my work, and I had my beautiful daughter.

  What I’m going to say next is delicate. I don’t want to say negative things about your mother to you, but I know you must be well aware by now that her nature is not nurturing, and there is no way to get around the fact that she came to despise me. I worried about this when you were small, but your governess was so kind and so loving, I hoped you were getting what you needed.

  Two years after your birth, my mother, your grandmother, still in Oakland, was diagnosed with a rare kind of spinal tumor which would require a complicated surgery. There was one surgeon who was believed to be skilled enough to perform it, and he was in the UK, oddly the birthplace of my mother. (She had come to the States before the war, and she and my father had met and married. But that is another story.) Time was a factor in her possible recovery. I must clarify here that my parents were not well off and had no medical insurance at the time. They had sacrificed everything to send me to art school. I had been married for three years by the time of this terrible diagnosis, but I had no money. We had big debts. I blame myself for this. I was somehow unable to manage your mother’s spending, and money that should have been in our account was not.

  Not that my salary would have been enough to do more than help with the surgery. At any rate, there was a time factor in getting it done, and I made a terrible decision which has caused me great shame and has all but ruined my life. I signed one of the pieces I had painted under Hanson’s instruction and sold it as if it were his. The collector who made the purchase was thrilled. At the time, such a price had never been achieved for a Hanson Puthuff—800k, and I immediately sent half of it to my parents to pay both for their trip to London and for the surgery. (It was successful, by the way, and my parents returned to my mother’s birthplace in Cornwall and stayed there until their deaths.)

  Had I this to do over again, I’m afraid I would have allowed my mother to die, for I did not see the choice I was making in my rush to help. I did not see that with this one action I was losing a lifetime with you, my only child, and that you would inevitably feel I had abandoned you.

  Your mother was well aware of what I had done. I paid off our debts and did what I could to keep better control of our money, but I was guilt ridden about the sale of the painting. She wanted me to sell the rest of the series I had painted in Hanson’s style, but I refused. It was not long after this that your mother asked me for a divorce. She had met someone. I was devastated.

  It was not that my heart was broken by losing my relationship with Minerva, Octavia. The devastation came from realizing that a break-up would mean I wouldn’t get to live with you. There was nothing I could do about your mother’s decision, though I did try.

  She told me what she wanted from me: a steady income and a promise neither to take you away from her nor to see or communicate with you. She also wanted me to move away from Portland. If I did not comply with her wishes she would turn me in as a forger. By this time I knew her well enough to believe she would follow through on her threat. She had me, and I was guilty—something she well knew—and all it would have taken was her word for the scandal to break.

  It would have meant prison, you understand, and the inability to support you and see to it that you were cared for. Not only that, it would have been, because of the notoriety achieved by forgers at the time, a terrible scandal that would have plagued you—your father convicted of a crime of this kind!

  I had to talk to someone, and I chose Emilio Coronado, for he and I had become friends through your nanny, Amelia. He had helped me with a few things around the house, and he and I were the same age. He was ambitious to do well and a graduate student at Portland State at the time. Of course, he and Amelia knew that I was in a bad marriage as no one else did. I trusted him. He pledged to keep my secret and said he would do whatever he could to help me. Amelia loved you so much, you see, and I knew that if she remained as your governess you would have some stability and nurturing. I would always know how you were doing and what was happening with you.

  Shortly after my separation from your mother, I met Colleen. I was terribly unhappy, you see, and she helped me to get through the most painful episode in my life. When
the divorce papers were signed, she and I moved to Austin with her son, Vincent, then seven years of age. Sadly, my second marriage lasted no longer than my first. I was not a happy man, you see, and I had little to offer. After the marriage ended, I continued to do what I could for Colleen and Vincent, but I very much regretted the marriage.

  You will be wondering why, when you were old enough to understand, you were not informed of what had happened. Emilio believed that your anger at your mother was so great that you might have revealed our contact to her. It would have meant my arrest and imprisonment, and it would have meant that I could no longer help you in any way. I hope this makes sense. For through the years I have been able to pay bills and make certain things possible through Emilio. Not that he would ever allow me to help him or Amelia. He was very proud and said that giving you a normal life was worth more than all the money I had to offer.

  Recently I had decided, now that he was gone and I had been diagnosed with a terminal illness, that Minerva could no longer exert control over me. I had planned one, wonderful visit with you in which all would be explained, but regrettably, since you are reading this, I have failed. I am so sorry, my dear child.

  Please don’t blame Amelia for keeping our connection secret from you. Emilio and I discussed telling you at length many times, and he really believed your rage at your mother would be unstoppable if you knew the truth. It would have meant even more unhappiness in the long run, he feared, and because he had done so much for me, I had to trust him, and I believe it was the same for Amelia. Her love for you is something I have always been deeply grateful for.

  If you need help of any kind, you must go to my dear friend Angus Kerr. He is a good man and will do everything he can for you. You can trust him. I must also give you one warning: Vincent is unstable. Stay away from him. Colleen, though she worries about her son, is also very materialistic. I hope you won’t let her bully you into giving her pottery or paintings.