A Palette for Murder

by Sybil Johnson

  “He did have a lame excuse about looking for one of Sekhmet’s toys, which he still hasn’t given to me, by the way.” Rory waited while the waiter set down their plates before continuing. “On the other hand, Lance could be the murderer and he was covering his tracks. Maybe Dawn arrived before he had a chance to take it away with him.”

  “We don’t know if he has an alibi yet. I’ll see what I can find out.” Liz took a sip of her iced tea. “Did you ever find Sekhmet?”

  “She was at the back door waiting for me when I got home.”

  “Besides Luscious Lance, what other suspects do we have?”

  “Let’s see.” Rory broke open a packet of crayons that was on the table and began writing names and motives on the back side of her paper placemat. “There’s Monica. Willow’s death means she won’t lose her store. Marcia and Lance’s other fans. That’s jealousy. Her partner, Dr. Wagner. Then there’s the possibility we’re wrong about the camera and Willow was blackmailing someone. I saw a bank statement at her house. The balance in the account was huge, but there were no large deposits.”

  “Doesn’t prove anything. She could have another account somewhere. I asked around, but no one’s heard any rumors about blackmail.”

  “I can’t think of anything else, can you?”

  “You can’t forget Dawn. There’s a lot of evidence against her. Is she still in jail?” Liz asked.

  “Dad couldn’t get her out on bail. I visited her this morning. She’s beginning to lose hope.”

  “You’re doing everything you can.”

  For the rest of the lunch, they talked about the trompe l’oeil project they were both working on. When Rory glanced at her cell phone to check the time, the screen indicated she had a new message. “Looks like I have voicemail. Guess I missed a call.”

  “Voicemail? I don’t know why anyone bothers with it anymore. No one checks it. Texting’s the thing.” Liz put her napkin on her empty plate and sat back in her chair.

  “I do. Or at least I usually do. I’ve been so busy I forgot to check to see if I missed any calls.” Rory listened to the message. “Kit’s awake and wants to talk with me. His nurse left the message when we were at the bar last night, and I didn’t have my phone by me. Visiting hours are still going on.”

  Liz motioned toward the patio exit. “Go. See what he wants to talk to you about. I’ll take care of the check.”

  “But you won fair and square. It was supposed to be my treat.”

  “Next time.”

  Walking as fast as her tired muscles would let her, Rory headed toward her house to shower and pick up her car for the drive to the hospital. A short time later, she hurried down the hallway toward Kit’s room, only to find the bed empty, appearing as if no one had ever occupied it. Fear gnawing at her stomach, she walked toward the nurses’ station and asked about him. One look at the nurse’s face and Rory knew the worst had happened. Whatever Kit had wanted to tell her had died with him.

  Chapter 24

  Rory took a tissue out of the Kleenex box on her coffee table and blew her nose. “I didn’t know Kit that long, but I’m still going to miss him. I didn’t even get the chance to finish telling him my story about solving the murder at the painting convention.”

  Liz placed a comforting hand on her friend’s arm. “I’m sure he appreciated the time you spent with him.”

  The two sat on the couch in Rory’s living room Monday evening, a Canadian bacon and pineapple pizza lying uneaten on the coffee table in front of them.

  “You’ll feel better if you eat something.” Liz put a slice of pizza on a plate and pushed it across the table.

  Rory waved it away. “I can’t think about food right now.”

  “It’s your favorite. I even got pepper flakes.” She dangled the packet of spicy peppers in front of her friend’s face. “You can use as much as you like. I promise not to say a word about how you’re ruining the pizza.”

  Rory gave her a sad smile and took the packet, sprinkling a quarter of it all over the slice on her plate.

  Liz scrunched up her nose in disapproval. “I don’t know how you can eat that.”

  “I thought you weren’t going to complain.”

  “It wasn’t a complaint, it was an observation.”

  They ate in silence, each thinking about the day’s tragic turn of events. When Rory finished, she put her empty plate down on the coffee table. “That was good. Thanks for bringing it over.”

  Liz peeked inside the pizza box. “You’ve got a couple slices left for breakfast.” She closed it up and sat back on the sofa. “Do you have any idea what Kit wanted to talk to you about?”

  Rory shook her head. “We’ll probably never know.”

  “Where’s he now?”

  “The nurse said they took him to the hospital morgue, waiting for the coroner’s office to pick him up.” She glanced at the time on her cell phone. “They should have him by now.”

  “How long do you think the autopsy will take?”

  Rory considered the question. “I’m not sure there’s going to be one. I’m not familiar with the rules, but I don’t think there’s anything suspicious about his death. It wasn’t completely unexpected. He was under a doctor’s care and had a bad infection.” She wiped her fingers on a napkin and crumpled it up on her plate. “We need to find out his full name so we can get a hold of his relatives. Someone could be searching for him. I would want to know if someone in my family died.”

  “What about fingerprints? The police might be able to identify him that way. Maybe they already took them. Dashing D might know. Call him.”

  Rory grabbed her phone and placed the call. She listened carefully as the detective explained the situation to her.

  When she hung up, Liz said, “What did he say?”

  “The coroner’s office will be taking his fingerprints to see if they can identify him. He promised to check with them and let us know what he finds out, but the search could take a while and there’s no guarantee his prints will even be in any database.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” Liz glanced at her watch. “Where’s Teresa? Did she move back home?”

  “She’s at a client’s house right now, going over wedding plans. She’ll be back later.”

  “She’s been a busy beaver lately.”

  “Keeps her mind off her troubles.” Rory went into the kitchen for some aluminum foil. She was wrapping up the extra slices when her phone crowed.

  “Who was that?” Liz said after Rory hung up.

  “One of the nurses from the hospital. She has a bag of stuff Kit wanted me to have. She’s there now. Says it’s a good time for me to pick it up.”

  “Why didn’t she give it to you when you were there earlier?”

  “This is a different nurse. She just came on duty and learned about Kit. Apparently, he gave her instructions to give the bag to me if he didn’t make it.”

  Liz grabbed her purse and headed for the door. “Let’s go then. Maybe something in his things will give us a lead.”

  Rory drove the two of them to the hospital where they made their way to the floor where Kit’s room had been. When they neared the nurses’ station, a woman in navy blue scrubs brought a plastic bag with Kit’s name on it out from behind the counter and handed it to Rory.

  “So sorry for your loss. Kit seemed very nice. He wanted you to have this. He said you would know what to do with it.”

  Rory took the clear plastic bag, glancing at its contents. “Thanks. We’re looking for his relatives. Did he ever talk about family or tell you his full name?”

  The nurse shook her head. “We didn’t have much time to talk. He was in and out of consciousness a lot. He didn’t have a wallet on him when he came in, but you probably know that already.”

  “You have no idea what he wanted to talk
to me about?”

  “I asked, but he wouldn’t tell me. It was important to him though.”

  Rory thanked the nurse again. She suppressed her curiosity about the contents of the bag until they got back to the car, where she opened it and looked inside. “The only thing in here is clothes.”

  “There might be something tucked in between that you can’t see.”

  Rory took out each item and inspected it before handing it to her passenger.

  Liz looked at the pile on her lap. “Sandals, t-shirt. There isn’t much here. I wonder why he wanted you to have this stuff.”

  “Maybe he wanted me to give them to a shelter. He might have thought the hospital would throw his clothes away.” Rory was about to hand over the last item in the bag, a pair of cargo shorts, when she felt something hard in one of the pockets. She pulled out a small key and held it up to the overhead light. “Maybe this is why. What do you make of it?”

  Liz took the key and turned it over in her hands. “There’s a number written on it in black Sharpie. A little worn off, but I think it says 253.”

  “Looks like a padlock key. What would he need to padlock? I don’t remember seeing anything that needed one in the bags he had on his bike.”

  “Unless it’s for the bike itself. Did he have a lock for it?”

  “Not that I remember. I think I would have noticed one. They’re usually on the end of a chain, aren’t they?”

  “Maybe you missed something else. Did you look through all of the bags?”

  “Mom and I looked through everything. I suppose we could have missed something. His stuff is still at the store. Let’s head over there now. She’s open late tonight.”

  “To Arika’s Scrap ’n Paint, it is then. Onward, James! And step on it.”

  Fifteen minutes later they were on the sales floor of the craft store, explaining to Rory’s mother what they planned on doing.

  Arika led the way into the back room. “Not much space to spread things out in here.” Her gaze strayed to the adjoining classroom. “I don’t have any classes scheduled until tomorrow. You can use the tables in there as long as you promise to clear it all out by the time you leave.”

  “Thanks, Mom. We’ll be sure to do that.”

  Rory and Liz untied plastic bag after plastic bag from the bicycle and deposited them on one of the two eight-foot tables in the classroom. Once they had everything off the bike, they opened each bag and laid the contents out on the other table, sorting them as they went. Before long, they had a pile of clothes, a pile of books—mostly paperback, but a few hardbacks—and a pile of odds and ends, but nothing that had a padlock attached to it.

  “Looks like another dead end,” Liz said.

  Rory flipped through the books, then turned them upside down to see if anything fell out. A business card and an envelope fluttered to the floor. Rory glanced at the card before handing it over. “Willow’s business card. At least now we know for sure where he got her phone number.”

  “What’s that say?” Liz nodded at the piece of paper Rory drew out of the envelope.

  “Not much. Just a four-digit number. Not long enough for a phone number. Could be an address, but there’s no street name.”

  “Let’s see what Google says.” Liz keyed in the digits and “Vista Beach” into the browser on her phone. “There’s a bank at that address on Dewey. I’m not sure what it would have to do with the key though. Banks don’t use padlocks. Keys for safe deposit boxes look completely different.” She handed it back to Rory, who sat down on a nearby chair and twisted it around in her hands, trying to see if she had missed any distinguishing marks.

  Arika poked her head around the corner. “How’s everything going in here? Find anything useful?”

  “Afraid not,” Rory said. “We still don’t know what this opens.” She handed the key to her mother, who examined it.

  “Reminds me of the key to our storage locker,” Arika said as she handed it back.

  “Of course,” Rory said. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “Do you think he had enough money to rent one?” Liz said. “He was living on the streets.”

  “Just because he couldn’t afford an apartment doesn’t mean he couldn’t afford the rent on a storage locker,” Arika said. “The amount of money needed to move into an apartment is a lot more than the cost to rent a unit. You can get a small one at some of the newer places for a dollar a month for the first six months.”

  “It’s worth looking into,” Rory said. “Can we use your computer, Mom?”

  Arika waved her hand in agreement and went back to help a customer on the sales floor.

  Rory and Liz packed the clothes and books into a box to take to a local charity. They put the bag of odds and ends to one side to decide what to do with later before settling down in front of the computer in the back room. A search of all the storage facilities in the area brought up page after page of results.

  “There are a lot of them,” Rory said. “I didn’t realize there was that much of a call for extra storage.”

  “I see it over and over again. A lot of my clients use them when switching between houses or when they move into a smaller place. They say it’s temporary, but…”

  “Kit would want to have easy access to the storage place. He could take public transportation and go almost anywhere.”

  “Except there’s Buddy to consider. Do they allow dogs on the bus?”

  “Good point. Let’s assume he biked or walked there and got something closer. We’ll eliminate any places that use those pods that are delivered to you. He would want access to his stuff.” Several taps on the keyboard, and before long, they had a printout of self-storage places within five miles of Vista Beach. “We’ll start with these. We can expand the search if we need to. It’s too late to look at any of them tonight. We’ll start first thing tomorrow.”

  “How are we going to find the right place? We don’t know his full name.”

  Rory waved her phone. “I’ve got a photo of Kit and Buddy I took a couple weeks ago. We can show it around.”

  Before leaving, they printed out a list of their destinations, ready for the next day’s storage locker hunt.

  Chapter 25

  First thing Tuesday morning, Rory and Liz consulted their list of self-storage facilities and headed to the nearest one.

  “What did Dashing D say when he called you this morning?” Liz said as she pulled her car out onto the street.

  Rory entered their destination into the navigation app on her phone. “No luck on the fingerprints. The coroner’s office will put Kit’s description on their website. They’re hoping someone will come forward and identify him.”

  “What if no one does?”

  “In a month, they’ll cremate him, but they’ll keep his ashes for two or three years in case they find relatives.”

  “No funeral? Everyone should have a funeral,” Liz said.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll make sure he gets one. If we can’t find his family soon, I’ll claim the body and cover the funeral costs.”

  “You won’t have to do it alone. I’ll get people to chip in. As soon as we’re done here, I’ll start working on getting donations.” Liz stopped at a light and looked over at her friend curiously. “What happens to his ashes after two or three years?”

  “They’ll be scattered at a service held once a year for unclaimed remains.” Rory consulted her phone. “Turn right at the next light. It’ll be on the left halfway down the block.”

  A short time later, Liz pulled into the parking lot next to the storage facility’s office. They checked with the employees inside, but no one recognized Kit’s photo. They were on their fourth place when they struck pay dirt.

  The scarecrow of a man behind the counter at Beach Storage squinted at the photo on Rory’s phone as she held it up for him to see.

 
; “He seems familiar to me. Yeah, he rented a unit a few months back. Why do you want to know?” he said, a suspicious look in his eyes. “One of you an ex-wife or something?”

  “Do you know the number of the unit?” Rory crossed her fingers, hoping it would be the same as the number written in black Sharpie on the key they found.

  “Got a name?” the man said.

  She gave Kit as the first name and mumbled gibberish for the last, hoping the man would supply it himself.

  “Kit what? Speak louder. I can’t understand you.”

  Rory mumbled it again.

  “Sorry, can’t help you. No name, no info.”

  “Can’t you just look and see if you have a unit rented out to someone named Kit?” Liz said.

  “We have a hundred and fifty units here. That’s a lot of looking.”

  Rory placed a twenty on the counter and pushed it toward him. “You would be doing us a big favor.”

  He stared at the bill, a glint of interest in his eyes. He was reaching for the twenty when a customer walked into the office. Instead of picking up the money, he shoved it back across the counter. “Sorry, no can do.” He waved them away and turned his attention to the new arrival.

  Disappointed, Rory and Liz left the office and stood by the main gate into the storage facility. Behind it, they could see row after row of storage units with gray metal doors.

  “We have the unit number. We can go see if the key fits,” Liz said.

  “How do we get in?” Rory eyed the metal gate. “I’m not climbing that.”

  They were turning away in disappointment when a car drove up. The driver stopped in front of the gate and typed something into a keypad.

  “Of course.” Rory pulled a piece of paper out of the pocket of her jeans and stared down at the four-digit number on it. “I bet this is the access code.”

  Liz looked toward the office and grabbed Rory’s arm. “Scarecrow’s staring at us. Let’s see if we can find a different entrance to try it out on. Somewhere he can’t see us.”