Fatal Brushstroke (An Aurora Anderson Mystery Book 1)

by Sybil Johnson

  Rory sidestepped the art project and promptly fell over an ottoman that seemed to jump out in front of her. By the time Rory righted herself, Liz had disappeared down the hallway.

  Rory crept forward, listening for sounds of activity. As she passed an open doorway, she felt a vise-like grip on her left arm and someone yanked her into Hester’s office. She rubbed her shoulder and frowned at her assailant. “That hurt.”

  “You’ll recover,” Liz said as she flipped through an appointment book lying on the desk.

  “What happened to following Kevin and Trudy?”

  “This is better.” Liz frowned. “I see the class at your mother’s store, but no other appointments listed for the night she died. If she had one, she didn’t write it down.”

  Hester’s office was a logical place to look for answers, Rory thought. They’d probably learn more here than by following Kevin and Trudy. She disliked poking through people’s things, but they might find something in the office that led them to the murderer.

  Rory’s gaze swept the room, taking in the decorations (a vanity wall and several floral studies Hester must have painted), the furniture (typical office stuff including desk and filing cabinet), and a pocket door Rory assumed led to a closet or storage area. An empty drafting table, which only two weeks ago had been covered with one of Hester’s projects, stood in the corner. From the looks of things, her painting teacher had finished the designs and never had a chance to begin something new. Rory felt a lump starting to form in her throat. She took a moment to compose herself, then turned her attention to Liz, who pointed at the computer that stood on a nearby table.

  “Do your thing,” Liz said.

  Rory shook her head. “Uh-uh. I’m not going down that road again.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Rory had forgotten she’d never told Liz about Hester’s wild accusations, and she had no desire to go into details right now. “It’ll take too long to go through her computer. Besides, I don’t think she used it much. Let’s search the rest of the office first. You take the filing cabinet, I’ll take the desk.”

  While Liz rifled through the cabinet, Rory rummaged through the desk drawers, finding little of interest until she came across a folder labeled CORRESPONDENCE. One letter in particular stood out. “According to this, Hester’s publisher had rejected her latest book.”

  “What’s the date on the letter?”

  “Nine months ago. I wonder what changed his mind.” After glancing through the rest of the letters, Rory replaced the folder and pulled out another drawer.

  “She’s no Donna Dewberry, that’s for sure,” Liz said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “According to her tax returns, she barely made a profit the last two years.” Liz closed the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet and started looking behind the paintings that covered one of the walls. She shoved aside a large still-life, revealing a built-in safe. “Bingo! Now all we need is a combination. Maybe she jotted it down in her appointment book. She never could remember numbers.” Liz was thumbing through the book’s pages when they heard voices coming down the hallway.

  Rory looked wildly around for somewhere the two of them could hide. For one heart-stopping moment she thought they were trapped until she remembered the pocket door she’d noticed earlier. “Quick. In here.” She shoved Liz toward the door and prayed they’d both fit into the space on the other side.

  They tumbled into an empty bathroom with another exit leading into the hallway. Rory barely had time to slide the pocket door closed before she heard someone enter the room they’d just left.

  Rory sank down onto the toilet to catch her breath and rested her head against the wall behind her while Liz leaned against a nearby cabinet. A jumble of curious noises seeped through the wall between the office and bathroom. Liz knelt down by the door and motioned for her friend to join her. Rory crouched down onto the cold tile beside Liz, wedging herself between the toilet and the wall. She brushed aside the leaf of a potted fern and pressed her ear against the door. If she concentrated hard enough, she could make sense of the sounds coming through it. A succession of thuds indicated that several objects had landed on the carpet. From the moans and smacking noises that followed, Rory assumed a make-out session was in full swing, but couldn’t tell who was involved.

  She felt uncomfortable listening to the suggestive noises and was wondering if they should leave the bathroom when she heard a raspy voice say, “Your mother would have hated this, the two of us making out in her precious office. It’s nice not having to pretend anymore.”

  Rory mouthed Veronica’s name at Liz who nodded in agreement.

  “What do you mean?” Kevin must have downed a pot of coffee since they saw him on the terrace, Rory thought. He sounded far more sober than he had half an hour ago.

  “Now that your mother’s gone we have no reason to keep our relationship a secret.”

  “What’s wrong with the way things are?”

  Liz flashed Rory a look that said “typical male.”

  “You said the other women were just for show. You said as soon as you convinced your mother, we could stop pretending and get married. She’s dead now. What’s stopping us?”

  During the heavy silence that followed, Rory’s leg cramped up. She tried to readjust without making a sound, but her foot inadvertently knocked the potted fern into the toilet. The resulting noise was so loud she was sure it could be heard miles down the coast.

  Rory and Liz froze.

  “Did you hear something?” Veronica said.

  “I think it came from the bathroom.”

  Liz was already halfway to the hallway door before Rory could free herself from the tight quarters and make her way across the floor. When the two of them burst out of the bathroom into the hallway, they ran straight into Nora.

  “All yours,” Rory said to the startled woman and, as nonchalantly as possible, followed Liz to the sliding glass door that led outside. Moments after they emerged onto the terrace, Detective Green confronted them.

  That’s odd, Rory thought; the detective seemed to have grown several inches taller since she saw him last.

  “Lose something?” He held out his hand. A pair of black pumps dangled from the tips of his fingers, and a purse was tucked under his arm.

  Rory looked down in dismay at her bare feet. If she couldn’t keep track of her own belongings, how in the world was she going to figure out who killed Hester?

  Chapter 13

  The next day, Rory emerged from the back door of Arika’s Scrap ’n Paint carrying a tote bag filled with supplies and headed toward Liz’s car parked in the alley behind the store. “Sorry I took so long,” she said as she climbed into the passenger’s seat of the Lexus sedan. “I wanted to go over everything with Mom one last time.”

  Dressed more casually than usual in neatly pressed jeans and a fitted T-shirt, Liz tucked the document she’d been reviewing into her briefcase and stashed it behind her seat. “Are you sure you have everything we need? It’s a long drive to Hester’s, especially with all the Saturday morning beach traffic. I’d hate to have to turn around halfway because we forgot something.”

  “I think so, but I’ll double-check.” Rory went through the contents of her tote bag, once again making sure they had what they needed to inventory Hester’s painting supplies. Yesterday at the memorial service, Julian had asked Rory’s mother to help him dispose of the supplies. The first step in the process was an inventory the two young women had volunteered to do since Arika was needed at the store.

  “I’ve got clipboards, pens, blank inventory forms, and a digital camera with an extra SD card. Do we need anything else?” Rory said.

  “Where’s your laptop?”

  Rory stowed her tote bag in the back seat and fastened her seat belt. “We’re going old
school on this one. Mom prefers the inventory be done on paper. And she wants pictures.”

  “I think that’s all we need, then.” Liz started the car and put it in gear.

  “Are you sure you have time for this? Isn’t Saturday usually a busy day for you?”

  “I cleared my schedule. No way I’m missing the chance to rummage through Hester’s closets. No telling what we’ll find. I do have one stop to make before we head out of town, though. Won’t take long.”

  After dropping off paperwork at a client’s house, Liz steered the car toward Hester’s home in Malibu. “Is your mom going to buy all the supplies Hester owned? What’s she going to do with them?” Liz asked as she pulled onto the freeway.

  “Depends on how much there is. Apparently, Julian wants to get rid of everything right away. I expect she’ll buy what she thinks she can sell at the store or use in classes. I might be able to convince her to sell some of it on eBay.”

  As they retraced the route they’d taken to the service, they talked about the inventory and wondered what they would find. The miles sped by and, before long, they reached their turnoff on PCH.

  Liz maneuvered the car around the winding canyon road at a slower pace than Rory had taken it the previous day. As they neared their destination, a Jaguar tore around a curve straight at them. Liz twisted the steering wheel to the right, narrowly avoiding a collision. Although Rory had only caught a fleeting glimpse of the reckless driver, she was sure it was Trudy who had almost run them off the road.

  When they pulled into Hester’s driveway, they found Julian smoking while he inspected a tire on a silver-gray Mercedes with a license plate frame that read “So much to paint, so little time.” As soon as he saw them, he stubbed out his cigarette on the concrete with the toe of his loafer, then brushed bits of ash off his polo shirt and waved a greeting.

  “Trying to quit, but haven’t had much luck. Hester never let me smoke in the house. I guess I don’t have to worry about that anymore.” Julian pulled a tube of breath mints out of the pocket of his tan slacks and popped one into his mouth.

  “That’s the cleanest car I’ve ever seen.” Liz pointed to the Mercedes Julian had been inspecting when they drove up.

  “No thanks to the police. It was filthy when I got it back from the impound lot. I complained to Redmond, of course.”

  “That’s Hester’s car, then? I’m sure they were just seeing if they could find anything to help them figure out who killed her,” Rory said.

  “That’s just it.” Julian looked as if he had every intention of throttling the next representative of the Vista Beach police department who had the misfortune of crossing his path. “They had it in the impound lot, but never bothered to examine it. I got a call from that Green fellow, demanding I turn it over for their inspection. He went ballistic when I told him it was being detailed.”

  Rory understood Detective Green’s anger. There was no telling what the thorough cleaning had wiped out. Now if forensics found nothing, the police would never know if it was because there was nothing to find or because any evidence had been deliberately obliterated.

  “What was it doing in the impound lot?” Liz voiced the question that had popped into Rory’s mind.

  “It was parked in a tow-away zone. That one on Surf Lane they clear out every morning before rush hour.”

  Rory was familiar with the area, the next street over from her mother’s store. The tow truck was out there every weekday morning at five clearing out vehicles before rush hour started. Hester must have parked her car there when she taught her class, expecting to move it before the parking restrictions went into effect. The thought of the murderer accosting the painting teacher within blocks of Arika’s Scrap ’n Paint made Rory shudder.

  “Enough about the car. Let’s get you started.” Julian led them around the side of the house toward the site of the painting class Rory and Liz had attended earlier that month.

  “You’ve been here, of course,” Julian continued as he preceded them down the path. “As I told your mother, I’d like to unload as many of Hester’s painting supplies as possible. I want to turn this back into a guest house as soon as I can.”

  Rory couldn’t help wondering why he was in such a hurry to make the change.

  “As you’ll see, her hobby has taken up most of the downstairs,” he continued.

  “I thought it was a business,” Rory said, a little annoyed he didn’t take his wife’s vocation seriously.

  “I suppose you could call it that,” Julian said in a tone that indicated his doubts.

  He stopped at the front door of the two-story house and retrieved the key from his pocket. Before they entered the building, he turned to Rory and said, “I just want you to know that I never believed Hester when she told me you’d stolen financial information off her computer. If I did, you wouldn’t be here now. Don’t worry, I didn’t tell that idiot of a detective. None of his business, really.”

  Liz’s face registered surprise at the news. Her eyes shot a question at Rory who steadfastly ignored the query—and the poke in the ribs that soon followed.

  Julian unlocked the door and led them into what people generally referred to as Hester’s painting cottage, although it was larger than Rory’s entire house.

  They stood in the entryway, facing the stairs that led to the second story, while Julian explained what he wanted them to do. All the items to be inventoried were in two rooms on the ground floor.

  In the classroom to their left were cabinets filled with two-ounce bottles of acrylic paint in a rainbow of colors and a plethora of varnishes and painting mediums. The majority of the supplies were in the room to their right, which Rory had only glimpsed on her last visit.

  When they stepped across its threshold, she gazed in awe at the sea of cabinets that lined the walls of the ten foot by twenty foot room. The little empty wall space that existed was covered with close-up photographs of tropical flowers.

  “Everything seems to be well-organized, but you have your work cut out for you. Feel free to take a few supplies for yourself and Nora. There are cardboard boxes in the other room,” Julian said before leaving them to their work.

  Rory opened the nearest cabinet, which turned out to be crammed full of unpainted wood pieces. “Whoa! Look at this. If this is any indication, the inventory is going to take longer than I expected.”

  Rory hoped the sight of all that wood would distract Liz enough she’d forget about Julian’s earlier comments, but she soon discovered how wrong she was.

  “What was that about?” Liz said.

  “What?”

  “You know perfectly well what I’m talking about...what Julian said about you and Hester.”

  “Do you think it’s odd that Julian wants to get rid of this stuff so soon?”

  “Hard to say. People handle grief dif—Hold on. You’re not going to sidetrack me so easily. What was Julian talking about?”

  Rory put her tote bag on the table in the center of the room, pushed up the sleeves of her long-sleeved T-shirt, and tied her hair back in a ponytail. “Let’s get to work.” She turned her attention to the cabinet filled with wood. “Should we start here or in the other room?”

  “No.” Liz crossed her arms in front of her. “I won’t lift a finger until you tell me what’s going on.”

  Rory sensed her friend wasn’t joking. Liz’s petite frame hid an inner core of stubbornness that was hard to fight against. Rory knew she should have told Liz about the situation when it first came up, but she’d been too embarrassed to say the words out loud. Rory sat down at the table and told her friend everything.

  “Those are serious accusations, computer sabotage and identity theft,” Liz said after Rory had finished explaining. “Wouldn’t it have been better to come clean with Dashing D when he asked about your relationship with Hester? After all
, none of it is true.”

  “You know that and I know that, but I’m not sure he’d believe it. All the information he has about me comes from Chief Marshall. And you know how the chief’s had it in for me ever since we moved to town.”

  “But you told the detective about how Hester thought you’d sabotaged her machine. Why not the rest?” Liz continued.

  “I had to tell him something and sabotage was the least serious of the accusations. No way was I going to utter the words ‘identity theft’ in front of the police. They’d just say that was my motive for killing Hester, to prevent her from telling them about it.”

  “But she told her husband, so the information didn’t die with her. Killing her wouldn’t help.”

  “But I didn’t know that. Thank God Julian never felt it necessary to spill the beans.”

  “Maybe he did. Julian and Chief Marshall are pretty tight. The police might be keeping the information quiet until they gather more evidence. With your knowledge of computers, they might think you’re the head of an identity theft ring. You hear about those on the news all the time.”

  The situation was even worse than she’d feared. Rory had to repeat the mantra “only speculation” to herself a dozen times before she’d calmed down enough to think. “I just assumed he was telling the truth, but he could have been lying. Maybe he killed Hester, dumped her body in my yard, then told the police about the supposed theft. They’d be so focused on me, they might forget about him. But, as far as I know, he has no idea where I live.”

  “Of course he does. Don’t you remember what he said at the driving range about all the break-ins on your block?”

  Rory had been so tired from dealing with the false alarm at her mother’s store, she hadn’t realized the significance of Julian’s comment. “Let’s say he dumped her body at my place, where did he kill her?”

  “Maybe Hester made it home after all. He could have killed her, stashed her body in the trunk of her car, and driven back to Vista Beach in the wee hours of the morning. But he’d have to get back to Malibu somehow.”