1 Portrait of a Gossip (4 page)

At least, not criminal behavior.

“Can they help it, the artists, or are they just…?” He
sounded frustrated as he searched for a word, and she supposed that for a
non-artistic person, dealing with the creative and sometimes egotistical personalities
of an artists’ colony could be frustrating, especially when they shared no
common cultural denominator.

“Born weirdoes?” Juliet suggested and then shrugged. “I
wouldn’t know. I’m one of the craftsmen who like to eat.”

“And remembers to feed the neighbor’s cat
even if she has to leave her own work half-done.”

So he had looked at her painting and identified the work as
hers and that it was unfinished. He wasn’t a complete cultural heathen then.

Twin black shadows flickered overhead. Juliet glanced up and
almost fell on her face. Garret’s hand saved her.

“What is it?” he asked.

“A pair of ravens.
I think they are
following the cat.”

“They’d have to be crazy to take on that orange puma. He’s
got to weigh at least twenty pounds.”

“Courage in numbers,” she said back. “And some of that is
fur.”
Only not that much.
Marley was pretty heavy.
“Still, I hope you are right. Marley wouldn’t enjoy becoming a completely
indoor cat.”

“Any thoughts you’d like to share about Harvey Allen? You’ve
never been in to complain about him. Did he get under your skin like he did
everyone else?”

“No, not really.
Though I am sure
he would have gotten around to it eventually.
Or tried.”

“He wouldn’t have succeeded?” Garret asked. They were both
breathing a little harder as the trail steepened. They also had to drop back to
walking single file. Juliet’s calves began to protest the second steep climb.

“I spent most of my career working for some of the most
exasperating, egotistical men on earth. I am not certain that Harvey Allen was
in their league.” Though she wasn’t entirely certain that he wasn’t and that
bothered her. “I will be interested to hear what Dr.
Hyder
says about time of death.”

“What do you think he’ll say?” Garret asked curiously.

He was being so
unpoliceman
-like
that Juliet began to suspect that he had done more than surface digging about
her past. If he had searched at all he would have run into her old career. She
wasn’t living a secret existence in deep cover, just not dragging her old life
behind her.

And maybe he realized that he was going to need a guide and
interpreter because his suspects were such
rara
avises
,
and she seemed like the most
normal of the inmates.

“Well, time of death was definitely sometime before the
storm which rolled in around four o’clock. But not much before,” she said.

“Your reasoning?”

“The wasps—you call them meat bees—hadn’t gotten at him. And
he would have taken down the mike before it started to rain even if he were
listening to something fascinating.”

Garret declined to discuss the wasps, which suited Juliet.
She had watched them strip a dead blue jay of meat in under an hour.

“You don’t think he tried for the microphone, maybe after it
started to rain, and that’s how it got broken? Things would have been slippery
on that roof.”

“No,” she said simply. “He may have gone outside to remove
the microphone and had the killer sneak up on him. But the mike was expensive,
not something picked up at the local electronics store. He would have been
careful with it and not left taking it down to the last minute. Also, he was
tall. He didn’t need to get on the roof to retrieve it.”

They climbed in silence for a while, the sheriff
occasionally taking her arm when the way got rough. Her flat ballet slippers
were less than ideal for the uneven ground. She should have gone back to her
bungalow and swapped them for sneakers.

“How would someone know he had it?” Garret asked.

Juliet was sure that he had already reasoned this through
but for some reason wanted her confirmation of his theory.

“Anyone with binoculars could have seen him putting it up.
Anyone in the nearby bushes could have seen too. There’s a place near the trail
where someone had been sitting. Or he might have told someone outright that he
had recordings of something they said.”

“Was Harvey Allen that dumb?”

“Yes—well, maybe not dumb. But he’s made a career out of
blackmailing and spying on people. It is possible that he had gotten cocky and
didn’t judge the difference between a movie star’s annoyance with the paparazzi
and a high-strung artist’s reaction to a threat to their life or career. He was
also inclined to let his contempt for his neighbors show. He seemed to think
that distracted artist was the same thing as feebleminded and weak-willed.”

“And you’re sure it was an artist who killed him?”

“Or craftsman.
Pretty sure.
No one
could have gotten into or out of the compound after the storm started. I tried
and ended up with a car full of mud.” Juliet pushed her glasses up her nose.
Perspiration was making them slip. “We didn’t have any visitors who came by car
yesterday,
and only a grocery delivery in the morning.
At least I am unaware of any other vehicles entering the compound. Robbie Sykes
will be able to tell you about that.”

“He says no, though he did have to make a brief trip into
town.”

“So that leaves people on foot. We don’t get too many of
those since the road up the hill is steep and the other route involves ropes
and pitons.”

Garret nodded.

“So the death was premeditated, would you say?”

Juliet thought about it.

“Perhaps not in the traditional sense of
the word.
I mean, the killer may have thought for some time that Harvey
should die, but I think this was a crime of opportunity. An opening presented
itself and the killer said yes to temptation. Frankly, I suspect that if we
hadn’t had that storm which would have made this trail into a seasonal stream,
Harvey would have ended up in the river too and you would be investigating a disappearance.”

Garret grunted. It could have meant anything, but Juliet
chose to interpret it as agreement rather than mere acknowledgment.

“You don’t seem very disturbed about things—for which I am
grateful,” he added swiftly. “There is enough agitation around here.”

“Well, I am and I’m not. The killer should be found. We
can’t be safe with a neighbor who is resorting to homicide to do away with what
annoys them. But I do not feel that I am in jeopardy.
At
least not yet.
Hence the lack of hysteria.”

“Frankly I can’t picture you being hysterical no matter what
the provocation.”

Juliet was flattered. She had always prided herself on the
ability to remain calm and level-headed in a crisis.

When they reached the gate Juliet took a seat on a
convenient stone near a sunbathing lizard and let the sheriff do the police
thing alone. While he examined the lock she closed her eyes and listened to the
finches
twitter, their voices slightly louder than the
blood rushing in her ears. After a moment she searched her pockets and came up
with a rubber band. Her hair was just long enough to put in a short ponytail.

Around her there were poppies sheltering in the rock’s
deeper fissures. Most had been destroyed by the storm, stripped of petals or
buried under leaf-wrack, but a few remained. Vivid, almost opalescent when
touched by the sun, they made Juliet wish that she had her paints with her. In
spite of her words to Garret, she was enough of an artist to want to capture
the moment.

With the sky so clear and the wind so still, she was able to
hear noises from below. Carrie Simmons’ shrill voice was easy enough to make
out. Apparently murder was more interesting than rubber stamps, though she was still
lamenting the time away from her drafting table.

It took a moment to place the other voice that answered.
Asher Temple sounded annoyed. Carrie had probably woken his mother, Elizabeth,
who napped around eleven each morning.

Artists came in two types: those who were certain that death—even
murder—couldn’t be as important as their work and therefore didn’t concern
them.
And those who knew—because their work was so important—that
the death had to somehow be all about them and their work.
Carrie was
the latter and Asher the former. Unlike Raphael, who was an obvious genius, Asher
painted the kinds of things that needed an art dealer’s intercession to make them
accessible to collector-investors. There was no hope and no desire to be
appealing to the masses who liked pictures of cute animals and English cottages
and gardens. His only humanizing feature was his devotion to his
wheelchair-bound mother, a lovely lady who hand carved every frame that graced
her son’s work. She also did wonderful quilts, made from scraps so small that
they looked like impressionist paintings.

Juliet also heard Mickey’s voice saying something soothing
and wondered if the potter was able to see the killing as being part of God’s
wondrous plan. Of course, perhaps it was. Maybe Harvey had been called home and
the murderer was only the Lord’s chosen machine.

Mickey was tall enough to have reached the microphone with
only the smallest of hops, she thought abruptly. And he was strong enough to
move the body to the Adirondack chair, supposing the shooting had happened
elsewhere. He could also, barring the rain turning the path into a river, have
carried the body to the gate.

Rose
Campion, his sometimes
companion, was the other extreme. She was almost taller sitting down than
standing. She probably couldn’t have reached the roof even with the aid of the
nearby bench. Certainly she couldn’t have moved the body even if she had had
the inclination.

The sheriff very bravely climbed the gate and peered over
the top. The eroding ledge was about three feet wide at the gate but narrowed
on either side. The views were spectacular, but not great for anyone with
vertigo. However, it required very little in the way of muscle to fling a
portable computer over the gate and into the river, which was still loud enough
to reveal its current state of post-storm torrent.

Juliet’s stomach rumbled and she stood up. They were wasting
time up there. The killer was waiting down below.

It was still early enough for there to be a few sharp
shadows that were charcoal black against the pale rock, but the shade was
shrinking and she was beginning to think earnestly about what foodstuffs were
in her kitchen.
And then about getting back to work.
She had a commission and did not want to be late with it. One of her other
commercial jobs was supplying illustrations for seed catalogues which they used
to demonstrate garden layouts that they didn’t have time or space to do in their
own test gardens. This one was for a deer-resistant herb garden.

“Look, Sheriff—”

“Call me Taylor.
Or Garret.”
The
sheriff climbed back down from the gate.

“Taylor, I’d love to talk some more about the case, but I’m
about to faint from hunger.” Juliet jumped as something twined about her
ankles. Marley had joined them. Had he intuited that she was ready to eat
lunch? “Marley says it’s time for tuna. If you like, come have lunch with us.”

Garret hesitated.

“I’d like to, but I need to get started searching the
bungalow before my deputy leaves. I don’t feel confident that locking the door
would make it secure.”

“You’re right. It wouldn’t. Since every key opens every
lock, most of us don’t bother locking our doors.”

“I figured.”

“So, I’ll bring you a sandwich instead.” He looked surprised
and Juliet wondered if she had been too abrupt. That sometimes happened when
she was thinking of other things.
“Unless you don’t like
tuna.”

She hoped he wouldn’t decide to send her away. She needed to
find the killer and get him out of her Eden but, and here she was sharply
honest with herself, she was also doing this because maybe she was just the
tiniest bit bored and the hunt was entertaining.

“Uh—I do. Thank you, but—”

“The Bible tells us to
be
not forgetful to entertain strangers
.”

“Well….”

“I didn’t kill Harvey so you needn’t worry about breaking
bread with a murderer.”

“I wasn’t actually worried about that. I was thinking more
of appearances. Technically I have to consider you a suspect.” This was said
apologetically.

“Oh, well, if you would rather go without….”

“No. A sandwich would be good. I think I’m going to be here
for a while. I’ll just have to risk people saying I succumbed to a bribe.”

She smiled.

“My tuna isn’t that good.”

“Why did you leave your old job?” Garret asked when they
reached Harvey’s bungalow and caught their breath. The body was gone, so
either the deputy and
the doctor had managed, or Robbie
Sykes had been pressed into service as a stretcher bearer.

“You know about my old job?”

“Only a bit.
The records are pretty
murky and I was told to stop looking.”

Juliet digested this and decided not to ask why he had
investigated her.

“It was time to get out.
While I still
knew enough of the real world to fit back into it.”

There had also been the matter of her one great failure.
Juliet usually could see over horizons, but she didn’t notice what was under
her nose, that they had a traitor in their office. It didn’t matter that no one
else saw it either, not even the security apparatus that was supposed to be
looking for spies. And someone had died when the spy panicked and bolted with
some top-secret files. She hadn’t seen it coming and felt that she should have.
Would have, if she hadn’t grown so complacent and sure that her life in the
think tank was safe and those around her were all fighting the good fight.