A Palette for Murder (16 page)

“You can be—frustrating.”

“My Scottish friend, George Sutherland, says the same thing. I’ll keep my eye open for your painting. And you can do the same where my sketch is concerned.”

“I almost forgot. A friend told me your sketch is now being offered for three thousand.”

“Three thousand?” I couldn’t help but laugh loudly.

“Name value. Dinner tonight?”

“Love it. Call me later.”

I went to my room and sat in an overstuffed chair by the window. I needed a few minutes of relax time. The trauma of that morning was catching up with me, and I didn’t want to allow that. If I totally let down, I was afraid I’d spend the rest of the day and night with nothing on my brain but the gruesome vision of Jo Ann Forbes wedged between the bed and wall of Hans Muller’s cottage.

I freshened up and returned to where Fred Mayer waited in his cab. I’d made a decision on my way down. I wanted to touch base with Jo Ann Forbes’s patents—if I could find them. Police Chief Cramer said they were on their way to the Hamptons from Baltimore.

“Next stop?” asked Mayer.

“Police headquarters, if you don’t mind.”

“Thought you were hungry.”

“Hungry for information,” I said. “I’ll eat after police headquarters. Have a good restaurant to recommend?”

“I will by the time you’re ready, Mrs. Fletcher.”

Chief Cramer wasn’t at headquarters, but I was introduced to his deputy, a young woman named Gloria Watson, sharply dressed in her close-fitting brown uniform, her short-cropped red hair as precise as Chief Cramer’s.

“I was with the chief earlier,” I told her.

“I know, Mrs. Fletcher. He told me. Can I help you?”

“I was wondering whether Ms. Forbes’s parents have arrived yet. Chief Cramer said they were coming from Baltimore.”

“They got here only ten minutes ago. They flew to Kennedy, and took a private plane out of there to Spadaro’s Airport.”

“They must be devastated.”

“Surprisingly calm, Mrs. Fletcher. Maybe that’s not the right word. But they are in control of themselves. They mentioned you.”

“They did?”

“Yes. Evidently, Ms. Forbes kept in very close touch with them. She told them during phone conversations that she’d met you and was—”

A door opened and a middle-aged man and woman looked at us. Deputy Watson glanced at me, then at them. She seemed unsure of what to do.

The woman, who was short and chunky, locked eyes with me. “Jessica Fletcher?”

“Yes.”

“Mrs. Fletcher, this is Mr. and Mrs. Forbes,” Deputy Watson said.

“I’m so sorry about your daughter,” I said.

Mrs. Forbes tried to force a smile, which immediately degenerated into tears. Her considerably taller husband put his arm around her. I fought back my own tears.

“This is not the time for us to meet,” I said. “Perhaps another time.”

“No,” Mrs. Forbes said. “Please, stay, Mrs. Fletcher. Jo Ann was thrilled at meeting you. She said you and she were becoming friends, and that you’d offered to help her with her stories.”

“That’s true,” I said. “She was a lovely young woman, and I suspect a very good reporter.”

Mrs. Forbes swallowed hard, again supported by her husband.

“Would you like to sit?” Deputy Watson asked, indicating the room in which Mr. and Mrs. Forbes stood. I looked past them to see a good-size room containing a conference table and chairs.

“Please,” said Mr. Forbes. He extended his hand. “I’m Bob Forbes. This is my wife, Mary.”

Deputy Watson closed the door behind us as we took seats at the pine table. I was uncomfortable; what can you say except “I’m sorry for your loss”?

But Bob Forbes put me at ease by saying, “I know how awkward this must be for you, Mrs. Fletcher.”

What a remarkable man, I thought. Jo Ann Forbes came from good stock. “Yes,” I said. “It is. Please call me Jessica.”

“I suppose you can say that Mary and I are pragmatists. That doesn’t alleviate the pain of losing Jo Ann, especially considering the violent nature of her death. But she taught us a lot.”

“She taught you?”

“Yes. She had this fatalistic view of life. You take chances, you take risks. And if you’re not lucky, you can get hurt.”

“Quite a sophisticated philosophy,” I said.

“She was a very sophisticated young woman,” said Mary Forbes. “She had such ambition as a journalist. She saw the art story she was working on as a possible launching pad to a job with a big newspaper, maybe even television. She always said she wanted to work on
Sixty Minutes.”
She wept softly and her husband covered her hand on the table with one of his.

“Have you heard anything, Mrs. Fletcher, about who might have murdered our daughter?” Bob Forbes asked.

“Sorry to say that I haven’t. You mentioned a story Jo Ann was working on about art.”

“Yes,” her father replied. “The one she said you were helping her with.”

“I’m afraid not much of a story has developed with that,” I said. “It had to do with a young model’s death from natural causes.”

“She told us that. But she said you weren’t convinced that it was natural causes.”

“Just a hunch on my part, Mr. Forbes.”

“Bob. And Mary.”

“Of course. Bob, was Jo Ann looking into that story beyond the model’s death?”

His eyebrows went up. “Yes. I assumed you knew.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know more than what I’ve told you, except my question about the model’s death—her name was Miki Dorsey—seems to be on the minds of a few other people.”

“The missing painting.” Mary Forbes said it so softly and flatly that I barely heard her.

“What missing painting?”

“The one you and Jo Ann were trying to find.”

“Oh,
that
missing art. My sketch.”

“Your sketch?” said Bob Forbes. “Jo Ann didn’t say anything about that. She said she’d learned that paintings by some artist here in the Hamptons—his name was Leopard or Leonard, or something like that—were missing.”

“Leopold,” I offered. “Joshua Leopold.”

“That’s it.”

“Was your daughter talking about a painting allegedly missing from the dead model’s room?”

Bob and Mary Forbes looked at each other, their expressions quizzical. Mary Forbes answered: “No, I don’t think so. Jo Ann said—what term did she use, Bob?—she said there was an underground market for this artist’s paintings. People were stealing them. Wasn’t that what Jo Ann said, Bob?”

“Exactly.” He smiled. “Of course, when Jo Ann was excited about something she was working on, she talked fast. Full of enthusiasm. She—”

Mary Forbes broke down. Bob Forbes wrapped his arms around her and held her tight.

I was glad when the door behind me opened and Deputy Watson, along with Chief Cramer, entered the room.

“Hello again, Mrs. Fletcher,” Cramer said.

I stood. “I was just leaving, Chief.”

Bob Forbes stood, too. “Any word on who did this, Chief Cramer?”

“Not yet, but we’ll get to the bottom of it, Mr. Forbes. I’m afraid you’re going to have to identify your daughter’s body. I know, I know. It’s a brutal thing to go through. But it must be done.”

“I’ll go,” Bob Forbes said. “You stay here, Mary, with Mrs. Fletcher. If you don’t mind staying a little longer,” he said to me.

“Of course I’ll stay,” I said.

But Mary Forbes got up, took her husband’s hand, and looked up into his eyes. “We’ll go together,” she said.

Deputy Gloria Watson and I were alone in the room.

“Have the police been to Ms. Forbes’s house yet?” I asked.

“Yes. We sent a squad immediately. They’ve secured it. Detectives are there now going through her things.”

“Where did she live?”

Watson opened a file folder and read Jo Ann’s address.

“When will her parents be allowed to go there to gather her belongings?”

“Up to the chief. Whenever the detectives are finished.”

“I’d like to go there.”

“You would?”

“Yes. Do you think Chief Cramer would allow me?”

“It’s up to him.”

“And Mr. and Mrs. Forbes.”

“Ask them.”

The return of Bob and Mary Forbes and Chief Cramer was wrenching. Mary sobbed, and her husband, tears running down his cheeks, tried to comfort her. I liked these folks. They were decent and caring, and strong. Good people, like many of my friends and neighbors back in Cabot Cove.

Eventually, without anyone saying anything, they regained their composure and asked if they could go to their daughter’s house. Chief Cramer went to his office, returned minutes later to say, “The detectives have finished up there. We can go now if you’d like.”

I was poised to ask whether I could accompany them, but Bob Forbes saved me the question. “Would you like to come with us, Mrs. Fletcher? Jessica?”

“Yes.”

Chief Cramer and his deputy, Gloria Watson, transported Bob and Mary Forbes in his marked car. Fred Mayer and I followed by Mayer’s taxi.

Jo Ann Forbes had lived in a pretty pale green house a few blocks from one of the bays. It was a small home, but obviously well kept. The postage-stamp patch of lawn in front was manicured, a virtual putting green. The paint was fresh, as were flowers in window boxes and in hanging baskets.

We stood just inside yellow crime-scene tape that had been strung. A uniformed officer stood at the front door.

“Had you been here before?” I asked.

“Yes,” Jo Ann’s father answered. “Right after Jo Ann took the job at
Dan’s Papers
and moved to the Hamptons. We helped her get settled.”

“And we visited two weeks ago,” said Mary Forbes. “We had such fun.”

“Let’s go in,” Cramer said, sensing that to stand there talking about the deceased girl would only generate more sorrow and tears.

The inside was as pristine as the outside. The wood floors glistened with polish. Starched white curtains fluttered in a breeze through open windows. The furniture was old, and comfortable. Everything was as neat as a pin. I wasn’t surprised.

“My detectives didn’t find anything they felt would help shed light on what happened,” Chief Cramer said. “Feel free to go where you want.”

Jo Ann’s parents stood in the middle of the living room, as though unsure what to do and which direction to take. I felt it best to leave them alone, and slowly wandered into the kitchen. Clean dishes were in a dish drainer on the sink. A large bird feeder just outside a window was doing a landslide business.

I peeked into a small room that served as a pantry. A door from it led to the backyard. Mr. and Mrs. Forbes joined me.

“Everything’s so neat,” I said.

“That’s the way she was,” said her father.

I left them and went up a narrow set of stairs to the second floor, where two bedrooms were located. One had been turned into an office. I stepped into it and perused what was on her desk. Nothing caught my eye. I sat and opened the right-hand drawer, which had been configured to accommodate hanging files. They were segregated into three sections, each using different-color folders. Those in front were red; the middle section was yellow; the section to the back of the drawer contained green folders. Jo Ann Forbes, among other attributes, was a highly organized young lady.

I started through the front red files. They seemed to be reserved for personal matters: papers regarding her 1994 Mazda automobile, health insurance, investments, taxes for the previous year, credit-card receipts, personal receipts.

The yellow files in the middle held folders marked “Research.” Jo Ann obviously had clipped items from newspapers and magazines that she felt might be grist for future stories under her byline. There were also numerous scraps of paper on which she’d noted her reactions to the clippings, as well as independent story ideas that had occurred to her.

The rear section of the drawer, with its green files, was the repository for Jo Ann’s files on stories she was working on for
Dan’s Papers,
along with other files containing material relating to potential stories based upon information she’d gathered in the Hamptons. One hanging file folder tab immediately caught my eye: LEOPOLD, JOSHUA.

I was in the process of pulling out that folder when Chief Cramer and Deputy Watson entered the room. “Find anything interesting, Mrs. Fletcher?” Cramer asked.

“Not really. She was so well organized. I was just perusing some of her files.”

“And?”

“She kept this file on the artist, Joshua Leopold. I was just about to see what was in it.”

Mr. and Mrs. Forbes came up the stairs and joined us. Seeing them reminded me that I was overstepping my bounds, poking through their deceased daughters’s papers and files. I asked them directly if they minded my doing that.

“Not at all,” Bob Forbes replied. “Jo Ann told us during our last phone conversation that she had tremendous faith in you. So do we. Please feel free to look at anything you’d like.”

“Thank you,” I said. My admiration for them grew with each passing minute.

Deputy Watson went with the Forbeses to Jo Ann’s bedroom. Chief Cramer pulled up a chair next to me as I opened the folder marked LEOPOLD, JOSHUA, and began reviewing what was in it, handing each sheet to the chief as I finished reading it. We’d gone through a half-dozen sheets of paper when I started reading the seventh, and let out a small, involuntary grunt.

Cramer said, “Find something, Mrs. Fletcher?”

I finished reading, then handed it to him. “I find this fascinating,” I said.

He frowned as he read. When he was through, he handed the paper back, saying, “I see what you mean.”

The paper, page one of three, contained Jo Ann’s notes on what she’d uncovered about Leopold’s career, his output—which, according to her, was prodigious—and some observations on his sudden death a year ago, allegedly because of a heart attack.