Fatal Brushstroke (An Aurora Anderson Mystery Book 1) (9 page)

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.”

“That’s awfully far to go to dump a body. He’d be taking a huge risk. Wait, he wasn’t even in Malibu Monday evening.”

“What do you mean?” Liz said.

“That article in the
View
said he stayed in his condo in town that night.”

“Even better. He killed her in the condo, used her car to transport the body and, afterward, parked it where he knew it would be towed.”

That could have been what happened, Rory thought. But they needed proof to convince the police and standing around talking about it wasn’t going to get them anywhere. Maybe they’d find something here that backed up the theory. “We should get to work. There are fewer supplies in the other room. Let’s start there.”

In the classroom, Liz went through each cabinet, describing each item while Rory wrote down the information. Before long, they’d completed their work in that room and had moved back across the hall where the rest of the supplies were located.

Rory felt a little overwhelmed as she once again surveyed the cabinet-lined room. “I think we’re going to have to split up for this one.” She attached blank inventory forms to the spare clipboard she’d brought with her and handed it to Liz. “You take this side, I’ll take the other.”

They tuned a radio they found to a top 40 station and got to work, taking pictures as necessary, occasionally setting aside supplies to take home with them. Rory found an entire cabinet filled with finished pieces Hester had painted herself, including a tray that had earned her Master Decorative Artist certification. She selected a particularly nice example of Hester’s work to give to Nora. Two hours and a bathroom break later, they’d finished inventorying half the room.

Rory rolled her shoulders and stretched out the fingers of her writing hand. Her clipboard was filled with page after page of inventory forms listing supplies that must have taken Hester years to accumulate. “There’s a lot of stuff here.” She rummaged around in her tote bag for another pen to replace the one that had run out of ink.

“I know and we’re only halfway done.” Liz set her clipboard on the table and sank down onto a nearby chair. “I’m getting hungry.”

Rory opened a cabinet with sliding drawers, relieved to see it wasn’t nearly as full as the others had been. “We can take a lunch break after I finish this one.” She tried pulling out the top drawer but, instead of sliding out smoothly, it came off its runners, spilling its contents all over the hardwood floor. She managed to catch the drawer before it fell down and smashed her toes.

“You okay?” Liz looked at the pads of tracing and palette paper surrounding Rory’s feet. “What happened?”

“Not sure. It just fell out.” Rory lifted the drawer and placed it back on its runners but, when she tried to slide it back in place, it stopped partway as if something were preventing it from going in completely. “I think there’s something stuck behind it.” She took the drawer out and placed it on the floor, then rummaged around in the back of the cabinet. “Got it.” She drew out a picture frame that, judging by the amount of dust on it, must have been in the back for quite a while.

Liz picked up the pads of tracing paper off the floor, stacked them on the table, and walked over to where Rory stood. “What’s that?”

Rory wiped off the front of the five-by-seven frame with the sleeve of her shirt and held it so Liz could see. A much younger Hester cradled a baby in her arms while Julian and a slightly frumpy blonde Rory didn’t recognize looked on. “That must be Kevin in Hester’s arms. Any idea who the other woman is?”

Liz took the picture and examined it more closely. “Don’t know her. Must be a relative.” She handed it back to Rory who propped it up on the table.