The Muse (Interracial Mystery Romance) (Dark Art Mystery Series) (3 page)

“Of course.”
I’ll just have to forge some
.

“Okay, fine.” Hex shook the grass and dirt off his overalls. “Prove that I’m wrong.”

“Well. The movie is
The Things We Can’t Forget
.” I knew I was right when Hex sucked his teeth. “The person who said the line was a kid, played by the child actor Dale Cataway, who—”

“Just get on with it. How am I wrong?”

I giggled. “Well, when he says the line, he’s surrounded by his other friends who are also kids. They’re looking down a deep well where this man had climbed into it, to get the kids’

baseball. Earlier, all of the kids’ parents told them to not play baseball in this far off field, but they did it anyway. So their only ball falls into the well. This wandering homeless guy climbs an old ladder to get the ball. It broke under him as he tries to climb back up and he falls deep into the well. He’s trapped down there. After a while he screams and screams for them to get help, but the kids refuse because they know their parents will punish them for playing in that field. So the line is actually, ‘Sorry, mister. We ain’t gonna get you no help.’ In the end, they leave him there to die.”

“Let’s go. I would like to get a look at all of you.” Hex spun around and stomped off to the door with the Only Authorized Personnel sign. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew it wore a frown.
Had he even wanted me to be his model or did he just really enjoy playing games?
I hoped for the latter as I followed him into his art studio as Alvarez trailed behind me.

Chapter 2

~Alvarez

Can anything ever go right when I’m gone?

I returned to my family’s castle after a two-day business trip to discover a dead girl slumped between the rows of cabbage and carrots in the back of the vegetable garden. Gray tinted her skin. Rot radiated from her dirt-smudged flesh. Those green eyes stared off in the distance. I didn’t know how long she’d been gone, but it must’ve been a day at least. All of my breakfast spilled out from my mouth and my appetite for the rest of the week left with it. Thank God I’d volunteered myself to pick a few basil leaves for the soup my grandma was making. I made Grandma sit down to take a rest while I went to grab the herbs.

If not, she would’ve found the body and God only knows what she would’ve done.

Probably strip the body for parts.

Lots of her spells required organs. The darker incantations involved human ones. It’s not that she practiced dark arts, but something motivated grandma in these last years to do stronger enchantments that apparently needed human remains. I’d appeased her with weekly deliveries from the morgue that
carried boxes of hearts, livers, and lungs to her cottage beyond the vegetables. Those visits made her happy, yet still she complained once a month, explaining that she needed the organs as fresh as possible. For all I knew, she would’ve gone to the garden, spotted the girl, rushed off to her cottage for an ax, and been hacking at body limbs by the time I had the good sense to go looking for her.

It was stupid of me to think I could leave for two days with nothing major happening.

I called the police immediately and begged for them to give my family some discretion due to our status in the community as well as reminded them of the large sums I’d given to their charities. Several cop cars and official vehicles came through the back entrance where Hex and our other guests never went. Our property was massive. Not many people would have known anything if not for the idiot ambulance driver that drove up to the front. Grandma had said the girl’s name was Brenda. My grandma made an effort to introduce herself to all of Hex’s models and artist friends who stayed on the property with us. We gave any information we had to the police. Once the cops took pictures, interviewed me, and grabbed fingerprints and whatever their crew of men did with plastic gloves and bags, they instructed the EMT to take the body and then they left.

I told that fat bastard to get his vehicle and drive to the back. Did he listen to me? No. He
just puts the girl on a cart and pushed her from the far back of the property all the way to the
entrance. What an idiot. How many people saw? Surely, the servants and guests are gossiping by
now.

Currently a police detective named Mr. White sat in my office, waiting for me to discuss God only knows what. I shoved those thoughts away and battled with focusing on the present problem, Hex and his hiring of yet another new model. I followed them as we entered his art studio.

“Elle, this is where I do my work, which means this is where you’ll be working for most of the summer.” Hex switched on the light.

A blue glow bathed the space. Elle took her time entering the room. Her head moved

from side to side as she drank in all of the wonders of my brother’s imagination—transparent funeral caskets full of torn condom wrappers, painted hypodermic needles dangling from a statue of Mary mother of Jesus, bedazzled lighters stuck on paintings of child nurseries on fire, mountainous sculptures of bodies rotting to the bone, holy crosses dipped in blood, haunting murals done in oil that captivated most viewers’ eyes while taunting their ideas of immortality.

Half of his works got him locked up in jail for obscenity, banned from art galleries in certain countries, and verbally brutalized by every art critic with more love for religion than skill.

My brother’s curse was not that he said so many crude things with art. It was that he had too many vulgar things to say, and most of it no one longed to hear. Nevertheless, his stuff sold all over the world. In the end, no one else could do what he did, and do it so well that you had to love it, even though the deep crevices of your heart yearned to hate it so much.

Grandma always said, “Your brother and you carry curses. Each is different. I know

yours, Al, but I just can’t figure out what his is.”

Whereas Hex replied, “My penis is the curse I carry.”

And though a shadow fell across the kitchen that night, we laughed at his joke and sipped our glasses of wine. Those were the good days, when we lived in a tiny shack in the center of Key West with grandma’s garden, Hex’s dreamy goal of ruling the world with his art, and my sweet memories of being out to sea on US Naval ships as thousands of brilliant stars painted the sky.
If I knew what I realized now, would we ever have left?
The more we bought and spent, the harder my life became.

Who killed this girl and why did they do it on our property? Should I even consider my
family? No. I can’t. I . . . just can’t.

“Your art is amazing.” Elle stopped at a face that was the size of her whole body and carved in black glass with dips of gray and white spots near the eyes and nose. She extended her hand out to it but didn’t touch the smooth surface, as if brushing the few inches of air in front of the piece was enough to satisfy her need. “Why did you choose to carve such a dark-shaded surface instead of forming it from a clear block of glass?”

“Because life isn’t clear.” Hex tied his black-and-white strands into a big ponytail. “It’s polluted and murky.”

She rolled her eyes, but kept her face slanted enough so Hex didn’t catch it. “How can someone who lives in a castle with a huge moat full of koi surrounding it see life in such a sad way?”

“Life is not how I see it. Life simply is what it is. I just represent it the best way I can.”

“I respectfully disagree.” Elle moved on to a watercolor of a gray woman with bushy red hair like our mother. The woman yanked at those bright crimson strands with her fingers and screamed at a pile of dead bodies in front of her. Grandma and I hated this one, so for once Hex didn’t reveal it to the world, yet hung the piece in his studio for only a select few to see.

“Why do you disagree?” Hex leaned his head to the side.

“I don’t see life as so dark. There’s good and bad times. It’s what we choose to see that determines our life.”

“That’s a shocker.”

“Why?” She turned to him.

“What about your very public, dysfunctional relationship with Michael, Mr. Bright Light himself?”

She returned her attention to the works in front of her. Tension creased the edges of her eyes. Her lips transformed from a sweet grin to a straight line that wrapped tightly across her face. “I don’t see how my relationship with Michael reflects on our conversation.”

“There are rumors that Michael threw his Archangel in the trash for others to find and use as they want. I like to think of myself as a finder of treasure and gold in the dumpster of life. If I’m such a dark viewer and I spotted something inspiring in you, then what does that mean about your life?”

Hmmm. I was wondering why Michael would release her from the contract. Now I know.

It ran deeper than art.

Anyone in the art world could recognize that face. If I hadn’t been so busy with a dead girl and cops on my mind, I would’ve realized who she was. In each of Michael’s paintings, those pouting lips craved to be sucked on and kissed. Her eyes whispered promise of pleasure between cool sheets on a hot night. Her pale skin looked so soft I’d been afraid to shake her hand and damage those delicate fingers. And that hair. Even in a bun, it made my length rise for a few seconds, before I calmed myself down. Michael painted a whole series on just those strands—

long luxurious ones, blanketing her taut body in mystery and sensuality so much that any average man would long to cut it off, just to see what lay beneath and sadly to avoid the competition of so many men dreaming of running their fingers through it.

I moved deeper in the shadows so I could get a view of Elle’s facial response without her catching me watching her again. Earlier was absurd. For one second, I slipped my gaze to her plump behind as any normal man would do when walking behind an attractive woman. She caught me and held no shame or disgust on her face, just a matter-of-fact response as she turned back around.

Just another pervert looking at my butt, I bet she thought. She must be used to people
staring at her all the time.

“Are you going to answer the question?” Hex pushed the topic some more.

“I don’t have an answer for you.” She walked through a path of two carved banyan trees.

They connected to each other by the branches, so that the top appeared more like a wooden bridge of leaves than linked trees. Hex never admitted what the piece meant, but I knew the carving depicted our relationship as brothers and even our whole family.

Hex and I had those same bonded banyans tattooed all over our backs, two black trees standing next to each other, a strangling growth of roots built upwards from the soil and bridging out to others while the branches matured toward the ground. Like most banyans, the host tree that started it all was close to death and uncertain of its future.

Those thoughts of the crumbling host tree brought me back to the problem of the dead girl.

Did she kill this girl? Dear God. I hope not. I can’t take anymore. It must’ve been
someone else. It had to be.

The dead girl had been one of the many models for Hex. She’d just completed the poses he needed and was due to leave the property tomorrow.

And instead, someone killed her.

“Besides, life is truly not at the forefront for me,” Hex continued. “Death is my muse. It’s what inspires me.”

Months before all of this, I told him that inviting lots of people to our castle would be dangerous. He said I worried too much. Grandma got between us and threw her special cowrie shells onto the ground. A gray film glazed over her eyes. Hex thought it was some funky trick Grandma knew to make her magic appear real. I wasn’t so sure. He didn’t believe in her religion.

I just didn’t discount it. Regardless, Grandma peered at those shells with murky eyes and prophesized that girls would die over and over again. When I discovered the body this morning, she tossed me that knowing look, the one that screamed, “I told you, boy. I told you, and now the blood is on your hands.”

I have to deal with that police detective before the meeting with the Metropolitan Art
Museum. He’ll need to figure out where the girl’s from so that her family can be notified and
possibly paid for their loss. Not that this could be paid off with money!

A loud and exasperated breath escaped my lips. Both Hex and Elle turned to me. I

covered my mouth with a fist and coughed. “So how much longer is this going to take?”

“Why are you even here?” Hex grabbed a blue sheet from the shelf and carried it to the stage. “You never care about the introductory phase with my models, or really anything when it concerns the art process.”

“Well, now I do.”

“Why?”

Who would kill that poor, young girl?

“You keep hiring women and men and bringing them here.” I leaned on the wall. “Their lives are in our care when they walk on these grounds.”

“What the hell are you talking about? We can afford them walking around here, and I’m inspired by people and the things around me.”

I held up my hand. “I understand that, but we need to limit the models.”

Hex paused. “Why?”

I ignored the question and didn’t want to discuss this any further with Elle around. “How many models are on the property now?”

“Three counting Elle.” Hex gestured for her to come to the stage. “Go ahead and take off your clothes.”

I choked on my own saliva. It was such an out of nowhere reaction that even I was

shocked as well as my brother, who laughed at me while I struggled to get my breath. I never stood in the studio with him when he created his works, especially the nude sessions.

By God, naked women represented the most heightened work of art. I was a man after all, a mature one, but a man nonetheless. I could walk into a room with a bare female laid on the stage and not drool or ogle. But there were just so many minutes of staring at lush breasts adorned with erect nipples and that plump flesh between a woman’s spread thighs before I became aroused and embarrassed us both. I stayed far away from Hex’s models and all the unclothed gatherings he had with them.