The Muse (Interracial Mystery Romance) (Dark Art Mystery Series) (36 page)

The damn garden, and everything around it, is the installation piece.

“The deaths are part of his collection.” I rubbed my eyes with shaking hands.

“And now we know what project the artists he invited to his property were working on.”

Detective White handed me the ball.

“
Ay Dios mio
.” Grandma shook her head. “So Snyder isn’t coming back?”

“Well. . . there is
that
silver lining. We don’t have an evil ghost haunting and killing people on the property.” I handed the camera back to Detective White. “You told me that some of these women committed suicide, right?”

“Yes. At least three of the five. Another one was diagnosed with cancer.”

“Which meant she could’ve known she was dying and decided to kill herself,” I guessed.

“So that gives us four people who may have been willing to commit suicide. They were artists who hung around Hex, which means they’re probably not fully sane and have an abnormal dedication to the creation of art.”

Detective White nodded. “I do remember one of the three recent victims attempted

suicide long ago. While she hung by her neck, she tried to paint everything she saw. That’s an abnormal dedication for sure.”

I rubbed my eyes. “This is too much for me. We need a list of the remaining artists that Hex has here. Grandma, could you call Reece? She would know where everything is. Knowing her, she has all the names memorized. Once we get these people, we need to find them and make sure there is a sort of suicide watch on them. It shouldn’t be too difficult.”

“There’s no need to call Reece. I know who they all are. Since everyone else left I made it my job to know everyone’s name who stayed. Hex has them all on the second level of the east wing. There’s only seventeen of them left.”

“Grandma, have the servants round them all up and keep them in the sitting area below.

Nobody else is killing themselves on our property.”

“We should have people guarding all the areas where Hex has cameras,” Detective White offered. “Plus, it is anywhere there are cameras. The last three suicides happened inside the house and ended in your office.”

“Yeah.” I clenched my hands into fists. “I’ll have to remember to thank Hex for that.”

“Now that we may have an idea of what your brother is planning, do you think you can anticipate his next moves?” Detective White asked.

“I would be a fool to say a confident yes, but I could try. I’ll just need time to think about this.”

“In the meantime, I’m having the penis in the jar analyzed to see who it could belong too.”

Grandma and I exchanged glances.

“What?” The detective looked at both of us.

Grandma handled it before I had to. “It is probably Hex’s penis. He’s always saying he’s cursed by it.”

“Why did he think he was cursed?”

Grandma and I shrugged.

“Let’s start with rounding everyone up and questioning them.” I walked away from the damn model that had played a part in the most horrific thing my brother had ever done in his life.

Why would you allow them to die, and right here around us all? Did you know I would
find the first girl? Did you even care, or was it just the art to you, the creation process that
fueled your madness?

And it was madness, all of it. Part of me hoped I was wrong with my guess, that Hex wasn’t a part of this, but deep inside I knew I was either correct or very close. Hex and his damn suicidal artists were involved in stirring up our lives, wasting the police’s time, and shoving the fear of God into everyone on the property. And what was it all for, art?

What the hell was his muse? Death, heartache, or chaos? If one more person dies, I’m
done with him.

It hurt to even think the last statement. It killed me to have that thought in my heart, but the urge to leave him thrummed through me all the same. Guilt pulsed through my veins, but I knocked it all away. How many years had I spent, trying to make up for what my mother and stepfather had done to him? How much of my energy did I exhaust in these years so that I can forgive myself for leaving Hex by himself with that mad pair?

If you’re behind this, Hex, then we’re even. I owe you nothing else.

It took thirty minutes to gather Hex’s remaining artists and only one minute to realize that five women were missing. With tight-lipped, neutral expressions, they held hands with each other as if they were hippies who were part of a peaceful movement to eradicate discrimination.

They all wore black boots, jogging pants, and huge watches on their wrists. When I looked at the surface of the watches, I saw that none of them had hands to tell the time.
How symbolic. Time
doesn’t matter to you all.
None of them met my gaze, none dared. Perhaps they noticed the rage on my face or the dare in my eyes for one of them to say the wrong thing. I longed to punch the men and scream at the women.

You just let five of your friends die!

“So no one knows where they are?” I paced back in forth in front of the depraved co-conspirators. They knew exactly where the women were. They knew it and stood right there refusing to sit down or say anything more than yes or no.

You trained them well, Hex.

“If these women die,” Detective White took over, “then all of you are accomplices to murder.”

One shrugged. The rest looked away.

My temper left me. “Is the art really that important?”

“Calm down, Al.” Grandma carried a tray of fruit punch with cut out pieces of cheese and sliced deli meat on a wooden plate. Anytime in the past I would have taken the tray away and escorted her back to her cottage. Grandma holding food wasn’t a good combination. Even when I was a young kid and stayed with her during the summers, her guests never ate or drink from her house. At parties, the treats remained on the table untouched.

“Is anybody thirsty or hungry?” She gave them a warm smile that chilled me.

“No, thank you,” they all said one by one.

Hex prepared for Grandma, too?

“Are you sure?” She walked in front of them again.

They shook their heads.

Detective White exhaled. “Then we’re going to have to take everybody down for

questioning.”

They left with no hesitation or dispute, departed from the castle, and took their time getting in police cars. Detective White took them away. Thankfully, he left more of his men just in case I needed them. Although now that we knew these deaths were suicides rather than a deranged serial killer, the guards and White’s men relaxed. Many chatted about sports. Others leaned on trees smoking their cigarettes or glancing every few minutes at their phones. This had turned into a vacation for them, where for me I’d been shoved into a pool of insanity with no option of swimming through the murky liquid.

Where would the last women kill themselves?

I considered where the others had died. Two committed suicide in Grandma’s garden.

Why? Was it the easiest place to have them do it, or were you trying to tell us something?

Does this installation have something to do with us, Hex?

The third group must’ve attached themselves to wires or Hex had done it himself. Once they died, the wires carried them throughout the castle where they ended in my office. I’d barely ever left my office until Elle came. He probably saw me run off with her and figured it was the best time to put them in there.
So you put the dead girls in a place where you knew Grandma and
I would discover them? Why? Why did we have to find them? I guess the answer is, who else
could’ve found them?
Most of his artists were part of the whole charade. The rest were maybe distractions. Or maybe I was focused on the wrong thing. Perhaps, he needed his family to discover the bodies.
Why?
One thing Hex loved to stress about was how important life was, how we all needed to take it seriously and not waste our lives away doing tedious tasks. If I went with his thinking, then I completely understood why he would have the three girls in my office. He figured I worked too hard and didn’t spend enough time enjoying my life. Meanwhile, Grandma had been obsessed with lifting the curse from our family ever since we started taking care of Hex. She’d never dated or talked to her friends. It was all about the curse and keeping the evil spirits away from Dayanara.

You wanted us to see death. Look it right in the eye and realize that life was precious.

I concentrated on my theory of Hex wanting the family to find the dead women.

“What are you thinking about?” Grandma set the tray of food on the table.

“Dayanara.” I almost grabbed one of the cubes of cheese. “Did you put something in the food?”

“Just a little truth serum.”

I placed my hand in my pocket. “Then throw that stuff away. I don’t need anyone else being sick around here.”

“Speaking of the bad man, did he wake up?”

“I don’t know or care.”

“Why are you thinking about Dayanara?”

“I think Hex wanted us to find the dead women. He wanted you, me, and Dayanara to see them and somehow come to the conclusion that we should value our lives.”

Grandma snorted. “We value our lives.”

“We value the family and keeping all of our heads above water, but we don’t value it the way Hex wants us to. We don’t take the time to breathe it all in.”

Grandma rolled her eyes. “He could have just said so. Instead he puts dead girls in my garden.”

At the mention of her garden, I considered the fact that it had rotted. “Why was your garden destroyed? Do you really think it was the gods?”

“No.” She waved me away. “I spilled chemicals all over the area. It’s bad luck to grow fruits and vegetables where someone died on the soil. It needs to be burned and prayed over before the soil is fit to bear fruit again.”

“So you figured you could kill two birds with one stone?”

“Yes. Burn everything with my liquids. Tell you and Hex the gods did it so you both would finally listen to me for once.”

“Do you realize that your meddling had us running around on a goose chase?”

She raised her hands in the air. “Don’t blame me. I didn’t tell women to kill themselves here. I only work with the cards I’m dealt. Besides, all of this discussion started because you were thinking about Dayanara.”

“Yes. I think Hex was going to have the last five women be discovered by Dayanara.

Granted, she isn’t there right now, but he could have never guessed that part. Plus, he figured out a way to mess with the security cameras before. I’m sure he could’ve done something to Dayanara’s cameras.” I headed for the staircase. “Could you have some guards rush upstairs for me?”

“Al, I’m coming too.”

“Fine, but come with the guards, and don’t forget to get rid of that poisoned cheese and meat.”

“It’s not poisoned. It—”

“Needs to go in the trash.” I raced up the first flight of stairs, heading to the attic floor where I hoped to find five women still alive.

Chapter 29

~Elle

We watched it all unfold on Hex’s cameras. Alvarez figured everything out and each time he came closer to a clue, Hex beamed with pride. It all would’ve been so adorable and breathtaking if not for me being trapped in a smelly metal room and Alvarez rushing to the attic where, on the third television screen, five women lay on the floor. The women had gone up there an hour earlier, right when Hex had walked me back to the studio to talk. The whole time Hex knew they would be heading to the attic while we strolled in the opposite direction. A month ago, Hex had gotten one of his video artists a security job where he managed the cameras.

They’d been jamming and messing with them for the past hour.

I’d watched the girls die, one by one. They lay next to each other, murmuring nothing, not words or a last prayer. They just gave each other a knowing look and minute by minute life left them. Hex watched with an unnerving fascination. It was like he was addicted to it. He even went as far as zooming the cameras in to each of their eyes.

That was the worst part.

I couldn’t look away. The humane part of me said,
close your own eyes, turn around, and
give these women peace
. The darker side kept my gaze on the women, searching for death to make its appearance known.

It reminded me of when I was a teenager and my cousin had a baby. I watched her a few times when my cousin worked. I remember looking into the tiny girl’s eyes and seeing God curved around her pupils. Innocence and purity flickered within the child’s irises.

“This must be what it feels like to see God,” I’d said out loud to the child and she smiled, probably seeing God all around her and confirming the truth for us both.

That was the only time in my life I’d witnessed the true power of God. Until the moment I watched these girls die. I could see the essence of themselves slip away, but it wasn’t horrific.

It was. . . hauntingly beautiful. Peaceful, even.

I didn’t like that I found their deaths enchanting.

How sick did that make me?

“When Alvarez walks into my mother’s old bedroom to find the bodies, then the locks in this room should work as well as the phone.” Hex’s words interrupted my thoughts as he grabbed a water bottle with his name written on the surface and drank it. We’d found some pain medicine and since then he’d stopped complaining about his hurts. However, I was certain he’d broken something. “My man in the video room will turn on the operating system down here to make everything work.”

“So what if Alvarez was the one trapped in here, then when would the guy have pressed the button?”

“Whenever anybody found the girls.”

“But you
did
want your family to discover the bodies, right?”

“Yes. Just like Alvarez said. They needed to be shocked into living. What better way to shock them, but with a corpse?”

“There are hundreds of ways to shock people, but I doubt you would have had it any