Wall-To-Wall Dead (34 page)

“So you saw the painting?” Derek asked when I was back in Waterfield, inside Aunt Inga’s house, with my feet on the living room table and the laptop in my lap and Mischa curled up between Derek and me on the sofa.

I nodded. “With my own eyes. He had it in a pizza box. It isn’t very big.”

“The
Mona Lisa
is only about twenty by thirty inches,” Derek said. “I saw it when I did that exchange year in France.”

I glanced over at him, where he was sitting next to me on the couch. “Surely you’re not comparing the
Mona Lisa
to the
Madonna
?”

“Only the size. I haven’t seen it, or even seen a picture of it.”

“Here you go.” I’d only just finished pulling the information up on the computer screen, and now I handed him the laptop.

He was silent for a moment after receiving it. “Huh.”

“Yes?”

“It’s not as bad as I thought. The colors are nice.”

I slanted a sideways look at the screen. They were, sort of.

“And it’s obviously a portrait.”

“Obviously?”

“Face,” Derek said, circling the oval with two fingers, “lips, hair. Or halo.”

“If you say so.” I took the computer back from him to manipulate the keys. “Your average medium pizza is twelve inches across and has eight slices, right? So this couldn’t be any bigger than twelve inches to a side. Probably less. That’s small for a painting.”

“Maybe it was a copy,” Derek suggested.

It could have been. I hadn’t been close enough to get a good look. However—“If it wasn’t the real thing, why
would he want to get rid of it? He could just say it was a copy.”

I shook my head. “Here we go. Yes, this says the
Madonna
was only twelve by nine. Barely bigger than your average sheet of copy paper.”

“I called Wayne,” Derek said, “and told him about it. He said he’d get a warrant and go out to Brunswick in the morning.”

“Will he let us go with him? I’d like to see if I’m right. If it’s a copy, I’ll feel really stupid.”

“Like you said,” Derek said, “if it was a copy, why’d he bother to move it? He must have taken it out of the gallery before it burned. Maybe he set the fire. Or maybe it’s some kind of insurance fraud. Maybe all the paintings were removed and then the place was torched. And the
Madonna
was Maurits’s payment for facilitating the fraud. He seemed very attached to it.”

He had. Right down to risking a peek at it in the parking lot within view of the other condos. Maybe he’d done the same thing when he brought it home five years ago, and that was when Miss Shaw had seen it.

“If Miss Shaw went to the police, he would have gone to jail, wouldn’t he? For insurance fraud, at the very least.”

“At least,” Derek nodded.

“That might be enough reason for him to murder her.”

“It might. But what about Candy?”

“No idea,” I admitted, since I couldn’t come up with a good reason why William Maurits would have wanted to do away with Candy. If it had been Jamie, that might have been a different story. She’d seen the contents of the envelope, and knew that the painting had something to do with Maurits. If she’d told him about it, he might have decided to get rid of her, too. “Unless the wine and chocolates were really intended for Jamie. Then Candy would just be collateral damage and Jamie would be the intended victim.”

“Puts a different spin on things,” Derek agreed. “Another explanation is that the two aren’t related.”

I shot him a look. “How do you mean?”

“Maybe Maurits killed Miss Shaw because of the painting. Or Mariano killed her because of the ICE. Or Bruce killed her because of Robin. And then Rossini decided to take advantage of that death to rid himself of Candy. Maybe she’d become a nuisance. Maybe she was pressuring him to leave his wife and marry her instead. So he killed her, thinking that whoever killed Miss Shaw would get blamed for Candy, too.”

Also possible.

“My head hurts,” I said plaintively.

“Poor baby,” Derek answered. “Wanna go to bed?”

“Soon. I just want to look something up first.”

“You already looked something up.”

“Something else.” I moved my foot away from the big toe inching its way up my ankle. “You’re distracting me.”

“Yes,” Derek said, “that’s the point.”

“Ten minutes. I promise. Just let me look up this one thing.”

He sighed and moved his foot away from mine. “What is it you’re looking for? More pictures of the
Madonna
?”

“Not the painting. Or the entertainer. But in a funny way, sort of. I’m hoping to find a picture of Nanette Barbour.”

“Amelia Easton’s roommate? The one who died?”

I nodded.

“Why?” Derek said.

“Not sure.”

“Didn’t you see a picture of her in Amelia’s condo?”

I nodded. That was why I wanted to see another one.

“What are you thinking?”

I denied thinking anything. “I’m just wondering why Miss Shaw had it. If there was nothing to the story.”

“The same reason she had the article about you,” Derek said. “She thought you might have pushed your aunt Inga down the stairs. You didn’t.”

“Of course not.”

“Just like Amelia didn’t kill her roommate.”

“How do you know she didn’t?”

“I don’t,” Derek said, “but I’m sure the police in Mississippi looked into it. It’s been twenty years; if they suspected her, someone would have done something about it by now. And besides, she had no reason to.”

“Maybe she didn’t want to go back to the commune, either.” She hadn’t gone back, after all; not in the twenty years since Nan’s death. She’d stayed in college and gotten an education and worked, and had never returned to Mississippi.

“If she didn’t,” Derek said, “all she had to do was keep her mouth shut. The only reason the elders got involved was because Amelia called them and ratted out her roommate.”

“I’m sure you’re right.” It made sense, after all. “And there are no pictures here. Plenty of photographs of Amelia, from after she started college, but none of Nan. Not even the one Amelia has.”

“Some religious groups think taking photographs is wrong,” Derek said. “They equate them with graven images. You know, ‘Thou shalt not make onto thyself…’”

I nodded. “The photograph Amelia had must have been taken after they got to college. It might be the only picture that exists of Nan. Not much of a legacy to leave, is it?”

Derek shook his head. “It isn’t. I’m sure she had bigger hopes for her life.”

Probably. She’d been the one who had insisted on going away to college in the first place, and who had made Amelia go with her so she could. She was the one who had decided to study history, while Amelia had chosen the wimpy and no doubt commune-approved home economics—at least until Nan’s death had made her change her major. Nan didn’t seem like the type who’d allow herself to be forcibly taken somewhere she didn’t want to go. If nothing else, I would have expected her to run away. Just pack her things and leave, and never look back. She would have built a life eventually. And she’d had the time to do it. It wouldn’t have taken much longer than the time it took to tie a rope to the ceiling light and the other end around her neck and
to strangle herself to death. But it would have hurt a lot less.

“Ready for bed?” I said, and closed the computer, feeling inexplicably sad about a young woman I’d never met, who’d died more than twenty years ago, when I was just a little girl myself.

“I thought you’d never ask,” Derek answered, and reached out a hand. “Can you walk, or should I carry you?”

“I can walk. But if you want to practice, I won’t stop you.”

“In that case,” Derek said, and lifted me. I made the trip up the stairs hanging over his shoulder.

“Here she is,” Wayne said the next morning.

We—that is, Derek and I—were standing outside William Maurits’s storage unit in Brunswick, while Wayne and a couple of officers from the Brunswick sheriff’s office had opened the door to the unit and were rooting around in there. It didn’t take long before Wayne emerged holding the pizza box I’d seen Maurits carry to his car last night. He flipped it open in front of me, as if to make sure I’d received what I’d ordered.

“That it?” Derek said, watching over my shoulder.

Wayne glanced at him. “That seems to be it. It’s a real painting. It’s possible the artist painted more than one, sometimes they do, but unless that’s the case, and unless Maurits painted this one himself, this is the real deal.” He turned to me. “Can you confirm that this was the box William Maurits carried to his car last night?”

“I can confirm that it’s the same kind of box,” I said, “and that the painting I saw inside that box looks like the painting that’s in this one now. Will that do?”

“That’s great.” He handed box and painting off to one of
the Brunswick cops, who slid them into a big, thick plastic bag, probably to preserve any evidence like fingerprints from getting lost. Wayne stripped off his latex gloves and stuck them in his pocket.

“Are you done?” I asked.

He nodded. “The sheriff’s office will catalog everything in the storage unit. They’ll be checking anything they find against missing artwork and antiques, but between you and me, I doubt they’ll find anything. The rest of it looks like it’s just old furniture and things he didn’t have room for in his place.”

It did. And not just William, but perhaps his parents and grandparents, too. Some of the things I could see were old, but not nice old, or antique old; they were just plain old and really not worth keeping.

“I get the pleasure of driving to Portland,” Wayne added, “and coordinating with the police there to pick up Maurits and bring him in to the police station to help with our inquiries. I won’t be back for a few hours at least.”

“I’m sure we’ll manage to muddle through,” Derek said.

“Josh gave me the envelope last night. Looks like most everyone in the building has some kind of motive, at least for offing Miss Shaw.”

Pretty much.

“At the moment, we really have no idea who did it. There were fingerprints in her apartment from several of the neighbors, but that doesn’t prove anything, as she spoke to everyone in the building at some point or another.”

“We weren’t invited inside,” I said.

Wayne nodded. “Several of the others were. She seemed to have preferred women to men. We found prints from all the women inside her place. Jamie and Candy, Robin, Professor Easton, even Shannon. She said Miss Shaw asked her to bring up the mail a while ago.”

“I don’t really think Shannon’s anywhere near the top of the suspect list,” I said. “And after what happened, I’m pretty sure Candy’s off the list completely.”

Wayne nodded. “There, we had a break. There were
traces of ethylene glycol in both the empty bottle and glasses, and some of the chocolates were intact, and still stuffed with the substance. Good call.” He nodded to Derek, who grimaced.

“Not sure how much that helps, Wayne. Antifreeze is too easy to come by. I’m sure we’ve all got a bottle or two of it sitting around. I know I do.”

“True,” Wayne said. “However, we traced the other stuff. The wine was bought at a liquor store in Portland, the chocolates at a confectioner’s in Portland, and the flowers at a florist in Portland, all within an hour of each other on Saturday afternoon. All within the same one-mile radius. All for cash, so there’s no way to trace a credit or debit card. People are too savvy to make that kind of mistake these days. But the person who bought them was female. Brunette, long hair, big hat, and sunglasses.”

“That takes Maurits out of the running,” Derek said. “He’s short, but he doesn’t look like a woman. Not even in a hat and a wig.”

“Have you ever seen him in a hat or wig?” I didn’t wait for his answer. “It takes Gregg and Mariano out, too. They’re both too tall. So is Bruce.”

“Candy, Jamie, and Robin are all blondes,” Derek said. “Not that Candy would have bought the stuff. Not unless she was trying to kill Jamie. But then she wouldn’t have drunk so much of the wine herself.”

“Hair color is easy to change, though. Wigs aren’t hard to come by. I don’t know about Robin, but Jamie probably has them at work.”

Wayne nodded. “She does. One of the pictures Miss Shaw had has her wearing a long, brown wig. She could have taken it home on Friday night, and brought it back on Saturday. The place is closed during the day, so no one would have noticed that it was gone for a few hours.”

Likely not. And Derek had already posited a good motive last night, when he suggested that Jamie had killed both Miss Shaw and Candy because they both, at different times, threatened to call her parents and tell them she was
working as a stripper. He must have shared the idea with Wayne while he and Josh were dropping off Miss Shaw’s envelope of shame. It was looking more and more like Jamie was the guilty party, much as I was loath to admit it.

“What about Francesca Rossini?” I said. “She’s a brunette. And if she figured out that her husband was cheating, she could have come up with a way to take out Candy while framing David for it. Two birds with one stone. And since Jamie hadn’t told her about it, she might have considered Jamie an acceptable sacrifice, too.”