Color Me Dead

by Mary Bowers

  Table of Contents:

  List of Characters

  Chapter 1 – A New Breezer

  Chapter 2 – Lunch, Interrupted

  Chapter 3 – The New Shopkeeper

  Chapter 4 – Dinner with Friends

  Chapter 5 – No Man is Safe

  Chapter 6 – The Cleansing

  Chapter 7 – Producers, Prima Donnas and Pizza

  Chapter 8 – A Dead Breezer

  Chapter 9 – Paintbrushes and Garter Belts

  Chapter 10 – You Call That Art?

  Chapter 11 – Dr. Trance and the Performing Flea

  Chapter 12 - Bibimbap

  Chapter 13 - Bereft

  Chapter 14 – Showtime!

  Chapter 15 – Romeo and Some Bimbo

  Chapter 16 – Dirty Laundry

  Chapter 17 – Strange Dreams

  Chapter 18 – Cast Out of the Nest

  Chapter 19 – Juicy Gossip

  Chapter 20 – Gone Fishing

  Chapter 21 – Blundering Around in the Garden of Love

  Chapter 22 – Souls in Ecstasy

  Chapter 23 – The Wistful Rastafarian

  Chapter 24 – Home

  Chapter 25 – Setting the Chessboard

  Chapter 26 – Deception at the Diner

  Chapter 27 – Over the Falls

  Chapter 28 – Into the Abyss

  Chapter 29 – Peace Again

  * * * * *

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places and events are products of the author’s imagination. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Color Me Dead

  Copyright © 2019 by Moebooks

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any way without the express written permission of the author.

  Cover art by Custom Covers, www.coverkicks.com

  * * * * *

  List of Characters

  Taylor Verone, owner of Orphans of the Storm, an animal shelter in Tropical Breeze, Florida. Also, a reluctant psychic.

  Michael Utley, retired lawyer and lifelong Breezer. Taylor’s live-in lover.

  Bastet – Taylor’s cat. All cats think they’re gods and goddesses; this cat may actually be one.

  Maida Rosewood, new resident of Tropical Breeze. Her husband, famed artist Grant Rosewood, recently committed suicide.

  Carmen Rosewood, daughter of Maida and Grant, a struggling artist with a studio just outside of town.

  Hank Rosewood, embittered brother of Grant.

  Joy Hardy, student of Grant Rosewood, and perhaps something more. She’s currently renting studio space from Carmen.

  Adam Cody, art dealer, about to open a new gallery on Tropical Breeze’s main street.

  Jesse Mantrell, on-screen talent for local-color TV show Orlando Sizzles!

  Treena Hilliard, fresh young talent, hoping to replace Jesse on Orlando Sizzles!

  Lily Parsons, Location Producer for Orlando Sizzles!

  Carver Charteris, Executive Producer of Orlando Sizzles!

  Greg – videographer for Orlando Sizzles!

  Jerry Malkovich, lives across the street from Maida. He keeps an eye on things in the ‘hood.

  Marty Frane, Flagler County homicide detective. The cop with the creepy eyes.

  Jaylynn Thomas, Tropical Breeze police officer.

  Mark Williams, police hypnotist.

  Sandy, former occupant of Maida’s house. She needs a little help to move on.

  Calvin, a waiter at the Karma Café. In love with a customer.

  Edson Darby-Deaver, PhD – Paranormal Investigator. He was the first to recognize Taylor’s psychic abilities.

  Dobbs – Marvin Sterling Dobbs, a/k/a “The Marvelous Dobbs,” a former magician, currently apprentice and protégé of Dr. Darby-Deaver.

  Florence Purdy, elderly manager of Taylor’s resale shop. Maida is her new next-door neighbor.

  Myrtle Purdy, Taylor’s housekeeper, sister of Florence.

  Jelly Nevison, Vivian Dear and Bob Norton – Orphans of the Storm volunteers.

  Chapter 1 – A New Breezer

  I kind of like Mondays. Not a lot of other people do, but that’s because it’s the beginning of the classic Monday-to-Friday work week. If I were to analyze my work schedule, I guess I could just say I work all day, every day. But I don’t mind, because I’m doing something I love.

  There hasn’t been a classic Monday-to-Friday work week for me since 1982. That was the year I turned 26, came to terms with the deaths of my parents, got a divorce, picked up the pieces of my life and moved from Chicago to the outskirts of a little seaside town called Tropical Breeze. I have never had a moment of regret.

  As soon as I arrived in Florida, before I even moved into a house, I opened an animal shelter. I called it Orphans of the Storm, because at that particular moment, I could relate to sad little homeless creatures.

  Whatever walls of safety I’ve put around myself and all those lost creatures, the outside world still demands that you pay up in cold, hard cash, so over the years I’ve developed a lot of fundraising strategies. One of them is a resale shop on the main street of Tropical Breeze, just down the road apiece from the shelter.

  Mondays are my downtown Tropical Breeze days. I drive over to Locust Street and check on things in Girlfriend’s, the resale shop, and help my shop manager, Florence Purdy, make up the bank deposit from the previous week’s sales. Then it’s lunch at Don’s Diner with whoever happens to be around, and maybe a little shopping: a browse around The Bookery, a box of goodies from The Bakery, a cappuccino at Perks. Yep, Mondays are pretty good for me.

  That particular Monday in February there was a heavy sea mist, and the visibility along State Route A1A was about a third of a mile. I had to crawl along beside the ocean, constantly clearing the windshield with the wipers, and by the time I made the turn onto Locust Street, I was just grateful I’d gotten into town without anything looming up out of the fog and coming straight at my windshield.

  The name of the shop, Girlfriend’s, has a possessive apostrophe “s” because it had been named after a dog, my landlord’s beloved little Schnauzer, Girlfriend. The plural form would also have been accurate, though, because most of our customers were women, and almost all of them knew one another.

  When I was safely parked behind Girlfriend’s, I thought through my plans for the day. First the bank deposit, then lunch at the soda fountain at Don’s, and then I wanted to go back across the street and see if I could introduce myself to a new shopkeeper who was just moving in. If I saw any activity on the other side of Perks, I’d stop in quickly and make the new guy welcome, whoever he was. The rumor mill had it that it was, in fact, a he, and he was opening a gallery of some kind. Maybe a souvenir shop. We’re family, we shopkeepers of Locust Street, and we make sure we take care of the newbies.

  I went in the back door of Girlfriend’s, calling out to Florence as I came in.

  “I’m here! Hey, Flo, I’ve got an idea,” I was saying, slinging down my purse on the desk. “Let’s have a sidewalk sale in honor of the new shop that’s about to open. Now that Valentine’s Day is over, I’m bored with February. Let’s put our heads together and dream something up.”

  By then I was through the curtains that divided the shop from the back room, and I found myself being stared at by three pairs of eyes: Florence’s liquid brown ones, Wicked the shop-cat’s golden ones, and a stranger’s striking violet ones.

  I stared at the stranger.

  Florence spoke from behind the counter. “Taylor, I want you to meet my new next-door neighbor, Maida Rosewood. Maida, this is Taylor Verone, the lady who runs Orphans of the Storm.”

  “Ah,” Maida said. “The bo
ss. We’d better shape up.”

  I came forward to shake hands. “Has Florence been telling you horror stories about me? They’re all true. Knock it off, Wicked,” I added as I walked by the cat without looking at him. He’s always up to something. “Nice to meet you, Maida. What a beautiful name.”

  “Thank you, Taylor. I like your name, too. I’ve always thought it was elegant. As for what Florence has been telling me about you, she’s been just about nominating you for sainthood. I’m sure we’re going to be friends.”

  Maida was a distractingly beautiful woman who was about twenty years younger than me; say about forty. She still had the kind of beauty that would draw second looks everywhere she went, and when she’d been younger, people must have actually stopped in their tracks and stared. She was used to it, apparently, because while I studied her perfect features, she seemed to take my scrutiny for granted.

  She had Elizabeth Taylor eyes, and had copied the actress’s trademark eyebrows. Her hair was very dark against a creamy complexion. She was petite, even tiny, but middle age was just beginning to thicken her body. The shape of her face was particularly attractive, and her hair was loosely arranged to frame it without hiding it. Her little chin was pixielike, and I could just see lovers taking hold of it and caressing it. It made her face into a heart.

  How wonderful to be so beautiful, I thought, but that kind of beauty can be a double-edged sword. The forties could be the beginning of one cruel decade after another for a woman who had come to expect the special treatment that gorgeous people always got. She didn’t seem to be fighting her age, though. I saw no obvious signs of cosmetic surgery, and she hadn’t dieted herself into scrawniness, the way some pretty women do.

  As I paused to observe her, she began to nearly gush. “I’m so impressed by the work you’re doing here, Taylor, I just have to pitch in and do my share. After all, my life is so empty now, and I’m sure you can always use volunteers. I want to help. It seems as if this opportunity was sent to me from heaven above, just when everything that matters has been taken away from me. Just tell me what to do. I can start today, now, this minute.”

  Taken aback, I looked from her to Florence. “Well, since the two of you are neighbors, maybe you can come in together in the morning and open the shop. Florence can always use the help.” My faithful Flo was getting up towards 80. After over 30 years of running Girlfriend’s she showed no signs of slowing down, but it only made sense for her to have more helpers now.

  I asked Maida if she’d ever worked in retail before.

  “Well, I’ve helped with special events at art galleries.”

  “Maida’s husband was a famous artist,” Florence said, dropping her voice slightly. “Grant Rosewood.”

  I caught my breath. Of course I’d heard of him. He’d been a brilliant sculptor. It was his work in welded metal that had made him famous, of course, but I preferred his smaller, earlier works, from when he’d been working with wood and other natural materials. He would harvest driftwood from the beach and hunt for deadwood in the swamps, looking for the shape already within it and then coaxing it out for the rest of us to see. But there wasn’t much money or recognition in that kind of work, and in his early thirties he made the switch and never looked back.

  Even people who weren’t familiar with Grant Rosewood as an artist had still heard of him, though. He had committed suicide just after New Year’s, five or six weeks before. It had been both shocking and sad. The general feeling was that he had so much more to do, and now his artistic gifts were gone forever. It was a loss for us all, and in Maida’s life, he must have been a towering presence.

  I steadied myself and said, “I was a great admirer of your husband’s work. And I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  She thanked me quietly.

  “Well,” I said, trying to change the tone, “a fine art gallery is a far cry from a charity resale shop. As you can see, we have some artwork, but I’m afraid it’s even a step below starving artist. Call it wayward amateur. It’s nothing like your husband’s. But I can tell just by looking at you that you have a flair for fashion, and our best-sellers are clothing and jewelry. Maybe Florence can give you a quick tutorial behind the counter, and then you can watch things while we go to the bank.”

  Maida and Florence were both pleased with the plan. It would only mean leaving her alone in the shop for about fifteen minutes, and Monday mornings were always slow anyway. I usually made the bank run by myself, but I wanted to get Florence away from Maida and ask a few questions.

  So I went off to the back room to make out the bank deposit on the desk, and all the while, through the curtains, I could hear Florence’s voice as she went over the cash register and credit card system we use.

  On the way to the bank, walking down the sidewalk, I said to Florence, “You like Maida?”

  “Oh, yes. She’s so beautiful, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, she is. But . . . you like her?”

  “Yes. I do. She only moved in last Friday, but she’s been very friendly and nice, and I feel so bad about her husband. Poor thing, she’s so lost. After she’s got herself settled in, I don’t know what she’s going to do with herself. Volunteering will help to keep her busy. All she talks about is her husband – what he would have said about this, what he would have done about that – he seems to have been the center of her whole universe.”

  Florence is very tender-hearted. But I had just left a stranger in charge of Girlfriend’s, for however short a time, and I began to wonder what had come over me. I’m usually not so impulsive. I’d been handling volunteers and staff for a long time by then, and one thing I’d learned over the years was that it was easy to bring people on board, but it was infinitely harder to tell them it was time for them to go.

  I’d had volunteers before that were vaguely like Maida. She had the look of a socialite, and apparently she’d never had a real job. After all, she hadn’t said she’d worked in an art gallery, she’d said she helped with special events. She probably just stood around looking lovely and schmoozing with the customers during private showings. Cases of champagne, liveried waiters, little black dresses – definitely not the scene at Girlfriend’s.

  My worst volunteer of all time had been a woman named Tina, and she had nearly started a war at Orphans before I managed to get rid of her. Over the years there had been some helpers who were lazy and a few who were dishonest, and I’d gotten so that I could spot trouble coming. It was a bit early with Maida, but somehow I felt like I was getting a warning signal, and I couldn’t quite catch it. I’d never accepted anybody on the fly like that before.

  I suddenly remembered seeing Grant Rosewood’s picture on the TV, at the time of his death. The man had to have been in his sixties, maybe even close to seventy. Maida couldn’t have been much over forty. Trophy wife? I wondered vaguely if she’d broken up a previous marriage. What if she was an art groupie, who’d hunted him down because he was famous? Ridiculous thoughts began to bubble up.

  As we were walking up to the door of the bank, I turned to Florence again. “But you really feel like she’s a good person? I can see that you’ve got a lot of sympathy for her, and she’s had a rough time, no doubt about it, but do you think she’s basically nice?”

  “Everybody is nice,” Florence said in her simple way, “until you find a reason to think they’re not nice. So far, I like her. Don’t worry about Maida. We’ll make her my responsibility. If she doesn’t work out, I’ll handle it.”

  We made the deposit and were out on the sidewalk again within four or five minutes. During the time that we chatted with our favorite teller and got our business done, a train of thought had been moving along in my mind underneath it all, giving me an unsettled feeling.

  When we started walking back to Girlfriend’s, I told Florence, “Let me be the bad guy if she doesn’t work out. You have to live next door to her. I don’t.”

  “You worry too much, Taylor. Maida is going to work out fine. Just you wait and see.”
/>
  Chapter 2 – Lunch, Interrupted

  Usually, if I’m alone, I like to have lunch at the soda fountain on Mondays so I can joke around with J.B. while I eat. She’s the counter waitress at Don’s Diner, and I love her nonstop wisecracks. But on that particular Monday, I figured I needed to get to know Maida a little better before I let her loose at Girlfriend’s, so I invited her to join me. That meant taking a booth.

  Don had reupholstered the booths against the right wall, replacing the sparkly red vinyl with newer, sparklier red vinyl. The new Formica tabletops were also sparklier, solid blocks of icy white with confetti flecks and just a hint of glitter. I wondered why he hadn’t ordered new menus as long as he was sprucing things up. The old ones were getting downright frail, and they had been wiped clean so many times that the sandwiches in the pictures were developing blue halos. Maybe Don never bothered because his regular customers never looked at the menus.

  Maida waited until we sat down and ordered iced teas before saying, “I hope you don’t mind if my daughter joins us. We already had plans to meet for lunch today, and I sent her a quick text while you were in the back room picking up your purse.”

  “Of course I don’t mind,” I said. This was the first I’d heard of a daughter, and I wondered why the girl hadn’t qualified as something Maida could live for after her husband died. “It’ll be nice to meet her. What’s her name?”

  “Carmen. She takes after her father, at least in her looks. When she’s not at work, she even tends to dress like him – just throws on any old clothes that happen to be lying at the end of the bed when she gets up. I keep telling her that studio work is no excuse for slovenliness. Many famous artists used to work in suits and ties, simply putting smocks over their good clothes while they were in their studios. It’s nothing to do with art; she was always like that, even as a little girl.”

  “She’s an artist too? You must be very proud of her. I’d like to see her work.”

  “Oh, she’s not a professional. I don’t think she’ll ever rise to the level of her father’s artistry. He was a sculptor, of course, and she paints. Acrylics,” she added, as if that were lowbrow. “She has a day job that pays the rent.”