Color Me Dead

by Mary Bowers

  I met the detective’s transparent eyes blandly and said, “Want some coffee?”

  “Hello, Ms. Verone. This is a pleasant surprise. Coffee would be good, if it’s no trouble.”

  “No trouble at all. I’ll join you.”

  Dobbs had disappeared, and I turned to Ed and said, “Where’s the kid?”

  “Dobbs has some work to do in my research library. You won’t be needing my assistant, will you, Detective?”

  “Was he involved in your investigation in Maida Rosewood’s house?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Then yes, I’d like to speak to him. But not now.” I set his coffee next to him on a table by the overstuffed chair where he’d sat, and he thanked me.

  “Want some privacy?” I asked. “I can go bother Dobbs in the library. Besides, you’ve already interviewed me, right? You got the report from Dr. Williams?”

  “I did. Bravo, ma’am. You remembered everything, it seems, word-for-word. I was surprised at how fascinated Dr. Williams was by you. He wasn’t, particularly, before the session, but he sure was after.”

  “Naturally,” Ed said, as if I’d been insulted.

  “So you don’t need to talk to me at all?” I asked.

  Now Ed showed signs of panicking, and he said, “There is no harm in her staying, is there, Officer? I mean Detective? As to the investigation of the Rosewood haunting, of course we videotaped it, and I’ve made a copy for you. Perhaps you’d like to review it preparatory to asking me any questions about it? We could make another appointment when you’ve had time to absorb it. Say, sometime next week?”

  “Thank you,” Frane said, accepting the thumb drive and slipping it into his suitcoat pocket. “I’ll look at it later, but there’s no need to postpone the interview. And if you’d like Ms. Verone to stay, that’s all right with me.”

  Ed relaxed visibly.

  So I settled back into my corner of the sofa and prepared to listen to the interview without speaking.

  And . . . it wasn’t two minutes before I was speaking. I got involved in the back-and-forth immediately and forgot I was just there for emotional support.

  “How was it that Mrs. Rosewood came to think her house was haunted?” the detective began. “Was she hearing voices, things being moved around, that kind of thing?”

  “No, she didn’t mention the classic signs of paranormal activity,” Ed told him. “I came to believe she was simply a lonely, narcissistic woman who craved attention, and perhaps felt some kind of guilt. She believed that the spirit of her dead husband was haunting her. They had purchased the house together, and he didn’t live long enough to make the move with her.” Ed paused and adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses. “They had, for whatever reason, decided to make the move from the downtown section of St. Augustine to Tropical Breeze. To be nearer their daughter, perhaps.”

  That’s when I jumped in. “Their friend, Adam Cody, was opening an art gallery in Tropical Breeze, and he was going to sell Grant Rosewood’s artwork there. Mr. Rosewood’s working studio was much closer to Tropical Breeze than where they were living at the time, so the Rosewoods decided to make the move, too.”

  Both men were looking at me, and Ed said, “Thank you Taylor. That explains it.”

  “But as far as the haunting of Mrs. Rosewood’s house . . . you thought she was making it all up?” Frane asked Ed.

  “Self-delusion, perhaps. None of us got to know her well enough to be able to judge if she was prone to magical thinking or just a garden-variety liar. Still, we proceeded. My partner, Dobbs, felt that if nothing else, we could give the lady peace of mind. Or, in the alternative, relief from guilt over her husband’s suicide.”

  “Was it suicide?” I asked. Again, both men turned to look at me. I went on. “I’ve been wondering, and I’m sure you have, too, Detective Frane. I mean, first one of them dies, then the other one does too? Isn’t that a little coincidental?”

  “Maida Rosewood’s death was definitely homicide,” Frane said. “And you’re right, it did hit me as fishy, coming so soon after her husband’s death. So I reviewed the file on Grant Rosewood’s death from the St. John’s County Sheriff’s Office and talked it over with the detectives who investigated. It would be tempting to think that somebody is out to exterminate the Rosewoods, one by one, but Grant Rosewood’s death was definitely suicide. He shot himself. There was no way anybody else pulled the trigger; they looked into it pretty carefully.”

  “Oh.” I was deflated, somehow.

  “No doubt about it,” Frane said, driving his point home. “Now, Dr. Darby-Deaver, let’s go back to your first interview with Mrs. Rosewood. Do you have a record of that, also?”

  “Naturally. I recorded the phone call, as I always do with every new client. It’s the first file on the thumb drive.”

  Detective Frane looked awfully pleased to be dealing with somebody so meticulous. Sure, Ed might have looked absentminded, but his recordkeeping was legendary.

  I let myself be distracted for a while, unhappy with the concept that two spouses could die so closely together and their deaths not be related. After a few minutes of nearly fuming, I interrupted, just as Ed was talking about working with the empath from California.

  “But,” I said, talking right over Ed, “there still could be a connection. Maybe Maida knew something about her husband’s suicide. Something her killer didn’t want anybody else to know.”

  “That’s a possibility, of course.”

  “And of course, you’ve already thought of that. I’m sorry I keep interrupting.”

  “Actually,” Frane said, “I hadn’t thought of that. It’s an interesting theory. Two spouses dying closely together is something that happens, you know, especially if they’ve been very close over the years and grew old together. But this wasn’t that kind of situation. And trying to cover up a reason for suicide – that may be a stretch, ma’am. I’ll consider it, though,” he said, writing in his little notebook.

  I was embarrassed. He was only being polite, showing a little respect for my suggestion. Once I gave it a second thought, it seemed like a dumb idea.

  After that, I kept my mouth shut.

  * * *

  Frane interviewed Dobbs in Ed’s psychical research library. The detective said he’d be interested in seeing it, and after they were done with the interview, Dobbs took Frane around and explained some of the curiosities in Ed’s cabinet displays: the vintage phrenology heads and chiromancy hands, the scrying bowl reputedly used by Dr. Dee, (Ed doubted its authenticity, but it was a pretty, gilded thing and hadn’t been overpriced, so he bought it anyway, from a site called Apport Central), two famously possessed dolls, and one contraption that looked like a salon’s hair dryer but was meant to send electrical currents through the head and read a person’s thoughts.

  Across the room from the aids to psychical research were props from magicians, and they were from Ed’s collection, not Dobbs’s. Yes, Dobbs had been the magician, but he didn’t have the kind of money to be a collector, like Ed. Magicians and psychics have always been closely bound up together, in the same manner as hunters and the hunted, and Ed was interested in both.

  Dobbs’s interview didn’t last long, and after Ed showed Marty Frane out, I asked him, “Did you make the appointment for the detective to come over at 4:00 so Lily couldn’t stay around here with her crew too long?” Before Ed could think of something face-saving to say, I told him, “Never mind,” and took off for home.

  Chapter 15 – Romeo and Some Bimbo

  Lily made dinner that night, apologizing all the time that it was just spaghetti out of a box and marinara sauce from a jar.

  “We love spaghetti,” I told her, “and for some reason we haven’t had it for a while. Quit apologizing.”

  I threw a green salad together, slathered some garlic butter on toast, and we carried it all across the great room and sat down at the far end of the banquet table. I began to realize how much I was going to miss Lily once her assignment in Tropical
Breeze was finished.

  “So,” I asked her, “is Jesse definitely off the show now?”

  “Yeah, it’s official. He blames me, of course.”

  “People would always rather find somebody else to blame instead of admitting it was their own darn fault,” I told her. “Don’t let it bother you.”

  “Of course it wasn’t your fault,” Myrtle told her stoutly, and Michael agreed.

  “The new girl, Treena, seems all right,” I said.

  “Yeah, she’s going to be fine, for as long as she lasts. She’s not a lifer, like Jesse. The ones like her always move on as soon as they get a better opportunity. I don’t know, though, these tough-as-nails, fluffy-bunny types get on my nerves worse than the egomaniac jerks like Jesse. I can already tell she’s going to be a diva. At least with Jesse, when the camera was off, you felt like you were in the company of a real person. With all his faults,” she added.

  “Where are Treena and Greg staying?”

  “They’re not,” Lily said. “Orlando is less than a 2-hour drive from here. They’re commuting for the shoot.” She gave me a leer. “They’re young. I don’t drag these old bones back and forth across the map unless I haven’t got any friends in the area to crash with.”

  Lily was only 31. I just shook my head at her.

  “Well, I’m glad you decided to stay with us instead of commuting,” Michael said. “We don’t get to see you often enough.”

  Something occurred to me, and I asked, “Did Jesse have friends in the area, too? Was the reservation at The Breakers just for cover, while he fooled around?”

  Lily took a moment to think it over, then said, “Actually, that would explain a lot.”

  “If so, he’s a dope for not just coming out with his alibi witness.”

  “What makes you think he isn’t a dope?” Lily said. “But you know what we never thought of? What if Carmen went to her mother’s house straight from the arms of Jesse? What if he was out at her beach studio that night?”

  I made a skeptical noise, and Lily started doubling down. “Carmen could have met Jesse when he did the piece on her father. He may have kept in touch with her all this time. He might have been there when Maida called Carmen that night, and even gone into town with her.”

  “But if so, why wouldn’t Carmen have said so?” Michael asked. “Would she protect a man who may have killed her mother?”

  Lily looked to me. “Did it seem to you that Maida and Carmen had the typical mother-daughter relationship?”

  “No,” I said unhappily. “But Carmen has a roommate: Joy. Wouldn’t she have said something if Jesse was at the house that night?”

  “Does Joy look like the kind of girl who would notice or care if some dude spent the night with her roommate?” Lily said. “And she’s goofy enough not to realize the importance of it, if he was there. And while we’re at it, what about Joy?”

  “Joy was in love with Grant Rosewood,” I said, “and she’s not through worshipping him yet.”

  “Exactly,” Lily answered, getting excited. “She blames Maida for her mentor-Zen-master’s death and gets vengeance by killing her.”

  “That sounds too logical for Joy,” I said, only half-joking. “And as for Carmen . . . well, I don’t know what kind of a man Carmen would love, but it wouldn’t be a burnout like Jesse Mantrell. At least, I hope not.” I gave it some more thought. “I think that just at the moment, Carmen is in love with art, and isn’t interested in messing up her life with any man. It’s a shame she has to work nights as a waitress to support herself, but I’m sure she’s going to be a self-supporting artist very soon. I saw her today, by the way, at Artwerks, Adam’s new gallery. It’s open, in case anybody wants to see it.”

  “What did you think of it?” Michael asked.

  “Oh, he’ll make a success of it. There’s sort of a poetic irony to the fact that Adam’s first success as an art dealer was with Grant Rosewood’s work, and his new gallery is going to thrive because of Grant’s daughter. Has anybody heard anything about what’s going to happen with Grant Rosewood’s estate, now that Maida’s gone?”

  Myrtle didn’t have any information (for a change), and Lily just shrugged. But I could tell by the way that Michael stiffened and got a stubbornly blank look on his face that he knew something. Michael is a retired lawyer, and he still has a lot of friends in the legal community in the area.

  I leveled my gaze at him. “You know you’re going to tell me eventually. You may as well give.”

  He looked around the table and Lily murmured, “I’ll never tell,” while Myrtle told him, “You know I’d never betray your trust.”

  And, inveterate gossip that she was, we all knew she wouldn’t. Michael was her hero. And from the way she protected the dirty secrets of the Cadbury family, years after she had any real connection with them, we all knew she would be as good as her word.

  “Well,” he finally said, “it’s going to come out anyway. Maida made a will, shortly after her husband’s estate was settled. Only a week before her death, in fact. Her lawyers strongly advised it as soon as the probate wrapped up on her husband’s estate, and she went ahead and made a new will for herself. In it, she left everything she had and gave all her powers as executor of her husband’s estate to her only living relative. It was either that or take the time to set up a trust, and Maida didn’t want to bother, at least not yet. She said she’d revisit it when she’d had time to think things over, and in the meantime she just designated Carmen as her heir.”

  “Bingo,” I said involuntarily, and everybody stared at me.

  I let it all sink in for a moment, not wanting to think what I was thinking.

  Finally, Lily said, “How was it you just put it to Michael? You’re going to tell us eventually. You may as well give.”

  “Yeah, I may as well. It’s about the last, unfinished works of Grant Rosewood. They’re going to be valuable. And Maida was considering farming out the finishing and selling of them to people down near Miami. But Carmen wanted to finish them, and Adam had expected he would sell them. With Maida dead, they both get what they want.”

  I waited for reaction, but I didn’t get any. They were all still staring at me.

  We ate silently for a while, and then Michael said, almost to himself, “It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t. To strangle your own mother.”

  I remembered Carmen telling me how Maida was garroted. The murderer hadn’t had to see her face. It had been somebody too weak to strangle her manually, or somebody who couldn’t bear to see her face as they strangled the life out of her. And whoever it was had made a point of including Grant in the murder by using one of his paintbrushes.

  Chapter 16 – Dirty Laundry

  Lily was wrapping up the Tropical Breeze shoot the next day. After that, she was packing up and going back to Orlando.

  I’d meant to ask her about the shoot at Artwerks sometime during dinner, but with all the talk about the murder, I didn’t get the chance until the next morning at breakfast. I’m always up early, and Michael and I were still at the breakfast bar when Lily came downstairs.

  I asked her if she was heading back to Orlando after they were done at the gallery, and she said yes. “Unless you have any other ideas about noteworthy things in Tropical Breeze.”

  “I think you’ve got enough for one show already, maybe two,” I said. “When your executive producer sees how much material you’ve got, you might be coming right back to fill out another hour for the show.”

  “If so,” Michael said, “come on back and stay with us again. We love to have you.”

  She thanked him, just as Myrtle straggled in and reiterated the invitation. Myrtle is not a morning person, and she still wasn’t a hundred percent after her bout with the flu.

  When we were saying our final good-byes, Lily turned to me and said, “Come on downtown with me, Taylor. You’re my good luck charm on this shoot.”

  “I’ve had just about all I can take of Treena,” I told her.

&n
bsp; “Well, that’s not good.” Lily paused to make an observation: “If you’ve already gotten tired of her, a TV audience isn’t going to like her, either. They’re brutal. She is a little phonier than I expected her to be. Come on, Taylor. I’ll treat you to a cappuccino at Perks afterward, before I head out for Orlando.”

  “Let me treat you to lunch at Don’s Diner instead. I’ve got stuff to do here this morning, but I can make it downtown by 11:00.”

  “Perfect. If I’m not there right on the dot, just order me an iced tea and wait for me. I won’t be long.”

  * * *

  Lily walked into the diner about two minutes after I did. We were early enough to get my favorite booth, and as soon as we sat down, I asked her how the shoot at the gallery had gone.

  “Terrible,” she said. “I was shocked at how Adam looked. There were bags under his eyes, he looked disinterested, and Treena’s perkiness obviously grated on him to the point where I wonder if we’re going to be able to use anything we shot this morning.”

  “It’s too bad you didn’t interview him yesterday,” I told her. “He looked all right then. Somber, but not haggard, like you’re describing. Didn’t you put a little make-up on him?”

  “Yeah, but you can’t work miracles, especially on a man. Audiences will tolerate a lot of make-up on a woman, but they notice it more on a man. I think we may have wasted our time on this. I don’t know, we’ll see how it shapes up in post-production, if it gets that far. Maybe we can do a re-shoot. I’ll talk to Carver – my boss – and see if he thinks it’ll be worth it. He’s extremely hot for the story angle on the Rosewoods, but this morning’s interview was just depressing. Treena was so bright and cheery, it just made Adam look worse by contrast.”

  “I’m sorry. I can already see that Treena has only the one persona when she’s on-camera: the bubbly ingenue.”

  “She’s going to be a problem. I can see that now. She doesn’t play off the person she’s interviewing. Treena is always just Treena, and when the interviewee doesn’t respond, she just notches up the Treena act. She doesn’t adapt. Jesse used to be able to go to their level and bring them up, so we’d manage to get something we could use eventually. I never thought I’d miss him, but I have to admit, he was good at the job.”