The Girl With the Dragonfly Tattoo: An Austin, Texas Art Mystery (The Michelle Hodge Series Book 4)

by Roslyn Woods

  “Yeah. Software engineer. I go to conferences all the time.” He seemed proud of his work, and she wasn’t the tiniest bit interested.

  “Oh. Must be nice,” she answered distantly.

  “Yeah, I love it. What do you do?”

  “School teacher.” Actually, I’m unemployed. I’ve got thirty-five thousand dollars in the bank and a retirement account I’m leaving alone. I could have said I was an artist or a bum. I don’t know what I am.

  “Little kids or big kids?”

  “Little.”

  “Hmm.” Now he was bored. Telling someone you were a school teacher could do that. It had certainly been a handy answer since her divorce. And it had been true twenty-four hours earlier. Something told her she would never go back to teaching.

  She had dated some after the divorce, but she was bitter. She didn’t believe in people. Her dream of finding a nice man like Tio had been shattered, and everyone she met seemed deeply flawed. Even Chad Baker, the man she was seeing off and on now, though “nice,” just hadn’t found a way to win her heart.

  “Do you like him?” Mia had asked.

  “Sure. I like him, but I don’t like him,” Tavy had answered. “Not enough to be serious,” she had added. “What do you think of him?”

  “I like him,” Mia had answered, “but I guess I don’t like him either.”

  “There you go. Seems like no one’s worth the trouble.”

  Tavy had spent the years since she got her degree teaching second grade. She stayed as close as she could to her surrogate parents, maintained no relationship to speak of with her biological mother, started painting as a serious hobby, and wondered if she was anything like her father. She didn’t look at all like her mother.

  Google searches for an artist named Edwin Bishop in Austin, Texas had revealed nothing. The man didn’t seem to exist. Tavy had often thought about going there, hunting him down, and interrogating him about abandoning her. Just when she had mustered up the courage to do the deed, Tio had become gravely ill.

  By then she had already turned thirty-three. Mia was distraught, and Tavy gave up her apartment and moved into their house, juggling her teaching job with sharing care-taking duties, comforting both of the people she loved most in the world.

  It was a long illness. Tio lasted four years from the time of his diagnosis. The little family was happy some of the time even though they knew Tio’s life was ending. When it was over, Tavy stayed with Tia Mia for nearly two years, keeping up the red roses both her parents—which was how she thought of them—had loved so much, and trying to manage the vegetable garden that had ceased to be important to Mia, now that her husband was gone. Eventually, Mia seemed to rally and resigned herself to a life without her husband.

  “You need to get back to your own life, Tavy,” she said. “I’m going to be okay.”

  And so Octavia Bishop had moved back to her own place, realizing, like someone coming out of a dense fog, that she was now thirty-nine years old. She figured her child-bearing years were gone, and she mourned the loss even though she thought she would probably have been a terrible parent. Not like Mia and Tio, who were wonderful. She imagined she was probably like her biological parents. Unforgiving, uncaring, un—whatever it was you were supposed to be.

  The call from the lawyer came, out of the blue, on a Tuesday in August. Octavia learned that her father, Edwin Bishop, had died and left her—among other things—a house and three hundred thousand dollars. She was needed in Austin, Texas to settle the burial and matters related to the estate as soon as possible.

  After absorbing the strange shock of the news, she pushed away the reality of her father’s death and her unrealized relationship with him. She focused on her own need for some time to think about her next steps in life, and the inheritance would make it possible. The school system in Oregon was a mess, and much as she cared about her students, she was ready for a change. Summer was the best season to make this decision. She sent her request for a leave of absence to Lake Oswego School District exactly one day after she got the lawyer’s call.

  Mia said she would come see her in Austin soon. She figured Tavy would take a few months to handle her father’s burial and the sale of the house before returning to Portland. It would be too long for Mia to wait to see her again, and she needed a change herself. She was also afraid Octavia was going to have an emotional time of it, dealing with losing her mythical father, and she wanted her to have her arrival in Austin to look forward to.

  The line-backer lifted Tavy’s suitcases from the carousel and gave her another smile. He was acting flirty again.

  “Thanks so much,” she said in her most business-like voice. “Nice talking to you.”

  “I always enjoy talking to a beautiful woman,” he drawled.

  Well, that was a little much, big guy.

  Her phone buzzed and she looked at the screen. Rand Miller was texting, I’m in the cell phone waiting area. She imagined the lawyer looked like the man who had handled her divorce eleven years earlier—a stodgy fellow with no hair and a double chin.

  She rolled her two suitcases out into the oven that was the pick-up area. The H section was a bit crowded, but there was nothing to be done about that. She messaged back to let Rand Miller know where to find her.

  Look for a white Buick, he responded.

  It only took four minutes, but it felt longer. A red pickup truck that was jacked up on enormous wheels hurtled in and parked just in front of the H section, so that Tavy was afraid the lawyer would never see her behind it. And it was loud. A woman with big, blond hair was in the driver’s seat, impatiently gunning the motor every little bit. Tavy could already see that there were some things about Texas that were going to be hard to take.

  But Rand Miller pulled in behind the obnoxious vehicle and did find her. He wasn’t what she had expected. As he got out of the car, she saw that he was lean, about five-ten, with a narrow, and somewhat angular, face. Maybe forty-five, with completely gray hair and pale blue eyes, she thought he had the look of Anderson Cooper. Pleasant smile. He was wearing a sky-blue polo shirt, khakis, and sandals.

  Normal clothes, she thought.

  “Octavia Bishop?” he asked as he approached her.

  “Yes.” She smiled back in spite of the heat.

  “The car’s nice and cool. You’ll want get in while I load your luggage,” he said, opening her door.

  Tavy looked up at the noisy red pickup as she stepped off the curb. The line-backer, already in the passenger seat of the monster truck, was giving the big-haired blond an amorous kiss.

  So, Mr. Flirty was already in a relationship. Typical.

  Chapter 8

  Thursday, August 6, 2:45 p.m.—Tavy

  The drive into Austin was surprising to Octavia Bishop. In some ways the landscape reminded her of southern Oregon with its dry, rolling hills and trees. Except for the hazy skyline in the distance, there was little to nothing out near the airport to let her know she was approaching a city, the eleventh most populous in the United States. Out here were big roads, intersecting highways, construction all along the way, industrial buildings, and oak trees. She was also surprised by the enormous Texas flags flying at most businesses they passed, larger than the American flag, whipping around in the hot wind like sails. An enormous billboard they passed read, LONE STAR, THE NATIONAL BEER OF TEXAS. Yes, she was in Texas. The nation of Texas, and she wasn’t sure she was going to like it here.

  Even though Rand Miller was trying to be pleasant, the last thing Tavy wanted to do on her arrival in Austin was peruse the contents of her father’s house with him. She had waited her whole life, imagined, worried about the father who had rejected and abandoned her. She couldn’t share these first moments of encountering his home with a stranger.

  She figured she would just have to tell him. I’m sorry, but this is a very emotional time for me. I need to do this alone. Something like that. She kept trying to take in the things he was telling her while she rehearsed what s
he would say when they got to the house.

  “My father was his lawyer for many years,” Rand Miller was saying as they drove along 290. “He liked him—had so much respect for him! Anyway, Dad started grooming me to take over a few years ago. Then, about a year before his planned retirement, my father had a stroke, so it was essential that I take over managing Edwin’s affairs earlier than originally planned.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about your father.”

  “Oh, he survived. He’s just not able to work anymore, and honestly, his memory never recovered.”

  “Why did my father need a lawyer?”

  “Largely, because of you, Miss Bishop.”

  “Me? Why me?”

  “Because of the divorce.”

  “Wait. What are you talking about?”

  Rand Miller looked at the road ahead of him for a few moments before answering.

  “I’m afraid this might be difficult for you. Do you want to wait and talk about it later?”

  “No. No, I want to know. What do you mean because of the divorce?”

  “Well, according to my dad, your father wanted to have child support sent to your mother through a third party so she wouldn’t be able to find him.”

  “Hmm. I didn’t know that.”

  “Anyway, I’ve got the keys to your dad’s house and car and the keys to his studio. There’s also a house up by the lake. This stuff isn’t absolutely final, but it’s a pretty ironclad will. I don’t see any reason why you should have to stay in a hotel till all the red tape is completed. You inherit unless—well that’s not a point. You inherit. Except for a few bequests you’ll be learning about at the reading of the will, everything that was your father’s is yours now. The Austin house, the lake house, the car, the bank account, and the art.”

  “I inherit, unless? Unless what?”

  “Unless you’re not here.”

  “Not here? Not in Austin?”

  “Not in this world.”

  “Oh.” It was Tavy’s turn to pause. “And if I’m dead, who inherits?”

  “We’ll go over all of that in my office as soon as you’re ready for me to talk to you about it. Later, everyone interested will need to be present for the reading.”

  “I see. And where is he?” Tavy asked.

  “He? You mean your father’s body?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s at the county morgue.”

  “Okay. I need to see him, I guess.”

  “Yes. I can take you tomorrow, if you like.”

  “No. Thanks, but I don’t think so.”

  “Okay.” He paused, letting Tavy take in the passing town, the apartment complexes along Manchaca Road sandwiched between houses and trees. So many trees. Oaks, pecans, magnolias, and blooming crepe myrtles. “I imagine all of this is hard for you,” the lawyer said. “How close were you?”

  “Are you kidding?” she asked. “I haven’t seen him since I was two.”

  Rand Miller stopped the car at the red light on the corner of Manchaca and Barton Skyway.

  “But, that’s impossible!” he said.

  “Why?”

  “I—I thought he’d been to see you.”

  “Never.”

  The lawyer turned left and seemed to consider for a minute before he spoke again.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Bishop.” He drove for a while in silence while Tavy took in the neighborhood around them through blurry eyes. She noticed the strange mixture of large and small houses, of well-kept and ragged lots. “What about the house?” he asked, his pale blue eyes moving from the road to her face every once in a while.

  “What do you mean?” she wanted to know.

  “Do you want me to go through the house with you?”

  “No,” she answered more emphatically than she intended. “I mean, no, thank you. I—I need to do this alone, I think.”

  “I understand.”

  “Maybe you do.”

  “And maybe I don’t,” he answered, pausing. “I took the liberty of having your father’s cleaning lady come in and wash all the linens and clean the house.”

  “Oh. Thanks.”

  “Everything is as he left it. I—I didn’t have her do anything she didn’t ordinarily do.”

  “How often did she clean?”

  “I think once a week.”

  “And this cleaning lady—do you have a number for her or something?”

  “Yes. I’ll text it to you. I imagine there’s a phone book or something in the house. I don’t know. Anyway, I have it.”

  “Why do you have it? I mean, you were his lawyer. Why do you have the cleaning lady’s number?”

  “Because your father thought he might be dying. He gave me instructions.”

  “But he didn’t try to see me,” she said quietly.

  Rand Miller didn’t speak. There was nothing to say, nothing that could make this feel any better. She looked out the window at the buildings along a street called Rae Dell Avenue. They blurred again as her eyes filled. She didn’t want to feel this way. Why hurt about it now? She should have dealt with this earlier. Long ago, really. Why hadn’t she done it? Some little part of her had been hoping that someday there would be some resolution. That obviously wasn’t going to happen now.

  Chapter 9

  Thursday, August 6, 2 p.m.—Shell

  Only days after her rescue, Shell had begun bi-weekly counseling sessions with a psychologist recommended by Sgt. Gonzalez. It had taken several weeks of therapy for her to feel ready to approach any discussion of the kidnapping. The fact was, everything about the event had gone fuzzy in her mind, and she only had snatches of memory about it. There had been plenty else to discuss with the psychologist—her childhood, her parents’ deaths, her breakup with Dean. When Dr. Shapiro had finally broached the subject of Garrett’s murder and the abduction, Shell had begun to tremble.

  “I’m not ready,” she had said, folding her hands tightly to control their shaking.

  Dr. Shapiro had backed off, but that was last Saturday. Today, she was less inclined to let Shell get away with refusing to discuss her main reason for being in counseling.

  “We only have a few minutes left in today’s session, and I think you’re as ready as you’ll ever be,” the psychologist said. “It’s been eight—almost nine—weeks. You said you had another panic attack when you followed the old man to the hospital.”

  Shell stared at the woman with the stylish gray hair and the silver, dreamcatcher earrings. Dr. Shapiro was more than a sixtyish Stanford-educated woman who dressed beautifully and had a remarkable collection of contemporary pastel paintings in her office. She had a presence that could vacillate between nurturing and demanding, and it was getting harder for Shell to hedge without being called on it.

  “It was only a small panic. It passed,” she answered.

  “Yes, but your body is telling you something. This repression is causing you to get dizzy and weak. It’s sapping your energy. Have you been able to get back to your oil painting?”

  Shell shook her head. “I think I just need more time.”

  It was true she couldn’t paint. Sometimes she thought about it, but she could only think of colors. Even drawing an image in charcoal and roughing in the shapes she imagined was a bridge too far. It seemed like heavy work.

  “Yes, time is good,” said the doctor, “but it’s also time to start talking about what happened.”

  “I can’t talk about it,” Shell answered, looking out the office window and realizing she could see the UT tower from the downtown high-rise where they sat.

  “But your subconscious mind is working on what happened. You know that, don’t you? That’s why you keep having nightmares.”

  “But I don’t remember anything.”

  “Just tell me one little thing you do remember.”

  “I can’t remember anything after the evening Leo and Billie took me to the lawyer’s office for the reading of the will.”

  “Yes, but that’s a detail I hadn’t he
ard about! The will. Whose will?”

  “Garrett’s.”

  “The partner who was murdered?”

  “Yes, but that’s the last thing I remember from that night.”

  “What do you think would have happened after the reading? What do you think you probably did?” Dr. Shapiro asked.

  “We would have gone back to the house, I guess.”

  “We?”

  “I’d broken up with Dean. Actually, he had broken up with me. I was staying with my partners at their house, and we had all been called for the reading of Garrett’s will. So we went together.”

  “In what car?”

  “Billie’s Ford Escape.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I don’t know! I don’t know!” she answered, frustrated, her eyes taking in the jewel tones in the shag area rug under her feet.

  “So, let’s guess you went back to the house. Then what? It was night time. What would that have been like?”

  “I don’t know. It would have been dark? We would have parked the car in the garage?”

  “Where would you have been sitting in Billie’s car?”

  “In the back. I’d have sat—” Shell suddenly stopped, her mind flashing on an image of Billie’s tear-streaked face. “They were arguing.”

  “Ah! About what?”

  “I think they were arguing about the will. Garrett had left more to Leo than Billie expected.”

  “And what were you doing?”

  “I just—I think I just wanted to get out of the car—get away from being a captive audience to their disagreement. I hate things like that.”

  “So then what?”

  “That’s all. I don’t remember anything else.”

  The painting over Dr. Shapiro’s head was entirely abstract, not Shell’s favorite style, but she liked it anyway. The vivid shades of overlapping geometric shapes and intense colors echoed the deep reds, blues, and greens in the carpet—alizarin crimson, cobalt, and viridian.

  “Who was in the driver’s seat?” Dr. Shapiro asked.