A Palette for Murder

by Sybil Johnson

  Rory bought cheerful flowers in the gift shop, then took the elevator to the appropriate floor. Inside the hospital room, a nurse was checking the patient’s IV. When Rory knocked on the door, the woman turned and smiled.

  “Is it okay if I visit for a while?” Rory asked.

  “Sure. You’re the first person who’s stopped by.” The nurse crossed the room to the doorway. “He’s in and out right now, but I’m sure he’ll welcome the company.”

  After the nurse left, Rory placed the flowers on a table where Kit could see them and know someone was thinking about him. She dragged a chair over to the side of the bed and sat down. In her gentlest voice, she said, “Kit? It’s me, Rory.” She waited for a response, but the man’s eyes remained closed. Even though she didn’t know if he understood, or even heard, anything she said, she continued talking to him. “Just wanted you to know all of your things are safe. My mom’s taking care of them at the store. And Buddy’s okay too. Good people are looking after him. He’s got a yard and another dog to play with.”

  As soon as she mentioned his dog’s name, Kit’s eyes fluttered open. “Buddy?” he said in a hoarse voice.

  “That’s right. Buddy’s safe. He’s with a family not far from here. On Paskowitz. They’re going to take care of him until you get out of here. How are you doing? You gave everyone quite a scare. Do you remember what happened?”

  Kit stared at her as if he was having trouble understanding the words coming out of her mouth. He squinted and looked around the room. “Where am I?”

  “You’re in the hospital. We found you underneath the pier. I’m afraid I haven’t had any luck finding Zoe. Is there anyone else you want me to call?”

  “Where did you hear that name?”

  “You said it right before you passed out. You asked me to find her…didn’t you?”

  “No, you misunderstood.” He turned his face away from her and stared at the wall. “There’s no one.”

  She placed a slip of paper with her cell phone number written on it on the table next to his hospital bed. “I’m leaving my phone number. If you need anything while you’re here, call me.”

  Before she could say anything else, someone knocked on the door. “Can I come in?” a deep voice said.

  Rory turned to find a handsome man standing in the doorway. Her heart skipped a beat, as it did every time she saw him. She smiled and gestured for him to come inside. “Kit, this is Detective Green. Are you feeling well enough to answer questions?”

  He nodded, a wary look in his eyes.

  The detective took a flip-top notepad out of the inner pocket of his suit. “That’s quite a lump you have on your head. Do you know how you got it?”

  Kit touched the bandage on his forehead as if realizing for the first time something was wrong. “I’m not sure.”

  “Did someone hit you?”

  “Hit me?” He touched the bandage again, then shook his head and winced. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember.”

  “What’s the last thing you do remember? Take your time.”

  Kit frowned in concentration. “I got my lunch at the church like I always do on Friday. This is still Friday, isn’t it?”

  Once he got confirmation, he continued, “I ate half the sandwich, I think, then Buddy and I walked down to the beach. Buddy. Where’s Buddy?” He looked in confusion around the room and called out to his dog, his voice getting louder and louder with each call.

  Rory told him over and over again his dog was in good hands, but the news didn’t seem to sink in.

  As his agitation grew, the nurse appeared in the doorway and looked sternly at Rory and Detective Green. “I think that’s enough for now. He needs his rest.” She shooed them out the door and into the hallway where they stood out of sight of Kit.

  Rory listened as the nurse calmed her friend down, then turned to the detective. “I hope he’ll be okay. Did the doctors tell you anything?”

  “The head injury isn’t serious. He was severely dehydrated when the paramedics brought him in. And he’s running a slight fever, but no one seems overly concerned about it. He should be out of here in a day or two.”

  Rory sighed in relief.

  “Thank goodness. Maybe he’ll remember more after his fever’s gone.”

  The detective touched her arm in a reassuring gesture. “We’re doing everything we can to find out what happened. Have you thought of anything more? Something you didn’t tell Officer Carr?”

  “No, not a thing. There were a lot of people on the beach, but no one who looked suspicious.”

  “He might not have been hit there. We’re looking into the possibility he was in a fight somewhere else and walked down to the beach afterward.” He put his notebook back in his jacket pocket. “Why didn’t you tell me about the car that almost ran you down?”

  “Oh, you heard. Everything happened so fast. I didn’t really have anything to tell, and I wasn’t hurt so I decided not to file a police report.”

  “I’m not talking about filing a report. Why didn’t you tell me?” He shook his head in exasperation. “Next time something like that happens, don’t be afraid to call me.”

  Rory smiled to herself at his concern for her wellbeing. “Okay, Detective, but there won’t be any need for a call like that.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “With your track record? And why don’t you start calling me Martin. We’ve known each other long enough.”

  “Okay…Martin. I forgot to thank you for visiting my mother when she was in the hospital. She really appreciated you and Mel stopping by.”

  “I’m glad she’s better.”

  “How is Mel, anyway? She hasn’t been into the store lately.”

  He looked at her, a puzzled expression on his face. “She moved back East to go to med school. Didn’t she tell you?”

  Rory shook her head. “So soon? She was talking about becoming a doctor, but I didn’t realize she’d started school. I thought she was planning on staying in the area. Are you two…?”

  Detective Green shook his head. “We decided it was better to stop seeing each other. We’re still friends though.”

  “Oh.” Rory stared at her feet, avoiding his gaze, embarrassed that she hadn’t known and that a tiny part of her was glad he was single again.

  An awkward silence surrounded them until he finally cleared his throat and said, “I was wonder—” His phone chimed, indicating the arrival of a text message. He frowned at the display. “I’m sorry, I have to go. I hope your friend gets better soon.” As he headed down the hall, he called over his shoulder, “Stay out of trouble.”

  Rory hummed to herself as she walked toward the nurse’s station to leave her phone number in case Kit needed anything and wasn’t able to call himself.

  Chapter 4

  “Thanks a lot for helping me test out this software. There’s nothing like a real-life situation to iron out the kinks.” Rory smiled at the woman with blonde hair styled in a short bob in the chair beside her. The two sat side by side in Dawn Ogden’s dining room that evening, staring at a computer screen on the table in front of them.

  “You’re helping me out. If this class works out well, I’ll buy your software and schedule several more,” Dawn said. “I love working at Arika’s Scrap ’n Paint, but this is what I want to do full time.”

  “I can’t thank you enough for running the store when my mom was sick.” Rory’s eyes misted over when she thought of her mother’s recent illness, a nasty bacterial infection that had laid her up for over two weeks.

  “I was happy to help. Arika’s like a mother to me.” Dawn patted Rory’s hand. “I know how worried you were.”

  Rory blinked away the tears and smiled. “Are you ready to start the test run?”

  Dawn checked over the painting supplies on the table. Brushes, two-ounce bottles of acrylic paint, palette paper and a water basin
were laid out in front of her. “All set.”

  Rory talked the painting teacher through starting the conferencing software, and soon the two of them were looking at themselves from a window that filled a quarter of the screen. A few more taps on the keyboard and, moments later, two more windows popped up on the display. Liz’s smiling face appeared in one while a thirty-something woman wearing glasses showed up in the other.

  “Hi!” Liz waved at the two of them. “That was pretty easy.”

  “Can you both hear us okay?” Rory said.

  Liz gave them a thumbs up while Teresa Mut nodded and spoke but no sound came out of her mouth.

  “Could you speak up, Teresa?” Rory said.

  The woman adjusted something on her end. “Sorry. I can hear you fine. I accidentally turned off the sound.”

  “Are we ready to get started?” Rory asked.

  A knock came from Teresa’s screen. “Excuse me. Let me just get that.” She got up and disappeared from the computer display, returning moments later with a plate of food.

  “Teresa, are you in a hotel? I didn’t mean for you to go to any expense for this.” Rory gave her a worried glance.

  “It isn’t costing me a thing. I know one of the owners. I do a lot of weddings here. He’s letting me use the room for a few hours. It’s a mini-vacation for me. I can’t concentrate with the kids around. Breaks like these keep me from going crazy.”

  With three kids between the ages of two and seven, the woman probably welcomed any break she could get. Teresa doted on her “monkeys,” as she called them, but Rory suspected they and her wedding-planning business ran the woman ragged.

  “Let’s get started. You all have your cheat sheets, right?” Rory waved a piece of paper in front of the camera, a document explaining the software features she sent to all the test participants earlier in the week.

  After they all nodded, Dawn put up a photo of the finished piece she was demonstrating that evening onto the screen. Once she verified that the jpeg appeared on each of the student’s displays, Dawn pointed the camera at a piece of poster board where she’d already painted a circle in a medium shade of blue. “You get that 3D effect in trompe l’oeil projects using a combination of shading, highlighting and adding cast shadows. Today I’ll teach you how to transform this plain circle into a ball using the first two techniques. First, let’s review the proper way to load your brush.”

  Rory sat back in her seat and watched as the teacher demonstrated. She took notes of changes to make to her program, occasionally interrupting to make sure the students were seeing everything on their ends. Dawn had finished shading the circle and was about to demonstrate highlighting when the doorbell rang. She looked up briefly, then continued her explanation.

  When the doorbell sounded again, Rory looked at Dawn and said, “Do you want to get that? We can wait.”

  “Ignore it. They’ll go away.”

  She had barely said the words when the doorbell rang once again, more insistently this time, followed by a pounding that drowned out the question Teresa was asking. A shrill voice that seemed vaguely familiar called out Dawn’s name.

  The painting teacher looked toward the entryway in annoyance. “I’d better get that. Sorry about this. I’ll be right back.”

  While Dawn took care of her visitor, Rory asked the others their opinions of the software. As they talked, Rory heard the murmur of voices in the background. She tried to ignore the conversation in the next room, but when the voices grew louder and louder she couldn’t help overhearing the words “never” and “forgive.”

  “Now, pumpkin…” the shrill voice said.

  “Don’t call me that!” Dawn’s voice was the angriest Rory had ever heard it.

  “Okay, okay!”

  Looks of concern came across all of their faces. Rory stopped in mid-sentence and turned her head toward the front door.

  “What was that?” Teresa said.

  “What’s going on?” Liz craned her neck as if she could poke her head through the screen and see into Dawn’s home.

  “I have no idea.” Rory leaned back in her chair, but furniture blocked her view of the front door.

  “Turn the camera so we can see.”

  Liz made a swiveling motion with her hand.

  “Wouldn’t help,” Rory said. “There’s a bookcase in the way.”

  She put her finger to her lips to indicate the other two should stay quiet and strained to hear the muffled voices coming from the other room. “I think she’s talking to Willow. I’ll be right back.”

  Rory tiptoed across the dining room toward the entryway. She peered around the doorway in time to see Dawn say “You have no right” and shove a protesting Willow out the front door. Rory hurried back to the computer and whispered, “That was Willow all right. Dawn just pushed her out the door.”

  “Really?” Liz and Teresa said in hushed voices.

  “Any idea what they were talking about?” Teresa asked.

  “It was more like arguing. Nothing I heard made sense to me. I have no idea.”

  “Teresa, Willow’s a friend of yours. Any idea what’s going on?” Liz asked.

  The woman shook her head. “No clue. Willow took one of Dawn’s classes not long ago. Everything seemed fine between them then.”

  The door slammed shut.

  “Shh! She’s coming back,” Rory said.

  When Dawn slid into the chair moments later, her face was pale but composed.

  “Everything okay?” Rory asked.

  “Sorry about that. Just a misunderstanding. Nothing to worry about. Now, where were we?”

  As Dawn continued where she left off, Rory couldn’t help wondering why the painting teacher was arguing with one of her students and what had gotten the normally placid woman so bent out of shape.

  After the test run was over and she had a list of changes to make to the software, Rory met up with Liz for a late dinner. They were walking back to Liz’s car in the restaurant parking lot when Rory’s phone rang. She frowned as she listened to the woman on the other end of the line.

  “Is everything okay?” Liz asked.

  “Kit left the hospital.”

  “They discharged him already?” Liz unlocked the car door and slipped into the driver’s seat of the black Lexus sedan.

  Rory curled her long legs into the passenger seat. “Not exactly. He got dressed when they weren’t looking and walked out the door.”

  “No one stopped him?”

  “They didn’t notice until he was long gone. There were emergencies on the floor.”

  “Maybe he went to see Buddy.”

  “All I told him was the name of the street where the family that’s taking care of him lives, not the house number. I suppose he could have gone there to see if he could find him.”

  “Easy enough to find out.” They drove over to the eastern part of the city, stopping in front of a craftsman-style house on Paskowitz Lane. When no one answered the front door, they headed toward the backyard, where they heard dogs barking and children laughing. Liz called out as she opened the gate. Lights lit up the expanse of grass where two golden retrievers were playing fetch with a grade-school-aged boy and girl. Buddy bounded up to Rory and barked. After she gave him a quick pat on the head, the dog raced back to his canine companion.

  A woman smiled as she walked toward them. “Come to visit Buddy?” She held her hand out to Rory. “We haven’t met. I’m Bethany.”

  Rory shook her hand, murmured her name followed by “nice to meet you” and nodded toward the dog. “He seems to be doing well. Has anyone stopped by looking for him? His owner left the hospital.”

  Surprise with a tinge of disappointment came over the woman’s face. “They discharged him already?”

  Liz shook her head. “He left against the doctor’s advice. We thought he might have come lo
oking for his dog.”

  “No one’s been by. He’s not dangerous, is he?” Bethany cast a worried look at her kids, who were running around the yard with the two dogs.

  “No, we just want to make sure he’s okay,” Rory said.

  “I’ll call you if he stops by.” She clapped her hands and called out to her children. “Okay, play time’s over. Off to bed.” As her kids put away their toys and headed inside, Bethany said over her shoulder, “I hope you find him. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

  Rory and Liz went out the way they came in, carefully closing the gate behind them. Next stop was Arika’s Scrap ’n Paint, where Rory let herself in the back door of the closed store. Kit’s bicycle and all his possessions were still in the same spot and didn’t appear to have been touched. They drove slowly down the streets of downtown Vista Beach, past the library and the church, but saw no sign of him.

  Finally, Liz said, “It’s too dark. He could be sleeping anywhere. We’ll have better luck in daylight.”

  Rory reluctantly nodded her head in agreement. They ended the day disappointed and worried they hadn’t found Kit but determined to continue the search the next morning.

  Chapter 5

  Saturday morning dawned as hot as ever. Rory and Liz searched everywhere they could think of for Kit but didn’t find him. As Liz drove the short distance to the mall, the two talked about that evening’s double date.

  “You still haven’t told me his name.” Rory fiddled with the radio, hopping from station to station in search of music that appealed to her.

  Liz swatted her hand away and turned off the radio. “All you need to know is he’s new in town, taller than you, and cute. I’m not saying anything else. You know what happened last time.”

  “I was not stalking that guy!”

  “No, you just looked him up on the internet and drove by his house. Twice. You freaked him out.”

  Rory folded her arms and slumped down in her seat. “I wanted to know what I was getting into. I don’t like blind dates.”

  “Trust me. This one’s a keeper. Besides, I checked your horoscope. Today’s an auspicious day for starting a new relationship.”