by Hillary Avis
Yeah, come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly. No thanks. No way Bethany was going anywhere with this guy—a guy who apparently thought it was fine to hack the foot off a dead person! She was no lawyer, but she knew that was definitely not cool in the eyes of the law. No wonder he tried to hide it in his trunk!
But Ryan and Milo didn’t seem to share her compunctions. They were already following Lucien into his lair. She rolled her eyes and tailed after them.
Someone has to be the adult around here.
Inside the studio, Lucien buzzed around finding enough chairs and stools for everyone. “Sit, sit,” he said, perching on a rickety folding chair himself.
Bethany eyed him warily as she took a seat on a paint-splattered stool. Milo took the chair next to her, but Ryan refused to sit and instead stood just behind Lucien with his arms crossed.
“Start talking,” he hissed in Lucien’s ear.
“OK, OK,” Lucien babbled, drawing his shoulders up. “I did everything in accordance with Bernard’s wishes. It’s all written down and notarized. He wanted me to do it!”
“He wanted you to cut his foot off?” Milo was taking notes, of course.
“Yes!” Lucien exclaimed, apparently pleased that someone understood what he was trying to say.
“Why would he want that?” Bethany asked. “And why was his body in the conservatory? Why was he mummified to begin with?”
“Good questions,” Milo muttered, writing them down.
“Answer.” Ryan’s voice was gruff and sent shivers down Bethany’s spine.
Lucien sighed and adjusted his glasses. “Let me start at the beginning. No, that’s too long. Let me start at the end. Bernard knew he was dying. He gave me exact instructions for what he wanted me to do after his death. He gave me the supplies, too.”
“Wait—you mummified him?!” Bethany exclaimed.
Lucien nodded. “He was very dedicated to the Peregrine collection, you see. He wanted to preserve it, and he wanted to be part of it forever. So...”
Ryan gasped. “Mummia!”
Is he speaking Latin? Bethany looked at Milo to see if he had any idea what was going on, but his face was swimming with as much confusion as she felt.
But Lucien just nodded again. “Exactly. And that’s why I removed his foot.”
“Let me see the paperwork,” Ryan said, pacing back and forth behind Lucien’s chair. Lucien nodded and scurried to his desk to rifle through a drawer of files.
“I think I missed something.” Milo tapped his pencil on his notebook. “Can you fill me in, Ryan?”
Ryan nodded, still pacing. “So in the past, a lot of artists used a pigment called mummia in their work. It made really great pale tones and also glazes. And it was made from—”
“Mummies,” Bethany guessed.
“Yep. Ground up mummies, to be exact. In fact, some people called it ‘mummy brown.’ Jasper James Peregrine used it, but so did everyone in his time. At least until the supply of mummies dried up.”
“Dried up,” Milo repeated and snickered.
Ryan rolled his eyes. “Anyway, nobody can get their hands on mummy brown anymore, so it’s tough to do a completely authentic restoration of these old paintings.”
Bethany reeled with the new information. “Oh, so Bernard LaFontaine wanted to be made into this kind of paint so he’d be used to restore his painting collection?”
Lucien returned, clutching a sheaf of papers. He handed them to Ryan and nodded to Bethany, beaming. “Exactly right. I removed his foot to grind it up into pigment, just as he specified.”
“And you agreed to this?” Milo asked, his voice incredulous.
“How could I refuse?” Lucien shrugged. “He wanted to be part of the Peregrines forever. It’s a beautiful thought.”
“Plus you wanted to do an authentic restoration. Let’s not pretend this was altruism. I know plenty of people in the art world who’d kill to get their hands on a tube of mummy brown,” Ryan said dryly as he perused the papers. “You’re not lying, though. Bernard’s wishes are clear. He wanted this.”
Chapter 13
MILO FROWNED AT LUCIEN. “So if Bernard wanted to be made into paint, why hide it? Why not publicize it as part of something that makes the Peregrine collection special?”
Special is one word for it. Just plain creepy is the other!
Lucien looked up at Ryan pleadingly. “Well, like you mentioned—mummy brown is very desirable. If word got out, museums and conservators from all over the world would be harassing me to share the supply.”
Ryan’s face was unsympathetic. “I imagine you wanted to take your mummia with you if you ever left the museum, too. Keeping me out of the loop meant the mummy brown was all yours.”
Lucien hung his head guiltily. “I’d have enough pigment from Bernard to last me twenty years—the rest of my career—if I didn’t have to share. But then you found the mummy and I only had his foot left. And when Bella’s body was found in the crypt—” he broke off, unable to continue.
“You hid the foot so it wouldn’t be confiscated.” Ryan finished.
“And so people wouldn’t think you killed her,” Bethany added. Ryan looked at her strangely. “What? That’s the first thing I thought. I mean, whoever opened the crypt to get Bernard out is probably the person who put Bella in.”
“No! No!” Lucien protested. “I had nothing to do with that. I mean, yes, I took Bernard out of the coffin—he had it made with a special trap door in the end so it’d be easy for me to do it alone—but I left it empty, I swear! Someone else put her in there.”
Milo raised his eyebrows skeptically. “So someone came later and opened up the crypt, put Bella inside, and didn’t notice that Bernard was missing?”
“Don’t ask me—I wasn’t there.” Lucien gave a small shrug. “The last time I saw Bella, she was very alive. I drove her to the airport that night, actually. She was headed to the convent in Spain, totally devastated. I think she cried the whole way to the airport. When I got back to the estate, all the lights were out, so I assumed Simon was in bed. I went to the chapel, loaded Bernard into a wheelbarrow—that was a task, let me tell you—and took him to the basement in the main house. I never went back inside the chapel until today, and I have no idea when Bella came back from Europe, either.”
“I wonder why she came back,” Bethany said thoughtfully.
Lucien licked his lips, his eyes darting between them. “Well. You didn’t hear it from me, but Bella had a very...intimate friendship with Ernesto. Maybe she came back to see him.”
“The estate manager?” Milo asked. Lucien nodded. “Were they having an affair?”
“Who can say? I just noticed that they enjoyed each other’s company. They spent every afternoon together in the gardens. I could see them from my studio,” he explained hurriedly. “I wasn’t paying special attention.”
“You need to tell the police all this,” Bethany said. “They need to know how close Ernesto and Bella were. And they need to know why you made the mummy.”
Lucien winced. “Can’t we keep the duffel bag situation just between us? I didn’t do anything wrong, and if I tell them, they’ll certainly confiscate the mummia.”
“You mean Bernard’s foot!” Milo said indignantly, momentarily losing his neutral journalistic tone. “It’s a man’s foot.”
Lucien waved away the concern. “A foot he donated to art, to live in perpetuity. He’d be more upset if his plans were thwarted.” He turned to Ryan. “You don’t want to lose access to the mummia, do you?”
Ryan sighed, shaking his head regretfully. “As helpful as it would be for the museum’s conservation efforts, I just can’t see how we could keep it.”
“Easy. We just hide it and don’t say anything. I’ll tell them about the mummification and show them the contract Bernard had drawn up. They’ll be appalled, but it’ll blow over eventually once they verify the paperwork. And when I’m cleared of any wrongdoing, I’ll still have mummia to use for the ar
twork.”
Milo’s mouth dropped open. “You want us all to lie to the police for you?”
“It’s not a lie!” Lucien looked genuinely offended. “It’s just a slight omission. I mean, you’re not planning to tell the cops what you ate for breakfast, are you? Is that a lie?”
“It’s not the same,” Milo said stubbornly. “I’m not sure why, but it isn’t.”
Bethany nodded in agreement. I don’t think I can keep something like that from Charley, either. She’ll take one look at my face and just know I’m hiding something. “If Charley finds out we kept this from her, we might all end up in trouble.”
“She’s right. You have to turn in the foot,” Ryan said firmly. “It won’t ruin the museum’s conservation efforts. We’ll just be on an even playing field with everyone else. I’m driving you and Bernard’s foot down to the station right now so you can make your statement and show them the contract.”
Lucien’s shoulders slumped in resignation as he picked up the handles of his duffel bag. Bethany supposed he couldn’t argue with his boss.
“I can drop you off at the restaurant afterward,” Ryan said apologetically to Bethany.
“I’ll take you!” Milo said. “I’m going that way anyway. And it’ll save you some time.”
She looked back and forth between them as they waited eagerly for her answer. She didn’t want to hurt either of them or show favoritism, but obviously she couldn’t accept a ride from both of them!
She gave herself a mental shake. You’re not picking a husband here. This is about a ride to work. It wasn’t about who she liked better or who she could see herself with in five years. This was about logic. Wasn’t it?
She smiled at Milo. “Thanks, that’d be great. We can even work on wedding stuff on the way.”
Ryan dropped his head momentarily, but when he brought it up again, he wore an uncomfortable smile. “See you around,” he said, before escorting Lucien out of the studio and down the stairs.
“Bye!” Milo waved, seemingly blithe to Ryan’s disappointment.
Bethany’s heart sank. Am I letting the wrong guy walk away from me?
Maybe she should have made the decision with her heart instead of her head. Maybe she was screwing this all up.
Chapter 14
“DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE Lucien that he wasn’t involved in Bella’s death?” Milo looked at her sideways as he guided his car along the twisty road toward Newbridge. “What if she caught him stealing Bernard’s body and he just conked her on the head and shoved her into the box?”
“He wasn’t stealing it—he had permission. He had no reason to hide it from Bella.”
“Then why did he wait until after he took her to the airport to retrieve the body?”
Bethany shrugged. “He was just following Bernard’s instructions, right? Maybe Bernard told him not to tell her. It seems like they didn’t have a great marriage. Anyway, wouldn’t Bernard have told Bella he was going to be mummified, if he wanted her to know about it?”
Milo nodded. “You’re probably right. And maybe he did tell her. There’s no way to know now that they’re both dead.”
They were quiet after that. Bethany stared out the window at the yellow, orange, and red leaves that stood out like fire against the gray sky. The forests thinned, broken up by houses and small fenced lawns, as they got closer to town. When they entered the city limits, they passed a vegetable stand that overflowed with pumpkins and lumpy decorative gourds, a coffee shop shaped like a miniature lighthouse, and a little brick florist shop.
“Stop the car!” Bethany pushed down her foot on an imaginary brake and Milo quickly followed suit, pulling the car over to the curb and stopping with a jerk.
“What is it? What happened! Are you OK?”
She blushed, realizing how her words had sounded. “Everything’s fine,” she said. “I just saw the florist’s shop, and I remembered that Kimmy asked me to stop by there and finalize the floral arrangements.”
“You almost gave me a heart attack!” Milo said, clutching his chest and grinning. “I guess I’m on edge after the whole finding-a-dead-lady scene up at the estate. Sure, let’s shop for flowers.”
“You don’t have to stay,” she said quickly. “I can walk to work from here.”
“No, I want to.”
“You want to shop for wedding centerpieces?”
“Yeah, I’ve always dreamed of being a florist.” Milos’s voice was deadpan but his eyes twinkled. Then, when he saw her smile at his joke, his face turned serious. “No, I mean it—I want to spend time with you. If that means shopping for someone else’s wedding flowers, then I’m in.”
She swallowed, a little embarrassed by his earnest expression. He’s not going to make this easy for me, is he? But if he was so eager to hang out, why hadn’t he asked her on a date recently?
“I mean, if you don’t want me to come with you, I understand,” he said quickly, sensing her hesitation.
“I don’t mind.” She bit her tongue—that came out too blasé. “I mean, I’d like it if you came.”
“Good.” He seemed genuinely relieved. “I know we haven’t gone out lately because we’ve both been so busy, but I realized up at the estate that you and Ryan have been finding time. I guess I assumed if you were too busy to see me, you were too busy to see him, too. But you squeezed in a date yesterday.”
“It wasn’t a date,” she blurted out. “It was just looking for a new wedding venue.”
He nodded. “OK. So now we’re going to have a non-date and look at flowers. Cool?”
She bit back a smile. “Cool.”
The shop’s quaint brick exterior was outshone by its even quainter interior. Potted mums and buckets of cut lilies welcomed them through the entrance. Shelves along the walls held tropical houseplants, and a central table was crowded with orchids of every color, spot, and stripe. A refrigerated display showcased long-stemmed roses in a rainbow of shades. But the counter at the rear of the shop was empty, staffed only by an ancient manual cash register.
“Is it even open?” Milo asked Bethany.
She shrugged. “The door was unlocked, so it must be.” She picked her way through the plants to the counter and rang the bell.
“Hold your britches,” a crotchety voice said from a back room. “I’m coming as fast as I can.”
Bethany grinned over her shoulder at Milo. “It’s open.”
An elderly woman in a long, green rubber apron pushed through the calico curtains separating the back and the front of the shop, holding a pair of floral shears in one hand. She slipped them into the pocket on her apron. “Here for porch mums?”
“What?”
“Porch. Mums. Mums for your porch.” The florist raised her voice and enunciated as though Bethany might be hard of hearing.
“Oh, no. I came about the flowers for the Caldwell-Perez wedding. I’m in the wedding and one of the brides asked me to come down and finalize the arrangements.”
The florist took out the shears and brandished them at Bethany. She snapped them inches from her face. “I was just working on that! I’ll be right back.” She shuffled back through the curtains and Bethany could hear her sliding and banging things around.
Milo gave her an amused look. “I thought she was going to mess you up with those shears. I was all ready to fight her on your behalf.”
Bethany giggled at the thought of Milo fighting anyone. “I think I can handle a little old florist on my own.”
“You never know. She could be some kind of ninja,” Milo said seriously.
“He’s right.” The florist’s creaky voice filtered through the curtains. “I have many skills.”
“She probably knows karate,” Milo whispered.
Bethany clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle her laughter as the woman returned carrying a silver bowl of flowers. It was a traditional arrangement of peachy roses, trailing variegated ivy, and small sunflowers, perfect for the season. The florist set it down on the counter with a c
lank.
“You don’t like it.” She leaned on the counter with one hand and narrowed her eyes at Bethany.
“No, I do!” Bethany took a step back from the counter. I really do like them—but will Kimmy?
“Don’t lie to me, young lady. I can see it in your face. Whatever you’re thinking, spit it out!”
“You better tell her.” Milo nudged her. “She’s a ninja, remember?”
“It’s just...” She fumbled for words as she tried to formulate her thoughts. Let’s not have the floral arrangements be a repeat of the dress situation. “It’s not boring, exactly—it’s beautiful. But I think it’s a little too conventional for them. Is there any way to make it more unique?” She cringed, hoping the florist wouldn’t be upset at the criticism.
To her surprise, the woman’s face brightened. “Unique, eh? That I can manage. Tell me more about this bride friend of yours. What’s she like?”
“Kimmy’s tall, dark, and stunning,” Milo said.
The florist snorted. “I didn’t ask what she looked like. What’s she like? What does she do?”
Bethany grinned. “She’s loyal to the end. Smart, sensitive. And a very talented chef.”
A smile split the florist’s wizened face for the first time. “I have just the thing!” She grabbed the arrangement and, with sudden spryness, disappeared again between the curtains.
“This is like a magic show,” Milo said in a whisper. “I thought I was shopping for flowers, but instead I am entertained.”
“I know, I need to come here more often,” Bethany said, giggling.
“That’s fine, you can buy me flowers.” Milo winked at her.
The florist popped her head out between the curtains. “Any allergies?”
Bethany shook her head, and the woman disappeared again. She returned a few minutes later and presented the new arrangement triumphantly. It still had the ivy, roses, and sunflowers, but she’d added artichokes, tiny pumpkins, and cabbages with purple centers and green outer leaves to it. It looked colorful, bountiful, and good enough to eat.
