Murder on Mustang Beach, page 23
Denise eyeballed him. “I remember you.”
“The police have been stumped by the initials D.S. on the sign-up sheet,” I said.
“Not y’all, though.”
“Not anymore.” I told her about recognizing the pink letters signed to the mural inside Sanctuary Bungalow.
“Sanctuary was one of my first-ever commissions,” she said. “Years ago. I was barely drinking age when I decorated those walls. I assumed someone would have painted over those scenes by now. I was pretty tickled to learn they’re still there, and that the sunlight hasn’t damaged them too much. Beautiful place, Mustang Beach. Anyway, if the police come knocking, I’ll tell them the same thing I’m about to tell you: Heather Westerly owes me money.”
“Oh?” I cocked my head. “Dr. Heather Westerly, the equine veterinarian?”
“She’s been blowing off my calls and texts. That morning—the day they found that guy dead in the dojo—I had taken the ferry over to Cattail Island. Hadn’t been in years. My destination was the Casa Coquina. Where Heather was staying.”
“She’s still there,” I said.
“I never made it to the B and B, because I spotted Heather on my way there. She was walking down the street not a half block away. I’d never met her in person, but we’d FaceTimed often enough for me to recognize her. She went into the dojo, so I did too.”
“You explained to me that you weren’t there for a workout,” Toby said. “You only needed a quick word with Heather.”
“Which you were fine with,” Denise said, nodding. “But you still insisted I sign in. I just scribbled my initials. Figured that’d be good enough.”
“And I didn’t notice, because that Cooper guy was shoving a pair of gloves in my face, insisting on sparring with me.”
Denise lunged for a fly that had landed on the counter, but missed. I noticed a splatter of paint on her chin. “So I went into the big room where Heather was doing karate moves or whatever,” she said. “I was only inside the dojo for a minute or so. That’s all the time I needed to look her in the eye and let her know, in no uncertain terms, that that if my PayPal account wasn’t flush within the next few days, I was taking matters to the good old internet. If my issue went viral, that might inspire her to settle up.”
“What did she say?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“Did you notice anything strange or suspicious going on inside the dojo? A weird vibe, a tense exchange of dialogue—anything?”
Denise thought for a moment before shrugging. “My very presence inside that building was probably the weirdest thing.”
“What does Heather owe you money for?” I asked. “A mural?”
“She commissioned a—well, I guess you could call it a self-portrait.”
What did that mean? Toby and I shared a glance. “Could we see this self-portrait?” he asked.
“I was hoping you’d say that.” She smiled wryly. “It hasn’t felt right, keeping it all to myself.”
* * *
• • •
Behind her home, Denise’s workspace addition was big enough to shelter a propellor plane or two. The scale of the building, combined with the gigantic canvases it housed, made me feel about the size of a blade of grass. Gargantuan paintings in various stages of completion adorned the walls. One showed sunflowers waltzing in the wind, their height towering, their faces bigger than turkey platters. Another painting showed wide-eyed children reading books as rainbows and spacecraft zoomed from the pages.
“Whoa,” I said.
“I’m doing that one for the library,” she said of the reading-themed one.
Toby and I strolled, spinning around three-sixty, taking in the scenes. At least according to my untrained eye, Denise’s artistry had progressed since her mustang-mural days. These images were more realistic, the colors more vibrant, the overall effect of general wonderment more profound.
And when we came face-to-face with the biggest canvas of all, propped against the far wall, Toby and I gasped.
64
Mm-hmm,” Denise said. “That’s my reaction whenever I lay eyes on her too, and I made the darn thing.”
The canvas itself—much larger than your average garage door—must have cost a pretty penny. It showed a magical nighttime beachscape, with purple comets reflected in the water and the moon illuminating sea creatures underneath the waves. The focal point: larger-than-life Heather, about fifteen years younger than she actually was, sitting astride a muscle-strapped warrior horse. Elaborate braids cascaded around her shoulders. Furs made an X across her chest, leaving her muscular midriff bare. Studded leather armbands accentuated dainty but defined biceps and triceps, and her tan, sinewy leg ended in a sexy medieval bootie. In the bottom corner, against moonlit sand, slanted the now-familiar D.S., in Denise’s signature salmon pink.
“Oh.” I stepped backward and tipped my head up. I noticed a square-jawed merman in the surf, gazing up lustily at warrior-maiden Heather. His eight-pack ab muscles glistened; his tail poked suggestively above a wave. “It’s . . .”
“Go ahead. Say whatever you want. I only replicated a printout Heather Westerly sent in the mail. I don’t know where she got it. She must have made it with Photoshop or a meme app or something like that. It was rudimentary, but enough to give me an idea of what she wanted.”
On Thursday afternoon, I’d observed a tipsy Heather Westerly lovingly take something out of the frunk of her Tesla. That something bore the same dimensions as a standard sheet of paper.
Had it been a copy of the printout?
“Heather emailed me,” Denise said. “We went back and forth. I told her I wasn’t a high-fantasy artist. She didn’t care. She knew I was competent, she knew I went macro, she knew I could paint horses, she knew I was relatively local. I ticked all her boxes, so she hired me.” The artist twisted her hair off her shoulders and pinned it in place with the flyswatter. Her dog had followed us, shuffling inside the workspace. He now lowered himself with a groan to the concrete floor. Denise tossed him a piece of popcorn. “Everybody’s into something funky, or different,” she said. “She wanted a portrait of, like, herself as Xena: Warrior Princess or something. Okay. Cool. But I need my money.”
“Of course,” Toby said. “I get that.”
I shifted left, taking in colossal Heather from a patch of sunlight slanting in through a window. The woman was attracted to high fantasy. The books, the art. It was only natural she’d want to put herself inside that world. How heady the prospect must have been, to be portrayed as an object of beauty, imbued with power.
The equine veterinarian’s secrecy made sense. If I’d spent—several thousand dollars, I’d guess?—on a portrait of this ilk, I’d want to keep it under wraps too. Hiding a ninety-square-inch sheet of paper was one thing. This?
“Where is she going to put it?” I asked. “She’s house hunting in Cattail for a permanent place to live, but most of the homes there don’t have that much wall space.” Finally able to wrench free of the strange hold the painting had on me, I turned to Denise. “Is that why she’s not paying you? Because it’s dawning on her that she just won’t have the space?”
“It’s dawning on her that she doesn’t have the money. Last week, I texted her a pic of the finished product, and she hearted it right away. Then she FaceTimed me, boo-hooing about how she’d recently overspent on a car and had underestimated the expenses of moving and buying a home. And now she wasn’t sure if she’d even be able to afford rent, never mind a mortgage. She said she’d be paying off student loans for the next twenty-five years. She said she loved my painting but didn’t want to dip into her savings, which is pretty skimpy. Then she begged me for a layaway option.”
“I’m guessing your answer was no,” Toby said.
“Denise Sawicki Arts does not do layaway.”
I nodded. As I had recently discovered, Cattail Island had become a difficult place for a single person to get established, home-wise. Bargain starter homes—either for sale or lease—were nearly impossible to come by. I felt for Heather, who certainly wasn’t alone in having a strained relationship with money. I felt for Denise too, because making a living as an artist wasn’t easy.
“Can y’all help me get what I’m owed?” she asked.
“Contact Cattail police,” Toby said.
“Ask for Detective Iona Fusco,” I said. “Tell her I sent you. Tell her everything.”
65
The ferry pushed steadily through the low waves of the Pamlico. Toby had gone for refreshments. I sat in the Wagoneer passenger seat as my stomach pitched. Caressing my aching belly, I considered asking the nice-looking couple in the next car if they had any Dramamine but decided against it. I wasn’t suffering from seasickness. I was suffering from dread. Gnawing, nagging unease, twisting my insides into a Gordian knot.
True, the encounter with Denise had been strangely satisfying. Heather Westerly was holding out on Denise. Fusco would set that to rights, I was certain.
But there were other concerns. Bigger ones. A lot of them.
To begin with, as far as I knew, Tigress was still missing.
There’d been no additional headway into the mystery of the man in the Zimmerman T-shirt running on Mustang Beach.
Zero clues had emerged as to who had torched my Little Free Library.
Addison Battle was nowhere to be found.
And the most worrisome tangle of all: Seth Goodnow’s murderer was still on the loose.
Fresh air. I needed it like I’d been trapped inside a sauna.
Exiting the Wagoneer, I joined several people at the nearest railing. Something low on the horizon had caught their attention, causing exclamations of awe. I assumed it was a school of dolphins racing alongside the boat, but that wasn’t the object of their fascination. Causing the commotion—even inspiring a few people to snap photos—was a cloud. Not counting a couple of foggy dawns, it was the first cloud in weeks to appear in the vicinity of Cattail Island. It looked like a giant had dipped a huge sponge into pink paint and dabbed it onto the sky. As the minutes passed, the cloud morphed from a mammalian shape into something more serpentine.
“Your uncle might get his wish.” Toby had found me. He handed over a bottle of water.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
He pointed to the cloud. “A good old-fashioned Outer Banks rain.”
“Oh. Yeah. Wouldn’t that be nice.” I tried to wrangle my thoughts. Toby was right: a cloud bore the possibility of sorely needed rain, of one of those unpredicted storms Hudson had talked about, so fast and localized they don’t allow time for preparation. And yet, my mood remained gloomy.
It all came back to the sign-up sheet. Everyone who’d put down their John Hancock had checked out.
Take Heather Westerly. She’d lied about not knowing who D.S. was. She reported having seen only four people that morning in the dojo—when she knew there’d been five, because Denise had confronted her. Heather’s lie probably hadn’t been to cover up any involvement with Seth’s murder. She simply didn’t want anybody to know about her commissioned self-portrait. And how she’d stiffed the artist.
Heather Westerly didn’t have any reason to kill Seth Goodnow.
Neither, for that matter, did the artist herself, Denise Sawicki. She’d only stopped in at Cattail Family Martial Arts to have a face-to-face with a noncompliant client. Or so she claimed.
“Do you believe her?” I asked Toby. “Denise.”
“Every word.”
“Me too.”
That left Cooper Payne. Frankly, though, the guy didn’t come off as smart enough to get away with murder.
Which brought me to my non-sign-up sheet suspect, Ezra Metcalfe. He had seemed genuinely distressed that Seth Goodnow was strangled just a few days after getting hitched to his lovely bride. Ezra had even taken on a greenish hue when speaking about the tragic turn of events.
I was missing something. What?
Cattail Island approached. I saw the smile of beach that was Smile Beach. It looked so much bigger now without the old fishing pier. Farther south, the lighthouse jabbed above the treetops. Mid-island, the masts of the replica pirate ship poked the sky.
My heart swelled. Home.
A home I wanted to protect.
I longed to reconnect with the people there. To tell my uncle I had his yarn. To inform police that D.S. was Denise Sawicki, and that she and Heather Westerly were off the hook.
I got out my phone. No signal. The ferry still hadn’t sailed out of the dead zone.
“We should get back to the pride and joy,” Toby said, meaning his vehicle.
On the way, we passed the restroom, where a whiff of cleaning solution walloped me. A similar antiseptic odor had hit me in the shed behind Ivy and Dominick’s rental cottage.
That shed.
How strange that it had been eat-a-meal-on-the-floor spotless.
During high school and community college, I’d worked as a cleaner of rental cottages. One thing I was never expected to tackle, ever? Storage sheds.
Even if the owner gave it a regular deep clean, wouldn’t the strong disinfectant smell have faded during the O’Neills’ stay?
That shed had been cleaned recently. I was sure of it.
Why?
I climbed into the passenger seat, and Toby climbed behind the wheel. The people around us began stirring, jabbing away at their devices.
Service.
I whipped out my phone and could practically feel the dopamine firing through my brain with each notification that popped up. Jurecki had called. Fusco too.
“I got a new recruit,” Toby whispered as he listened to his voicemail messages. His eyes sparkled.
“I told you things would get back to normal,” I said.
“Mind if I call the parent back?”
“Go for it.” I was glad he was distracted. Because I had something urgent to attend to. I googled Dominick O’Neill. The first few relevant hits were work related. An internal corporate newsletter singling him out for outstanding quarterly performance; a conference attendee master list; things like that.
And then something unexpected appeared, from a weekly paper in Massachusetts. It seemed so random, I almost skimmed right over it. A three-year-old news story about a sit-in. In an effort to raise awareness about bullying, a small group of concerned parents staged a peaceful protest during last night’s school board meeting . . . A color photograph showed solemn-faced twenty- and thirty-somethings lining the walls of a classroom. I easily identified Ivy and Dominick by their striking good looks. Dominick draped an arm over his wife’s shoulders as she held up a sign: choose kindness.
I scanned the article. It appeared the O’Neills hadn’t always homeschooled their daughter. I’d put money on the likelihood that once upon a time, back at this school in their former town, Cadence had been the victim of bullying. The incident might have influenced their decision to homeschool—and maybe even to move out of state too. It also occurred to me that the O’Neills did the right thing according to that book I’d come across, Bullies: How They’re Made, How to Defeat Them. The O’Neills had stood up for themselves.
The ferry sounded its foghorn, and I jumped at the sudden blast. Toby’s warm hand rested on my arm. “Hey,” he said. “You good?”
I forced a smile. “I should touch base with Fusco. And we need to get you to your Kids-N-Parents class.”
“I’ll make it. Right on time.”
The ferry approached the dock. On deck, there was the usual scramble—the slamming of car doors, the wheezing up of engines. The line wasn’t moving yet. I dialed Fusco.
She answered without a hello. “What’s the information?”
“Hi to you too. I found out who D.S. is, but she checks out. At first blush, anyway.”
“I’ll be the judge of that. D.S. is a she?”
“An artist named Denise Sawicki. She lives in Jarvis Harbor.” As I explained, the foghorn blasted again.
“Are you on the ferry?”
“That’s neither here nor there. Listen, have you come across a wedding guest named Dominick O’Neill? He’s renting the cottage next door to Naomi Goodnow. He was a colleague of Seth’s. He was transferred out of Seth’s office a while back.” Dominick’s transfer. Was there more to that story? “Some people—including Seth’s own widow—had the opinion that Seth was not a very nice person,” I added.
“So I understand,” Fusco said.
“What if Seth did something to Dominick, and Dominick retaliated?”
“Let me guess. This is all wild conjecture, and you have no proof, and you’re just following a hunch.”
“I’m not a policewoman, Fusco.”
“That’s right. You’re not.”
66
Toby steered into the queue as, one by one, vehicles rolled off the ferry. My bottom lip was becoming shredded as I chewed on it. He reached out and brushed his knuckles against my cheek. “Bad habit,” he said. “So—Dominick O’Neill? I knew you had something on your mind. Do you think . . .”
“I don’t know what to think,” I said, clasping his hand.
“What are you up to tonight?”
“Oh, nothing much. I’ll just be chilling with Hudson and Scupper.”
“Good. Lay low. Get some rest. That way, I won’t have to worry about you.”
* * *
• • •
Get some rest? Not an option.
After Toby drove off, I peeled out of my parking spot, zooming for Love Beach Trail. Balanced on my dashboard with the volume on high, my phone played my messages. The first: Hudson, wondering where I’d been and if I wanted to join him and Antoinette for supper. They were going to hit Bravo Tacos. And about that thing, he added, in a way that let me know Antoinette had been right there. He didn’t want to give away the surprise of the hobbyhorse but in typical Hudson fashion was being totally obvious. What’s going on with our thing, you know?
