Painted to Death, page 1
Sarah Vernon
Painted to Death
First published by Oh Honey Projects 2023
Copyright © 2023 by Sarah Vernon
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Front cover photograph by Alice Dietrich / Unsplash Images Back cover photograph by Dong Cheng / Unsplash Images Title page photograph by Joshua Coleman / Unsplash Images Cover design by Mel D. Truin
First edition
ISBN: 979-8-9873525-0-2
This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy
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Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
About the Author
Chapter One
It was a dark and stormy night. Yeah, for real. That’s how I’m starting, because why mess with what works?
Also, it really was dark and stormy the night this all started, the wind bursting in through all the tiny cracks around the old, barely insulated windows of our triple-decker apartment. I say started, but this was actually a couple of weeks after Catherine had died. I just thought I’d start right in the middle of it, because we all know the worst Agatha Christies are the ones where Poirot doesn’t even come into it until page seventy-five, and you have to first get through hours and hours of slow English family drama, or worse, a bumbling English inspector.
We were huddled in the living room, with Benny on the floor leaning against the coffee table, and Rebecca, Mel, and me on the couches, mugs of mulled wine steaming in our hands. We would have all preferred to be outside smoking, the distraction of a cigarette easing the conversation, but there’s that dark and stormy night again. Plus, our landlord had recently made it harder to disarm the smoke alarm, so no more smoking inside either.
So here we were, trying to have a casual conversation about a topic that defies casual conversation. Mel – the kind of roommate we weren’t quite close to yet, who still attached herself to any kind of group activity at our apartment – was trying hard to make everyone smile, telling unfunny jokes and keeping the wine topped up. Rebecca had taken the comforting aunt approach, keeping her hand on Benny’s shoulder while he told us about his afternoon.
“I just feel like they weren’t even asking the right questions,” he was saying. “It’s like, the cops didn’t ask about her family much at all – what kind of mood she had been in. All they wanted to know was things like, did she have a boyfriend?” Rebecca tutted and leaned down to pat his back. “I mean, what is this, twenty years ago? Do they still only go for the boyfriend?” Benny frowned into his cup, the steam blurring his glasses.
In fairness, people are still most often killed by their immediate loved ones. And twenty years ago is not all that long ago. But forgive Benny’s nearsightedness; in fairness, at twenty-two, it was essentially a lifetime to him.
“What did you tell them?” Mel wanted to know.
Rebecca and I shot her a sharp look, but she was innocently fiddling with her hair, short and newly dyed lavender, and wouldn’t meet our eyes. Benny had called us as soon as the police had finished interviewing him, desperate for our company and already on his way over. We had all agreed it would be best not to ask for specifics, but Mel was apparently determined to be as annoying as ever.
“Obviously the truth,” Benny replied. “That she had dated a few different people so far this year, but none was particularly serious. And really,” he continued indignantly, “even if someone had been a serious boyfriend, how can they actually think that proves anything? All that shows, I think, is how easy it was to love her.”
Benny’s chin dropped to his chest and Rebecca was immediately on the floor next to him, her arm around his back. I swear she actually said, “There, there.”
“Sam, maybe you can get out some extra blankets? Benny, why don’t you just spend the night here, on the couch?” Rebecca looked at me expectantly.
“Of course,” I said, a clap of thunder accentuating my voice. “It’s way too stormy out for you to go anywhere, anyway.” I got up, dragging Mel with me. “Mel, help me get the blankets down.”
She followed me, obviously reluctantly, out into the hall. I opened the door to the hall closet, still holding onto her arm.
“Sam, what’s up? Let go of me,” she whined. I rolled my eyes.
“What was all that back there?” I hissed. “We agreed we weren’t going to ask him for specifics. Benny’s been through enough as it is – we don’t have to make him relive everything.”
Her eyes grew wide, an expression of innocence we were familiar with, as Mel always proclaimed that she was never the one who left dirty dishes out or forgot to buy toilet paper. It was frankly gross that she would try to pull the same crap here, in the middle of a murder investigation.
“Sorry, I didn’t think it was prying just to ask what he answered to one question,” she said, still in her most exasperating whine. “And come on, Sam, it’s not like you’re not curious. Benny was her best friend. Basically her brother! Who else is going to know what’s really going on?”
“But you don’t need to know what’s going on,” I said, reaching up to the top shelf for an extra quilt. “If the police want to call you up and tell you everything they’ve found out in the past two weeks, they’ll do that. You don’t have to ask Benny for the recap.” I pushed the quilt into her arms, turning back for sheets.
“Fine,” Mel said. “I’m sorry. But for the record, I’ve heard you and Rebecca whispering. I know I’m not the only one who wants answers.” This last word she delivered in a true crime podcast-perfect whisper.
It was honestly like this with everyone at school – as if Catherine’s murder was just one big game, an adventure we were all in on. In reality, the past two weeks had been gut-wrenching. It was only a few weeks after winter break, and we were all just starting to settle in again. Class schedules became routine, and we had even become accustomed to commuting in a particularly snowy Boston February. And then, suddenly, Catherine had died. She was found one morning, collapsed in her studio on campus after a night presumably spent working there. I didn’t see her, of course. Poor Benny had found her and had run screaming down to the security guard at the front door. It seemed that, in an instant, the whole building had been turned upside down. Police tape had gone up at the entrance to the senior studios, over Catherine’s locker, even at the door to the darkroom, which she managed as a part-time job. Just as quickly, it seemed, everyone in the department had split into one of three possible reactions: giddily morbid curiosity; extreme public displays of mourning by people who had barely known Catherine; and reserved, detached sympathy from those who had actually known Catherine, which unfortunately was the reaction of only a minority of people, mostly just the older faculty who had the sense to be respectful.
I don’t mean to make it sound like Catherine didn’t have many close friends. She was, in fact, beloved – the kind of person who always had a smile ready, who rarely said a bad word about anyone. Rebecca and I had been friends with her since we’d started college two years before, but it was undeniable that Benny was her closest friend. They had grown up together in the same small town out in Western Massachusetts, coming to school in Boston a year before us and still living together now. I wasn’t sure how he was going to get through the rest of the year without her, let alone anything after graduation.
I finished slowly refolding a pillow case and followed Mel back to the living room.
“I’m just grateful, in a way, that her mom isn’t here to have to see this. I don’t know what that poor woman would have done,” Rebecca was saying, doing her sympathetic tutting. Benny’s head was still hanging down, a good impression of a marionette who had lost its handlers. “I mean, I know her aunt will be devastated,” she went on, “but for a single mother to lose her only child … I honestly can’t think of anything worse.”
It could’ve been worse to be Catherine right about now, I didn’t say. Sorry, I really don’t mean to seem so cavalier about all this. Really. But on some level, you probably know that humor is the best coping mechanism. I just tried not to share these more macabre thoughts with anyone else. Or at least not with Rebecca.
“Come on, Benny,” I said instead. “We’ve got everything ready for you. Let’s try to have an early night, and we’ll be okay in the morning.” I helped him to his feet. “We’ll go for breakfast before class, yeah?”
He nodded.
I pulled Mel back off the couch and gestured for Rebecca to follow. Another clap of thunder sounded, closer than ever. We all jumped.
“Let’s all just try and get some rest now, okay?”
The next morning was freezing, though for February in Boston, any day with sunshine was a relatively good day. Even after nearly three years, I was barely used to the weather. It seems like there shouldn’t be much of a difference between New York and Boston weather, but I definitely could not remember this much snow and ice from my childhood winters. The puddles from the storm the night before had all frozen solid, turning every intersection into a slippery death trap. I kept my head down as I walked, tucking my chin into my jacket to keep the cold out. I needed to get to class early to set up, and had left everyone still sitting over breakfast, quiet and a bit subdued but decidedly better. Benny had even smiled once or twice, after a few cups of coffee.
We lived about a thirty-minute walk from the building our art department was housed in, which meant it was usually faster to walk than risk delays on public transportation. Despite (or perhaps because of) the difficult conversations of the previous night, I was eager to get to class. Although we weren’t required to formally select majors that were more specific than the “Fine Art” track we were all on in the art department, I had spent the past two years working mainly with the sculpture faculty. I was no great engineer, but what can I say? I just liked making things. Even when I was a kid, I could spend hours working on crafts, the smaller and more intricately detailed the better. Which is really to say, you know I had a ridiculously extravagant dollhouse in elementary school, every piece of furniture lovingly crafted from whatever I could find in our trash (because even if my parents had been willing to splurge on dollhouse furniture, you could rarely buy the level of detail I was looking for, even if eight-year-old me wasn’t quite skilled enough to pull it off). Caps from glue bottles became drinking glasses; the lid from a jar of mustard was filled in with aluminum foil to become a trendy round mirror; pieces cut out from cereal boxes became, well, miniature cereal boxes. I even used photographs of the house in my portfolio when I was applying to school, adding in some conceptual story about investigating the decline of the American middle class and neglecting to mention that it had been a decade since I’d touched any of it. I loved miniatures so much – and this is in the category of macabre thought I would never admit out loud to anyone else – that in the days after Catherine’s death, when all of us could see the police coming in and out of her studio and the school buildings, one of my first thoughts was about Frances Glessner Lee. In the early 1900s, this wealthy heiress made twenty miniature dioramas of fictional crime scenes, with ominous titles like “Dark Bathroom,” “Red Bedroom,” and “Burned Cabin.” And it wasn’t just an odd hobby. She actually donated these models and helped create the first forensic medicine department at Harvard University. Some police departments even used these models until the 2000s. After the pristine, easy pastime of dollhouse furniture-making in elementary school, I graduated to examining these miniature crime scene models in high school, writing a whole paper about them for a school assignment. Yes, the teacher thought I was bizarre. And yes, the better assignment would have been to recreate one of the models (but I had read that each diorama cost Lee at least three thousand dollars to make, and that was in 1900s money, so no way was I going to fund that). But in any event, in the days after Catherine’s death, when we still didn’t know many of the details, I couldn’t help but picture her studio like one of these forensic miniatures, with art supplies strewn about and bright sunlight pouring down onto this horrible scene through the skylights cut everywhere into the ceilings. I know, it was dark but weirdly comforting to bring everything down in scale. Just don’t tell Rebecca.
Even without looking up, I could tell I was getting close to school, because the regular pavement of the sidewalk was replaced with the red-brick cobblestone that demarcated our campus from the city at large. But something was wrong, and I stopped where I was. It was a half-hour before classes started, and ordinarily there would be kids milling around out front, standing and smoking in small groups, no matter how cold it was. Usually, I was one of them. But today, the sidewalk outside the entrance to the art department was empty. I walked slowly up to the door, peering through the glass. Inside, I could see the lobby was filled with students, most sitting at the small tables and couches scattered throughout the space. Instead of the usual lone security guard who sat sentry at the door, there were three guards standing together, apparently still working out the finer points of crowd control. Something was clearly up. I hardly wanted to know what.
I debated for a moment turning around and going home, but the lure of the pottery studio was too strong. That morning’s class, “Mineral, Mud, Clay,” was one of my favorites, especially since the department had heeded my many pleading notes and finally purchased a series of miniature pottery wheels. That’s right, tiny wheels that make tiny vases! And tiny plates, and tiny bottles, and so on. That semester, I was working on a series of tiny Grecian urns, and today several of the forms would be ready to paint, which as everyone knows is the best part. So I pushed open the doors and stepped into the instantly too-hot building.
It seemed like everyone, even the security guards, turned to look at me as I clattered through the doors. As if I were late to an event that no one had announced. I gave some unconvincing apologetic noises and made a beeline for the closest table, winding up next to a senior named Chris. She was sitting back with her long legs stretched out, as if whatever was going on was her new favorite show.
“Hi, Samantha,” she whispered, with the kind of smile most people would call crocodilian. She always insisted on calling me Samantha, no matter how many times I told her it was only Sam. “Samantha” was always too Victorian American Girl Doll for me (even though, yes, I know, Samantha is the 1940s doll).
I smiled back and asked, through gritted teeth, what was going on.
“The police are back,” Chris said, way too smugly for the circumstances, if you ask me, even adding in a casual toss of her long brown hair.
I refused to flatter her by asking for any more details, instead wanting to know if there was any reason we were required to stay in the lobby.
“No,” she said. “We just can’t go into the senior studios yet.”
Not a problem for me. I fled down the nearest musty staircase to the peace of the pottery classroom in the basement.
Chapter Two
I had just finished setting up the pots of glazes I would need, lining up the bright containers in a neat row on my bench. Peggy, the graduate assistant for our class, was at the back of the classroom, pulling our pieces off the firing racks. She was a pretty clumsy choice for this particular task, and usually dropped at least one piece a week, so I didn’t bother to look up when I heard the smash of freshly fired pottery.
Until this sound was quickly followed by someone loudly clearing their throat, too deep and too male to be anyone in the studio – we were a dozen women working in the basement today.
I looked up to see two police officers in the doorway, making apologetic gestures to Peggy, who stood stammering in the back. The younger of the two met my eyes.
“Samantha Green?” he asked. “Would you mind having a quick word with us?” He stepped aside to make room for me to walk out with them.
I looked back longingly at my pots of glazes.
“We’re really sorry to interrupt you during class,” he was saying now, as they led me down the hall and back towards the staircase. I couldn’t imagine where on campus they could be taking me that could possibly be private enough for a police interview, even if it was just a supposedly quick word. Everything, every whispered remark – especially these past few weeks – spread like wildfire in the department.
“It looked like fun back there,” he continued.
I guess they were trained to make friends?
“It’s okay,” I said and smiled. “I’m happy to help. Really. Also, it’s Sam. Not Samantha.”
“Of course,” he replied. “Our apologies. I’m Detective O’Connor and this is Officer Bryson. My supervisor, Sergeant Marks, is upstairs waiting for us.” The second officer turned his head at the mention of his name, and nodded down at me from where he towered, six feet over my barely five feet, two inches.
