The Skeleton Paints a Picture: A Family Skeleton Mystery (#4) Read online

  “Did you ask her why?”

  “She said she’d found another victim here at FAD.”

  “Who?”

  “She wouldn’t say. She said it was better if her sources were uncontaminated, which they wouldn’t be if we compared notes.”

  “How did she find the other person?”

  “No idea. All I know is that she was fired up about investigating and was planning to write this big exposé about it. Did you know she hated working here?”

  “I’d heard that.”

  “She figured that if she could break this story, she would get some serious attention and then she could get a reporting job at a newspaper or magazine or maybe at a good blog. She thought this was her big chance.”

  “But why? I mean, I’ve done a little research into this kind of theft, and it looks like this topic has been written about quite a lot. Why did she think her story was going to make a splash?”

  “No idea,” they said again, “but she was spending serious time on it. She wanted to know if I knew any other people who’d had their work stolen, and if they’d be willing to talk to her.”

  “Did you?”

  They shook their head. “I did try to help her, though. She had me going through websites looking to see if any of my other designs had shown up. I found one more for sure, and one maybe. The ‘maybe’ looked a lot like my idea, but it had been tweaked quite a bit, and I think the copy was better than my original, so I don’t know if it counts. Anyway, she said it was corroboration.

  “Then she gave me some scanned sketches like those and asked me to look at sites for those designs. She wouldn’t tell me where they’d come from and had edited out the signature, but I guessed they were from the other victim she’d found. Whoever it is, they’re good—really elegant work. And I found three of their designs for sale online. That was the week before last. Then last week I found out Kelly was dead and…I just wondered if it was connected somehow.”

  “Then you thought Kelly’s death was suspicious?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Everybody said it was an accident, but I just wasn’t sure.”

  “Why didn’t you go to the police?”

  “What would I have said? ‘That woman who died in an accident? I think it could have been murder over some stolen T-shirt designs that were worth maybe a hundred dollars at best, and I have no idea how you can figure out who it was. So go investigate already.’”

  “I see your point. Is that why you’ve been hanging around here?”

  “Partly. Plus I wanted to see if Kelly left any notes. I thought maybe I could, I don’t know, continue her work. Then I got suspicious about you.”

  “About me?”

  “Just about the first thing you said to me was about a sketchbook, and I knew Kelly had been scanning somebody’s sketchbook.”

  “All I knew is that a student came by looking for one.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t have any reason to trust you. Anyway, I figured it couldn’t hurt to hang around and see if anything else turned up. I was going to give it up after this week, but now… Wait, you weren’t looking for the thief, because you thought Kelly was the thief. What have you been looking for?”

  “Would you believe a murderer? I think Kelly’s death was suspicious, too.”

  I knew I was going to have a bruise on my leg—Sid whacked me a good one when I said that.

  It took a while to convince Indigo that I really knew what I was doing, more or less, or at least had done it before. Of course I didn’t mention my kicking partner, but given how hard it was for them to believe I’d solved murders, I didn’t want to throw Sid into the mix. As it was, I had to go online to show them articles about previous murders I’d been involved in. I think they were actually a little bit impressed after that.

  “So what are you doing next?” they asked.

  I waited for Sid to kick me again, but there was no need. I didn’t have any secrets left to spill. “Honestly, Indigo, you’ve thrown me for a loop. If Kelly wasn’t the thief, then obviously she wasn’t killed by one of her victims. That must mean that the thief killed her. She must have figured out who it was.”

  But Indigo was shaking their head. “No, she’d have told me if she had.”

  “Maybe she didn’t have a chance to.”

  “Sure she did. I saw her that afternoon.”

  “You mean the day she died? What time was that?”

  “Maybe two thirty?”

  “What happened?”

  “There’s not a lot to tell. Kelly had asked me to put out some feelers with artists on Etsy and some other sites, but I hadn’t gotten anything. I asked if she’d had any luck, and she said she’d been doing background research into copyright law and creator’s rights and stuff like that, but even though she tried to make it sound important, I could tell she was stuck. I asked if she wanted me to hang around, but she said she had an appointment in a little while, and then she was taking the weekend off to clear her head.”

  “A tutoring appointment?”

  “I guess. She didn’t say. Anyway, if there’s one thing an artist learns, it’s body language—she was beyond tired and frustrated that day. She didn’t have squat.”

  I was starting to feel the same way. “One more thing. Have you been talking about this with other students?”

  “Yeah, some. Why?”

  “I’m probably just being paranoid, but do me a favor and be really careful. Maybe Kelly didn’t figure out who the thief was, but I’ve got to wonder if the thief found out what she was up to.”

  “Okay, now you’re freaking me out, and saying it out loud makes it sound crazy, anyway. Why would anybody kill somebody else over T-shirt designs? We’re not talking big bucks.”

  “People kill for stupid reasons all the time. Just be careful.”

  “Sure. Whatever.”

  “And let me give you my contact info in case you hear anything else.”

  We exchanged phone numbers and e-mail addresses, and they asked, “So you want me to keep working here?”

  “You do realize that I can’t pay you or get you credit.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not a bad place to work—the light is good. And listening while you tutor people has been kind of okay. I’ve learned a lot more about writing papers than I did during the class I wrote the paper for.”

  “Thank you. That’s good to hear. Who did you write that paper for, anyway?”

  “Mr. Deen. Why? Do you think he’s involved?”

  “Not really—just nosy about my colleagues.” After they left, I took a moment to gloat that they were learning more at the Lab than they had in Owen’s class.

  I only wished I were getting something worthwhile for my time. Sid’s and my big theory had been blown to bits, and I had no idea what to do with the new one. We were back to square one.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Sid had come to the same conclusion, and even he was frustrated. Of course, he’d had nothing to do but stew over it while I finished my shift at the Lab before we finally got a chance to retreat to my office and have a real conversation, so he decided to take it out on me.

  “Did you have to tell Indigo everything?” he demanded.

  “I didn’t tell them everything, but I had to tell them as much as I did or they never would have told me anything. And aren’t you glad they did?”

  “I can’t believe we got it backwards! I am such a bonehead!”

  “Hey, it did make sense given what we’d found out.”

  “Yeah, yeah. But so much wasted time. Where do we go from here?”

  “We can hunt for the real thief, right?”

  “How could we? You read those articles about art theft I e-mailed to you.”

  “Um… Not all of them.”

  He looked at me suspiciously. “How many did you read?”

  “None. Look, you gave me such a good summary that I didn’t feel the need.”

  “Georgia—”

  “I know, I know, I should have done
my homework. But can we drop the topic of Georgia-is-an-idiot for now? Tell me why we can’t hunt for the art thief.”

  “Because if you’d read the research, you’d know that most art theft is done electronically. Artists post their work for critique, or for sale, or just to show friends what they’ve been up to. Then somebody downloads it and sells it as their own. They don’t ever meet in person. It might be possible to lever that information out of City Riggers, but not without a search warrant or at least some serious clout.”

  “Which Kelly didn’t have. Do you think she was just spinning her wheels?”

  “No, you’ve said she was cranky and bitter, but you never said she was stupid. She wouldn’t have been spending her time on this if she didn’t have an idea that she could really figure it out. And it must be somebody local, or he wouldn’t have been able to kill Kelly. If she could figure it out, so can we. Right?”

  “Right.” I thought there might have been some circular logic involved in that conclusion, but I was willing to go with it.

  “I sure wish we had some kind of notes or something other than the art in Kelly’s files. I’ve looked through every folder.”

  “Everything else was probably on her computer, which was smashed in the car wreck.”

  “That was awfully convenient.”

  “True,” I said, thinking about how thoroughly the laptop had been destroyed. “She must have had backup somewhere, but if it was in the office, Mr. Perkins would have packed it up and sent it to her family. If it was in her apartment, the family got it, and if it was in her car, the cops got it.”

  “All we’ve got is the pictures.”

  “And Indigo.”

  “Right, Indigo… Didn’t they say they told Kelly about the theft months ago, but that Kelly only got fired up to do something about it this semester?”

  “Yeah, they did.”

  “So why the sudden interest? What changed?”

  “The other victim she told Indigo about?”

  “Possibly, but we still don’t know who that is. I don’t suppose you noticed anybody in particular hanging around the Writing Lab before the murder.”

  “Sid, there were students in and out all day. No, I didn’t notice anybody.” Then I remembered something. “Unless it was the sketchbook.”

  “What sketchbook? The one Indigo was talking about?”

  “The day I started at the Lab, a student came by and asked if we’d found her sketchbook. Why would her sketchbook have been there unless she was the other victim Kelly told Indigo about?”

  “That could be it. So who was she?”

  “I have no idea. I don’t remember ever seeing her before or since. I don’t even know for sure that she was a student, though she did look like one.”

  “What does an art student look like?”

  “The right age, a big bag because she’s carrying around sketchbooks and pens and pencils, a knit cap, and ink on her fingers.”

  “Sounds like a third of the people I’ve seen around FAD.”

  “I know, so I don’t think wandering around looking for her would be a good tactic. I could ask some of the other faculty members, but her looks just aren’t that distinctive.”

  “And maybe there should be some things that you don’t share with every Tom, Dick, and Harry.”

  “I thought we agreed to no more Georgia-is-an-idiot remarks.”

  “You agreed,” he muttered. “Anyway, let’s attack it from the other direction. If this girl had had designs stolen, how would Kelly have found out?”

  “Saw her crying somewhere and stopped to comfort her? Not that I can picture Kelly doing that. Um… Gossip? No, she wasn’t much of a gossip. All I ever saw her do was work with students.”

  “Students! That’s it!” Sid snapped his fingers, which should be physically impossible for bare bones. “What if the girl did the same thing that Indigo did? Maybe she wrote about having been stolen from.”

  “That makes sense, but it doesn’t help us much.”

  “Sure it does. My watching you at work has not gone to waste after all. Every time somebody presents a paper to be critiqued, it gets logged into the system, right? All we have to do is go through the log and figure out which paper was written about stolen T-shirt designs.”

  “Sid, how many papers did Kelly critique? There must be hundreds.”

  “At least, but we only have to go back as far as the beginning of the semester, when Kelly got back in touch with Indigo.”

  “How many papers is that?”

  “A lot,” he said, “but don’t worry. I live for stuff like this.”

  He wasn’t being sarcastic, either. Okay, maybe about the living part, but I could tell he was delighted to have something he could sink his gumless teeth into. I hated to dampen his enthusiasm, but I had to say, “You realize we may not be looking for a killer after all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if Kelly was the thief, then we would have had a murder motive. Revenge, stopping her, whatever. But if she was looking for a thief, what was the motive?”

  “You don’t think a thief would want to kill her?”

  “For a T-shirt design? Unless it’s sold by a big designer, T-shirt designs aren’t worth that much.”

  “Maybe there’s more to it than just T-shirt designs.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like… Like we’ll figure that out later. But for now, you just give me access to the Writing Lab database, and I’ll find that second victim.”

  It was late, and we decided to head back home so we could work simultaneously rather than having to share my laptop. So I loaded Sid back into his suitcase and headed to the minivan. Though it wasn’t snowing at the moment—something I appreciated—a dusting of snow had fallen at some point during the day, so I took a few minutes to brush it off. Then I got in and waited for the heater to start working.

  Sid peeked out of the bag. “Georgia? We’re not moving.”

  “I’m just letting the engine warm up.”

  “Really?”

  “No, not really. I’m just tired. It feels as if we’ve worked so hard and gotten nowhere.”

  “We’re getting somewhere! But if you’re tired, I could drive.”

  “Being able to navigate up and down the driveway does not make you street-legal, Sid.”

  “I know, but I’ve been thinking. When I first woke up like this, I already knew how to walk, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And talk.”

  “Most definitely.”

  “So obviously I retained some skills and knowledge from when I was alive. And we know I was in college before I, you know, died. So I probably knew how to drive. Maybe I still do.”

  “That’s a big maybe.”

  “I moved the car in the driveway okay, didn’t I?”

  “More or less.”

  “And I’ve played a lot of driving games—I score really high.”

  “The roads around here are a little less forgiving that the ones in Mario Kart.”

  “Hey, I’ve played more realistic simulations. I think I can do it.”

  My first instinct was to say “No,” or even to yell, “Are you nuts? NO!” but I thought that might be a bit undiplomatic. So I dodged it as if I were driving in Mario Kart myself. “The problem is, even if you can drive, you don’t have a license, and needless to say, you can’t get one.”

  “When was the last time you were stopped and asked for your license?”

  “Almost never, but I do have one. Whereas if the cops stop you, not having a license is going to be the least of our problems.”

  “Yeah, I see what you mean. I just think it would be fun to try.”

  “Let me think about it and see if I can come up with a way,” I said. A deserted parking lot might do the trick, if we were really careful. Or maybe I could borrow a golf cart or a riding mower—I didn’t think either of those required a license, and I was pretty sure nobody had thought it necessary to pass a law requir
ing that golf cart drivers be living.

  “Awesome!”

  “But just so you know, I’ve never once had occasion to drive like they do in the movies.”

  “Got it. No wild chase scenes. Cross my chest cavity and hope to die. Again.”

  As soon as we pulled into the driveway, Sid popped out of the suitcase, fully formed.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You’re tired and don’t need to be lugging me. Nobody’s going to see me.”

  The temperature was even colder than usual, so I was ready to make a mad dash from the minivan to the nice, warm bungalow, but Sid called out to me before I got halfway there.

  “Georgia, whose footprints are those?”

  “What footprints?” I looked where he was pointing. A clear track lead to and from the front door. “The mailman?”

  “The mailman comes in the morning between nine and ten—he hasn’t missed it any of the days I’ve been here. And the snow started after that.”

  “Maybe he was running late, or it was a substitute.”

  “Would a substitute mailman peek in our front window?” he said, pointing. Sure enough, somebody had walked right up to the window and back again. “I wish it weren’t so cold—the snow is too fluffy to make a recognizable print.”

  I looked around, which was silly because whoever it was, he was long gone. Still I shivered from something other than the cold. “Let’s get inside.” Neither of us wasted any time doing so.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  As soon as we were safely inside, Sid said, “Georgia, I told you that you shouldn’t be telling everybody about our investigation! Now the killer knows you’re looking for him.”

  “I am not having this conversation. If I hadn’t told Indigo what I did, they wouldn’t have answered our questions.”

  “And when Officer Buchanan was here?”

  “I didn’t tell her a thing she couldn’t find out elsewhere.”

  “You told somebody something!”

  “Sid, I realize you’re nervous about somebody finding out about you, but—”