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

  “That should do it. I hate to sound paranoid about it, but—”

  “No, I get it. I had to borrow my father’s car when mine was in the shop once, and I was petrified that something would happen to it and he’d never trust me again.”

  “I appreciate your understanding. Where should I leave the suitcase?”

  “Here, I’ll stow it under the table.”

  That suited me fine. Sid’s phone was in there, on silent mode, of course, and I wanted it within easy reach if he needed to call me.

  “Well, happy painting or sketching or whatever.” I hesitated. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “If all of your students are going to be drawing the same thing, won’t the pictures all look alike?”

  “You mean like plagiarism?”

  I blinked. “Wow, rumors spread fast.”

  “Telephone, telegraph, tell-an-adjunct.” He grinned. “But in answer to your question, not really. For one, each student is sitting in a different spot—they have slightly different views. For another, they’ll paint as much of themselves as they paint what they actually see. Some will draw this guy as horrific, some as sad, some as happy, and so on.”

  “That’s kind of what I told somebody when he asked why I wanted to use a skeleton as a writing prompt.”

  “Did any of your students come up with the same piece of writing?”

  “Not even close. I got some funny pieces, some scary ones, one kind of clinical, and even a limerick.”

  “A limerick? Do tell?”

  “Later. It’s not really work-appropriate.” Besides which, Sid had been offended by it. I was tempted to ask Lucas what else he’d heard about my snooping, and from whom, but decided not to bother. As fast at the adjunct grapevine transmits data, it was probably all over campus already. I wasn’t entirely happy with people knowing, but at least I wouldn’t have to try for subtlety anymore.

  “So will I get a chance to see what your students come up with?”

  “You bet.”

  I took a last look at Sid, who managed to wink despite his lack of eyes or eyelids.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  To make our meeting appear less suspicious, I’d signed Marissa up for a one-hour critique session, and Indigo was going to pretend to be an assistant again. They were both waiting for me outside the Writing Lab, trying to look as if they weren’t totally checking one another out. If I interpreted their expressions correctly, both of them seemed satisfied with what they saw. Maybe Kelly had kept them separate partially to forestall romantic complications in her big story.

  “Hi, guys. Come on in, and we’ll get situated.”

  “You want some coffee or anything?” Indigo said, presumably getting into character as a student assistant.

  I was about to refuse when I wondered how much Marissa had had to eat since I gave her my hot chocolate. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m starved. Could you get me a Dr Pepper and one of those bacon-and-egg English muffins? What will you have, Marissa?”

  “I don’t—” she started to say.

  “My treat.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No big,” I said blithely.

  “Then a breakfast sandwich sounds great. And maybe some orange juice?”

  “Plus whatever you want, Indigo.” I dug into my purse for my lunch money and handed it to them, and they headed off.

  “Have a seat and I’ll take a quick look at your paper,” I said to Marissa in case anybody was listening.

  Neither of us said much until Indigo returned with a tray covered with food, drinks, and the appropriate utensils. I cut my sandwich in two and only ate the first half, just in case, and after I saw Marissa wolf her food down, I made an excuse about being full and pushed the second half toward her. She looked a little bashful, but she ate it, too, and afterward her face looked considerably less pinched.

  I closed the door and said, “Okay, maybe the best start is for each of you to tell your stories. Indigo?”

  They went through what they’d told me, and then explained how the two of us had each decided the other was trustworthy. I listened carefully, hoping they’d share a new detail they’d inadvertently omitted before, but if they did, I missed it.

  “Now, you, Marissa. Did Kelly find out about your work being stolen via a paper, too?” Of course, I knew the answer via Sid, but I couldn’t exactly cite him as a source.

  She nodded. “It was a personal issue paper I had to write for Ms. Turner.”

  “Okay, tell us what happened with Kelly.” I listened intently, but there was no eureka moment. Marissa’s story wasn’t that different from Indigo’s.

  “So that’s where we are,” I said once she was finished. “Kelly was trying to find the thief, but I don’t think she had yet. Do you guys agree?”

  They nodded.

  “Yet she seemed pretty confident she would be able to do so eventually, and that the thief was at FAD. Or maybe somebody local.” I didn’t know how I’d ever get a line on a local unaffiliated with FAD, but I had to admit it might be a possibility. “I still don’t know how she was able to conclude that when you two are the only victims here, as we know. Maybe it was something computer-related. Was she computer savvy?”

  Indigo shook their head. “She could use a word processor and a spreadsheet and was decent with online research, but she couldn’t even crop a scanned photo until I told her how.”

  “Then I’m lost,” I said.

  “Wait,” Marissa said, “didn’t I tell you that part? How Kelly knew it was somebody on campus?”

  “I am all ears,” I said.

  “Okay, after I found out I was ripped off the first time, I took all my stuff off the web.”

  “Indigo did that, too, but it was shutting the barn door after the horse got out. The thief had already stolen their designs.”

  “But that design with the wolf? In woodblock style? I drew that after I quit posting online. It was never anywhere on the web.”

  “That means the thief had to be somebody who saw it personally,” I said excitedly.

  “Right.”

  “No wonder Kelly thought it was someone on campus. So who did you show it to?”

  “Well, lots of people,” she admitted. “It was for a school assignment, so my professor. And we critiqued it in class, so everybody in my class. Plus I made T-shirts with the design to sell at the Holiday Fair in December.”

  “Then it could have been anybody at the fair. I read online that some thieves intentionally target art and craft shows to steal designs. The FAD fair isn’t just for students and faculty, is it? Don’t parents and people from town come, too?”

  “Usually yes,” Indigo said, “but not this year. The blizzard, remember?”

  “I wasn’t here then,” I said.

  “Oh, right. So there was this blizzard that weekend, and the roads were a mess. But the fair was already set up, and most of us students were stuck on campus anyway, so we went ahead and held it, but nobody but students, staff, and faculty came.”

  “Which means that somebody here at FAD had to be the thief,” I said. “Unless somebody gave one of the shirts to somebody for a Christmas gift and…”

  “Nobody bought any of the shirts,” Marissa said sadly.

  “I’d have bought one if I’d seen it,” Indigo said. “That design is sharp.”

  “You think? I kind of liked it.” She looked down, smiling.

  “Okay then. Now we know why Kelly was focusing on FAD people. Maybe we should start with Marissa’s professor for that class.”

  “It was Mr. Silva.”

  Lucas? With whom I’d just left Sid? I was ready to go rescue him until sanity reminded me that Lucas wasn’t likely to try to kill Sid, what with Sid being dead and all. “Okay, we should look at him. He would have had your drawing when you handed it in, so he could have taken a photo or scanned it then.”

  Both of the students were looking at me as if I’d said something real
ly stupid.

  “Um… Not exactly,” Marissa said gently.

  Indigo didn’t waste time being gentle. “He wouldn’t have to scan anything. Almost everybody does digital submissions, right to the teacher’s Dropbox.”

  “Oh. Yeah. You have to remember that my art career mostly involved construction paper and crayons.”

  Now they were looking at me pityingly.

  “Anyway,” I said, “we need to look at the professor. Indigo, were any of your stolen designs drawn for one of Mr. Silva’s classes?”

  “No. One was for Mr. Inamdar and the other one was for Mr. Azzopardi.”

  “Okay then.” I would like to have concluded that Lucas was innocent since other professors had had access, but I didn’t think I could do so quite yet. “What about the other students in your classes? Could they have taken a picture or hacked into the Dropbox or… Okay, don’t give me that look. I freely admit I don’t know the nitty-gritty of how your courses work.”

  Indigo tried to stifle another snicker. “There are private discussion boards online, and a lot of us post our art there for feedback before we hand it in. So sure, another student could copy our art that way.”

  “And the professors can get to that area, too,” Marissa put in. “Probably even you English profs, if somebody told you how.”

  I wondered if I should get instructions. Though I didn’t want to pore through those boards, I knew a skeleton who would be willing. “So any student and any teacher can get to those boards. Were any of your stolen designs on the FAD board?”

  They both nodded.

  “Any student, any faculty member. Plus somebody could have taken a picture of the T-shirt at the holiday fair, even if they didn’t buy one.”

  “A cheapskate thief,” Indigo said. “It doesn’t get much lower than that.”

  “No argument here. Students and faculty, plus probably administration, too.” I was confident that Mr. Perkins could find his way into any FAD database he wanted to see. “I don’t even want to try to add up all the possibilities.”

  “Kelly was getting pretty frustrated, too,” Marissa said. “She said that it was so easy to steal art around here she wouldn’t be surprised if every student had at least one piece of work stolen.”

  I ran my fingers through my hair. “I don’t suppose either of you has noticed anybody showing more interest in your work than they should have.”

  “Kelly asked me that, too,” Indigo said. “Not a clue.”

  But Marissa was looking at her hands and fidgeting.

  I said, “Marissa, what are you thinking?”

  “Okay, I never told Kelly because it happened after she died, and I hate to tell on people, but one day I came back to my room and my roommate was looking at my sketchbook.”

  “Seriously?” Indigo said. “Man, that is so uncool!”

  This was a form of etiquette with which I was unfamiliar, but from Indigo’s reaction, clearly Marissa’s roomie had violated artist-to-artist protocol.

  “I felt, you know, violated,” she said. “A person’s sketchbook should be private. And then she, like, made fun of some of my stuff. It’s not like I don’t already know I’m bad with hands.”

  Indigo said, “Hands are hard! Everybody knows hands are hard.”

  “Well, they’re hard for me. She actually started lecturing me on how to do them better. I was so mad—I took my sketchbook back and left, but I never got around to asking why she thought she had the right to look at my stuff.”

  “Did you have T-shirt ideas in there?” I asked.

  “Some. It’s a new sketchbook though, so not a lot. None of the pictures in it have shown up online, at least not that I’ve seen.”

  “Still, we should talk to your roommate. What’s her name?”

  “Bobbie Fitzpatrick.”

  “Oh, her,” Indigo said with obvious disdain.

  “You know her?” I asked.

  “Bad Bobbie was in my Intro to Sequential Art class.”

  “Bad Bobbie?” I said.

  “There’s another student named Bobbie majoring in sequential art, but she’s cool. So now it’s Bobbie and Bad Bobbie to keep them straight. Not to her face, of course. Anyway, Bad Bobbie made sure we all knew she was just taking the class as an elective because she is a ‘serious’ artist and obviously serious artists don’t draw comic books.”

  “How many more graphic novels like Maus do we need to shake that rep?” I asked.

  “I know, right?” Indigo said. “I liked the class, but the critique sessions were torture when she was participating.”

  “Was she too hard on the other students?” I said.

  “I wish. That would have been something. Bad Bobbie gave us nothing.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “Okay, do you know how our critique sessions work?”

  “Only in theory.”

  “Basically an artist goes to the front of the class and displays the assignment on the big screen, and the rest of us are supposed to give comments and suggestions. And we’re not thin-skinned about it. We know the only way we’re going to improve is through hearing different perspectives and getting constructive criticism. So we can handle harsh feedback.”

  Marissa was nodding emphatically as Indigo went on.

  “Yeah, it sucks when you get called on something, but that’s okay, if it improves the work. Positive comments are good, too—we need to know what we’re doing right as much as we need to know what we’re doing wrong. But what Bad Bobbie did was basically no feedback at all. All she ever said was, ‘I like it,’ or ‘It’s really creative.’”

  “That sounds kind of useless.” If I handed out that kind of “advice” in the Writing Lab, the students would revolt.

  “Completely! I don’t think Bobbie gave me a single useful comment all semester. Worst of all, she always had this smug little smile on her face, as if she was doing us a favor by even looking at our stuff.”

  “She had that same smile when she was looking at my sketchbook!” Marissa said indignantly.

  “Meanwhile, the prof and the rest of us were trying to give her useful information about her stuff, which wasn’t really that great, and all she ever said was, ‘That’s interesting, but I don’t think it’s the way I want to go with this piece.’ She never changed anything! Why go to art school if you’re not going to learn? After a while, I quit bothering. I’d say, ‘It’s unusual,’ and she took that as a compliment.”

  “Okay, Marissa, you’ve been rooming with her. Do you think she’d steal from other artists?”

  “In a heartbeat. She stole my pads!” Then she colored and looked away from Indigo. “You know, my sanitary pads. She never even told me, so when I needed some, there were none left. And she didn’t pay for them, either. She just said I must have forgotten using them. Anybody who’d do that has no shame at all.”

  I had to agree. My sister, Deborah, and I had occasionally borrowed each other’s supplies when we were both at home, but never without letting the other know. There were some things that should be sacred.

  Indigo seemed to agree but said, “Okay, I can see her as a rip-off artist, but a murderer?”

  I winced, since I’d been planning to avoid the M-word with Marissa because she seemed so fragile. But apparently Indigo had a more accurate read on her than I did.

  “Wait, then you guys think Kelly was murdered?” she asked.

  “I do,” I said. “I’ve got no proof, but—”

  “No, that makes sense,” Marissa said. “Her dying when she did was too much of a coincidence, you know. And that explains why you haven’t found my missing sketchbook. This wasn’t the new one Bad Bobbie stuck her nose into, but one that was filled with designs, including some that had been swiped. Who else would have taken it than the art thief, and the only way that could have happened is if the thief killed Kelly.”

  “So do you guys think Bad Bobbie could kill somebody?” I asked.

  The two of them looked at one anoth
er, then shrugged.

  “I’ve heard anybody can kill, given the right circumstances,” Indigo said, “and if Kelly had outed her as an art thief, she’d probably have been kicked out of school.”

  Marissa said, “Even worse, she’d never be able to go to another art school. She told me how her parents wanted her to study nursing. She had to beg and beg to come here, and her parents still talk about this just being a phase she’s going through. The day she told me that was the only time I almost liked her. Then when I tried to tell her my story, she said I didn’t really need art school anyway because what I was doing isn’t ‘real art.’”

  “What a piece of sacrum,” I said. They looked at me funny, but any mother of a teenager is used to that.

  Obviously Bad Bobbie was now at the top of our list of suspects, and Indigo was all for confronting her right that minute. I pointed out that as a faculty member, I couldn’t just barge in on a student, because it was a good way for me to get fired. If Indigo or Marissa went after her without me, she’d just deny everything. No, we needed to do something a little more subtle.

  Normally, subtle was not a word I’d use to describe Sid, but in this case, I thought he’d be perfect for the job. Without telling them exactly who—or what—my accomplice would be, I made plans with Indigo and Marissa for Saturday morning. I figured that Sid and I could plot out the rest of the details that night.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  After Indigo and Marissa took off, I finished my shift at the Lab, then went back to my office to grade papers. I was managing to keep up with my work, even with the extracurricular activities, but it didn’t hurt to have an uninterrupted afternoon to buckle down and get a lot off my plate. Needless to say, I was not interrupted by fellow English profs wanting to chat, nor did I feel a pressing need to seek anybody out.

  Around four, I was starting to feel lonely but knew it wouldn’t last because I was going to get Sid. I locked up and went back to Lucas’s studio, and when I saw him in the adjoining classroom, I went on in. Sid was exactly where I’d left him, which was good news. Lucas was focused on sketching at his easel and didn’t notice me at first.