Faux Reel (Imogene Museum Mystery #5) (18 page)

“
You have a pressure bandage.” Gemma brought me back to the issue at hand. “We’ll get you an instruction sheet on how and when to change the dressings. And a prescription for painkillers.”

“
So I can go home?”

“
You bet, hon. We don’t admit for ticky-tacky injuries.”

“
Bullet wounds are ticky-tacky?” I glanced back down at my sausaged leg and frowned, wondering what it was going to feel like after the drugs wore off. For now, my thigh ached, tight and hot as though the muscles were burning after a challenging hike.

“
It’s all about location. Yours we could call liposuction.”

“
Thanks a lot.”

Gemma
’s broad, starched white bosom jiggled at her own joke. “The bullet did actually slice through muscle, and you are bleeding — hence the pressure bandage. But you’ll be fine.”

“
How’s Mom?” I glanced at the next bed. Mom’s head was deep in the pillow.

“
We gave you both generous hits of morphine. She’s still sawing logs. We’ll let her wake up on her own.”

Sheriff Marge huffed into the room followed by Barbara who was pushing a chair with the canvas roll slumped in it.

“We need to talk,” Sheriff Marge announced.

Barbara parked the chair, lifted the painting out and laid it carefully across the end of my bed. It looked battered, with ratty edges and a large reddish brown stain in the middle plus a few deep indentations.

My stomach sank as my brain wrapped around the image. My blood. And the painting had been shot — those indentations were bullet holes all the way through the multiple layers of the roll.

Sheriff Marge sank into the chair, a frustrated scowl pushing her glasses low on her nose.

“I can take a hint,” Gemma said. “But I’ll be back in a few minutes to check on my other patient.” She gave Sheriff Marge a pointed, no-nonsense look.

I grinned. Gemma doesn
’t take guff from anyone. A rare trait.

“
Are you — do you have to be — what’s the word? Sidelined?” I asked.

“
Administrative leave,” Sheriff Marge grumbled. “WSP will handle the investigation because my department’s too small. No way my deputies could be unbiased with me hovering over them. But I can work on this.” She jabbed a finger at the painting.

“
I’m sorry,” Barbara whispered. “I’m so sorry.” Tears welled in her eyes.

“
Don’t be.” I stretched out a hand, and she latched onto it as though it was her last hope. “You saved the painting, and whatever it represents.” I pulled her against the side of the bed and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She was warm and squashy, like a teddy bear. If it had been appropriate, I might have snuggled her. I was in need of some snuggling.

Actually, what I really needed was Pete. My heart hovered over that idea for a second before Barbara
’s words brought me back to reality.

“
But you — and your mom.” Barbara’s tears were falling freely now. “I thought if I hid the painting, I would prevent people from getting hurt. He must have followed me. I lost my head when I found my shop ransacked. I led him straight to you.”

“
Are you sure? He could have followed us from the campground. Our departure wasn’t exactly subtle,” I said.

“
No matter now,” Sheriff Marge interrupted. “What matters is why. Why on earth is that disgusting painting worth killing for?”

“
I have an idea,” I said. “It’s going to take a lot of acetone.”

“
Oh.” Barbara’s head jerked up in surprise. “Nail polish remover. I have gallons.”

“
Are you willing to donate them to a good cause?”

Barbara nodded, her eyes wide. She dabbed her cheeks with her sleeve.

I inhaled, making a check list in my mind. “How long until the state patrol is finished processing the Imogene’s laundry room?”

“
Few hours, probably,” Sheriff Marge said.

I glanced over at Mom
’s prone form. She was snoring softly — for real this time. “We’ll be here for a while too. As soon as we can, let’s meet at the museum. We have some scrubbing to do.”

CHAPTER 18

I must have dozed off again. I awoke to low laughter and found Gemma helping Mom slip her bandaged arm through the arm
hole in her blouse. The paramedics must have torn off the sleeve to treat her at the museum, so she looked like a proper little redneck in her cutoff muscle shirt.

“
How are you?” Frankie leaned over the bed and squeezed my shoulder.

“
Ready to get out of here.”

“
That’s why I’m here. Sheriff Marge called. I’m your ride home.” Frankie pursed her lips. “I’ve also been instructed to tell you to call Pete ASAP. Apparently he’s been trying to reach you, and when you didn’t answer for hours, he got worried and called Sheriff Marge. She gave me a lecture on your behalf about not being an answering service — or a matchmaking service.” Frankie’s brown eyes sparkled with amusement.

I patted the sheets around me. My phone
’s usually near by. And then I remembered and groaned. “It’s in my truck — at the museum.”

“
Use mine.” Frankie dropped her phone in my lap and hurried around the bed to help Gemma situate Mom in a wheelchair.

I dialed Pete
’s number and closed my eyes, listening to the distant ringing.

“
Frankie?” Pete’s voice was scratchy, urgent. “Have you seen Meredith?”

“
It’s me,” I whispered.

He was silent for a long time, just breathing. Finally he said,
“How bad?”

“
Not. Not at all. Just a scratch,” I said, staring at my swollen leg.

“
That’s not what Sheriff Marge said.”

“
She exaggerates.”

An involuntary chuckle ripped from Pete
’s throat — because we both know that’s the opposite of Sheriff Marge’s personality. But he didn’t say anything.

“
I’m here,” I murmured. “And I’ll still be here when you get back.”

“
I’m counting on it.” He sounded as though he was choking up. “I love you.”

I leaned into the phone as if it was Pete himself.
“I love you too.”

When I clicked off, Gemma was standing at my beside, fists on hips with one eyebrow arched over the thick rim of her glasses.
“’Bout time the two of you got that settled,” she said crisply then nodded toward the wheelchair. “Your turn.”

For the second time in twenty-four hours, Mom and I squeezed awkwardly into a pickup
— this time Frankie’s little new-to-her S-10. Mom perched sideways on the fold-down backseat and nested the painting at her feet so I could enjoy the leg room the passenger seat afforded.

Frankie delivered us to the fifth-wheel and stayed to tuck Mom and me in our respective beds, with water, pills, tissues and whatever else we might need piled within arm
’s reach. She promised to return in a few hours, when it was daylight and I could somewhat politely roust a forensic art analyst from his slumber and beg his assistance.

oOo

The next morning, Frankie brought us maple bars and bottled orange juice from Junction General. My entire leg sensed every bump and jostle magnified into shooting pain. The pressure bandage itched like crazy, and it was all I could do to keep from tearing it off. I popped the allowed dosage of Vicodin along with a swig of juice and hoped the resulting mental fuzziness would wear off by the time I needed to concentrate.

I hobbled gingerly down the trailer
’s steps, Frankie offering her shoulder as a hand grip and bearing much of my weight. On level ground, I maneuvered pretty adroitly, considering. Not gracefully, but I got where I wanted to go with only a few grimaces. Thank God for painkillers.

Mom
’s color had returned, and she’d applied her usual makeup. She’d pulled on a bulky sweater that masked the bandage on her arm and hitched her purse over the opposite shoulder. If I hadn’t been at the hospital myself, I’d never have guessed she’d spent the better part of the night in the ER.

Her face fell, though, when she caught sight of the empty spot next to my trailer
— the place where her Mercedes had been parked. A crinkle appeared between her brows. She lowered her lashes, purposefully avoiding eye contact with me and hurried to Frankie’s pickup. Maybe she was hoping I hadn’t noticed.

Frankie and I loaded a plastic kiddie pool I keep on hand to help Tuppence survive hot days into the pickup
’s bed.

When we got to the museum, I gave Mom the keys to unlock the basement door.

Frankie lingered at the passenger door, watching Mom walk away. “Meredith, I need to give you something,” she said in a low voice. She leaned into the cab, clicked open the glove compartment and pulled out a yellow sheet from a triplicate form. “This was stuck on your door last night. I pulled it off without thinking and shoved it in my purse. This morning, when I found the paper again, I skimmed over it. I shouldn’t have, I suppose. I’m sorry for intruding.”

I took the page from her outstretched hand. A notice of repossession. Details about Mom
’s Mercedes were typed in the blanks — VIN number, year, model, color, as well as Mom’s home address. The recovery agent had handwritten the address where the vehicle was seized and scrawled his name and date.

“
Is there anything I can do to help?” Frankie laid a protective hand over the huge agate pendant dangling from her necklace, a pinched look on her face.

I shook my head.
“She won’t even let me help — not yet anyway.” I folded the paper and stuffed it in my bag. “Did you have this much difficulty with your mother?” I meant it as a rhetorical question, but Frankie sighed.

“
Oh yes.” Her helmet hair bobbed emphatically. “Even up to the day she died, I was terrified of disappointing her. She was the icon of perfection, and I never measured up. In a way, I’m glad I don’t have children, especially not a daughter. At least no one has to deal with that kind of treatment from me. It seems inevitable that those expectations get passed along from generation to generation, although I don’t think my mother meant to inflict emotional pressure.”

Barbara drove up and parked between my truck and Frankie
’s. Shades of last night, but we were more orderly today. Sheriff Marge sat longways on Barbara’s backseat, being chauffeured in style.

“
Here, let me.” Frankie took over management of the kiddie pool.

Barbara opened her trunk, revealing several cardboard boxes.

“Frankie will show you where the hand truck is,” I said.

Barbara nodded and bustled toward the museum in Frankie
’s wake.

“
Now you know what it feels like,” Sheriff Marge grunted, “not being able to do things for yourself. Being coddled.”

“
Yuck.” I extended my hand and helped Sheriff Marge scoot off the seat and stand upright.

She wedge the crutches under her armpits and fixed a stern gray gaze on me.
“Ready?”

So she had noticed that I was reluctant to enter the Imogene
’s basement. I shrugged.

“
The sooner you deal with it, the better.”

“
You’ve done this before.” I limped beside her, our pace blessedly slow.

“
Unfortunately, yeah.” She stopped and shoved her glasses up with a forefinger before peering up at me, still over the top of the lenses. “I’ve never fired in anger — at least not yet. So my conscience is clear in that regard. The three men I’ve killed I did so in order to prevent them from harming or killing someone else. It’s hard to read a person’s intent — so sometimes you wonder. But Vince wasn’t trying to wing people, Meredith. He’d established a pattern of violence in a very short time, and there was no way I could let him get ahold of that gun, not so near to you.”

I bit my lip and nodded, glancing away to blink tears out of my eyes.

Sheriff Marge nudged me with her elbow. “I like having you around. I suspect there are quite a few people who share my opinion. Speaking of which—” Her voice lowered from contemplative to the no-nonsense timbre, her eyes narrowed. I couldn’t tell if she was irritated or secretly amused. “You did call Pete back, didn’t you? That man was driving me crazy with pestering.” She snorted and resumed her swinging, stumping gait.

The laundry room was in disarray. Apparently the state patrol does not include housecleaning in their forensic evidence collection service. Frankie hauled the pieces of the broken rocking chair out to the dumpster while Barbara cleared off the table and picked up all the items I
’d flung at Vince last night. We all tried to pretend there weren’t puddles of dried blood on the floor even as we took creative side steps and shuffles to avoid them, like some kind of awkward dance. 

Some of that blood wasn
’t mine. But it looked the same — the same thick, dark rust brown drips and smears. I shuddered and reminded myself that Vince had been willing — and able — to kill me. I replayed Sheriff Marge’s words and took a deep breath. Busy — I needed to stay busy.

I splurged on the luxury of riding the elevator instead of climbing three flights of stairs to retrieve my laptop from my office. I didn
’t wake up Leland Smiley as I had feared I would. He graciously claimed he was already on his second cup of tea, although his voice still held hints of early morning frogginess.

When I
’d explained our recent developments, Leland jumped into action, directing me to his Skype account and giving me a list of tools and supplies to assemble. Back in the laundry room, I set the laptop up on the corner of a washing machine so Leland could have a good view through the webcam.

Frankie stood on a chair and opened the two small windows that were above ground level. Barbara helped her prop oscillating fans on the ledges, and Mom plugged in a big box fan and set it in the doorway, aimed out into the basement. We
’d be working in a windstorm, but it was a better option than passing out or risking a flash fire from the fumes.

We lifted the kiddie pool onto the table and unfurled the painting face up in the big plastic tub. It was too big to lie flat, and it rippled in the bottom like wave-washed sand. Really ugly sand.

I turned on the laptop and connected with Leland. He must have been leaning into his video camera because his face loomed on the monitor, all nose and chin and independently-minded bushy white eyebrows.

“
Good morning,” I shouted over the fans. “This is Frankie, Barbara, and my mother, Pamela.” I pointed in turn to each of the women standing around the table wearing bright yellow rubber gloves that reached their elbows and stiff waterproof aprons. “Also, our sheriff, Marge Stettler.” I turned the laptop so he could see Sheriff Marge resting on a low ottoman upholstered in psychedelic fabric featuring puce pineapples and fleurs de lis. Over the years, the mansion has experienced its share of truly awful home decorating concepts, the remnants of which have accumulated in the basement.

“
Ladies,” Leland said, “you have a big job ahead of you. Ready?” He rubbed his hands together in front of the camera. I’m sure he would have preferred to join us in person.

We followed his instructions, emptying gallon after gallon of Barbara
’s nail polish remover into the kiddie pool until the canvas was submerged. Leland provided a running educational commentary while we went to work with stiff brushes. In a more sensitive case, where the painting was of value, we would have needed to use pure acetone and spot treated the canvas. But since our goal was to remove all the paint and dissolve it into a liquid slurry, the extra ingredients in the nail polish remover didn’t matter.