Partner In Crime

Joa

Dee shook her head. “Not really. ‘Somebody I knew back home,’ she’d tell me without ever bothering saying where ‘back home’ was. But I did notice that there’s no rain in any of her pictures. Wherever home was, it must not rain very often, or else she just didn’t like to paint rain.”

“Maybe Rochelle Baxter didn’t tell you where she came from because she had something to hide,” Joa

“Like maybe she had done something wrong? Something illegal?” Dee demanded.

“Possibly.”

“No!” Dee replied hotly. “Nothing like that. I’m sure of it. I’m an excellent judge of character, Sheriff Brady. Psychic, even. Shelley was as honest as the day is long. If she had done something bad, I would have known it.”

“You said she was an ex-Marine. Did Rochelle mention anything to you about where she served and when?”

“She’d been in the Gulf War,” Dee answered. “I remember something about her being an MP, but again, she wasn’t big on details.”

“Do you have any idea about the people in the paintings?” Joa

“Maybe you should come up to the gallery and see for yourself,” Dee suggested. “I assume they’re people from Shelley’s past. They’re all painted in a wonderful sort of summer light, but not the light we have here in the desert. The shadows don’t have the same hard edges that desert shadows do. This is much softer. And speaking of soft, that’s how she spoke, too – with a soft drawl that makes me think she must have come originally from somewhere down south, but then she’d say something about being glad her bones were finally warming up, so I really don’t know.

“If that’s all you need, I’d better go,” Dee added, extracting a car key from the fringed leather purse that hung from her shoulder. She edged away from Joa

“I still need to go get gas,” she said, “but I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to go through with the show’s grand opening tonight after all. For one thing, it’s too late to call off the caterer. Even if I canceled, I’d still have to pay for the food. So we’ll have an event anyway, even if it’s more like a wake than anything else – a wake with paintings instead of a body. But before it opens, I’m going to redo all the prices.”

“Redo them?” Joa

“I’m going to raise them,” Dee Canfield returned decisively. “Those fifteen pieces are all I have to sell of Shelley’s work. With her gone, that’s all there’s ever going to be, which makes a big difference to collectors. It means the paintings are more valuable.”

“There aren’t any others?”

“Only one,” Dee replied. “But that one’s already sold.”

“But I would have thought there’d be others, either here in her studio or in storage…” Joa

Dee shook her head. “Shelley was something of a perfectionist, you see. She’d paint one canvas over and over until she got it right and moved on to the next one. Maybe she was just cheap, but she didn’t believe in letting canvases go to waste.”

“How do art galleries work?” Joa

“Of course not,” Dee said. “Shelley’s and my agreement works on a percentage basis, fifty-fifty.”

“So, if you raise the prices on Rochelle Baxter’s work, her heirs will receive more, but so will you.”

“Believe me,” Dee said, “I’ll see to it that Shelley’s heirs receive the additional proceeds, if that’s what you mean.” She paused, and her eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute. Are you suggesting that I may have had something to do with Shelley’s death – that I killed her so I could make more money off her paintings?”

“I wasn’t implying anything of the kind,” Joa

Joa

With that, Dee got in her car and slammed the door behind her. On the second turn of the key, the old engine coughed fitfully to life. Jerking and half-stalling, the Pinto lurched away from the curb and bounced through an axle-bending pothole.

As the Pinto shuddered out of sight, Joa

Three

DAVE HOLLICKER CAME OUTSIDE and heaved yet another set of plastic bags into his waiting van. “How much longer do you think you’re going to be?” Joa

Joa

As she drove toward the Justice Center, Joa

Recalling the event, Joa

Rochelle hadn’t been in evidence at the wedding, but Joa

Halfway back to the department, Joa

Picking up her radio, she called in and asked for Bobo Jenkins’s address. She learned that he lived on Youngblood Hill in Old Bisbee, only a matter of blocks from his former business, the Blue Moon. Joa

Thirty-two steps later found her standing, out of breath, on the wooden porch of a fully renovated 1880s-vintage miner’s cabin overlooking Brewery Gulch. The clapboard siding, front door, and porch railings were all newly painted. The broad planks of flooring showed evidence of having been recently replaced. The period piece of etched glass in the front door had been carefully relined with new putty, and the glass itself sparkled in the morning sun. Sighing with reluctance, Joa

When Bobo Jenkins came to the door, he wore shorts, a sweat-soaked T-shirt, and a pair of te