We left the room and crossed the landing at the top of the stairs. Straight ahead was a galley kitchen that was undisturbed. A porcelain mug sat on a gray counter next to some dirty dishes. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
I peeked into the bathroom next to the kitchen. It was tiny, with a maid’s sink and an old-fashioned tub with claw-and-ball feet. Everything was in order, down to the loofah stuck between the tub and the tile wall. Except for the toilet seat. Its ring was up. Odd. Would a killer use the toilet? I wondered if the police had noticed, or if you had to be a woman to notice when the seat’s been left up.
“The bedroom’s here,” Johanssen said, and I walked to the doorway.
It was beautiful. A queen-size bed with a lacy spread, in a disarray that looked sweet instead of merely unmade. The sheets were a soft, unbleached cotton, as were the pillows. Against the wall on the right was an oak bureau covered by a lace runner. “I guess there was no struggle in here,” I said.
Johanssen said nothing for a change.
Against the far wall were windows with white lace curtains and a blanket chest stood between them. To the left was a bookshelf, but there were no clues announcing themselves anywhere. “Are there any other rooms, Officer?”
“No.”
“Then I think I’d like to see the living room again.”
“Suit yourself.”
I tried to look at the room like a professional, now that the initial shock had worn off. I took a small legal pad from my purse and began to make notes. The blood didn’t seem to fall in any particular pattern or spatter. It seemed likely that Patricia had been attacked in the studio, perhaps while painting, and had been stabbed there. I had no support for it, but it looked as if the killer had wrecked the place in a rage, possibly drug- or alcohol-induced, or in a struggle. I wondered if the cops had any theories.
“Looks like a struggle,” I said, to no cop in particular.
Johanssen didn’t reply.
Real helpful. I considered reminding the cop that I was a taxpayer and the least he could do was throw me a bone, but thought better of it. It wouldn’t be very detectivey, begging for hints and all.
I stepped over to a shelf to the right of the room. Sketchbooks and pads flopped over on the shelves, next to a cigar box of pencils. Messy black smudges covered almost all of the surfaces around me. “Is this dusting for fingerprints?”
Johanssen nodded.
Hey, I was in the zone. I moved closer to the bookshelf. Untouched, except for the fingerprint dust, was a massive wooden paint box that sat open on top of the bookshelf. It looked expensive, so I guessed this was the paint box Fiske had bought Patricia. It was three trays deep and laden with silver tubes of oil paint. Cadmium Red, Prussian Blue, Viridian, said the black labels, and each tube had been squeezed in the middle like the nightmare tube of Crest, travel size.
But the paint box hadn’t been harmed. It seemed strange, especially if it was Fiske who had killed Patricia and ransacked the place. Wouldn’t he have destroyed his expensive gift? And was the studio ransacked before or after she was killed? Was the killer looking for something? I stepped back and heard the rustle of paper underfoot.
“Watch out,” Johanssen said. “We’re not finished with the scene yet.”
“Sorry.” I reddened. Joe Cool at the crime scene, tripping over Exhibit A. I looked down at my feet, expecting yet another depiction of flowers in May, but I was wrong. Underneath my pump was a sketch of a young black man.
Nude.
I looked closer. He was reclining on some sort of sheet, and his handsome face, framed by short dreadlocks, was turned directly toward the artist. His body was young and strong; muscular shoulders, a broad chest, and nipples were suggested by delicate lines of black india ink. His hips looked bulky and powerful, and one leg was up, discreetly concealing what lay beneath his flat stomach. I wondered who he was and whether he was real or imaginary. I made a note to find out.
I glanced at the other sketches. All of them were fruits or flowers-peonies, cosmos, rudbeckia-like a Burpee’s catalog in pencil. But I learned more about Patricia from the erotic drawing than I did from all the leggy cosmos, and I took the time to look at each painting, as well as the unfinished canvases that she had leaning against the wall. Then I remembered another unfinished canvas.
“Officer, can we see that garage now?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I led the way down the stairs, relieved to leave the bloody scene behind, and walked ahead of Johanssen while he locked the front door. I made a note about the distance from the driveway to the mansion and confirmed my original conclusion that the witness’s identification of the judge could be attacked. Except for that license plate part.
It gave me another unwanted thought, one I’d dismissed when I’d seen Kate at the house, looking so upset. Kate drove a black Jaguar, she had an almost identical license plate. And she had a motive-her anger at Patricia for bringing the lawsuit. If she knew about the affair, she’d have an even stronger motive. It sounded crazy, but could Kate have done it? And did I want to exonerate Fiske only to put Kate on the hook?
“Must not have used the lock,” Johanssen said to himself, as he struggled to lock the front door.
“But she wouldn’t leave the door unlocked.” A woman, living alone? No way.
The lock fell into place. “Let’s go,” Johanssen said, and led me around the house to the front, where the avaricious ivy crept over the left side of the garage door. Johanssen tipped his hat back and frowned. “You really have to do this, lady?”
“Yep.”
“This real important to the defense?”
“I doubt it, but the alternative is reading cases.”
He looked at me sideways, then back at the door. “Must be manual.”
“What?”
“The door.” He bent over and gripped a rusty handle on the bottom of the garage door. It opened after four hard yanks, and a bare lightbulb in the ceiling shone down on the damndest thing. A motorcycle. It was a shiny turquoise blue with bright chrome pipes underneath and a leathery black seat. So Patricia had a motorcycle. There was no car in sight. I filed this piece of information and looked around the musty garage.
“Well, will you look at that?” Johanssen said with sudden animation, and glommed on to the bike as if pulled into its gravitational field. “It’s a BMW.”
“I didn’t know BMW made motorcycles,” I said idly.
“BMW? Are you kidding? They’ve been making them for years, since World War II. They made them for Rommel, the first shaft-drive bikes. He needed them because the sand from North Africa, it got in the chains on the old bikes. Abraded them. Motoguzzi copied it, and by the eighties everybody had the drive shaft.”
“Really?” Like I care. Against the cinderblock wall of the garage was a shelf with tins of painting supplies, slim cans of brush cleaner, and linseed oil. So Patricia did keep her painting stuff in here.
Johanssen wolf-whistled. “Jeez, this is a 750.”
“A 750?” I asked, keeping him distracted so he wouldn’t see me snooping. “What does that mean?”
“Seven hundred and fifty cubic centimeters. The displacement, the size of the engine. Like the horsepower in a car.”
“Interesting.” To others. I walked by the motorcycle to the other side of the garage. In the light from the window I could make out some suitcases, a pink steamer trunk, and some papers against the wall.
“My bike’s a Honda,” Johanssen said. “It’s only a 550. They don’t even make it anymore. They start at 650 now.”
“I guess there’s nothing down here,” I said, trying to sound disappointed. “She must’ve used the garage for storage.” I walked over to the cardboard boxes and peeked under one of the flaps, which was slightly damp. Inside was a pile of wool skirts and pullover sweaters. “Just a lot of old winter clothes. I wouldn’t put my sweaters in an open box, would you?”