A Deadly Judgment (26 page)

“Three?”

“Jill Farkas arrived this morning from Boston. I invited her to spend a few days in Cabot Cove, see the sights, get away from Boston. Thought the three of us could break bread and hash over everything that happened in Boston.”

“Seth.”

“What?”

“I just remembered an appointment I made for this evening. I completely forgot. You and Jill will just have to enjoy dinner together, without me.”

“That’s disappointing, Jessica.”

“I know. Give me a call tomorrow. And my best to Jill.”

I defrosted a container of homemade clam chowder, sliced a loaf of onion sourdough bread I’d bought that morning at Sassi’s Bakery, and settled down at my computer.

Life was good again.

Learn more about
the “art” of murder!

Don’t miss the next
Murder, She Wrote
mystery novel:

 

A
Palette for Murder

by Jessica Fletcher
& Donald Bain

 

 

Available from Signet

She was naked.

There wasn’t a hint, an expression, a gesture to indicate that she was uneasy being nude in front of fifteen strangers, male and female.

She was a pretty young girl, in her early twenties perhaps, but not beautiful. At least not according to the prevailing standards set by the arbiters of beauty in Hollywood, or the modeling agencies. Her features were too coarse to be labeled classic. Sensuous, though, large brown heavy-lidded eyes; lips full and fleshy; and thick auburn hair, obviously washed that morning and catching the sun that poured through large windows on the studio’s north wall.

Her body was firm and without blemish, breasts in proportion to her overall frame. I judged her to be only slightly over five feet tall, nothing willowy about her. She had somewhat thick, healthy legs that undoubtedly served her well in a gym, or when playing volleyball on a beach, and had an easy laugh as she bantered with the instructor, a middle-aged man trying desperately to appear twenty years younger. He wore his graying hair long in the back, secured by what looked to me to be a silver-and-turquoise clip of Zuni origin. He was bare-chested beneath a brown corduroy jacket that was, to be kind, well worn. His jeans had holes at the knees, although I suspected he’d cut them, rather than allowing them to have occurred naturally through wear and age. The jeans looked new. Leather sandals on large bare feet completed the “look.”

I’ve always been more comfortable with people who simply get dressed in the morning, rather than costuming themselves. But I didn’t let that cloud my judgment of Jorge, our teacher, who’d always been pleasant and courteous to me and the others in the class.

“Well, shall we begin?” he asked. He turned to the naked model. “Ready, Miki?”

“Sure,” she replied, getting up from where she’d been perched on the edge of a battered desk and sitting on a tall stool in front of the room. She looked to Jorge for direction. I now noticed she wore white sweat socks, her only clothing. I felt a chill, and checked her for goose bumps. None. Evidently, she was used to being naked in cold rooms.

“All right, my budding Rembrandts and Caravaggios, pick up your pencils and go to work.” To Miki: “Ten minutes, my dear. Profile. Sit up straight. Hair out of your eyes. That’s it. A little to the left. Aha. Perfect. Hold that pose.”

I glanced over at the easel to my immediate left. The artist, a pink-cheeked young man wearing thick glasses, began sketching with fervor, licking his lips as he did.

To my right, a painfully thin and pale young woman kept cocking her head as she observed Miki, whose expression had settled into one of supreme boredom.

I made a curved line on the paper on my easel to represent Miki’s back. No. It was wrong. Too curved. I muttered under my breath as I took an eraser to it. The woman to my right was still sizing up things. I reached into the oversized black leather portfolio I’d bought for the occasion and withdrew the sketches I’d made of the male model a few days earlier. Now that was a back. I felt I’d captured the curvature of his spin rather nicely, and went back to trying to achieve the same thing with Miki.

Ten minutes later, Jorge asked us to stop while Miki took a break. He should have called it a breather for her because she immediately slipped into a yellow terrycloth robe, opened a fire door at the rear of the white clapboard building and stepped outside to smoke a cigarette. So young, I thought, to be hooked on a nicotine habit. If I were her mother—which I wasn’t, of course—but if I were, I’d try to convince her to quit before it became too ingrained and difficult.

Jorge strolled between easels, glancing at what we’d done during the first ten minutes. “Good start,” he told me. The only thing on my paper was the redrawn curve of Miki’s back.

“It’s so difficult to get it just right,” I said.

“You did better with Harold.” Harold was the male model we’d sketched a few days earlier.

“I think you’re right,” I said. “Is it usually easier to draw men than women?”

“Depends entirely on your sexual orientation,” he replied, a small smile on his lips.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” I said.

“Of course you didn’t, Mrs. Jessup.” He moved on to the next aspiring artist.

Mrs. Jessup. My
nom de plume
at the art studio. I’m not quite sure why I didn’t want to use my real name while taking the course that summer in the Hamptons, on the east end of Long Island. For some reason—could it have been my embarrassment at sketching naked people, or at my amateurish results? —I didn’t want anyone to know how I was spending my mornings.
Anyone.
Even my dear friends, Vaughan and Olga Buckley, my host and hostess for the two weeks. Vaughan had been my publisher for years, and he and his lovely wife had a splendid summer home there. But I wasn’t staying with them because the house was undergoing massive renovations.

Which worked out better for me. It certainly made it easier to slip away early each morning from the charming inn where I was staying, and tote my portfolio, sketch pads, pens and pencils, and other tools of the artist to the studio. “What do I do each morning?” I repeated each evening to the Buckleys when turning down yet another invitation to join them for breakfast. “Oh, I’m just enjoying being by myself, watching the sun rise on the beach, feeling the sand between my toes. That’s all.”

Maybe some day I’d admit to them what I’d been doing. But maybe not. It depended upon whether I managed to turn out something decent enough to take credit for. That hadn’t happened yet, although I’d been playing out my closet passion back home in Cabot Cove for the past few years. Two of my “works” hung on the walls of my home there. No one ever asked who painted them, so I was spared having to lie to my Maine friends and neighbors, too.

Fortunately, no one in the class had recognized me as J. D. Fletcher, author of bestselling murder mysteries. I was Mrs. Jessup, who always came to class with her hair hidden under a brightly colored bandana, and who was partial to oversized sunglasses which seldom left her nose.

“Let’s go,” Jorge said to Miki.

She snuffed out her second cigarette, came inside, dropped her robe, and again took her position on the stool. “We’ll do fifteen this time,” Jorge said. “Full frontal view.”

Miki faced us. A wan smile came and went. She directed a stream of air at a lock of hair that had fallen over her forehead, hunched her shoulders, allowed them to relax, and settled in for another modeling session.

Time always went so quickly during these classes; I was surprised when that day’s lesson was almost over. Miki had used each of her breaks to smoke outside. Now, she settled in for her final pose of the morning. Jorge instructed her to lean forward, with her head almost down between her legs, her hair skimming the floor.

“I hate this pose,” she said.

“But it’s a classic,” Jorge said. “We’ll do ten minutes and call it a day.”

I’d loosened up as the morning progressed, my strokes with the pencil more free flowing now, less constricted. My chubby colleague next to me had filled his paper with odd shapes, mostly boxes and circles, his vision of Miki. I preferred mine, as imperfect as it might have been.

“Time,” Jorge announced.

I started to pack away my materials. I looked up. Miki was still in her pose. Strange, I thought. Jorge noticed it, too. He tapped her shoulder, laughing as he did.

Instead of straightening up, she slowly continued in the direction in which she’d been leaning. Over she went, face first.

“Good Lord!” I said, getting up and going to where she was sprawled on the cold, bare floor. I knelt and placed my fingertips on her neck. There was no pulse.

The others had formed a tight circle around us. I looked up. “She’s dead,” I said.

There were screams, and muttered curses.

By the time I stood, Jorge had already called the local police. He asked for an ambulance, but I knew it was too late. I covered Miki’s bare body with her robe.

Minutes later, the door opened and two uniformed officers entered, followed closely by a man and woman from the town’s volunteer ambulance service.

“She’s dead,” the male medic said.

“I know,” I said.

One of the officers looked at me. “Who are you?” he asked.

“I’m ... I’m J. D. Fletcher. I’m a student here.”

“Fletcher?” Jorge said. “I thought you were Mrs. Jessup.”

“Well, you see, I—”

The older of the two policemen narrowed his eyes. “You’re that famous mystery writer.”

“I really—”

“It is,” one of my fellow students said loudly. “It’s Jessica Fletcher. I’ve read some of your books.”

I held up my hands and said, “I really think who I am is beside the point. Our lovely model is dead.”

An hour later, after Miki Dorsey’s body had been removed and we’d all given statements to the police, I packed up my things, left the studio and started walking back to the inn. There was no way, of course, that I could have discerned that my portfolio was slightly lighter than when I’d arrived that morning. A couple of sketches don’t weigh much.

It wasn’t until later in the day that I discovered they were missing.