Dying Art (A Dylan Scott Mystery)
Read Dying Art (A Dylan Scott Mystery) Online
Authors: Shirley Wells
Dying Art
By Shirley Wells
Portrait of a mystery
Dylan Scott vowed never to return to the dreary town of Dawson’s Clough. But one visit from a beautiful ex-lover and he’s back in Lancashire, investigating a possible murder. The police think Prue Murphy died during a burglary gone wrong, but her sister isn’t so sure—and neither is Dylan. After all, the killer overlooked the only valuable thing in Prue’s flat.
So who could have wanted the quirky young woman dead, and why? Dylan’s search for answers takes him to France, where he discovers Prue’s family didn’t know her as well as they thought they did. And the more he digs, the more secrets he unearths—secrets someone would kill to keep buried...
83,000 words
Dear Reader,
Exciting things happen in November. It’s the month we first announced the creation of Carina Press, the month of my Harlequin employment anniversary and it’s the month when we in the U.S. get gorge-yourself-on-bad-carbs-and-turkey day (otherwise known as Thanksgiving). We also get Black Friday (I think they call it that because of the color of your bruises after you’ve been run over by crazy shoppers).
This November, we’re excited to release our first Carina Press book in trade print format.
The Theory of Attraction,
an erotic BDSM romance collection featuring novellas from Delphine Dryden, Christine d’Abo and Jodie Griffin, is on shelves and available for order online.
We also have fourteen new stories in digital for you to enjoy post-turkey coma, in that long, long line outside the mall on Black Friday or, if neither of those is your thing, to enjoy just because you like a good book! Try to avoid the crime and violence of some of those crazy holiday shoppers and enjoy some on-page suspense instead. Marie Force is back with her popular Fatal series and ongoing protagonists Nick and Sam, in her next romantic suspense,
Fatal Deception.
Also returning is author Shirley Wells with
Dying Art,
the next Dylan Scott mystery.
I’m happy to introduce debut author Jax Garren’s new trilogy, which kicks off this month with
How Beauty Met the Beast.
This novella grabbed my attention when I read it on submission, with off-the-charts sexual tension, a wonderful, character-driven futuristic world, a smart, sassy heroine and a tortured, scarred hero who yearns for nothing more than to keep the woman he’s secretly falling in love with safe.
Looking for something out-of-this-world to take you away from the pre-holiday madness? J.L. Hilton offers up her next cyberpunk science-fiction romance,
Stellarnet Prince,
continuing the adventures of futuristic blogger extraordinaire Genny. Meanwhile, Cáit Donnelly’s
Now You See It
gives a paranormal edge to a thrilling romantic suspense, while erotic fantasy romance
Dark Dealings
by Kim Knox is guaranteed to give you that “take me away” feeling.
Joining Kim with erotic romance releases this month are Jodie Griffin with her next Bondage & Breakfast novella,
Forbidden Desires,
and Lynda Aicher’s first of a BDSM trilogy,
Bonds of Trust.
All three books in this trilogy are both smokin’ hot, while delivering a wonderful, captivating story.
We have two authors with male/male releases this month, including L.B. Gregg’s contemporary romance
Men of Smithfield: Adam and Holden.
Also in the male/male niche, author Libby Drew has her first Carina Press release, paranormal male/male romance
40 Souls to Keep.
Susanna Fraser’s
An Infamous Marriage
is our lone historical romance offering this month, but one that won’t disappoint. Anchoring us in the here and now are several contemporary romance titles. Jeanette Murray’s
No Mistletoe Required
aims to get you into a holiday mood and December Gephart bursts onto the publishing scene with her debut, the witty, fun and romantic
Undercover Professor.
And don’t miss the upcoming conclusion of Shannon Stacey’s second Kowalski family trilogy,
All He Ever Dreamed.
Wherever your reading pleasure takes you, enjoy this month’s variety of releases as we gear up for the holiday season.
We love to hear from readers, and you can email us your thoughts, comments and questions to
[email protected]
. You can also interact with Carina Press staff and authors on our blog, Twitter stream and Facebook fan page.
Happy reading!
~Angela James
Executive Editor, Carina Press
www.carinapress.com
www.twitter.com/carinapress
www.facebook.com/carinapress
Dedication
To Murphy,
with grateful thanks.
Acknowledgements
Working tirelessly behind the scenes at Carina Press are too many people to mention, but I thank each and every one for their hard work and professionalism, and for making this author feel part of a big happy family.
Special thanks must go to my amazing editor, Deb Nemeth, not only for her vision and attention to detail, but also for being such a joy to work with. Thank you, Deb.
As always, I must thank my husband Nick for not minding too much that I chose to be a writer rather than a domestic goddess.
Contents
Chapter One
Dylan was a lot of things but, unfortunately, in demand wasn’t one of them. So when his office phone trilled out for the first time in three days, his list of possible callers was topped by
salesman.
Client
didn’t even make the top ten.
He picked it up. “Hello?”
“You’ve got a customer.” Tracy’s words were punctuated by the clack of the gum she was constantly chewing. She always looked and sounded bored out of her skull. Magazines crammed with lies about celebrities littered the reception desk on the ground floor where she worked and, occasionally, she’d flick through them. One afternoon, Dylan had seen her polishing her nails. Usually, though, she was like a corpse. “She’s on her way up.”
“Does she have a name?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Okay. Thanks, Tracy.”
“You’re welcome.” Another clack of gum and the phone was dead.
A client would be more than welcome, but he wasn’t raising his hopes. Even if this woman was here on business, she’d probably want him to snoop on her two-timing spouse. He wasn’t desperate enough to sink to surveillance work. Yet.
The click of heels on the stairs alerted him to her imminent arrival. He took a couple of files from his desk drawer to give the impression he was busy, left his desk and walked to the door.
He had it open when she reached it. There was something familiar about the short blond hair, the tall willowy figure dressed in a clinging black skirt and jacket—
“Dylan!” She lunged forward, threw her arms around his neck, nuzzled her face against his and croaked something he didn’t catch.
He let go of the door and it crashed against his elbow.
Shit! That hurt.
He leaned back to look at her, so far back that he was in danger of losing his balance. “Maddie?”
Madeleine Murphy. The girl with the crazy name and the legs that went on forever. The most stunningly beautiful woman he’d ever had the pleasure of sleeping with. The euphemism mocked him.
Sleep
was about the only thing they hadn’t done together.
“I’m so glad I found you, Dylan.”
“Madeleine—” He guessed the last person to call her Madeleine had been the vicar who christened her. It sounded forced. Foolish. He cleared his throat and tried to inject a brisk businesslike tone to his voice. Why he needed to sound businesslike, he had no idea. He just did. “Well, Maddie, it’s good to see you.”
“You too. It’s been far too long.” She clung even tighter. Her perfume smelled of fruit—apple or lemon. Or maybe flowers. “I wondered if you’d remember me.”
No one who’d enjoyed a relationship with Maddie would forget her in a hurry. She’d changed, but who hadn’t? She’d always been reed-thin, probably too thin, but her face hadn’t been this pale. There was no sign of the vibrancy he remembered.
“Of course I remember you.” He pushed the memories away and tried to move out of her embrace.
“You look well,” she said, holding both his hands and running her appraising gaze from the top of his head to the tips of his shoes. Before he could comment, she put a hand against his midriff. “And you’ve still got the six-pack.”
A smile curved his lips and he was pleased he’d sucked in a breath. Even though her touch had been brief, he could still feel the warm imprint of her hand through his shirt.
He was a practising atheist but, that morning, he’d asked any superior beings who might be listening if he could, just for once, have a good day. Perhaps someone had been paying attention after all.
He eased his hands out of hers, removed his jacket and slung it over the back of his chair. He needed to put some distance between them before he spontaneously combusted. Or something similar. The office felt a good twenty degrees hotter than usual.
“So what brings you here, Maddie?” His head was a jumble of memories but he kept his voice and his smile casual.
“Prue.” She spoke as if the name should mean something to him. It didn’t. “You remember Prue, don’t you?” Before he could answer, she said, “Perhaps you don’t. You only met her a couple of times.”
Prue. The name seemed familiar, but Maddie had been popular and usually surrounded by a crowd of bright, beautiful friends.
Popular
wasn’t the right word perhaps. She’d been surrounded by people, yes, but many had been too in awe of her to be classed as friends.
“You must remember that Halloween party we went to,” she said. “Prue was there. She spent the entire evening with some nerd who was telling her his evolution theories. Everyone else had the good sense to avoid him but she said she didn’t want to be rude.”
“Prue—” A memory surfaced. Another blond head, this one belonging to a younger girl. “Your sister?”
“Yes.”
“She was the one dressed as a witch because you’d forgotten to tell her the fancy dress idea had been cancelled?” He could remember wondering for days if Maddie really had forgotten or if it had been her idea of a joke. It was funny how some memories stayed with you.
Maddie smiled. “Yes, that’s her. She insisted on leaving with us to get away from that awful man. We had to take her home.”
And they’d been desperate to get to bed. Or to the kitchen. Or anywhere they could indulge in hot sex without fear of being arrested.
Her gaze locked with his and he wondered if her thoughts had travelled the same path.
Maddie sat across the desk from him, long legs crossed elegantly. She was a year younger than him, which put her at thirty-nine.
The knowledge that he was forty hit him with its usual force. Forty. People said that’s when life began. They were wrong. But Maddie—yes, she had to be thirty-nine and, Christ, she looked nowhere near that. She’d sure as hell worn well. Prue, if memory served him correctly, was younger, probably about thirty-five.
“She’s dead. Prue’s dead.”
“Dead? But she was only—”
“Thirty-four.”
“How did she die?”
Maddie stared at her shoes for so long that Dylan didn’t think she was going to answer. Perhaps she needed a few moments.
“Start at the beginning,” he suggested. “How did you find me? Why are you here?”
Maddie took a breath. “Prue was living up north, in Dawson’s Clough to be precise.”
Dylan suppressed a sigh. The next time he conversed with superior beings, he’d remember to impress upon them that Dawson’s Clough, with its old mill chimneys set against a backdrop of bleak moors, didn’t figure in his idea of a good day. That bloody northern town would forever haunt him. “I know it.” Too well.
“So I gather. The police called me when she was—when she was killed.”
She hadn’t mentioned the
killed
part.
“I went up there and had to stay in a hotel because her house was—” Maddie took a long breath. “The police were still there and her house was a crime scene. I was reading through a local newspaper at the hotel, and there was an article about a woman who’d gone missing. People thought she’d taken off and abandoned her daughter—”
“Anita Champion?”
“Yes. That’s her. The article mentioned a private investigator called Dylan Scott and I wondered if it was you. It’s not a very common name, is it?”
“Not particularly.”
“I looked you up on the internet,” she said, “and found this office. I was going to phone but I thought it would be quicker—easier—to call in.”
He wished she’d phoned. That way, he could have taken out his memories, dusted them off and enjoyed them, and packed them safely away again.
“You have to help me, Dylan. I won’t rest until I know what happened to Prue.”
“What do you mean? What did happen?”
“Three weeks ago, on the Friday night, she phoned me. She sounded—tense, nervous. She said she needed to talk to Tim and me. I told her to stop being such a drama queen, but she refused to say anything over the phone and said she’d come down to London the next morning on the early train.” Maddie brushed an imaginary speck from her skirt. “She never came. She was dead.”
“How?”
“The police—” Her lips tightened. “The police say she disturbed a burglar. They claim she fell or was pushed down the stairs, and they don’t know which. They do know that she hit her head on a table.”
“And you think the police have messed up?”
“Yes. I told them over and over about that phone call and how she had things on her mind, but they took no notice.”
“So what do
you
think happened?”
“I have no idea.” She ran her thumb along a perfectly painted fingernail. “I just know that it’s all—wrong. When she called me, she sounded nervous. Frightened too. I know there was something wrong, that’s all. She never wants—wanted to talk. We hadn’t had heart-to-hearts since I told her Santa didn’t exist. I was worried about her and the next thing I knew, she was dead. Murdered.”
Maddie left her seat and took the one opposite Dylan’s desk. She was so close that he could smell her perfume again. “God, it’s good to see you again,” she said.
“You too. How are you? Well, apart from—you know.”
“Oh, I’m okay.” She gave him another of those smiles. “After we broke up, my modelling career really took off. I’m still doing a bit. Of course, at my age, it’s nothing too exciting. I’ve done a couple of TV adverts recently for anti-ageing creams targeted at the fifty-plus woman.”
“Really? That’s great. And you—you look great.” She looked a million times better than great. If asked, Dylan would have said he preferred more curves on his women but there was something about Maddie. There always had been.
“All thanks to living on a treadmill.” Her smile faded and she ran her fingers through her hair as if she didn’t have time for these social niceties. “What about you?” She lifted his left hand and touched his wedding ring. “So there’s a Mrs. Scott?”
“Yes. I have a wife and two kids. A boy and a girl.”
“It looks as if life has treated you well.”
“I can’t complain.” He could, but there wasn’t any point. “I worked my way up to detective sergeant and found myself on an assault charge after some piece of scum claimed I used unreasonable force when I arrested him. I ended up in prison, got kicked out off the force, and now—” He gestured to his new office. “Now I’m a private investigator of sorts.”
“Of sorts?”
“It’s okay. I was forced into it really, but yeah, it’s okay.”
“It looks lucrative.”
Lucrative
was one way of describing it, albeit a totally inaccurate one, and
boring
was another. If he received one more call asking him to check on the fidelity or otherwise of a spouse, he’d get himself a job counting holes in the road. In comparison, it would be a thrill a minute.
There was no doubt though that his new office gave the impression that he was a high-flying, successful investigator that no one in their right mind could afford not to employ. The office had been Bev’s idea. “You’ve got the flashy website,” she’d said, “so you need the flashy office to match. I, for one, wouldn’t employ someone who didn’t even own a proper office. I’ll have a look round...”
This one had appealed to her because of the swanky address. The fact that it had rental fees to match hadn’t bothered her at all. On the contrary, she’d soon been out buying furniture. His black desk had a red leather covering. There was a chair behind his desk, one opposite and two for guests. All were red leather and chrome in a contemporary design. The carpet was a very pale smoky grey and the walls cream. The aroma of fresh gloss paint was coming from a small kitchen.
It was a good office. Convenient. All he had to do now was find enough work to pay for it.
“So what do you want me to do?” he asked, getting his head into work mode.
One thing was certain, he wasn’t going to Dawson’s Clough. He had nothing against the place, except that it was up north and, consequently, always bloody freezing cold and wet, but he simply didn’t want to be driving that distance and living out of a suitcase.
“I want you to find out what happened to Prue.”
She made it sound so simple. Now he came to think of it, she’d always suffered from a touch of hero-worship. Way back then, she’d thought there was nothing he couldn’t do. Their relationship had been wonderful for his ego.
“But if she died in Dawson’s Clough, you’d do better to employ someone local to the area,” he said.
“You’ve worked up there before.” She pouted and gave him a winning smile. “I want you to do it, Dylan.”
“I’d love to help, but—” He should get rid of her now. It would be easy enough to claim pressure of work, too many other cases to deal with. “Tell me about Prue.”
“There’s not much to tell. She rented a small house in Dawson’s Clough. God knows why she chose to live there. She liked the idea of living by the moors, she said.”
Dylan knew those hills well, too bloody well. On the rare occasions the sun chose to shine, they could be stunningly beautiful. Most of the time they were bleak, lonely, forbidding places.
“She said properties to rent were cheaper and more plentiful.” Maddie’s expression called her sister all sorts of a fool. “She was always broke. She designed and made jewellery, and tried to sell it. I suppose she sold a few pieces, I don’t know. And now she’s dead.”
