Rupert inhaled sharply. “For Cantone? You
“Well, we didn’t know—”
“I will personally pay for a grand funeral for this man before I’ll let you just stick him—” He actually began to tear up.
Sam laid her hand on his arm. “Rupert, it’s okay. Now that we know who he is . . . It’s going to be okay.”
Beau spoke up. “Rupert, that’s very kind of you. But now that we know his identity, we have to make an attempt at locating next of kin. Once we know if he has living relatives, decisions can be made.”
“I’m sure you can be part of the plans, Rupert, once his relatives are found.”
He visibly relaxed. Rupert loves to plan a party and Sam could already see the cogs turning.
Beau said, “You know a lot about this man’s life, Rupert. Do you know if he had children?”
Rupert told Beau the same story Sam had discovered online, that the artist’s wife and children were killed in a train crash years earlier. He’d never remarried and had become quite reclusive. Adopting a fake identity was about as anonymous as a person could get, Sam imagined.
She spoke up: “I’m wondering about the younger man who was living with him. According to Betty McDonald he showed up in March and was gone—well, both men were gone—in June. I wonder if he was related. Anderson, uh, Cantone, didn’t seem like the type of guy to have a stranger move in with him.”
“I seem to remember a brother . . . or maybe it was a sister,” Rupert said. “Let me check.” He pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number from memory.
“Esteban. Hey, Rupert here. What do you know of any family history on Pierre Cantone?” He listened and hmm’d a couple of times. For a couple of minutes he simply waited, as the other man talked. “Okay. Thanks ever so.”
“Okay, here’s the deal.” Rupert loved to tell a story and he was just warming up.
Beau picked up on that and pulled a couple of chairs closer to his desk so they could sit down during the telling.
“Cantone had a sister. Sophie. She was ten years younger. She married an American, an older man—really a romantic whirlwind thing during a trip to New York.” He sighed. “Kind of like the scenario I created in
Sam tapped his foot with her toe.
“—oh, right. Sophie Cantone became Mrs. Robert Killington. He was wealthy, an industrialist or something. They had the most to-die-for apartment in New York, right on Central Park, and a villa in the south of France.”
She could see Beau’s eyes beginning to glaze over.
“Children?” she reminded.
“Ah yes. Esteban wasn’t sure. He thought he remembered there being a son, but if so the child was kept completely out of the limelight. Sophie and Robert traveled the world and attended all the right parties and there were never any children in sight.”
Beau stood, a clear signal. “That gives us a lot to go on. Thanks, Rupert.”
Sam nudged Rupert in the shoulder to remind him that they needed to get moving.
“I’ll do some checking to see if Sophie and Robert Killington are still living. As his sister, she—”
“Oh, they aren’t,” Rupert interrupted. “Living. That’s what else I meant to say. He died after only about ten years of marriage. He was quite a lot older, remember. She stayed around the art scene, attending many openings as Cantone’s hostess, for a few years more. But then she became ill—the rumor was cancer. She died only five or six years after her husband. It was so tragic. So young.”
“Then I guess I’ll start with the possibility that the son might still be living. Maybe even in Europe,” Beau said.
Rupert and Sam left him to the search. His phone was already ringing as they walked down the corridor.
“Sam, let’s dash back out there. To Cantone’s house? Please?”
She unlocked the truck. “Oh, Rupert, I’ve got all those cookies to bake . . .” And she wanted his help. She would get that a whole lot easier if she didn’t send him into a pout. “All right, but just a few minutes, okay?”
He seemed as delighted as a kid going to the carnival. The Anderson/Cantone place was only about fifteen minutes away. Sam was surprised to see that it was just a little past noon, anyway. She’d accomplished a lot already today so it shouldn’t matter that they take a quick side trip.
Rupert was beaming as she unlocked the door to the simple wood frame house. While he clearly regarded this as a near-shrine, knowing that his beloved artist had lived here, Sam merely saw it as sad, that such a respected man had ended up unable to pay for even this worn-down abode.
He headed straight for the front bedroom, where they’d found the art supplies and where the mural was painted. Even with it gone and the wall patched, Rupert seemed to sense the essence of the artist at work in the cramped space. Sam, meanwhile, went to the kitchen, updating her sign-in sheet, making sure that she’d left everything in order for the pending sale of the place.
At once she sensed something different. What was this greenish, powdery stuff on the wall near the table? And there—more of it near the sink. She’d wiped down the counter and table with disinfectant cleaner. She could see her circular wipe marks in dried swirls of green. No way she left it like this. She checked the back door. Still locked tight.
“What’s going on?” Rupert asked, peering around the doorjamb.
“Huh?”
“You cursed. I heard you say ‘what the f—’ all the way down the hall.”
“Look at this!” She pointed to the table. “I didn’t leave all that green stuff.”
“Uh-huh. Sam, there’s no green stuff.”
“Right there!” She flicked her fingers toward the wall. “And there. Powdery stuff on the wall. Swipe marks on the table.”
He was staring at her blankly.
“Stop it! No teasing.” She laughed but it came out sort of shaky. “Rupert, you’re scaring me. You do see this.” She wiped her finger across it and some of the green came off. She held it up to him.
“Honey, I see a table and a kitchen that looks perfectly clean. You’d never leave a mess behind in one of your places. You clean like the devil when you do these jobs.”
Sam felt like she’d been whacked. What the hell was going on? She rubbed at her eyes and blinked hard. The green stuff was still there. And her good friend was looking at her like she’d just sprouted horns.
“I want a third opinion.” She pulled out her phone and dialed Beau. No answer on his cell. Sam stopped herself. How crazy would it sound, trying to explain this to him?
Rupert was watching her from the doorway.
“You. Keep out of this,” she grumbled. He flinched and slinked away.
She stomped across the kitchen and flung the door open. It closed behind her, a lot more firmly than she’d intended. She strode over to the gaping hole in the back corner and stared into the empty grave for a good ten minutes. Maybe she
She took a deep breath and headed back to the house.
Refusing to look closely at the kitchen walls, Sam went back to the bedroom where Rupert was sitting on the bed, looking like a whipped puppy. “Hey, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.” She sat down beside him.
“And I shouldn’t have doubted you. That’s not what friends do.” He took her hand.
“So, we’re good?”
“We’re good.” He patted her hand and gave it a light squeeze. “Want some help with those cookies?”
“Absolutely. I’ll just recheck all the locks first.”
He went out to the truck while Sam made the rounds, ignoring the green powder in several places. She rinsed her fingers at the kitchen sink and the substance came right off. So strange.
She drove back home, still shaky over the fact that she was seeing things other people couldn’t see, hoping that it wasn’t some alien concoction from the Planet Whatever.
