The Last Word

Harris’s last name to her own and had practiced the signature over and over in the margin. Wedding bells and tiered cakes danced along any available white space, and plump hearts were scattered about.

This evidence of Estelle’s vision of her future with Harris didn’t please Olivia at all. Harris would make a wonderful husband someday, but Olivia didn’t think that Estelle was a suitable life partner for her friend. In her mind, Estelle was merely one of the girls Harris would date to discover exactly what he was looking for in a spouse. Estelle was pretty, sweet, and bubbly, but she was about as deep as a puddle.

She was practice for the real thing.

And then there was Millay. The tension had been escalating between Harris and Millay ever since Estelle had entered the picture, and Olivia knew that it stemmed from the fact that the two young writers were attracted to each other. Millay had dated dozens of men, from bikers to stockbrokers, but she’d never stayed with anyone long enough to form a genuine relationship. Though Millay had an undeniable connection with Harris, Olivia knew that Harris hadn’t ripened into the man he needed to be in order to capture the beautiful bartender’s heart. He was getting closer, but he wasn’t quite there. He needed another dose of confidence, a dash of bravado, and a bit more worldly experience before he had the necessary ingredients to woo his fellow writer.

Olivia was positive that Harris was precisely what the fearless bartender needed: someone to challenge her on a mental level, treat her tenderly, and win her respect not by possessing a muscular physique or fat bank account, but with a sharp wit and ready humor.

“I’ll ring Harris’s extension now, but I’m not sure what the company policy is about having dogs in the building,” Estelle said, a jester’s practiced smile stretched across her face. “And what can I tell him this is about?”

“It’s personal,” Olivia said flatly. “And you have my word that Haviland won’t soil the carpet.”

Again, that flicker of hostility appeared in the young woman’s eyes, but she looked down at the phone and pressed some keys with manicured nails. She baby-talked into the receiver until Olivia had to step back lest Estelle see the disgusted curl of her lip.

Harris jogged into the lobby less than a minute later. “This is so cool!” He exclaimed to Olivia. “I’ve never had a friend visit me at work before!” He scratched Haviland on the head and then noticed the canvas tote bag. “Whoa. Is that the painting?”

Olivia nodded. “Can we go sit somewhere? An empty conference room or staff lounge?”

“Sure.” Harris waved at Estelle. “Thanks for paging me.”

“Anytime, sweetie,” she cooed. “And I won’t tell anyone that you’ve got a dog back there with you.” She drew a finger across her lips to seal in the secret.

Flushing, Harris led Olivia through a warren of hallways. He poked his head in a small conference room and signaled for Olivia to enter. “This one has food left from the bigwig’s lunch meeting. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.” He gestured at a sandwich platter flanked by a bowl of red apples and a row of soda cans and snack- sized bags of potato chips. “It doesn’t look like much, but this is the best chicken salad you’ll ever eat.”

Olivia raised her brows. “You do recall that I own a five-star restaurant?”

“I know!” Harris enthused. “That’s how good it is.” He loaded two sandwiches, an apple, and a bag of Fritos onto his plate.

Olivia carefully laid the tote bag on the conference table and then idly chewed on an apple as Harris devoured his lunch. They small-talked about their writing and Harris’s current software project until he finally pushed his plate away.

“It was totally nice of you to bring this here,” he said. “But it wasn’t necessary.”

Exhaling, Olivia touched the canvas bag. “There’s a reason I came to your office. Harris, this painting may be more important than any of us can comprehend. In fact, it may figure into a murder investigation.”

Harris blanched. “What?”

Gently, for she knew that her young friend idolized Nick Plumley, Olivia told him that the writer had been killed that morning.

“How? Why?” Harris stammered, clearly shaken.

After admitting that she didn’t know the reason, Olivia hesitated and then softly explained that Plumley had been strangled.

“Harris, this is going to sound strange, but did Nick poke around your house the day you two were painting the living room?” Seeing the confused look on her friend’s face, she went on. “Was he especially interested in loose floorboards or in seeing the attic? Did he ask if you’d discovered any hidey-holes?”

Harris’s eyes widened. “Yeah, he did. He was telling me about this old house north of Beaufort he’d visited a bunch of times. It had a hidden space behind a wallboard in one of the closets and a niche carved from an exposed beam in the kitchen. Nick asked if I’d found any secret hiding places in my house, but I told him I doubted there were any.” He shook his head in befuddlement. “It’s not that old of a building. And except for being moved a few decades ago, it wasn’t important, historically speaking.”

“But what if it wasn’t the house that captured Nick’s interest?” Olivia wondered aloud. “What if he wanted to find this painting all along? Maybe the message on the back indicates that there’s more to Heinrich Kamler’s story. What if Nick believed he could track Kamler through this painting? Could you imagine the book he could write?”

Harris touched the canvas tote bag possessively. “Why didn’t Nick just ask me? I would have fessed up that I hadn’t found anything but would gladly show him if I did.” A hurt look crossed his features. “He never cared about my manuscript, did he? I bet he never read it.”

“That’s his loss, Harris.” Olivia gave her friend a fond smile. “If it’s any consolation, I believe he genuinely liked you and would have helped you with your writing, but for some reason, he wanted to keep the knowledge of this painting to himself.”

This notion seemed to trouble Harris. “What makes you say that?”

“When I called him this morning and told him about the painting’s existence, I could practically feel his desire to see it surge through the phone line. The emotion was so strong that I could picture a pair of hands reaching out to me.” She shook her head at the theatrical depiction. “Okay, that’s a bit much, but it meant a great deal to him.”

Crushing the remaining Frito on his plate into corn-colored bits, Harris’s expression grew thoughtful. “If you hadn’t just told me that Nick was dead, I’d assume the watercolor was important to his research and that he wanted to use it as a plot device in his sequel. But now . . .”

“Now?” Olivia prodded.

Harris pushed the bag toward her. “You’d better keep this. It would be safer at your restaurant or in a bank vault or something. Give it to the cops. Don’t even tell me where you put it, just take it away.”

It was unlike Harris to be dramatic, and Olivia frowned, but she’d just told him that his potential mentor had been murdered and he had every right to be upset. “All right, I’ll see to it.”

“Listen, Olivia. The killer stuffed Nick’s own book pages into his mouth. That means not only is it likely that some homicidal maniac had cause to hate The Barbed Wire Flower, but also didn’t want Nick to write the sequel.” Harris’s face was pink with anxiety. “This painting might be a pivotal part of the book Nick planned, so it might be important to his murderer too.”

Nodding, Olivia fed Haviland a few hunks of chicken. “I’ve been concerned about the same thing, but we could be blowing this out of proportion. We have no facts as of this point, and we need to gather some quickly.”

Harris opened a can of Fanta and drank a swallow. “Yeah, because I don’t want any of us to end up with pages of manuscripts crammed down our throats.” He ran his hands through his ginger- colored hair. “We need to figure out why Nick’s research set the killer off. If we don’t, I could be the next victim. This lunatic might come to my place in search of the painting or whatever connection Nick thought my house had to his story.”

Olivia saw the fear in her friend’s face. “Chief Rawlings has asked me to investigate the history of the families who used to live in your house, and I intend to begin this afternoon. Harris, I will do everything in my power to figure out this riddle. Millay and Laurel can assist me. Laurel can dig through the newspaper archives, and Millay can help me sift through the records at town hall.”

“I can’t just send my female friends all over town to solve this mystery while I design a fairy forest for some stupid computer game.” Harris squared his shoulders and sat up a fraction straighter. “I need to get my hands on Nick’s computer. There’s got to be a clue in his files as to why someone wanted to silence him before he could