“Her body was found in a dumpster yesterday morning.” His gaze was hard, angry. “What do you know about that?”
Cayce took the blow almost viscerally. Her body bowed against the pain. Her knees sagged, and her heart crushed from the horrific pressure of the shock. “Are you serious?” she gasped out. “Oh, my God.” She sank to the floor, shutting her eyelids, as if that would somehow stop the assault on all her senses.
Her mind was completely overwhelmed, as shards of pain splintered through her. Was that why the last two days had been so rough? She’d fought the headaches and the nausea, and, when a darkness had enveloped her, she’d really wondered what was going on. When she found out Elena had been replaced in this installation, Cayce hadn’t been happy—as in seriously not happy—and had figured the ugly energy was due to that. That, in part, had been behind her bad mood.
Although her being forced to use Naomi hadn’t helped. She liked to choose her own models. Not deal with the ones who were sleeping their way to the top. Naomi hadn’t fit the bill yesterday. She hadn’t fit the bill today. Cayce’s models had to have that extra something.
Naomi didn’t have it.
Elena had it … in spades. No, … had had it. Past tense.
The grief crushed her, and she couldn’t get air into her lungs, as she stared at the detective.
The detective squatted in front of her. “Breathe.”
She struggled, then gasped, and drew in a deep breath, her gaze wide and painful as she stared at him. “How? When?”
“She had already been dead for several hours,” he said softly, as he studied her. “Her throat was cut.”
The shocks just kept reverberating. Her body shook involuntarily. Then she added her own headshake. “Oh, my God, dear God, no.” She continuously shook her head, her lips firmed into a straight line, her eyes filling with tears. “Please, no,” she whispered again, turning to the detective. “Elena was special. Why would anybody want to hurt her?”
“You body-painted her, correct?”
She nodded, her gaze still locked on his, searching for anything to say, but her throat had closed, her heart shutting down at the terrible horrors filling her mind’s eye.
“And what did you paint on her that night?”
She stared up at him, and sadly, she whispered, “A masterpiece. I painted her into a masterpiece.”
“Well, guess what?” he said, his voice hardening. “A collector found something else to collect. Her skin.”
At his last words, her body automatically took a fetal position, rolled over, where her stomach revolted, and she vomited all over the floor.
In her heart of hearts, she knew the murderer hadn’t just collected a masterpiece of art. Something was so very special about Elena. Her energy was pure gold.
When her killer took her life, her painted skin, he’d also taken a part of Elena’s soul.
*
He stared at the beautiful painting in front of him. It would be a challenge to preserve this. He’d taken multiple photographs, and he’d already stretched out the canvas. The stretching bars were ever-so-gently tightened in order to fine-tune the tension to get the look that he wanted. It was a stunning picture—sunsets and an eagle—but something was just luminescent about it. He was desperate to capture that luminescence. He quickly coated it with yet another layer of preservative, trying to keep it as it was, trying to keep that something special. He looked at the discarded masterpieces he had worked on before.
Most of them were no good, but he’d taken photographs and had them blown up, just as a reminder. But they were something. They were a memory, faint, just a shadow of what they should be, what they could be. This one, however, he had high hopes for. He studied the piece again carefully, analyzing the stretchiness of it. And then quickly tightened just one millimeter on one of the top bolts to stretch that one portion back out again. Satisfied, he sat back and took more photos. He was obsessed with the painting. It was just so good, so stunning. He’d hadn’t realized she’d become so big, until he’d seen the artist at a huge installation.
She had created a great big wall painting and was doing an incredible job of taking people from their normal reality, dropping them right into the fantasy world she wanted the observer to experience. He’d watched the artist work, as she painted a doorframe and walls, all the way down, giving it a 3-D effect, as if you could walk right in, and yet into what? And that was the thing that she invited you to play with—into the world beyond, into the world within, into the world that you had yet to explore. He’d spent most of the day there, absolutely enthralled with her work.
And he hadn’t been alone. A lot of other people busily worked, standing and staring in surprise, shock, and wonder. He couldn’t leave it alone. He’d become obsessed, knowing he had to own a masterpiece himself. Only she didn’t sell them—at least not at a price he could afford. But so much life existed in her paintings. So much life force.
He’d painted at her side for a time, but she’d taken off, and he hadn’t.
He pondered the idiosyncrasies of fate that left him here in this dreary hidden space, while she was queen of the art world.
When he realized he’d never own a Cayce masterpiece, he’d become inspired to pick up his paintbrush again. He’d been an artist for years. Surely he could copy her work. Make something so similar that he’d be happy. But it hadn’t happened yet. Those failures had fueled his determination to not only own one of hers—now something he’d succeeded in, even if it was only a tiny piece of Cayce’s art—but it was here beside him for him to copy, so he could become the king of the art world.
Through his phone he heard his mother yell out.
“You were supposed to bring me milk for
