Twenty-Eight

Matt hesitated outside the gallery, holding a box of chocolates in his hand. Even though the cardboard felt dry and rough against his palm, the past seemed to overlay the present.

The shadow of wings on the wooden deck, too much like blood.

The seagull glided on a current of air, a sweep of black-tipped grey feathers against the clouds, the white underbelly. That dark stain drifted over the ground as the gull wheeled and soared overhead.

On the street behind him, white awnings snapped. The seagull squawked and plunged, diving for a crust of bread by the gazebo.

Matt blinked, shook himself out of it.

This was a gallery, not a crime scene. And he’d better be ready to celebrate, because that’s why he was here.

Holding onto that thought, Matt shoved through the gallery door into laughter and the hum of voices. The colours hit him first. Then he saw the careful planning that enticed people in.

Charley had transformed the place. And drawn a crowd to witness it.

Scanning the room, he spotted her, and his heart stuttered. She looked like she’d stepped straight off the set of a film noir. Swept back hair, hands on her hips. Red lipstick that had him thinking of the taste of her mouth. When she turned, caught his eye, the grin she aimed his way had his heart skipping a beat. And that worried him.

She cut through the crowd toward him.

“You look —” Before he could finish, she grabbed his hand and pulled him back outside. “What’s going on?” Concern shot through him.

But as soon as the door closed behind them and she turned to face him, he saw the thrill in her eyes. “I sold a painting,” she whispered.

He grinned. They stood on the deck, in a hubbub of conversation, upbeat pop music and the crackle of sweet and salty kettle corn. It was unlikely they’d be overheard, but he dropped his voice low, to match hers. “You what?”

“To Sarah Felles.” She beamed at him. “I’m hoping she didn’t buy it just because it’s a painting of her. But, still, a sale’s a sale.”

“That’s huge!” They stood close enough together for him to catch that same cassis scent on her skin. “Why are we whispering?”

“Because I’m trying to pretend I’m taking it super-cool.” But the excitement in her voice was barely contained.

“You had me fooled. Guess I’ll have to give these champagne chocolates to someone else.” He scanned the people strolling past, pretending to search for a likely candidate.

“Champagne chocolate?” Her eyes lit up. No poker face there. At least, not when it came to chocolate.

“Caught your interest, did I?” He laughed.

“And how.”

“I meant to be here when the gallery opened, but Chocoholic’s is packed.” It had been hard to escape even now.

Charley took the box he held out to her. “Thanks. Matt —” She bit her lip. “— about yesterday —” A scratch of claws on the door interrupted her.

“Patience isn’t Cocoa’s strong suit, is it?” He’d picked up on the hesitation in her voice, that second’s pause. It might be a good thing she’d been cut off mid-sentence.

“Never has been.” Charley reached for the doorhandle, then turned back, eyes shining, like she was offering up a secret. “Would you like a tour?”

“Actually” — he couldn’t resist shooting a casual glance past her — “someone said there were crackers.”

“Very funny.” She swung the door open. The glass panels reflected sunlight and white clouds, thick as Chantilly cream. Not a bird in sight.

Soon as he stepped over the threshold, Cocoa sniffed his shoes, his hands. “I probably smell like chocolate.”

“You do,” Charley said, then looked like she wished she hadn’t.

He flicked his eyes to hers, felt that snap of electricity between them again. She glanced away first. But judging from the flush in her cheeks, she’d felt it too.

Matt tucked his hands in his pockets and followed her into the room with a grin.

She led him away from the crowd, over to the wall on their left. Her gaze firmly on the painted faces. “When art gets put on display in a gallery, that’s when a piece takes on a life of its own. Everyone who looks at it sees it differently.”

“Perspective, you mean?” The give of the floorboards distracted him. That squeak of wood yielding beneath his weight. A noticeable slope angled down toward one corner of the room.

“Yes, but it’s more than just point of view. The natural instinct to want to find the meaning behind the artwork, to raise questions and search for answers. Every painting is a combination of choices the artist made. About the subject, the style, the size, the colours. To really understand an artwork, you have to pull it apart and figure out how the pieces fit together to make a whole.”

“Like solving a puzzle,” he murmured. Or a mystery.

But he was here for the art. Just because he’d been googling floor joists for the past few days did not mean this was the time to investigate.

She nodded. “It’s all about noticing the details.”

Sure, he saw the talent in Thomas’s work, recognized it in Kayla’s, but Charley’s caught and held his attention. In fact… “I like these details.”

The painting was small. Smaller than all the others. A femme fatale lounged in a hammock in the shade of oak trees, as deadly as a poison vial. But the gun rested forgotten on her stomach as she ate chocolates straight from the box. A distant smile on her lips, she stared up at the sky, as though lost in a daydream. Choosing the Sweet Life. To his surprise, he wanted it.

Charley glanced at him. “Art is more than just personal preference. It all comes back to emotions.” And wasn’t that true. “To provoking a reaction.”

She moved on to the next piece. A vast, starry sky. Darkness and bright bone. A ragged shirt, silvered with frost.

She said, “That’s why we say art, paintings, crackle with energy, with anger.”

“This one does.” He didn’t need to read the artist’s name on the title card to know this was Kayla’s work.

That wasn’t — He leaned in for a closer look. The similarity was impossible to miss. And that expression of suffering Kayla had painted on Andrew’s face? He couldn’t help but enjoy it.

Charley moved to the next wall. “Thomas’s paintings are full of geometric shapes.” She gestured at the musician painted on canvas. “That triangle could be a flat, abstract shape. But we see the angle of an arm.”

A trick? Or wishful thinking. “So, we see what we want to see.”

She grinned at him. “What the artist wants us to see.”

A clever illusion. Like evidence, planted to mislead.

Stopping in front of the next painting, he tried to focus on it, but his gaze slid down the wall. Near the baseboard, spiderweb cracks ran through the drywall. Probably caused by seasonal changes in temperature and humidity.

“Those circles, those squares,” she said, “remind us of the human form, of instruments. Thomas knew that.”

“And used it.” There was something wrong with the structural integrity of the building. Then she died. The words echoed through his mind, nearly drowning out everything else. “So, when we look at a painting, we’re trying to uncover the truth?”

“The artist’s truth, anyway.”

Over her shoulder, he noticed a middle-aged couple turn toward them. The woman approached Charley with a smile. “Are you the artist? Could we ask you a quick question?”

“Go ahead,” Matt said. “I’ll look around upstairs.”

“You’re sure?” she asked.

“I won’t get lost.”

But when Cocoa followed him up the stairs, he was happy for the company. Especially when the man passing him on his way down said over his shoulder, “I swear I heard footsteps.”

The man behind him laughed. “Straight from the afterlife?”

This might be harder than he thought.

But the room he stepped into was filled with colour and light. The bay window framed a blue square of sky. Despite all his better instincts, he moved to look out of it.

The floor dropped away beneath his feet. The room spun. Fighting the dizzying onslaught, he forced himself to look down at the deck below, the tops of the white awnings. To fall that far — Cocoa nudged his hand, cold wet nose to his palm.

His feet were on the ground. And there was a solid pane of glass in front of him.

He turned his gaze on the frame. Tried not to glance at the sky and the ground below. He focused on the seam in the sash. The patch job looked uneven. At some point, the window had been replaced. A shift in the foundation had caused the window to crack. And now it was resettling.

There was a reason the building was up for a temporary lease, why it wasn’t for sale. All the signs pointed to framing deterioration — no surprise there.

Whatever Andrew had done to pull the job through had been a fast fix. Not meant to withstand the test of time. Then again, not much did.

The foundation Charley had built her dreams on was rotting.

Matt checked his watch. He couldn’t linger. He had to get back, give Mrs. Callahan a break. Get away from that window. And pay for his painting.

Downstairs, Charley’s laughter rose above the murmur of conversation. Following the sound, he headed her way, but checked his pace when Kayla cut in front of him.

She got to her first, Alex one step behind. “This was a mistake,” Kayla said, her voice shaky.

Charley turned and looked startled. Then concerned. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know what I was thinking.” She shook her head, looking a second away from bolting. “I can’t do this.”

“Hold on —”

“I have to get some air.” Kayla pushed by him on her way to the door.

“What’s going on?” Matt asked.

“That’s what I’d like to know.” Charley turned to Alex. “You’ve been watching Kayla like a hawk all evening.”

“Yeah. And what I saw was a guilty conscience.” Alex’s gaze burned after her, and Matt thought of the seagull’s steep and sudden dive.

What had Charley said? It was all about perspective. At a glance, it was easy to mistake flying for falling. Hunter for hunted. It all depended on how you looked at it. The questions you asked.

And all the answers kept leading back to Andrew. To Clarkston Engineering.

“You’re paranoid,” Charley told Alex.

“Realistic.” Alex jerked his thumb at him and Matt raised his brows. “Even the chocolatier thinks I’m right.”

“Hey.” He put his hands up. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to,” she said.

Hopefully she’d forgive him, when he told her she could tally a second sale to her score for the day.