Murder in Pastel Read Online Free PDF

lifetime member of the National Audubon Society or not, the only birds that Norman was likely to be watching on a day this hot were the ones who hung out at the Class Room pool hall. I thought Irene probably knew too, though she never let on.
    “That’s a peculiar young man staying with Adam MacKinnon,” Miss Irene said a little stiffly after I’d drunk two glasses of lemonade and described my battles with black spot fungus to the last skirmish.
    “Brett? Well, he’s from New York.”
    Actually she did consider this a sort of explanation. “He seems familiar to me. Is he an actor by any chance?”
    “He’s done some modeling.”
    “I expect that’s it.” She held up the pitcher. “More lemonade?”
    “No, thank you, Miss Irene. I should be going.”
    Miss Irene led me out back to her own splendid rose garden which looked like a commercial for Miracle-Gro, and handed over an obscene-looking contraption with a thin rubber hose which her nephew Jack had made for her own war on garden pests. Along with the insecticide I got numerous strictures on standing upwind and avoiding breezes.
    “It contains a good jigger of cyanide,” she informed me, making it sound like a refreshing cocktail.
    “I’ll be careful,” I promised.
    As I started the jeep I considered stopping by my grandfather’s house. I hadn’t seen him in weeks. But then sometimes months passed between our meetings. I don’t think my grandfather’s bitterness toward my father extended toward me, but I was a product of my unorthodox upbringing, and that didn’t leave us much in common. Micky said once that she thought I looked enough like my mother to stir painful memories. If I’d been a girl, it might have been different—and no use dwelling on the irony of the situation.
    In the end I decided to give the family reunion a miss, and drove straight on toward the colony. Twenty miles from Steeple Hill, the “colony” consisted of six cottages straggling down the shoreline. This was the original town site, which is why there is an abandoned chapel, complete with graveyard, in the woods. No one remembers why this site was discarded in favor of the inland location of modern day Steeple Hill, but its loss was our gain.
    Passing Vince and Jen’s, I decided to stop in and grab my wok. Anything left longer than a week at the Berkowitzes’ tended to be considered a donation.
    Before Vince gave up a lucrative career as a commercial artist in favor of the challenge and frustration of Real Art, he used to bring down a tidy six-figure income. It was no secret he had trouble adjusting to a restricted budget, and he and Jen mostly managed on her salary from the Cobb House Historical Society.
    Vince was tall, bearded, with hazel eyes and an irritating laugh. Maybe I found it so because he was frequently laughing at me, usually when I wasn’t trying to be funny. As for Vince’s artistic standing, the colony’s ruthless verdict was that Jen had all the talent in the family, and Vince should have stuck to designing smiling dogs and dancing blueberries to encourage mass market consumption of dog biscuits and cereal.
    Jen’s stuff is startling: bold primary colors and aggressive brush strokes. She won’t exhibit. She says she paints for her own pleasure. I think she’s afraid of showing Vince up.
    I turned in at the wooden gate of the Berkowitzes’ cottage. Wind chimes hung motionless in the hot air. The lawn was overgrown with sea grasses; wild flowers overran the garden. The cottage’s paint was gone and the wood had worn to satiny gray. Still, the place had a rustic appeal.
    Not so appealing were the sounds issuing forth from an open window.
    “What do you want?” Vince was yelling. “Do you want me to lie? Do you want me to live a lie?”
    I couldn’t hear Jen’s reply, only the emotion throbbing in her low tones.
    “That’s right,” Vince overrode her. “It’s my fault. Every goddamn thing that happens is my fault. You can’t have kids and