Free Black Jack Point by Jeff Abbott

sandals.
    ‘How are you holding up?’ he asked.
    ‘Barely am,’ she said in a tone that meant anything but.
    Whit followed her into a high-ceilinged foyer and then to a living room. The furniture was modern and expensive, imported
     teak, leather surfaces of tan and black, the carpet a creamy white, brave for a beachside house. Abstract art filled the walls,
     lined the bookshelves. But all painted with the same crude hand, no eye for detail or form. Savagely mixed, the colors selected
     to hurt the eye. Jackson Pollock without the restraint. Whit sensed a sudden meanness in the pictures. They were uglinessdisguising themselves as talent. He hated the pictures on first sight.
    He followed her to an immaculate, steel-dominated kitchen. A man who looked like he might drag his knuckles when he walked
     stood by the granite kitchen counter, drinking a bottle of Dos Equis. Big, thick-necked, with a shaved-bald head and wearing
     a black T-shirt and faded denim overalls. A bracelet of intertwining tattoos whirled around one melon-shaped bicep.
    ‘I don’t think you’ve met my boyfriend, Roy Krantz. Hon, this is Whit Mosley. He’s the coroner and the JP here and he’s conducting
     the inquest into Uncle Patch’s death.’ No, he hadn’t met Roy. The few parties and events where Lucy and Suzanne crossed paths,
     Roy was always at home or sleeping or working on a sculpture. Roy shunned limelight, it seemed to Whit. Perhaps he had trouble
     fitting through the front door.
    Whit offered a hand; Roy shook it and didn’t try to squeeze Whit’s fingers into pulp.
    The phone rang. ‘Excuse me,’ Suzanne said. ‘News has spread, and people want to bring over casseroles and cakes. You know
     how it is when you have a death in the family. Everyone swarms over with comfort foods and you gain ten pounds.’
    As though weight gain were her biggest worry. Whit thought she needed a cheeseburger. But he gave his solemn, conducting-the-inquest
     nod. ‘Of course.’ She left the kitchen, scooped up a phone in the living room, spoke in a low voice.
    ‘You’re Lucy’s guy,’ Roy Krantz said. His voice was low and flat and sounded like it had been honed in a prison yard.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘How’s she holding up?’
    ‘She’s talking to the police right now.’
    Roy raised an eyebrow. ‘And what’s she saying?’
    ‘Family secrets, probably.’
    Roy made a noise of thick beer-swallow, kept staring at him.
    Suzanne returned. ‘Something to drink, Whit?’ Her voice glimmered a little too cheery, a little too hostess-bright.
    ‘No, thank you. May we talk now? Privately?’
    ‘Sure.’ Suzanne glanced at Roy, then led Whit down a hall thankfully empty of abstract art-pukings. Two doors opened off the
     hall: one to a concrete-floored room cluttered with small iron sculptures of gulls, palm trees, flamingos, and assorted equipment;
     the other to another studio, bright windows framing the view of the bay. A huge canvas leaned near one window, covered with
     a stained dropcloth. A worktable stood nearby, dotted with oil paint in blues, mustards, venomous greens, as though poison
     dripped on its surface. Finished paintings – more of the obnoxious scribblings that hung in the living room – decorated the
     walls.
    In one corner a huge roll of paper lay unfurled, with smears of bright acrylic paint dried on the paper. Whit glanced at it,
     then glanced again. Two round magenta globes looked like they’d been pressed on the paper from small, pert breasts. A roll
     of lime paint looked like a hip; multiple handprints lay in blue and pink. Other blobs resembled kneeprints, footprints, and
     one squat figure eight looked like apple-green testicles. Suzanne wore a bent little smile on her architectural face.
    ‘You’re very prolific’ Whit nodded toward the calmer paintings on the wall. It was the only compliment he could think of.
    ‘I get bored working on a painting too long, so I paint quickly. But they sell quickly, too.’ An