Free A Palette for Murder by Jessica Fletcher Page A

say.”
    “I appreciate this.”
    “I wouldn’t want those damn media vultures hounding me, Mrs. Fletcher. I’ll do whatever I can to help you avoid them.”
    I stepped through the screen door to the garden I’d seen only from my suite’s window. The rain and fog had turned everything in it a vivid verdant green. A pungent smell of flowers and manure touched my nostrils.
    I walked to the elm tree and paused next to it. A vision came back of last night: the shadowy figure paused behind the tree, then running out of sight. Who might it have been? All my imagination? I didn’t think so.
    I was about to step away when I happened to look down to the ground next to the lovely, graceful tree. I crouched and picked up the cigarette butt that had caught my eye. It looked similar to those I’d found outside the building where Miki Dorsey had died during the class, the ones she’d smoked during the breaks. I’d forgotten that I’d put one of those butts in a jacket pocket, which was hanging in my closet. I picked up this butt, put it in my raincoat pocket, and walked with purpose through a gate to a small road running behind the Scott’s Inn property. I looked up. The sky was dark and angry. The wind slapped the rain against my face, stinging it. Maybe venturing out wasn’t such a good idea.
    I considered returning through the garden to the house and holing up in my room until the weather cleared. But that didn’t seem to be a viable option, not with the press camped on the porch.
    I headed in the direction of the shore. I didn’t have a destination in mind. I just wanted to get away from people, specifically the press. A boy on a bicycle passed, his head lowered into the wind. He was followed by a shaggy brown dog, who didn’t look happy. A warm, dry rug in front of a roaring fireplace would be more to his liking.
    I eventually reached a small street that led directly to the water, and to the town dock, according to a rustic sign attached to a telephone pole. The street was lined with small, modest homes, some in bad repair, others reflecting more active maintenance. As I walked toward the waterfront, I noticed a crudely lettered sign at the foot of a driveway: YARD SALE. At the other end of the driveway was a garage with its overhead door open. Inside, items for sale were haphazardly displayed, illuminated by a bare bulb hanging from a rafter. A man sat on a wooden chair just inside the garage.
    I went up the driveway. “Hello,” I said.
    The man, who I could now see was old and gnarled, smoked a curved pipe. He nodded without getting up.
    “Bad weather for a yard sale,” I said pleasantly.
    “Can’t do much about that,” he said.
    “I suppose not. Mind if I look?”
    “I’d rather you buy something.”
    I laughed. “I just might do that.”
    As I perused the eclectic array of items for sale, I thought back to yard sales I’d held at my house in Cabot Cove. They were hard work, but fun. And it was always pleasing to see things I no longer wanted or needed end up in someone else’s hands. I never made much money from those sales, but that hadn’t been my purpose. What little cash they did generate paid for dinner out with my friends who’d helped me move items to the yard, and to tag them.
    The garage contained some broken stereo equipment, frayed throw rugs, kitchen items, tools, a pile of framed pictures, worn clothing, and other things no longer of interest to the home’s owner, nor to me.
    I focused on the pile of framed pictures. Some looked as though they might have been painted by a small child, so crude were the images. There were a couple of prints of pastoral scenes. I held up a photograph of what I presumed was the man and his family, taken many years ago. Why did he think a photo of him and his family would be of interest to anyone else? The frame, I suppose. It was a discolored metal frame with filigree in its enlarged corners.
    “You can have them all for five dollars,” he