Free A Little Learning by Jane Tesh Page B

your talents are put to their best use on murder investigations?”
    “I don’t always have cases like that. I like finding lost articles, missing relatives, family heirlooms.” When I’m not being challenged by murder mysteries, I wanted to add.
    “If your art work were to become popular, would you have the time to spend on it?”
    “Fortunately, the murder cases are few.”
    “Well, you’re a very attractive young woman. Some of the artists I’ve met, quite frankly, look as though they’ve been sleeping in Dumpsters. This could be a good story for the museum, a good way for the show to get more positive publicity. I’d like you to meet our liaison to the
Parkland Herald
.”
    For a horrible moment, I thought she was going to say, “Chance Baseford,” the critic who’d shredded my first exhibit. But she said, “Valerie Banner. May I call her and set up an interview?”
    A favorable showing at the gallery and a positive interview in the paper would go a long way toward improving my reputation as an artist. “Yes, thank you,” I said.
    “I believe we have your contact information. I’ll have her call you.”
    As we left the museum, Jerry took my arm in his. “I feel a Twenty-First Century mood coming on,” he said.
    “A good mood?”
    “Oh, yes. You accomplished quite a lot in that short visit. If Valerie Banner writes a decent story, you might even get more cases.”
    “Just so she doesn’t write something like, ‘Murder is an Art,’ or ‘A Brush With Death.’”
    “Or ‘Color Me Dead.’”
    ***
    We entertained ourselves with more headlines as we drove back to Celosia and home.
    Home. Yes, when I thought of the house, I thought of it as home, a home slowly emerging from years of neglect to become a beautiful, inviting place, set in a field of waving grass and wildflowers, and surrounded by ancient oak trees. Before moving here, I’d lived in a small apartment in Parkland, and before that, Bill and I had a large, ugly split-level house. The only other home I’d had was my mother’s house with its cold black and white décor and uncomfortable furniture. I never wanted to go back to any of those places.
    I know Jerry loves the house, I thought, but this house means something to me, too. I love our blue living room. I love our kitchen at the back with the old fashioned table and chairs. I love my upstairs studio with its wonderful light and the front porch where Jerry and I watch the sunsets.
    The white van parked under one of the trees meant Nell Brenner, our handywoman, was here. While Jerry went into the kitchen in search of a snack, I found Nell upstairs replacing the front of a new air conditioning unit.
    “Heard there was a little commotion over at the school,” she said.
    It no longer startles me that Nell knows everything that happens in town, sometimes before it happens. “Amelia Lever had a heart attack.”
    Nell wiped her large hands on her paint splattered overalls. “Passed on, did she?”
    “Yes, and I’m not so sure it was of natural causes.”
    She reached into her toolbox for her screwdriver. She gave me a glance from her small shrewd blue eyes. “You on the case?”
    “Not exactly.”
    She tightened the screws that held on the front panel. “Well, I can tell you that Amelia Lever was a hateful woman, and I’m a little surprised someone hasn’t killed her before now.”
    “Hateful in general, or did something make her hateful?”
    “Can’t figure it. She married George Lever, had the two boys, taught school forever. Must have been something in her childhood. Why are you interested?”
    Why was I interested? Well, for one thing, the idea of a murder happening at Austin and Denisha’s elementary school made me very uncomfortable. “She was wearing a nicotine patch and smoking at the same time.”
    “Probably just forgot—or do you think somebody saw her light up and smacked a patch on her?” Nell chuckled. “I’d like to see the man or woman brave enough to