Murder in Paint Read online

  Also by Rodney Strong

  Troy’s Possibilities

  For my amazing wife Sarah, and crazy kids, Quinn and Lorelei,

  who support me with love and distract me with piles of washing.

  I couldn’t do this without you, I wouldn’t do it without you.

  Contents

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY ONE

  TWENTY TWO

  TWENTY THREE

  TWENTY FOUR

  TWENTY FIVE

  TWENTY SIX

  TWENTY SEVEN

  TWENTY EIGHT

  TWENTY NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY ONE

  THIRTY TWO

  THIRTY THREE

  THIRTY FOUR

  THIRTY FIVE

  THIRTY SIX

  THIRTY SEVEN

  THIRTY EIGHT

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Book writing is a joint effort. Therefore I’d like to thank the following people for helping make this happen:

  Debbie Weaver, from Weaver Creative, for making the cover look good.

  Anthea Brittliff for her work proofing the manuscript.

  Lesley Marshall for her editing prowess.

  Christine and the team at YourBooks for helping shepherd this past the finish line.

  Angelique, Andy, Mary, Linda, and Helen for providing fantastic feedback on the manuscript as it was being developed.

  Kaos, my cat, for enforcing writing breaks by sitting on the keyboard.

  And lastly, I have taken some liberties in writing this book, to ensure the story line worked. All going well you probably won’t even notice them.

  The painting on the front cover is Mana Island Sunset by Robyn Hall. You can check out her work at www.robynhallartist.nz

  ONE

  Oliver Atkinson stared in disbelief at the couch. It wasn’t possible. This couldn’t be happening. He was trapped in a waking nightmare, doomed to repeat the same mind murdering task over and over.

  A practical man, he didn’t believe in magic or other wordly phenomenon. But what else explained the never-ending supply of clothes that mysteriously appeared, needing washing, drying, then folding and putting away? Every time he finished, opening and closing countless drawers, slowly working the pile away to nothing, he would turn back to the couch and there would be more. It was no coincidence that the two smallest members of the family created the most washing either. They were surely part of some diabolical plan. His five-year-old daughter changed her clothes three times a day, carelessly leaving each discarded item on the floor, where Dad, having no clue which was clean or dirty, resorted to washing everything.

  Oliver scratched his head, then his testicles – not because they were itchy, but because he was alone, and he could.

  ‘I used to prepare presentations to senior managers,’ Oliver told the empty house. Sighing, he grabbed the clothes and carried them into the master bedroom, shedding socks and underwear in his wake. He dumped everything on the bed. They were no more away than before, but at least the couch was tidy.

  Padding back through the three bedroom house he shared with his wife and children, Oliver was aware of the unnatural silence that permeated the structure whenever the family was out. It was the sort of silence found in a horror film just before the maniac jumps out with a machete. Only in this case the maniacs were both under two foot tall.

  They had bought the brick clad brand-new house when the children were still babies. Since then the children had aged four years and the interior of the house fifty. The once pristine hallway walls were now a mixture of shoe scuffs and crayon marks. The carpet had long given up retaining its original colour, settling for a dull combination of green and crackers. The back yard was littered with forgotten or broken toys and a never-ending supply of weeds. Oliver suspected they came from the same magical place as the washing.

  Easing onto the kitchen stool, he sighed at the laptop screen and massaged his aching left knee. The page that stared back at him was more white space than black letters. Out of habit he saved the document, then checked the word total against the spreadsheet he meticulously kept of daily progress. Miraculously it hadn’t increased without his fingers on the keyboard.

  He re-read the last couple of paragraphs he’d written before being distracted by housework, picked up the train of thought and plunged back into the world he was creating. Five minutes and twenty usable words later he saved the document again and made a cup of tea. The clock read 2.05pm. There was thirty minutes before the school run, and then no more work for the day. It was impossible to focus with the children running around, demanding food, and quality time. Damn it, didn’t they realise he was trying to write the great New Zealand novel. As the tea brewed he rubbed the prickles on his chin, realising suddenly he hadn’t shaved, or had a shower. There was a thin layer of fuzz on his teeth. Had he done anything this morning before dropping the kids at school? That was the problem with worrying about making sure the children were ready, especially that his daughter was wearing underwear, which didn’t always happen. If he hurried he could have a quick shower, shave, brush, and still get twenty minutes quality writing time.

  Energised, he strode into the ensuite, turned the shower on, and grabbed the electric razor from the cabinet while the hissing blast of water changed slowly from cold to warm.

  Flicking on the razor he paused to study his thirty-six-year-old reflection. Some days he was happy with it, considering himself handsome, in a rugged Hugh Laurie kind of way. Other days the lines around his eyes seemed to deepen and multiply, creating cracks leading into his short brown hair. Jennifer was the sole breadwinner, and he did his bit to save money by cutting his hair – well, clipping…, well mangling – but since the people he mainly interacted with were parents or children, he wasn’t really concerned about style. The first time he’d proudly exited from the bathroom with tufts of fluff sticking out from bits of his head he couldn’t see, Jennifer raised an eyebrow. The equivalent of a “What the hell is that?” He’d become marginally more adept since then.

  Oliver’s face disappeared behind a smudged mirror and he realised he’d been procrastinating. Quickly running the razor over his skin a couple of times, he jumped into the shower. Twenty minutes later he was back in the kitchen.

  Six hundred seconds later he saved for the last time, updated the spreadsheet, gave himself a mental fist pump for meeting his daily word target, and logged off.

  Backing the 2013 Toyota Corolla out of the drive he immediately thought of several things that needed changing or adding to the story. With a sigh, he stored them away for tomorrow, not for the first time cursing that the best ideas always seemed to appear immediately after he’d switched off the laptop.

  Five minutes later he slipped into a car park down a side street and joined the stream of parents on their way to stand awkwardly outside classrooms. They generally made up two groups, full time mothers; with or without younger children waiting to noisily greet their cool, school-aged siblings, and working parents. The first group appeared excited just to be out of the house and to have adult conversation. The latter talked on cell phones and glanced at their watches, as if they couldn’t believe they weren’t working on some deal.

  Oliver walked the uncomfortable l
ine between them. Technically he had no paying job, although he did some freelance writing every now and then. Enough to justify telling people that he worked from home.

  One of the regulars gave him a wide smile. Wendy was immaculately dressed, as usual; perhaps she spent the entire time between drop-off and pick-up working on her appearance. If so, Oliver had to admit the outcome was worth it. School pick-ups were certainly more visually stimulating when Wendy was there.

  ‘Hi Oliver.’

  She spent the next few minutes telling him about the brutal spin class she’d gone to that morning. Oliver made appropriate noises of amazement, but secretly couldn’t see the point in riding a bike for an hour and not going anywhere.

  ‘How’s the book?’

  He inwardly cringed. There were probably lots of writers who loved nothing more than to talk about their work, but Oliver wasn’t one of them. Besides it was a query akin to asking how your weekend was, or if you had a good Christmas. They didn’t want the truth, just a polite stock-standard response.

  ‘It’s going well thanks,’ he replied.

  Her smile widened. ‘Excellent, I’ll get it out of the library once it’s published.’

  And do me out of royalties, he thought bitterly. Outwardly he smiled. ‘Great.’

  Oliver was saved from further small-talk by the bell, followed by the eruption of children from classrooms. He snagged his two from the throng, and struggled to make sense of the excited babble as they shuffled with everyone else down the path and out the gate. From fragments of conversations he established that both children’s days had been good, that Reed, six years old and obsessed with super heroes, was learning fractions. Rose, a year younger and obsessed with fairies, had learnt all about the letter G, and – so she informed her father – that Amber was a poo bum. Oliver admonished Rose, but it was half hearted. He’d met Amber and she was a poo bum. He’d also meet her mother, so he had a good idea why.

  Rose was the spitting image of Jennifer, right down to the cheeky smile and bolshie attitude. Her blonde hair, which had taken five years to grow to a decent length, was currently cut into a bob, thanks to a scissor related incident at day-care just before starting school. Reed was tall for his age, and thin despite constantly eating from breakfast to bedtime, and preferred books and iPads to balls and bats. He’d already declared his intention to become a scientist when he grew up. Oliver secretly worried that it was to blow things up rather than finding new discoveries.

  Three minutes after they got home Oliver’s carefully tidied house was strewn with school bags, shoes, and empty cracker packets, and the kids sat spellbound by the latest television obsession. It had fairies in it, or gnomes, or genies – they all blended together after a while.

  Oliver stood in the middle of the lounge and sighed. He was fast developing into a world-class sigher. If it was introduced as an Olympic sport he was a shoo-in for gold.

  At 5.30pm Jennifer texted to say she was on her way, and he started on dinner.

  At 5.35pm Reed and Rose dragged themselves off the couch and proclaimed their imminent death from hunger. He sent them packing with a grape each.

  At 5.38pm the kids were back asking to help with dinner. Oliver looked at the sharp knife on the bench, and the boiling water on the stove top, and settled for asking them to set the table. Five minutes later he supplemented the single place mat and knife with the rest of the settings, while in the background he could hear his children arguing about who was the bigger mouldy old potato.

  At 5.44pm Reed came out and said Rose had hit him. Rose closely followed hotly denying everything. Oliver sighed again and told his daughter to stop hitting her brother. She continued to protest her innocence but based on previous experience Oliver knew she was probably guilty.

  At 5.55pm he asked them to go and wash their hands for dinner.

  At 5.56pm he told them to wash their hands for dinner.

  At 5.57pm he turned the television off and started counting. By two they were in the bathroom. Which was just as well because he had no idea what to do if he ever got to three.

  At 5.58pm Reed came back out and said Rose hadn’t used soap, closely followed by Rose who announced the soap hurt her fingers.

  At 5.59pm Oliver said he didn’t care and told them to sit down.

  At 6pm he put their plates in front of them, and issued the standard warning of “It’s hot”.

  At 6.01pm Reed burnt his hand.

  At 6.02pm Rose declared she didn’t like the food that she hadn’t tasted yet.

  At 6.03pm Jennifer walked through the door, dumped her jacket and bag on the empty chair at the end of the table and was engulfed in hugs.

  At 6.04pm she extracted herself from the children, dutifully gave Oliver a kiss, and retrieved her food from the microwave.

  They completed the ritual by going through each of their days. The children’s turn consisted of telling their parents their favourite part of the day was lunchtime, and not for the first time Oliver wondered why they bothered sending them to school.

  After dinner was a chaotic mess of bath time, arguing over the television, and Rose asking for food two minutes before her bedtime. By 8pm both kids were in bed and the adults collapsed on the couch, too tired for adult conversation. Jennifer had a glass of red wine firmly grasped in her right hand, while Oliver remembered for the seventh night in a row that he was out of vodka and why didn’t he remember that when he could do something about it.

  Jennifer was slightly shorter than him, with shoulder length black hair, and stylish glasses that gave her a sexy librarian vibe, at least according to Oliver. Like the house, both adults showed signs of being worn down by two children. These days they considered a typical evening was spent in front of the television for a while before staggering off to bed where they finally talked about their days, then switched off the lights and lay in the dark waiting for sleep to claim consciousness. Tonight, like most nights, was a typical evening.

  ‘Are we going to the cemetery on Sunday?’ Jennifer’s voice was already dulled, on the cusp of sleep.

  ‘Yes, I thought around mid-morning. Get it out of the way,’ he replied.

  ‘Mmm,’ she agreed tiredly.

  ‘Sleep well, love you,’ he said.

  ‘You too, love you babe,’ she completed the nightly ritual.

  Oliver’s last thoughts for the night weren’t of the story he was crafting, but of housework and gardening and shopping and all the domestic things that needed to be done over the next few days.

  When did this become my life?

  TWO

  Sunday morning they loaded the kids into the car. It was a thirty-minute drive over the hill which meant they only had to listen to the same song seven times. It would have been more but the children spent the first five minutes of the journey arguing over whose turn it was to choose.

  Around the fifth time through Oliver found himself involuntarily singing along to a song about magic fairies.

  It was a warm spring day, with the occasional lonely cloud wandering across the blue sky. Grass hovered on the edge between brown and green thanks to the recent dry spell, and fields of sheep navigated hillsides in search of a decent meal. The road was nestled between two hills, and if it wasn’t for the occasional glimpse of houses through trees they could have been in the middle of nowhere.

  Oliver felt his stomach tighten the closer they got. It could have been the reason for the trip, or the fact that they were on the song’s seventh go-round and he was wishing someone would strangle Rainbow the flying fairy with her own wings.

  He glanced at the car clock, and muttering a soft hallelujah flicked the button, cutting off Rainbow. Through a chorus of protests from the back seat he cheerfully informed them it was news time so they had to be quiet. It usually worked, and if he forgot to tell them when the news was over…well, everyone makes mistakes.

  Jennifer rested her hand on his thigh the whole way over. It was an intimate gesture from early in their relationship, before chi
ldren and life got in the way. Now she only did it when she knew he needed comforting.

  The cemetery was ringed by large trees, and stone markers stretched out either side of a narrow lane. Some headstones were new, fresh dirt covering the recently interred, while others were dull and faded with time, forgotten reminders of lives. Cars punctuated the winding lane. Sunday morning was a popular time to visit the dead.

  Reed and Rose spilled from the backseat and were halfway across the lawn before Oliver had his door open. Despite missing the toilet from five centimetres away, Reed had no problem navigating through rows of identical headstones, and stopping at the right spot. A plaintive ‘Wait for me’ floated up as his sister’s younger and shorter legs struggled to catch him. Oliver and Jennifer followed slowly behind hand in hand.

  ‘Nana has new flowers,’ Rose pointed out loudly.

  Three sunflowers poked out from the pot in front of the headstone. Jennifer glanced at Oliver who shrugged. It could have been anyone in his mother’s large pool of friends, neighbours, and church parishioners. Oliver glanced at the pale pink roses he was carrying, plucked from the garden that morning, and felt self-conscious about their adequacy. Jennifer took them and knelt on the ground. In twelve months it had evolved from fresh dirt into a thick layer of green. Absentmindedly he remembered she hated green.

  A lot had happened since he had sat at his mother’s side as she rattled out her last breath. He remembered every second of that morning, even if the subsequent hours and days bled into a single motion of time. She had been sick for a long time, yet the end came quite abruptly. She went into hospice on Sunday and was gone Tuesday morning. Parishioners from their local church rolled out the usual clichés, at least she was together with her husband again, she’s in a better place, at least she isn’t suffering any more. The cynical thought that flirted with his mind as he sat through the funeral service was that after fifty years of marriage, his mother had stuck around long enough to ensure she had the last word. She loved her husband, but equally loved finishing every conversation. It had made for some stressful times growing up.