Death by Art: A SeaBreeze Island Murder Club Mystery Book 2 by L. C. Richards

Author:L. C. Richards [Richards, L. C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anonymous
Published: 2024-03-09T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter eighteen

Maud ordered her favorite rare roast beef with roasted potatoes from Marino’s for lunch. Mr. Marino’s son brought it over, and Maud ate at her desk. She had more work to do than she thought. There had been a mix-up in some of the orders from one of her wholesalers, and it took a little mild forensics and a couple of calls to the company to straighten out the mess. In addition, Maud was distracted. She couldn’t quit thinking about Samantha. A drug addict? Could it be? Aren’t there signs?

For instance, Samantha’s house had to be at least a million and a half, easy. That would buy a lot of drugs, but, Maud thought, a hardcore addict could probably go through that pretty fast. Either they could spend that much money or waste it doing stupid stuff. Maud had never been around a real addict before. So, she wasn’t exactly sure how stupid they could get, but she figured pretty stupid.

Lawrence had been an alcoholic, but he was a functioning alcoholic. He had been mainly a party drinker, and, if truth be told, so had Maud, although she swore off liquor decades ago. A little wine was fine. It gave her a fuzzy feeling, but she never felt addicted to the stuff. If she had been in a plane and crashed on a desert island with no wine, she would surely miss it, but she would miss rare roast beef more.

Between Lawrence and Maud’s uncle, her father’s brother, Maud knew a thing or two about alcoholism. She’d even been to a few AA meetings. Most people who’ve never been around alcoholics think of them like Bowery Street winos. Maybe at the end stage, but in the AA meetings Maud had been to, she had met some pretty successful people. Business people, famous musicians, a judge in the Florida Supreme Court, and even a famous actor in one of her favorite TV serials. No, alcoholics could cause a lot of damage over time, but Maud figured it wasn’t like hard drug addiction. Having said that, she never wanted to find out, and she felt very blessed that her own Annette had never ever shown any signs of having ventured to the dark side of life.

The whole Samantha thing, however, didn’t add up. How could a woman who was an addict paint like that? Samantha wasn’t only an excellent painter; she was prolific. If she’d started to number her paintings from one, she’d at least have created over fourteen hundred. That was amazing. Of course, as Arnie said, maybe Samantha had become addicted lately through opioids. There was apparently a pandemic of opioid addiction in the country. Perhaps she just got off track recently. But then again, why would she resort to harder street drugs when she had plenty of pills left? That didn’t make sense, either. Maud wasn’t sure, but she assumed people who got addicted to opioids moved on to the harder stuff when they couldn’t get their prescriptions refilled.

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