Tracy Hayes, Tenacious P.I. (P.I. Tracy Hayes 6) by Susanna Shore

Author:Susanna Shore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: crime, suspense, murder, mystery, detective, mystery humor, women sleuths, private investigators, amateur sleuths, mystery cozy
Publisher: Susanna Shore

Chapter Fourteen

We stared at the sight in disbelief. “What the hell happened here?” I finally managed to ask.

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Jackson looked grim as he picked his way around the upturned easels, paints, and canvases littering the floor.

“Should we call Taylor or the police?”

“Both. You call your brother and I’ll call Taylor and ask if the place looked like this earlier.”

We dug out our phones and placed the calls. Trevor was driving, so Blair answered his phone. “Someone’s ransacked Taylor’s studio,” I said without introductions.

“Why?”

“If I were to hazard a guess, because they were really fricking furious.”

“Does it look like there’s been a struggle?”

“You mean, like Sam’s been abducted from here?” I studied the room. “Difficult to say, but if she was, whoever took her took time to rip apart dozens of sketches and throw paint over the finished works.”

“Doesn’t sound like abduction to me. We’ll be right over.”

“I’ll come down and let you in through the back door.”

I finished my call the same time as Jackson finished his. “Taylor says the place was tidy when she was here last time. She’ll come over and see for herself.”

“Pity we didn’t anticipate this and mind our fingerprints with the door.”

He looked around. “With this much destruction, there’s bound to be prints everywhere. And if we’re lucky, they match whatever they’ve found in Joel’s studio.”

Trevor said the same when he and Blair arrived fifteen minutes later. “Here’s hoping they belong to someone in the system.”

“But was this done by someone after Taylor or Sam?” Blair wondered, staring at the room with the same dismay Jackson and I had earlier.

I hadn’t even considered it would be done in retaliation against Taylor. “Maybe someone didn’t like her latest comic.”

“That someone would have to have a key,” Jackson reminded me.

I nodded. “So we’ll have to go through all the people who have a studio here?”

“Unless the person who did this used Joel’s key,” Trevor noted. “He didn’t have it with him. I asked.”

“I think Joel’s killer is a likelier candidate for this than someone retaliating against a comic. That would be too much of a coincidence,” Blair said. “But was it done last night or when they came for the phone?”

I shook my head. “The door was closed when we were here yesterday, so I don’t know.”

Jackson turned around slowly, taking one last look. “This level of rage indicates a personal motive. Perhaps we’ve been wrong to assume Joel’s murder was about business and the paintings. Maybe the goons didn’t have anything to do with the killing. Perhaps it was very much personal.”

We all fell silent as we contemplated that.

“It’s not Sam,” I had to say. “She wouldn’t destroy her own work.”

“Unless this is some sort of elaborate misdirection from her part,” Trevor suggested. “She kills Joel, then tells Taylor someone’s after her and disappears, and then returns to destroy her studio to make us think the bad guys have got her.”

I hated how he made sense. “But wouldn’t she have

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