Death Paints a Picture by Tess Baytree

Author:Tess Baytree [Baytree, Tess]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Speculative Turtle Press

Fourteen

Back at home, seated sideways on the couch with her back pressed against Jake's shoulder and Brutus weighing down her feet, Penelope searched for information about JP under the names John Blanchard and John Phillips. Her initial query returned thousands of results, making her groan. "Why couldn't he have a less common name?"

"Like 'Penelope'?" Jake asked, not looking away from the curling match on television. Two players swept the ice madly as the stone headed toward its target.

"It would be a little odd for parents to name their son Penelope, but yes, that sort of thing. After you get past the famous and infamous people with that name, all of whom are too old to be JP, there's no way to distinguish the other 800 guys from each other. Why not name their child… I don't know, Hieronymus or Pieter with an i-e?"

"I'm glad that museum exhibit of Dutch painters wasn't a complete waste." They had made a pact a few months ago to do one educational thing every two weeks. Results had been mixed.

"So many men crowded into the paintings trying to pretend they were busy doing something," Penelope sighed. "I temped in a couple offices like that, and I swear I was the only one doing any work."

"Could have been looking at harvesters instead."

Since Penelope had been the one pressing to go to the traveling exhibit of Dutch masters instead of Jake's suggestion of the tractor museum, she felt the need to defend her choice. "Someday we may need to retrieve a Dutch Renaissance painting, and when we find it in a thrift shop with aliens painted on it, we'll be about to talk about the themes and how the paints available at the time affected the mood, until the poor volunteer is so bored they give us the painting for free." She lifted her head from his shoulder so she could look at him. "Speaking of which, how much did you have to pay to get that one back?"

"Fifteen dollars. She offered to let me have the other one in the set for an extra five, but that one started out with a picture of a clown, so I declined."

"Good move." Penelope settled back against his shoulder.

There were gasps from the television as one team's stone knocked the other team's stone out of the circle. During the third replay from a different camera angle, Jake decreased the volume. "You know he grew up in Scranton, right? You might have better luck running a query on the name along with the high schools in the area."

"I knew there was a reason I kept you around." Penelope typed on the laptop as the announcers discussed stones, skips, and houses. "Ha! There we go." On her screen, four teenagers in stage makeup beamed as they looked out into the audience. "He played one of the leads in Guys and Dolls."

"If he sang like you, that might be a reason to leave town and change his name."

When Penelope tilted her head back, she caught Jake trying to hide a smile.

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