Love, Art, and Murder – Mystery Romance

You just let five of your friends die!

“So no one knows where they are?” I paced back in forth in front of the depraved co-conspirators. They knew exactly where the women were. They knew it and stood right there refusing to sit down or say anything more than yes or no.

You trained them well, Hex.

“If these women die,” Detective White took over, “then all of you are accomplices to murder.”

One shrugged. The rest looked away.

My temper left me. “Is the art really that important?”

“Calm down, Al.” Grandma carried a tray of fruit punch with cut out pieces of cheese and sliced deli meat on a wooden plate. Anytime in the past I would have taken the tray away and escorted her back to her cottage. Grandma holding food wasn’t a good combination. Even when I was a young kid and stayed with her during the summers, her guests never ate or drink from her house. At parties, the treats remained on the table untouched.

“Is anybody thirsty or hungry?” She gave them a warm smile that chilled me.

“No, thank you,” they all said one by one.

Hex prepared for Grandma, too?

“Are you sure?” She walked in front of them again.

They shook their heads.

Detective White exhaled. “Then we’re going to have to take everybody down for questioning.”

They left with no hesitation or dispute, departed from the castle, and took their time getting in police cars. Detective White took them away. Thankfully, he left more of his men just in case I needed them. Although now that we knew these deaths were suicides rather than a deranged serial killer, the guards and White’s men relaxed. Many chatted about sports. Others leaned on trees smoking their cigarettes or glancing every few minutes at their phones. This had turned into a vacation for them, where for me I’d been shoved into a pool of insanity with no option of swimming through the murky liquid.

Where would the last women kill themselves?

I considered where the others had died. Two committed suicide in Grandma’s garden.

Why? Was it the easiest place to have them do it, or were you trying to tell us something? Does this installation have something to do with us, Hex?

The third group must’ve attached themselves to wires or Hex had done it himself. Once they died, the wires carried them throughout the castle where they ended in my office. I’d barely ever left my office until Elle came. He probably saw me run off with her and figured it was the best time to put them in there. So you put the dead girls in a place where you knew Grandma and I would discover them? Why? Why did we have to find them? I guess the answer is, who else could’ve found them? Most of his artists were part of the whole charade. The rest were maybe distractions. Or maybe I was focused on the wrong thing. Perhaps, he needed his family to discover the bodies. Why? One thing Hex loved to stress about was how important life was, how we all needed to take it seriously and not waste our lives away doing tedious tasks. If I went with his thinking, then I completely understood why he would have the three girls in my office. He figured I worked too hard and didn’t spend enough time enjoying my life. Meanwhile, Grandma had been obsessed with lifting the curse from our family ever since we started taking care of Hex. She’d never dated or talked to her friends. It was all about the curse and keeping the evil spirits away from Dayanara.

You wanted us to see death. Look it right in the eye and realize that life was precious.

I concentrated on my theory of Hex wanting the family to find the dead women.

“What are you thinking about?” Grandma set the tray of food on the table.

“Dayanara.” I almost grabbed one of the cubes of cheese. “Did you put something in the food?”

“Just a little truth serum.”

I placed my hand in my pocket. “Then throw that stuff away. I don’t need anyone else being sick around here.”

“Speaking of the bad man, did he wake up?”

“I don’t know or care.”

“Why are you thinking about Dayanara?”

“I think Hex wanted us to find the dead women. He wanted you, me, and Dayanara to see them and somehow come to the conclusion that we should value our lives.”

Grandma snorted. “We value our lives.”

“We value the family and keeping all of our heads above water, but we don’t value it the way Hex wants us to. We don’t take the time to breathe it all in.”

Grandma rolled her eyes. “He could have just said so. Instead he puts dead girls in my garden.”

At the mention of her garden, I considered the fact that it had rotted. “Why was your garden destroyed? Do you really think it was the gods?”