Love, Art, and Murder – Mystery Romance

“Were there other similarities with these girls? I don’t have time to read the report tonight.”

“Well. . . I’ve found that when investigating murders no little coincidences should be overlooked. These women shared a doctor. However, I’ve discovered that basically all people living in the castle went to this same doctor.”

“Dr. Rosenberg?”

“Yes.”

“He treats anybody here and has a small office in the west wing. With a staff as big as mine and the types of parties Hex enjoys having, I like to keep a medical person on the property. Additionally, Dayanara presents her own medical needs.”

“Well, I’ll need to interview him also. The police already have him down on the list of people to talk to. He prescribed all five women the same sleeping pill. It was discovered in all of the victims’ stomachs. The official coroner report states that all five victims died from a sleeping pill.”

I sat up in shock. “What? Sleeping pills?”

“Yes. The first victim, Brenda, was stabbed in the heart, but she was stabbed after the murder. The sleeping pill is what actually killed her. The second girl, Patricia, ingested the same thing. The police believe that these three girls will have the same pill in their stomachs, too, which leads us to the doctor who prescribed the pills to the girls.”

“I doubt the doctor was involved.”

“I don’t doubt anything anymore. And if this doctor treated Dayanara, then he had access to her. Perhaps he would know the schedule of the servants.”

“Maybe. He treated the servants also, and my grandma told me that many have befriended him.”

“Then he’s someone I will look into further.”

“Are there other similarities with these women?” I asked.

“I’m not sure, but they all have troubled pasts in some way.”

“Hex is drawn to imperfect people with battered upbringings. It’s a sort of camaraderie for him to know that he’s not the only one who was dealt a wicked hand. What did these women go through?”

“Brenda, the first victim, was born a twin. When she was seven, she lost her twin sister in an accident. The two girls bathed together. Their parents didn’t monitor them and were in another part of the house. The police reports say the two girls were play fighting and the twin sister slipped backwards and banged her head against the edge of the tub. Brenda jumped out of the tub and ran to get her parents, not realizing that her sister would be unconscious, slide into the water, and drown.”

“Dear God.” I rose from my chair to fix a drink.

“Brenda never truly got over it. Before modeling she was a video artist who didn’t do well. However, a lot of her videos related to death and loss. When I dug further into her family history I noticed that her parents divorced a year after her sister’s death. It seems Brenda left the house at fifteen to travel with a rock band, and didn’t have any true contact with her mother. In fact, I’m still having trouble notifying any of Brenda’s relatives.”

“So none of her family are aware she is even gone?”

“None.”

“What about the second victim?”

Detective White flipped a few pages. “The second victim’s name is Patricia. Both parents were psychiatrists. What I could grab from her medical records was that she had some bouts with depression and anxiety. She was engaged to one of the writers here, a Mr. Winslow. He was her mentor when she was twelve and continued to assist her with her poetry. There were rumors that he might’ve molested her when she was young, but no charges were ever raised by the parents. Apparently, the art world is a pot ripe for gossip. Once she turned eighteen, her relationship with Mr. Winslow went public. The whole time he was married. It seems until this year, he’d separated from his wife and lived at this property with Patricia as counsel in whatever project Hex invited them for. Once you decided that everyone would need to leave, things changed between them. Patricia’s friend, the one who found her in the garden, told me in an interview that Patricia discovered a day before that Mr. Winslow would be utilizing your offer to everyone for a plane ticket to anywhere and that he would use the flight to return to his wife. Witnesses saw Patricia drinking all night and yelling at Mr. Winslow the few times she managed to come near him.”

I poured a glass and returned to my chair. “And these three women?”

“A calligrapher, watercolor painter, and video installation artist. Again, all three had difficulty sleeping like the others. There’s not really any clear depression like the first two victims, but I found some interesting facts. The calligrapher, Broseli, was diagnosed with a rare form of bowel cancer three years ago. There has been no indication that she is healed from it. She did have several visits from her own private doctor while she remained here, as well as kept a private nurse with her.”