The Last Word (A Books by the Bay Mystery)

best chicken salad you’ll ever eat.”
    Olivia raised her brows. “You do recall that I own a five-star restaurant?”
    “I know !” Harris enthused. “That’s how good it is.” He loaded two sandwiches, an apple, and a bag of Fritos onto his plate.
    Olivia carefully laid the tote bag on the conference table and then idly chewed on an apple as Harris devoured his lunch. They small-talked about their writing and Harris’s current software project until he finally pushed his plate away.
    “It was totally nice of you to bring this here,” he said. “But it wasn’t necessary.”
    Exhaling, Olivia touched the canvas bag. “There’s a reason I came to your office. Harris, this painting may be more important than any of us can comprehend. In fact, it may figure into a murder investigation.”
    Harris blanched. “What?”
    Gently, for she knew that her young friend idolized Nick Plumley, Olivia told him that the writer had been killed that morning.
    “How? Why? ” Harris stammered, clearly shaken.
    After admitting that she didn’t know the reason, Olivia hesitated and then softly explained that Plumley had been strangled.
    “Harris, this is going to sound strange, but did Nick poke around your house the day you two were painting the living room?” Seeing the confused look on her friend’s face, she went on. “Was he especially interested in loose floorboards or in seeing the attic? Did he ask if you’d discovered any hidey-holes?”
    Harris’s eyes widened. “Yeah, he did. He was telling me about this old house north of Beaufort he’d visited a bunch of times. It had a hidden space behind a wallboard in one of the closets and a niche carved from an exposed beam in the kitchen. Nick asked if I’d found any secret hiding places in my house, but I told him I doubted there were any.” He shook his head in befuddlement. “It’s not that old of a building. And except for being moved a few decades ago, it wasn’t important, historically speaking.”
    “But what if it wasn’t the house that captured Nick’s interest?” Olivia wondered aloud. “What if he wanted to find this painting all along? Maybe the message on the back indicates that there’s more to Heinrich Kamler’s story. What if Nick believed he could track Kamler through this painting? Could you imagine the book he could write?”
    Harris touched the canvas tote bag possessively. “Why didn’t Nick just ask me? I would have fessed up that I hadn’t found anything but would gladly show him if I did.” A hurt look crossed his features. “He never cared about my manuscript, did he? I bet he never read it.”
    “That’s his loss, Harris.” Olivia gave her friend a fond smile. “If it’s any consolation, I believe he genuinely liked you and would have helped you with your writing, but for some reason, he wanted to keep the knowledge of this painting to himself.”
    This notion seemed to trouble Harris. “What makes you say that?”
    “When I called him this morning and told him about the painting’s existence, I could practically feel his desire to see it surge through the phone line. The emotion was so strong that I could picture a pair of hands reaching out to me.” She shook her head at the theatrical depiction. “Okay, that’s a bit much, but it meant a great deal to him.”
    Crushing the remaining Frito on his plate into corn-colored bits, Harris’s expression grew thoughtful. “If you hadn’t just told me that Nick was dead, I’d assume the watercolor was important to his research and that he wanted to use it as a plot device in his sequel. But now . . .”
    “Now?” Olivia prodded.
    Harris pushed the bag toward her. “You’d better keep this. It would be safer at your restaurant or in a bank vault or something. Give it to the cops. Don’t even tell me where you put it, just take it away.”
    It was unlike Harris to be dramatic, and Olivia frowned, but she’d just told him that his potential mentor had been murdered and he had every right to be upset. “All right, I’ll see to it.”
    “Listen, Olivia. The killer stuffed Nick’s own book pages into his mouth. That means not only is it likely that some homicidal maniac had cause to hate The Barbed Wire Flower , but also didn’t want Nick to write the sequel.” Harris’s face was pink with anxiety. “This painting might be a pivotal part of the book Nick planned, so it might be important to his murderer too.”
    Nodding, Olivia fed Haviland a few hunks