Gina Cresse - Devonie Lace 05 - A Deadly Change of Luck (13 page)

I smiled and nodded, then walked to my car.  If Bridgett had a million dollars in cash, I doubt she’d still be here, slaving to get through school and working for the wicked witch so she could pay her bills.                  

Chapter Twelve

W
hen I walked into Mr. Champion’s classroom, my chin nearly hit the floor.  Thirty art students each stood in front of their easels, working on the same image
: a purple, monotone landscape—
exactly the same one I’d taken off of Lou
Winnomore’s
wall.  A framed print hung on the wall in the front of the class to serve as a guide.  That must have been one of the prints that Eric at the police lab told me about.

I wandered around the classroom, searching for the man in charge.  I found him helping a young woman who seemed to be having a difficult time with her paintbrush.

“You’ve got enough paint on your brush to cover my entire house.  That’s your problem,” he explained.  The young girl blushed with embarrassment, then helplessly handed him the brush.

“Can you show me?” she drawled, with a southern accent so thick I halfway expected to see a crate of Georg
ia peaches under her hoop skirt
—if she were wearing one, that is.

I remembered Raven’s comment t
hat Mr. Champion was cute
.  I watched him charm her as he took young Scarlett’s hand and moved it back and forth across her pallet to remove the excess paint.  I fully expected her to swoon.  He had deep-set brown eyes and a strong jaw.  When he smiled, a dimple formed in his cheek and I swear I saw a sparkle from his teeth, like one of those toothpaste commercials.  He stood six-foot-four, easily, and was built like an Olympic swimmer.  He wore faded jeans, a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up to just below his elbows, and leather boots.  My first impression was that he belonged on the front porch of a rustic, Rocky Mountain log cabin, with a guitar in his lap and a good dog at his feet.

When he finally had his helpless student’s overloaded paintbrush crisis under control, he looked up to see me, a stranger, in his classroom.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

I cleared my throat and offered my hand.  “Hello, Mr. Champion.  My name is Devonie.  I wondered if I could
have a few minutes of your
time?
”

At that very moment, a voice from a distant corner cried out in a pathetic whine.  “Mr. Champion.  I need your help.  Please?”

He gave me the look of a fireman being summoned to rescue a woman from a burning building.  “Be right back,” he said, flashing me a movie-star grin that I’m sure kept many women waiting for his return.

I waved my hand.  “That’s okay.  I’ll wait till your class is over.  I’m sure they need you more than me.”

He smiled and checked his watch.  “Fifteen minutes,” he said,
then
rushed off to save his young pupil.

I strolled around the classroom, admiring the work of the fledgling artists.  Some definitely had more talent than others.  Most of the students were young women, and if I had to guess, were only there because Mr. Champion was teaching the class.  He could have been teaching primitive spear making and they’d have signed up.

After the class ended, and Mr. Champion helped the last of the needy students with their heavy easels, he offered me a chair near his desk.

“How can I help you?” he asked.

“Well, I don’t really know where to begin,” I started.

“Did you want to sign up for a class?  I don’t know if I
have room, but let me check my
—“

“No.  I’m here because I understand you teach a class that requires the students to mix their own dry pigments into specific mediums.”

“Right.
  That’s this class.  You sure you don’t want to sign up?”

“No, at least not this semester.
  I’m curious about this landscape you use,” I said, pointing to the framed print hanging on the wall.  “I noticed all your students were copying it.”

He gazed at the picture. 
“Right.
  It’s the first assignment for the class.  I like the simplicity of the lines and the use of one base color.  It gives the students a feel for mixing tones without having to worry about complex lines or keeping proportions accurate,” he explained.

“So you use this same assignment to start the class each time it’s offered?”

“Yes.  It’s a very effective teaching tool,” he said.

“For how long?”

“How long have I been teaching?” he asked.

“How long have you used that print to teach this class?”

Mr. Champion’s smile turned to a frown.  He eyed me with suspicion.  “You’re not a lawyer, are you? 
Because I only use this as a tool.
  None of my students ever sign their work on this assignment.  I make sure they don’t.  Like I say, it’s just an exercise.”

I shook my head and waved my hands in a motion to tell him to relax.  “No.  I’m not a lawyer.  I’m not worried about any copyright infringements.  I just found one of these paintings in a house I bought, and I wondered who painted it.”

Mr. Champion relaxed.  “Good.  You had me worried for a minute.  You found an unsigned original?”

“Yes.  It had to have been one of your students
’
work
, now that I see what you’re doing here.”

“Most likely.
  But I’ve been using that print for years, and this class is always full.  I don’t know how you’d ever be able to tell which student painted it.”

“How many years?”
I asked.

“Gosh, it must be fifteen years.  And I teach it every quarter. 
At least thirty students in each class.
  If you do the math, that’s a lot of possibilities.”

I cringed as I tried to calculate the number in my head.

“That’s about eighteen hundred,” he announced.

I gave him my most pleading expression.  “I don’t suppose if I showed it to you, you could remember who painted it?”

He laughed.  “You’re kidding, right?  Besides the fact that most of them look almost exactly the same, I can barely remember who was in my class tonight, let alone fifteen years ago.”

I’m sure several dozen hearts would break if they’d heard him admit he doesn’t remember them.

“Why do you want to know who the artist is?  I’m sure any one of these students would be happy to give you another, if that’s what you’re after.  Most of them give the assignment away after it’s complete and graded anyway.”

Part of me felt I’d just stumbled onto a huge clue that should put me infinitely closer to finding out who killed Lou
Winnomore
.  Only problem was I didn’t have the resources to track down nearly two thousand alumni, even if I thought I could get their names.

“You don’t happen to recall a student named Raven Covina, do you?” I asked.

“Ah, young Miss Raven.
  Now there’s a student that’s hard to forget,” he replied, gazing
into space as though he were re
living a pleasant experience.

“She took this class?” I continued.

“She certainly did,” he said.

“Then she would have painted this assignment?”

“Yes, but she’s not the artist you’re looking for,” he said.

“She’s not?  How could you know that?”

“Because she gave the painting to me,” he explained, still wearing the silly grin of a schoolboy in love.

I noticed the gold wedding band on Mr. Champion’s left hand.  A marr
ied man—
just Raven’s type, if she really was the home wrecker everyone said she was.  He must have noticed me staring at his hand.

“Raven was the most talented artist I’d seen
come
through here in my entire career.  I tried to encourage her to pursue her art with more seriousness.  She’s a funny girl.  You know her?”

I nodded.  “We just met.  I bought one of her paintings, as a matter of fact.”

A broad smile spread across his face.  “That’s great.  So she’s finally selling her work?”

“At least one.
  I tried to prod her in that direction, too. 
Such a waste to let those paintings sit, unseen, in her spare room.”

Mr. Champion nodded in agreement.

“So you still have her purple painting?” I asked.

“No.  I gave it to a friend who moved into a new apartment and needed something to cover a big hole he put in the wall.”

There was no telling how many of these paintings were floating around, and just how many times they’d been given away.

“How about Bridgett
Winnomore
?
  Do you recall her in any of your classes?” I asked.

He searched his memory,
then
finally shook his head. 
“Can’t say that I recall that name.”

Right.
  Raven Covina is the kind of woman men cheat on their wives with.  There’s something unforgettable about her.  Bridgett, on the other hand, is the kind of woman who gets cheated on.  As a wife, it doesn’t pay to be forgettable, but as a murderer, maybe it does.  Maybe Bridgett really was in one of his classes, but unlike Raven, she failed to make an everlasting impression.

I thanked Mr. Champion for his help and wandered back to my car, wondering what to do next.

Sam Wright was barking into his phone about the ludicrous state of the judicial system when I walked into his office.  He nodded at me as I pushed the door closed and strolled over to his new whiteboard.  As he continued to reprimand whoever was on the other end of the line, I picked up a marker and pulled the cap off.  Sam quickly put his hand over the phone’s mouthpiece.  “Hey.  What do you think you’re doing?” he asked me, ignoring the caller.

“I’m adding a clue to the list,” I explained as I began writing on his precious board.

Sam removed his hand from the phone.  “Call me back when you’ve grown a new brain, Huey!” he roared, then slammed the phone down on its cradle.

I jumped at the sound. 
“My goodness.
  Who was that?” I asked, surprised at his anger.

“Another defense attorney who wants to suppress evidence that would, with
out
a doubt, convict his client,” Sam said, fuming.

“On what grounds?”
I asked.

“The kid confessed and handed us the murder weapon, but his brilliant lawyer says we can’t use either because the kid’s got a hearing problem and may not have heard us read him his rights.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“I know.  Welcome to our wonderful judicial system.  Anyhow, what’s this clue you have?”

“
Our killer was a student at UCSD
sometime in the past fifteen years or so.”

“That doesn’t narrow it down very much,” he replied.

“Wait.  I’m not finished.  He took a class called
Principals of Color
.  Every student in the class is required to paint the same purple landscape I found in Lou’s house, and they’re also required to mix their own paints for the assignment.”

Sam rubbed his chin with the back of his hand and watched me scribble on his board.  “How’d you find this out?”

“I spoke with the teacher.  His name’s Peter Champion.”  I finished writing and put the marker back in its tray.  “I’m not going to write this down, but if I had to make a bet, I’d say our killer is female.”

Sam crossed his arms over his broad chest and studied my face.  “Now what makes you say that?” he asked.

“It’s just a hunch, really.  Close to seventy percent of Mr. Champion’s students today were women.  If that’s typical for all his classes, then the odds are in my favor that I’m right.”

Sam pushed his chair back and pulled a bundle of paper out of his file cabinet.  He slid it across his desk toward me.  “These are recent statistics from the Department of Justice.  Take a look and you’ll see that men are almost nine times more likely to commit murder than women.”

I studied the charts and graphs,
then
I shoved it back toward him.  “But look there, where it shows that woman are more likely to use poison than any other means when they do commit murder,” I rebutted.

Sam glanced at the chart briefly,
then
jammed it back into his file cabinet.  “All I’m saying is, if you’re going to go on hunches or odds, then the percentages point to a male offender.”

“I’d agree if the weapon was
anything other than poison.  I bet I’m right.”

Sam smiled and shook his head, giving me a doubtful look.

“Okay, I’ll make you a bet.  If our killer turns out to be female, you owe me…what?  What can you afford, Mr. Cheapo?”

“Cheapo?
  I’m not cheap.  I’m just thrifty,” he replied, defending his character.

“Fine, Mr. Thrifty
.  If I win, you owe Craig and me
the biggest, best dinner to be found in San Diego.  If you win, which you won’t, Craig and I will take you out on the
Plan C
for a weekend of fishing. 
Deal?”