Black & White & Dead All Over: A Lost Hat, Texas, Mystery (The Lost Hat, Texas, Mystery Series Book 1)

  A Lost Hat, Texas Mystery — #1

  Black & White & Dead All Over

  Anna Castle

  Copyright 2015 by Anna Castle

  Cover image by Renée Barratt at The Cover Counts

  Black & White & Dead All Over is the first book in the Lost Hat, Texas, mystery series.

  What happens when the Internet service provider in a small town spies on his clients' cyber-lives and blackmails them for gifts and services?

  Murder; that's what happens.

  Penelope Trigg moves to Lost Hat, Texas to open a photography studio and find herself as an artist. Things are going great. She's got a few clients, some friends, even a hot new high-tech boyfriend. But when Penny submits some nude figure studies of him to a contest, she gets hit with a blackmail letter in her inbox. "Do what I want or your lover's nudie pix get splattered across the Internet." The timing couldn't be worse, so Penny is forced to submit to the blackmailer’s demands. Then people start dying and all the clues point to her. She has to rattle every skeleton in every closet in Lost Hat to keep herself out of jail and find the real killer.

  For my parents Carmen and Dale, who keep on making things possible for me.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  About the Author

  Books by Anna Castle

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Actors want to see their names in lights. Athletes want to see their pictures on cereal boxes. Pundits want their blogs to go viral. Me? I want to see my name on a little white card in a museum, next to one of my photographs:

  Penelope Sophia Trigg

  1985—

  Lost Hat, Texas, USA

  I did not want to see my name in a police report as a person of interest in a major felony or on a flyer explaining that I did not murder anyone and that the Trigg Photography Studio was safe and ethical and not the scene of any crimes.

  Well — none committed by me, anyway.

  All I wanted was to do photography, which is what caused all the trouble in the first place.

  * * *

  Late one January morning, I was shooting my lover’s well-formed body as though it were a landscape, the tripod at eye level with the iron bed where he lay. I tried to accentuate the hills of his shoulders and buttocks against the long valley of his spine and play the broad planes of his back against the oval curves of his muscled legs. His skin tones were warm and earthy against the cool white of the sheets. We were lounging around in the unfinished, semi-furnished space above my studio. The clear light of the winter sun angling through the tall triple windows was perfect for black and white photography. A north wind was blowing rows of puffy clouds across the pale sky, so every shot had a different quality: some all gray shadows, murky and mysterious; others with bands of bright sun striping across Ty’s back and casting hard shadows through the bars of the footboard.

  Soft light, slow film, and a willing model: my idea of a perfect Sunday. I was in the Zone, keyed in to light and shadow and form. This is what I lived for. This is why I’d moved to Lost Hat, where the living was cheaper and I could spend more time doing art.

  Ty was languid and compliant after a leisurely morning of lovemaking. I wanted to take advantage of him while the mood lasted. As soon as he woke all the way up, he’d start thinking about work and the long drive back to Austin.

  At least I’d have the pictures to play with when he was gone.

  I fired off two frames in quick succession. Scooting the tripod an inch to the right, I stopped down, adjusted my shutter speed, refocused, and took two more shots. They were not bad, not bad at all. They might even be good. It didn’t hurt to have a dishy model.

  “You are so gorgeous,” I murmured.

  The corner of Ty’s lip crooked in a tolerant smile. “Can I get up yet?” His voice was muffled by the pillow.

  “No.”

  “Can I fall asleep, then?”

  “Yes.” I wished he would. I could sneak down to the kitchen and grab some olive oil. I would love to get a little shine on that northeast slope.

  I had created this hideaway as a place to crash after late nights in the darkroom. Rummaging around in the hoard of antiques left to me by my late great-aunt Sophie along with the building, I’d found an iron bedstead with a tolerable mattress, tugged it into a clearing under the windows, and covered it with a pile of old quilts. Courthouse windows overlooked my room, but nobody was over there on a Sunday morning.

  Ty pretended to doze while I had my way with his lanky body. I rolled him on his side to form a hillscape, then onto his back to shoot the plains of his chest and belly. I adjusted his legs and shifted the sheet to cover or reveal. I used up two rolls of pricey Agfa film and couldn’t remember when I’d had so much fun. I perched on his belly to get a wide-open close-up of his naked toes. They were long and shapely and looked like miniature tree trunks. How had I not noticed that before? Six weeks of seeing each other nearly every weekend and there was still so much to discover.

  “I can’t believe you’re letting me do this.”

  He chuckled; a warm rumbly sound.

  Tyler Hawkins was a wheeling, dealing, Austin high-tech venture capitalist, not the sort of amiable wastrel you usually get for life modeling. When he was vertical and fully dressed, he was dynamic, authoritative, a guy that made things happen. That’s the guy most people knew. This postcoital rag doll? This guy was mine alone.

  He’d grown up on a ranch near Lost Hat, where his sister still lived. She had introduced us at the courthouse Christmas party. At first it had just been the easy hook-up of two healthy, unattached people with holiday time on their hands. On the surface, we had nothing in common: he was a suit; I was an artist. He was a workaholic; I was an artist. He was a techno-wizard who kept his eyes on the really big prizes; I was — well, you get the picture.

  But by the second weekend, we’d started talking. Really talking, beyond the where-are-you-from-and-what-do-you-do trivia. We discovered a mutual love of the natural world and its amazing, fragile beauty. We talked about dreams he’d never shared and desires I didn’t know I had. That moved our relationship to Level Two: something worth pursuing.

  “I can’t believe I’m still in bed at this time of day.” Ty yawned a sono
rant yawn. “You must have drugged my coffee this morning.”

  “That’s right. Zee drug of looove. You are under my spell and now you must do my bidding.”

  He stretched his legs and wiggled his toes.

  “Stop that! No wiggling!”

  I felt him lever himself up onto his elbows. “This is quite the view,” he said. I could hear the smile in his voice and knew he was admiring my trim runner’s backside. And since I wasn’t wearing anything but a long-sleeved T-shirt and socks, his view was indeed comprehensive.

  “Time to get up.” Ty raised his knees and jostled me just as I snapped the shutter.

  “Ty!”

  “Sorry, darlin’. But I gotta head back to the money mines. We’ve got a major deadline coming up and I’ve got to be there to crack the whip.”

  I turned around and planted my butt beside his shins. “No, stay, stay. A little bit longer. Go back to sleep until I finish this roll.”

  “You only want me for my body.”

  “Just the toes. And maybe the arches. You have photogenic feet, has anyone ever told you that?”

  “Oddly, they have not. That would be the unique Penelope Trigg viewpoint.” He propped himself up on his elbows. “I hope you’re not planning to tweet those toes.”

  “Do what?”

  “Tweet, you know: publish widely to people with very short attention spans.”

  “Hmm, no,” I said. “I’m not into the virtual scene these days. I’m trying to meet actual people, being the new gal in a new town and all that. Do you want me to tweet your toesies? Because if that’s what floats your boat, baby, I’m game.”

  Ty laughed. “No, thanks, but I appreciate the thought.” He laughed again, shaking his head. “Our CEO is running for Congress and he’s gone crazy paranoid about Internet scandals, especially anything having anything to do with sex. Pictures of unclothed body parts would qualify, even toes, probably. He actually asked us to refrain from engaging in any kind of sexual activity whatsoever until after the November elections.”

  “Hey!”

  “That was pretty much the unanimous response. When the noise died down, he begged us to at least avoid doing anything that could be construed as unseemly or unsavory in any way, shape, or form. Keep your noses clean, he said.”

  That expression always made me giggle. “You do have a nice nose. I could shoot you some portraits, kind of a super close-up…” I lifted my camera to focus in on his face. He turned to give me a profile, but spoiled it by breaking into another mighty yawn. This one sounded definitive, like the last yawn of the morning. Playtime was over.

  He smiled at me. “Who has time for hanky-panky? We’ve got the investment people from Japan coming in two weeks and we are not ready. I’m going to have to keep my nose to the grindstone to make the deadline.”

  “That should help keep it clean.”

  He smiled that eye-crinkling, easygoing smile that sends little shivers up my spine. And I got the shot. One in a million.

  He pulled himself up to a seated position. “When do I get to see these pictures?”

  “When are you coming back? Maybe I need motivation and encouragement.”

  “As soon as I can, darlin’. Let me motivate you a little in advance.” He reached out and grasped my left arm, pulling me slowly, but firmly, toward him. His intentions were plainly not in line with his CEO’s request.

  “Camera! Camera!” I wrestled my arm free and clambered off the bed, setting the camera carefully atop a sturdy chest of drawers. A delicious memory prompted me to move the tripod out of the reach of flying blankets. I turned back to Ty, got a running start, and leapt with all the force of my athletic hundred and thirty-five pounds back onto the bed.

  Big mistake.

  The old bed groaned and twanged as the rusty springs beneath the mattress pulled away from the antique frame. Ty and I rolled helplessly into the sinking middle, limbs tangling, a heap of quilts tumbling on top us. The iron footboard bent in toward us, some piece of metal underneath it going click-click-click-click-click.

  Ty grabbed me tight and gave a mighty heave, shifting us out of our upholstered pit along with a trail of quilts. We huddled together on the floor and watched as the footboard wobbled backward and forward and the headboard began a steady, slow, decline. Then, with a creak and a sproing and a long, weary screech, they both collapsed, clanging against each other as they jostled onto the mattress, iron feet scraping across the wooden floor.

  We clung to each other and laughed until tears rolled down our cheeks.

  Chapter 2

  Ty left, promising to do his utmost to get back out to Lost Hat next weekend. I was sad to see him go, but glad to have the rest of the day to myself. Motivation was not an issue: I was eager to develop those photographs. I’d never had time for darkroom work after college. First, no darkroom, and second, I had to earn a living and people want color. Digital, for choice.

  Digital’s great, but it ain’t quite film.

  I agitated the last print gently with my plastic tongs in the final rinsing bath. I lifted it out, squeegeed off the water, and clipped it to the line to dry. Then I sat on my stool to contemplate the row of wet prints. This was my favorite way to view my work.

  They were better than I’d hoped. The light had been extraordinary. My favorites were the pair where I’d posed Ty on his side with his head resting on one outstretched arm. The curves of his body looked like a mountain range by Georgia O’Keeffe, with the rumpled quilt making foothills in the foreground and the modesty sheet across his hips standing out like a trail of snow.

  I sat on my tall stool, listening to soft jazz leaking under the door from the Internet radio station playing on my Mac out in the studio, tasting the acrid tang of chemicals in the air. I gazed at my work and thought, the Fourth Annual Berlin Photography Institute Black-and-White Competition. I’d just seen a full-page ad for it in Professional Photographer. This year’s theme was “Body Language.” First prize, 5,000 euros. Since I was primarily a nature photographer and mostly worked in color, my work was not usually a good fit for this contest. But here I had a couple of decent black and white photographs that were right on target.

  I hopped off my stool and zipped into the studio to find the magazine. I heard rain pounding on the sidewalk outside and caught my wavy reflection in the windows on the front doors. Night had fallen and the storm had landed. People had closed up their shops and gone home, leaving me all on my lonesome on the courthouse square.

  I ruffled through the pages of the magazine to find the ad. Sure enough, the deadline was in two days. Was this synchronicity or what? The universe wanted me to enter that contest.

  I felt the rising thrill of getting ready to show my work to fellow professionals. It had been a long time. And this would be my very first photographic foray out of Lost Hat. Even an honorable mention would be a milestone.

  I made a pot of chai and gobbled up the last of my oatmeal cookies while I waited for the prints to dry. Then I scanned the three favorites into Photoshop and made copies in the size and format specified for the contest. I opened up Firefox and typed in the contest website address.

  A little voice in the back of my mind sang, “Ty won’t like this.”

  “Shut up,” I said to the voice. “You can barely see his face. He doesn’t have to know about it unless I win.”

  The odds were steep. But if I won, Ty’s torso — or his toes — would be immortal. What man doesn’t want that?

  The voice persisted. “He trusts you to use discretion.”

  “Trusted me not to tweet sex pix,” I told the voice. “This is totally different. This is art.”

  “That’s not how the CEO would see it,” said the voice, which now sounded like my cousin Marion. “I think Ty would think, ‘Why can’t you just wait until things settle down?’”

  I reminded the voice that contests have deadlines and told it to put a sock in it.

  I found the entry form on the contest site. I wrote “Nude male
#1,” “Nude male #2,” and “Bare toes” in the title fields. I uploaded the images, crossed the fingers of my left hand for luck, and clicked ‘Submit.’

  Chapter 3

  When the antivirus scanner popped up on my Mac, I knew the wee hours had arrived. My service provider had given me a suite of security programs with his high-speed Internet package and advised me to run the whole suite every night to keep the digital oogly-booglies at bay. They were set to run at two A.M.. I took it as a signal to close up the shop. I cleaned up the darkroom, put my new prints in a folder, and slipped upstairs to wrap myself in Ty-scented quilts.

  The wet rumble of traffic around the square woke me to the gray light of a rainy morning. My tummy rumbled, too. I needed fuel. And caffeine.

  First stop was the Texaco on 88 to fill up my GMC Sierra pickup, another hand-me-down from Aunt Sophie. Filling its tank takes a while, giving me plenty of time to clean the bugs off the windows. The rain had stopped, but the temperature was falling fast, so I was happy to keep moving.

  I didn’t mean to eavesdrop on the couple on the other side of the pump aisle, but as their voices rose in volume, I couldn’t help it. They were arguing about money. He was outside the car, standing by the pump, leaning toward the window with his arms crossed over his chest. She was in the driver’s seat, leaning out. Their faces were contorted with their efforts to keep their anger under control.

  She hissed, “That was our children’s college fund! And you gambled it away!”

  He snarled back. “It’s not gambling. And it’s not lost. Stocks go down and they come back up. The brokerage site explains it all. You should trust me.”

  “How can I? You’ve been so secretive about it.”

  “That’s what this is really about, isn’t it? You’re too suspicious. You had to go snooping around in my files.”

  “I wasn’t snooping!”

  “Then how’d you find out?”