The following happened between 7am and 8am
Kim stood at the door of Angel’s room and watched her as she slept. She had been scared that Angel would be too afraid to sleep alone after she heard of Richard’s death. However, she was glad to see Angel was coping. She stepped out and closed the door.
Her head and feet ached. She pulled off her heels and started walking down the hallway. She was about entering her room when her eyes fell on the door of Richard’s room. Richard. She thought. You were so good to me. She dropped her heels and walked to the front of Richard’s room.
Hesitantly, she opened the door and entered. She wasn’t ready to deal with his death. She took in a deep breath and perceived the fragrance in the air. It still smelled of Richard’s perfume. He hardly stayed in this room, choosing the guest section of the compound yet the room was packed and arranged as though he slept there every day.
Soon, she would have to sell his things or give it to charity. She opened Richard’s large wardrobe. And it reminded her of a treasure chest. New, shiny, gorgeous clothes, all neatly folded and hung on padded hangers. His shoes were in shoe boxes with Polaroids on the front. His belts were hanging neatly from the hooks. That was Richard. Neat to the core.
In fact, if she were to say, most operating rooms weren’t as sterile as Richard’s personal space. And this was his small wardrobe. The bigger one, his closet was in the sealed guest quarters and as this place was pristine, his closet was also that way.
Her eyes travelled from his Armani shirts down to that of his Louis Vuitton and Versace.
On his vanity table, lay various beauty and hair products, way more than she had ever seen at a particular place. The beauty salon and spa Richard used to go sent her his outstanding bills the previous day. She grinned. That was Richard once again.
He loved the best. Looked his best. And used the best of any clothing that money could possibly buy.
She approached his bedside and sat down on his bed.
Richard.
Could she ever forget him?
She opened the drawer of his nightstand. Richard never locked any of his personal effects here in the mansion. Whatever he felt was very personal to him, he moved to the guest quarters where no one but him would tamper with it.
She lifted a torn page of a magazine inside the drawer. She looked at it. How come Richard left a torn page of a magazine here? It’s unlike him. He never left any trash around. Or…was he looking at something? What was he looking at? The enormous breasts of David Legend’s wife?
The torn out page was a picture of the famous musician, David Legend and his wife in their home. On the wall behind the couple was a painting.
She stared at it.
Wasn’t that the Peowark painting she was touching in the gallery almost an hour ago? How come? How was the Peowark in David Legend’s sitting room?
Wasn’t there only one copy of the Peowark in the world? Her late father, Hugo tirelessly boasted of how he bought the only copy of this painting at an auction abroad.
In Richard’s neat handwriting, on the torn page he wrote, stretching an arrow from the painting on the wall to his note. Real copy of the Peowark. How did it disappear from the gallery?
She pulled out another picture in the drawer. It was a photo of a painting. She couldn’t recall the artist’s name but, it was one of those paintings that has been in her family for a long time and that Richard carried and placed in his gallery, not for sale but to ‘add sophistication’ as he said it.
Behind the photo, Richard wrote. Saw real copy of the Veladu today. How did it disappear from the gallery?
Then he also wrote,
Other real copies of several paintings are missing.
The Vasla. The Otha. The Mitka. The Bolla.
Where are they?
She placed the picture and torn out magazine page beside her on the bed. Then, lifted a brown envelope that was also in the drawer.
TO: MR RICHARD HARRISON
CONFIDENTIAL
NO COPIES
She opened it.
An investigative report was inside. What was Richard investigating?
Curiosity gripped her and at once, she started reading. The report told the places where the real paintings that were missing from the gallery were found. It concluded by explaining that whoever stole the paintings was most likely not Richard’s customer or employee because of the security procedures involved in letting them in and out of the gallery.
However, the investigators suspected that the thief would be among Richard’s closest friends and family whom they have watched enter any part of the gallery at any hour of the day without security checking them.
Then Richard wrote below the last lines of the report:
Ethan? Jean? Arnold? Seb? Aidan? Bridget? Felicity? Tony? Kim? Or Fr. Mark?
Who is the thief among them?
SOLUTION - Trap the asshole!
Did Richard later find the thief among us? Shockingly, everyone who was in the gallery an hour ago to remember Richard, had his or her name on Richard’s suspects list.
Now she thought of it, what did Richard do to the thief? Confront him? Or threaten to report him and make sure he was imprisoned? If so, what did the thief do in return?
She checked the date on the investigative report.
July 9.
So that meant Richard ended up dying two days after he received this report. And confronted the thief.
Who killed Richard? And what exactly was going on?
****
The person sat down and remembered his confession vividly.
“Bless me Father, for I’ve sinned. It’s been six weeks since my last confession”.
“And I confess that I killed Richard Harrison. For he was my…”
The person paused “And the truth is, Father, I still want the blood of his wife and his daughter to flow next”.
YOU ARE READING
A Psychotic Killer? How to Get Away!
Mystery / Thriller#1 - romanticsuspense #3 - mystery As a four years old child, Kimberly Jacobs, made global news as a psychotic. A child who murdered her own mother in cold blood. And now, thirty years later. The evil cycle has repeated itself again. Someone in Kim...
