Title:
Paint by numbers
By
Author: Clare Mishica
Tag line: Dell Meese was sure he’d committed the perfect crime – until something
tipped off the sheriff.
Police characters: Sheriff Henson
The gist: Mr. Sharp, owner of Sharp’s
Interiors, had had a good year business-wise.
He was in the process of repainting his office. It was going to be cream on the bottom with a
yellow border at the ceiling. The author
tells us that he could have easily afforded to hire the house painter he had
used before but he didn’t want to spend the money. The author informs us that the house painter
had a son with health issues that required surgery, and could have used the extra
money, but Sharp’s opinion was that the man should have had better health
insurance. Sharp hired his accountant
from a firm that had gone bust, and he congratulated himself for getting a
talented employee for a bargain-basement salary. That is until Sharp realized the man was
skimming money. He had called the
accountant in this morning to go over the books. Sharp finished painting the cream walls,
sealed the paint can, and laid his wet brush on the top. He checked his watch; the accountant was 30
minutes late.
The next part
of the story switches to the accountant’s POV.
His name is Dell Meese. Meese had
purposely come late hoping to arrive after Sharp’s assistant had left. When he entered the office, Sharp brought him
over to the computer and pointed at the screen, demanding an explanation. Meese walked behind Sharp, grabbed a heavy
statue that he had stashed earlier, and struck Sharp from behind, killing him. The author states at this point Meese is in
shock and staring at the body. Then he thinks, “Lots of people get away with
murder” and he half drags/half carries the body to the floor beneath the paint
ladder and places it in a position consistent with a fall. He then opens a can of paint, climbs the
ladder, and lets it fall to the floor, splashing yellow paint all over
everything, including the body. Then
Meese puts the paint brush near Sharp’s hand.
He wipes out the records on the computer, cleans the floor around the
desk where he had hit the victim, stashes the statue in the trunk of his car,
and changes into the clean clothes that he had brought with him. He calls 911 at this point, claiming to have
found his employer dead from a terrible fall.
When the
sheriff arrived, he viewed the scene and declared “This was no accident.” What clue gave Meese away?
Crime scene: The victim’s office.
Clues: Paint.
Suspects: This story did not have a
suspect. We know whodunit.
Red herrings: None.
Solution: Meese had opened and spilled the can of yellow paint, but the
paintbrush was tipped with cream paint.
My two cents:
Couldn’t it be just as likely that Sharp had finished the cream walls
and was ready to paint the border, so he opened the yellow paint and brought it
to the top of the ladder, realized he hadn’t cleaned the brush, and as made his
way back down (and now he’s aggravated) missed a step and fell hard to the
floor, to his death. It seems logical
that the motion of his fall, him grabbing the ladder to try to steady himself,
could knock the paint can off. Also why
did the sheriff think it was Meese?
Finding a dead body and calling 911 doesn’t make him a killer. There was an assistant there not too long
before.
There was
extra information that the reader doesn’t need, which to me is a waste of words
in these little stories. For example the
stuff about the house painter’s kid needing surgery. Maybe it was intended to show us how
unlikeable Sharp was, but that’s not germane to the motive. Also the bit about Meese being in shock and
staring at the body? He wasn’t in shock
at all. He was cold and calculating. Poor choice of word there.
