Paula’s gallery was on a side street in Portland, a converted mill building with exposed brick and huge windows that let in the kind of light artists would commit crimes for. The sign outside saidFerraro Galleryin clean black letters, which must have driven Rosaria insane—Paula using the family name for the one thing Rosaria had dismissed as a waste of time.
I walked in like I was browsing. The space was bigger than I’d expected—high ceilings, concrete floors, Paula’s paintings on the walls in various sizes. They were good. Better than good. Bold colors, confident brushwork, landscapes of the coast that felt alive and slightly wild. One large canvas near the entrance showed Starfall Bay at dawn, the water silver and violent, the sky cracked open with pink light. It looked like hope feels when you’re not sure you deserve it. Not the careful, pretty paintings you’d hang in a dentist’s office. These had edges.
A smaller piece near the back caught my eye—a woman alone in a garden, face turned away, surrounded by flowers that were just slightly too bright, too vivid, like the color was compensating for something. I recognized the garden. It was Rosaria’s.
Paula was in the back, behind a half-wall that separated the gallery from her working studio. I could see easels, canvases stretched on frames, a long workbench covered in paint tubesand jars and rags stiff with dried color. The smell hit me before I rounded the corner—turpentine and linseed oil and something sharper underneath, chemical and clean.
“Gina.” She looked up from a canvas she was priming, surprise shifting quickly to warmth. She had paint on her forearms and a smear of cobalt blue on her cheek. “Twice in two weeks. People will talk.”
“They already talk. It’s a small coast.” I wandered along the workbench, looking at the supplies without trying to look like I was looking at them. Jars of solvent, clearly labeled. Bottles of medium. A ventilation hood over one end of the bench, the professional kind. “This is a beautiful space.”
“Took me fifteen years to afford it. Rosaria told me I’d never make a living with paint.” Paula set down her brush. “She was almost right. I almost didn’t.”
I picked up a jar of solvent, casual, turned it in my hand. The label readMethanol-Based Cleaner — Flammable — Use in Well-Ventilated Area.My fingers tightened around it and I set it back down.
“You work with some serious chemicals in here.”
“Part of the job. Solvents, varnishes, fixatives—half the stuff in this studio could kill you if you drank it.” She said it matter-of-factly, the way people who work with dangerous materials talk about them. Then she paused. Her eyes went to the jar I’d just set down. Back to me.
Something shifted in her face. The warmth cooled.
“Half the artists in New England have that solvent, Gina. But to actually turn it into something lethal? You’d need chemistry knowledge. Real chemistry. I barely passed high school science.”
“I wasn’t?—“
“You were.” Her voice was flat now, direct. Paula without the warmth was a different person—sharper, harder, the rebel who’d survived Rosaria’s disapproval by building walls of her own.“You came here to see if I could have made the poison. That’s why you’re touching my solvents and asking about chemicals.”
I didn’t insult her by denying it. She’d always been too smart for that.
Paula crossed her arms, paint-stained fingers gripping her elbows. She studied me for a long moment, and I watched the calculations happening behind her eyes—what I knew, what I might know, what I was really after.
“Why are you really here?” she asked. “Did you find the diary?”
I kept my face neutral. “No.”
“But you looked.”
I didn’t answer. That was answer enough.
Paula let out a breath and turned away, pacing to the window and back. When she faced me again, her composure had cracked—not broken, but cracked, like a plate that’s been dropped and is holding together by habit.
“There’s something in there about me,” she said. “Something no one else knows. Mom held it over my head for twenty years. Every family dinner—that look she’d give me. That little smile, like she was turning a key in a lock only we knew about.” Paula’s jaw worked. “Twenty years of that smile, Gina. Twenty years of knowing that any time she wanted, she could destroy me.”
She didn’t say what the secret was. The words gathered at the edge of her mouth and she pulled them back, swallowed them down. Her eyes were bright and hard, daring me to push.
I didn’t push.
“My alibi is solid,” Paula said. “Gallery opening. Dozens of witnesses. Timestamped photos. I didn’t kill her.”
“But you could have slipped something in the cup earlier. During the party, before dinner. It was sitting on the counter all afternoon.”
“So could anyone. So could George.” Paula leaned in, and her voice dropped. Not quiet—intense. “You want to look at someone acting guilty? Look at George. He’s been a mess since Mom died. Jumpy. Secretive. Locking himself in that den more than ever, with the deadbolt on. Won’t let Claudia in. Won’t let anyone in.”
“George has always been like that.”
“Not like this. This is different.” She shook her head. “I went over there last week and he nearly jumped out of his skin when I knocked on the den door. Dropped a bottle of paint he was using on one of his models and just—froze. Stood there with paint all over the carpet, staring at me like I’d caught him doing something terrible.”
“What kind of paint?”
