Page 116 of Buried Too Deep

“What’s this?” he asked Goddard, pointing to the area. There was a streak of blue and one of a yellowish brown. “It looks like a grease stain, but it’s not the right color.”

Goddard held out his hand for the photos and placed them back in the envelope. “That, Mr. Bishop, is the question of the day. I asked the lab to run tests to identify that spot.”

“What are you talking about?” Cora asked.

“Stain on the thigh of the trousers your father was wearing that night,” Phin told her. “What did the lab say?”

“First,” Goddard said, “I want to remind you that Mr. Elliot’s remains were found wrapped in a plastic sheeting that can be bought anywhere, and there’s really no way to trace it after all this time. I tried. But the lab report yielded information that’s more specific. I just got the report fifteen minutes before you got here and I haven’t had time to research what the results mean. My lab guy had an appointment, so I can’t dig deeper until he returns.”

Burke scowled. “Detective, get on with it, please.”

Goddard ignored him, his attention on Cora. “Your father’s remains were clothed. Pants, shirt, undergarments, and a windbreaker. The lab found trace elements in the stain on his right pants leg.”

“What kind of elements?” Burke asked.

“Lazurite, iron oxide, and manganese oxide.” Goddard handed him the report.

Burke scanned it, then handed it to Cora. “What does that mean, Detective?”

Goddard shrugged. “I don’t know. I was about to google those three things when you arrived.”

Cora drew an excited breath. “Lazurite’s in lapis lazuli.” She looked up, her brandy-colored eyes wide. “That stain is paint. Old paint. Like paintings from the Renaissance. It went into the ultramarine pigments that are still so vibrant. Vermeer was famous for using them.”

“I’ve heard of him,” Val said. “Elijah and I watched a documentary about his ability to portray light. He was what…sixteenth century?”

“Seventeenth,” Cora said.

Goddard was staring at her. “How do you know all that?”

“She’s a librarian,” Phin explained. Yes, he was proud of her. “Knows a lot of stuff.”

“Remind me not to play Trivial Pursuit with her,” Goddard said wryly. “What about the other two things? The oxide things?”

Cora was practically buzzing. “The iron and manganese oxides are in burnt sienna pigments, also used in old paintings. That’s…wow. How would old paint have gotten on my father’s pants? He wasn’t a painter. He couldn’t draw a stick figure with a ruler, according to my mother. And not just house paint or even oil paint, but paints used centuries ago.” She frowned. “Not those exact paints, of course. Reformulations, would be my guess. But how did they get on his pants?”

“He could have brushed up against a wet painting,” Phin said. “Or the paints might have been transferred from whoever was carrying him the night he ended up in the foundation. Picture your father’s body being carried over a man’s shoulder. Probably not a woman. Your father wasn’t a small man. His thighs would have rubbed up against the clothing of whoever was carrying him. And the transfer had to have happened before his body was wrapped in plastic.”

“What was someone doing with old Renaissance-period paints?” Val asked. “They aren’t used anymore, are they?”

Cora bit at her lip. “Not widely. Mainly by art restorers. Or maybe by painters trying to re-create old masters. But not by any starving artists. Those old paints are super expensive.”

“So,” Burke drawled, “we’re looking for a man in his late fifties, early sixties, with mild arthritis in his hands who restores artwork. I mean, that’s very specific. I wasn’t expecting that.”

He was right, Phin thought. That was very specific.

And troubling.

Art restorers worked in museums, he knew.

But sometimes in galleries, too. He knew this because he’d repaired the sink of the owner of a gallery only a few blocks away from the gallery owned by Cora’s best friend Tandy.

Tandy owned the gallery with her father. A father who was exactly the right age to be the letter writer. Phin wanted to blurt this out, but he stopped himself.

Cora was angry enough that they thought Harry Fulton should be investigated. And Tandy’s father hadn’t even known Cora until she was eight or so. The girls had met as third graders. The letters had started earlier than that.

He’d hold on to the thought and share it with Burke.

“I’m back to the plastic,” Val was saying. “Was the plastic at the job site where Jack Elliot was buried? Did the killer have to go out and buy it? Did he have it on hand, planning the murder? It doesn’t seem like it. If I were planning to kill someone, wrap them up, and shove them into a foundation—sorry, Cora—I’d be damn sure I had on clothes that wouldn’t give me away. I wouldn’t wear clothes that had Renaissance-period paint on them.”

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