Framed and Burning (Dreamslippers Book 2) by Lisa Brunette Read Free Book Online

set the canvas on the floor, climbed to the top of a very tall ladder, and then dripped pink paint over it. Canon’s vote was trumped by the other faculty, and Pink Splash was submitted against his wishes. In competition with the work of hundreds of students throughout the country, it won.  
    “A riveting commentary on the nature of racial complexion,” said the judges. That had taken the wind out of Canon’s sails, for sure, since Mick’s talent had been vindicated by an independent panel of judges whose opinion he had to accept, even if he vehemently disagreed.  
    Mick ran down the list of hating grad students in his head, wondering if any of them still bore a grudge. It was possible. A year after grad school, Art in Our Time published a Letter to the Editor that bad-mouthed the work of one of Mick’s professors, making it sound as if the letter had been written by Mick. It was signed Mick in Miami , which is where he’d fled after graduate school. He was the only “Mick” in the Miami art world.   Coupled with the letter’s references to the professor’s work and the classes Mick took, it was easy to assume that Mick had written the letter. That professor had been one of Mick’s staunchest allies, and it pained Mick to think the professor believed he’d written it. Mick tried to get the magazine to print a retraction, but it refused. And the professor refused to take Mick’s calls.
    The worst part was, Mick had criticized some aspects of that professor’s work, over beers with the other students, in confidence, but never to the professor’s face. Whoever wrote the letter cribbed some of Mick’s details from those conversations. So the letter had an air of authenticity to it, and Mick knew whoever betrayed him had been close enough to be involved in the regular round of criticism most art students doled out against their professors, especially when drinking.  
    The pastry was a delicious concoction of orange guava jelly between layers of buttery, flaky crust. Mick wolfed it down and gulped his coffee. Then he took his flip sketchbook out of his back pocket and began to jot down some names. It was something Priscilla and Cat had been asking for since the night of the fire. It was a humiliating task, compiling a list of people who might want him dead for no other reason than jealousy over his knack for putting lines and colors together on canvas. And he was alarmed to find that it was a rather long list, one that had grown through the years.
    When he was finished, he sat there staring at the ring of milky brown coffee left in the bottom of his cup. He could give this list to the police, but they would still think of him as a suspect unless he coughed up his alibi.  
    But he feared his alibi would make him look guiltier.
    He flipped the cover closed on his sketchbook and decided to talk to the one person who could verify he hadn’t set the fire that night: A goth chick named Jenny Baines.

Chapter Four

    Grace was sitting in the cottage in Ernesto’s living room listening to her granddaughter complain about Mick when the man himself burst into the house. He tossed a crumpled sheet of notebook paper at Grace, said, “Here’s your damn list,” and announced that he was leaving again. Grace smoothed out the paper. He’d done a good job, at least, with names, dates, and details. In the silence after he slammed the door, Grace read the list aloud to Cat.
    “Let’s split up this time,” Grace said. “These first two are here in South Florida, but after that, it looks like we’re going to the Big Apple.” She gave Cat the task of interviewing one of Mick’s former professors up in Fort Lauderdale and took it upon herself to interview the number-one hater on Mick’s list.  
    This happened to be a woman.  
    With whom her brother had once slept. There it was in Mick’s chicken-scratch handwriting: Candace Shreveport, ex-lover. Grace remembered meeting Candace, but only briefly. Back then—more than