Kirk was pretty sure that his mother was having some kind of mid-life crisis. Sitting behind her garage, he watched as she worked on pulling weeds and cutting down bushes and vines that were growing up over the back wall. All to uncover some kind of creepy mural that the former tenant, the former murdered tenant had made. He didn't understand why she was so obsessed with looking at the mural. From where he was sitting it looked like a big mess made out of broken pieces of glass and a zillion or so marbles.
"There," Veronica said, her hands on her hips. "That looks better, doesn't it?" She squinted at the mural. "I can almost make out what it's supposed to be a picture of."
"You can? What?" Straining his neck, Kirk tried to make sense out of the mural but it still didn't look like anything to him.
"There's a path," Veronica said, pointing at the bottom foot of the garage. "See? I think it's made out of old 7-Up bottles. And the path leads up to a house. I think."
"I guess I can see that, sort of," Kirk said, "but Mom, so what? What does it matter what the mural is a picture of?"
Veronica brushed off her hands. "Oh, I don't know," she replied. "I have an idea that if I can figure this picture out then maybe I'll be able to figure out who killed Mary Austin."
Kirk stared at his mother. "That's really weird, Mom. What do you think--Mary Austin had some kind of psychic flash that she was going to be murdered so she came out here, smashed up some 7-Up bottles and glued them to the back of her garage in a big picture so the police would know who did it?"
"It sounds kind of dumb when you put it that way."
Kirk didn't say it sounded dumb because it was dumb but that's what he was thinking. Ever since his mom had moved to this Nowheresville town it was almost as if her brain had been sucked right out of her head. Kirk had thought she moved to Schuyler Square to shake down her ex-lover, his father, for some much owed back child support but that hadn't been the case. Instead his mom was working for his father and he still hadn't met the legendary Ron Schuyler, the donor of half of his DNA. Kirk was getting fed up with the whole thing and if it wasn't for Mindy, he'd be heading back for Minnesota on the next plane.
"I should be going," he said. "Mindy's waiting for me."
His mom looked at him like she didn't want him to leave but she didn't say anything. Kirk appreciated that. It had taken him so long to finally move out and now that he'd done it, he wondered why he'd waited. But he also knew that his mom was more than a little freaked out to be living in a house where a murder had been committed. He was going to have to convince her to move as soon as possible. The longer she stayed in that house, the stranger she was going to get. "Want to bring home some chili with you?" Veronica asked. "I made a huge pot just the way you like it."
"No, thanks. Mindy's a vegan."
"Naturally," Veronica replied. "How's the job going?"
Kirk shrugged. "It's a paycheck." Not much of one but being an adjunct professor was probably the easiest job he'd ever had. Not enough to live on but by splitting expenses with Mindy he was making it and still had time to write. Kirk got to his feet and started toward the driveway. Something in the mural caught his eye and he stopped. Studying the messy mural he had the feeling that he was seeing something he hadn't recognized before. Was that a tiny figure made out of chips of glass standing in what was supposed to be the window of the house? Kirk leaned forward and tried to make the figure out more clearly. It was a man, he thought, wearing a blue top and with yellow glass for hair. It reminded him of someone.
Kirk swallowed. It reminded him of...him.
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