My heart rate ticked up, but I forced myself to nod easily. “We’ll be back in a minute, then.”
Teeny’s excitement when I led her into the office a half hour later was off the charts. Unfortunately, so was mine, especially when I saw that Delaney had moved his laptop, cleared off his desk, and set up our takeout containers like a little picnic. He’d even fetched us soda from the fridge in the laundry room.
“Sit,” I told Teeny, pointing to a spot by Delaney’s visitor chair.
Delaney pointed to a white paper bag on the desk. “Looks like they misdelivered me dog biscuits again,” he said with a put-upon sigh. “Not sure how that keeps happening. But since they’re here, you, ah… might as well give them to her, I guess.”
“Misdelivered?” I peered at Delaney over his desk. “But Kel doesn’t make mistakes.”
Delaney opened his mouth, then closed it again, a flush rising up his neck to his cheeks.
“You know what I think?” I went on. “I think you’re secretly in love with my dog, and you’re trying to win her affection with dog biscuits.”
“Yes.” He rubbed his hands on his pants nervously. “You caught me, Brewer. This heart-pounding terror is all an elaborate ruse.”
I shrugged. “I think you can want something and fear it at the same time. Right?”
Delaney’s eyes met mine, and then he looked away. “Right,” he said softly.
I grabbed the bag off the desk and held out a biscuit, not to Teeny but to Delaney. “Go on, then. Give her a treat.”
Delaney blinked at me. “What, like… put my hand close to her mouth?”
I shrugged. “You said you’re working on it. No risk, no reward, right?”
He studied me for a long moment. “Yeah,” he said with a strange intensity to his voice. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” He took the biscuit from me with the tips of his fingers. “Teeny? Come here, girl.”
“Gentle,” I warned her since the way she normally ate treats—or anything at all, really—made it seem like she’d never seen food in her entire life.
Teeny approached Delaney slowly, like she had some strange, innate canine sense that she needed to not make any sudden motions. Then she sat with her tail swishing lazily against the area rug beneath Delaney’s desk.
Delaney’s arm shook a bit, and Teeny sniffed the biscuit gingerly, as though she’d never seen one before.
I rolled my eyes. The two of them were ridiculous. And kind of adorable.
Teeny took the treat gently from his fingers, her tongue barely brushing his skin.
Delaney exhaled a shaky breath. “Huh. That wasn’t so bad.”
“See?” I said. “Progress.” I could hear the pride in my own voice and wondered when I’d started caring so much about Delaney conquering his fears.
“Speaking of progress,” he said, wiping his hand on a napkin before picking up his burger, “how’s the kitchen coming? I know we turned your workspace into Grand Central Station.”
“It wasn’t that bad.” I took a fry from my own container. “Things are coming along. I got most of the base cabinet frames built, and Hen said I can return the red cabinets Monday, which will give me more space to move around in there.” I wiped my mouth on a napkin. “What about you? Any progress on your article?”
“Nope.” Delaney grimaced. “I took a side quest and looked into our Jam Cupboard Mystery instead.” He licked a bit of sauce from the corner of his lips. “I googled E. Winters yesterday and found an artist with the same name.” He unlocked his phone and began typing. “A pretty prolific mid-century painter who had a couple showings at the Met. I’m not sure if it’sourE. Winters, though. Does this look similar-ish to the paintings we found?”
He turned his phone and scrolled up and down, displaying some paintings of urban scenes. A taxicab in the rain with faceless pedestrians hurrying by. A park with the Empire State Building in the distance.
I squinted at the images for a minute, then shook my head. “I can’t say. Those are pretty, but they don’t reach out and grab me like the ones we found. Maybe because the subjects are so different?”
“Maybe, yeah.” He frowned at his phone, then turned it off and set it down. “We’ll have to wait for the appraiser to come by next week to know for sure. And I’m meeting with Samuel Purchase tomorrow.”
“I bet he’ll know something,” I said. “I think he grew up in Copper County. Have you done a record search on the previous owners of the house? I’m more curious how the paintings got there than who painted them.”
“I haven’t pulled any records yet, but I will. Janice did say the house was vacant for a while before the owners put it on the market last fall, though, so who knows how long the paintings were there.”
I took a quick sip of soda. “That tracks. It was vacant when I came to town. I do know it’s a 1932 Arts and Crafts bungalow designed by Everett H. Lowell, but I don’t think that helps answer these questions.”
