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The Death Artist
Six short stories about death, #2.
A real artist is known by his work, not by his life.
Carolina Deveraux was never a real artist. She was an idol — that is, until her untimely and highly publicized death one summer morning in the swimming pool of her Beverly Hills estate.
All accounts say the last guests had left the party she’d thrown the night before by three in the morning. The coroner put the time of Miss Deveraux’s death between four-thirty and six, though her body wasn’t discovered until the maid arrived at half-past nine.
The circumstances of Miss Deveraux’s death sent shockwaves far beyond the bounds of Hollywood. The leaked photos of the scene sold for millions. It’s easy to understand why. A famous beauty face-up and dead-eyed, sporting immaculate hair and nails, dressed in nothing but a diamond necklace and pearl earrings, bullet hole through her head, floating in a swimming pool littered with waterlogged Bible pages and English roses, the water tinted pink from all the blood. When the maid arrived and found the body, the record player was spinning in the dead wax of an autographed OK Computer LP. This aesthetic incongruity was the most shocking detail of all.
There were no fingerprints on any of it. There were no signs of a struggle. Not one neighbor had heard a gunshot. The…
