A reclusive but renowned artist, Anthony D’Scarpio, has died unexpectedly in Charleston. Police determine the cause of death to be accidental—poisoning by his toxic oil paints. But Becca Campbell, who knew D’Scarpio decades before, is not so sure. Even as she attended the artist’s memorial service, Becca suspected foul play. Were her suspicions and the stones she began to overturn well founded? Or simply an escape from her own boredom?

That’s what I’m cooking up in my latest writing endeavor, a “cozy mystery” (that’s an actual genre name, for those who don’t know!) titled Death by Cobalt Blue. It’s been a challenge to learn to put together clues, red herrings, and suspects–and I’m only partly convinced I can get all the threads to come together at the end! That said, I hope to complete the first draft by the end of the summer, 2026.

Here’s a sample:

Becca savored her daily read of the obituaries, skipping lightly over the accomplishments in long-ago careers and contributions in more recent volunteer roles. She then slowed to go more carefully, lingering on details of odd passions, nicknames of questionable origin, and curious omissions of well-known family complications. If anything caught her attention, she might even dig deeper with Google.

But the layer of fascination that colored it all was this: These people were dead, and she was not. Life in the senior years was a game of musical chairs, and today—and maybe only today—she was one of the lucky ones who found a chair when the music stopped.

In fact, her actual chair couldn’t be nicer—in a peaceful walled garden in Charleston, South Carolina, a mug of coffee within a hand’s reach, the faint scent of jasmine and birdsong wafting from beyond. Nothing, absolutely nothing, on her to-do list but the heading, Wednesday.

All this as she sat reading about newly dead people. 

Today Becca had already skimmed through most of The Post and Courier on her iPad. The top few articles on the home page had covered corruption on the seawall project, the closing of a nearby lumber mill, the opening of a celebrity-backed restaurant, and all the political mayhem she had grown so tired of. Swipe, swipe, swipe.

Then, some headlines that actually mattered to her, with content she did stop and read. It’s an El Niño year: What Can Gardeners Expect? Becca was a retired botanist, so weather had bossed her around for decades. Artificial Intelligence Cooks Up an Award-Winning Recipe. Her lips let out a pffff. Really? Hard to imagine a computer besting her grandmother’s chocolate chip cookie. On the other hand, she’d rather AI harmlessly create recipes than dominate and then annihilate the humans, which some seemed to think inevitable. Charleston Named Best City for Retirees by AARP. She glowed momentarily, the announcement being a certain legitimization of her own move to the city when she inherited the house from Aunt Beth. But then soured: Truth be told, she hoped all the other old people would head to Florida.

With all that behind her, Becca took a long swig of coffee, now just lukewarm, and settled in for the main course—the obituaries. She had a system. First, she scanned to see if she knew anyone. Of course, her connections were few these days, being a relative newcomer to the city, so that rarely yielded much. Then, she’d go back to the top and begin again, checking the age and cause of death for each of the deceased. This was to set herself firmly within the context. How close was she to the same fate? Finally, the more careful reading.

This morning, she stopped short at the very first name. Anthony D’Scarpio. The Anthony D’Scarpio? She looked again. Yes. It was.

Anthony D’Scarpio passed away on Tuesday, February 20, after a brief illness. He was 65. D’Scarpio was a visual artist represented by the Williamson Gallery in Charleston.

Born in 1960 in Chicago, Mr. D’Scarpio studied painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He moved to Charleston in 2001, where he had lived ever since.

The artist was best known for his large-scale modernist paintings from the 1980s, which some critics noted were a furthering of Jackson Pollock’s work. In later years, he focused on realism with iterations of a single theme: peacocks in full plumage in unusual settings. One such painting—a peacock in a plexiglass bus stop structure—was the most expensive painting ever sold by the Williamson Gallery. In more recent years, his work focused on miniatures.

Mr. D’Scarpio is survived by a son, Tony. The Williamson Gallery will host an evening in the artist’s honor on February 29 at 7 pm. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to Habitat for Humanity.

Becca, shocked, put the iPad down. She did not know D’Scarpio had moved to Charleston all those years ago. 

She thought back to the ’80s. She was in her mid-twenties. Unmarried. With a third-floor walkup studio apartment on the fringes of Chicago’s Old Town—not the cool part. She was dating a guy named Neil, who had a very respectable job as a young associate attorney at Smithson and Ryder, the biggest law firm in the city.

Meanwhile, Becca slaved away at her first job out of college as a glorified landscaper at the Chicago Botanical Garden, weeding the Native Plant area and pruning the floribundas. “What do you expect with a botany degree?” her parents had said when she complained about the low pay. Neil’s lifestyle was everything hers was not. And she loved it.

He collected art. Not extravagant stuff. But pieces appropriate for a culture-minded 28-year-old. Neil had bought one of the first paintings Anthony D’Scarpio ever sold—back when they were quite affordable—and he became friends with the artist.

The painting was called The Lake. On their first date, when Neil had taken Becca to his apartment for a glass of wine after dinner, this painting had captivated her. It was huge. Six feet high by seven feet across, completely dominating Neil’s living room wall. The thick strokes of paint in shades of deep blue rose like waves off the canvas. Somehow, this painting—plus Neil’s Brooks Brothers suits, preference for white-tablecloth restaurants, and knowledge of world affairs—legitimized him as well worth dating. That turned out to be a miscue, but no mind. The fact was, the painting made a statement.

In the six months Becca and Neil were together, they went out drinking three or four times with D’Scarpio. Always referred to by his last name. Not the elitist caricature of a crazy artist she would have presumed. He wore polo shirts and Adidas. He was clean-shaven. He talked to her like a favorite sister.

Becca sighed. So sad when the good guys die too young.

After Neil broke up with her, Becca never saw D’Scarpio again. The painter was squarely in Neil’s friend group, which became off-limits after the breakup.

Then D’Scarpio had fallen completely off her radar once she got caught up in a series of events that would be more permanent—meeting the man who would become her husband and then her ex, having a child, pursuing her science.

Becca picked up the iPad again, opening Google. So many questions. The first: How big had D’Scarpio become in the art world?

It turned out the painter had peaked young. Not long after Neil purchased The Lake, D’Scarpio’s work took off, and prices skyrocketed. His paintings became highly coveted in Chicago collector circles, and his notoriety then rippled out to New York tastemakers.

Something changed, though, around 2005. That was almost a decade after he had abruptly switched to peacocks, and then just as abruptly moved on to miniatures—postcard sized paintings. Finally, he relocated to Charleston and ultimately dropped off the tracking of art news. Becca thought that odd. After all, D’Scarpio had enjoyed great success in Chicago. Then he moved and began to fall from grace? Why?

More questions bubbled up. Whatever happened to Neil? Did D’Scarpio have a romantic partner? What was the backstory on the son mentioned in the obituary? 

These search results were disappointing. Neither Neil nor Tony D’Scarpio—the son—had any history beyond the usually-dubious results from PeopleFinder about former addresses and “may also know.” Becca didn’t want to dig too deep, fearful that Neil could somehow know she had looked him up, which would be beyond embarrassing.

She sat back, staring up at the slice of turquoise sky above her courtyard walls, framed by the upper limbs of century-old oaks. Nearby, a truck rattled down the street. She sighed, then swung her legs from the ottoman and collected her things. She carried them inside to the kitchen, put the mug in the sink, plugged her iPad into the charger, then grabbed four chocolate chip cookies still on the wire cooling rack from the night before and shoved them into a plastic bag, hurrying out the door. On a mission.

 

Turning the corner onto bustling Queen Street, Becca smiled in relief. The French doors halfway down the block were open to the sidewalk, which meant Jack was at work in his studio. He was exactly who she hoped to see.

“Hello, Miss Becca,” he called out without looking up as she stepped in the doors behind him. “How art thou on this gorgeous winter day?”

The man seemed to have eyes in the back of his head. “Ha! Rarely were gorgeous and winter ever used in the same sentence in my Chicago life!” Becca said.

He smiled and motioned to the worn leather chair to the side of his easel, while she raised the bag of cookies.

“Chocolate chip, your favorite!”

 He made a namaste gesture, paintbrush still in hand, head slightly bowed.

Jack Wilson’s gig as Artist in Residence at the Hotel Royale was not exactly a nine-to-five job. In fact, from what Becca could tell, he pretty much just showed up when he wanted. Which meant sometimes she was disappointed to find the doors shuttered and locked. But not today.

The hotel gave Jack free studio space, which played right into its tagline, “Where Art Meets Taste.” The hotel also owned quite a bit of fine art and offered guests tours of the collection every evening. Becca couldn’t even guess how expensive the guestrooms were.

This scene—a painter and his oils dabbing away at a canvas in a messy studio open to the street as horse-drawn carriages clip-clopped by—was the storybook picture of life in Charleston that she had hardly dared dream for herself. Yet here she was.

 The studio was the perfect setup for Jack. The beautiful, light-filled space cost him nothing. And with the doors open to the sidewalk and passersby stopping to watch him work, it was also good for sales. 

When she first moved to Charleston, Becca had been one of those curious people stopping on the sidewalk at the sight of an artist at work and then wandering into the studio. Those days, she would walk for hours on end to pass time in a city where she knew no one. Stopping to see what Jack was working on was always a highlight.

Eventually, she’d struck up enough conversations that they’d developed an easy friendship. These days, she’d often bring him a sweet tea, coffee, or something she’d baked, and she’d stay and chat while he worked.

Becca placed the bag of cookies on the desk. He wouldn’t eat them until later, when painting was done for the day, and he’d cleaned up and sat at the desk to attend to any emails.

“Okay, my artist friend, I have something to ask you. Do you know Anthony D’Scarpio?”

Jack looked up, mouth pursed. His appearance was every bit his age—75-ish—and then some. He’d not begun his art career seriously until his early 60s. Prior decades of working outside as a carpenter had etched deep lines in his face, and his unruly white hair was reminiscent of a mad scientist.

“I intersected a few times with D’Scarpio, but we were hardly friends. I did hear that he passed away, though. Which is sad. He wasn’t that old.”

“Yeah, the yardstick for ‘old’ keeps moving as we age, doesn’t it? Anyway, I knew him a little during the ’80s in Chicago but then lost touch. Didn’t realize he’d moved here.”

“Funny coincidence—from Chicago to Charleston for you both.” Jack paused. “I do believe the guy was quite talented.”

This is what Becca wanted to know more about. “Yeah, I’d agree, but it seems like he went dark in the last years. I was sure he’d be the next boy wonder. What happened?”

Jack sat in thought a moment, then said, “Well, he certainly didn’t paint to the market. He went in different directions that just interested him personally. I heard after the peacocks, he turned to tiny canvases. Miniatures. It was sort of odd. But who knows why?”

“Yeah, I thought it was weird. Back in Chicago, when I knew him, he was painting on huge canvases.”

Jack just shrugged.

“Listen, Jack. The Williamson Gallery is having a night to honor D’Scarpio’s memory. Would you want to go to it with me?”

Jack’s brush stopped mid-stroke, but he said nothing.

She immediately realized how this invitation could be taken. “Oh! Lord knows, not a date or anything. It’s just that I don’t know anyone, and you do….”

He glanced sideways at Becca, a slight smile on his lips, and she knew he was in.

“I guess cookies leave me in your debt. Sure, I’ll go. But just so you know, I don’t do fancy. I’ll be keeping it real.”

“Wouldn’t want it any other way.”