The Painting (Knives Out)

Based on the prompt:

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The Painting

Benoit stared at the portrait by the Bengali artist. The brush strokes around Harlan's lips were like a mystery. You couldn't tell if he was smiling or frowning or hiding something in plain sight, like the portrait of the orange against the blue background. But on close inspection, he realized that the artist intended on orange against an orange background because there were slivers of orange peeking.

The portrait made Benoit curious, just like the man himself. It was like Harlan was writing a mystery from beyond his grave.

And the slivers of orange were the lies his family had woven. The blood on Martha's shoe peeked at him, challenging him, asking him to solve the mystery. The hole in the donut, the orange against the blue. It needed fixing, but what filled it? The identity of the person who had hired him to solve Harlan's apparent suicide.

Harlan's look now definitely seemed like a smile - a smile of approval as if telling him he was asking the right questions. And Benoit knew that! He was a goddamn detective, for heaven's sake!