Perfect Touch: A Novel

by Elizabeth Lowell

“What happened to all his stuff?”

  “It’s probably packed up somewhere. Or burned. Custer wasn’t the only one who knew how to start a fire. JD built plenty of his own.” Jay glanced at Sara. Her face was set, flushed, and her jaw was tight. “Think about finding the portrait as a gain for the arts and your own career. Either one is reason enough to search. Forget about Liza.”

  “How has that worked out for you?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Underneath that calm you’re cold enough to burn.”

  Silence again.

  “It’s not Liza alone,” he said finally, his mouth grim. “I’d be a lot happier if I didn’t feel like Fish Camp was tied up in all this.”

  “You said you didn’t think Liza was involved.”

  “I don’t.” His hands flexed on the wheel. “But I feel like I’m fighting on too many fronts to win on any of them. So I’ll spend a few days trying to eliminate the front called Muse and then get on to the important fight—finding the killers.”

  And, he thought savagely, if this all tangles up with Fish Camp, I’ll be that much closer to those murdering sons of bitches.

  “Blackmailers never go away,” she said. “You know that, right?”

  “Liza’s pushing so hard now because she believes that once you leave, her leverage leaves with you.”

  That reality tasted as bad as the roadhouse coffee, but Sara accepted the sour truth. What she and Jay shared wasn’t long term.

  “I’ve called Liza a lot of names, but stupid isn’t one of them,” he said. “She thought she saw her time and her weapon and she struck. Why not? It’s a win-win for her. More money, maybe a Custer painting, and sweet revenge to soothe whatever is gnawing at her. What more could she want?”

  “I’m sure we’ll find out.”

  CHAPTER 20

  SARA HARDLY NOTICED the beauty of the cloud-dappled sunlight as Jay drove up to the front of the ranch house. She was too busy thinking of a lost painting and double murder.

  “I’ll leave,” she said into the silence.

  No!

  But Jay kept his violent reaction to himself. “Liza will try to ruin your reputation just because she can.”

  “How do we know Beck hasn’t lit up the gossip lines already?” Sara asked.

  Jay turned off the truck. “Has anyone called?”

  She didn’t need to check her phone. She was still holding it in her hand from the last time she had checked her messages three minutes ago.

  “No,” she said.

  “Then your reputation is intact. One of your competitors would have called to play ‘oh, isn’t it awful’ with you.”

  She couldn’t argue that. She was counting on human nature to let her know the moment gossip began.

  Is that when Jay will hand me an engagement ring for Liza to choke on?

  The idea disturbed Sara on too many levels to name.

  He leaned over the console and gave her a nibbling kiss at the edge of her mouth. The thoughts that had made her frown scattered. She put her hand on his cheek, still smooth from his morning shave.

  “Remember,” Jay said, “we’re just pretending to be worried.”

  “All right. I’ll stop fretting.” For now. She nipped his lower lip. “You distract me too easily.”

  “Sweetheart, you distract me every time you breathe. And if I don’t get out of this truck right now, the proof of that will be in my pants for anyone to see.”

  “Have I mentioned how much I love your jeans?”

  “You’re not helping.”

  She was still smiling—and carefully not looking—when he opened the front door for her.

  Henry was waiting just inside the house. “Well, how bad was it?”

  The question reminded Sara of what Jay had said about the foreman being a gossip.

  So I’ll look worried. Because I am worried.

  “Bad enough,” Jay said. “Did you get the evidence box from the trial? With all the excitement yesterday I forgot to ask.”

  Henry started to ask another question, then looked at Jay’s eyes and decided better of it. “It’s in the den next to your desk. Sheriff Cooke called. Duggan and Valentine are in jail in Cody. Drunk and disorderly.”

  “How long they been there?” Jay asked.

  “Too long for them to have murdered the Solvangs.”

  Jay took off his hat and tapped it against his thigh. “It was an outside chance, at best. Thanks, Henry. Stay close to the ranch house, would you? I may need your memories of Custer.”

  The foreman slapped a sweat-stained Stetson on his head. “I’ll go check the horses we’ll be using tomorrow. It’s getting close to shoeing time.”

  “And some of the shoes are getting thin,” Jay said, mentally adding the farrier to the list of chores in his mind.

  “Yep.” Henry stepped out of the front door and swiped long, graying hair behind his ears. “Rube and Willets are on their way back. Should be here by noon.”

  “They must be taking the steep way.”

  “Yep.” Henry shut the door and vanished. His voice called back to them, “I’ll check in when I’ve finished the horses.”

  “Steep way?” Sara asked.

  “A shortcut,” Jay said. “Too steep for cows but fine for good horses.”

  “Here I thought I was out in the wilderness. Turns out there are more trails here than in Central Park.”

  Smiling, he ran the back of his fingers over her cheek. “The idea of being untouched by man is just that. An idea. People had settled in the New World long, long before Columbus stumbled over it on his way to India. Wherever you go, people have been there before you.”

  “As long as they don’t leave trash, I’m good with it.”

  “Speaking of trash, let’s sort through that evidence box.”

  “Is it big enough to hold Muse?” she asked whimsically.

  “Not unless it’s folded down to the size of a legal document.”

  “Another dream dies.”

  He took her hand and interlaced their fingers. “You need tougher dreams.”

  She squeezed his hand. “Working on it.”

  Sara followed Jay into the room he had made his office. A bedraggled cardboard banker’s box sat in the middle of his desk. Various stickers coded for the guardians of evidence decorated the cardboard.

  When he opened the carton, pieces of paper popped up. The box was literally stuffed full of records.

  “The stickers on the box led me to believe that the papers inside would be organized,” she said.

  “They scanned in what was important for the trial.”

  “And left the rest. Gotcha.”

  “There’s a ledger in here somewhere,” Jay said. He rummaged gently, found the ledger, and lifted it out. “Here you go.”

  She took it, sat, and began scanning lines and columns.

  He went to get some coffee worth drinking and found he would have to make it himself. When he came back with two steaming mugs, Sara hadn’t moved.

  Out beyond the kitchen, the mudroom door opened and closed. Henry was back.

  Her finger ran under a line that had been crossed out. “What’s this one? May 5, 1993. Do you celebrate Cinco de Mayo?”

  “Not when I was a kid.”

  She took his hand and urged him closer. “Well?”

  “I won’t know until you let me read it,” he said.

  “What’s all the fuss about?” Henry said from the doorway. He was watching Jay the way Skunk watched King Kobe. “I thought you were done with digging around in dusty boxes. What in hell is that bitch Liza up to now?”

  “We’re in the extralegal part of the game,” Jay said.

  “This one,” Sara said, reclaiming his attention. “It was written then crossed out real hard. Amount of five thousand dollars. Not a casual mistake.”

  Jay looked closely. “It’s written to ‘Cash.’”

  “A lot of money,” she said

  “Not when you’re buying
livestock.” Without looking up, he asked, “Any ideas, Henry?”

  The older man leaned forward and pulled out a pair of wire-rimmed half spectacles, looking through them to the beaten page below. “Well, sure, I remember that date. It was right about the time Custer wore out his welcome here. JD got tired of him underfoot while he was courting that bitch. This might be what you’d call a parting gift.”

  “Or go-away money,” Jay said.

  “Same difference.”

  Sara exhaled sharply and tapped the line item with her fingernail. “But that’s not what we’re looking for.”

  “Not unless it was a payout for the painting,” Jay said.

  “Without some kind of note, there’s no way to be sure,” she said unhappily. “It’s the same amount that JD paid for other Custer paintings, but that’s not enough to convince me.” Much less Liza.

  Jay drummed his fingers on the table. The sound spread through the study and was absorbed by hundred-year-old books and hand-worked wooden bookshelves.

  “That crossing out isn’t like JD,” she said, flipping back through the pages. “Every other line item is accounted for, business and personal alike. His recordkeeping was idiosyncratic, but not chaotic.”

  “True,” the foreman said. “He was particular about keeping these private records, probably so Ginny never figured out how much he spent on art.”

  “I thought she was the one who liked Custer’s art,” Sara said.

  “Liking it and liking to pay hard cash for it are two separate things,” Henry said.

  Jay began sorting through the contents of the box, looking for a receipt for a portrait.

  “What exactly is it you two are after?” the foreman asked after a minute. “I might be able to help.”

  Sara looked to Jay, who nodded.

  “We’re looking for a portrait that Custer painted, called Muse. As far as we can tell, it dates from before he and JD parted company.”

  “Which was about the time that JD married again,” Jay added. “Which makes the two things stick together in my mind.”

  Henry nodded and thought about it. “A portrait? From the name, I’m guessing it’s a woman. Unless they have male muses now.”

  “I haven’t heard of one yet,” Sara said.

  Jay pinched the bridge of his nose to drive tension out of his skull. He wanted to be doing something rather than sitting around sifting through old records and pretending to be worried out of his mind.

  “Man or woman,” Jay said, “we need that portrait. There has to be some reason that Liza is hell-bent on getting it.”

  “She doesn’t give up,” Henry said, looking like he wanted to spit.

  “Liza?” asked Sara.

  Henry nodded.

  “When all you have is eroded beauty and animal cunning,” Sara said, “giving up isn’t a choice.” She went deeper into the carton and found a worn manila folder holding a sheaf of material. She opened it and flipped quickly through a few papers. “What are these?”

  “Some of the junk Custer left behind,” Henry said. “JD cussed up, down, and sideways over having to keep stuff until Custer sent his new address.”

  “Which he never did,” Jay said. “We found a lot of the receipts in there. All but the portrait receipt said ‘Gift to Ginny.’”

  Sara set the folder down and read at random through the papers to get some idea of the contents. “Receipt, receipt . . . newspaper clippings . . . I didn’t know that Custer rode broncos in the rodeo. Second place, bareback. My clients are going to lick this up like cream.”

  “He pressed flowers,” Henry said, pointing to the dried petals that lay between pages. “Odd duck, that one.”

  “Any favorite kind of flowers?”

  “Nothing from Ginny’s garden,” Henry said, chuckling. “She lit into him like a mama bear when she found him picking tulips one spring.”

  Sara paused, then went back to the folder. A wad of papers were stuck together, probably by the dried oil paints dotting them. She could imagine Custer interrupted while painting and being called to sign for receipt of something. The top paper was a bill for a shipment of oils and brushes. The amount was several thousand dollars.

  JD had paid for it.

  “Lots of information in here that will help in writing a book,” she said. “Nothing about a painting called Muse.”

  With quick, impatient movements Sara tried to stuff everything back into the folder.

  The wad of papers slid from her fingers and hit the desk with a crackling sound. Several of the papers came unstuck. Curious, she carefully pried at the rest of them. One of them was folded in half and stuck together among the larger papers.

  When she unfolded it, she saw a pencil sketch of a face, drawn out in strokes that were both spiked and curved.

  “Huh,” Henry said. “Looks like a kid did it.”

  “A very, very talented kid,” she said absently. “This is the start of a preliminary sketch. Almost a doodle, really. Look at the wild freedom in it. The main form is graceful, almost ethereal, but . . .”

  “What?” Jay asked softly.

  “Well, the main outlines are easy enough, but he’s agonizing over the details. The eyes are barely there, yet they’re the heart and soul of every portrait. He was having trouble seeing them. Or maybe he was just having difficulty translating what he saw.”

  The barest ghost of a woman’s face stared from the page.

  “Do you know her?” Sara asked Jay, eyes wide with wonder and hope.

  “About all I can be sure of is that this isn’t my mother,” Jay said. “Eyebrows are wrong.”

  “Henry?” Sara asked.

  He took out his half glasses and bent over the sketch. “Doesn’t look like anyone I ever knew. Custer was probably too drunk or stoned to do the job right.”

  “Stoned?” She looked at Jay.

  “Stoned,” he agreed. “I always thought it was the paints that made his cabin smell funny. By the time I hit junior high, I’d learned better.”

  “JD didn’t mind Custer’s love of herb? At the time pot was seriously illegal.”

  “Still is,” Jay said.

  “JD told Custer he’d tan his bare backside if he ever caught the painter smoking anything but tobacco,” Henry said. “After the first time in the woodshed, Custer believed him.”

  “JD spanked Custer?” Sara asked in disbelief.

  “It ain’t spanking when it involves a leather belt,” the foreman said. “It was a downright ass whuppin’.”

  “Remind me to sit you down with a digital recorder,” she said. “You know more about Custer than anyone alive.”

  Henry shrugged. “What a foreman don’t personally see, he hears about in bunkhouse gossip quick enough.”

  She turned the paper over, hoping to find a notation on the back. Instead she found out how the sketch had ended up in a box of receipts. Custer’s crabbed, small script was written on the back. The ink had faded but could still be read.

  Jay bent over her so close that she could feel his heat. His breath stirred against her cheek while he read aloud. “‘Official receipt for the sale of Emerald Solitude, my last awful piece of shit landscape painting to the fool JD Vermilion who hid it so I couldn’t burn it on this date May 1993.’” He laughed softly. “Custer sounds well and truly pissed off. Probably drunk, too. And look down here. ‘Gift to Ginny’ in JD’s handwriting.”

  Sara turned the page back over and looked at the unfinished face.

  “The odds are very good that this is a study for Muse,” she said, “but it’s not proof that he actually created a finished painting. A study is just that—a beginning, not an end.”

  Jay rubbed his cheek against hers. “It’s a start, sweetheart. That’s more than we had.” He stood and looked at Henry. “From the sound of all that barking, Rube and Willets must be back with the dogs.”

  “I’ll take care of it. Want me to send them back up to Fish Camp to truck out those paintings tomorrow?”

 
; “No,” Sara said instantly. Then to Jay, “I’d like to oversee their repacking, if that’s all right. Every bit of damage is a ding on the potential sale price.”

  “So you’re selling them?” Henry asked.

  “Thinking real hard about it,” Jay said.

  The foreman nodded, put on his hat, and headed for the back door.

  “Why didn’t you tell him the rest of it?” she asked in a low voice.

  “The rest of what?”

  “That the future of the ranch is riding on these paintings. Especially Muse.”

  “There’s nothing he can do about it,” Jay said, “so why add to his load? Liza is a loose cannon rolling around on the deck. Sooner or later something will get crushed.”

  Is that what happened at Fish Camp? Liza lost control?

  He shook his head at his own thought. Liza couldn’t use a knife for cutting anything but steak.

  “This is all my fault,” Sara said, her voice thinned to breaking.

  Jay listened. He couldn’t tell if Henry had left. So I keep to the worried act.

  “Even if you and I had never met, Liza would have found something else,” Jay said, “some bit of the past she could use as blackmail, and Barton would still try to sell the land to anyone willing to cut fences to look at it. And none of that matters anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Even if I knew all this was coming because we’d met, I’d still go running toward you. Hell, I’d have run even faster if I’d known what was waiting.”

  She put her arms around him and hugged him hard. “I—” She shook her head and tried again. “I—”

  “Don’t cry,” he murmured. “I thought I’d survived everything intact, and then you walked into my life and I realized how much of myself I’d left overseas. Liza can sue me and blackmail me until hell freezes over, and I’ll never regret meeting you.”

  Holding on, feeling like she was wrapped in living sunlight, Sara finally sighed, accepting what he said. “You’re a good man, Jay Vermilion. So good. God, what I wouldn’t give to strangle that bitch.”

  “She’s not worth going to jail for, which is why she’s still running around loose.”

  Something in his tone made Sara’s eyes widen. “You’ve thought about it, too.”