Perfect Touch: A Novel

by Elizabeth Lowell

She stretched sensuously against him. “Where were you?”

  “Checking on things—the ranch, the paintings, talking to the Solvang family about funeral arrangements.”

  In a flash she was fully awake. “What time is it?”

  “After four.”

  “You should have gotten me up,” she said, horrified that a simple nap had stretched into hours.

  “You needed the sleep. Besides, I was looking forward to waking you up from the inside out.”

  “Oh, well, in that case.”

  She pulled the covers up over both of them. In the sensuous twilight, they loved each other until they were a languid, sated tangle of flesh and bone.

  A cell phone on the bedside table buzzed.

  “It’s yours,” she said.

  “Yeah.” He emerged from the blankets, swiped his phone off the table, hit the answer button. “What?”

  “Hello to you, too,” Cooke said. “When did you turn into a daytime sleeper?”

  “When there was something worth staying in bed for.” He put the phone on speaker and pulled Sara back into his arms. “What’s up?”

  “We found a cell phone that we missed in our first pass through the wreckage of the helicopter. Pilot’s phone. The shooter’s was in too many pieces to put back together. Direct hit from what looked like a .45. But this phone was in a fancy case so the guts are mostly intact.”

  “Anything good on it?”

  “Velma, our resident tech-head, is working on it. I’ve seen her resurrect worse phones than this, but it takes as long as it takes.”

  “I’ll hope for short.”

  “Hope is a good thing,” the sheriff said, “so long as you don’t confuse it with reality.”

  Jay scratched his chest and tried not to yawn in the sheriff’s ear.

  “Anything else?” Jay asked.

  “They were freelancers.”

  “Local?”

  “In the way that Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana are local,” Cooke said. “Their street names—Sky High and Hilo—”

  “Hilo?” Jay asked, startled.

  “Surfer dude. Anyway, their names have come up before. Little bit of everything, but mostly the easy money in smuggling and delivery of drugs. Links to some pretty ugly acts, but that’s hearsay from cons who are trying to buy their way out of jail early.”

  “So they were kind of local, thanks to the drug trade.” Jay rubbed his head. “That explains the who and the how, but not the why. Don’t suppose you have a line on that?”

  “Nope. Just more on the who and the how. Of the two corpses, the pilot was the heavy hitter. His name has come up in the past as kind of a criminal fixer, getting crews together, moving stolen goods, that sort of thing. Which is why we’re interested in his phone in particular.”

  “Can you give me odds on something useful coming out of it?”

  “Define useful.”

  “The why of it.”

  Sara watched Jay closely, fingertips tracing her stitches as she remembered the horror of the Solvangs’ bodies, the terror of being pursued by a helicopter, and the feel of her own blood hot against her chilled skin.

  Why?

  For what?

  “Sorry, I have nothing about who hired them,” the sheriff said. “Unless something else happens, the D.A. wants to close this case and bury it deep. Fresh, unsolved murders aren’t a tourist attraction.”

  “What about the third set of boot prints?”

  “Crime tech can’t guarantee they were made at the same time as the other two, so the D.A. isn’t interested. Frankly, I can see his point. That set could be anywhere from recent to three months old.”

  “You need us to sign a statement for all this?” Jay asked.

  “Yeah, we can take an affidavit down here when you’re ready. Today would be a good time for you to be ready.”

  Jay’s eyes went to Sara and she nodded.

  “And then we’ll do some work at the gallery,” she said softly.

  “Call to let me know when you’re on the way,” the sheriff said. “Take care.”

  “You too, Cooke.” Jay punched out, looked at Sara, and rumbled, “Gallery?”

  “Don’t worry, you’ll be with me every minute. You’ll be the guy with the big claw hammer opening all those wooden crates.”

  “Well, that didn’t take long,” Sara said as they left the sheriff’s office. “They really are in a hurry to bury this case.”

  “Cooke will keep working on it when he has time.”

  “And so will you,” she said.

  “Until I have answers, I won’t stop.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to. Just—be careful. If the D.A.’s wrong and the third set of boot prints is related somehow, then it isn’t over.”

  “Cooke knows what I’m going to do. He’ll give me all the help he can without losing his job.”

  “Good to have the sheriff on your side.” She checked for traffic, stepped off the curb, and nearly slipped on a patch of black ice.

  “The suite is that way,” he said, pointing.

  “The soon-to-be-Custer gallery is this way. And don’t tell me I should rest. I’m on to your sexy tricks.”

  “What if I said I’m tired?”

  “I wouldn’t believe you.”

  He followed her to the storefront. From several blocks over came the clang and bustle of a building site. It was away from the tourism, yet probably related to it. Tourism was the only growth industry in Jackson.

  “This building is on the wrong side of your ‘antler park,’” he said, looking at the empty display windows. “This block isn’t nearly as trendy. In fact, there’s talk of building a parking garage a few blocks over. Gotta have a place to stash all those fancy tourist cars while the owners leave Jackson richer than they found it.”

  “This building is in transition,” she said, “but it still has the bones of the frontier West beneath. Like Jackson itself.”

  “Wait until you see the back entrance, where we’re going in. It’s old, all right.”

  He stopped and fished in his pockets. Instead of the gloves she expected, he pulled out some no-skid tracks and pulled them over the soles of his boots.

  “I haven’t seen those since I lived in Chicago one winter.”

  “Except in summer, people around here carry them all the time. Like gloves. We’ll have to get you some tomorrow.”

  He led her down a paved alley where snow lurked in dark corners and trash bins waited to be picked up. No matter how spiffy and well cleared the street front was, the back of the brick or wooden buildings hadn’t changed much in one hundred years. Dirty piles of snow lay beneath fresh. The smell of cooking food and hot oil wafted across the alley. Susie’s Kitchen was painted over the back door opposite from where they stood.

  The gallery’s back door was locked, but hardly secure. It wouldn’t take two seconds and a crowbar to open the padlock and hasp. One more thing on the to-do list, Jay thought. Way too much went to hell while I was gone and JD was sick.

  In the failing late-afternoon light, Sara looked at the padlock, remembering another one in Fish Camp. She could still see Jay unlocking it: 9, 2, 7, 0.

  He went through the motions again. Exactly.

  “This one is the same as the one in Fish Camp?” she asked, watching him work.

  “When JD’s memory began to go, he had all the Vermilion locks changed to the same code.” He yanked down on the padlock to open it. “I’ve been meaning to fix that, but had no reason to put it at the top of my work list.”

  She inhaled deeply and said, surprised, “That’s minestrone.”

  “Susie’s is a good place to eat when you’re in a hurry,” Jay said. “The soup doesn’t come out of a can. The hours are iffy, though. If there aren’t enough customers, they close.” He flipped on an interior light. “Watch your step in here. I left a mess when I opened the crates earlier. The crate tops—with their nails sticking out—are propped against the workroom walls.”

  “Are t
he paintings all right?” she asked quickly.

  “Nothing damaged that I saw. A minor miracle, all things considered.”

  She pushed at his waist impatiently and felt the Glock beneath his jacket. “Let me see them.”

  He stepped aside. “Have at it. I’ll get the other lights.”

  “Where is Muse?”

  “In one of the empty crates.”

  She laughed. “Hide in plain sight.”

  “Pretty much. Until I figure out why Liza’s stuck on that painting, I don’t want it ‘disappearing’ again.”

  Jay strode between the long, sheet-covered tables, the pegboards, and the empty easels that had been left behind by the previous tenant. One of the tables held the big claw hammer he had used to pry open the crates. He’d swept off that sheet and left it heaped on the table, out of his way.

  “Watch the sheets,” he said. “They’re easy to trip over.”

  Sara stayed behind while more lights came on in the front room. She thought of protesting at working in a fishbowl until she remembered that the display windows out front were walled in at the sides and back to give more walls for showing the previous tenant’s art in the main room. Humming under her breath, she pulled clean white gloves from her big purse and began removing paintings from cartons.

  Some of the paintings were still framed. Most weren’t. None of the frames were elaborate. In fact, they were cheap.

  “Were all of these framed once?” she asked.

  “Mostly. When JD crated them and took them to Fish Camp, he left the frames behind in the storage yard here or in the ranch barn. We used them for kindling. Does it matter?”

  “Only if the artist personally made or approved of the frames.”

  “Custer didn’t give a damn.”

  “I could have guessed that,” she said, placing a painting against the wall.

  She tried not to notice how the brushstrokes all but leaped off the canvas, demanding attention and underlining the power of the mountains at the same time. No matter what Custer had been as a person, he was a fine artist.

  Jay helped her lay out the paintings, kicking sheets out of the way as he arranged and rearranged the paintings according to some logic that Sara didn’t share. That didn’t bother him. It was enough to see her humming and smiling over aspects of various paintings that he probably would never appreciate in the same way.

  But he appreciated her in so many ways.

  “Okay,” she said finally, looking at all the paintings. “Would you get Muse? I want to see it in the context of his other early work. I’ll set up an easel in the workroom. The light is better there.”

  “For a kiss.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll get Muse for a kiss,” he said.

  “Three kisses, and that’s my final offer.”

  Smiling, he pulled her close and claimed his payment before he went to get the painting. As soon as he put Muse on an easel, the overhead lights made the woman’s eyes the center of the painting’s reality. There was something in them, something both ordinary and yet out of reach. Her eyes were haunted by something that he’d seen before but didn’t expect to find caught within a cheap frame.

  Desperation.

  Jay’s phone went off, singing It’s the end of the world as we know it.

  “Kill it,” she said.

  “Can’t. It’s the sheriff. I gave him a special ringtone.” He pulled out his phone. “What’s up? Did we forget to initial something?”

  The implication that Jay and Cooke would be calling each other so often that a special ring was needed made Sara frown.

  I want it to be over.

  But it wasn’t.

  She knew it deep inside, where primitive instincts whispered of ambush and bloody death. Even if she had been able to fool herself that everything was all right, there was Jay, relaxed yet fully alert, automatically checking the Glock at his back as he listened to Sheriff Cooke.

  Cooke’s voice was gravel rough. “You sitting down?”

  Jay leaned his hip against a nearby worktable.

  “Close enough,” he said. “Go.”

  “The good news is that we got Velma to lay on hands and bring that pilot’s cell phone back from the dead. For a little while, anyway.”

  “Good. Now give me the bad.”

  “We have not one but two calls coming in from a number in town.” Cooke read it off, including the area code.

  “Don’t know it,” Jay said.

  “It’s listed to Liza Neumann.”

  Jay sucked in his breath and went cold as disbelief and certainty fought in his head.

  How could I have misjudged her so badly?

  “Are you positive?” he asked.

  “It’s good enough for phone company billing, so, yes, I’m positive. I’m going to roll over to Liza’s address and see what she has to say. You want to meet me there?”

  “Give me a ten-minute head start.”

  “Can I trust you?” Cooke asked bluntly.

  “For ten minutes? Yes.”

  “Are you taking Sara with you?”

  “No,” he said. Even without a drop of blood spilled, it’s going to be ugly.

  “Then stash her somewhere public. Safe.”

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “The D.A. might not be worried, but that third set of boot prints is keeping me up at night.”

  “I hear you.”

  Jay shut down the call and walked to the back where Sara was studying Muse with a hand-sized magnifying glass and a small flashlight pulled from her bottomless purse. He thought of the larger belt flashlight he always wore and wondered if he should leave it for her.

  “Jay,” she said, “I think there is—”

  “Sorry,” he interrupted. “I’ve got to run.”

  “Are you meeting Cooke?”

  “He has a hot lead. You’re going to Susie’s for soup. I’ll meet you there when I get back. It shouldn’t be long.”

  “Then I’ll stay here.”

  “No,” he said. “Not alone. You’ll have company at Susie’s.”

  “I’d rather stay and study Muse,” she said. “I think I’ve—”

  “When I get back, you can study until your eyes cross,” he cut in, picking up her shearling jacket. “Hell, we can sleep in the gallery if you want.”

  “What about the lights?” she asked as they marched out of the work area to the back door.

  “Later,” he said, moving fast.

  After he hustled her outside, he closed and locked the door in a few swift motions.

  She planted her feet stubbornly in the twilight alley where intermittent storm cells spat rain or snow. “What is this red-hot new lead that can’t wait another minute?”

  He thought about picking her up, opening the back door of Susie’s Kitchen, and carrying her into the café. Instead he took her arm and began walking out of the alley and around to the front of the building.

  “The shooter’s phone had received two calls from a number in Jackson,” he said.

  She looked around suddenly, feeling hunted again. “Where in Jackson?”

  “A listing billed to Liza Neumann. That’s why you’re going to hang out at Susie’s Kitchen. Liza will make this talk as ugly as possible. I don’t want you there.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  Sara wrapped her jacket more closely as she quickstepped to keep up with Jay’s long strides. Despite wearing her hiking boots, she slid a few times on new patches of ice left by clouds that wanted to snow but ended up spitting icy slush. They were spitting now, stinging pellets that raked bare skin.

  “You say Susie’s has good soup?” she asked.

  “Nothing fancy, but it’s good.”

  “Soup it is.” Then, “Wait. I left Muse in plain sight.”

  “Nobody can see into the store. Everything will hold until I get back.”

  “Don’t dawdle,” she said, wanting to be back at the gallery so much she all but vibrated. “Mus
e is calling to me. I think I found a way to reveal her secrets. I took a picture and—”

  “Good,” he said over her excited words, his mind on Liza and what she might say. “I’ll look at it when I get back. Half an hour, tops.”

  Jay opened the door to the eatery, pulled Sara inside, and spotted a booth at the rear. “Here you go.” He tucked her into the booth, threw a twenty on the table, and kissed her swiftly. “The condo is about a mile away. I’ll call if I’m going to be more than half an hour.”

  He was gone before she could tell him again that she would rather be studying Muse. As she watched him leave, she felt like she had been dropped by a whirlwind into a place with cozy booths and the muted chatter of a handful of people enjoying their meals.

  A server appeared. Sara ordered the first thing that came to her mind. Then she settled back and tried to gather her scattered thoughts.

  No point in wasting time. I’ll study the pictures of Muse I took.

  Sara reached into her bag for her telephone, only to discover that both telephone and bag had been left behind in Jay’s rush to leave the gallery. The phone was on a table in the back room where she had photographed Muse. Her purse was in a corner somewhere.

  At least Jay had remembered what was left behind. He’d given her enough cash to pay for her food.

  Damn it, she thought. He was in such a tearing rush to dump me here and I was so involved in Muse that I didn’t even think about what I was leaving behind.

  Her thoughts were still churning, harder than ever now that she didn’t have the painting to distract her.

  How can he call me if my phone is in the gallery?

  Did Liza really know the pilot? And why would she know someone like that?

  If Jay died, Liza wouldn’t inherit, Barton would. That’s a motive of sorts. Although I’d hate to depend on his generosity for survival.

  But why murder the Solvangs?

  And most of all, why now? Why not years ago when JD was sick and Jay was half a world away?

  Sara drummed her fingers on the table, barely noticing when the server put soup in front of her.

  What a bloody, murderous tangle.

  Still crackling with unanswered questions, she lifted a steaming spoonful of minestrone and blew gently. A glance at her watch told her she had been in the restaurant less than ten minutes.