Perfect Touch

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “We’ve got four seasons here,” he said, shutting and locking the door behind himself. “Three of them have ‘winter’ in the name. We’re in ‘still winter,’ right on the edge of ‘construction season.’ Last week’s sun? That was a little tease. Not that we wait for good weather to build things around here. The ground thaws enough, building begins.”

  As he talked, he led her to the elevator just off the lobby. In the light from the overhead fluorescent bulbs, her skin looked too pale. Yet even in the harsh light, her beauty caught at his heart. Her features were a woman’s still holding the sweet memory of youth.

  How can I let her go?

  On the heels of that inner cry came the answer. She’s not yours to keep. Remember that. Enjoy what we have. Sometimes tomorrow never comes.

  “Mark Twain said he never had a winter so cold as summer in San Francisco,” Sara said as the elevator slid smoothly upward.

  “I don’t think Twain spent too much time butted up against the Tetons in still-winter-should-be-spring.”

  He walked her to the door of the suite. Nobody was in sight. The hall carpet had been freshly vacuumed. Their footprints were the only ones that showed. Even so, once the door was unlocked, he and the Glock made a fast tour of the suite.

  Empty.

  He holstered the Glock and went back to the hall.

  “Clear?” Sara asked.

  “Clear. Pick your bedroom.”

  “The one with you in it.”

  He locked the hallway door and turned back to her. “You need sleep.”

  “I need you.”

  He pulled her close, holding her, rocking gently. “I’m here.”

  For now.

  The phone in his shirt pocket buzzed. He held Sara firmly against him for a moment longer, breasts soft against his chest, before reaching for his cell.

  She felt his muscles flex as he pulled the phone out and looked at it.

  “It’s Cooke.” He hit the answer button. “Hello, Sheriff. Anything new?”

  She nestled in again, hearing his voice rumbling through his chest against her face. He slid his fingers into her hair and rubbed her scalp.

  “Unless you feel like taking a drive right now,” Cooke said, “I’ll be sending you some pictures.”

  “Send them. It’s damned cold outside.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Cooke said. “I’m ankle deep in icy mush, looking at a wrecked helicopter.”

  “Our shooters crashed?”

  “Somebody did. White with a diagonal green stripe, null registration numbers, and seven bullet holes that we’ve found so far. You know where the weaknesses in a chopper are.”

  “The biggest one is the pilot,” Jay said.

  “You got him, too. Helicopter went in hard.”

  “What about the shooter?”

  “He packed it in with the bird,” Cooke said. “No need for another medevac run. These boys are one hundred percent dead. Cut and dried, at least as helicopter drive-by shootings go. Which I think is a first for Jackson County. Congratulations.”

  “Am I in trouble?” Jay asked.

  “We’ll need a statement, but that’s it. Personally, I think you did the county a favor.”

  “The only favor I was looking for was survival. Is there anything beyond circumstantial to tie this to Fish Camp?”

  “A Paul Basal Shadow—fourteen inches of knife for the man who’s afraid his dick is too short.”

  “He won’t need to worry about that now,” Jay said.

  Cooke laughed darkly. “No, he surely won’t. Serrated top on the knife. Should make a distinctive mark on flesh. I’ll let you know when we make the match. And if I don’t hear from you right away, I’ll assume that the pictures I send are of the same helicopter that shot at you.”

  “I’ll check as soon as you hang up.”

  “You two get some rest now. I’ll see you tomorrow and—Oh, wait. Almost forgot. My gum-chewing crime tech sorted out three tread patterns at the death scene. The pilot and the shooter are good for two of them. The third one was in some spilled paint and was probably made earlier than the others. Didn’t match any boots the Solvangs owned, though. Henry never wears anything but cowboy boots, and the tread wasn’t anything like your old combat boots.”

  “I guess it’s a good thing I’m armed,” Jay said.

  “Stay that way. I don’t have a spare deputy to watch over you. You two sleep good, now.”

  CHAPTER 24

  DON’T LOOK SO discouraged,” Jay said to Sara the following morning. “The weather is mostly sunny, we have another whole building to search, and more receptionists to terrorize. The day is young.” He yawned. “A lot younger than I am. Not that I’m complaining.”

  “Your fault. You decided that I was so fragile that you had to take your time. Hoo-hah! No complaints here.”

  He laughed so hard he had to lean on the building.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I think you meant ‘booyah.’” He snickered.

  “Isn’t that what I said?”

  “Not quite. Military slang can be tricky.”

  “What did I say?” she asked.

  “I’ll tell you when we aren’t in public.” He swallowed a laugh. “But now that I think of it, you were accurate. For me, it was the best part of the night. Snug and hot and—”

  “I’m getting the message,” she cut in. “Part of the female anatomy, right?”

  “Oh yeah. Very female.”

  She just shook her head and wished she could laugh, too. But the Vermilion building where they had stayed the night, and searched after breakfast, was empty of any portraits. There had been other landscapes—a few quite valuable—by various artists, but nothing that resembled Muse.

  The second building to be searched was three stories of red-yellow brickwork and modest yet extensive concrete façade work that was a century old. Morning light slanted across it. The word VERMILION stood out in an arc of capital letters.

  “Office manager said there’s a master key in his office waiting for us,” Jay said.

  He took her up the stairs slowly, one at a time, his arm around her waist in case she needed help.

  And his eyes searched every shadow for someone lying in wait.

  “You’re being ridiculous,” she said as he practically lifted her to the next step. “Sweet, but ridiculous.”

  “I’m not taking any chances.” I don’t want either of us to end up in the sheriff’s photos, smashed and bloody, wearing a look of terror. “Talk to me about exactly what we’re looking for. There was a portrait in that other building that you didn’t look at twice.”

  “Custer used hard edges, bold strokes, lots of contrast, especially in his color choices. But he also said in one of the notes I found that for ‘her’ he painted like Monet. Impressionistic, softer lines, romantic.”

  “Custer as a romantic. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  The interior of the building was sturdy and austere, grudgingly acknowledging modernity with its clean lines and lack of ornamentation. The hallways were lit with suspended lamps still burning incandescent bulbs.

  There was art between every doorway, on every wall, and in every hallway.

  “Good Lord,” Sara said, and checked the charge on her phone. Three quarters full.

  “I’m told the people who work here refer to it as the museum,” he said.

  “Better than the ‘mausoleum,’ which was what I called the first office I worked in.”

  Jay picked up the key at the reception desk and they began searching. Sara tried to do justice to each painting, taking photographs and brief notes, but after the first hour they all ran together into one category: not Muse.

  She leaned against a wall and sighed.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Tired.”

  “I knew that this was overdoing it.”

  “It has to be done. By me,” she added firmly.

  “But you don’t have to be on your feet, do you?”<
br />
  He went back to an empty office and returned with a rolling desk chair. He nudged it against the back of her knees in silent command.

  Relieved, she sat down.

  “Only another two rooms on this floor,” he said. “The good news is that most of the art is on the main floor for the public to see. The local schools tour every year.”

  “The bad news,” Sara said, “is we’re flat running out of places to look. You sure JD didn’t have any paintings in the storage unit?”

  “If he did, they weren’t listed on the inventory sheet he kept at the ranch.”

  The final two rooms yielded two Custers each.

  Landscapes.

  “Right,” she said. “Wheel me down to the elevator and we’ll check the other floors.”

  He looked at her face. It was grim and set, a person nerving up for the last of a grueling hike.

  “Let’s rest and then—” he began.

  “I won’t walk anymore,” she cut in. “Let’s just do this.”

  After a few minutes, the elevator door opened like the antique it was. Sara eyed the threshold of the cage, which was nearly an inch higher than the hallway. A normal wheelchair would have had no problem. The office chair would send her flying at the first hard bump.

  She started to stand up, only to find herself lifted, chair and all, into the elevator.

  “Maybe you’re not David,” she said. “Maybe you’re Goliath.”

  “Too many eyes.”

  She smiled faintly and touched his cheek. “You’re thinking of ogres.”

  Jay kissed her gently and punched in the second floor. The cage lurched upward. When the doors opened, it was the hallway that was higher than the cage. He had to lift the chair out.

  The second floor seemed to specialize in historic photographs plus a few paintings of historical events. It didn’t take long to search before they were back in the hallway. When the elevator door opened, the feeling of being lifted no longer surprised her, but it did give her an acute understanding of Jay’s strength.

  He’s always so careful with me, I forget how powerful he is.

  The cage lurched upward.

  “Historical photographs are enjoying a revival,” she said. “Some of those were of quite high quality. That DiMaggio painting of Hoover Dam under construction would make some collector very happy. If you want to sell, I could recommend appropriate experts.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind when the fire sale kicks in.” He watched her from the corner of his eye. She looked drawn, pale, but he didn’t know how much of it was a hangover from yesterday and how much was disappointment. “Only one office to search up here. JD used it until he was too sick to care. Then he went back to the ranch to die. The other offices are held by tenants who do their own decorating.”

  Just one room? Sara thought, horrified that the search was all but over. Her hand fisted on the arm of the chair.

  Saying nothing, he loosened her fingers and kissed her palm.

  The elevator was level this time. He rolled her to an office door, unlocked it, and rolled her through.

  The wall opposite the desk was dominated by a beautiful canvas of Jackson Hole, a muscular sunset study in pink and magenta and violet. It was signed by Weekly.

  “That’s stunning,” she said. “I never understood why Weekly didn’t become a bigger name.”

  “Maybe his art was bought by people who weren’t interested in the critics.”

  She half smiled. “I think you’re right.”

  The other walls were filled with Custer’s work.

  Landscapes.

  “More empty land with a huge sky looming above,” she said. Then, “Listen to me. Not long ago I couldn’t get enough of his work and now I’m disappointed because these aren’t the mythical portrait.”

  “I’ll bet Ahab felt the same,” Jay said. “Just another damn whale.”

  He parked her near JD’s immense desk. Idly she ran a hand over its spotless surface.

  “You could land a helicopter on this,” she said, then grimaced. “Sorry. I guess I still feel kind of hunted.”

  “So do I,” he said, thinking of the third pair of boot prints.

  “Probably because we’ve been hunted.”

  He shrugged and returned to the topic of the desk. “Roomy underneath, too.” He tapped it with a knuckle and laughed. “When I was a kid and Mother was too sick to watch me, JD would bring me here and park me under the desk with some comics. Then he would pace around talking on the phone, not even seeing the paintings on the walls.”

  “There’s no Muse,” Sara said starkly. “Odds are, it never existed. Why is Liza so convinced it’s real? She was acting like she was there to see it and hold it.”

  “She acts like that about everything. It’s her world and we’re just tenants who don’t pay enough rent.” Jay ran through the desk drawers one at a time, flipping through their contents. “There’s some old paperwork here, too. Maybe I really will do a family history.”

  She scanned some of the papers. “That’s all about ranch land and head counts and not about the paintings.” She chewed on her lip and stared at something only she could see.

  He took her hand and placed it between his. She was hot. Not fever-hot, just alive-hot. “Relax, sweetheart. We have six more days.”

  “To do what?” she asked. “Rent a van, go picking in old houses, hit swap meets and galleries for two hundred miles around? Maybe we can sell the reality show.”

  He laughed.

  She put both hands on the chair as if to brace herself to stand.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.

  “I saw a restroom sign down the hall.”

  “Good idea. I could use one myself.”

  He rolled her out the door and down the hall, stopping at a door marked LADIES. The one marked GENTS was across the hall.

  “Easy does it,” he said, bracing her with his arm as she stood.

  “I’m not made of spun sugar,” she grumbled.

  He licked his lips. “Could have fooled me.”

  Ignoring him, she opened the door and shut it pointedly in his face. “Go find your own.”

  Naturally the room was dark. Sara began patting down the wall for the light switch.

  Welcome to Wyoming. Set the clocks back before motion-sensor lights were invented.

  Yet the meal last night was as sophisticated as any I’ve eaten.

  She found the switch and snapped it on. Light flooded the room. She went through the small vanity anteroom and into the restroom itself. When she turned down the aisle between the stalls, Sara stopped in disbelief.

  From the far wall, a woman stared back at her. She was icy, cast in pale pinks and purples, with green undertones to the shadows.

  Muse.

  In a bathroom.

  Stunned, she could only shake her head in disbelief.

  Muse wasn’t what she’d imagined at all. If this was a romantic portrait, it was the dark side of romanticism. Enigmatic, moody, vibrating with distance and emotions that were as difficult as the portrait itself. Though the rendering and technique were different from what Sara was used to seeing from Custer, there were enough echoes of his more familiar work that she had no doubt as to who had painted it.

  The woman herself was pleased, almost exultant. Sara could see it around her eyes and enigmatic smile. There was triumph, but no warmth to it, no generosity, nothing shared. It was the woman’s victory alone.

  Sara stood and stared at the painting, the female face almost lost in the shadows of the cabin backdrop, which was dusky gray and pale but for the indigo and violet of the starless sky pouring through the window. The painting wasn’t comforting at all, and in that it was unmistakably Custer.

  Studying Muse, Sara felt a sense of lost dreams and desperate longing.

  She also sensed that the painting itself was maddeningly incomplete, even at odds with itself. The dissonance in the canvas set her teeth on edge.

  Jay’s voi
ce yanked her out of the painting. “Sara? Are you all right? I know women take longer, but seven minutes?”

  “Come here,” she called. “Hurry.”

  Before she finished speaking he was in the door, through the powder room, and striding toward her.

  “Look,” she said. “Muse.”

  He stopped and stared at the painting, motionless, emotions cycling through his expression from confusion to wonder to relief to something else, something much more difficult to name.

  “In the ladies’ room,” he said. “So JD would never have to look at it. Son of a bitch.”

  “We found it!”

  She threw her arms around him, hugging him hard enough to make her stitches protest. He lifted her off her feet and spun her around before he put her down carefully.

  “Take Muse down,” she said. “I’ll help you carry it.”

  “I can—”

  “It’s not safe for just one person to carry. This painting isn’t leaving my sight until we can get it secured.”

  “Somewhere that Liza won’t know about it. Or Barton. Or—”

  “You’re not telling her?” Sara cut in.

  “No hurry. We’re holding the trump card now.” He looked at it, jaw set, studying the woman’s face. “But who the hell is this muse, and why would Liza care?”

  CHAPTER 25

  WHEN JAY TIPTOED back into their bedroom, the afternoon sun had gone over closer to sunset than to dawn. Moments later he was stripping.

  “You’re cold,” Sara mumbled as she pulled the blankets higher around her.

  “You’re warm,” he said as he slid naked into bed. He nuzzled beneath the blankets until he found a breast against his lips. “I sense real possibilities.”

  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.”