Die in Plain Sight

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Rory shrugged and smiled. “Sorry. Old habits and all that.”

  Bliss ignored her ex-husband. She’d had a lot of experience doing that, as Rory had worked for her father before, during, and after their marriage. Ward Forrest had never quite forgiven her for divorcing Rory, “the only one of the lot with balls.” She had to admit that the sheriff did indeed have an impressive pair, but he never used them on her behalf outside of sex. Yes sir was all he ever said to his father-in-law. It was pretty much the same when it came to her brother, too.

  What was the point of having a badge and a gun if all you did was kiss ass?

  Savoy looked around the table. As always, at least one of the Pickford arm of the “family” was present. Sandra Wheaten Savoy’s nephew Steven the accountant or his son Jason the lawyer didn’t miss a meeting, or a trick, when it came to making sure that the Pickfords’ fifteen percent of the action produced every possible dime of money. Today it was Steven who waited to argue pennies, his eyes and pencils sharp, calculator at the ready.

  Also present and ready to fight were the Savoy Sharks, the two New York lawyers who kept minutes, digital recordings, and score at every Savoy Enterprises meeting. The men had names, but only Savoy remembered them. To the rest of the family, lawyers were as interchangeable as they were important.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” Savoy said to them.

  Both lawyers smiled graciously. They were on retainer and Savoy Forrest was the man who signed their checks.

  “The governor wanted to know if she could count on our support for her re-election,” Savoy continued, looking around the table. “I assured her that she could.”

  Bliss made a rude noise and smoothed her hair, which was several shades of blond and cost four hundred bucks a month to keep that way. She resented the governor because she kissed Savoy’s ass instead of hers. But then, so did everyone else at the table except Pickford. He was simply a pain in everyone’s ass. He liked the governor well enough, though. She’d quietly pushed some amendments through the state legislature that resulted in a tax windfall for Savoy Ranch—and thus for the Pickfords’ fifteen percent. The vice president of the United States was trying to do the same for the Savoy Ranch at the federal level.

  “Now, for the first item of business,” Savoy said, shuffling through the soft leather folder in front of him and pulling out papers. “You know how honored the Savoy-Forrest family is that the Savoy California Impressionist Museum has been selected to receive the—”

  “Christ,” Pickford said loudly, “is this going to cost us more money? At last count you’d spent twenty million of our corporate money building a museum and acquiring so-called art for your private collection of—”

  “Not private,” cut in one of the Savoy Sharks. “The museum is a tax-exempt, nonprofit organization funded and run by Savoy Enterprises for the cultural enrichment of the community, county, state, and nation. The museum is open to the public on a regular, published basis and—”

  “Spare me the legal bullshit,” Pickford said over the lawyer’s words. “Everyone knows that Savoy Forrest and his daddy pick all the paintings and some of them hang in the Savoy Museum Wednesday through Saturday. Only fifteen paintings are on display at any one time, and you’ve got more than two hundred of the things. If that isn’t private use of Savoy Enterprises money, it sure as hell looks like it to me.”

  “Your legal opinion didn’t hold up in court,” one lawyer said coolly, shooting his cuff.

  “Only because Savoy Forrest owns the bench and the honorable ass on it.”

  “Thank you for your input, as always,” Rory said. “Do drive safely and well within the speed limit on your way home.”

  Pickford shifted his suit coat and shut up for the moment.

  Savoy reached out, checked his sister’s watch, and said, “Almost thirty seconds without an argument. A new record. My compliments, Steven.”

  Rory snickered.

  Bliss bit her lip against a smile. Savoy knew just how to jerk the Pickford chain and look innocent as an egg while doing it.

  Savoy lit a cigarette and waited. Smoke rose swiftly, sucked away by the air-filtration system.

  No one spoke.

  “Shall we try for thirty-one?” he asked.

  “Just cut to the chase,” Pickford said, tapping his well-manicured fingers on the table. “This isn’t a press conference called to congratulate the true Savoy blood on their civic virtue. You have the power, so you have a tax-exempt hobby that takes money away from taxpayers in general and the Pickford family in particular. Next topic, please.”

  “You’re welcome to visit the museum,” Rory said. “I’ll make sure you get a free pass.”

  Pickford gave him a slicing sideways look.

  Savoy drew on his cigarette, then placed it in the smokeless ashtray Bliss had nagged him into using. “I’m afraid the next topic won’t please you, Steven. This board has been invited to host a table at the Friends of Moreno County charity dinner and auction.”

  “Charity is only free if you’re poor,” Pickford said. “How much will it cost?”

  “Ten thousand dollars for a party of eight.”

  Pickford rolled his eyes: fifteen percent of $10,000 was $1,500.

  “Cheap. Good publicity, too,” Bliss added, yawning. “Buy two tables and put Rory at the other one with Daddy.”

  “Excellent suggestion,” Savoy said. “Sure to improve everyone’s digestion. Rory?”

  “He wants the family together, in public, and not arguing or getting drunk.”

  Rory carefully didn’t look at his ex, who had almost made headlines taking a swing at the cop who arrested her for drunk driving. Fortunately, the cop had been a sheriff’s deputy who knew which side his bread was buttered on. He’d tossed Bliss in the back of the squad car and drove her home to her daddy.

  “If he wants a public love feast, separate us,” Bliss said.

  Rory shook his head, making light slide and shine over the gray temples that turned a rather boyish face into a dignified one. “Mr. Forrest was pretty clear that he wanted a united Savoy table for the press to see.” And more important, to reassure Angelique White that the family was in accord on the subject of the merger.

  But Bliss was dead set against anything that had to do with developing the ranch, so talking about Angelique wouldn’t increase the peace.

  Rory also didn’t say aloud what everyone at the conference already knew—Ward Forrest might be more than seventy, but he looked and acted like a fit fifty. Although he’d willingly handed over the reins of corporate power to his two favorite children ten years ago so that he could pursue various hobbies and interests, the bulk of the actual wealth was still under Ward’s control. The leash on Bliss and Savoy was long, but it was real.

  “If press coverage is the issue, tell Daddy to sit at La Susa’s table,” Bliss said, using the media’s name for Susa Donovan, who signed her paintings with a simple Susa. “The Donovan matriarch is the driving power behind the auction as well as being the celebrity that reporters will line up five-deep to interview.”

  Rory ignored her.

  So did everyone else.

  “Fine, one table,” Savoy said, making a note in the margin and turning to the next topic.

  “Where is my side of the family sitting?” Pickford asked. “These tables aren’t big enough for more than eight, and I’m sure the Pickford women will want to attend with us.”

  “I thought you didn’t like art,” Savoy said.

  “I don’t. Make sure there’s room for at least eight Pickfords at a Savoy Enterprises table.”

  “Two tables,” Savoy said, making another note. “At opposite ends of the room.” He looked up at Rory. “Unless Dad wants to include collateral relatives in the love feast?”

  Rory laughed. “Only if it’s their funeral he’s attending.”

  Savoy smiled slightly. Ward had hated the Pickford family at first look forty years ago. Nothing had changed since then.

 
Nothing would.

  “The next item on our agenda,” Savoy said, shifting papers, “is the suit filed against the corporation by Concerned Citizens for Sane Development. We have to decide whether we want to settle out of court and agree to cut the density of our planned Artists Cove community by two thirds, or spend the next decade in court while continuing to pay taxes as if the land is already developed. Or we could put the land in Agricultural Reserve, save tax money, and in all probability lose the ability to ever develop that tract of the ranch in the future.”

  “You can develop whatever you want, as long as it isn’t on my half of the ranch,” Bliss said. “That half includes Sandy Cove, which is the real name of Artists Cove.”

  “You don’t own half of anything,” Rory shot back, “and Sandy Cove doesn’t exist on any map. Artists Cove does.”

  “Keep your goddamn bulldozers out of the old family land where our ancestors lived and died,” Bliss snarled.

  “Waterfront is the most profitable land to develop on the ranch, and Artists Cove is just a small part of what should be on the table,” Pickford said loudly. “We’re getting eaten alive by taxes and—”

  Bliss, Pickford, and Rory started talking over one another.

  “Ladies first,” Savoy said, rapping the ashtray sharply on the table.

  “That would be you,” Rory said to Pickford.

  When the accountant came halfway out of his chair, Savoy sat down, picked up his cigarette, and took a long, soothing pull. He would need any help he could get not to lose his temper. The meetings resembled nothing so much as the family brawl they were. It had always been that way. It always would be. The only thing that changed was the names of the players snarling at each other, wasting time when there wasn’t any to waste.

  He hadn’t even brought up the New Horizons merger yet. When he did, Bliss would really go ballistic—most of the proposed development was on land she thought of as “hers.”

  But there was no choice. Angelique White had made it clear that the suit with Concerned Citizens for Sane Development had to be settled before she would consider a contract merging the future of Savoy Enterprises with that of New Horizons. From what he had seen of the balance sheets, there wasn’t any choice about that merger, either. In the brave new world of the twenty-first century, it was merge or die.

  Savoy took another drag on his cigarette. Even if nothing else went wrong, it was going to be a hairy bitch of a month.

  Newport Beach

  Tuesday afternoon

  6

  Lost Treasures Found was located off Pacific Coast Highway, several blocks up on the inland side where monthly rents weren’t the same as the national debt of an emerging nation. The streets weren’t swept as often as they should be and the homeless people took up informal residence at night, but there were no drugs or prostitutes. Yet.

  One day Lacey fully expected to own a shop facing traffic on the water side of the heavily traveled highway. One day, but not this one. Today she was happy to meet the rent with enough left over from her half of the profits to buy groceries and finance her twice-weekly forays to flea markets, garage sales, thrift stores, and estate sales. Along with handicrafts that Shayla found in the United States and South America, informal noncommercial sales were the major source of the contents of the store—the lost treasures of other days and places, waiting on the shelves to be found in the here and now.

  Awkwardly Lacey let herself in the back door of the shop, juggling three bundled-up paintings along with a big cloth purse that often did duty as an overnight bag. The frisky ocean wind wasn’t any help. She felt like a kite without a string.

  Lacey kicked the door shut behind her and listened for the sound of her partner, who had left the storage unit earlier to take the afternoon shift in the store. But even with the door shut, she couldn’t hear anything except the muted steel river of Pacific Coast Highway traffic pouring by a quarter mile away.

  “Shayla?” Lacey called out.

  “Back here, admiring your latest painting.”

  “Ouch. Sounds like a thrilling day at the retail level.”

  Shayla’s laughter floated from the apartment over the shop. “Between one and two o’clock, we made overhead and then some, and we don’t close for a couple hours yet.”

  “Thank you, Lord.”

  “You need any help getting that stuff upstairs?” Shayla asked.

  “So far, so good.”

  Lacey headed for the back staircase that led to the upper floor where she lived, painted her own kind of plein air dreams, and kept extra merchandise when the downstairs got too full and Shayla’s brother didn’t have any spare storage units to give them rent-free.

  The sound of something bumping against the walls brought Shayla to the head of the stairs. She saw her friend struggling under bundles that were half as big as she was.

  “Told you I should have taken at least one of them,” Shayla said.

  “Nope. Anything happens to these suckers, I want to be the one in line for the butt-kicking.”

  “Hon, they aren’t that valuable.”

  “We’ll leave that for Susa Donovan to decide. As far as I’m concerned, my grandfather is the undiscovered genius of California plein air painters.”

  Shaking her head, Shayla descended the stairs in time to catch a painting that wanted to cartwheel off into the great unknown. “Which one is this?”

  “Don’t know.” Lacey blew a chestnut curl out of her eyes.

  “I’d hate to think I rescued that wretched murder painting.”

  “Then don’t.”

  “Rescue it?”

  “Think.”

  Shayla started to say something, then shook her head. Following her friend’s unexpected turns of thought was more than Shayla was up to right now. Between packing for her next buying trip to the Andes and trying to catch up on inventory, she had a headache big enough to share with a stadium.

  “Right,” she said. “I won’t think.”

  Lacey propped the wrapped paintings against a stack of unframed finished canvases—hers, not her grandfather’s. When the paintings started to slide, she stopped them with one of the big fire extinguishers she kept in her upstairs apartment.

  The shop door chimed cheerfully.

  “My public calls,” Shayla said, heading for the stairway.

  “I’ll take it,” Lacey said, talking as she raced out and down the stairs. “You deserve a break after the inventory stuff. There’s some fresh orange juice in the fridge. Or beer, since it’s been that kind of day already.”

  She was going so fast that most of what she said was overheard by Ian Lapstrake, who was browsing downstairs. He voted in silent sympathy for the beer and that kind of day. Then he went back to cruising the shop for his own personal idea of treasure: Western movie posters from the time before southern California and the Southwest was paved over, smogged out, and generally screwed up by growth.

  That was why he’d left L.A. early and cut over to Pacific Coast Highway before going to the John Wayne airport to pick up Susa Donovan—if you looked fast and not too hard, there were glimpses of the old California just off the coast highway. That was how he’d discovered Lost Treasures Found, a twenties bungalow wedged between a fast-food business and a con artist selling control of your own karma through the shop called Cosmic Energy. As far as Ian was concerned, it was earthly bullshit. But then, people had accused him of being a cynic in the past.

  Lacey spotted her new customer before she reached the bottom of the stairs. Uneasiness flared in her. Though his back was to her, it was clear that he was at least six feet tall, with shoulders wide enough to fill out his black denim jacket. She was suddenly glad that Shayla was upstairs. Most of her customers were women alone or dragging a bored and boring husband along. Whatever this man was, he wasn’t boring.

  “May I help you?” she asked professionally.

  “Just looking for old movie posters,” Ian said, turning around.

  At first glance the
girl standing a cautious five yards from him didn’t look old enough to work. A second glance told him what he already knew—looks were deceiving. Beneath the mop of loose curls were measuring cinnamon-brown eyes and a mouth that waited to see whether it would smile. Not a girl at all. A woman dressed in paint-spattered shirt and jeans and totally unaware of it.

  “Old movies,” she said. “Film noir?”

  “Westerns.”

  “I should have guessed.”

  He looked at his feet. “How? No cowboy boots.”

  “Denim jacket.”