Die in Plain Sight

by Elizabeth Lowell

  All of a sudden, Ian understood. “You think you can date the canvases by their technique?”

  Lacey just kept shuffling paintings like cards whose numbers only she could read. The pouring side light made it easy. Differences in texture and technique leaped out like boulders. Between the fire paintings there were subtle differences in how thoroughly he covered the canvas, which brushes were favored and then not employed again, and whether or not he used the end of the brush to draw lines in colors; the possibilities for changing technique were infinite, but humans tended to settle into patterns that changed only slowly.

  While she worked she kept glancing over to the drowning paintings, but she didn’t reach for any of them. They were simply from another period in his artistic development.

  Finally all the fire paintings were lined up to Lacey’s satisfaction, or at least as much satisfaction as she was going to get right now. She glanced at the drowning pool canvases and again left them out of the lineup.

  “It’s not perfect,” she said, “but it’s the best I can do without spending hours at it. Now see if the numbers on the back of each painting make some kind of order the way I’ve lined them up. I’m betting that the farther down the row you go, the closer the match in numerical sequence will be.”

  Ian started at the far end and worked back to Lacey. “You’re right,” he said simply. “How did you do it?”

  “Technique. If I had all his paintings, I might be able to link the changes in technique across the years he painted.” She paused, then smiled crookedly. “More likely, I’d get impossibly confused. Human beings don’t develop in linear fashion, and artists are less linear than most. Anyway, the fire canvases were painted earlier than the water canvases. Probably quite a bit earlier. Decades, maybe.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “When Granddad painted with me a few years ago, his technique was the same as in the water paintings. The eucalyptus painting that was stolen was created with thinner paints, so thin that the ground showed through in places. Not a fault, just a way of making the colors look transparent. The strokes are longer in the drowning paintings, too. More curved. In the fire paintings the strokes are narrower, more angular, more like the eucalyptus. There’s more blending of color layers in the fire paintings, a lot less in the drowning.”

  “Same artist?” Ian asked sharply.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Very. He might have changed the thickness of the paint or the angle of the stroke through the years, but the strokes themselves have the same…rhythm, I guess. They start very firmly and end with almost a sigh. Even the drowning pool. It gives an unmistakable feeling of movement to the paintings that’s uniquely his. My strokes begin light, thicken, and end with a swirl. Just the way I do things, I guess, but it gives a ‘feel’ to my paintings that is uniquely mine. Susa…Susa’s strokes are a graceful slow-motion explosion of energy, and always have been no matter how different the resulting paintings might be.”

  “Both style and technique,” Ian said.

  Lacey nodded. “Unfortunately, it’s only a way to date canvases in relation to other canvases. I can say one was probably painted before or after the other, but that’s all. Granddad didn’t leave a journal saying ‘Today, on nine October nineteen eighty-seven, I decided to use the palette knife more.’”

  “Interesting. You reversed the day and month.”

  She made a questioning noise, but it was the drowning pool paintings she was looking at, not Ian.

  Scream Bloody Murder

  “You said nine October instead of October ninth,” Ian explained.

  “Hangover from Grandfather,” Lacey said absently. “Like separating date and month and year with a period instead of a slash or putting a bar through sevens and Z’s—his way of being classy without a university degree.”

  Ian didn’t say anything. He was too busy digging up the notes he’d taken the night before. He flipped through them quickly. Benford Savoy III had died on June second. Lewis Marten had died on June fourth.

  2.6

  4.6

  Pieces of the puzzle he really didn’t want to fall into place fell there anyway. If he hadn’t been so worried about how any investigation would affect Lacey, he probably would have seen it sooner.

  “What?” Lacey asked, looking up at Ian.

  Instead of answering, he kept flipping pages, hoping he was wrong. He wasn’t. Gem Savoy had died on February ninth. 9.2 Just like the numbers painted across every version of the drowning pool.

  “Ian?” Lacey came to her feet. “What is it?”

  “The numbers on the front of each painting are death dates.” He pointed to the car wreck. “Three Savoy on June second. Marten on June fourth. And then, almost forty years later, Gem Savoy died on—”

  “February ninth,” Lacey cut in, looking at the drowning pool canvases. “Murdered.”

  There’s something wrong in Moreno County. Too many deaths. Not enough police work. Ain’t nothing changed. Stay away from it, boy.

  But Ian hadn’t.

  Digging up old graves was bad enough. Digging up old, buried murders was much worse—especially when the more pieces fell into place, the more holes in the puzzle he could see. But there was no help for it. It was too late to stop digging now.

  All he could hope was that he dug up the truth before it burned them alive.

  “Lacey? How did your grandfather die?”

  Newport Beach

  Noon Sunday

  51

  Bliss stood behind Rory, trying to knead the knots out of his neck and shoulders.

  “What was that call about?” she asked.

  “A tail. Subject spent some time in a storage yard, then got on the freeway. They just crossed the county line, headed east in an old SUV.”

  She paused. “Is this something to do with the hotel robbery?”

  “It sure as hell would be nice. But there wasn’t anything big enough to be stolen paintings in Lapstrake’s SUV, and there wasn’t any place to hide them.”

  “Doesn’t sound very hopeful,” Bliss said.

  Rory shrugged and expected to hear his shoulders creak. “I’ve gone through the files of every one of the security guards who worked at the hotel, plus the guys who installed the electronic lock-card system at the hotel. Nothing popped. Ex-cops, ex-military, nothing but good recommendations in their files and no sign of anything else in the last five years.”

  “What about Lapstrake?”

  “On paper, he’s a fucking saint.”

  “Now there’s an image.”

  Rory laughed and pulled Bliss into his lap for a quick, hard kiss.

  “The problem is,” he said, “if it’s not Lapstrake, I’m shit out of luck when it comes to leads.”

  Bliss nuzzled his neck. “Do you think he’s stupid enough, or arrogant enough, to work for Rarities, steal Susa Donovan’s paintings, and drive off with them in his own truck while being followed by your deputies?”

  “That’s what working inside is all about—arrogance. Nobody expects the guard to be the crook.”

  “Good thing you’re on the right side of the law.” She nipped his neck.

  “Why?”

  “God knows you’re arrogant enough to steal elevators in broad daylight.”

  “I’d have to be to marry you.”

  The kiss he gave her took her mind off the problem of inside or outside or anything at all except getting closer to him. She could hardly believe she was married again. To Rory Turner.

  Again.

  He was right. It took attitude. That’s what turned her on in a man. Brass balls and the arrogance to make them clang.

  But damn, it made them hard to live with.

  Pasadena

  Noon Sunday

  52

  Mother is all excited that I’m bringing a man home for Sunday dinner,” Lacey said gloomily. “I told her it was more or less business, but…” She sighed and shrugged at the same
time.

  “Are you trying to say that grilled Lapstrake will be on the menu?” Ian asked, smiling.

  She sighed. “Yeah. Oh, they’ll be polite about the grilling.” I hope.

  “But they’ll want to know which of your ancestors came over on the Mayflower and is your mother a Daughter of the American Revolution and that sort of stuff.”

  “None and no. There. Wasn’t that quick and painless?”

  Lacey watched him as he drove bumper to bumper at seventy miles an hour with all the rest of the southern California lemmings on their way back from a Sunday outing.

  “Not even a genuine horse thief hung from the old oak tree?” she asked after a few moments.

  Before he answered, Ian eased through several lanes of traffic to take an off-ramp that headed up toward the expensive hills of Pasadena.

  “Oh, I’ve got a few horse thieves in my background,” he said. “When Lapstrakes weren’t fishing and farming, they sort of alternated between being the cops and the robbers. Some of them were both. Made for interesting family reunions.”

  She saw both the humor and the acceptance in his expression. “You really don’t mind about Mom and Dad, do you? Like you didn’t mind when the deputies pulled us over just short of the Moreno County line and took a good look at the inside of the truck.”

  “It beat having them follow us up to your parents’ front door.”

  Lacey didn’t know whether to cringe or laugh at the idea of arriving home for dinner with an unmarked police vehicle right behind. And there would be no way to hide the official tail on her parents’ manicured, sweeping drive.

  “God, Mother would plotz.”

  “Sounds entertaining.”

  “It wouldn’t be. Guaranteed.”

  He gave Lacey a quick sideways glance. “Don’t worry, darling. I’ll be on my best meeting-the-parents behavior.”

  “Have you done a lot of it?”

  “What?”

  “Meeting parents,” Lacey said.

  “Nope. Never been married or even engaged. How about you?”

  “The same.”

  “Want to try it?”

  She blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “Getting engaged and married.”

  “Frankly, the whole thing scares the hell out of me.”

  “Me, too. Good thing we’re old enough to live together without the approval of parental units.” He grinned at her and then turned his attention back to driving. “How old was your grandfather when he disappeared in the desert?”

  Lacey switched conversational gears as fast as Ian had. “He would have been eighty-eight last year.”

  “Healthy?”

  “A regular poster boy for the geriatric set. Had most of his teeth and all of his wits. Said both his parents had lived to be a spry one hundred and he planned on doing at least that well.”

  “When you inherited the paintings, did you get anything else of his? Other than his favorite pliers?” Ian added quickly, remembering.

  “Paint boxes, brushes, easels, even his old painting tables and a chair. I still use them. Then there’s some other stuff in the carriage house at my parents’ place. That’s where he lived when he wasn’t roving around, painting. I haven’t had the heart to go through it. I don’t need mementos of him. I have my memories and his paintings.”

  “So he gave you tables, huh?” Ian remembered the night he’d set Lacey’s warm, naked butt on a paint table. “Any particular one?”

  She gave him a sideways glance that said she knew just what he was thinking. “Not that one. It wouldn’t have survived that kind of use.”

  He turned up the sweeping drive toward the stately brick home on its huge lot. As he pulled to a stop in front of the double doors with their heavy iron decorations, he turned toward her with a slow smile. “Did I ever tell you how cute your butt is covered with bright paint?”

  Lacey knew she was blushing. “Of all the things to tell me when my parents are opening the front door.” Then she laughed out loud. She couldn’t help it. The idea of her butt looking like a piece of performance art was too funny to bury in silence. “You looked pretty cute yourself. Bet you had the only purple-eyed pocket snake in captivity.”

  “Don’t forget the green racing stripes.”

  “I’ll never forget the green racing stripes.” Lacey was still laughing when she got out of the car.

  Dottie Quinn couldn’t help smiling at the picture her grinning daughter made in a cream silk shirt, camel slacks, and black cashmere jacket. So much better than her usual wretched paint-stained jeans and flea-market coats. Then the late afternoon sun flashed on a ridiculous piece of sixties beaded sun-face jewelry that totally ruined the ensemble. Dottie sighed, wondering how that particular piece of junk had survived the fire. Then she remembered that the shop’s overstock items were kept in storage. No doubt the tawdry necklace came from there.

  “Lacey, you look wonderful,” Dottie said, ignoring her daughter’s ratty sandals.

  “I should. You handpicked my outfit.” But Lacey hugged her mother with enthusiasm. Neither of them could help their differences; they could only accept them and move on. “It was lovely of you to fix dinner for us on such short notice.”

  Brody came down the steps to shake Ian’s hand. “Are you kidding? You saved me from another night of tuna surprise.”

  “Brody!” Dottie said, horrified. “I’ve never served you anything called that.”

  “Now that’s a shame,” Ian said, smiling. “All my relatives swap recipes for tuna surprise. I was wondering what the Pasadena version tasted like.”

  Lacey shot him a warning look.

  He winked. Then he gave Dottie the smile that made people forget all the reasons why they thought they shouldn’t trust him.

  All through dinner and cleanup afterward, Lacey watched in bemusement as Ian charmed her parents into forgetting that he wore a gun under his cheerfully unfashionable sport coat and didn’t have any ancestors worth painting and hanging on the wall. She also noticed that each time he brought up the subject of her grandfather, her parents changed the subject without really saying much of anything about David Quinn. She was sure that Ian noticed it, too.

  “Did you always live in Pasadena?” Ian asked Brody.

  “I have vague memories of living in Antelope Valley as a child, but otherwise I’ve always lived in Pasadena. Dottie and I bought this place after Lacey was born.”

  Ian’s eyebrows went up. “I should have gone into law instead of law enforcement.”

  Brody looked uncomfortable. So did Dottie.

  “Grandfather helped,” Lacey said.

  Her parents stared at her.

  “Who told you that?” Brody asked.

  “Grandfather. I was about five. You and he had just had a shouting match and I was crying in my room, afraid that Grandpa Rainbow would go away and never come back. He found me in my room, set me on his shoulders, and told me not to worry, he owned the house so he wasn’t going anywhere he didn’t want to.”

  “Sounds like being an artist paid pretty well,” Ian said casually.

  Dottie gave her husband a worried glance.

  “Well enough,” Brody said. “Who do you think will win the Super Bowl?”

  Ian looked past Dottie to Lacey. “Sorry, darling.”

  “I didn’t think we drove all this way for small talk and a big dinner. Go ahead,” she said, though she suspected he would have anyway.

  He gave her a smile, a different one, gentle and sad and admiring all at once.

  “I wish I’d come here just as Lacey’s…beau,” he said to her parents, remembering his great-grandmother talking about her youth, when girls had beaux instead of boy toys and roommates. “But Lacey and I came here to find out more about her grandfather.”

  Dottie’s smile vanished. “He’s dead. That’s all anyone needs to know.”

  Brody picked up his wife’s clenched hand and put it between his own. “It’s all right, honey. I’ve already withdrawn my
name from the judge pool, remember?”

  She looked even more grim. “It’s so damned unfair. You always—”

  “It’s all right,” he interrupted. “Part of me was always trying to overcome my father’s lack of scruples. I don’t have to be a judge to prove that I’m not what my father was. Besides, now we get to travel.”

  Slowly her fingers relaxed and she returned his smile. For a moment she looked years younger. “Paris first?”