Perfect Touch

by Elizabeth Lowell

She breathed out in relief at having a closed door between her and the bodies. Carefully she circled the pile of odds and ends in the center of the floor in order to examine the first packing crate. It had been carelessly opened. The splintered boards and random nails looked like they had been wrenched out and thrown aside.

  Though the overhead light was barely adequate, she could see that every slot in the first crate held an unframed painting on the original canvas stretcher or particleboard, whichever Custer had used. No sign of water damage on the wood or on the floor beneath.

  “Can we take them to the house?” she asked.

  “Not without messing up the death scene even more.”

  “Then I’ll photograph each one, front and back,” she said, taking her phone from her jacket. “If you hold them for me, it will go quicker.”

  He went to the box she had been working over and gently pulled out a painting. Her breath came in at the beauty and energy of the work emerging from the dusty crate. She took several images in succession.

  And she tried very hard not to think about the incredible cultural treasure she was recording. There would be time later to exclaim and laugh and soak in the paintings, letting them soothe the ugliness of murder.

  “Over, please,” she said.

  The back of the canvas held a few scribbled notes—time, place, title.

  “Is this Custer’s handwriting?” she asked.

  “Think so.”

  “Okay. Next,” she said.

  He pulled out another painting for her to photograph.

  Very quickly they worked out a rhythm of removing, digitizing front and back, replacing, and removing another painting. Not all of them were Custers. Apparently JD—or his wife—sometimes had purchased other painters.

  Sara had to force herself not to linger over paintings only a few people had ever seen.

  “How many paintings in that last carton?” she asked.

  “Nine.”

  “Fifty-six paintings, total. Fifty of them Custers.” And not one of them a portrait. She lifted the lid from the pot and breathed in a whiff. “Incredible.”

  He didn’t ask if she was referring to the paintings.

  She coughed and covered the pot. “What’s in those cardboard cartons along the wall over there? Custer was careless with his work. He could have stacked smaller paintings in the cartons.”

  “I’ll find out.”

  Jay went to the first carton and carefully slit the wide tape sealing the box. “Looks like papers.” He reached in and flipped through random stacks. “Old records kept by Inge.”

  The next two boxes were the same.

  “Keep going. Please,” Sara said.

  The fourth carton held Custer’s papers. So did the fifth. The sixth one held field studies he had painted on everything from canvas to particleboard, with a few even painted on cardboard.

  No portraits.

  Beautiful plein air studies, yes.

  People? No.

  “Can we take these with us now?” Though her voice was even, her eyes pleaded.

  “We have to walk out anyway. I don’t see any harm in carrying three boxes that the jackals didn’t even bother to open.”

  Breath rushed out of her. “Thank you. Papers in cardboard are much more vulnerable than oil paintings in special wooden crates. I know the cardboard boxes have been safe for however many years, but . . .” She shrugged, unable to explain.

  “I understand. Too much has been lost as it is.” He closed the three cartons of Custer’s papers and paintings and picked them up, two under one arm and one under the other. “Take the lid off the pot and leave it. The deputy will thank us.”

  She put the open pot on top of a bench, switched on her flashlight, and led the way back to the main house. The fresh air was staggeringly beautiful. The rain hadn’t changed, except maybe to get colder. It certainly seemed frigid to her.

  I’m just tired and . . . hungry.

  Once the smell had vanished, Sara’s normal healthy appetite had returned with a vengeance. She would have been embarrassed, but a farm girl learned young that death and hunger were a part of life.

  The house mudroom was warmer than the outdoors, but not by much.

  “I’ll put the boxes in the den,” Jay said, “and bring in some more wood. The bin here is nearly empty.”

  Sara shook the rain off her jacket and headed for the woodstove. The fact that it was barely warm told her how much time they had spent with the paintings. Her stomach was also registering a nearly continuous, rumbling complaint. A glance at her watch made her realize that it had been too long since they had last eaten. Quickly she went to work on the fire.

  “Dinner will be hot in fifteen minutes or we can eat it cold now,” she said as he headed back to the mudroom.

  “Make it half an hour,” he said, snagging his cold mug of coffee and downing it in three long gulps. “We need wood.”

  Even more, I need to pound on something.

  But he didn’t say anything about that. She had been a good partner. If she was managing to think of something besides murder, he didn’t want to remind her.

  The chili was bubbling fragrantly on the stove. The coffee was hot. Sara’s stomach rumbled continuously. The rhythmic sound of chopping outside was like the sound of the generator. Relentless. She had heard Jay working even over the sounds of her meal preparation and the noisy generator.

  Chop.

  Chop.

  Chop.

  What is he, a machine?

  Chop.

  Chop.

  Well, I’m not. I need food.

  She poured a mug of coffee, put on her jacket, and headed out to lure him away from the woodpile. Rain and wood smoke from the stove blended in the cold air. Pulling her jacket closer, she turned the corner of the house.

  And stopped.

  Jay’s back was to her, muscles bunching and releasing as the ax rose and fell, wood all but exploding apart. He kicked pieces aside and lifted the next section of log into place.

  He didn’t have his jacket on, or even long sleeves. He didn’t need them. Steam rose steadily from his white T-shirt, mixing with the rain. The work lantern he had hung on the eaves threw every line and curve of his body into sharp relief beneath the nearly transparent cotton.

  Sara bobbled the coffee mug and barely held on to it. And she stared at him, compelled by his grace and his sheer, mesmerizing power.

  I’d like to rub myself all over that fine male body.

  The pile of split wood was knee deep around Jay before he stopped to wipe sweat from his eyes.

  “Mind sharing that coffee?” he turned and asked.

  She unstuck her tongue from the roof of her mouth and cleared her throat. “You can have anything you want.”

  Some of the hard lines on his face shifted into a crooked smile. “Anything, huh? I’ll keep it in mind. But right now I’ll settle for some coffee.”

  She tried not to stare at his body as she handed over the mug. Not looking wasn’t really possible. The hair on his chest was like smoke against his soaked T-shirt. His jaw was highlighted by dark stubble.

  He makes Michelangelo’s David look like a boy. It would take Rodin to capture Jay’s raw male power.

  “Coffee?” he reminded her, but his eyes were gleaming with inner laughter.

  “I spent years in art classes looking at the male form,” she said, giving him the coffee. “Yours is—Oh my. I’m trying to think of words when all I want to do is . . . shut up. Yeah, that would be a really fine idea. Shutting up right now.”

  She turned to go back into the house.

  He snagged her by her jacket collar, pulled her back, and gave her a coffee-flavored kiss.

  “Thanks,” he said when he lifted his head.

  “For the coffee?”

  “For taking my bad mood and turning it into something else.”

  “My pleasure. Dinner’s ready.”

  He didn’t point out that dinner wasn’t all that was ready. “I’ll
have my knees under the table in ten minutes.”

  “Don’t hurry on my account,” she said, appreciating him with her eyes all over again.

  “I’ve never taken a woman in a cold rain. Right now, taking you is sounding like a really good idea.”

  Her head snapped up so that she could see his face. “You mean it.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Try me on a warm night, rain optional,” she said, then bolted for the house before he could stop her.

  He was still laughing when she shut the door.

  Feeling much better herself, she set plates out to warm on top of an upside-down frying pan on the stove. She stirred the chili, checked the fire again, and decided that she would do a quick survey of the contents of the boxes in the den. She poured herself a mug of coffee and sipped gingerly at the hot liquid as she walked to the den.

  “Where to start?” she said under her breath, eyeing the cartons.

  She went to the first carton of papers and rifled through, looking for intact notebooks or good sketch paper with drawings. She didn’t find any. It looked like half the papers had been ripped from someone’s notebook or torn off a writing pad. Most had doodles or sketches. Quite a few were caricatures.

  Custer had a wicked, cruel eye. I doubt that anybody paid him for a caricature. Belted him with a fist wrapped around a roll of nickels, more likely.

  The generator’s background rumble stopped suddenly. The mudroom door opened and closed, followed by footsteps going up the stairway off the living room.

  She wondered if Jay was wearing his soaked T-shirt or if he had already stripped it off.

  Focus, she told herself sternly. And not on sex.

  The shower came on. Her thoughts strayed—and stuck on what he must look like naked with hot water pouring over him. She shook herself. Hard.

  Focus.

  It had never been so difficult.

  The next box held field studies and miscellaneous papers, often Custer’s notes to himself on some aspect of the painting he had in mind.

  Awesome.

  People eat up this sort of personal history with a spoon. I’m really hoping a lot of these studies can be matched to the paintings Jay has. And if one of the field studies is of Wyoming Spring, I’ll dance naked in the snow.

  Alone, she added hastily. No audience.

  With another mental smack to her wandering attention, she bent down to the third box. More papers, doodles, and sketches that could have been an end in themselves or a means to new paintings. There was no way to tell unless some of them matched up with existing paintings.

  “Want to shower before you eat?” Jay asked.

  Sara choked back a shriek. He was even quieter in his bare feet.

  “Shower?” she asked blankly, staring at his feet.

  She had never considered a man’s feet one way or the other, but his looked strong and . . . edible.

  “Maybe I should eat first,” she said, dragging her gaze away from the floor and craning her head to meet his eyes. “I’m really hungry.”

  “Then let’s eat,” he said as she came out of her crouched position over the boxes.

  “Don’t get your hopes up. All but one can was vegetarian chili,” she said, standing and stretching. “I considered going after King Kobe, but it was raining really hard.”

  “I thought about it, too. Decided to work out my mad on the wood, instead.”

  “Ah, well. I can always open the canned beef I found.”

  He shuddered. “No thanks. JD loved that crap, creamed on toast. I’d rather eat corral scrapings.”

  “Makes two of us. My grandfather used to call it SOS.”

  “Shit on a shingle?”

  She nodded as they headed into the kitchen. “Somehow, it never sounded appealing to me, so I stuck with peanut butter on my toast.”

  Jay put the pot of chili on the table and held out her chair for her. “Smart girl.”

  She grinned up at him, then served him a heaping plate of chili. He sat and waited for her to pick up her fork.

  “Eat,” she said. “There’s plenty for seconds, so I’m not worried about you getting a head start.”

  He grabbed his fork, shoveled in some chili, and muttered something that sounded like “Booyah!”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “Best chili I ever had. Could have used more spice, though,” he said teasingly.

  She waved at the salt, pepper, and cayenne waiting on the table. “Help yourself. I made it fairly mild because I didn’t know what you liked.”

  “I’m joking.”

  “I’m not,” she said, adding more pepper—black and red—to her chili.

  He slid his fork in for a taste of her chili and raised his eyebrows. “If we run out of wood, we can always use your chili to warm up the place.”

  “That’s assuming there’s any left.”

  For the next ten minutes there was no sound but the rain and the occasional clink of flatware against heavy pottery plates. The thick slices of bread disappeared as fast as the chili in the big frying pan.

  Sara stopped at two good helpings. Jay didn’t stop until he saw the bottom of the chili pan.

  “Should I warm up some more?” she asked, looking at his empty plate.

  “No thanks. I’m saving room for pie. Inge makes the best . . .” His voice faded. Damn those jackals to everlasting hell. “She was a great baker. Ivar swore she could fatten up a fence post.”

  Sara put her hand over the fist that Jay had made and rubbed gently. Slowly his fingers uncurled and wrapped around hers.

  “More coffee with your pie?” she asked quietly, but her eyes said she wished she could hug him and make it all go away.

  He squeezed her hand. “That would be good, thanks.”

  Reluctantly she let her fingers slide away and pushed back from the table. When she reached for the empty dinner dishes, he was already picking them up.

  “I’ll take care of the kitchen and stack the wood while you shower,” he said as he walked to the sink. “There are three bedrooms upstairs. Take your pick. The middle one is right over the kitchen stove. It’s the warmest.”

  Sara found a pie knife in the utensil drawer and eyed the golden brown peaks of meringue as if there was an award for most even slicing.

  “Which bedroom is yours?” she asked.

  “The first one on the left.”

  She nodded and sliced the pie neatly. The meringue was fluffy, the lemon filling bright with promise, and the crust beautifully flaky beneath the knife.

  “I don’t know about a fence post,” she said, “but I sure would get fat if this kind of dessert was part of my life.”

  “A few pounds wouldn’t hurt you.”

  “Says the man who doesn’t have an ounce of fat on him.”

  She hesitated, then gave in to temptation and ran her finger along the knife, picking up every sticky crumb. She licked her finger, closed her eyes, and made a sound of sensual appreciation.

  “You make that sound again and I’m going to lick a lot more than your finger,” he said.

  Her eyes flew open. Jay was watching her lips and her tongue as she sucked her finger clean. She was tempted to do it all over again and see what happened. Then she caught a whiff of herself—onion and trail dust and wood smoke with an astringent note of pine cleaner—and decided that she needed a shower.

  A cold one.

  He saw her temptation, then her decision not to tease and test him. He told himself that it was better this way.

  He didn’t believe it.

  To keep from grabbing her, he took two small plates from the cupboard and set them near the pie.

  Automatically she started to serve the dessert, then remembered how many return trips her licked finger had made to the pie knife. She headed for the sink.

  “You don’t have to wash it on my account,” he said.

  She glanced sideways and saw the devilish light in his eyes. Pleased that she had done something to lift his mood, sh
e ducked her head and smiled.

  “My mother would faint,” Sara said.

  “She’s not here.”

  “Behave.”

  “I am behaving. Like a man.”

  “One of us has to be sensible,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t have any condoms.”

  He smiled slowly. “I do.”

  Heat twisted through her. This man is pure trouble. And God knows I’ve come to enjoy his particular kind of trouble.

  Barton has already trashed my professional reputation when it comes to having sex with a client. If I have to wear the name, why not enjoy the game? Life is short.

  We just never know how short.

  She served Jay a piece of pie with the freshly washed utensil.

  “I’d rather have it tasting of you,” he said.

  “If you don’t eat it, I will.”

  “Can I watch?”

  Shaking her head, laughing softly, Sara served her own piece of pie while Jay topped off their coffee mugs. At the first bite of pie, she made a low sound of pleasure.

  “Orgasmic,” she said without thinking.

  He gave her a heavy-lidded look.

  “Well, it is,” she said. She lifted her mug. “To Inge, who made the best pie I’ve ever tasted.”

  He hesitated, then clicked his mug against hers. “To Inge. God keep her and Ivar.”

  CHAPTER 15

  SARA LAY IN the bedroom that was positioned over the kitchen. Despite the long, demanding day she was wide awake. It wasn’t the coffee. She usually fell asleep with a half-full mug by her bed. In the morning, she would sip at cold coffee while she brewed fresh. Piper had scolded her endlessly until her partner finally gave up on converting Sara to the joys of green tea.

  A branch knocked against the window.

  Instantly she sat up, stifling a scream, her heart beating triple time.

  Not the coffee.

  Fear.

  Every time she closed her eyes, mixed-up pieces of the day flashed behind her eyelids—Skunk alerting, the ragged blue tarp that couldn’t hide the flow of blood, the stalking cougar falling limp, the smell of death so thick she could taste it, Jay’s muscles flexing and sliding as he took out his anger chopping wood, the seething rustle of grass stirred by a predator.

  Blood and death.