Die in Plain Sight

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “Yeah. Didn’t see, didn’t hear, didn’t know shit until the sirens woke ’em up.”

  The server came and put breakfast platters in front of the men. Rory was eating toast, fruit, and scrambled eggs. Merle was eating everything but the hand that fed him—eggs, pancakes, steak, potatoes, toast, biscuits and gravy, a side of ham, and two glasses of milk.

  “More butter, please,” Merle said to the server. “And jam.”

  “Man, you’re something,” Rory said. “I’ve known you for years and you never gain an ounce.”

  “Clean living, constant prayer, and twenty-hour workdays.” He shoveled in the first of the food, chewed, and said, “So the boys questioned the bums—excuse me, the domicile-challenged—and found out nothing.”

  Rory chuckled and shook his head. “If your job depended on votes, you’d be mopping floors.”

  Merle chewed and didn’t disagree. His impatience with politics of all kinds was an article of personal faith. “My men found indications of petroleum products, which was hardly a shocker—it’s an alley and people park cars there and change oil there and take out their household garbage and such. Plastics are made with petroleum, you know. They also found a plastic trash can that was pretty well slagged.”

  “Fire source?”

  “Yeah.” Merle cleansed his palate of pancakes and syrup with one glass of milk and went to work on the salty part of the meal. “There was enough trash around to burn down half the city. No surprise that the wind tipped over the can and the fire spread. I’m guessing the drifters that started out warming their hands over the barrel ended up running down the alley with their asses on fire.”

  “So it wasn’t your arsonist?” Rory asked.

  Merle swallowed coffee and went back to steak, talking and chewing with startling efficiency. “Buildings were inhabited, not empty. No cigarette butts stubbed out while he stood back and waited for it all to get going. No empty rainbow package of birthday candles left to taunt us. Nope, not our boy.”

  Rory settled back and got to the part of the conversation that interested him, or rather, Ward.

  “What about a Louie the Torch?” Rory asked, referring to a contract arson purchased to collect insurance on a losing business.

  “Possible, I suppose. Didn’t look like anything much in the place where the woman died. How much are crystals and bogus vitamins worth to an adjuster? Besides, so far there’s no sign of any insurance on that one.”

  “What about the other place?”

  “The artist’s business?” Merle shrugged, swallowed the last of the steak and eggs, and concentrated on the biscuits and gravy. “Insured. Kept the policy in a bank safe deposit along with some other papers.”

  “How much?”

  “Dunno, but she said business had been good enough to pay the rent and then some, and the insurance wouldn’t be worth more than that. We’re checking on it.”

  “What about the merchandise itself?” Rory asked. “Was it worth burning down the place to collect on insurance?”

  “She had some old movie posters that apparently were worth something, and some stuff that was too old to be junk but not old enough to be antiques. Nothing big. Anyway, she said she got the most valuable things out before it burned.”

  “What was that?”

  “Three old paintings.”

  Smiling, Rory nudged his plate over toward Merle. “Have some more breakfast.”

  Savoy Hotel

  Friday morning

  32

  For the past hour, Lacey’s parents had sat in Susa’s suite and grilled their daughter more thoroughly than the police, but with a different intent.

  “Lacey, you’re just being stubborn,” Dottie said with a sad sigh. “There’s no reason on earth you can’t wrap up whatever’s left of your little shop and come home with us right now. We do have telephone service for you to handle all the details. Oh, honey, I knew from the start that you shouldn’t have rented that ratty little place.”

  “So you’ve said before, many times.” Lacey rubbed her eyes. “Look, I appreciate your concern, but I’m staying.”

  “You don’t have a place to live,” Brody said. It wasn’t the first time he’d pointed that out. “Be reasonable. You have no money, no home—or are you planning to sleep out of your car?”

  Ian had been trying to be invisible in the second bedroom, but that did it. He hung up on his great-uncle—who had been regaling him with tales of the old days in Moreno County—and made a fast call to the bellman. Then he stalked into the suite’s sitting room. The bedroom door shut real firmly behind him. He crossed over and stood beside Lacey’s chair, stroked his palm over her wild brown hair, and caressed her cheek in silent support.

  “I know y’all mean well,” he said, “but I haven’t seen anything this relentless since my two cats tag-teamed a baby bird.”

  Brody looked at the tall, relaxed man with short dark hair, unflinching eyes, and a weapon harness hanging from his broad shoulders. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Ian Lapstrake,” Lacey said quickly. “Remember?”

  “Oh,” Dottie said and smoothed her pink St. Martin’s knit suit. “You’re the one who was, uh, with Lacey when the fire broke out.” She stood and held out her hand. “I’m Dottie Quinn. I want to thank you for helping our girl. She’s not very practical about life.”

  Ian was real tempted to tell this nice, tightly wrapped piece of Pasadena society just how fine her impractical daughter looked wearing nothing but paint on her shapely ass, but decided against it.

  “My pleasure,” he said, shaking Dottie’s hand, and smiling. He didn’t understand why his smile worked on people the way it did, but he sure didn’t hesitate to take advantage of it. Especially at times like this, when butter was going to accomplish a lot more than bullets. “You have a fine and talented daughter, as I’m sure Susa Donovan will tell you when she gets off the phone with her husband.”

  Dottie smiled. “Yes, well, we love our Lacey.”

  Ian didn’t doubt it. That was the only thing that had kept him from kicking a hole in the outer wall and shoving Lacey’s parents through it. He turned to Lacey’s father. “Mr. Quinn, glad to meet you.”

  Before he knew what was happening, Brody found himself shaking the hand of his daughter’s lover. Not that it should have mattered—she was over thirty. But some reflexes die hard in a father. Bristling in the presence of a male who’d seduced his daughter was one of them.

  “You don’t have to worry about Lacey sleeping out of her car,” Ian said. “The suite next door is being made up for her right now. It’s hers as long as she wants it.”

  Lacey made a startled sound. “But I can’t afford it.”

  “No worries. It’s free.”

  Her brown eyes widened. “Since when is a Savoy Hotel suite free?”

  “Since I called Rarities and told Dana about the paintings.”

  Lacey shook her head like a dog coming out of water, making loose curls dance. “Excuse me? I’m kind of slow this morning.”

  He smiled, tipped her chin up, and brushed a gentle kiss over her lips. “Darling, one thing you never are is slow.”

  She closed her eyes, blew out a breath that sent stray curls flying, and tried to gather her thoughts. “What’s happening?”

  Brody smiled. Any man who could sidetrack Lacey with a light kiss had more going for him than the average bedroom jockey. About time, too.

  “Susa told Dana about the paintings,” Ian said. “You remember? The ones you ran back into a burning building to save?”

  “It wasn’t burning,” Lacey said.

  “What would you call it?”

  She stuck out her lower lip. “Almost burning.”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” he said, “but isn’t that the same almost burning building you wouldn’t let me go back into for your paintings?”

  “That was different.”

  Instead of being irritated, Ian grinned. “Oh, well, that explains it.”

>   Lacey looked warily at him. “It does?”

  “Sure. Different things entirely.” He looked at her expectantly.

  “Ah…what are we talking about?”

  “You got me, darling. Mustn’t have been important.”

  Brody snickered and winked at Dottie, who was watching openmouthed as a strange man got around Lacey’s stubbornness as though it didn’t exist. Then Dottie noticed Ian’s steady, dark eyes and knew that her daughter hadn’t heard the last of the subject, but it would be settled later, in private.

  “Before you forget what your name is,” Brody said, “I wanted to tell you that I’m withdrawing my objections to you displaying the paintings.”

  “What? Why?” Lacey asked.

  Dottie answered, “He decided that it’s time to slow down and smell the golf courses. He withdrew his name for the judicial vacancy.”

  Lacey hesitated. “Are you sure this is what you want, Dad?”

  “Yes.” He smiled wryly at his wife. “It just took me a while to figure it out.”

  A knock came from the hall door, followed by a voice announcing the arrival of the bellman.

  “Get that, would you, Lacey?” Ian said. He turned to her parents. “It was real nice of you to drive here with clothes for Lacey. The bellman will need one of you to show him what to bring up for her.”

  “I’ll do it,” Brody said.

  “I’ll come along,” Dottie said. “I could use something to eat.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom, I didn’t think that you’d be hungry,” Lacey said, overhearing. “I’ll have something sent up to—”

  “We’ll join you as soon as Lacey has something more to wear than a bathrobe,” Ian said over her words. “The cafe is excellent. Be sure to try the Welsh cakes.”

  He shut the door firmly after her parents and the bellman. Then he went to the locked double doors that led to the adjoining suite. When he opened them, the matching doors on the other side were also open, creating a giant suite that could sleep twelve and host thirty more.

  “How did you do that?” Lacey asked.

  “Easy. You turn this deadbolt and then—”

  “No. I meant how did you get rid of my parents without making them mad?”

  “They mean well and they love you and don’t understand you. You mean well and you love them and you don’t understand them. You all push each other’s buttons without even trying. I just short-circuited the old playlist.”

  “You’re scary.”

  He took the lapels of her plush robe and pulled her slowly closer. “That’s not what you said last night.”

  “Last night you let me paint you naked.”

  “Any time, darling.”

  She stood on her tiptoes and leaned into the kiss, luxuriating in his strength and his willingness to let her be herself. It was an experience as heady as any sex, any liquor, anything.

  “When I bought her more painting supplies,” Susa said, “I didn’t have performance art in mind.”

  Lacey would have jumped back like a guilty teenager, but Ian didn’t let her. He ended the kiss as slow and tender as he’d started it. Only then did he lift his head.

  “How’s the Donovan?” Ian asked.

  “Lonely. Like me.”

  “Time to go painting?”

  Susa looked out the window, hesitated, and then smiled. “You’re an understanding kind of man, Ian. I feel like painting, but not outside.”

  His dark eyebrows lifted. “Okay. Where?”

  “Here.” Susa smiled at Lacey. “What do you say we paint him?”

  Lacey stared. All she could think of was last night, when she’d done a swift study of Ian watching her from the bed, his arousal as clear as his pleasure in watching her.

  Susa laughed out loud. “Oh my, the look on your face. But I’m not thinking about getting naked and rolling around in the paints. I’m thinking of you as you are now,” she said to Ian, “T-shirt and shoulder holster, all gentle and hungry around the edges, with those bleak eyes and trust-me smile.”

  Ian looked like a man whose shoes were too tight.

  Smiling, Susa crossed the room, grabbed his face between her hands, and gave him a smacking kiss. “I didn’t know men still blushed.”

  “You’d embarrass a statue,” he muttered.

  “Good thing you’re flesh and blood,” she said. “I’d like you over by the window, I think.”

  “Lacey,” he said. “Help.”

  “I plan to, just as soon as I get the new paints Susa gave me.”

  He started to point out that Lacey’s time would be better spent salvaging what was left of her shop, but he liked seeing light come back to her eyes too well to spoil her mood.

  “How about I give y’all a rain check?” he said instead. “I’ve got to make arrangements for those three paintings to be locked up.”

  “They’re not worth guarding,” Lacey said.

  “I disagree,” Susa said.

  “Look,” Lacey said wearily, “I appreciate all you’ve done, but you’re wrong about the paintings. They’re not by Lewis Marten.”

  “Have you had them appraised?” Susa asked.

  “No.”

  “I’ve made arrangements for Rarities Unlimited to appraise them,” Susa said. “If you’re right, I’ll bite my tongue and slink off into the sunset.”

  The light that had returned to Lacey’s eyes was gone as though it had never existed. “No. No appraisal.”

  “Why?” Susa asked mildly.

  Lacey simply shook her head.

  “What would you say,” Ian said to Susa, “if I told you that the paintings originally belonged to Lacey’s grandfather?”

  “What are you talking about?” Lacey demanded. “I never said anything like that.”

  “You never meant to,” he agreed. “But before you went back into your shop, you yelled something about saving your grandfather’s paintings. Then you came out carrying those three paintings. Nothing else. Not even your own work.”

  Lacey went pale, then red streaks of anger appeared over her cheekbones. “You’re wrong. I—I painted them!”

  “Show me.”

  “Go to hell. I painted them.”

  He almost smiled. “Darling, you don’t lie worth a damn.”

  “But you do, don’t you,” she said bitterly. “You act all gentle and kind, and all you can think about is springing an ambush so that your poor victim trips and falls flat, spilling everything.”

  He didn’t move, yet somehow he seemed to loom over her. “Is that what you think, that I seduced you to get some answers?”

  “Yes!” Then she remembered last night, the laughter and the passion and the peace. “No.” She crossed her arms over her chest and turned away. “Jesus, what a mess.”

  Susa looked at the tears of anger, fear, and exhaustion standing in Lacey’s eyes. “We want to help you. Do you believe that?”

  “Yes,” she said hoarsely. “But I can’t. I just can’t.”

  “But—” Susa stopped at a gesture from Ian.

  “Your grandfather’s dead,” Ian said. “What’s the problem? He collected some paintings and passed them on to you.”

  Lacey almost said that he hadn’t collected them, he’d painted them. Big difference. Then she realized that Ian was offering her an out, whether he knew it or not. “Look, Grandpa Rainbow was something of a, uh, character. Colorful. Really, really colorful.”

  Ian waited and wondered if she would ever trust him enough to stop lying, or at least trying to. She was so god-awful at it he would have laughed if he hadn’t been pissed off.

  “He drank too much sometimes,” Lacey said.

  Ian started listening because her body language said she wasn’t lying now.

  “And he went off on trips.”

  Ian waited.

  Lacey took a deep breath and stuck to as much of the truth as she could. “Sometimes he came back with paintings, but he never had any bills of sale from a gallery or an artist or anything like that.�
��

  “Where did he go?” Susa asked.

  “All over California.”

  “Any favorite places?” Susa asked.

  “Palm Springs, Anza-Borrego, San Francisco, Death Valley. Why?”

  “But not Laguna Beach or Painter’s Beach or Savoy Ranch?”