Her mouth went suddenly dry. She’d really hoped she was weaving smoke. “Of what?”
“Correct me if I’m wrong on this, but up until the charity benefit, your grandfather’s art was out of public sight.”
“Yes.”
“The art goes public, everyone goes nuts, someone tries to buy it and someone else tries to burn it. When that doesn’t work, it’s stolen. Then a whole new stash of the art is found. I’ll bet that put somebody’s gonads in a twist.”
“Who?” she asked.
“Whoever doesn’t want David Quinn’s history or his art out in public.”
Too many deaths. Not enough police work. Ain’t nothing changed. Stay away from it, boy.
He should have taken his great-uncle’s advice, but he hadn’t. Now the woman he loved was in danger.
Too many deaths.
Laguna Beach
Late Monday afternoon
58
Usually Lacey thrived on art galleries, but at the moment she was suffering overload. She and Ian had both agreed that it would be smart to plow through as many galleries as possible before the caller had a chance to track her down.
Anybody who wanted to find her would have to move fast. Eleven galleries so far today, starting with two in Palm Desert, followed by four in San Diego, two in La Jolla, and three in Laguna Beach. In the past twenty-four hours, she’d seen a mind-boggling amount of pretty good art, some very good art, and a few paintings that made her realize all over again just how far she had to go as an artist. One of the latter had been Susa’s.
They had discovered that four of the galleries were too new to have been used by David Quinn. Another three of them had only been in business for eight to fifteen years. The rest were old enough, but had changed management and/or ownership too many times for anyone to remember anything useful.
No one had seen anything like the Death Suite before, or if they had, they weren’t talking about it. Everybody wanted to buy the landscapes.
The twelfth gallery on their list was also in Laguna. The business was crammed into an old, much-remodeled Victorian on the inland side of Pacific Coast Highway. Just enough had been spent on ambiance that the walk-in customers knew they weren’t in a frame shop; the rest of the overhead was in location and stock. Franz Bischoff, Sam Hyde Harris, Paul Lauritz, Granville Redmond, Hanson Puthuff, Guy Rose, George Brandhoff, Edgar Payne, William Wendt, Maurice Braun—Lacey read the signatures aloud in a kind of a daze.
“You okay?” Ian asked, wondering if the pressure of the death threat had finally gotten to her.
“Yes. No. This is incredible. Museum-quality southern California plein air artists all over the place. Only a few of the paintings are major, of course, but all of the artists are.”
“Whatever you say,” Ian muttered. “They’re all beginning to look alike to me.”
“Then you need a break.”
“We’ll get something to eat as soon as we’re through here.”
“More hamburgers,” Lacey said.
“Afraid so. They’re easier to eat on the road than fancy food, and we’ve got a couple more galleries in Newport Beach to hit before they close.”
Lacey stifled a groan. She was used to fast food, but she was also used to having some green stuff from time to time.
“I’ll buy you a big salad before we go to bed,” Ian said.
“Are you a mind reader?”
“Nope. Just a guy who’s tired of so-so beef, bad cheese, and worse fries. We haven’t had anything decent to eat since Oliver’s quiches.”
“Did Milhaven ever call?”
“Not since I last checked.”
“When was that?” she asked.
“While you were asleep in my truck.”
“Don’t give me that long-suffering voice,” she said, determined to act like everything was normal. “Whose fault is it that I haven’t been getting my full eight hours of sleep at night?”
He gave her a dark, sideways look. “I wasn’t complaining.”
She licked her lips. “Neither was I.”
“Feeling real frisky after that nap, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. Wanna fight?”
“I’d rather f—” Ian cut off the rest of the word and smiled over Lacey’s head at the clerk, an under-thirty woman with a power suit, one-of-a-kind jewelry, and expensive red-gold hair. “Hi,” he said, “are you Mrs. Katz?”
“No, I’m Julia York. May I help you?”
Ian smiled. “We talked to Mrs. Katz earlier today. We’re a little late for our appointment, but we’re hoping not too late.”
Julia took in the smile and the rest of the package, and loosened up considerably. “Mr. Lapstrake?”
“That’s me. This is Lacey Quinn.”
Julia nodded but didn’t look away from Ian. “Mrs. Katz told me to expect you. She’s up in the storage room.”
Lacey wondered if she suddenly had gone invisible. Then she felt Ian’s hand tucking loose curls behind her ears before settling on her nape in a gesture of intimacy that was as telling as it was casual.
“Lead the way,” Ian said, caressing Lacey’s nape.
Julia got the message. She smiled at Lacey. “Ms. Quinn, Mrs. Katz is looking forward to meeting you. Follow me.”
The assistant had a nice pair of hips and she used them to advantage climbing the stairway to what had once been an attic and now was a storage room for art. She passed Ian and Lacey over to Katz by calling out brief introductions into the interior of the attic.
“Be out in a minute,” Katz called from behind a rack of paintings.
Julia nodded to Lacey, gave Ian a predatory smile, and left without a word.
“Whew,” Lacey said under her breath, watching Julia descend the stairs. “I was wondering if you were going to have to pull your gun to defend your honor.”
“Guns probably turn her on.”
“Scary thought.”
“You think it’s scary—what about me?”
“I think you’re scary, too.”
Ian smiled despite the gnawing tension in his shoulders and the echo of that voice in his mind.
Stop asking questions.
Or she’ll die.
Stop asking.
She’ll die.
Die.
Laguna Beach
Monday afternoon
59
It was five minutes later when Mrs. Katz finally bustled out from behind a screen and into the small cleared area of the attic. Her hair was short and improbably dark, framing a face that looked every bit of seven decades old. She reminded Lacey of a sparrow at nesting time—small, dark-eyed, nondescript, energetic, bristling with purpose.
“Hello excuse the mess I’m getting ready for a new show and what is this about some mysterious man?” Katz said.
Lacey sorted out the flood of words and said, “We understand you’ve owned this gallery for forty years.”
“And worked in it for twenty more,” Katz agreed. “My parents owned it and my grandmother was a painter back when women artists were rare enough to stop traffic. None of it came down to me but an eye for good art, which made me crazy because I can’t paint worth spit. What can I do for you?”
Ian handed the photos over to Lacey and set his computer on a work-table.
“I was wondering if this man ever came to your gallery to buy or sell art,” Lacey said, laying out a series of enhanced photos of her grandfather.
Katz picked up the photos and held them about two inches from her nose, peering at them. Ian saw the cataracts clouding her left eye and didn’t have much hope for the outcome.
“Clean shaven, middle-aged or older, not handsome, not ugly, wallpaper clothes.” Katz shrugged and handed back the photos. “It could be any one of a hundred men.”
“‘Wallpaper clothes?’” Ian asked.
“Ordinary,” Lacey guessed. “Unremarkable.”
“Wallpaper,” Katz agreed.
“Gotcha.” Ian reached into his computer case and
pulled out the backup photos, the ones where Quinn had more or less hair, a hat or no hat, glasses or no glasses. “What about these?”
Katz went through the first three without a pause, then stopped on the fourth.
Lacey looked over the woman’s shoulder. The photo was a reworked wedding picture. It showed her grandfather with a short beard and mustache, glasses, and a leather cap with a bill. The facial hair was dark, making him look younger than the forty years he’d been when the picture was taken. The digital trickery still intrigued Lacey because she’d never seen her grandfather with anything on his face but his skin. Neither had her father.
“I recognize him. I know I’ve seen him.” Katz frowned. “But I can’t remember if it was here or somewhere else.”
“Do you remember when?” Ian asked.
“Oh, years and years ago, forty, maybe even fifty, maybe even more. Never was much good at dates and numbers and things, but I know I’ve seen him.”
Ian reined in his impatience and fired up the computer.
“Was he buying paintings?” Lacey asked.
Silence, then a sigh. “Too long ago for me to remember.”
“How about this?” Ian said, pointing to the computer screen.
Katz bent over and got close enough to the screen for her eyes to cross. She backed up an inch or two and looked at six landscapes as Ian clicked through the file. When the Death Suite appeared, she blinked, tilted her head, and said what everyone else had. “Good but tough to sell. The landscapes, now…” She clicked back to them.
“Lewis Marten,” she said. There wasn’t any doubt in her voice. She might have trouble with time, but she’d worked in the plein air art business since she was ten years old, dusting and cleaning the gallery for her parents. “My father collected him, or tried to. My, that was a terrible thing losing all that art in the fire, just terrible.”
“Hard on the artist, too,” Ian said dryly. “He lost his life.”
“We all die sooner or later, but we don’t expect everything we did to die with us,” Katz said. “If it weren’t for collectors like my father no one would even know about Marten.”
“You have some of his paintings?” Lacey asked eagerly. “Signed paintings?”
Katz’s expression became cautious. “My father did.”
“You don’t have them still?” Lacey asked.
“My insurers don’t like me talking about what I do or don’t own.”
“We understand,” Ian said. He handed her a Rarities card. “We’re not thieves sizing you up for a contract robbery, Mrs. Katz.”
Katz read the card very carefully, then nodded her head once. “I had to sell five of my father’s six signed Martens in order to keep the gallery after my parents died. Since then, I’ve bought two Martens. Neither of them is signed.”
“When did you buy the unsigned ones?” Lacey asked.
“One was about thirty years ago and one was about ten, eleven years ago. I’ve heard of others coming on the market, but I’ve never seen them.”
Lacey looked at Ian and wondered if he was thinking what she was about the timing. Thirty years ago Lacey’s parents were buying a new home. About ten years ago Lacey had been trying to get enough money to study overseas. And her grandfather, despite his contempt for higher education, had given her the money to go.
“Now that you mention it,” Katz said thoughtfully, “the men who sold them to me could have been in those photos you showed me, but I couldn’t swear to it, wallpaper being pretty much wallpaper and all. Thirty years is a long time and I’d just had my first cataract surgery ten years ago so my right eye wasn’t what you’d call real sharp.”
“If Rarities contacts you directly,” Ian said, “would you be willing to let them examine your three paintings?”
“I wouldn’t have to pay anything?”
“We’ll even pick them up and deliver them back to you,” Ian said, especially as I’ll be doing it on my vacation time. “Rarities’ insurance carrier would cover you door to door. Plus we’d give you a hard copy file of our research and our conclusions as to the authenticity of the unsigned paintings.”
“Why?” Katz asked baldly. “Normally Rarities charges thousands and has a waiting list as long as this century.”
“We have other clients who are interested in unsigned Lewis Marten paintings. Having access to your signed painting would be worth a great deal.” Ian smiled gently at her. “As you know, museums have all kinds of internal constraints on where and why and how long they can let out their collections. Paintings by Marten—signed paintings—are real rare. We’d appreciate a chance to look at yours.”
“Young man, you’ve got a real nice smile,” Katz said.
Lacey choked back a laugh.
“Thank you, ma’am. I have to give my grandmother credit for it. I got it from her.”
“How about this?” Katz said, settling in to bargain with the relish of a person whose life’s work consisted in working on a profit margin that changed from customer to customer. “You can take those three paintings and I’ll take Rarities’ opinion as to the art.”
“And?” Ian asked warily.
“And you’ll agree to sell the six landscapes through my gallery,” she said, pointing a bony finger at the computer.
“They aren’t signed,” Lacey said, “and they’re not for sale.”
“Sooner or later everything’s for sale,” Katz said. “Trust me. I’ve been to enough estate auctions to know. Do we have a deal?”
“If those five paintings come on the market, it will be through your gallery,” Lacey said.
“Five? What about the sixth?”
“The desert landscape is promised to someone else.”
“Good enough.” Mrs. Katz’s grin showed teeth that were as improbably light as her hair was dark.
“How many clients do you have waiting for them?” Ian asked.
“Enough for a lot more paintings.”
Ian wasn’t surprised. Seven of the eleven galleries they’d visited had said the same thing. Apparently selling fake Martens was a thriving underground business on the collector circuit.
And somebody was willing to kill to keep it that way.
Southern California
Monday evening
60
Is Mr. Milford available?” asked a woman’s faintly raspy voice.
His hand tightened on the phone. Very few people knew that name. Four of them had called him in the past twenty-four hours. He’d hoped that his own call would put an end to it.
Obviously it hadn’t.
“Speaking,” he said.
“This is Mrs. Katz from Seaside Gallery. I have a line on five paintings by Lewis Marten.”
“Signed?”
“Unfortunately, no. I’ve only seen digital representations, but the paintings look excellent. Definitely some of his best work.”
“All landscapes?”
“Two coastal mountains, three coastlines.”
He didn’t know whether to be relieved or irritated that none of the crucial paintings were being offered by any of the callers. Why in the name of Christ doesn’t the bitch just gouge me like her grandfather did? Why is she dragging it all out?
“Are the landscapes for sale?” he asked, wondering if the answer would be different from the other galleries that had called.
“Not at this point, but that could change at any moment,” Mrs. Katz said. “The owner has guaranteed that the instant the paintings are available, my gallery will represent them.”
“I’ll wait for your call,” he said, and hung up.
He didn’t expect to be waiting long. Estate sales happened quickly after death. The tax collector saw to it. As for the death, he would see to it, personally.
Maybe that will be the end of it. Finally.
But just in case it wasn’t, he had some paintings to burn.
Savoy Hotel
Monday night
61
You’re looking at that door lik
e you’ve never seen one,” Lacey said. She took off her coat and shook off raindrops as she ran her fingers through her wildly curling hair. “Is something wrong with it?”
Die in Plain Sight Page 35
