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Authors: Elizabeth Lowell

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BOOK: Die in Plain Sight
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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

L
ost 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.”

He smiled and decided not to tell her it was great cover for his shoulder holster. “Dang, I keep forgetting about that.”

Lacey absorbed the man’s slow smile and wondered why she’d ever been nervous. The smile she gave him in return was more appreciative than professional. Automatically she walked closer.

“Most of the people around here still worship at the altar of film noir,” she said, waving to the three framed posters that hung over the cash register, protected from the sun by special glass.

Ian glanced up at the posters. Though they depicted black-and-white movies, the cinema moguls had known that color sells. Most of the posters had been printed with at least some bright elements. For every man in dark hat and jacket—no tie—cigarette dangling at a just-so angle from his world-weary lips, there was a woman with smooth yellow hair, hourglass body, creamy skin, and wearing a cocktail dress that was as red and close-fitting as lipstick. Some kind of handgun—usually wrong for the period—smoked in the foreground. Everything but the babe’s dress and hair was in shades of darkness that owed more to philosophy than to the reality of shooting in black-and-white film.

“I prefer my black-and-white with more color,” he said dryly.

Lacey laughed. “So do I, but I’m in business and noir sells.” She pointed toward the side of the store. “My Western and musical posters are in the bin just beyond the Deco-style vases. I’ll help you, but have to wash my hands first. I’ve been grubbing around in the storeroom.”

“Pretty colorful storeroom.”

She looked at her hands and then at her clothes. “Oops. I forgot. I was painting before I went through some canvases to choose three for a charity event and then I came back and—oh brother, talk about too much information. Go look in the bin. I’ll be right back.”

Instead of telling her that she could keep talking just for the pleasure of hearing the laughter in her voice, Ian walked over to the bin and began flipping through the cardboard-backed, glassine-shielded posters. Musicals and more musicals. Though he didn’t collect them, he smiled at the colorful exuberance of the singers and dancers coming and going beneath his fingertips. Like Westerns, musicals celebrated a less world-weary America. He was all for that. Christ knew that the world had enough brutality without making movies about it.

The scent of soap and something feminine drifted to him even as he heard footsteps behind him. She wasn’t nearly as wary of him now. She came up almost close enough to kiss. He’d always enjoyed women like her, unself-conscious and intelligent. The fact that there was definitely a female body wrapped around the package sure didn’t hurt.

He would have to browse this store again. Soon. Since the charity art show wouldn’t happen until the end of the week, he should have enough time to explore the shop, and maybe even the woman. There hadn’t been any rings under all the paint and grime on her hands. But then, maybe she didn’t wear jewelry while painting or working in storage sheds.

“Any luck?” she asked, watching his mouth, wondering idly if his kiss was half as warm as his smile.

“Not yet. Nice collection, though.”

“Thanks. A lot of them were my grandfather’s.”

“Was he in the movies?”

“Nope. Unless set painting counts.”

“Keeps bread and beans on the table,” Ian said. “That always counts.”

Lacey’s smile slipped. She remembered more than one loud argument between her father and grandfather on the subject of how the elder Quinn earned his living.

“Now here’s a prime one,” Ian said.

Lacey stepped around him and looked. The poster was indeed prime. “John Wayne in
Hondo
.” She started to say that her customer bore more than a passing resemblance to the younger Wayne. At the last second she changed her mind. He might take it as a come-on.

He might be right. It had been a long time since she’d seen anything as deep down interesting as this man’s smile, obvious pleasure in the posters, and offhand intelligence.

“That was one of my grandfather’s favorites,” Lacey said.

Ian glanced at the discreet sticker on the back of the cardboard and sighed. “You know what you have, don’t you?”

“You bet.”

“Any give on the price?”

“Not much.”

“How much is not much?” he asked.

“You live in California?”

He nodded.

“I’ll eat the sales tax,” she said.

He glanced at his watch. There was just enough time to make Susa’s plane and still buy the poster. “Bon appétit,” he said, smiling. “Check or credit card?”

Lacey blinked. There it was, slow and warm and so gentle it had to be seen to be believed. A smile like that should be registered as a lethal weapon. Mentally she shook herself and focused on the business at hand.

“Local check?” she asked.

“If Upland is local, I’m local.”

She hesitated. Upland wasn’t exactly local, but it wasn’t that far away, either. And she really hated giving the credit card barons two percent of her hard-won sales.

“Pleased to meet you, neighbor,” she said, holding out her right hand. “I’m Lacey Quinn, half owner of the shop.”

“Ian Lapstrake, neighbor at large.”

He shook her hand. Its competent feminine strength reminded him of Dana. He released Lacey’s hand before she could feel uneasy about her humorous gesture of “neighborliness” when they actually lived one to three hours apart, depending on how clogged the freeways were.

“Will you be taking the poster with you or do you want it shipped?” she asked.

He glanced at her left hand—freshly scrubbed, no visible rings or ring marks—and decided he would come back for the poster. “Could you hold it for a day or two?”

“Sure.”

He pulled a folding checkbook out of his jacket pocket, and braced it on his thigh. “Can I borrow your pen?”

She patted her jean pockets. “I don’t have one.”

“How about this one?” Deftly he pulled a pen out of the curls dancing around her right ear.

“What are you, a magician?”

“Only in my dreams.” He wrote swiftly, tore out the check, and tucked the pen back into its nest of curls before she could react. “I didn’t know hair came in that many shades of dark and gold and almost red. It’s beautiful.”

Before the compliment registered, he was on his way out the door.

“Who was that?” Shayla asked from the stairway.

“I was wondering the same thing myself.”

Lacey was also wondering if she had really seen the outline of a shoulder holster beneath the denim when he bent over to write the check, stretching the cloth across his back.

Over Moreno County

Tuesday afternoon

7

I
t was the type of sunny January day that made people in the Blizzard Belt pack their cars and head for southern California. Though Seattle rarely had any snow to flee from, it did have a thousand shades of winter gray. Susa Donovan was happy to see the sun again, even through an airplane window.

Sitting in the comfortable cabin of a Donovan International executive jet gave her an uninterrupted view of the coastline far below. These days she rarely painted humanity’s marks on the landscape, but the contrast between the wild fluid blue of the sea and the pale man-made grid of subdivisions, freeways, and industry made her hand itch to hold a paintbrush. Viewed from a distance, the image was abstract and dramatic, like a human storm poised on the edge of breaking over the endless ocean.

Yet if she almost closed her eyes, she could see the land as it once had been, green ravines and velvet shadows of eucalyptus, orange and yellow
evenings, a young woman’s smile as she painted her lover holding out his hand in silent offering.

Sometimes it was hard for Susa to believe she’d ever been that young, but she had. Years before it became fashionable in the late sixties, she’d abandoned school and home for an unconventional life of late nights, exotic cigarettes, the smell of turpentine and sex; and painting, always painting, more important to her than all the rest of it put together.

She’d been born much too late to participate in the glory days of California Impressionism, yet she’d known some of the great painters, had learned from them, had heard them talk over endless bottles of wine about the glories and scandals of the Painter’s Beach art colony at its height, Benford Savoy III, called Three, a rich man’s son who supported artists because he enjoyed the bohemian life.

Sometimes she wondered what had happened to those unknown artists, the talented ones who lost their art in booze, or the women whose art disappeared under the weight of cultural disinterest and the intricate demands of motherhood. So many of them tore themselves apart and left nothing to mark their passage from art to death.

A feeling of foreboding went through her, the kind of rippling of the skin that her kids laughingly called sure evidence that not all the witches had been burned in Salem. Even as she tried to dismiss the chill beneath the warmth, she wished that her husband was beside her and her children and grandchildren gathered around. She felt…haunted.

Something was wrong. Somewhere.

Of course there is,
she told herself briskly.
Something is always wrong somewhere. No need to take it personally, even if I do have witches in my ancestry. Well, druids, actually, but they burned just the same.

Whatever. Everything is fine with those I love.

And if she told herself that often enough, she might believe it. Part of it was that she hated having Don half a world away. And most of it was something else, something that couldn’t be touched or known, simply accepted.

“Ms. Donovan?”

The pilot’s voice came over the intercom. Susa flipped a switch on the seat arm. “Yes?”

“The Donovan requests that you ‘turn on your goddamned cell phone.’”

“Oops,” Susa said, reaching for her big purse. “I didn’t expect him to be awake. Isn’t it the middle of the night in whatever godforsaken hunk of real estate he’s visiting?”

“Trust me. He’s awake.”

“I’m calling him as we speak.”

The pilot, whose ears had been singed, sighed gratefully. “Good. We’re landing in twenty minutes. I’d hate to try to juggle both the Donovan on a rant and the air controller at John Wayne International.”

Susa was still smiling when her husband answered his phone.

“Susa?” The voice was rough yet warm.

“I’m here, love.”

“I miss you.”

She caressed the phone with her fingertips as though she could reach through time and space and feel the warmth of her husband’s mouth. “Same here. I’m one lucky woman.”

“Because I’m not around to harass you?”

She laughed softly. “That’s not harassment. I was just thinking about the painters in Moreno County.”

“BWM,” he said.

Before We Met. It was the way Susa and Donald Donovan divided their lifetimes.

“Yes,” she said. “I look down at the land and I’m haunted by the talented men who never found what they were looking for and stopped painting, and the talented women who weren’t fortunate enough to find a mate who supported their work, praised their abilities, and made painting part of raising a family. I was so lucky to find you. Have I ever thanked you for that, my love?”

“Every time you smile.”

“I wish I could kiss you.” She hadn’t wanted him to go and had told him so more than once before he left.
For God’s sake, Don, why do you think I put up with our strapping, looming sons and quick-witted daughters if not to let them take over the business so we can play?

But Don was as stubborn as she was, which was why they were still individuals and still together. “How are the negotiations going?”

“Slowly.”

“You’re going to miss the auction.” It wasn’t a question.

“I’m afraid so.”

“Afraid? Ha! You’re chortling.”

“Well, smiling maybe, but not chortling. I never chortle.” He yawned hugely. “Couldn’t sleep until I heard your voice.”

“Are you saying I put you to sleep?” she teased.

“Eventually. Damn it, honey. I should be with you, not over here talking through interpreters to people who see dollar signs when I walk in the room.”

“Then come home.”

“Always.”

“But not tonight, huh?”

“No.” He sighed. “I swear I’m going to put a leash on one of our kids and make them take my place.”

“Remind me to be somewhere else when you try.”

He bit back a laugh. “Be safe, my beautiful Susa. Call me even if you think I’m asleep.”

“Same for you. Don’t let down your guard, love.”

“Don’t worry. Uncle Sam assigned me some company. Three guys. They remind me of Jake and Archer, cool around the eyes and always ready to jump in any direction.”

Susa’s heartbeat quickened. Their son Archer and their son-in-law Jake had once spent time in the kinds of government service that Congress didn’t oversee. “Don’t worry?” she asked in a rising voice. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing. The government just thought it was easier to keep an eye on me than to find me if I got lost,” he said.

She let out a long breath. “Good for them.”

“You think it’s a good idea?”

“Anything that keeps you safe is a good idea.”

At the other end of the line, her husband grinned.
Gotcha
. “Then you’ll cooperate with Ian Lapstrake.”

“Who?”

“The man who’s meeting you at the airport. He’s Lawe’s friend.”

“Oh,
that
Ian.”

“He’s also one of Rarities’ top security men. I’m sure you’ll enjoy his company every minute of the time you’re hauling yourself and your half-million-dollar paintings all over the southern California landscape.”

“Are you saying—” Susa began hotly.

“I love you.”

Being a wise man, the Donovan hung up before Susa could answer.

BOOK: Die in Plain Sight
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