Dove in the Window (30 page)

“We
certainly
can’t,” I murmured. I felt Gabe’s hand squeeze my upper arm as Rianna looked beyond us to greet another group of people.

“Geez Louise,” I said in a low voice. “Fourteen flavors of fish eggs. What’s this world coming to?” I read the place cards, which were written in fancy calligraphy and placed in front of each crystal dish. “Ginger, orange, Grande Passion, Black Tobikko.”

“Here’s one you might like,” Gabe said. “Lone Star caviar. Smoked with mesquite and heated up with jalapeno and serrano chiles and Absolut Peppar vodka for that distinctive, truly Texan taste.”

“Gee, wrap some up to go,” I said. “The only fish eggs I’ve ever experienced have been the kind you put on the end of your hook to catch a trout, and I’m happy to keep it that way.”

He handed me a small china plate holding some caviar. “It wouldn’t hurt you to try something new. You might like it. Like many things, it’s an acquired taste.”

I took the plate and looked down at the jellylike eggs. “Anything someone says you have to acquire a taste for instantly makes me suspicious. Makes me think of the emperor’s new clothes. My theory is no one really likes this stuff, but nobody has the nerve to be the first one to say, ‘For cryin’ out loud, does anyone realize we are eating dead fish embryos?‘”

He grinned and dumped another spoonful on my plate. “Frankly, I love it. Take some more before this crowd inhales it.”

Holding my plate, I made small talk with people until I couldn’t think of one more thing to say, then wandered out to the backyard, where the trees sparkled with tiny white lights that made me think of Disneyland more than fireflies. I pictured Snow White and her seven cohorts skulking about the perfectly trimmed bushes and trees. The lake, a short walk down some flagstone steps, shimmered in the moonlight and looked beautiful in an artificial, theme-park sort of way that fit with this whole plastic milieu. I gazed out over the lake, watching the small ripples made by the wind, and couldn’t help but think about how, by all rights, Shelby should have been here with the rest of the up-and-coming artists, how this would have been such a special night for her, the first of many in her life.

“Are you enjoying your caviar?” Isaac said behind me.

I turned around and held up my still overflowing plate. “My third helping,” I replied. “And if you believe that, I’ve got some oceanfront property in Elko, Nevada, I’m sure you’d be interested in.”

He laughed and came over next to me. “Actually, it is quite delicious, you know. It is ...”

“I know, I know, an acquired taste. So I’ve been told.” I studied his face. Though his expression was jovial, his eyes were sad. “Are you okay?”

He sighed. “These things get harder and harder.”

“Don’t I know it. And I’m sure you’ve done a hundred thousand more than me.”

“This one’s been especially difficult, trying to laugh and make small talk when all I want to do is shake every person I meet until their teeth rattle and scream that my granddaughter is dead.” He gazed out over the calm lake. “By the way, just so you don’t think I’m being a snob, I invited your grandmother to be my guest tonight, but much like her granddaughter, she felt that fish eggs were something better left to those who are enamored with hooks and sinkers.” He smiled at me. “She also said she met her quota for dressing up this month. And since she wouldn’t accompany me, I chose to come alone.”

I smiled back, liking this man better each time we met. Then glancing around to make sure I wasn’t seen, I tipped my plate and dumped the caviar into the lake. “Umm, umm, good.”

He gave a small chuckle. “If this lake is stocked, there are going to be some very happy fish tonight.”

“Or some very confused ones. I mean, mesquite smoked? So, did you enlarge the photographs?”

“They’re in my car. I’ll give them to you before you leave. They don’t appear like much to me, of course, but you know the land around here better than I do. Perhaps they’ll strike a familiar chord in you. I still think the missing film strip is the key to who murdered her. And her boyfriend.”

“You’re probably right, but that doesn’t do us much good unless we find it. By the way, I do have someone else working on this. My cousin Emory is using his nefarious journalistic contacts to investigate the backgrounds of the people closest to Shelby. Hopefully he’ll come up with something—a good solid ‘why’ someone wanted her dead. What would cause any of these people to go to that desperate extreme.” I looked up at him. “Since so many of the people we’re suspecting are artists, tell me, if you were an artist ...” I stopped and laughed at my words, my face heating up slightly. “I’m sorry, that didn’t come out the way I meant it. You are an artist.”

He patted my shoulder gently. “I know what you’re trying to say. What would cause an artist to want to kill someone?”

“Right. What’s the worst thing someone could do to an artist?”

He thought for a moment, absently rubbing a thumb over his hulking knuckles. “I would have to say it would be stealing from them.”

“Stealing? You mean, like their ideas? Their style?”

“Plagiarism is hard to prove, of course, in any type of creative art. There’s no law against copying someone’s style. But to copy a painting, including the signature of the artist, and to sell it as an original—that would be the worst thing that could happen to an artist short of all his or her originals being destroyed in some way.”

“So, does that happen much in photography?” I asked, trying to figure out how that would work into why Shelby was killed.

“Sometimes, but not often. It’s really more a problem in the fine arts. There’s a lot of money to be made in forgeries. Especially in the western art field. It’s become very popular in Japan and Germany and other foreign countries, and many collectors are too trusting. They accept a fancy-looking document claiming a bronze sculpture or an oil painting is an authentic Remington or Russell without checking either the background of the art dealer or where the original might actually reside—usually in a museum somewhere.”

A cold breeze came up, causing the ripples on the lake to speed up to escalator-like regularity. I shivered and said, “Maybe she took photographs of something to do with forgeries.”

“Let’s walk back up to the house and get some coffee,” Isaac said, taking the china plate from my hands and cupping a warm palm underneath my elbow.

“Then we’ll just have to look deeper into all those things,” I said as we followed the flagstone steps back up to the party. “It has to be one of them.”

“Or something else we haven’t thought of,” he said, his voice weary. We reached the large patio where the mayor, spying Isaac, came over and grabbed his arm.

“Isaac, we’ve been looking for you everywhere. I want to propose a toast. There is so much to celebrate tonight.” A cloud of pain swept briefly over Isaac’s face and then was gone, replaced by his public smile. I slipped away to the back of the room.

“What’re you doing hiding back here, cowgirl?” Olivia said, coming up beside me. Greer came up a few seconds later, holding a glass of wine.

“They say the people in the back rows are always the smartest,” Greer said, sipping her wine.

“Who said that?” I asked.

“The people in the back rows,” Olivia said with a laugh.

We listened to the mayor’s speech, his toast to Isaac and the women artists of our community, then moved back outside on the patio.

“Is Roland here?” I asked. “I haven’t seen him.”

“You are kidding,” Greer said. “He’s been fluttering around like a bee in a honeysuckle patch. I bet by the end of the night he’s worth at least a quarter of a million dollars more.”

“As long as it’s some of my work he sells, more power to him,” Olivia said, bringing a caviar-covered cracker up to her mouth.

Greer’s eyebrows shot up. “Yeah, well, you’d better watch him. Roland has a way of manipulating things so that he always comes out on top.”

Olivia shrugged. “My cousin’s a lawyer. If he screws me, he’s going to be sorry.”

Greer thoughtfully twirled her almost-empty wineglass. “I was around a lot of men like him when I lived in San Francisco. My ex-husband is a man like him. You really need to approach them like you would a mad coyote—with great caution and preferably a loaded shotgun.”

Olivia frowned at Greer. “That’s the difference between you and me. Someone messes with me, caution is a word
they
need to worry about.”

Greer set her glass down on a glass-topped table, her face tightening. “Just trying to warn you, Olivia.”

“Warning heard and ignored,” Olivia said flippantly. Greer scowled and opened her mouth to reply.

Trying to sidestep the potential argument, I interrupted. “Weren’t both of you at the Frio the other night when Kip was killed?”

“Can you believe it?” Olivia said. “I heard that they’re really hassling Bobby about it. Ha. That’s what he gets, the little twerp.”

I watched their faces carefully. “So, what do you all think?”

“That little
hombre
did it,” Olivia said. “Bobby’s such a chickenshit coward I could picture him holding an unconscious man’s head under water.”

Greer gave me a half grin. “Think she might be a tad prejudiced?”

I lifted my eyebrows. “Maybe just a little. What do you think, Greer? About what happened to Kip, that is?”

“It doesn’t answer the connection with Shelby. Why would Bobby kill Shelby?”

Olivia snorted.

Greer shook her head. “I can’t imagine that those stupid nude pictures she took of him would cause him to kill her.”

“That’s because you don’t understand how bad it is to shame your family in our culture,” Olivia said. “His mama is a very strict Catholic—head of the altar society at St. Celine‘s—and his papa is a deacon. One of his sisters is a novitiate. They raised their kids
muy
Catholic. Nude pictures of him showing up in a gallery here in town would humiliate
la familia
and cause them to lose face in our community. If he asked her for them back and she refused ...”

“I wonder if he signed a model release?” I said.

Olivia said, “Take it from someone who knows not only Bobby’s low level of sophistication, but also his very active sex drive. If she tempted him with sex, he probably signed on the dotted line quicker than he could shed his tight little Wranglers.”

“So, are you close to getting this one solved?” Greer asked me.

“I’m not trying to solve anything,” I said, twitching inward slightly at the lie. “Just curious more than anything else.”

“And I bet I know why. I hear they arrested your brother-in-law this morning,” Olivia said.

Luckily, before I could answer, Gabe moved into our circle.

“Ready to go?” He put his arm around my shoulders. “It’s been a long day for me, and I’m tired.” His black eye had darkened and spread, giving him a one-eyed raccoon look. His bottom lip appeared less swollen, though. Olivia and Greer looked at his face curiously, but kept their comments to themselves.

I leaned against his familiar bulk and sighed. “Yes, but I need to get something from Isaac first.”

“What’s that?” He frowned, wincing slightly as he did.

“Some prints he made for me. I’ll see if I can break through his crowd of adoring fans.” I turned to Olivia and Greer. “I guess I’ll be seeing you two tomorrow. Are either of you in the fashion show?”

“Yes,” they said in unison.

I grimaced. “You might as well hear it from me first. Maribelle D‘Angelo had the nerve to rupture her appendix, and I’m taking her place.”

Olivia let out a whoop. “
Caramba!
She was the one wearing that huge eighteen eighties ball gown with the corset and the bustle.”

“I’m bringing my camera for this,” Greer said, joining Olivia’s laughter.

“I’ll sue,” I said.

“It’ll be worth every penny,” she called after me.

I finally managed to squeeze through the women surrounding Isaac, getting a few irritated looks when he excused himself and followed me to his rented car in the street. He handed me a stiff yellow 8 1/2 X 11 envelope. “Call me tomorrow. I’ll be out at the ranch or at the Historical Museum with Dove—around two, I think. I agreed to talk to them about old photographs.”

“Okay. If we don’t hook up before then, I’m sure I’ll see you at the fashion show. It’s at the Elks Club at seven o‘clock. Dove’s in it, so I’m sure you’ll be there.”

He walked back toward the mayor’s house where Roland met him halfway up the flagstone path. Emory’s suspicious voice echoed in the back of my head—what about Isaac? I shook my head, refusing to go there. If Isaac was involved with the killing of his own granddaughter, then I was going to give up on humankind once and for all.

On the drive home, Gabe kept glancing over at me perusing the photographs. There were twenty of them—various scenery shots of oak trees, rolling hills, a hawk darting down to catch something on the ground. Four of them showed the corner of a building—a barn perhaps. Even with the enlargements, there was nothing on them that looked particularly familiar to me.

“Whatever she saw,” I said, putting them back in the envelope, “has to be on the missing negative strip.”

“I’m not happy about this,” he said when we pulled into the driveway.

“I know.”

“But I’ve also learned that there’s nothing I can say or do that will keep you from sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong.”

I turned to him in the dark cab. The streetlight across the street shaded his battered face in a stark, spooky way. “I’m being careful. I have learned something in the last year, you know.”

He pulled the keys out of the ignition. “Not enough, apparently. You haven’t learned to let the police do their job. The job they are
trained
to do.”

I laid my hand on his arm. “I don’t want to argue.”

“I don’t either,
querida
, but I had to say it. It’s the only protection you’ll allow me to give.”

“I promise, I’ll be very careful. Isaac and I are just trying to look at the things that the police might not think about. Like these photographs. No one but Isaac would have thought to look at the numbers on the negatives to see if any were missing.”