Read Die in Plain Sight Online
Authors: Elizabeth Lowell
W
ard Forrest pinched the bridge of his nose and cursed the years that had made him need glasses to read print that had once been as plain as a whale in a parking lot. Even the fire in the hearth, which usually soothed him, was making his eyes hurt.
“We can do this tomorrow,” Savoy said.
“No.” Ward settled the reading glasses back on his nose and picked up the legal papers once more. “I can’t believe that bitch wants to screw more land out of us for the same amount of stock in New Horizons.”
Savoy didn’t bother to answer. “Bitch” was the nicest thing Ward had called Angelique White tonight. “She senses weakness and wants to know how bad it is.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Ward retorted. “If I didn’t need her cash, I’d tell her to piss up a rope.”
Honey Bear’s tail thumped against Ward’s ankles. He nudged the dog with his foot. The tail thumped faster.
“But we do need her cash,” Savoy said for the tenth time in an hour, “especially after that settlement with Concerned Citizens for Sane Development. Besides, it’s a good business fit. New Horizons has cash and no land. We have land we can’t sell or develop without costly court battles, and no one is willing to lend money at a rate that would turn a profit for us.”
“You’re preaching to the choir.”
“I’ll leave that to Angelique. Are you going to sign this ‘agreement to agree’ tonight or do you want to sit on it for a while?”
“Damn that bitch anyway,” Ward said bitterly. “If she hadn’t dragged her feet about developing, a lot of this would already be done.”
“What bitch are you talking about now?”
“Your mother. Always whining about her precious land and then spending money hand over fist like it grew on trees. Should’ve been born a frigging queen.”
Savoy’s fingers tightened on the contract he was reading. “My mother, your wife.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Then don’t remind
me,”
Savoy said in a clipped voice, standing up. He flexed fingers that weren’t as supple as they once had been and ached every time the wind turned cold. Unlike his father, he felt every year of his age, even if he didn’t look it. “I can’t touch the past and I’m sick of hearing about it.”
“Huh. Well, the past sure as hell can touch
you,
so you might open up your damned ears and learn something.”
Only if you have something new to say,
Savoy thought.
But he knew better than to speak it aloud. That would just lead to a shouting match. He didn’t need that. More important, the future didn’t need that. The future needed Ward’s agreement, no matter how reluctant, on the New Horizons deal. The longer Ward delayed, the more likely it was that something would come spectacularly and publicly unstuck in the family, and Angelique would bolt all over again.
“Are you going to restore Bliss’s credit?” Savoy asked, his voice carefully neutral.
“Has she agreed to quit fighting me over the ranch?”
Savoy managed not to flinch. Sooner or later Ward would see the new
clause Angelique’s lawyers had appended to the deal. Then his father would throw a shit fit.
According to the “agreement to agree,” the merger couldn’t go through without Bliss’s written approval.
“I don’t know. What does Rory say about it?” Savoy asked.
“They’re getting married again.”
“Really? When?”
“Couple of days.”
Savoy shrugged. “He might as well. He’s your son in everything but name.”
“Not if he takes Bliss’s side in this.”
“Does he know that?”
“He knows.” Ward’s finger stabbed at the sheet he was reading. “What the hell is
this
? Since when does this merger need an eighty percent agreement of all private shareholders in Savoy Enterprises!”
Savoy pinched his nose in an unconscious echo of his father. In some cases, headaches were indeed catching. “Since Angelique realized how deeply Bliss is against developing certain portions of the ranch, Angelique doesn’t want ‘to be a source of familial discord.’”
“How the hell did she find out?”
“Jesus, Dad, the woman would have to live under a rock not to know Bliss’s stand on developing the ranch. Radio, TV, newspapers—take your pick. They’ve all featured our dirty laundry at one time or another, and Blissy makes a wonderful poor little rich girl.”
Ward hurled his drink into the fire, glass and all. The explosion of sound sent Honey Bear scrambling for a calmer place to sleep.
“That bitch Bliss has twenty-four hours to sign this deal,” Ward said to the fire. “Then I’m going to the lawyers. All she’ll inherit from me will be ten dollars and my sincere hope that she roasts in hell. Tell her, Savvy. Tell her tonight.”
Savoy gathered the papers and left without a word. He’d seen his father mad before, but not like this. Not since his mother was alive. Cold, not hot.
Blissy, what have you done now?
T
urn left, turn right, run in circles, repeat sequence,” Ian muttered.
Susa ignored him.
Lacey didn’t, but she didn’t say anything, either. She could see his reflection in the rearview mirror. His eyes were darker than night. His mouth was flat. She knew he was irritated that she wouldn’t tell him why the trip to the storage unit was necessary, but she couldn’t help it. The paintings would speak for themselves. They would have to. She didn’t know how to explain them, and she didn’t feel like answering all the questions they would raise if she told everyone about them before they got there.
Too late for second thoughts now,
she told herself.
Hoping she was doing the right thing, she pulled the cashmere coat her parents had brought closer around her. It was a lot warmer than the velvet-patch coat, but not nearly as colorful. Black was pretty much black, and she preferred bright.
Ian checked the mirrors. His faithful escort had gotten careless. Instead of running a streetlight to stay on Ian’s bumper, the deputies had stopped two blocks back like good little citizens.
Ian didn’t feel like a good little citizen. He opened the gap between the two cars, pushed the next light, and turned right into a residential area without signaling. Then he put the accelerator on the floor and did the rocket-sled routine for two blocks, turned left, shot down two more blocks, whipped onto another side street, and shut down the car.
“Well, that achieved target heart rate,” Susa said dryly. “Tired of being followed?”
“Yeah.” His tone didn’t encourage comments.
“Any particular reason?” Susa asked.
“No.”
“Ah.”
Silence descended in the car.
“What do you mean, ‘Ah’?” he asked finally.
“Ah, as in, ah, of course, testosterone,” Susa said.
Ian didn’t argue the point as he watched the deputies cruise through an intersection one block over. He knew it was petty of him to feel good about losing them, but there it was. He felt good.
The deputies didn’t reappear. After a few minutes Ian started up the truck again and cut over to a road that would loop around to Corona del Mar.
Lacey began giving instructions again. “Turn right at the next light.”
Finally they came to an area where small businesses struggled to survive, motels became cheap apartments, and storage yards for the rich and overstocked thrived.
“There,” Lacey said. “Universal Storage, on the left. Just pull up to the gate. I’ll enter the code.”
Lacey got out, punched in her private code, and got back in before Ian drove through the electronic gate. Bright lights illuminated six rows of storage units, each row two units tall.
“Shayla’s brother-in-law owns the place,” Lacey said. “We get a couple of units for free, unless he needs them. Then Lost Treasures Found gets crammed to the ceiling again.”
Susa glanced around curiously and didn’t ask any questions.
Ian grunted. So far Lacey had been willing to talk about everything
but why she’d decided to take a late-night jaunt to a storage unit. “Why the big mystery?” he asked.
“Number one-twenty” was all she said, pointing to the right. “Second row of buildings, first story. You can park right in front of the freight elevator.”
No one else was around, which wasn’t surprising. Most people had better things to do late on a Friday night than check out the contents of their storage unit. Lacey winced at the thought of how many weekend nights she’d spent doing just that. She hadn’t realized how predictable—okay,
boring
—her social life had become until Ian appeared and put the moon and stars back in her nights.
She wondered how long it would last. If he was mad at her now, she couldn’t imagine what he’d be like when he saw the contents of number 120.
Ian looked around the designated parking area, rejected it, and went farther down the row to a point where the truck couldn’t be spotted from the street.
Lacey walked up the row, looked at the wide storage door that opened like a garage door, and pulled out the key that would open the padlock. The closer she got to the paintings, the more she wondered if she was doing the right thing.
And the more she was afraid she wasn’t.
“If you chicken out after all this,” Ian said conversationally, “I’m going to pry that key out of your paint-stained little fingers and go in alone.”
Her chin came up in a “You and who else, big boy” gesture that made him smile despite his irritation. He tugged at the lock of her hair that never stayed in place.
She didn’t know whether to smile or smack his hand.
Susa snickered.
Lacey opened the padlock, stuck it in her coat pocket, and tugged up on the door. Most of the units had rolling doors that shrieked like Halloween. Hers didn’t. The sound of metal on metal made her teeth ache. That was why the door rose up with hardly a sound. She kept it as well oiled as a bodybuilder’s pecs. Saying a silent prayer that she was doing the right thing, she flipped on the light and stepped aside.
It was a big unit. A quarter of it was packed with shelves and racks of items waiting to be needed at Lost Treasures Found. The rest was
Grandfather Quinn’s paintings and closed cupboards lining the far wall. The racks for the paintings were so closely packed that it was all a person could do to squeeze between the rows.
Ignoring the shop goods, Susa looked at the unframed paintings that were stacked in racks along the walls and aisles, leaning against the racks, and wrapped in paper and piled on or under cheap tables. Then she made a startled sound and turned the nearest painting toward the light.
A hillside waist-deep in golden grass, green eucalyptus with pale bark peeling in graceful ribbons, a wild sky alive with rain and wind…
“My God,” she breathed. “Another Marten.”
“No. Another David Quinn,” Lacey said. “A roomful of them, as a matter of fact.”
Susa shook her head like a woman coming out of one dream and into a deeper dream.
“I saw him paint that one,” Lacey said, pointing to the canvas Susa was holding.
“
En plein air?
Or was it painted in his studio from a field study?” Susa asked.
“Studio and field study.”
“Where is it?”
“The field study?” Lacey asked.
“Yes.”
Lacey frowned and looked around the unit. “I don’t know. It might not have survived. Like you, Grandpa destroyed paintings all the time.”
“Probably a good idea in his case,” Ian said. “If the original is gone, it’s harder to prove forgery.”
Lacey flinched and didn’t disagree.
“How could anyone destroy an original Marten?” Susa asked. Then, quickly, “Never mind. That was my heart talking, not my brain. But still…”
“I didn’t bring you here to make you feel bad all over again,” Lacey said. “I just wanted to prove to you that you didn’t have to mourn those three stolen paintings. They weren’t Martens. They were Quinns, and there are a lot more where they came from. And maybe, just maybe, an original Marten or two or three is waiting to be discovered somewhere in the hundreds of paintings I inherited. Since I was raised with the paintings,
I don’t think I’d be able to tell the difference between original or forgery. But maybe you can separate the wheat from the Wheaties.”
“Or Rarities could,” Ian said. “It’s what they do and they’re damned good at it.”
“Sure. Send them the whole bloody lot,” Lacey said unhappily, “but don’t ask me to pay for it. I can’t.”
“I can,” Susa said. She glanced around. “Looks like another triage job,” she said, mentally rolling up her sleeves. “Let’s get to work.”
Y
ou lost them twenty minutes ago?” Rory repeated into his cell phone. He looked at his watch. Almost nine o’clock. He hadn’t been with Bliss long enough to kiss her properly and already something had gone wrong.
The irritation in Rory’s voice made Bliss look up from the cheese pastries she was making. Glumly she wondered if he was going to have to rush off and leave her watching TV alone. The drop in her spirits surprised her. It told her how much and how quickly he’d become part of her life again.
The best part.
“How’d it happen?” Rory asked. “You get out to take a crap or what?”
The deputy at the other end of the conversation swallowed hard. “The subject had been cooperative, so we didn’t worry when he went through a yellow light. It was busy—Friday night and all—so we just let him go rather than endangering civilians by taking the light red.”
“Uh-huh,” Rory said, understanding their predicament but not real sympathetic at the moment. “So, did the light stick on red?”
“No, sir. He rabbited. Turned off the highway into a residential area. By the time we got there, he was gone.”
“If I were you,” Rory said, “I’d pray to God that nothing happens to Susa Donovan before she gets back to the hotel, where you and your partner will be waiting for her.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Call me when you pick them up again.”
Rory didn’t wait for the deputy’s agreement. He punched out and called Ward.
“Hope I didn’t wake you,” he said when Ward answered the phone.
Ward snorted. “That’ll be the day. You fight with Bliss and decide to play cribbage tonight with an old man after all?”
“Not yet. Just got a call from my men. They lost Susa Donovan.”
“How’d they lose her in a hotel?”
“It wasn’t in the hotel. It was PCH on a Friday night.”
Silence.
Mentally Rory prepared himself for the abrasive edge of Ward’s tongue. It wasn’t a happy prospect. Rory was still raw from the explosion that had come when Ward realized that the paintings he wanted to buy had been stolen.
“No big deal,” Ward said, “unless you think she stole the paintings herself or had it done, and is going to pick them up again.”
“If she did, I’m a long way from proving it. Besides, why would she do it? It’s not like she needs money. Ian Lapstrake, now, maybe there’s a possibility. But I got to tell you, nothing in the information I’ve dug up on him suggests he’s anything except the answer to a mother’s prayer.”
“Huh? You making any progress at all on the theft?”
“I said I’d call you if we had any breaks on the case.”
“So you can’t follow a truck on PCH and you can’t catch a brass-balled thief. What the hell good are you to me, Sheriff?” Ward hung up.
Rory grimaced and turned off the phone.
“You have to go?” Bliss asked.
He turned toward her. The rosy silk wrapper she wore brought color
to her skin and made her eyes look incredibly blue. “I’d have to be a fool to leave a beautiful lady alone on Friday night.”
She smiled almost sadly. “I’ll be here when you get back.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” He tossed the cell phone on the counter and unbuckled his weapon harness. He draped it over a kitchen chair and went to Bliss, drew her close, and kissed her. “Mmm, you smell good enough to eat.”
“Is Daddy mad at you because you’re here?”
“No.” Rory nibbled on her ear. “The paintings he wants to buy were stolen today.”
“And he blames you?”
“A firm I own part of was responsible for security at the hotel where the paintings were stolen.”
“So? Does he blame you every time a bank gets held up?”
Smiling, Rory kissed her carefully shaped eyebrows. “Nope. But he really had a yen for those paintings.”
“Do him good not to get something he wants.”
“Speaking of wanting something,” Rory said, sliding his hands into the deep neckline of the silk wrap.
“You want food or sex?” she asked, but she arched her back to make it easier for his hands to find her.
“Dinner in bed.”
She laughed and kissed him hard.
No sooner had she gotten his belt unbuckled than her phone rang.
“Ignore it,” she said against his neck.
“I was planning to.”
The phone rang again. Then again. Then the answering machine kicked in.
They heard Savoy’s voice. “Bliss, if you’re screening calls, let me in. It’s important. Really important.”
“Well, shit,” Rory said. Slowly he withdrew his hands. “Better get it, sugar. Savvy doesn’t sound happy.”
She sighed, touched his lips with her fingertip, and went to the phone. “Hi, Savvy.”
“Ring me up.”
Bliss’s mouth settled into sulky lines. “I’ve got a man with me.”
“Your future husband?”
“Who told you?”
“Our father, who art
not
in heaven.” Savoy’s tone said more than words. “Ring me up. I promise it won’t take long.”
A long, rosy fingernail stabbed at the number pad, opening the downstairs lock. By the time Bliss had her wrapper rearranged and Rory had his shirt tucked in, Savoy was knocking at the front door. Bliss opened the door and looked at her brother.
“You look tired,” she said.
“Spending time with the old man when he’s on a rant will do that to you,” Rory said.
“Yeah.” Savoy pinched the bridge of his nose again. The headache that had begun at the ranch had really taken hold.
“What do you want to drink?”
“Scotch. Neat. And some aspirin if you have it.”
Rory went to the wet bar just off the kitchen.
Bliss crossed her arms under her breasts and waited. Then she saw the new lines on her brother’s face. “Oh, damn, Savvy. Sit down. I can’t throw you out when you look like this. You hungry?”
Savoy hesitated, thinking about it.
“Did you eat dinner?” Rory asked, handing him the drink and some white tablets he’d taken from the bottle behind the bar.
Savoy knocked back half the drink, threw down the tablets, and finished the drink. “No, I don’t think so. I’ve been going over the latest version of the New Horizons agreement with Dad. Took away my appetite.”
“How does country soup sound?” Bliss said. “I’ve got some left over from dinner, and some bread to go with it.”
“You don’t have to feed me,” Savoy said. He smiled slightly, “I know you have better things to do. And by the way, congratulations to both of you.”
Hope you get it right this time, but I’m not holding my breath
. He glanced at Rory. “You were the only one of the crop that didn’t kowtow to Blissy. Drove her nuts.”
“Went both ways,” Rory said. “She didn’t kowtow to me.”
“And it drove you nuts,” Blissy said.
“Only sometimes.” Rory looked at his future brother-in-law. “Another drink?”
Savvy shook his head. “Thanks, but I promised Bliss to make this
fast.” He reached into the breast pocket of his wool blazer and pulled out the ten-page “agreement to agree.” “Sign this and I’m gone.”
Bliss’s eyes narrowed into glittering slits as she read the heading on the first sheet. “I’m not going to sign away my birthright to that sleek little church-talking bitch so that Daddy can have a fucking monument built to his everlasting memory.”
“Your choice,” Savoy said evenly. “But if you don’t sign this deal, your birthright will consist of ten dollars and your father’s fervent hope that you roast in hell.”
Bliss’s head snapped up. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“I don’t believe it.”
The corner of Savoy’s mouth turned down. “Believe it.”
She stared at her brother for a long moment. “He’d do that to his own daughter?”
“After what happened to our Moonie siblings, do you have to ask? Dad hasn’t so much as spoken to them for thirty years. Hell, he won’t even listen if I speak
about
them.”
“Jesus, thirty years.” Bliss shook her head, staggered by all the time. Where had it gone? “Has it really been that long?”
“Yeah. And nothing has changed since,” Savoy said wearily, “except that Dad’s gotten less patient with people who get in his way on business.”
Rory put a comforting arm around her waist.
“When you sign,” Savoy said, “you’ll get your credit cards back. He’s a no-holds-barred son of a bitch when it comes to running the ranch his way, but he doesn’t hold grudges.”
Bliss tilted her head back. Tears fell anyway. “Damn, damn,
damn him.
He always wins.”
“Marry me,” Rory said. “I can’t keep you like a queen, but you won’t starve.”
She gave him a watery smile. “You keep making me wonder why I ever walked away from you.” She looked at her brother and the smile faded. “Where’s a pen?”
Savoy reached into his breast pocket and gave her a pen.
“You don’t have to,” Rory said. “Money isn’t—”
“I won’t deny money is part of it,” she interrupted, her voice as defeated as the line of her back. “I’m too old to be happy on the pension
of a public servant, and I know it. You wouldn’t be happy having to find another job flipping burgers, and you know it.” She looked up and met Rory’s eyes directly. “Just like you know that if Daddy thought you were standing between me and my signature on this, he’d crucify you. So there’s no real choice, is there?”
Savoy didn’t disagree.
Neither did Rory. He’d never wanted to be one of the “retired” senior citizens working in fast-food joints to make payments on their medical prescriptions.
Silently Bliss signed the New Horizons papers and handed them back to her brother. “Well, it was fun while it lasted.”
“What was?” Rory asked.
“Yanking his chain.” She smiled thinly at both men. “It was a hell of a lot more satisfying than being one more Honey Bear licking his feet.”