Perfect Touch (25 page)

“Jay,” she said, “I think there is—”

“Sorry,” he interrupted. “I've got to run.”

“Are you meeting Cooke?”

“He has a hot lead. You're going to Susie's for soup. I'll meet you there when I get back. It shouldn't be long.”

“Then I'll stay here.”

“No,” he said. “Not alone. You'll have company at Susie's.”

“I'd rather stay and study
Muse,
” she said. “I think I've—”

“When I get back, you can study until your eyes cross,” he cut in, picking up her shearling jacket. “Hell, we can sleep in the gallery if you want.”

“What about the lights?” she asked as they marched out of the work area to the back door.

“Later,” he said, moving fast.

After he hustled her outside, he closed and locked the door in a few swift motions.

She planted her feet stubbornly in the twilight alley where intermittent storm cells spat rain or snow. “What is this red-hot new lead that can't wait another minute?”

He thought about picking her up, opening the back door of Susie's Kitchen, and carrying her into the café. Instead he took her arm and began walking out of the alley and around to the front of the building.

“The shooter's phone had received two calls from a number in Jackson,” he said.

She looked around suddenly, feeling hunted again. “Where in Jackson?”

“A listing billed to Liza Neumann. That's why you're going to hang out at Susie's Kitchen. Liza will make this talk as ugly as possible. I don't want you there.”

“That makes two of us.”

Sara wrapped her jacket more closely as she quickstepped to keep up with Jay's long strides. Despite wearing her hiking boots, she slid a few times on new patches of ice left by clouds that wanted to snow but ended up spitting icy slush. They were spitting now, stinging pellets that raked bare skin.

“You say Susie's has good soup?” she asked.

“Nothing fancy, but it's good.”

“Soup it is.” Then, “Wait. I left
Muse
in plain sight.”

“Nobody can see into the store. Everything will hold until I get back.”

“Don't dawdle,” she said, wanting to be back at the gallery so much she all but vibrated. “
Muse
is calling to me. I think I found a way to reveal her secrets. I took a picture and—”

“Good,” he said over her excited words, his mind on Liza and what she might say. “I'll look at it when I get back. Half an hour, tops.”

Jay opened the door to the eatery, pulled Sara inside, and spotted a booth at the rear. “Here you go.” He tucked her into the booth, threw a twenty on the table, and kissed her swiftly. “The condo is about a mile away. I'll call if I'm going to be more than half an hour.”

He was gone before she could tell him again that she would rather be studying
Muse
. As she watched him leave, she felt like she had been dropped by a whirlwind into a place with cozy booths and the muted chatter of a handful of people enjoying their meals.

A server appeared. Sara ordered the first thing that came to her mind. Then she settled back and tried to gather her scattered thoughts.

No point in wasting time. I'll study the pictures of
Muse
I took.

Sara reached into her bag for her telephone, only to discover that both telephone and bag had been left behind in Jay's rush to leave the
gallery. The phone was on a table in the back room where she had photographed
Muse
. Her purse was in a corner somewhere.

At least Jay had remembered what was left behind. He'd given her enough cash to pay for her food.

Damn it,
she thought.
He was in such a tearing rush to dump me here and I was so involved in
Muse
that I didn't even think about what I was leaving behind.

Her thoughts were still churning, harder than ever now that she didn't have the painting to distract her.

How can he call me if my phone is in the gallery?

Did Liza really know the pilot? And why would she know someone like that?

If Jay died, Liza wouldn't inherit, Barton would. That's a motive of sorts. Although I'd hate to depend on his generosity for survival.

But why murder the Solvangs?

And most of all,
why now?
Why not years ago when JD was sick and Jay was half a world away?

Sara drummed her fingers on the table, barely noticing when the server put soup in front of her.

What a bloody, murderous tangle.

Still crackling with unanswered questions, she lifted a steaming spoonful of minestrone and blew gently. A glance at her watch told her she had been in the restaurant less than ten minutes.

At least fifteen minutes before Jay will call.

She could eat and still have plenty of time to get her phone from the gallery.

T
HE MOON WAS
playing tag with shreds of a storm cell. When the moon was free of clouds, light from its crescent came shining through the naked branches of trees. They looked like black veins sketched onto the blue-white light.

A single look at the sky told Jay it was cold and was getting colder fast. He slammed the door on the rental truck he'd parked illegally and went up the steps to the condo lobby. It was only a few miles from the gallery, but still in the sprawl of town that had grown up along the highway out of town, away from the national park.

Another piece of the modern built on the bones of the old,
he thought.

If something is alive, it changes,
the critic in his mind pointed out.
That's how you know it's alive.

Don't have to like it, though.

Patches of ice gleamed sullenly in the shadows, waiting for an unwary foot.

He tried the lobby door, just in case.

Locked.

Will she let me in?

The pragmatic part of his mind laughed. If he mentioned
Muse,
she'd run to let him in.

“Yes?” came Liza's voice, tentative and hoarse.

“It's Jay. Let me in.”

“Jesus, what next,” she said dully, resignation in every syllable.

The intercom went silent.

He counted the seconds until he heard the door buzz, letting him in.

Fourteen seconds.

A lifetime.

Ignoring the elevator, he raced up the stairs to Liza's second-floor corner unit and knocked on the door.

“It's still me,” he said when the peephole darkened.

She opened the locks reluctantly, dragging it out, telling him without words just how glad she was to see him. The door opened in slow motion. He didn't wait for a verbal invitation. He was inside and closing the door behind him before she could blink.

The room was as hot as a tropical beach. The air smelled of floral perfume, burned food, and stale alcohol.

He opened his jacket while he measured the once-young woman his already-old father had married. Liza was wearing a red satin wrapper that was more suited to morning in bed than to evening anywhere. The fluffy red mules she wore might have been sexy at one time but were simply ratty now. Her hair was uncombed except for a long platinum sweep on the right side falling forward to conceal that side of her face. She was swaying slightly in place.

All in all, she looked like a bad day in hell.

“Blackmail keeping you up nights?” Jay asked.

“Fuck you.”

“No thanks.”

Liza turned her back and went to a chair where a glass of gin or vodka or water waited on the end table.

“Are you drunk?” he asked.

“What do you want?” she asked, ignoring his question.

“Remember the helicopter crash?”

“The one you went Rambo on? Hard to forget.” She took a deep swallow from the glass, as though it would help her forget. “It crashed. So what?”

A sense of futility and anger went through him, but he kept on anyhow. “Turns out the pilot was a seriously bad dude.”

She shrugged.

“The sheriff's men found the pilot's phone,” Jay said. “Your number was on the call record.”

She took another swallow. For all the comprehension she showed, he could have been speaking Swahili.

I have to make it simple,
he realized.
Something in her either isn't home or has broken.

“I can help you or I can hurt you,” Jay said. “Choose.”

Liza stared at him blankly. “What on earth are you chattering about? I never called anyone in a helicopter. Why would I? They wear earmuffs or whatever.”

He couldn't believe what he was hearing. “Listen to me, Liza. It's done. Over. Finished.”

Starting past him, she chewed on a fingernail that was already bloody. Her hand was shaking.

He swallowed his anger. Badgering a broken old lady wasn't going to help him get closer to the answers he needed.

“Cooke knows you were in contact with the men who shot at Sara and me,” he said evenly, “the same men who left boot prints in the Solvangs' fresh blood.”

She blinked at him like a sleepy child, waiting for him to say something that she understood.

“Why, Liza? What made you hate me so much?”

For a long moment, she stared at him like she was putting puzzle pieces of reality together, all but moving her fingers to mimic the act. Then her hands went limply to her lap.

“It wasn't ever about you,” she said finally. “You were just in the way.”

She didn't cry, but her lips were quivering. When she absently brushed the hair away from her face, Jay saw a livid bruise there, running from her temple to below her swollen eye.

Who hit her?
Jay thought.
That's a really fresh bruise.

“And maybe he's right,” she whispered. “Maybe it was all my idea and he was just doing what I was too weak to do.” She sucked in a shuddering breath.

“He? Who are you talking about?” Jay crouched before her and touched her chin gently, tilting her face until she met his eyes. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“You have the painting and you didn't give it to me,” she said.

“Why do you want
Muse
?”

“It wasn't for you. It's not yours.” Liza clenched her body and tried to lunge to her feet.

Running into Jay was like hitting a wall.

She fell back into her chair and grabbed one of his hands. “You don't understand. I have to get
Muse
back. If you give it to me, this can all end.”

He treated her like the child she had become, stroking her hair
gently, avoiding the bruise that was still spreading, consuming her face.

“It already has ended,” he said. “Your hired hit men are dead. I have
Muse
and I'm keeping it.”

“Sara's reputation,” Liza said, an echo of her old determination returning.

“An engagement ring will take the sting out of any gossip.”

“No.” She shook her head so that her hair swirled wildly.

“It's over, Liza. If you try to hurt Sara, I'll hound you out of Jackson. I can do it and we both know it. You'll have to live in a place where no one knows your name and no one cares.”

“No. No. No.” She shook her head emphatically. “It wasn't supposed to be like this. I told him but he laughed and called me names and threatened to . . .”

Her voice died and silence filled the room until it was as suffocating as the tropical heat.

“Who is murdering people and blaming you?” Jay asked.

The question came out of nowhere, blindsiding her, sending her back into her childlike hiding.

“No,” she said.

“Do you owe some thug money because of another of Barton's screwups?”

“No. No. No. No.”

It wasn't an answer. It was a denial that this could be happening to her.

“Why, Liza?
Why?
” Jay's voice, like his hand holding on to her arm, was gentle. And relentless.

She felt frail, vibrating so hard she might shake apart at any second. Eyes a darker blue than her son's filled and overflowed, sending more tears streaking through yesterday's makeup.

“He owes me everything, but even that isn't enough. More, more, more. He always wants more.”

“Barton?” Jay asked. “He did this to you? He
hit
you?”

Tears flowing from her swollen eyes were her only answer.

“Where is he now?” Jay asked.

More tears came.

The intercom buzzed. “Ms. Neumann, this is Sheriff Cooke. You can talk to me in the privacy of your home or in the official interview room at my office.”

Only the tears flowing down her face answered. Only they were alive.

Jay found the intercom near the door. “Cooke, it's Jay. Come up. Liza's in shock.”

“On my way.”

Jay opened the door and waited impatiently for the elevator to arrive.

“Talk to me,” Cooke said as soon as he saw Jay.

“I think Barton is the one who backhanded her. Bruise is less than an hour old. Still developing.”

The sheriff's eyebrows went up.

“I know Barton's the one pushing Liza for more and more money,” Jay said. “I don't know how the Solvang murders meant cash for Barton, but it's all tied up somehow. And the
Muse
painting, too. But none of it makes sense. Barton's just a spoiled kid. How could he be capable of this? What a bloody clusterf—”

“Where's Barton?” Cooke interrupted.

“He has a downstairs condo. I'll start there.”

“Leave him to me. Go get Sara and have dinner. I'll call you.”

“I can't just—” Jay began.

“Leave it to the law. That's an order.”

Jay's jaw muscles worked, but he nodded once before he turned and strode to the stairwell. He went down the stairs fast, the grip tracks on his boots scraping in the silence.

Sara was so eager to see
Muse
again that she fumbled the combination twice. The third time the ice-cold lock opened grudgingly. Before she went inside the gallery, she looked over her shoulder again to make sure she was alone.

There was nothing in the alley but the eerie gleam of ice buried in the thin shadows cast by the moon. A careless wind blew through the narrow lane, searching for something loose to play with.

She slipped inside the gallery just before the wind found her. The door creaked as it settled back into place. Her purse was where she'd left it in the corner. Her phone was with the magnifying glass and the small flashlight. She took off her shearling jacket and put it on top of her purse.

Just a few minutes with
Muse.
I have to be sure.

She checked her watch.

Five minutes. Then I'll go back to the café and wait for Jay.

With eager steps she went to the painting on its easel. She nearly tripped over the white sheets the previous owners had draped everywhere for their final art installation, a celebration of the ordinary.

As always,
Muse
's haunting and haunted eyes were the first thing to reach out to Sara.

The second thing was the fact that she was sure the face—and maybe the rest of the nude figure—had been painted on top of something else.

It could be just a redo. Even the greatest painters don't always get it right the first time, and we have x-ray photographs to prove it.

But a do-over gave a lot of insight into the artistic process.

She shoved her phone in her back pocket and went to work with the magnifying glass and the light. The more she looked, the more certain she was that everything within the frame of the window was a redo, including the model.

“Awesome,” she said to herself. “Once I have this x-rayed, I'll know what's beneath. If it's more than just a correction of a mistake, I'll make a giclee print of this version, restore the original, and show them side by side. It could be a real showstopper, a rare glimpse into the process of creation.”

Then she sighed.

“Or it could be nothing but a mess underneath, the usual reason for a redo. But I'll—”

The creak of the back door opening sent her pulse over the moon. Without even thinking about it, Sara whipped the phone out of her back pocket and punched in the three numbers she had come to know all too well. Holding the phone behind her back, her thumb on the call button, she waited.

It's just Jay.

Or the wind.

Or—

“Barton! What are you doing here?”