Gift of Gold

if the other person was a friend.”
    “I think you’re right,” Jonas said reflectively. “Although I guess it’s equally possible a stranger walked into the room and shot him. A man caught unawares like that could have the same expression of astonishment on his face.”
    “What about Kincaid?” Emerson asked shrewdly. “Do you think he knows anything about the history of the dagger on his wall?”
    Jonas lifted one shoulder in a negligent gesture. “Who knows? He thought the dagger was a genuine sixteenth-century piece, I do know that. He was furious when I told him it was a reproduction. He probably paid a fortune for it. But most collectors like him don’t ask too many questions about the recent past of an object they want to buy. The less they know, the better, as far as they’re concerned. If someone shot and killed a man to get hold of that dagger and sell it at huge profit to a fanatic collector like himself, Kincaid wouldn’t want to know about it. Just as Haggerty didn’t push too hard to know the recent history of those pistols. It was enough for him that they were genuine.”
    “I can understand that line of thinking, although I’ve always thought it was better to be informed than take a chance on being hung out to dry. Ignorance is not bliss. But I guess we can assume that Kincaid doesn’t know too much about the dagger,” Emerson concluded.
    “He didn’t even know it was fake,” Verity scoffed. She shoved a pan of pasta into Jonas’s hand. “Here, put this on the counter behind you.”
    He looked down at the pile of naked, steaming noodles. “What is it?”
    “Linguini. I was going to make a red sauce for it, but for some reason I changed my mind this morning. I’m going to make a nice green pesto sauce instead.”
     
    Much later that evening Verity did something she hadn’t done since her affair with Jonas had fully blossomed. She left Jonas and her father playing chess in her father’s cabin, grabbed her terrycloth robe, and headed for the peace and solitude of the empty spa. Both men were concentrating so hard on their game that they barely noticed her departure.
    The blue and white tiled room was empty, as it always was at this time of night. Verity left most of the lights off, turning on only the few she needed to find her way to her favorite pool. She stripped off her jeans and blouse and slid nude into the pool When she was submerged to her neck, Verity leaned back and contemplated the recent chain of events. She had found a lover, discovered a rather useless psychic talent, and become friends with a famous artist, all in the space of a few short weeks. The quiet, orderly lifestyle she had painstakingly created for herself in the past few years had been severely altered.
    The question was, how much of it would last and for how long? The psychic talent was connected to the lover who would undoubtedly go away one of these days, and the famous artist was on the point of giving up her brilliant career. Compared to everything else going on around Verity, her restaurant business looked stable.
    Verity decided not to dwell on the psychic connection she shared with Jonas. It was too disturbing, too fraught with unanswerable questions. Tonight she preferred to deal with hard facts.
    The first hard fact that came to mind involved herself. She closed her eyes and wondered if she really was turning into a shrew. That led to the question of how long any man would hang around such a woman.
    It was easier to wonder about that than about how long a man would hang around a woman who was causing his weird psychic ability to get stronger and more weird.
    “You are not, by any chance, sitting naked in that pool because you knew I’d be along after a while, are you?”
    Jonas’s indulgent voice, sounding unabashedly hopeful, took Verity by surprise. Her eyes snapped open. Instantly she was violently aware of her nudity. Considering all the nights she had spent with Jonas, her flushed reaction was ridiculous. With any luck he would attribute the pinkness in her cheeks to the heat of the mineral water.
    “I thought you were playing chess with Dad,” Verity said quickly.
    “I was playing chess with him until he won. My mind was wandering. We’ve scheduled a rematch for tomorrow night. I went looking for you and discovered you were not tied up in a red bow and waiting in bed for me.” Jonas came to a halt at the edge of the pool and began unfastening the buttons of his blue work shirt