Rarities Unlimited 03 - Die in Plain Sight

paraffin-log chunks he’d seen, but there hadn’t been any help for it. The woo-woo lady might have been a scammer and a scuffler and a drunk, but she hadn’t deserved to be roasted in her bed. “You’ll need every dime to put your shop back together. Selling one of those paintings could mean a lot to you.”
    “I know. It’s just…” Lacey’s mouth flattened. “It’s so damned ugly. If the woman in the painting was really murdered, I don’t want to make money from it.”
    “So sell a landscape to me,” Susa said. “No bad juju attached to them, right?”
    “I’d be happy to give you one,” Lacey said instantly, “but I won’t sell you one.”
    Susa’s grin said Gotcha . “Okay, but only if you’ll accept a painting of mine in return.”
    Lacey’s mouth fell open. “I couldn’t. Yours are much more valuable.”
    “That’s the deal. Take it or leave it. And if you leave it, I’ll cry, because I’ve always wanted a Lewis Marten painting—or one that draws me as strongly as his paintings,” she said before Lacey could object that the canvases she owned weren’t really by Marten. “Art is where you find it, not who signs it.”
    Lacey hugged Susa again. “I shouldn’t,” she said, “but I’m going to take advantage of your incredibly generous offer.”
    “Good.” Reluctantly she let go of Lacey. “I’ve got to run. The pilot has a takeoff slot. If we miss it, we have to wait around hours for another one.” She stood on tiptoe to hug Ian and said too softly for Lacey to hear, “I don’t have a good feeling about this. Be very, very careful.”
    “You been talking to my great-uncle?” he said against her ear.
    “More like my ancestors talking to me. I mean it, Ian. Something is… wrong .”
    “I hear you.”
    She looked into his dark, steady eyes and knew that he believed her. “Bring Lacey up to Seattle to select her painting,” Susa said in a normal tone of voice. “The Donovan should meet her.”
    Ian lifted his eyebrows. “Any particular reason?”
    “If you’re foolish enough to let her slip through your fingers, I havetwo unmarried sons.” She winked at Lacey. “You’re too old to adopt, but I’m determined not to lose you. Daughters are so very hard to find.”
    With a speed that made people used to commercial-airline schedules blink, Susa was aboard the idling plane and it was taxiing to the run-up area for its final check. Minutes later it gave a throaty howl, gathered speed rapidly, and leaped into the air.
    Ian was on the phone to Rarities before the wheels tucked into the plane’s sleek underbelly. “Tell Niall to stop the clock on the Donovan client,” he said to the desk. “Susa is on her way home and I’m on vacation.”
    He disconnected and looked at Lacey. He didn’t have a happy feeling about anything in the past few days except meeting her. He sure as hell didn’t want to see her hurt anymore. Which meant he had to distract her, get her up to her eyebrows in the mundane details of living, and then slide off to investigate her dear departed Grandpa Rainbow, who looked to be good for three murders.
    “Now what?” Lacey asked.
    “Let’s take another go at those paintings before we send them to Rarities.”
    “And then what?”
    “Tomorrow we’ll kick butt at the insurance company to get an adjuster out to your shop,” Ian said, “and line up a contractor to put the place back together for you. Always assuming that the arson team is finished poking around, of course.”
    “Doesn’t sound like much of a vacation for you.”
    He gave her a slow smile and threw an arm around her shoulders. “Oh, I’ll think of something.”
    And the first thing he would work on was a way to keep her safe. He didn’t need Susa’s and his great-uncle’s warnings to know that it could get ugly when he started digging up old graves.

Corona del Mar
    Sunday morning
50
    L acey leaned out to punch in her code, waited for the arm to lift, and drove Ian’s truck through the wide gates of the storage area. There were more people around today, everyone from middle-aged men stripping old cars and rebuilding them for the vintage-car circuit to families storing junk until they finally decided that Aunt Effie’s old furniture wasn’t worth the monthly fee to keep it.
    “You have any special place in mind to park?” Lacey asked, remembering when he’d wanted the truck hidden from the road.
    “Close.” He looked in the rearview mirror. “There’s