Rarities Unlimited 03 - Die in Plain Sight

These probably weren’t painted all at the same time,” Ian agreed. “Then why do they have the same numbers on the front?”
    Lacey didn’t answer. Head tilted slightly to one side, she studied the paintings. After a moment she said almost absently, “Could you move all the drowning ones aside?”
    He wondered why but didn’t ask. He just moved paintings and watched her. She was frowning. In the clean winter sunlight, her eyes glowed like fine, tawny topaz. Slowly she began sorting the remaining paintings without regard to subject.
    “Would it help to think out loud?” he asked softly.
    “The technique is different in the drowning paintings,” she said after a moment. “Thicker paint. More use of the palette knife. More paint, period. None of the ground shows through anywhere. There’s texture in the wreck and the fire, but it’s not as…heavy.”
    “And they all show some form of death at night, so the different technique isn’t a matter of trying to make a statement about the subject, is that it?”
    Without looking away, she smiled. “Underneath the shoulders and gun, you’re one bright man.”
    “You’re just figuring that out?”
    “Just saying it out loud. I figured it out about ten seconds after we met. Scary combination—brains and muscle. Then you smiled. It was all over then, no chance to run, and running was the last thing on my stunned little mind.”
    Grinning, he tugged lightly at one of her rebellious curls. “So why would your grandfather change technique?”
    “Lots of reasons. Some artists do it deliberately, as a kind of academic exercise. But Grandfather wasn’t academically trained. Self-taught all the way. The changes that came in his painting were a natural outgrowth of time and experience.”
    All of a sudden, Ian understood. “You think you can date the canvases by their technique?”
    Lacey just kept shuffling paintings like cards whose numbers only she could read. The pouring side light made it easy. Differences in texture and technique leaped out like boulders. Between the fire paintings there were subtle differences in how thoroughly he covered the canvas, which brushes were favored and then not employed again, and whether or not he used the end of the brush to draw lines in colors; the possibilities for changing technique were infinite, but humans tended to settle into patterns that changed only slowly.
    While she worked she kept glancing over to the drowning paintings,but she didn’t reach for any of them. They were simply from another period in his artistic development.
    Finally all the fire paintings were lined up to Lacey’s satisfaction, or at least as much satisfaction as she was going to get right now. She glanced at the drowning pool canvases and again left them out of the lineup.
    “It’s not perfect,” she said, “but it’s the best I can do without spending hours at it. Now see if the numbers on the back of each painting make some kind of order the way I’ve lined them up. I’m betting that the farther down the row you go, the closer the match in numerical sequence will be.”
    Ian started at the far end and worked back to Lacey. “You’re right,” he said simply. “How did you do it?”
    “Technique. If I had all his paintings, I might be able to link the changes in technique across the years he painted.” She paused, then smiled crookedly. “More likely, I’d get impossibly confused. Human beings don’t develop in linear fashion, and artists are less linear than most. Anyway, the fire canvases were painted earlier than the water canvases. Probably quite a bit earlier. Decades, maybe.”
    “What makes you say that?”
    “When Granddad painted with me a few years ago, his technique was the same as in the water paintings. The eucalyptus painting that was stolen was created with thinner paints, so thin that the ground showed through in places. Not a fault, just a way of making the colors look transparent. The strokes are longer in the drowning paintings, too. More curved. In the fire paintings the strokes are narrower, more angular, more like the eucalyptus. There’s more blending of color layers in the fire paintings, a lot less in the drowning.”
    “Same artist?” Ian asked sharply.
    “Oh, yes.”
    “You’re certain?”
    “Very. He might have changed the thickness of the paint or the angle of the stroke through the years, but the strokes themselves have the same…rhythm, I guess. They start very firmly and end with almost