Rarities Unlimited 03 - Die in Plain Sight

of the photo and it zoomed into larger size, but not so large that the shape of the bracelet was lost. Dottie leaned forward.
    “Interesting bit of jewelry, but I doubt if it’s terriblyexpensive. It’s hard to tell with a painting like this what size and quality the stones actually are. I would guess white gold rather than platinum. With platinum the stones are usually bigger.”
    “Have you seen the bracelet before now?” Ian asked.
    “I’ve seen the heart design used a lot, of course,” she said. “Who hasn’t? These days it’s a tacky cliché, like the love knot. I don’t remember seeing intertwined diamond hearts and solid metal hearts, but there would be no reason to remember if I had. It’s hardly an astonishing piece of jewelry.”
    “Brody?” Ian asked.
    “No.”
    “It wasn’t something your mother had or your father kept as a memento?”
    Brody snorted. “My father wasn’t a sentimental man. My mother had a plain gold wedding band. It was the only jewelry I ever saw her wear.”
    Ian didn’t need to ask Lacey; if she’d recognized the bracelet, she would have said something before now.
    “The Savoy Curse,” Dottie said. “Now I remember.”
    “What?” Lacey asked.
    “Accidental death due to far too much alcohol or meds,” Ian said, thinking of the newspaper archives he’d searched through Rarities. “The curse of the wealthy class. The high-toned newspapers whispered it and the bottom of the pack bayed it in the headlines every chance they got.”
    “Yes, that’s what my aunt talked about,” Dottie said. “The Savoy Curse. The second Benford Savoy died in middle age in a tragic hunting accident. The third Benford Savoy died in middle age in a fiery car wreck. The Savoy matriarch died in a riding accident, although what a woman of her age was doing racing stallions over the countryside…well, anyway, it was tragic. Then the granddaughter, Gem, rumored to be drunk when she drowned in her fancy spa. Again, middle-aged. So sad. All that money and no happiness.” Then Dottie added briskly, “Not that poverty brings bliss to anyone. It’s just that people expect money to make them happy.”
    “Which brings me back to my original question,” Ian said. “Why was David Quinn obsessed with these three particular deaths but not with the others in the Savoy family?”
    Brody looked everywhere but at Lacey.
    “It was nine years ago,” Ian said calmly to Brody, “but do you remember where your father was in February then? Particularly on the ninth?”
    “What?” Dottie asked, shooting to her feet. “Of all the—”
    “It’s all right,” Brody said, cutting across his wife’s anger. “Considering the paintings, it’s a fair question, don’t you think?”
    Instead of answering, Dottie started pacing. The click of her heels over wood alternated with the muted hiss of leather soles on expensive oriental rugs.
    “The man is dead. The people in the paintings are dead. What good is all this?” she demanded.
    It was Lacey who answered. “If people were murdered, it’s a simple matter of justice. If there weren’t any murders, I want to know that. I want to know what Grandpa Rainbow was or wasn’t. I need to know.”
    Dottie looked at her daughter’s stubborn chin and determined eyes. “And the devil with what the rest of us need.”
    Lacey flinched but didn’t back down. “You hated him. What would it matter to you if he was a killer or a saint?”
    “Not everyone is dying to have a murderer in their direct ancestry,” her mother shot back. “If he were still alive, I’d say go find the truth and then hang the son of a bitch from the highest tree you could find.”
    Lacey’s eyes opened in shock. She’d never heard so much as hell from her mother.
    “But he’s dead and the only ones who can be hurt are the living,” Dottie said. “If you don’t care about yourself, think of your sisters.”
    “I think my sisters will do just fine,” Lacey said. “If their society friends dump them for what their grandfather did, then they weren’t much in the way of friends, were they? Besides, why can’t he be innocent and just a closet groupie of the rich and famous of Moreno County?”
    “This is pointless.” Dottie stalked out of the room.
    “ Damn it ,” Lacey said, smacking her hand on the coffee table. “It always ends up the same way.”
    There was a long, unhappy silence.
    Ian was just getting to his feet to leave when Dottie strode back into the