Rarities Unlimited 03 - Die in Plain Sight

didn’t fuck with the ranch.”
    “Maybe she was just trying to get your attention with all her lovers and drinking,” Savoy said bitterly.
    Ward gave him a hard glance. “Then she didn’t know me very well, did she?”
    “Does anyone?” Savoy asked.
    “The point,” Rory said before an argument could explode, “is that there wasn’t any motive for murdering her. No one was better off because Gem was dead. Not you, not Savvy, not even Ward. He already voted her shares in the business, because Gem just didn’t give a damn as long as there was plenty of money for expensive clothes, booze, pills, and younger men.”
    Bliss winced. Her stomach clenched as she wondered if her mother had looked in the mirror one day, seen the ruins of beauty, and decided that living was more trouble than it was worth. Or maybe she’d simply killed herself a little at a time until there wasn’t anything left.
    And the daughter couldn’t help wondering if she’d been on the way to doing the same.
    “It’s so ugly,” Bliss said hoarsely.
    “It’s over, sugar,” Rory said, kissing her hair.
    “But why would anyone paint such a cruel image?” she asked.
    “Ask your father,” Savoy said. “He collects the damn things.”
    Bliss looked shocked. “What are you talking about?”
    “The family’s private collection,” Savoy said. “We have a lot of death paintings by this artist.”
    “You bet we do,” Ward said. “And that collection is the best proof of all that your mother wasn’t murdered.”
    Bliss turned toward him. “I don’t understand.”
    “Simple,” Ward said. “Your mother died nine years ago. The artist who painted the drowning woman has been dead for almost fifty years.”

Pasadena
    Late Sunday afternoon
55
    L acey looked up from the stack of old photo albums. There were pictures of Grandpa Rainbow’s wedding and the baby boy who grew up to be her father. She’d seen the first five or six Christmases and birthdays, and then the album photos gave way to people that Brody identified as his maternal grandparents or distant cousins. The rest of the stacked albums featured Dottie’s family and, after he moved in with his son, an older David Quinn.
    Set to one side was a huge envelope of faded, brittle newspaper and magazine clippings going back fifty years or more. Each clipping dealt with the scandals and sorrows of the Savoy and Forrest families. None of the clippings pictured or mentioned anyone called David Quinn.
    Quietly Lacey flipped the last page of the only album that had pictures of David Quinn. “Didn’t he have any photos of his own childhood and parents, like Mom’s parents did?”
    Brody frowned. “I never thought about it, but…no.”
    “Where was he born?” Ian asked.
    “Weed.”
    Ian didn’t even blink. “Northern California?”
    Brody smiled. “Yes. Didn’t think you’d know it.”
    “I’m a Central Valley boy. Did he travel a lot as a young man?”
    There was a long pause while Brody searched his memories. “If he did, he didn’t talk about it. Just California. He often said, ‘Why go anywhere else? It’s all here, all the landscapes anyone needs.’”
    “Did he ever talk about college?” Ian asked.
    Brody shook his head.
    Ian looked at Lacey.
    “Not to me,” she said, “except to say it was a waste of time for anyone with talent.”
    Dottie made a sound like a terrier sinking its teeth into a rat’s neck. Some of their worst battles had been over Lacey’s schooling.
    “He had the typical contempt of the undereducated for higher education,” Brody said evenly. “To my knowledge, he never went beyond high school.”
    “How about high school yearbooks, or even earlier school photos?” Ian asked.
    Brody shook his head. “I have some of my mother’s, if that would help.”
    “Only if they went to the same schools,” Ian said. “Did they?”
    “No. They didn’t meet until he was forty.”
    Lacey gave Ian an unhappy look, wondering if he was thinking what she was thinking. She didn’t ask. Her parents were upset enough as it was.
    “So the oldest photo you have of your father,” Ian said to Brody, “is his wedding?”
    Brody looked at his wife, who was the official keeper of the family history. She nodded.
    “Okay,” Ian said. “Would you mind if I borrowed some pictures of him long enough to scan them into my computer?”
    “Why?” Dottie asked bluntly.
    “Lacey’s going to give me a list of plein air galleries that her grandfather