Rarities Unlimited 03 - Die in Plain Sight

“or all that’s left will be a well-lickedplate.” Then Ian asked Oliver, “Don’t suppose you’d want to share this recipe?”
    “You cook?” he replied, startled.
    “A man who lives alone and likes good food learns to cook real quick,” Ian said. “And a man who’s going to marry an artist who’s mostly thumbs in the kitchen knows he’ll be doing the cooking.”
    “I’m not mostly thumbs,” Lacey said.
    “Yeah?” Ian said hopefully.
    “I’m all thumbs.”
    Oliver was still laughing when the front door opened.
    Anthony Milhaven was twenty years older and six inches taller than his partner, and had the bearing of a man who had spent a lot of time in the military. Though surprised to find guests, he was as gracious as Oliver had been. Soon everyone was sitting on one side or another of the bar, eating and talking.
    “You’ve been in the gallery business thirty years?” Ian asked Milhaven.
    “Thirty-three, but who’s counting?” He picked up his scotch and took a healthy swallow. “Damn, I needed that. Been a bitch of a day. Hate inventory. Hate taxes. Love these egg-thingies.” He popped three into his mouth at once and looked at Ian. “What can I do for you?”
    “We’re trying to trace an artist,” Lacey said before Ian could answer. “He might have been buying or selling paintings.”
    “When?” Milhaven asked, reaching for more canapés.
    “On and off for the last thirty years, at least,” she said.
    “How old is he?”
    “In his eighties. He’s been dead for two years.” As always, Lacey had to swallow hard. The image of the empty truck, the easel set up a hundred yards away, and desert silence made her want to cry. He’d been so alone when he died.
    Milhaven saw the sadness in her eyes and wondered, but he didn’t say anything.
    Ian reached into his breast pocket and pulled out photos. With the Quinns’ help, he had “aged” the best photos to represent ten-year spans of David Quinn’s life. If these didn’t ring any bells, he had a backup set with different hair, beard, and mustache styles to aid in jogging someone’s memory.
    “He was about five feet ten inches,” Ian said, handing over the photos, “lean body, brown eyes, brown hair and beard that went gray from the chin up. Probably had paint-stained hands. Eyeteeth partially overlapped his front two teeth. No accent. No limp. No missing digits. No obvious scars. Somewhat stooped bearing.”
    “Were you a cop before or after you were a soldier?” Milhaven asked without looking up from the photos.
    “After,” Ian said without missing a beat.
    Milhaven nodded. “Military shows in the posture. Cop in the eye and the gun under your jacket.”
    “Did you get your twenty years before you got out of the military?” Ian asked.
    Milhaven nodded. “Retirement kept me alive until the gallery began to pay its way,” he said, but his attention was on the third photo. It showed the face of a man who could have been between fifty and seventy years old. “I might have seen him, but it was at least ten years ago. Hard to say. I’ve got a head full of faces. Part of the business.”
    “Was he buying paintings?” Lacey asked.
    With a frown, Milhaven stared at the photo. “He didn’t buy any from me. I remember people who buy.”
    “How about selling?” Ian asked.
    “You have any idea how many times a day someone comes in and tries to sell me something?” Milhaven asked.
    Ian opened his computer, booted up, and opened a file of landscape paintings. “How about this?” he asked, turning the computer screen toward Milhaven.
    “Fabulous,” Oliver said, staring at stark desert mountains blushing pink with dawn and a foreground of skeletal shrubs as dark as fear.
    Milhaven pinched his lips together and studied the image. Even when translated into pixels and put on a computer screen, the quality came through. “Hell of a painting. Is it for sale?”
    “Not at this time,” Lacey said.
    “When it is, give me a call.”
    “I will.”
    He looked up, measuring her.
    “I mean it,” she said. “You remember faces and I remember people who help me.”
    With a brief nod, he went back to looking at the screen. The landscapes clicked by. Then came a painting from each aspect of the Death Suite.
    Milhaven grunted. “Good, but hard to sell. Landscapes are much easier.”
    “Have you ever seen any like these before?” Lacey asked.
    He shrugged. “I keep thinking I’ve seen this artist before. The landscapes,