Rarities Unlimited 03 - Die in Plain Sight

too.”
    Ian smiled despite the gnawing tension in his shoulders and the echo of that voice in his mind.
    Stop asking questions.
    Or she’ll die.
    Stop asking.
    She’ll die.
    Die.

Laguna Beach
    Monday afternoon
59
    I t was five minutes later when Mrs. Katz finally bustled out from behind a screen and into the small cleared area of the attic. Her hair was short and improbably dark, framing a face that looked every bit of seven decades old. She reminded Lacey of a sparrow at nesting time—small, dark-eyed, nondescript, energetic, bristling with purpose.
    “Hello excuse the mess I’m getting ready for a new show and what is this about some mysterious man?” Katz said.
    Lacey sorted out the flood of words and said, “We understand you’ve owned this gallery for forty years.”
    “And worked in it for twenty more,” Katz agreed. “My parents owned it and my grandmother was a painter back when women artists were rare enough to stop traffic. None of it came down to me but an eye for good art, which made me crazy because I can’t paint worth spit. What can I do for you?”
    Ian handed the photos over to Lacey and set his computer on a work-table.
    “I was wondering if this man ever came to your gallery to buy or sell art,” Lacey said, laying out a series of enhanced photos of her grandfather.
    Katz picked up the photos and held them about two inches from her nose, peering at them. Ian saw the cataracts clouding her left eye and didn’t have much hope for the outcome.
    “Clean shaven, middle-aged or older, not handsome, not ugly, wallpaper clothes.” Katz shrugged and handed back the photos. “It could be any one of a hundred men.”
    “‘Wallpaper clothes?’” Ian asked.
    “Ordinary,” Lacey guessed. “Unremarkable.”
    “Wallpaper,” Katz agreed.
    “Gotcha.” Ian reached into his computer case and pulled out the backup photos, the ones where Quinn had more or less hair, a hat or no hat, glasses or no glasses. “What about these?”
    Katz went through the first three without a pause, then stopped on the fourth.
    Lacey looked over the woman’s shoulder. The photo was a reworked wedding picture. It showed her grandfather with a short beard and mustache, glasses, and a leather cap with a bill. The facial hair was dark, making him look younger than the forty years he’d been when the picture was taken. The digital trickery still intrigued Lacey because she’d never seen her grandfather with anything on his face but his skin. Neither had her father.
    “I recognize him. I know I’ve seen him.” Katz frowned. “But I can’t remember if it was here or somewhere else.”
    “Do you remember when?” Ian asked.
    “Oh, years and years ago, forty, maybe even fifty, maybe even more. Never was much good at dates and numbers and things, but I know I’ve seen him.”
    Ian reined in his impatience and fired up the computer.
    “Was he buying paintings?” Lacey asked.
    Silence, then a sigh. “Too long ago for me to remember.”
    “How about this?” Ian said, pointing to the computer screen.
    Katz bent over and got close enough to the screen for her eyes to cross. She backed up an inch or two and looked at six landscapes as Ianclicked through the file. When the Death Suite appeared, she blinked, tilted her head, and said what everyone else had. “Good but tough to sell. The landscapes, now…” She clicked back to them.
    “Lewis Marten,” she said. There wasn’t any doubt in her voice. She might have trouble with time, but she’d worked in the plein air art business since she was ten years old, dusting and cleaning the gallery for her parents. “My father collected him, or tried to. My, that was a terrible thing losing all that art in the fire, just terrible.”
    “Hard on the artist, too,” Ian said dryly. “He lost his life.”
    “We all die sooner or later, but we don’t expect everything we did to die with us,” Katz said. “If it weren’t for collectors like my father no one would even know about Marten.”
    “You have some of his paintings?” Lacey asked eagerly. “Signed paintings?”
    Katz’s expression became cautious. “My father did.”
    “You don’t have them still?” Lacey asked.
    “My insurers don’t like me talking about what I do or don’t own.”
    “We understand,” Ian said. He handed her a Rarities card. “We’re not thieves sizing you up for a contract robbery, Mrs. Katz.”
    Katz read the card very carefully, then nodded her head once. “I had to