Rarities Unlimited 03 - Die in Plain Sight

door.
    “Who was that?” Shayla asked from the stairway.
    “I was wondering the same thing myself.”
    Lacey was also wondering if she had really seen the outline of a shoulder holster beneath the denim when he bent over to write the check, stretching the cloth across his back.

Over Moreno County
    Tuesday afternoon
7
    I t was the type of sunny January day that made people in the Blizzard Belt pack their cars and head for southern California. Though Seattle rarely had any snow to flee from, it did have a thousand shades of winter gray. Susa Donovan was happy to see the sun again, even through an airplane window.
    Sitting in the comfortable cabin of a Donovan International executive jet gave her an uninterrupted view of the coastline far below. These days she rarely painted humanity’s marks on the landscape, but the contrast between the wild fluid blue of the sea and the pale man-made grid of subdivisions, freeways, and industry made her hand itch to hold a paintbrush. Viewed from a distance, the image was abstract and dramatic, like a human storm poised on the edge of breaking over the endless ocean.
    Yet if she almost closed her eyes, she could see the land as it once had been, green ravines and velvet shadows of eucalyptus, orange and yellowevenings, a young woman’s smile as she painted her lover holding out his hand in silent offering.
    Sometimes it was hard for Susa to believe she’d ever been that young, but she had. Years before it became fashionable in the late sixties, she’d abandoned school and home for an unconventional life of late nights, exotic cigarettes, the smell of turpentine and sex; and painting, always painting, more important to her than all the rest of it put together.
    She’d been born much too late to participate in the glory days of California Impressionism, yet she’d known some of the great painters, had learned from them, had heard them talk over endless bottles of wine about the glories and scandals of the Painter’s Beach art colony at its height, Benford Savoy III, called Three, a rich man’s son who supported artists because he enjoyed the bohemian life.
    Sometimes she wondered what had happened to those unknown artists, the talented ones who lost their art in booze, or the women whose art disappeared under the weight of cultural disinterest and the intricate demands of motherhood. So many of them tore themselves apart and left nothing to mark their passage from art to death.
    A feeling of foreboding went through her, the kind of rippling of the skin that her kids laughingly called sure evidence that not all the witches had been burned in Salem. Even as she tried to dismiss the chill beneath the warmth, she wished that her husband was beside her and her children and grandchildren gathered around. She felt…haunted.
    Something was wrong. Somewhere.
    Of course there is, she told herself briskly. Something is always wrong somewhere. No need to take it personally, even if I do have witches in my ancestry. Well, druids, actually, but they burned just the same.
    Whatever. Everything is fine with those I love.
    And if she told herself that often enough, she might believe it. Part of it was that she hated having Don half a world away. And most of it was something else, something that couldn’t be touched or known, simply accepted.
    “Ms. Donovan?”
    The pilot’s voice came over the intercom. Susa flipped a switch on the seat arm. “Yes?”
    “The Donovan requests that you ‘turn on your goddamned cell phone.’”
    “Oops,” Susa said, reaching for her big purse. “I didn’t expect him to be awake. Isn’t it the middle of the night in whatever godforsaken hunk of real estate he’s visiting?”
    “Trust me. He’s awake.”
    “I’m calling him as we speak.”
    The pilot, whose ears had been singed, sighed gratefully. “Good. We’re landing in twenty minutes. I’d hate to try to juggle both the Donovan on a rant and the air controller at John Wayne International.”
    Susa was still smiling when her husband answered his phone.
    “Susa?” The voice was rough yet warm.
    “I’m here, love.”
    “I miss you.”
    She caressed the phone with her fingertips as though she could reach through time and space and feel the warmth of her husband’s mouth. “Same here. I’m one lucky woman.”
    “Because I’m not around to harass you?”
    She laughed softly. “That’s not harassment. I was just thinking about the painters in Moreno County.”
    “BWM,” he