Rarities Unlimited 03 - Die in Plain Sight

laugh out loud. He didn’t know what game the lady was playing, but he was certain it had to be as innocent as she was. She couldn’t have lied successfully to save her life.
    “Okay, Ms. Marsh,” he said, pointing with his chin. “This way.”
    From behind Ian, where Susa was judging paintings, came a man’s rueful laughter. “A student exercise, huh?”
    “Straight from a You Can Too Paint book. The frame, however, is quite old.” It was quite awful, too, but Susa felt no need to point that out.
    “Oh, well, back under the bed with it.”
    “Actually, if you wouldn’t mind leaving me your name and address, I know a professor who is doing a study of painting books and their influence on the popular culture of their time. I’m sure he’d be fascinated by this painting and its history.”
    “Sure.” He ripped the business card off the back of the painting and handed it to her. “Here.”
    Susa tucked the card into a small file that sat next to her left hand and smiled expectantly at the next person, a middle-aged man who was sweating heavily in the overcrowded auditorium.
    “I think the lady was next,” he said, gesturing toward Lacey.
    “Go ahead,” Ian said as he wrestled with the generous tape job. “We’ll be a minute.”
    “Thank you!” The man hurried forward, clutching some paintings.
    Considering the man’s nervousness, Susa decided the offerings were probably his own work rather than that of an ancestor.
    “They’re very unusual,” Susa said, hoping that you didn’t go to hell for white lies, because she sure had told a lot of them tonight. “Clearly in the genre of modern studio art, which is unfortunate. The purpose of this”—she waved a hand at the crowded auditorium—“is to discover old plein air artists, not new studio artists.”
    “I’d be glad to donate the paintings for the auction,” the man said quickly, “like it said in the pamphlet.”
    Ian had already figured out where this interview would end. He signaled to one of Mr. Goodman’s assistants, all of them local artists. This one was a cat-slim male dressed entirely in shades of black except for an unusual gold earring clinging to his left ear. He trotted over eagerly.
    “That’s very generous of you,” Susa said to the hopeful studio artist. “One of the assistants will give you the forms.”
    “Would you help this man carry his paintings to the auction table?” Ian said. “We’re trying to move things along so Susa can have a break.”
    “For La Susa, I’d move mountains,” he said with a bow that would have done credit to an eighteenth-century French courtier.
    Ian covered his laugh with a cough.
    It took Susa less than four minutes to reject the next three paintings.Each one was a still life of the type beloved by middle-class Victorian women who believed that painting roses on china and playing the piano were the hallmarks of good breeding.
    “You want to take your break now?” Ian said, tugging at more of the stubborn tape. “Ms., uh…” He hesitated.
    “Marsh,” she supplied quickly.
    Ian smiled slightly. “Ms. Marsh has these things wrapped up like the lead in Revenge of the Mummies .”
    “You just have to know where the zipper is,” Lacey retorted, pulling a painting free with a flourish.
    Susa took one look at the canvas and felt years fly away. She was breathless, young, standing frozen in a violent storm of discovery as she looked at a Lewis Marten painting for the first time. Hand against her throat, she made a small sound of wonder and surprise.
    “Susa?” Ian said instantly. “What is it? Are you—”
    She held up her hand, cutting him off. “Where did you get this?” she demanded without looking away from the canvas.
    Lacey moved uneasily. “A garage sale.”
    Deftly Susa turned the unframed canvas over without touching the face of it. All she saw was an e-mail address and the words Sandy Cove . There was no artist’s title on the back. No date. But then, many artists didn’t date their work.
    “A garage sale,” Susa said. “Where? When?”
    “I, um, I don’t remember.”
    Susa pinned the younger woman with a clear hazel glance that seemed to look right through to her soul. “How can that be?”
    Lacey cleared her throat. “I go to twenty or thirty sales a month, so it’s hard to keep track.”
    “Do you have any more Martens?”
    “Martens?”
    “Paintings by Lewis Marten,” Susa said.
    “I don’t even have one. These are—” Lacey stopped