Rarities Unlimited 03 - Die in Plain Sight

matters, not the labels people put on it. Although I’m quite human enough to prefer praise to brickbats and eating to starving,” she added, winking at the younger woman.
    Lacey grinned. “Me, too.”
    As Susa looked through the windshield at the canyon that had changed far less than she had through the decades, her face settled into lines that weren’t quite sad. “Time is the greatest mystery. Here and not here. Memory and regret. I took my first lover on a grassy knoll not far away, broke my heart over him, and then I went on to break other hearts. I painted at the feet of California Impressionists like Alfred R. Mitchell and Charles Fries, talked to men who studied under William Wendt and Edgar Payne, fell in love with a Lewis Marten painting, and wept when they told me he was dead.” She half smiled. “Where does the past go? Is there a cosmic museum filled with the beauty we’ve forgotten? It was all so urgent then, so misty now.”
    “How did Marten die?” Ian asked. “From what you’ve said, he must have been fairly young.”
    “He died in a studio fire, one of those pointless tragedies. He was mourning the death of Three Savoy, his patron and close friend, as well as a hard drinker whose car couldn’t drive itself. When Marten heard about the accident, he got drunk and went to his studio to paint out his grief. Alcohol, turpentine, and cigarettes.” She shook her head slowly, thinking of the wasted talent. “He fell asleep painting. The cigarette he was smoking dropped onto paint rags and touched off his studio. He never woke up. And his paintings…” She sighed. “All those extraordinary paintings burned.”
    “Three Savoy?” Ian asked. “I remember that name. My great-uncle worked as a deputy sheriff in Moreno County. Same for his son later on. They had some odd stories to tell.”
    Susa looked at Ian with new interest. “I’ll bet they did. It was wild in those days. Kind of an early version of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. Everybody seems to think sin was invented in the hippie sixties, but I’m here to tell you that the good ol’ boys of Moreno County could have taught sin to the devil.”
    Ian snickered. “Yeah, that’s what my uncle said.” He put the truck into second and ground up a steep turn. “Three Savoy was what my great-grandmother used to call a rounder. Never met a bottle or a whore he didn’t like. Nobody mentioned that he was a painter.”
    “He wasn’t,” Susa said, hanging on to the chicken bar again. “Oh, he dabbled, but from the paintings I’ve seen, he was quite ordinary. I suspect he was more drawn to the life than to the art.”
    “He could afford it,” Ian said.
    “Oh, yes.” Susa laughed. “I used to wish I’d been born in time to run with Three’s crowd—great food and booze, no worries, no limits, just the untouched landscape to paint and like-minded friends to celebrate the night with.”
    Suddenly Lacey grabbed at the dashboard and said, “Hey, back up, you missed a pothole.”
    Ian hit the brakes and threw the truck into reverse.
    “No! I was kidding!” Lacey said, laughing even as she braced herself.
    “Are you saying I’m a bad driver?” he asked.
    “Would I say that to the man with his hands on a lethal weapon?”
    Automatically Ian started to check his shoulder holster, then realized she meant the steering wheel. “Relax,” he said, shifting into first gear and then rapidly into second. “I used to drive in dirt races when I was a kid in Bakersfield.”
    “Demolition derbies?” Lacey asked dryly.
    “How’d you guess?”
    Susa laughed.
    Lacey decided to ask the question that had been eating at her since shortly after she’d met Ian Lapstrake. “Would it be rude to ask why you’re carrying a gun? Yikes!” Lacey almost hit the roof as the truck swerved and hit a bump. “Do you shoot the cars you can’t demolish?”
    “He carries a gun because my husband is a worrier,” Susa said.
    Lacey opened her mouth, shook her head, and said, “I’m sure that makes sense to someone.”
    “Remember the ‘protect’ part of Buy, Sell, Appraise, Protect?” Ian asked.
    “Um, yeah.” She slanted him a sideways glance. “So you’re protecting a culturally significant work of art called Susa Donovan?”
    Susa laughed into her hands. “She’s got you, Ian. No matter what you say, one of us is going to hit you.”
    Ian grinned. And didn’t say a word.
    “What Ian is protecting is my paintings,” Susa