Rarities Unlimited 03 - Die in Plain Sight

said.
    “You bet,” he said earnestly. “That’s why I left them in a hotel room a sharp six-year-old could crack and came along to watch you smear oil paints on yourself.”
    “Um, I sense an area of disagreement,” Lacey said.
    “No shit,” Ian said. “But I can guaran-damn-tee that if my brief was to watch the paintings, you two would be out here alone or the paintings would be in a bank vault.”
    “I’m not going to waste painting time waiting for the banks to open,” Susa said patiently.
    “It’s always painting time for you,” Ian muttered.
    “So glad you understand. I knew you were smart.”
    Ian was too smart to say what he was thinking, so he shut up. No wonder the Donovan thought his wife needed a keeper. She did. The woman just didn’t think the way the rest of the world did.
    Lacey stared at Susa. “You left a million dollars in paintings in your hotel room?”
    The older woman shrugged. “They’re not worth anything until they’re sold.”
    “But—holy shit.”
    Susa just laughed. “The look on your face. I’ll be sure not to invite you to my annual burning.”
    “Your what?”
    “Every year I go through my paintings and decide what’s worth keeping and what isn’t.”
    “And you burn the rejects?” Ian asked, intrigued.
    “Right down to the staples holding canvas to stretcher,” Susa said cheerfully.
    Lacey put her hands over her ears. “I’m not listening to this and I’m sure not believing what I’m not hearing.”
    “How long have you painted, Jan?” Susa asked.
    Guilt streaked through Lacey. She really wished she hadn’t promised her father anonymity. Lying to Susa about her identity was getting more and more uncomfortable.
    “Grandpa put a paintbrush in my hand before I was three,” Lacey said, grabbing the dashboard. “Dad swore I was going to be a housepainter, the way I covered everything in sight with paint. Including the cat.”
    “I’ve tied a few things to a cat’s tail in my time,” Ian said, “but I never painted one. What did you do, knock it out first?”
    “Nope. Canned tuna in one hand, brush in the other, and presto! One house tiger emerges from the boring cocoon of a formerly white Persian.”
    Susa laughed and gave Lacey a one-armed hug. “I hope your parents appreciated you. I always wanted more daughters than chance brought me.”
    Lacey’s smile faded as she thought of all the old arguments over her own painting, and the much newer ones over her grandfather’s work. “Oh, my parents and I bumped along okay. I wasn’t what they wanted, but they’ve gotten over it. Mostly.”
    “Consider yourself adopted,” Susa said. “Both my daughters are very creative, but neither of them would have thought to paint any of our cats.” Then Susa paused and looked thoughtful. “Well, let’s just say I never found out about it if they did.”
    The truck breasted the last curve. Ahead lay a rumpled bench of land sloping gently down to rocky sea bluffs a mile away. The ocean was the color of hammered silver beneath the clouds and sapphire where the sun stabbed through. The land was covered with grasses whose seed heads were already forming on the sunny slope, making the landscape a tossing, silver-tipped sea rippling beneath the restless wind. Ravines snaked down from the coastal hills in shades of dark green and shadows. A hawk soared overhead, impaled on sunlight and utterly free, shining like heaven.
    Lacey had never wanted so much to have brushes and canvas and time to paint.
    “Soon,” Susa said, patting the younger woman’s knee. “Almost there.”
    “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
    “You didn’t do anything but act like the painter you are,” Susa said.“Views like this make the hand and mind itch, don’t they? When the first painters arrived, the Pacific Coast Highway was a dirt wagon track along the top of the bluffs. Now it’s lane after lane of rolling steel. But the rest of the countryside here hasn’t changed. Wind and color, sun and sea and land. Those things outlive us.”
    “If they aren’t developed,” Lacey said.
    “Private property. Public need. Human greed.” Susa shrugged. “That hasn’t changed in all of history, and I don’t think it will start changing now. We do what we can to save the best of what remains.”
    “That’s why you’re doing the auction,” Lacey said. “To save this.”
    “I paint to save this. I’m doing the auction so that others might someday stand where we’re