Rarities Unlimited 03 - Die in Plain Sight

bar.”
    “You’ve been drinking coffee. Tastes good.”
    “I’ll get you some,” he said.
    “Only if you drink it first. I hate coffee.”
    His eyes darkened to a hot kind of black. “If I weren’t on duty, I’d take you down in that ravine and…play.”
    She blew out a breath. “Whew. Do you come with warning labels?”
    “Do you?”
    “I’ve never needed any.”
    “Neither have I,” Ian said. “Guess we have a bad effect on each other.”
    She licked her lips. “If that’s bad, heaven is overrated. Now go away before I do something embarrassing.”
    “Like what?”
    “Reach inside your jacket and see if your gun is loaded,” she retorted.
    Ian laughed out loud.
    “Knock it off, you two,” Susa said, trying not to laugh herself. “You’re distracting me and Don is half a world away.”
    “Does that mean if I tell you I’m taking a walk in the ravine you’ll hear me this time?” Ian asked.
    “I hear you,” Susa said. “Now I don’t want to hear you for a while.”
    “I’m gone,” he said, but he gave Lacey a tasting kind of look before he loped off toward the ravine.
    Then he paid attention to the footing. Running shoes were fine for sidewalks, well-combed athletic tracks, and pavement. On long grass and a steep slope, the shoes were a little like two surfboards. He managed to stay right side up and landed at the bottom with only a twinge or two from his bad ankle.
    The rusting hulk that had intrigued him from a distance wasn’t farm machinery after all. It was an old two-door Chevy of the kind once loved by hot-rodders. Even overgrown with grass and covered with eucalyptus leaves and bark, it was obvious that the car had burned either before or after it had bounced down the steep ravine. Rusted, heat-warped metal was scattered over the ravine. Whatever had happened had been a long time ago. Only the biggest eucalyptus growing nearby showed any trace of fire scars; all the younger trees were untouched.
    He watered one of the trees while he eyed hunks of wreckage. What looked like a bumper lay upside down by the one of the rocks poking out of the other side of the narrow ravine. He zipped up and went to investigate. There was a patch or two of chrome shining among the swaths of rust. When he pried the bumper out of the undergrowth, he saw a battered license plate beneath.
    “Cool,” he said, grinning at the half-century-old plate. “I don’t have one like this in my collection.”
    He picked it up, rubbed off dirt and frantic sow bugs, and looked around again at the collapsed, burned body of the car. Even fifty years later, one thing was clear.
    Whoever had been behind the wheel hadn’t walked away.

Painter’s Beach
    Wednesday afternoon
15
    M r. Goodman shook Ward Forrest’s hand with a combination of enthusiasm and gratification that he’d finally gotten the chance to meet the big man himself. Around them the Savoy Hotel’s lobby was like a kicked-over anthill with workers scurrying right, left, and center. Ward’s presence didn’t fluster any of the regular staff or workers. He’d been in and out—and underfoot—so much that the busy staff hardly noticed him anymore.
    “I’m so sorry Susa couldn’t join us,” Mr. Goodman said to Ward. “The hotel staff said she was out painting. On your ranch, I believe?”
    Ward looked at Rory, who was in uniform, right down to the shiny Sam Browne belt wrapped around his narrow hips. Rory looked at Savoy, who was casually elegant as always, turning female heads wherever he went.
    “We okayed her painting excursions before she arrived in southernCalifornia,” Savoy said. “Naturally, we’re hoping for some paintings of the ranch.”
    “She painted the ranch before, I believe,” Goodman said.
    “Yes, back when she was an unknown artist,” Savoy said. “I suspect that’s why she was willing to participate in your auction—a trip down memory lane.”
    Ward straightened his Western string tie with its beautiful Zuni medallion of coral and turquoise and silver, depicting the gods of rain and wind. “I can’t say as I’d mind adding a Susa to our collection. It’d be worth the money just to hear the Pickfords scream.”
    Mr. Goodman smiled warily. The fights between the Pickfords and the Forrests were the stuff of Moreno County legend. “It would certainly be a fine feather in our county’s artistic cap,” Goodman said. “As president of Moreno County Artists, vice president of California Plein Air Coalition,