Rarities Unlimited 03 - Die in Plain Sight

she’ll shed the last of the academic shackles and fly.”
    “Then what makes you so certain she didn’t paint those landscapes? I’m no specialist, but what she painted today looked damned good to me. Hell, it looked better than good. Maybe she was soft-pedaling her ability so that no one would suspect what she was capable of.”
    Susa was silent for the space of several breaths. Then she sighed. “It’s possible that she might have consciously shifted her brush strokes and managed to paint the two pure plein air landscapes she brought to me. Barely possible, in my opinion.”
    “But possible all the same.”
    “Don’t you want her to be innocent?”
    “I want to play blues guitar like B.B. King. So what?”
    Susa rotated her head on her shoulders, trying to loosen muscles tied up by decades of painting. Or by decades, period.
    “Field studies,” she said, “which is plein air painting by another name, are by their very nature looser and less academic than studioworks. In that sense, someone might argue that field studies are easier to forge. I’m not saying I would argue that myself, simply that an argument could be made.”
    Ian wanted more than faint reassurance. He didn’t like to think that he could have been so completely taken in by a paint-spattered con artist.
    “Did she or didn’t she?” he asked bluntly.
    “I’d say no.”
    “Much as I’d like to agree with you, I flat don’t believe she got those paintings at a garage sale.”
    Susa shrugged. “Stranger things happen all the time. In fact, one of my old paintings turned up in a flea market a few years back.”
    Ian grunted. “She didn’t act like she was comfortable talking about the so-called garage sale.”
    “How about this? Even if she was working from a photo or copying directly from another painting, I don’t believe she could have changed her basic style enough to produce the drowning woman canvas. Brushwork is as individual as handwriting and much harder to forge successfully.”
    “Keep going.”
    “Do you want a declaration signed in blood and notarized?” she asked impatiently.
    “Rarities Unlimited exists because forgers, good forgers, exist.”
    “People who are excellent copyists often are like good actors—they don’t have their own vision, so they borrow someone else’s. You saw her paintings today. What do you think?”
    “She didn’t wait around to see what you would paint. She just went out there and set up her easel and started thinking. Not painting. Not right away. She looked at the land, her brushes, the canvas, her paints, and then the land again. Once she started to paint, she never came up for air.”
    Susa smiled. “You’re a very noticing kind of man, Ian Lapstrake.”
    “It’s not like I had a lot else to do today.”
    “Am I detecting a faint whine?”
    “Yeah. And thanks, I’ve already had plenty of cheese to go with it.”
    Susa took pity on him. “You don’t have to come to the dinner with me tonight. I’ll be in the midst of southern California’s art glitterati and thespendy sponsors who go with them. The only thing threatening me is terminal boredom. That’s why I wanted Jan along.”
    “That’s the other thing bothering me about her,” Ian said.
    “What?”
    “Her name isn’t January Marsh.”

Newport Beach
    Wednesday evening
17
    W ard got out of the car and shot his cuffs, freeing them from the sleeves of his navy blue suit coat. He fingered his maroon silk tie, found it smooth against the handmade linen shirt, and didn’t know whether to laugh or swear at having to get tricked out like an executive flunky just to have dinner. But unless you were born with a platinum spoon clamped between your gums, the well-dressed social game was necessary to business success.
    “Very handsome,” Savoy said to his father.
    “Go ahead, say it. Too conservative.”
    Savoy shrugged, shut the car door, and gestured the driver on. “This isn’t Hollywood.”
    “Couldn’t tell it by you.” Ward waved at his son’s sport coat and slacks, shirt and no tie. At least he hadn’t worn running shoes. “The only people who can afford to ignore society’s conventions are the children ofthe spoiled wealthy, like you and Blissy. I’m the son of a working man. Nobody handed me anything.”
    “You married well.”
    “You think that wasn’t work?” Ward shot back. “Every day of her life, Gem shoved my lack of good breeding in my face.”
    “Couldn’t have been all that