Rarities Unlimited 03 - Die in Plain Sight

aside the painting and picked up one of the canvases that depicted a fire raging in a cottage. Again, fire and moon were the only illumination. The moon wasn’t quite full in this one, but the fire more than made up for it. The little cottage burned like a torch, an explosion frozen in time.
    Once he got past the sheer violence of the flames, he could see nuances that had escaped him before. The shadow outline of a burning figure. The deeper shadow of a fleeing figure with one foot off the canvas and something dark and bulky under his arm. Or hers. They could have been women. They could have been demons. They could have been nightmares.
    “Jesus, Joseph, and Mary,” Ian muttered. “If it was any more real, you’d smell it.”
    “As I said, brilliant.” Susa picked up one of the water paintings.“Nothing defined, everything suggested. Limitless, and all the more horrifying because of it.” Still holding the painting, she turned to face Lacey. “Having seen these, I feel more strongly than ever that they should be exhibited.”
    “But they’re forgeries!”
    Susa shrugged. “No matter. They’re brilliant. Since the originals are probably lost to us, it’s better to have something brilliantly copied than nothing at all of Marten’s work.”
    “Then list me as the painter,” Lacey said.
    Susa’s skin rippled in a primal wave of uneasiness that she neither understood nor questioned. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
    Ian glanced at Susa. “Why?”
    “Your grandfather’s dead. If these are forgeries, it won’t matter to him, will it?”
    Lacey hesitated.
    “Do you think it will be easier on your father to have his living daughter flogged as a forger rather than his dead father?” Ian asked.
    “No,” Lacey said unhappily. “Besides, he’s going to retire instead of being a judge. I’m just not thrilled about blackening my grandfather’s name.”
    “You aren’t doing one damn thing,” Ian said. “Any trash that gets passed around because of this is his fault, not yours.”
    “I won’t put these forward as your paintings,” Susa said. “Your career is too valuable to destroy over this. The world has lived without many of Marten’s paintings so far. I suppose it can bump along without him until you change your mind or die.”
    “Oh, hell,” Lacey said, throwing up her hands. “Do it. I’ll live with my whiny inner child.”
    Susa grinned. “You sure?”
    Lacey blew out a hard breath. “Yeah. But let’s keep it to a handful for now. After seeing your reaction to the dark ones, I’d just as soon not dump them all out in public at once.”
    “How about if we just sort of replace the three paintings that were stolen?” Ian suggested.
    “Good idea,” Susa said. “That way we’ll stay within the spirit of the original event.”
    “No more than three paintings per patron, please,” Lacey muttered,remembering. “I went through it once already. This time you do the selecting.”
    “Sold,” Susa said quickly. Her glance skimmed through the aptly named Death Suite. “I agree with your original selection of the drowning,” she said. “The woman is an immediate emotional focus for people unaccustomed to art. By the time they figure out what the canvas is depicting, they’ll already be trapped in its power.”
    “This is good?” Ian asked.
    Susa and Lacey ignored him.
    “This one,” Susa said, selecting one of the drowning pool paintings, “has the desperate clarity of the scream you can’t hear.”
    Ian blinked and kept his mouth shut. He didn’t want to get into the Zen thing right now.
    Lacey pulled the painting out of the lineup and waited while Susa, muttering, paced up and down the narrow walkways between the racks where she had left her favorites of the landscapes jutting out into the aisles.
    “Just two,” Susa said. “Dear Lord. How can I choose?”
    Ian sighed. Sometimes Zen was quicker than anything else. “Close your eyes.”
    “What?” Susa asked.
    “Close your eyes and see better. The Zen thing.”
    She gave him a sideways look. “Out of the mouths of babes…”
    “Hey, I’m fully grown.”
    “That’s what makes you a babe.”
    Laughing, shaking his head, Ian crowded past Susa and took the first two paintings that were sticking out into the aisle. “Here,” he said. “Now let’s go back to the hotel and get some sleep. Tomorrow will be a long day.”
    Susa took the first painting. It was a study of the desert east of the San