Silver Linings

her palms up and down her bare arms. Silk had left an hour ago after Hugh had gone through all the details of his late-night meeting at the warehouse. The big man had not seemed particularly shocked by Rosey's death. It was almost as if he was accustomed to that kind of news.
    “We'll find him.”
    “How are you going to do that in Seattle?” Mattie asked.
    “Silk will be in touch if anything turns up. Seattle's not the end of the world.”
    “Aren't there police or federal agencies who should be handling this kind of thing?”
    “Not on Purgatory. They're in the middle of a coup over there, remember?” Hugh went across the room and opened a cupboard.
    Mattie watched him pull out a well-worn khaki green duffel bag that looked as though it had been hauled around the world several times. She sank down onto a wicker chair and watched as Hugh carried numerous changes of underwear and shirts out of the bedroom and dumped them into the duffel bag.
    “Why the rush? Why do we have to leave tomorrow?” she asked. The sense of urgency had been hovering in the air ever since Hugh had walked back in the door.
    “No sense hanging around here. Silk's going to look after Abbott Charters for me. We might as well head to Seattle.”
    “There's more to it than that, isn't there? You're more worried about this second murder than you want to admit. You're afraid there might be some danger here for me, aren't you? Hugh, if finding Cormier's killer is so important to you, why don't you stay here on St. Gabriel and I'll go home by myself?”
    “Sure. And start ducking me again every time I try to call or see you? Not a chance, babe. I'm not letting you out of my sight this time. You want proof I'm serious about marrying you. You're going to get it.”
    “Damn it, Hugh, I know you're serious about marrying me. That's not the point. It's the reason you want to marry me that I don't trust.”
    He stopped packing the duffel bag and stood, feet braced, hands on hips, and regarded her with grim intent. “Now, you listen and listen good, babe. I want to marry you for all the normal reasons. I want a wife and a home, a real home. I want to have someone to talk to in the evenings, someone to warm my bed, someone to eat with, someone who gives a damn if I come home late. What's not to trust about that?”
    She stared at him, her hands twisting together in her lap. “There are a lot of women who would be glad to do all that for you.”
    “I don't want a lot of women. I want you.” He took two long strides over to where she was sitting and lifted her to her feet. “And I do not want to hear another word about my staying here on St. Gabe while you flit back to Seattle. Understood?”
    Mattie looked up at him sadly. “I don't think it's going to work, Hugh.”
    “Leave it to me, babe. I always get the job done.”

CHAPTER

Nine

    Three days later Mattie picked up a canapé from a passing tray and surveyed the throng of well-dressed people milling around a prestigious Seattle gallery.
    Plastic champagne glasses were everywhere. They were in people's hands, overflowing the wastebaskets, and standing around on every available empty surface. There were also a lot of little paper napkins, bits and pieces of canapés, and discarded programs. Most of the people in the room seemed more interested in being seen themselves than in looking at the art that hung on the walls.
    Not that the art on the walls was not good. It was. The gallery was showing some of the best avant-garde stuff ever done on the West Coast. The show was, after all, a retrospective display of the works of Ariel Sharpe.
    The canvases had been grouped according to the artist's four clearly recognized periods: her Early Dark period, her Exploratory period, her short-lived Elemental period, and the latest, which had been dubbed her Early Mature period.
    Mattie caught a few of the snippets of conversation going on around her. “ The emotion is incredible, right from the first…such brilliant use of color, even in the Early Dark period, when she was using only black and brown…a sense of cataclysmic inevitability…a surprisingly shocking use of line, but she was getting divorced from Blackwell at the time, and that kind of thing always has an impact with her. She's so emotional…a bit rough and crude , Art Brut, if you will, but it is from her Elemental period, after all ….”
    Mattie had no trouble recognizing the talent in her sister's work. The strong sense of line and