Die in Plain Sight Read Free Page A

patterns on both shirt and jeans.
    Then Shayla noticed the six paintings lined up. “Hon, you aren’t going to show that one in public, are you?”
    Lacey jumped again, having forgotten again that she wasn’t alone. She looked at the dark, savage painting. “I don’t know.”
    “It creeps me out.”
    “That’s what it’s meant to do. That’s what makes it so good.”
    “Well, yippee-skippy. Give it to a horror museum or the public morgue. Should fit right in. How many of those damn things did he paint anyway?”
    “I don’t know,” Lacey said. “I inherited thirty of the dark ones, but they’re numbered one through forty-seven. So my grandfather either sold, gave away, or destroyed the seventeen missing paintings. Or some combination of the three. The man was nothing if not unpredictable.”
    “I’m voting for destroyed.”
    Lacey sighed and swept her hand through her unruly cloud of curls.
    “I’m not. Even though the subject matter of the paintings isn’t exactly warm and cuddly—”
    Shayla snorted. “Ya think?”
    Lacey ignored her “—the Death Suite—”
    “Now there’s a name to draw little children.”
    “—is nothing short of brilliant,” Lacey finished loudly.
    “What about the others? Just because they don’t make you want to scream, does that mean they’re not good?”
    “Of course not. The landscapes have the same emotion and energy and finesse as the bleak paintings. Quinn painted light and dark, yin and yang, heaven and hell with equal skill and emotion.”
    “Maybe he was bipolar,” Shayla said, bending over her inventory again.
    “Could be. My dad said as much once. But I think my grandfather was simply a gifted artist who was able to create both sin and salvation with equal power.”
    “Give me heaven every time.”
    “Hey, I didn’t say I was going to hang any of the Death Suite in my apartment. But that doesn’t make those paintings bad. Just uncomfortable to live with.”
    “Uncomfortable. Yeah. The way a bed of razor blades is uncomfortable.”
    Lacey ignored her friend and went back to staring at the six canvases. Well, Grandpa Rainbow, she thought, using the nickname she’d given him for the paint splatters on his clothes, you’ve given me an impossible job. I’ve been hovering over these six paintings forever, and they all still look equally good to me.
    She turned the paintings to a wall, shuffled them like a con artist moving a pea beneath walnut shells, and then picked three paintings at random. The first one portrayed breakers foaming on the beach and the ocean in every shade of blue and green imaginable. The rocky cliffs were darkly textured, a solid masculine presence against the fluidly feminine sea. Though no people appeared in the painting, Lacey loved the canvas for its sheer sensuality, almost sexual in its impact.
    “Now that one is worth looking at,” Shayla said.
    For the third time, Lacey jumped.
    Both women laughed.
    “Score one for blind chance,” Lacey said, pleased that Sandy Cove would be one of the three she presented to Susa Donovan.
    “What else is going with it?” Shayla said.
    “Don’t know yet.” Lacey reached out to the second of the three blindly selected paintings. “Let’s find out.”
    The second painting was an untitled portrait of eucalyptus trees silhouetted against sunrise. The shadowed, textured masculine strength of the trees stood in stark contrast to the fluid, multicolored sigh of dawn. Again, the near tangible sensuality of the painting left Lacey with the feeling of having been stroked by a lover who savored the difference between male and female.
    “Excellent choice,” Shayla said dryly, like a waiter approving a dinner selection. “Or is it just that it’s been a long dry spell in the XY department for me?”
    “Does it really seem that sexy to you?”
    Shayla fanned herself. “Your granddaddy might have been twisted, but he knew that a woman’s mind is her most erogenous zone. Probably because