Just Before Sunrise (10 page)

She had to hunt for a parking space, found one two blocks up from the stone steps, but it was a glorious sunny afternoon. Her shop was closed on Mondays, and she had spent most of the day cleaning her apartment and thinking. She had on black leggings, her oversize Mt. Desert Island sweatshirt, and sneakers.

As tempted as she was to take Otto with her on such a beautiful day, she didn't think that would be a smart idea. Visions of bulls in china shops came to mind, not to mention Sarah's disability.

"I won't be long," she told him. "You be a good boy."

Her good boy was flopped on his back, paws in the air, before she'd gotten the doors locked.

She enjoyed her walk to the stone steps, reveled in the crisp, clean smells, the bright red leaves that had fallen on the sidewalk. When she reached the little cul-de-sac at the top of the hill, it occurred to her that for all she knew, Sarah Linwood could have packed up and gone.

But she hadn't. As usual, she'd left her door unlocked, and Annie walked right in.

Sarah was standing at the ancient stove in her cluttered kitchen. A teakettle whistled, and she motioned for Annie to sit at the rickety table just inside the front door. An extra cup and saucer were already set out with a plate of simple baking powder biscuits, small dishes of strawberry jam and soft butter, and cream and sugar. As at their previous tea together, Sarah had laid out her good china, in a delicate pattern of tiny pink rosebuds.

Annie gave her hostess a questioning look. "You knew I was coming?"

Sarah smiled. "I always put out two cups for tea, just in case I have company. Not that I ever do, of course, but I can always hope someone drops in at just the right moment. Is Irish Breakfast all right with you?"

"It's perfect."

Balancing herself with one hand on the stove, Sarah filled a rosebud teapot with the boiling water. Today she wore cheap elastic-waist jeans and a turquoise button-front top in a pilled polyester knit with her white Keds and mismatched socks, one white, one pink. Her graying strawberry hair was clean and neatly brushed, without any clear style.

"How do you manage groceries?" Annie asked, resisting the urge to start firing questions at her about her dangerous and secret affair with Vic Denardo, about her compulsive gambling.

"A little at a time. I have a string bag I carry. I don't have a car, but I use public transportation when I can, a cab when I must. It's a chore. I try to go on days when I can manage with just the cane. Sometimes I can even get along without it, but I always take it with me." She shrugged. "I don't get out much."

She took her cane from where she'd leaned it against the counter, then picked up the teapot. Annie started to volunteer to help but saw there was no need. Accustomed to the challenges of her physical condition, Sarah had everything well in hand. She made her way to the table, moving slowly but not clumsily, and set the pot on the table. "It'll need a couple minutes to steep." She eased down onto her chair, her expression registering just the barest flash of pain. "You can tell me why you look so troubled."

Annie took a biscuit from the plate, realized she was hungry after her long day pulling her head together after her twin encounters with the man in her workroom and Garvin MacCrae. "A man came to my gallery yesterday afternoon looking for you."

Sarah frowned. "Who?"

"He didn't tell me his name." Annie decided to give her the description she'd given Garvin MacCrae. "He was stocky, muscular, in his mid-to-late fifties. He had thick, wavy gray hair and very dark eyes."

"Vic," Sarah breathed, without hesitation.

Annie took a breath, trying to stay composed. "Then Garvin MacCrae didn't lie to me."

"Garvin?"

"He stopped by yesterday too."

Despite her shaken look, Sarah managed a sardonic smile. "Quite the day you had."

"Yes."

She poured a small amount of tea into her saucer, nodded in satisfaction at its color and filled Annie's cup, then her own. She set the pot down, her hands steady. She was an artist, Annie remembered, and a Linwood. She would know how to keep her emotions in check. "I let you walk into a potentially dangerous situation without all the facts," she said simply. "I'm sorry."

"Water over the dam now."

"I never thought—" Sarah inhaled, as if breathing in the steam from her tea. "I never thought Vic Denardo would dare show his face in San Francisco. Tell me everything, Annie. Please."

Annie sighed, watching Sarah take a biscuit and carefully cut it in half, then spread it with butter and jam. Her movements were precise and finishing-school delicate, even with her swollen, twisted joints. Would any of her family and friends believe this was the same woman who had taken up gambling and had a scandalous affair with a merchant marine? Would anyone recognize her? Had there been any signs of the disease that now swelled and twisted her joints? Had she worn mismatched socks and Keds? Annie couldn't imagine what Sarah Linwood had been like five years ago. She only saw her as she was now.

Finally, she simply did as requested and told Sarah everything, leaving out only her complicated emotional and physical reaction to Garvin MacCrae.

When she finished, Annie could feel her pulse racing. "Sarah, do you—do you believe Vic Denardo killed your father and your niece?"

Sarah suddenly looked very gray and tired; she reached for another biscuit, a slight tremble to her hand. "I don't know."

Not the words Annie had hoped to hear, had told herself last night and all day that she
would
hear. She wanted Sarah to tell her that the man who'd hidden in her workroom—if Vic Denardo— was, without doubt, innocent. "Do you have any idea what he meant when he said you and he have unfinished business?"

"He thinks I framed him."

"What?"

Sarah's vivid, striking eyes filled with tears as she fought back a sob, visibly struggling to compose herself. The murders of Thomas Linwood and Haley Linwood MacCrae weren't an intellectual exercise, Annie realized. The pain of them lingered, even after five years. The unanswered questions. The horror.

"Vic thinks I framed him. He thinks I..." Sarah broke off, her voice croaking and ancient-sounding, barely audible. A thin stream of tears worked its way down one cheek into the lines around her mouth. "He thinks I killed my father and—" She gulped, breathed out, made herself say it. "My father and Haley."

Annie had gone still. She noticed the picturesque, sun-washed city sprawled along the hills and valleys below the little pink house, noticed the hum of the refrigerator, the occasional sound of traffic outside in the distance.

She could be sitting here having tea, Annie thought, with a murderer.

Which was a loony idea. Truly loony. She glanced over at a canvas tucked up against the wall by the front door. A rose garden in the sun. It compelled the viewer into the world Sarah had created. Pink roses, yellow roses, warmth, beauty. Annie was
there.
She could feel the sun on her cheeks, smell the roses.

She forced herself to turn back to her hostess. "If he thinks you're guilty, then that must mean he's innocent."

"No." She shook her head, cleared her throat, but left her tears to dry on their own. "No, it doesn't. It could just mean he's trying to avoid responsibility for what he's done by blaming me."

"But it's been five years. He's avoided the police all this time. Why risk exposing himself?"

"Because that's Vic," she said firmly.

Annie gave her a faltering smile. "Maybe I'll be lucky and the man yesterday wasn't Denardo. That piece I told you about in the paper brought out all kinds. What about Garvin MacCrae? I don't suppose there's any hope he'll back off?"

"Not if he thinks you can lead him to Vic. Or to me."

A man with a mission, Annie thought. His apparent concern for her yesterday—the cappuccino, the biscotti, the effort to be patient—didn't mean Garvin MacCrae didn't have his own agenda. Annie pushed the unsettling thought aside. Her attraction to him was probably only transitory anyway, a not unexpected product of the tension and surprises of her weekend, her isolation in California.

"That must mean he thinks you might have some information that could help settle things. He told me he's trying to keep an open mind—"

Sarah scoffed. "Oh, it sounds it."

"I know," Annie said dryly. "If it's any consolation, I don't think he believed a word I said."

"Did you lie to him?"

"Not exactly. I just was careful in my choice of words and didn't tell him everything."

Sighing, Sarah reached across the table, took Annie's hand into hers. Her skin was warm, softer than Annie would have expected. "Listen to me, Annie. Garvin MacCrae is one of the most tenacious men I've ever met. He'll want to see whoever killed my father and Haley brought to justice. If he sees you as a means to that end, he won't back off. He'll use you, Annie, in any way he feels he must. And I can't say in his place I wouldn't do the same."

Before she could control it, dispel it, Annie was taken aback by the image—clear, detailed—of him studying her from across the table. His deep, earthy eyes, his blade of a nose, his thick brows. His mouth, sensual, compelling. Even his callused hands as he'd held his mug of black coffee. Her throat went dry, her mouth tingled. So much for a transitory attraction, she thought.

Sarah released her hand and sat back, suddenly looking exhausted. "He and Haley were so different. For a while I thought some of his strength and drive would rub off on her, some of her softness and joy in living on him. But I don't know. They'd only known each other a year before they married, and then a year later Haley was killed."

Two years total. Not long at all. "How sad."

"Yes," Sarah said. She grabbed her cane, leaning on it without making a move to rise. "Yes, how very sad. Haley was always so optimistic, so determined to enjoy life and see the good in others. She was charming, totally without pretense." Sarah's shoulders sagged; she seemed almost to sink into her chair. "I can't imagine how losing her the way he did affected Garvin."

Annie thought of him walking down Union Street with the drizzle collecting on his dark hair and his face grim, uncompromising. He had looked determined, but not haunted, as if he'd gone on with his life with the understanding that he would never be the same again.

"Dear God," Sarah mumbled, her voice strangled, "we lost her too soon."

Supporting herself heavily on her cane, she got slowly to her feet. A quiet melancholy had settled over her. She'd been in such a pleasant, homey mood when Annie had arrived. She felt a pang of guilt at having inflicted herself on this pain-racked, isolated woman. What if that hadn't been Vic Denardo yesterday? What if Garvin MacCrae had latched onto him and the painting in his desperate desire to find his wife's killer, and Sarah out of guilt and regret over her past association with him?

"I'm sorry, Annie. I can hardly warn you against Garvin when I've used you myself. I should have told you everything before I sent you to the auction. The painting—can you understand why I wanted it?"

It was all that remained of her early work, and it was a portrait of a niece she'd lost to murder. "Yes. I understand."

Sarah made her way to her rattan chair in the living room and, thrusting her cane onto the floor, dropped down into the faded chintz cushions. Feeling awkward, concerned, even a little scared for Sarah, Annie collected her walker from the kitchen counter and brought it to her, setting it against the wall near her chair.

"I haven't gambled since the murders," Sarah blurted, her eyes suddenly fierce on Annie. Then her face crumpled, and she covered her mouth with a big, paint-stained, gnarled hand and choked back a sob.

"I'll go now," Annie said quietly.

"The police—you can call them if you want. It won't do any good. They haven't found Vic in five years. They won't now. But you can call them. I can't hold you to your promise."

"Sarah, I haven't figured out what I should do or—"

"I
won't
hold you to it." Her voice was little more than a murmur. She sank back against her chair, staring up at the ceiling. "I'm getting all muddled. I need to think. I—" She sighed, breaking off. "Perhaps it wasn't wise to try and come home after all."

"I'll leave," Annie said. "We can talk later."

Sarah didn't answer, just lifted a hand in a feeble wave, and Annie withdrew without another word. As she started down the stone steps, she glanced back. Through the curtainless windows she could see Sarah Linwood, one-time heiress and mercurial recluse, back on her feet, edging her way to the easel she had set up in corner of her cottage, all of San Francisco spread out before her.

When her doorbell rang at six-thirty, Annie expected it was her landlord coming to tell her he'd changed his mind about Otto after all. She had a tiny ground-floor apartment behind a building on Russian Hill. It had its own entrance via a brick wall overgrown with the kind of greenery that didn't grow in Maine even in the summer. The three floors of the main building were reserved for larger, more elegant, far more expensive apartments.

Her doorbell rang again.

She smelled faintly of bleach. She had resumed her cleaning spree after tea with Sarah Linwood. Her little apartment fairly gleamed. She knew she was playing ostrich, avoiding facing up to the consequences of walking into that auction room on Saturday.

She stopped just in front of her door, Otto at her side.

What if it was the stocky, gray-haired man from yesterday?

"Hello," she said through the door, "who is it?"

"Garvin MacCrae."

She felt an unexpected surge of excitement mixed with a flicker of trepidation. She'd been rattled all day, especially since her visit with Sarah Linwood. Her resistance was down. What if she said something she shouldn't say? She still hadn't figured out what to do. Call the police, not call the police, trust Sarah, not trust Sarah. It was as if she were paralyzed by the shock of what she'd learned in the past two days.

"May I come in?" he asked.

His voice was deep, persuasive. Annie felt a slight tremble in her hand. This is absurd, she thought, and pulled open the door.