Just Before Sunrise (17 page)

"You need me to see you in, ma'am?" he asked, not even counting the money. Clearly there was more than enough.

"No. I'll be fine."

He seemed relieved not to have to pass Otto. He eyed Annie. "You got her?"

She nodded. "Thank you."

"No problem, she's a nice lady."

He waved a hand in a quick farewell, scooted around the front of his cab, and climbed in, wasting no time getting out of there. Otto, Annie knew, sometimes had that effect on people.

Sarah scowled after him. The wind caught the ends of her shapeless graying hair. She had traded her Keds for a pair of sturdy men's ankle boots and her usual mismatched socks. Otto, judiciously, left her alone as she hobbled toward her front door, muttering more to herself than to Annie. "I won't be treated like a daft old woman."

Annie couldn't stop a smile from creeping across her mouth. "Well, what do you expect when you dress like a bag lady?"

"Bag ladies should be treated with respect."

"That driver looked like he took pretty good care of you."

She sniffed. "He was patronizing."

"He was solicitous. There's a difference."

"I'm in no mood for seeing the bright side of things," she grumbled, unlocking her door.

"I've been worried about you," Annie said, not sure she was going to be invited in.

"First the cab driver, now you." She shot Annie a sharp look. "I suppose you think I should have left a note?"

Definitely touchy. Annie didn't back down and just managed to hold on to her patience. She'd had a rough day of her own. "Since there's a chance Vic Denardo's on your tail, it would have been nice."

"Vic," she sneered, pushing on inside. "He doesn't worry me."

"Well, he worries me."

Sarah leaned on her cane. "Are you coming in or not?"

Otto lunged forward, eager to get inside. But Annie held him back, although he could have dragged her in if he'd wanted to. "You don't seem in the mood for company."

"I'm not." But she sighed, her expression softening. "It's very sweet of you to fret about me, Annie. I'm afraid I've become an old crank. I'm not used to having anyone worry about me, and I haven't had anyone to worry about in—well, a long time."

At least five years. According to the papers, she and her niece had been close. And there'd been her father. Like him or not, Sarah Linwood had tended to his needs longer than should have been required of any daughter. And, of course, there'd been Vic Denardo, but Annie had yet to sort out Sarah's relationship with him.

"Perhaps I can make you a cup of tea," Annie offered quietly.

"I can make my own tea."

No hint of blue-blooded breeding this afternoon. Gritting her teeth, Annie followed the old crab into her house. "If you're too tired, I can come back tomorrow."

"I'm fine. A glass of water and some crackers will revive me."

"Otto can stay outside—"

"No, let him in. He won't hurt anything."

Annie wasn't worried about him knocking Sarah over; Gran had straightened him out on that score as a puppy. She just didn't want him shredding, slobbering on, or otherwise mucking up any of Sarah's canvases. "Really, it's no problem if—"

"Annie. Please. He won't hurt me. He won't hurt my paintings. Come inside."

It occurred to Annie that Sarah could have some justification for losing patience with her. Holding Otto short on his leash, she went inside. She discouraged her eager dog from sniffing around to familiarize himself with the territory until Sarah barked at her to let the poor animal off his leash.

Annie complied.
Go ahead, Otto. Lift your leg on one of her still lifes and see how she likes it.

But Otto, obviously in a traitorous mood, immediately plopped down in the middle of Sarah's kitchen floor as if he were back in Maine.

Sarah got her glass of water and handful of saltines, standing at the sink while she ate and drank without comment. Finally, she took a sleeve of crackers and hobbled on her cane back toward her rattan chair with the chintz cushions. Annie remained close to the front door and kept an eye on Otto, just in case he got any ideas.

"I suppose," Sarah said, sinking painfully onto her chair, "you're wondering where I've been."

"You don't owe me an explanation."

She might as well have not spoken. Sarah showed no sign she'd even heard her. "I went out to the house on Pacific Heights. Until five years ago I'd lived there my entire life, you know. I'd expected to die there. I just—I suppose I just wanted to see it before it was emptied of all its furniture, its very soul."

Annie quickly sifted through Sarah's drama to the facts of what she was saying. "You went inside?"

"I still have a key." She glanced up, cracker crumbs on her pale, purplish lips. "My brother didn't change the locks after I left San Francisco."

Or after the murders, Annie thought. But if the killer was Vic Denardo, he hadn't had to break in to do his handiwork. Even if it wasn't Denardo, there'd been no sign of forced entry, at least according to the press accounts she'd read. Security hadn't been the problem that terrible night. "You weren't afraid of being seen?"

Sarah smiled grimly. "Who would recognize me?"

She had a point. The pictures of her in the newspapers at the time of the murders showed a very different woman from the one Annie knew. That Sarah Linwood had worn pearls and cashmere, had been every inch the Linwood heiress. Now, in her red corduroy jacket and pilled polyester flowered top, with her debilitating illness, she wasn't a woman her family would readily recognize as one of their own.

"No one was around," she went on. "My footsteps echoed in a way I've never heard. It was almost as if the walls were trying to tell me something. I don't know how to explain—" She caught herself and glanced up at Annie. "I suppose you think I'm being ridiculous."

"Sarah, it's not my place to judge you. I wouldn't—"

"I kept telling myself it's only a house. I hadn't been there in so long, I thought time would have made it easier. But the memories flooded in, bad right along with the good. The wasted years, the years not knowing who I was, the deaths of two people I loved dearly—" She broke off, tears spilling into her eyes, making their blue even more vivid. "I know a lot of people don't think so, but I did love my father."

"Sarah..."

"Going back there..." Her voice cracked, but she seemed to will her tears not to spill down her cheeks. "It was as if someone had ripped out a piece of my soul." "I think I understand," Annie said quietly.

Sarah's head jerked up, her artist's incisiveness sharpening her gaze, yanking her out of her self-absorption. "Of course. Your grandmother's cottage. It was swept out to sea."

"I know it's not the same—"

"But it gives you a frame of reference, a way into what I'm feeling right now. Walking around those silent rooms..."

She swallowed, choking back any open display of emotion. She was a woman who didn't easily express her feelings except in her work. Annie's gaze drifted to the canvases leaned up against a cheap kitchen cabinet. In her work, Sarah Linwood held nothing back.

When she went on, her voice was calm, quiet, tortured. "I could feel my family in a way I never have before. The empty rooms, the distance of five years. My father, my mother, John. Haley. Even my grandfather, who built the house. I remember he had a great booming laugh. Mother thought him coarse. Father despised him. But they were all there today. I felt them." She swallowed again and fumbled for another cracker, her eyes unfocused. "I'll never go back there."

Annie ventured forward, moving closer to this woman she found so compelling, so solid and strong one moment, so conflicted and sad the next. "Because it's been sold?"

"It wouldn't matter. I know who I am now. I'm not the woman who lived in that house, who once belonged there and nowhere else. Who knew her place. But I—" She shut her eyes, squeezing back tears; in spite of her best efforts, a trickle found its way down her pallid cheeks. She looked homely and pathetic, no longer at peace with herself or her life. "Dear God, I wish I could have found out who I am without having abused the people I care about in the process. I brought tragedy and terror into their lives."

"But if you didn't kill anyone—"

Sarah's eyes opened, clear and focused. "I didn't."

Annie nodded. "I know. Then the murders aren't your fault."

"Vic. I brought Vic Denardo into their lives."

"Actually," Annie said carefully, "from what I understand, you didn't. Garvin did. He invited him to crew for him. Vic Denardo had already sailed with Garvin, Ethan Conninger, your brother— even your father—before you met him."

Sarah frowned. "I never thought of it that way."

"Which isn't to blame them, either. If Denardo did commit the murders—if he was determined from the start to wreak havoc on your lives—he'd have found another way into your circle."

"Perhaps."

"I'm not saying that's the case. I have no idea. I wasn't there."

Calmer now, Sarah studied her guest a moment. "I've been blathering. You came here for a reason, didn't you, Annie? What is it?"

"There's no need to trouble you right now—"

"It's Vic?"

Annie shook her head.

"Garvin," Sarah said with certainty. She folded the ends of her sleeve of crackers, her movements neat and precise, her cashmere-and-pearls self perhaps not as dead as she believed. "Sit down. We'll order in Chinese and talk."

"Sarah, I don't want to inflict myself on you if you're tired—" Sarah shook off her protest. "You're a charming and insightful young woman, Annie. I
need
your company. I don't want to become a morose old crone. And I know I can't run from my problems. The past has its obligations—and a hellishly long reach into the-future. Now. Order dinner." Her smile was soft, almost beautiful; the demons were at bay. "Then let's talk about Garvin MacCrae and why he thinks I might have talked Vic Denardo into killing my own father and niece."

"So she in trouble or what?" Michael Yuma asked.

"I don't know if she is or not," Garvin said.

Yuma had spent most of the last twenty minutes grilling Garvin on Annie Payne with limited success. Garvin was helping him work on his much-patched, much-abused launch, which had started taking on water again late yesterday, probably while Garvin was out on his deck kissing Annie. It was a bright, brisk morning. A perfect day to be out on the water. But he had work to do at the marina, and running would only postpone the inevitable reckoning he and Annie Payne had coming.

"It's the hair," Yuma said. "You know what I mean?"

Garvin sighed. "No."

"All those blond wisps. Makes her seem vulnerable, you know? And those big blue eyes—"

"Yuma, the woman drives around town with a rottweiler."

"So?"

"She also grew up in Maine. Her father was a fisherman who died when she was a baby. Annie Payne can take care of herself."

Yuma grinned. "Who you trying to convince?"

"Michael, you're being—"

"Sexist," he supplied easily.

"Yeah, I'd say so."

"Well, I'm only half serious. If she were a man, I'd still say she's probably in a heap of trouble, never mind whether or not she can handle it on her own. Am I right? She's in trouble and you want to help?"

Garvin threw down an undershirt-turned-rag. If only all he wanted was to help Annie Payne. But that wasn't the case. He wanted to know what she knew about Sarah Linwood, and he wanted to kiss her again.

He wanted more than just to kiss her again.

"Hell, Yuma, if you're implying I'm being sucked into something because Annie Payne has wispy blond hair, you're even crazier than I thought."

"Okay, my man. If you say so. You don't have an urge to protect this woman, you don't. Won't catch me saying otherwise. What I'm thinking, though, you can't do nothing about."

"One more word, Yuma, and I swear—"

"What? I'm agreeing with you."

"You're goading me."

Yuma shrugged. "You're saying it's sexist because I think Annie Payne's in trouble. It wasn't sexist when you thought I was in trouble."

"You weren't in trouble, Yuma. You
were
trouble."

He laughed, a long ways from the messed-up kid he'd once been. "What about your blonde? She trouble too?"

Garvin grabbed a gallon of sealer, refusing to answer. Michael Yuma was just trying to get under his skin and force him to sort out where he stood on the subject of Annie Payne. Well, he didn't want to sort that one out. He'd have to remember the feel of her mouth on his, the look of shock and desire in her eyes. He'd have to remember the jolt of sheer panic he'd felt when he'd realized how much he wanted her.

But she
was
trouble. She'd connived with Sarah Linwood, she'd lied to him, she'd damned likely lied to Vic Denardo.

What she hadn't explained was why. Why buy Sarah's painting of Haley at the auction? What was in it for Annie Payne newly of San Francisco?

"You growling?" Yuma asked.

"You know, I can still throw you in the drink."

Yuma was unperturbed. "You haven't met Beau yet, have you?"

"Beau?"

"New guy. I hired him yesterday as our part-time outdoor maintenance man. He's six foot four, two eighty. He's on probation, needed a job to keep himself on the straight and narrow."

"So 'we' gave him one."

"After he'd been turned down everywhere."

"And now he likes you," Garvin translated.

"Yep. If I go in the drink, two minutes later, you're in with me. O' course," he went on, dipping a thick brush into the can of sealer, "from the looks of you, a dip in the ice-cold San Francisco Bay would do you no harm."

"Change the subject, Yuma."

"Uh-huh."

That afternoon Garvin gave up on Yuma and the new guy, Beau, and drove out to Union Street and parked within a block of Annie's Gallery. When he arrived in her courtyard, Otto was prancing around, one end of his heavy leash attached to his collar, the other dragging behind him.

"He's restless," Annie said, her back to Garvin as she checked her door, making sure it was locked. "He needs a good walk."