Just Before Sunrise (2 page)

Annie squinted back at the water. "Otto. Come, boy."

He stood atop a massive granite boulder and watched her with the lavender sky at his back. She wondered if he sensed her ambivalence. San Francisco and an unknown life lay ahead. She had plans, dreams. Maybe they'd work out, maybe they wouldn't. Maybe she was being a little crazy and impulsive. She'd banked her insurance settlement instead of rebuilding, and ten days ago she'd found a buyer for her coveted property with its picturesque views and privacy. She had enough money for her new life. But she wasn't sure about anything except that her father had died when she was a baby, her mother when she was sixteen, and now Gran was dead and her cottage was gone—and if she didn't do something, maybe she'd be next. She'd latched onto the idea of San Francisco and opening her own gallery, starting over, and now she was going.

She opened the back liftgate, hoping that would coax Otto up off the rocks. He loved to ride. But if Otto didn't want to do something, she couldn't force him. He weighed five pounds more than she did.

"Come on, buddy. This'll be an adventure. You and me driving west. Over hill and dale, from sea to shining sea, amber waves of grain, purple mountains. We'll see it all."

Otto plopped down on his rock, tongue wagging. He loved autumn in New England, even chilly November mornings with fallen leaves coloring the ground gold and rust and the taste of winter in the air. Annie frowned, trying to push back any doubts. What if he didn't like California? What if, on some instinctive dog level, Otto already knew this entire adventure of hers was lunacy?

But she had made up her mind. "You'll love San Francisco, Otto. You'll see." The wind was coming in off the water now, catching the ends of her hair, biting into her cheeks. She shivered in her fleece jacket. "Otto. Come."

Otto stayed where he was.

Deliberately leaving her driver's door open, Annie climbed behind the wheel and started the engine. "Fine. I'll go without you."

She wouldn't, of course. She
couldn't.
But the threat was enough to get her recalcitrant dog moving. Brow furrowed, he bounded over to the car and jumped in back, where he just fit amidst the boxes and Gran's crated painting of the cottage on a bright summer morning, window boxes overflowing with pink petunias. Some would dismiss it as tourist art, sentimental and nostalgic. Yet somehow it captured everything that Annie's life in her cottage by the bay had been.

Before Otto could change his mind, she quickly jumped out and shut the liftgate.

Before she could change hers, she backed out of her driveway without even a parting glance at the bay and the picturesque spot where she had lived her whole life. Here today, gone tomorrow. She'd learned the hard way that was what life was.

It was a lesson she was determined never to forget.

Chapter One

Circumstances compelled Annie to take Otto with her to her first big San Francisco auction almost three months after rolling into town. She would have left him at her gallery, up and running for six weeks now, but the woman she'd hired to cover for her today was afraid of any and all rottweilers. She would have left him at her apartment, but her landlord, who didn't have "rottweiler" in mind when he'd agreed to let Annie have a dog, was coming over to fix what passed for heat in San Francisco, and he was still afraid of Otto.

Back in Maine, no one was afraid of Otto. The whole town knew he was a big galoot.

Annie parked in the shade on the wide, picturesque Pacific Heights street and left the windows of her station wagon cracked and Otto sprawled in back. She'd let down the backseat not for his sake but because of the auction. She had one item to buy, and she meant to buy it.

"I'll be back as soon as I can," she told Otto, as if he understood.

It was a dreary day even by San Francisco dreary-day standards. Low clouds, intermittent drizzle, lapping fog, temperature in the upper fifties. Since arriving in the Bay Area, Annie had developed an impressive collection of cheap umbrellas and always kept several in her car and one tucked in the tapestry tote she carried everywhere. She estimated she'd lost at least a half dozen since Thanksgiving. It wasn't that it rained all that much in San Francisco, she'd decided, but that it didn't snow. So it seemed that it rained more than in Maine. She had tried to explain this deduction to Zoe Summer, who ran the aromatherapy shop next to Annie's Gallery, but Zoe, a native of Seattle, said Annie didn't know rain.

She felt a rare tug of trepidation as she approached the imposing, ornate Linwood house, an elaborate Victorian mansion in lemon yellow. It was one of the most famous in San Francisco. Lush green grass carpeted a regal front yard, and beautifully maintained shrubs softened tall, elegantly draped windows that were so spotless they sparkled even in the gloom. The Linwoods were up there with the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, and Hearsts, not the usual sort Annie was used to hanging out with on her Maine peninsula.

A uniformed guard was posted at the end of the brick walk that led to the front entrance. Annie handed him her ticket to the private auction. She had attended a few of Ernie's Saturday night auctions on the Hathaway farm, inland up toward the lakes. She had once almost talked Gran into letting her buy a lamb.

A different time, a different life.

The guard scrutinized her ticket first, then her. She told herself he probably did that to everybody, not just her. She couldn't look that different from the dealers and collectors at the auction. Although her wardrobe was still limited, she had on a perfectly respectable outfit: a silk sweater over a calf-length skirt in a dusky blue, with silver earrings and her good black leather ankle boots. She'd pulled her hair up into a passable twist and, given the uncertain weather, had brought along Gran's Portuguese shawl, which had spent the nameless, devastating storm at her office at the museum. It was black wool with bright crewel embroidered flowers and exotic birds, and Annie suspected it really was a piano cover rather than a shawl. But it was beautiful and rather Victorian-looking, perfect, she thought, for her first San Francisco auction.

"Use the front entrance, Ms. Payne. A guard will direct you to the ballroom."

The guard handed her back her ticket in a way that made Annie wonder if she had dog slobber on her sweater. Or maybe she was just a tad paranoid because of the strange circumstances that had brought her here today.

With a hasty parting smile, she proceeded up the walk. The cool, rainy winter weather brought out the scent of flowers and grass and earth and reminded her of early spring mornings in Maine. It was the dead of winter there now. She sucked in a quick breath at the sudden stab of nostalgia, the unbidden image of her and Gran watching the fog swirling over the bay from their old wooden Adirondack chairs on the cottage porch. She tucked a drifting strand of hair back into its pin, steadying herself. She was in San Francisco at an auction that would require her to keep her wits about her. She wouldn't—she
couldn 't
—indulge in daydreaming about a life that was no more. She planned to enjoy herself even as she completed her rather peculiar mission on Pacific Heights.

"I have to have that painting," the woman whom Annie knew only as Sarah had told her.

After checking with the second guard at the front door, she ventured down the center hall of the cool, beautiful mansion, peeking into elegant rooms that were blocked off to the public with velvet ropes, absorbing every detail of architecture, design, and decor. Although the house had been unoccupied for several years, it was gleaming, spotless, without a single sign of neglect or disrepair. The Linwoods had put it up for sale. Hence, the auction of much of its contents. From what Annie gathered, necessity— banks, debts, the IRS—hadn't played a role in the decision to sell. But she really hadn't done much investigating. She was too busy with her gallery and settling into her new life—and even with her odd mission, there was no need for details. Her role at the auction was simple and clear, and, she had to admit, had an intriguing element of excitement and mystery. She had never represented an anonymous buyer at an auction.

A smartly dressed woman behind a table at the ballroom entrance checked Annie's identification and took a letter from her bank as assurance that any check she wrote wouldn't bounce. It was all brisk, formal, and routine, but Annie noticed that her palms had gone clammy. Wishing to remain completely anonymous, Sarah had deposited ten thousand dollars into Annie's checking account on Thursday morning. It was all perfectly legal, just unusual. What was to keep Annie from ducking the auction and blowing the money herself? But Sarah seemed to trust her.

The woman at the table presented Annie with a white card with the number 112 in large, legible, black print. Suppressing a twinge of nervousness, Annie managed a quick smile before proceeding into the ornate ballroom. Scores of buyers were settling into rows of mundane folding chairs set up against a backdrop of glittering crystal chandeliers, lavish murals of pre-1906 San Francisco and breathtaking views of the bay. Annie found a vacant chair well into a middle row and sat down, tucking her tapestry bag at her feet, suddenly feeling ridiculously tense.

What if someone else bid on the painting? What if she didn't get it?

The rest of the chairs soon filled up, an announcement was made that the proceeds from the auction would go to the Haley Linwood Foundation, and, finally, things got under way. The auctioneer was thin, white-haired and regal, a far cry, Annie thought, from Ernie Hathaway.

The first items went fast, with only token competition. There was no yelling, no complaining, no hooting. This was San Francisco. This was Pacific Heights. Even Gran, a pragmatic woman who didn't stand on ceremony, had considered Ernie's auctions a spectacle.

After forty minutes, the painting came up. Annie held her breath as it was brought out and set on an easel, then gasped in shock the moment it was uncovered. The buyers seated near her glanced at her in surprise. She tried to control herself. She was totally unprepared for this one: the painting was Sarah's work. There was no question.

Clutching her shawl in her lap, Annie forced herself not to speculate on how a painting by a reclusive, eccentric artist had ended up in a Linwood auction.

She'd first met Sarah last week when she'd made a brief, uneventful visit to Annie's Gallery. She was an eccentric woman with lank, graying hair, plain features, and a wardrobe of thrift-store clothes. A debilitating condition necessitated the use of a cane. She hadn't bought anything or asked any questions, and Annie only remembered her because of her unusual appearance— and because she didn't have that many customers. Then, two days later, Sarah called and invited Annie to tea.

With nothing better to do, Annie had accepted, venturing up to Sarah's tiny house on a hill overlooking the city. The strange woman was again dressed in thrift-store clothes but was using a walker to get around instead of her cane. Annie might have dismissed her as a lunatic and politely excused herself but for the canvases haphazardly stacked throughout Sarah's small house. With a grandmother artist, artist friends, and her own experience setting up art displays at the maritime museum where she'd served as director, Annie had developed an eye for art. She'd learned to recognize the real thing when she saw it. And that was what Sarah's canvases were, without doubt: the real thing.