"It must have come as a shock when you learned." He peered closely at an oil painting of a meadow of lupine that one of her Maine friends had done. "You had us glued to our chairs, I'll say that. Garvin and I have been friends for years—long before either of us got involved with the Linwoods. He's very tenacious. Actually, I was surprised when he stopped at five thousand."
"I'm glad he did." She tried to keep her tone light, that of a woman who had nothing to hide. Garvin wouldn't be fooled, but maybe Ethan Conninger would be. "I don't know if I'd have paid more than five thousand myself."
He cocked his head back at her. "No regrets?"
"I wouldn't say that. If I'd known about—if I'd known why Garvin wanted the painting, I might not have bid at all."
It was the truth, she thought. She hadn't known about the murders. If she had, she might have argued with Sarah and refused to represent her. At least she would have better been able to assess the risks of what she was getting into.
Ethan Conninger moved on to her pottery and glasswork displays, apparently giving them his full attention. "Cynthia mentioned you and Garvin have made peace."
"I didn't know we needed to."
He raised his eyebrows, giving her a rakish grin. "Then you're the only one."
She could feel the blood rising to her cheeks and wondered if he noticed.
"Any plans to put the portrait on display?" he asked casually.
"No, not right now." Maybe, she thought, when Sarah went public with her work. "I certainly didn't mean to stir up bad memories—"
"A lot of memories went on the block this weekend, Annie." Abruptly serious, he moved back toward her, Otto on his heels. "John and Cynthia wanted to do a real housecleaning. The painting wasn't the only hot button that could have been pressed. The house itself—" He broke off, his dark eyes clouded behind his glasses. "It wasn't an easy day for any of us, but at least it was all for a good cause. The Haley Linwood Foundation has become a real force in the community."
"I'm sure it has," Annie mumbled awkwardly. She recalled Garvin's reaction to Cynthia Linwood's reminder of the foundation's annual dinner on Friday. Maybe he'd moved on after his wife's death, but he wasn't over it. On some level, he could hope that finding her killer would give him the closure he needed.
"Look, I've taken up enough of your time," Ethan Conninger said. The earlier casualness and smoothly irreverent manner were back. "You've a nice gallery here, Annie Payne. Good luck to you. I hope it succeeds."
"Thank you."
As he turned to go, Gran's painting caught his eye, and Annie suddenly decided that Ethan Conninger knew a bit about art. "That's an interesting work," he said. "Not so easy to dismiss, is it? It makes me feel homesick, and I've never even been in a cottage that looks like that."
"My grandmother painted it. She lived in that cottage her entire life."
"Amazing. I suppose it's not for sale, either?"
Annie smiled, shook her head. "Nope."
He laughed. "It's going to be tough to stay in business when you insist on keeping your best stuff for yourself."
"Well, not many would consider Gran's painting or the painting I bought Saturday quality work—"
"But you do."
"They have heart. They're honest. I don't know, they just work for me. I don't pretend I'll ever get the five thousand back for the painting of Haley Linwood MacCrae, and Gran's—" She glanced up at it, immediately comforted. "I wouldn't take a million dollars for it."
Ethan Conninger winked at her. "It'll be interesting to see how you survive in San Francisco with that attitude. But it is refreshing. Glad to have met you, Annie Payne. Next time I'm ready to buy some artwork, I'll be in touch."
"I'd appreciate that."
After he left, Annie spent a restless hour before finally closing up shop for the day. She skipped her run on the beach with Otto and instead walked him up and down a couple of hills, then headed back to her apartment. She grabbed an apple and paced around her small main room. Five minutes later, without thinking too hard about whether she had the time, the energy, or the nerve for it, she decided that objective details on the Linwood murders were long overdue, and she headed to the San Francisco public library.
Garvin headed up the dock, yachts and launches and the sparkling bay behind him, a strip of grass with benches and a parking lot up ahead, and the main buildings and grounds of the marina up to his left. He knew he looked like hell. It was Wednesday afternoon, and he'd spent the last twenty hours out on the water. He'd just anchored his boat. He needed a shower, a meal, someone to handcuff him to his desk to keep him from going back out across the Golden Gate to see Annie Payne.
But Michael Yuma waved to him from the front of their marine supply store, a small white building in need of paint. Typically, Yuma looked as if he'd been scraping barnacles off the bottoms of boats all day. "Hey, MacCrae. You're twenty minutes too late. Your damsel in distress was just here."
"My what? That's a pretty sexist term, you know, Yuma."
Michael squinted at him in the late afternoon sun. "Yeah, well, you didn't hear what she called you. Man, her feet weren't touching the ground, she was so mad."
" 'Damsel in distress' implies troubled—"