He could see her swallow. "I know."
A voice from within the house instructed them to come in, the door was unlocked.
Annie went in first, then Garvin, his breath held.
A plain, misshapen woman with graying strawberry hair was seated in her small living room.
Her striking blue eyes swept over him, and a sharp arrow of shock struck its mark as he stared back at her.
"Hello, Garvin." Her voice was clear, the words distinct.
"Sarah."
He almost choked on her name. If not for Annie's word, he wouldn't have believed the woman before him was Sarah Linwood. She wore a loud flowered top, baggy, cheap jeans, mismatched socks, cheap sneakers with holes in the toe. Her gnarled hands were unmanicured, her hair unstyled. This wasn't the prim, correct woman he had always known as Sarah Linwood. Even gambling, even in the midst of her affair with Vic Denardo, she had been refined, dignified.
But she regarded him with similar shock, as if she didn't recognize him as the man who'd married her niece.
Two murders, Garvin thought, had changed them both.
Slowly, he took in the canvases scattered about her small home. Still lifes, landscapes, the occasional portrait. His shock deepened as he absorbed the power and mesmerizing quality of her work. Her art was no longer a polite, innocuous, wealthy woman's hobby. No wonder Annie had decided to represent Sarah at Saturday's auction. If Annie's Gallery could introduce Sarah Linwood as a brilliant new artist, it would distinguish hers from all the other struggling new galleries in San Francisco and help it make its mark in the city's competitive art world.
She had drifted into the kitchen, removing herself from his confrontation with his wife's aunt. His throat caught suddenly at the sight of her. She seemed so damned alone.
But Sarah started speaking. "It's been a long time, Garvin. And yet sometimes—sometimes it seems like the blink of an eye when I last held Haley on my lap as a toddler. You're looking well. Different, of course, but well."
He pulled his gaze from Annie, turned to the swollen-jointed woman in the rattan chair. She had aged more than her five years away should have warranted. Yet she looked freer than she ever had before, somehow more whole. It wasn't just the cheap clothes, the simple surroundings. It seemed to radiate from inside her.
"You've changed too," he said.
"Oh, yes. I've been living in the Southwest for most of the past five years. I studied painting, moved around quite a lot. I kept a low profile and lived quietly. It didn't occur to me that I might ever come home."
"Why did you?"
"The house going on the market. It was just a fluke that I even found out. I read about it in a newspaper I was crumpling up for a fire. So, I came back. I found this place, then I found Annie." She seemed lo sense his censure and raised her eyes lo him. "There's nothing sinister in our arrangement, Garvin. I wanted my portrait of Haley. That's all."
"Why the secrecy?"
Her gaze didn't waver. "I couldn't bring myself to go to the auction."
"You could just have called John—"
"I couldn't do that, either."
"So you hired a woman who didn't know anything about you, anything about the murders." He spoke harshly, more so than he'd intended. "You sent her to that auction never anticipating that the price would go so high that people wouldn't believe she was the legitimate buyer."
"You mean you, Garvin," Sarah said in a steady voice. "You didn't believe her."
"Neither did Vic Denardo."
She inhaled sharply. "We don't know for sure—"
Garvin shook his head. "We know, Sarah."
"I had no idea—these last weeks—" She faltered, running a broad, shaking hand over her face. "I can't expect you to understand. I don't even ask that you do. It was so exciting, thinking about coming home, making my plans. But the reality of being here—" She shook her head. "I just wasn't ready to come forward."
"Sarah—"
"I told the police everything I knew about the murders, Garvin." She spoke in a strong, firm voice; she wasn't being defensive. "Everything. That was my father and my only niece murdered. Can you possibly think I would have held anything back? My God, Haley and I.. .we..."
"I don't doubt that you loved Haley very much," Garvin said softly.
But she shook off his interruption and breathed in deeply, holding back any emotion. "If I knew anything that could bring her murderer, my father's murderer, to justice, I'd have provided it to the authorities at the time. If I'd thought of anything in the past five years that would help, I'd have given it over to the police."
"She was investigating your finances—"
"Garvin, I would never have withheld a single, solitary bit of useful information or evidence. That's the truth. Believe me or not."