Garvin nodded. "Should they want to talk to me, I'll be at home or at the marina. Otherwise, a few minutes before six."
The dinner for the Haley Linwood Foundation was tonight, Annie remembered. But he was already out the door.
Zoe scraped the yellow-green gunk into the trash can under Annie's desk. "I wouldn't call 911," she said briskly. "I'd look up the number and try to get the homicide detectives who investigated the Linwood murders. Holy shit. My God, Annie. Vic Denardo. I saw him with my own two eyes. And Garvin MacCrae. Do you have any idea what you're mixed up in?"
"I'm getting there."
"Jesus." She flopped onto a chair, spent. "Go ahead. Call the police. I'll wait."
"Zoe—"
"Do it, Annie."
"You don't know the whole story."
"Thank God for small favors." She snatched up the receiver, handed it over. "Call."
Instead of trying to look up the number, Annie just dialed information. Two minutes later, she was connected.
Within an hour, two officers were on her doorstep.
* * *
Chapter Ten
Garvin found his way up and around to the little hilltop where Sarah Linwood had her house. He didn't consider why he was there or what he expected to accomplish, just that he had to do something. He'd opted out of going back up to his house to look for traces of Vic Denardo. There would be none.
And staying with Annie Payne hadn't been an option. He needed distance. Waiting for her at her gallery had been torture. He'd been in San Francisco trying to talk himself out of barging in on Sarah Linwood when the call came from Yuma. The arrow of fear had struck hard and deep, the doubts, the questions. What if Denardo had decided to coerce Sarah's whereabouts out of Annie? What if he'd hurt her? Garvin had grown used to worrying about no one but himself. His life was more comfortable for him that way. Easier.
His life was neither comfortable nor easy with Annie in it. Yet he was having trouble imagining returning to the life he'd had before her.
He jerked his car into a parking space, pulled on the brake. Seeing her had been a different kind of torture than waiting. He'd sensed layers of strength and vulnerability and secret desires all mixed up together, motivating and scaring and thrilling Annie Payne, launching her into her new life in San Francisco, into her dangerous deal with a reclusive artist she didn't know. She would take him as he was or not at all. She wouldn't try to soften his hard edges. No. Annie Payne would leave his hard edges up to him to sort out—or she'd tell him to go to hell.
He jumped out of his car and pounded up to Sarah's little pink bungalow, San Francisco sprawling, sparkling, one hundred and eighty degrees around him. He knocked hard on the front door. "It's Garvin MacCrae, Sarah. Open up. We need to talk."
She had her door locked this time, probably for no reason, just as she left it unlocked for no reason. It was a few minutes before she pulled it open, regarding him with a fatalistic attitude found faintly annoying. The penchant for drama was still there, beneath the weird clothes and artist's discipline. "I was just washing up," she said, and left the door standing open as she gave him her back and withdrew inside.
Biting back a sharp response, Garvin noticed the chill as he entered the house and wondered if Sarah didn't bother with heat or even might have had the windows open. Given her eccentricities, neither would surprise him. But she seemed unaffected by the cold. Using her cane, she returned to her kitchen sink and turned on the faucet. She grabbed a bar of cheap soap and stuck it under the hot, steaming water. She seemed absorbed in the process, almost transfixed by her own hands as she soaped them up.
"I can't seem to get any work done lately," she said without looking around at him. "I suppose it's to be expected."
"You've had a lot on your mind. Your homecoming—"
"That's not what's distracting me." She rinsed her hands one at a time, surgeonlike. "I'm worried about Annie."
"Because of Vic," Garvin said, feeling his own knot of fear.
She nodded, grabbing a towel. She had on a paint-splattered denim smock over brown stretch polyester pants, her socks two different shades of pink, her white Keds scuffed. As far as Garvin knew, Sarah Linwood still had access to the funds in her personal trust. Whether or not she reunited with her family, she wasn't penniless.
She dried off her fingers one by one, almost ritualistically. "I really can't believe Vic killed anyone."
Garvin didn't respond. She settled back against the sink, letting it support her weight. Her brow furrowed in the silence, making her seem plainer, older, but in spite of her bizarre clothes, her obviously troubled state of mind, he could detect vestiges of the woman she'd been. There was a sudden quiet dignity about her, a self-control. The crankiness of only moments ago had vanished.