"That doesn't mean," she went on, "that he's innocent, just that I don't see him killing my father over the relatively small amount of money that was involved. Father could be an ornery old bastard, but Vic knew that going in."
"You don't think he had a motive to kill Thomas?"
"No." She fixed her level gaze on Garvin. "And I didn't supply him with one."
Garvin acknowledged her words with a curt, neutral nod. He ventured deeper into the kitchen area, noting the jars and coffee cans of soaking brushes and other artist's tools neatly lined up on the sink, the paint-stained rags drying on a folding clothes rack. A large wastebasket overflowed with cast-off drawings, a tangible sign of Sarah's frustrating day.
"If my arthritis flares up again," she said, watching him, "I could end up unable to paint."
Surprised at her matter-of-fact tone, Garvin glanced at her. "Does that bother you?"
"Not really. I just think it's ironic. I wonder who I am my entire life—for a long time I didn't even have the courage to wonder. When I try to find out, I bring scandal onto my family, and possibly even murder. Then I develop rheumatoid arthritis. I can't help but wonder if I'd never asked the question, if I'd never tried to become who I am, if any of this ever would have happened."
"Is that what this is?" Garvin could hear the coldness in his voice. He gestured, taking in the small house, the near poverty in which she, a San Francisco Linwood, lived. "Your penance?"
Sarah smiled sadly. "No. No, Garvin, this is all just an extension of who I am. Not who I've become. Who I am. It's not that I'm trying to pretend to be poor when I'm not. I see no nobility in poverty, or in wealth, either, for that matter. I just don't care. How I live isn't a statement about anything. It's just how I live."
"Your work—"
"I want other people to see it, react to it. I want that very much, Garvin. I won't pretend I don't." She reached for her cane, leaned up against the sink. "I don't know if you understand how confused and angry I was five years ago. I was in the grip of a gambling addiction I didn't understand—insisted upon denying. I liked to gamble. It felt so good. And Vic—" Her features softened. "I was in love for the first time in my life with a man my father couldn't abide."
"You were a grown woman," Garvin said, not without sympathy.
"Yes." Clutching her cane, she moved slowly from the sink. "Yes, I was. But that never seemed to make any difference, did it? I'm not like you, Garvin. You knew Father only tolerated you because you were on your way up and just didn't give a damn what he thought. And because of Haley. He adored Haley."
"She seemed to understand him."
Sarah nodded, still moving slowly, painfully. "Vic used to advise me to get out of San Francisco. 'Hit the road,' he'd say in that way of his. 'Forget the old fart.' But I never asked him to intervene, I never asked him to kill—" She raised her eyes to Garvin, tears shining on her pale, wrinkled cheeks. "He was my father. I loved him."
"Then why did Vic go to him that night? If not on your behalf, if not for money—"
"I think he went to talk sense into Father."
"About you?"
"Vic—in his own way, Vic was trying to help me with my gambling addiction. It's been my worst fear that he went to Father that night to talk to him about ways to help me, and they ended up arguing..." Her voice trailed off.
"And Vic ended up killing him," Garvin finished for her.
She nodded.
"From what he's said to Annie, he seems to think you set him up. Any idea why?"
"No."
"It doesn't mean he's innocent. It could just mean he thinks you set him up to take the fall. You knew in advance he was going to kill your father, you let him do it, and you made sure he would be the police's chief suspect."
"But why would I do that?"
Garvin shrugged. "Guilt. To take the heat off yourself. Maybe no reason."
She sank into a cheap wooden chair at her table and stared out the window. "I didn't put him up to killing my father. I didn't know he would do it. I don't even know that he did do it." She turned to Garvin, her gaze vivid, penetrating. "I don't want to believe that he did."
"If he didn't," Garvin said, "then who did?"
She shut her eyes and slumped back in her chair, and he looked around at her finished canvases, felt their power, that pull of nostalgia and betrayal, hope and despair. They were impossible to ignore, demanding his attention, insisting on a response. Before Vic Denardo, gambling, family murders, and five years on her own, Sarah Linwood had been easy to ignore, had never demanded anyone's attention or insisted on anyone's response. But could she have killed her own father and niece? Could she have arranged to have them killed?
Her jaw set, and she opened her eyes. "What do you want from me, Garvin?"
"There's a dinner tonight," he said.