Never Sleep With a Suspect on Gabriola Island (24 page)

“Mmm. Where do the others come from?”

He took her hand. “Oh, all over the place. Romania and Poland and Hungry. Found one in Macedonia once. In the old days.” He led her to the last and brightest, a Madonna and child.

Kyra's hand squeezed a little pressure back. She made herself concentrate on Mary's tiny face. The Jesus-baby's visage belonged to a miniature and very sinister old man, and featured a leer remarkably close to that of the red devil on the wall across. A joke on God-the-Father? Like the Sienese school-of she'd seen in the WWU Gallery. She thought, I'm not going to remember all this stuff. She took back her hand.

“Attributed to the Swabian school of Hans Multscher.” He stared at the painting.

“Do you have pamphlets for the show?”

“Of course.”

Kyra smiled warmly. “Could I look at one?”

“I suppose it's okay. I'll go find them.” He went out.

Quickly she brought out her camera and opened the shutter wide. She knew better than to use a flash. She clicked fast, circling the room, one-two-three-four-five. And again, closer in. A third round—

“Hey, cut it out!”

“What?”

“Those aren't public till the show!”

“Huh?” She covered the shutter, dropped the camera into her purse and faced him, faux-naive. “Why not?”

“For god's sake, Kyra—”

“What?”

Tam was mad. “You can't use those till after Thanksgiving.”

“What's the big deal?”

Tam threw his arms up as in disgust. Then suddenly he smiled. “No, you really don't get it. Just promise me. Keep those private till after the long weekend.”

“I will, I'm sorry,” she offered, and felt a shock as his palm rested on the skin of her nape. For a second her body stiffened, then relaxed in his direction. She made herself say, “I hope they're valuable. They aren't beautiful.”

He nodded, a serious movement, and held her eyes with his. “But they sold well.” His thumb and index finger stroked the back of her neck.

Small warm pressure. “Mmm,” she said. “For a whole lot of money?” In the voice of one who really didn't get it. “Oh, did you find the pamphlet?”

“Couldn't locate any.” He opened the door. “Shall we go back to my studio?”

He seemed eager to get her out of here. “Okay.” Push him on prices later.

Tam locked the Gallery door. They walked across the circular drive past the Honda and down the path to Tam's cabin. He told her how
The Jaws of Hell
had been traced for its history, to the extent that it could be determined. She let him talk.

• • •

The kitchen garden did need attention. The corn had finished over a month ago and the stalks should have been shredded. The cabbages looked limp, as if the rain reminded them they were parched. Oh well, cabbage was not Rose's favorite vegetable. She wheeled to the flower gardens. She deadheaded the last of the stargazer lilies. Work to be done everywhere. The Michaelmas daisies should be staked. Okay, Artemus did have cause to fuss.

• • •

Kyra tried to concentrate. The information kept flowing. That was good. The paintings were ugly. She'd hate to have to live with any of them, even in a hotel room. She held in control the part of her that wanted to ease Tam in among the trees and pull his clothes off. They walked in silence. Sweat dripped warm from her armpits down her side. She felt damp all over. Oh dear.

• • •

Motion caught Rose's eye: a man, a woman. Tam. And one of his babes. Here at Eaglenest! Next they'll simper over to the greenhouse or march into the living room—

Something familiar about this babe. Rose wheeled closer. No danger of them seeing her, they were practically a two-headed beast. That female detective? Couldn't be! Yes! She began a violent tack toward them, then stopped. She turned around abruptly. And wheeled away.

• • •

Inside the cabin Tam took Kyra's hand. On the walls hung many paintings, a great range. From abstract expressionism to naturalistic portraits and surreal landscapes. Kyra turned to him. “Yours?”

Tam nodded.

“All of them?”

Tam nodded harder.

An easel stood by one of the two large picture windows overlooking the sea. On the wall by the kitchen, shelves of paints in tubes. The rack held a work in progress, a kind of diptych. On the right, girls and women in flowing dresses, red and yellow and orange, tiny, against a background of tan hills like desert dunes, but sunless; to the left a kind of sketch in shades of tan of a monster with many feet with a background of reds, yellows and oranges.

Kyra said, “I like it.” She did.

He turned to face her. “It's coming along. And now, may I kiss you?”

She heard herself whisper, “Yes.”

He touched her shoulder and she flowed toward him, a single movement. He touched her cheek and his hand drifted to her chin. He raised its angle lightly, bent to her lips, touched his to hers, a bare brush of contact.

She reached to his shoulder as if to hold him back. But he was rounded and smooth there and she wanted his shoulder closer to her so she drew him forward. His lips held hers. She felt his hand at the back of her head. She stepped in to him and her breasts spread against his chest. She felt his lips part and she knew she was going, going, Kyra the juggling celibate gone. But suddenly it wasn't okay, not now. She slowly pulled away and could sense he knew the mood had shifted. He let her move-back happen, but slowly, slowly, and she liked that so much, his sense of her wanting it this way, that she nearly came back to him. She looked up at him. “That was nice.”

He shut his eyes. Reopened them. Nodded. “Yes.” Touched her cheek with two fingers. “There can be more.”

Her head could shake, her head could nod. How much would be lost, either way? She knew what a shake would bring, been there for months. A nod was uncharted territory. She gave him a tiny nod.

He let his hand slide down her arm to her hand and took her fingers in his. She took his other hand and they drew close. He brought both hands to her shoulders. She felt herself tremble. She dropped her hands to around his waist.

He glanced down at her, deeply serious. “You feel as nervous as I know I am.”

She reached up and laid her hands against his cheeks. The smooth skin on her palms sent small quivers from her belly to her pubis. She knew he wasn't nervous, but how sweet of him to say so. She drew his face down and kissed his mouth.

He held the kiss for a long while. Then he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom. “Got any condoms?” she whispered.

“I think I have some left.” He winked.

They came for each other twice in lusty succession, and again. He took pleasant minutes exploring her right clavicle, then her left, tracing each with his lips. A bones man, she thought. I have good bones. For a bit they slept. She woke. Well there you are, she told herself, first time. Well, in a long time. Clearly I needed that. Celibate no more. The better or the worse for it? A little of each. She glanced at Tam. A remarkable lover. In each instance able to tell precisely what she wanted, where and how to provide it. She studied his sleeping face, his fine round shoulder, the soft tickly hair on his arm. Was she in love? Don't be silly. She had just had sex with a fine practitioner, that's all. Tam was technically wonderful.

She drifted off again. Woke. He wasn't there. She got up, dressed, couldn't find him in the cabin. In his studio-living room, she examined his work. His range was phenomenal. One of a pretty pink-cheeked child, another of an older couple; both, she thought, impressionist. There were some playful ones with fish and shooting stars, as if done by a ten-year-old. A realistic if sort of smudged landscape with lots of trees and clouds, a seascape of a boat tossed by stormy waves. If the variety of his pictures were any indication, Tam Gill was a complex man.

She went to the bathroom and saw him on the deck when she came out. He kissed her brow. They sat side by side and stared at the water. Then she kissed his fingers. “I should go back to Nanaimo. And home to Bellingham.”

He turned to her. “You'll come back.” Almost but not fully a question.

She raised her eyebrows. “I might.”

• • •

Noel heard Kyra's key in the lock and looked at his watch: nearly four o'clock. Except for a slow forty-minute walk he'd been at the computer over five hours. He had called Albert at his office, at home and on his cellphone. Answering services all. Lyle had called to thank him for last night. And he'd really enjoyed meeting Kyra. He promised to be in touch soon, they should plan some time together. Most of Noel knew he didn't want to. But the part that enjoyed being liked, appreciated, wanted, gave him real doubt.

He'd copied his laptop Eaglenest files to his office computer. He'd found mentions of the correct Peter Rabinovich scattered around. Rabinovich had owned a hotel in Panama City before The Hermitage. A Panama newspaper, reporting on the Las Vegas venture, stated that Rabinovich had lived in Israel for seven years. Many of the Israeli entries citing Rabinovich were in Hebrew. Two in English mentioned his bar, The Wet Negev.

Noel set the computer on standby. In the living room he found Kyra slumped on the sofa, a beer in hand. “Hi! How'd it go over there?”

“Ask me questions, I'll tell you lies.” Code from her childhood: You'll find out someday.

Noel cocked his head in acknowledgment. “Drink that down.

Then let's go to the casino. Then I'll buy you a real drink. Then I'll buy you dinner.”

“The casino? Why?” Kyra sipped. “When are we going to have our talk?”

Noel held out his hand for Kyra's glass, took it and drank half. “We'll talk over dinner.”

She sat up. “Hey, you lose money at casinos.”

“It's for research.” Noel paced. “I found many Fascinating Facts about Vegas and got curious about the casino in my own backyard.”

“Where is it?”

“Back of Port Place. Then we'll go up to Gina's and have Mexican.”

“You're on.” Wow! An active dinner-out invitation. “And we can clarify what we know.”

He said, “I'll bring the laptop.”

His security blanket? “Sure.” At the door she poked at the weak lock. “Get this fixed, Noel.”

Downstairs, and out the door. Tell her about the obit? No, talk to Albert first. “Oh, Lyle called. He enjoyed your company.”

“Good.” She stopped. “Tell me, d'you think you could get serious about him?”

“Come on, Kyra, how can I know that?”

She looked at him. He really was dear to her. “Watch yourself, friend.” She took his arm.

They passed through the cool mall, well-peopled even on Sunday, and out again into the late afternoon sun. The asphalt parking lot intensified the light. In front of the casino, a gaggle of smokers in shirt sleeves. Noel and Kyra walked through a thin tobacco haze. Inside they had to stand a while, adjusting their eyes to bank upon bank of slot machines, most occupied. People pressed buttons rapidly. Decor nightclubby, low artificial light. A clinking rush of metal: to their right a slot delivered a shower of quarters into its trough. The winner remained expressionless. Then she picked up quarters and fed them one by one back into the slot. Where, Kyra wondered, were her friends, flocking to her side, patting her shoulder, Good on you, Mabel, hey! fifty bucks worth! Let's go celebrate with a coffee. But Mabel was in a closed loop, quarters back in, quarters maybe out again. How intimate.

Kyra edged closer to Noel. “Why's she using a machine that's just paid out?”

“There's always more in there. Probability pays no attention to previous amounts.”

She squinted. “How do you know?”

“Didn't math class teach you that?”

They wandered on. Poker. Roulette. Eight blackjack games, the dealers, men and women both, wearing tuxedos. The players were mainly old, mainly pale, mainly saggy. The people at the slots interacted only with their machines, drop a coin, press a button, drop a coin, press a button. Or just press a button—that guy was playing the slots on a credit card. Ah, a man who reached up to pull a lever on the side of the machine. The exercise option? Tall workers—bouncers maybe?—stood around in orange uniform shirts, men and women. Smaller ones, karate bouncers? Or spotters who called the bouncers?

Vegas casinos would be like this, Noel figured, only a hundred times as large. Three thousand rooms accommodate a lot of people.

Kyra saw a group of twenties-thirties at a poker table laughing, enjoying each other. On Bowen Noel had taught her seven card stud, and blackjack. They'd played for matchsticks or M&Ms. One man smiled at her. She smiled back but the smile didn't get her invited in.

“Enough.” Noel pulled her sleeve. “Food.”

“We're here, we do research.” But she let him draw her to the other exit. “Oh, look, a food court.” She glanced at the menu. “Boring. If you lose all your money do they send you to a soup kitchen? Till your next welfare check comes in?”

“Gina's.” Noel marched away.

Sometimes you're so old male, Noel. But she followed.

They climbed up the hill. He took her arm. “Thanks for coming with me.”

Gina's was bright raspberry with blue trim, a house converted to restaurant sitting on top of a rocky outcrop reached by a crooked road. In front of the door Kyra turned to him. “You know, your teaching me poker took me through my first year at Reed.”

Noel quirked his lip. “I corrupted a minor?”

“I only felt corrupted when you won.”

“You did develop a good poker face.”

Kyra kissed his cheek. No poker face there.

• • •

Rose had watched the car drive away. It took her the best part of two hours to feel calm enough to power-wheel herself to Tam's cabin. Letting that woman in there! “Tam!” She waited. “Tam!”