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The third she didn’t even see because her gaze was caught by what had lain beneath it. A colored-pencil drawing of a seductively smiling, nude woman, hair spread on a pillow, legs wantonly apart. Beth was vaguely aware that Tony had leaned forward, expression arrested. She couldn’t take her eyes from this beautiful, obscene drawing.
“That’s—How can it be?” Her stomach lurched, and she clapped a hand to her mouth. “Dear God. That’s my mother!”
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE INSTANT BETH uncovered the drawing, Tony knew he was looking at Christine Marshall. A Christine very different than she’d appeared in the photographs he’d seen.
For Beth’s sake, he wanted to whisk the damn thing out of sight. Still, he’d half hoped for a surprise to turn up—although he couldn’t have predicted this one—and he had a job to do.
“Are you sure it’s your mother?” he asked, with some urgency.
Her head bobbed. Her hand remained over her mouth. He hoped her stomach wasn’t going to revolt.
“The face could be hers, the body entirely imaginary,” he suggested.
She shook her head so vehemently that strands escaped the elastic at her nape.
He resumed studying the drawing. Okay, this woman was obviously petite, slender, even delicate. Small-breasted, slim-hipped. In fact, she was built a lot like Beth’s sister.
Beth’s hand dropped to her lap, although her eyes never left the drawing. “We used to go swimming a lot. We showered and changed in the dressing room. I was shy and stayed wrapped in a towel as much as I could, but Mom was confident enough not to be self-conscious.”
Another way of saying her mother was proud of her body. Rightly, he couldn’t help thinking, given that she’d been forty-two when she disappeared. And that she’d borne three children.
“See?” In a tone lacking all animation, Beth, pointed to a faint line that could have been a shadow, or a crease. “She had a C-section when Emily was born.”
“Damn,” he murmured. “Who drew this?”
“I don’t know.” She looked sick. “Dad can hardly draw a stick figure, in case you were wondering.”
He actually hadn’t been, even though husbands had been known to commission this kind of drawing or painting of their wives. John Marshall? Tony’s imagination didn’t stretch that far.
This drawing was both skilled and sensual. It caught the beckoning position of spread arms and legs as well as the heavy-lidded eyes and a teasing smile. If the artist hadn’t also been her lover, Tony would swallow his badge, pointy edges and all.
“The style doesn’t look familiar?”
“I—” Beth started to take her head, but stopped. “I don’t know,” she said haltingly. “I mean, I don’t remember seeing anything like this. Why would I have?”
He watched her for a minute, seeing doubt she didn’t want to acknowledge. Tony thought there was a good chance that, somewhere, sometime, she’d seen a drawing by this same artist. His experience said that pushing her now wouldn’t help. The memory had to make its own labyrinthine way to the surface.
“We’d better make sure there isn’t another one,” he said.
Appearing somewhere between numb and horrified, Beth shifted the erotic drawing to one side with a nudge that suggested she didn’t really want to touch it. He couldn’t blame her. Even as he studied the next piece of art, he imagined himself helpfully organizing contents of his mother’s garage or closet and finding something like this… Good God! He repressed a shudder and made himself concentrate.
He was looking at a watercolor of a basalt rimrock, a natural formation in this volcanic country that resembled the remnants of an ancient castle wall. It was beautifully done, surely by the same artist as the other watercolors.
Next came a watercolor of a sunset over ocean waves that looked amateurish.
That was it.
All five pieces of art were laid out in front of him. Three different artists, he’d swear. The ocean painting verged on generic and lacked a signature. The rimrock—he’d buy that one, if he saw it for sale. He liked the sculptural lines of the vineyard above the lake, but vineyards didn’t do much for him. Those three watercolors were signed, but the scrawl was unreadable.
