Familiar Obsession. Caroline Burnes

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      Liza clung to the possibility. “Do you really believe that?”

      Eleanor put her arm around Liza’s shoulders. “I do. But first things first. Let’s go back inside, smile and show everyone that you’re fine. Then we’ll escape. Okay?”

      “Okay.” With Eleanor’s support and the black cat at her heels, Liza steeled herself against the trauma of reentering the gallery. She met the expectant faces of her guests with a smile.

      “I’m so sorry,” she said. “My head.” She reached up to touch her temple, aware of the black humor associated with such a gesture. To children, such a gesture meant someone was “touched in the head.”

      “It’s a migraine,” Eleanor said. “Liza used to have them in college. Blinding pain, you know. The terrible, terrible stress of being so talented and being the center of attention.” She said the last lightly.

      “Yes, sudden success can be traumatizing,” Pascal Krantz added as he came to Liza’s other side. “I should have expected this. Liza is so shy and retiring. All of this attention, why it’s just too much!”

      “Yes,” Liza agreed. She gave Pascal’s arm a squeeze. He’d picked up perfectly on Eleanor’s cue, and she could see clearly that soon she’d be able to escape the party, to retire to the privacy of her third-floor apartment. Pascal and Eleanor would make it okay.

      “Liza’s sensitive to light,” Eleanor said. “I’m going to put her to bed in a dark room and call the doctor.”

      Before anyone could say anything further, Eleanor led Liza to the small elevator at the back of the gallery.

      “A million thanks,” Liza whispered.

      “Thank me by getting to the bottom of this,” Eleanor answered.

      THE ELEVATOR DOOR is about to shut, but a fast black cat can make it. Whew! Thank goodness I dropped that extra pound I gained at Christmas. Another sixteen ounces and I would have been a crushed kitty.

      So I’m headed up to the artist’s lair. How exciting. And even better, the color is returning to Liza’s face. For a minute there, I thought she might actually have seen a ghost.

      What did she see? By the time I got to the street, it was empty. But she saw something. Or she thought she did.

      Now as a student of humanoids, I’d say that Liza thought she saw something terrible. She had the look of a person who’s witnessed a tragic accident. A wreck. A fire. A kidnapping. Something truly awful.

      Yet she ran toward it. Which tells me that her expression and her actions are at odds. There’s a medical expression for such behavior—conflicted. The only analogy I can come up with is a cat who sees a dish of grilled grouper, wants to eat it, then spits at it and runs away. In other words, a very sick kitty. Then again, artists are known for their erratic behavior.

      I shall withhold judgment until further investigation, which I’m about to conduct right now. While Eleanor puts our little painter to bed, I’m going to inspect her digs.

      MIKE DAVIS RAN HIS FINGERS through his hair. He needed a haircut in the worst kind of way. And he missed his cowboy hat. At the thought, he felt an odd homesickness. Funny, when he’d first taken the job at Gabe and Rachel Welch’s ranch, the Circle C, he’d never anticipated that he’d come to call the ten-thousand-acre spread home.

      It was a home of harsh realities, in weather and in the heart. For the past five years, he’d worked every fence line, herded the cattle, birthed the calves and trained the horses. It had become home.

      And now he was over a thousand miles away, in the spring humidity of New Orleans, Louisiana, wandering the streets like a…what? A ghost? A man without a home or identity?

      Mike glanced in the mirror. He’d grown accustomed to seeing the reflection of his features, though truthfully, for the past five years, he’d hardly had time to stop and look at himself. Looks didn’t matter much on a cattle ranch. Not for a man, a cow or a horse. It was a life where skill and talent counted for everything. Good looks—and Mike had been told by more than a few cowgirls that he had some nice features—were just an extra blessing.

      But he might as well have been the phantom of the opera or the hunchback of Notre Dame, based on Liza Hawkins’s reaction to him. He terrified her. And if it wasn’t because of his looks, then it had to be because of his actions.

      He turned away from the mirror with a growing sense of frustration and took long strides across the room to the painting he’d just purchased. He’d saved most of his wages for the past five years—plus, he had uncanny luck at poker—he could afford to live well, for a while. Liza Hawkins’s painting had been irresistible. It was a watercolor so filled with afternoon light that he felt as if he’d lived the moment. He knew exactly the shade of terra-cotta that would show through in the old brick dampened by rain and then dazzled by sunlight. He knew the crooked texture of the bricks used as roadbed and the intense green of the shrubs. He knew that scene. But how did he know it?

      More importantly, how did he know the artist, Liza Hawkins?

      From the pocket of his jeans he drew out the worn business card. Liza Hawkins, artist. 225 St. Ann. New Orleans, Louisiana. It was the only personal possession that had been on him when he woke up in a North Dakota hospital five years before. He’d been found, beaten into unconsciousness, in a boxcar at a small train depot. Three days later, he’d regained consciousness in the intensive care unit of Dola County Hospital. From there, fate had taken hold of him with a benevolent hand.

      He replaced the card and continued to examine the painting, moving slowly around his rented apartment until he’d visited all five of the canvases he’d purchased in the past five months. All were Liza’s, and all depicted French Quarter scenes that somehow seemed to Mike to be a part of his personal history.

      That was why he was in New Orleans—to find his past. He wasn’t certain he was in the right city or the right state, but it was the only place he knew to start.

      The sharp ring of the telephone drew him out of his thoughts. When he answered, he felt his face melt into a smile.

      “Rachel,” he said, instantly picturing the elderly woman who’d seen him in the hospital and somehow found it in her heart to want to help. “I’m fine,” he reassured her. “Perfectly fine.”

      “Bristo’s been standing in the corral looking out toward the range,” Rachel Welch said. “He’s pining for you, Mike. We’re missing you, too. It’s calving season and we’re feeling the pinch.”

      Mike’s smile increased. Rachel Welch was using both barrels to make him feel bad—his horse and the fact that all hands were needed during calving season on the ranch he might one day inherit.

      “You know I’d be there if I could. I have to finish this. I want to be certain I’m the man you and Gabe think I am—the man you treat as your son.”

      There was a pause. “You think you have to finish it,” Rachel said slowly. “Mike, whatever you were in the past, you are a son to me and Gabe now. Whatever you did, it doesn’t matter to us. I’ve never known a better judge of a man than Gabe Welch. You’ve won his respect, Mike. And his heart. That’s what matters, not a past that you can’t even remember.”

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