The Face of Deceit. Ramona Richards

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СКАЧАТЬ most of whom had the usual quirks that went along with a creative spirit. The author of a bestselling book on art crime, Mason had come to Mercer to take up residence at Jackson’s Retreat, a writers’ colony on the other side of the expansive woods that began almost at Karen’s back door.

      He’d discovered Karen’s vases in the window of a local art gallery, and had immediately sought her out. Mason’s fascination with her art intrigued her, but she’d hesitated to ask the larger-than-life character about it, almost as if the interest would evaporate with the inquisition. He thought the vases museum-worthy, and for the past few weeks Mason had been on a mission to raise Karen’s profile as an artist. He’d helped her put up a Web site, and he’d sold an article about her to a pottery magazine, which had been reprinted in other publications. The article had led to the New York Times publishing two inches of coverage on her last gallery showing in SoHo. Then last week Mason had heard about this auction, and it had quickly become his latest effort.

      “I just don’t understand, Lord,” she whispered. “Why me?”

      The front door shot open with a bang, and Karen leaped off the couch with a screech, sending Lacey flying. The cat hit the ground, claws out, and flashed under a chair on the other side of the room as an alto voice rang out over all three floors. “Laurie’s daily special was lasagna with peach pie. Hope you’re hungry! Are you ever going to start locking that door?”

      Karen glared at her best friend as she sailed into the room. “Jane! Are you determined to scare me half to death? What are you doing here?”

      Jane Wilson, owner of the Heart’s Art Gallery in downtown Mercer, opened her arms in greeting, to-go bag in hand. “Aha! There you are.” She held the bag higher. “Lunch! I heard about the vase. Knew you’d need company. Have you talked to Mason about this afternoon’s auction?”

      Karen blinked. “What?”

      “You think he’ll be able to buy the vases? He should. I know just his being there will help, but I mean, if he could buy them, you do think he wants to, right? Why wouldn’t he? Come on. Lunch is getting cold.” Long dark curls swinging around her shoulders, Jane headed for the kitchen.

      Karen relented, brushing cat hair from her lap. Jane’s enthusiasm flattered her. Jane’s gallery anchored Mercer’s arts district, and she’d been one of Karen’s staunchest supporters since their teens. When Karen had decided ten years ago that she could, in fact, make a living as a potter, Jane had started putting Karen’s unique vases and clay art in the windows of her gallery—which was where Mason had first spotted them.

      “No idea if he’ll be able to buy them or not. I’m still not sure what good this will do.”

      Jane set the bag on the counter, then turned to pull plates from a cabinet. “Karen, darling, I love your naïveté sometimes. Why don’t you make fresh coffee? Your special blend Kona has been on my mind since I left the gallery.”

      “Jane—”

      “No, c’mon, Karen, I’m serious. He’s Mason DuBroc. Dr. Mason DuBroc. Well-known author of a book on art crime in Middle Eastern war zones so full of adventure that it would make Indiana Jones jealous.”

      Karen scowled. There was that comparison again. “I know who he is, Jane. I knew that when he first showed up on my doorstep.”

      “Look, girl, Mason may not brag about it around you or around the retreat, but he knows the worth of his own name right now. For him to even bid for your vases—”

      “Okay, I get it.”

      Jane paused in her frenzy of activity. “So what’s the problem?”

      Karen stood up and walked to the tall windows at the back of the dining area, looking out over the trees that bordered the lawn. Her property sloped down and away from the house, then back up into woods that stretched into the distance.

      She loved those woods. There was a path that led through the heart of them, all the way to the writers’ colony where Mason lived. But it had not been the path that had brought him to her door, and she still couldn’t shake her confusion about what had brought him to her.

      Karen cleared her throat. “The problem is that I keep asking, ‘Why me?’ Why did Mason DuBroc, of all the people on the planet, suddenly focus so much of his interest on my vases and me? What does he want with me?”

      “Afraid he’ll make you successful?”

      Karen turned away from the windows. “Don’t try to psychoanalyze me, Janie. You’re not good at it and I’m not in the mood.”

      Jane chuckled, a low, throaty sound. “Okay, so you’re a little suspicious. I can’t blame you. It did seem a little odd when he showed up in the shop, bouncing around the displays and asking all these questions about your vases, but he’s an odd bird.” She took a deep breath. “Did I tell you that he tried to lecture two of my customers on the relation of your vases to Southern folk art face jugs?” Jane’s words picked up speed as she resumed emptying the lunch bag. “I mean, this couple hadn’t been in the shop thirty seconds! They fled before I could get out ‘Welcome to Mercer, New Hampshire.’”

      Karen bit her lip to keep from laughing. “That sounds like him.” Joining Jane in the kitchen again, she pulled a bag of Kona coffee from the freezer and a jug of filtered water from her fridge. The sight Mason had made standing on her porch that first day drifted through her mind as she prepared a fresh pot of coffee.

      His notoriety intimidated Karen, but his peppered questioning cut to the heart of her craft, its history and its techniques. The accent certainly caught her off guard, as well. Southern but not twangy, the slow, easy-spoken combination of Alabama flatwoods and Louisiana bayou had a thick Cajun edge to it, and when excited, Mason would occasionally season his sentences with French words or phrases that Karen never understood. At least…she thought they were French.

      His looks had also gotten her attention, almost as much as the accent. Jane made him sound antic and half-mad, but Mason DuBroc was far from an absentminded professor. His brown eyes were intense and held a curiosity that seemed relentless. His lean frame was wiry, and his dark hair hung mostly straight, with a tendency to curl just on the ends. His eyes and skin were darker than most of the men she knew, and he had high cheekbones so sharp they could have sliced bread. He called himself “a mutt, a result of a lot of familiarity between the Native Americans, Cajuns and a conglomerate of English and Scottish folks hanging out in the Delta,” a description that made her own mostly Irish and German heritage sound downright plain.

      And the way he smelled. Aromas were vital to Karen, and she didn’t know if he wore a cologne or if his scent came naturally from who he was and what he did. He smelled like…Karen searched her mind for a comparison. Like opening a new book in the middle of a pine grove. Maybe a hint of sage. Whatever. It made her want to stand closer to him, and she inhaled deeply, just thinking about it.

      “Do you want Parmesan on the lasagna?” Jane asked as she lifted one of the wrapped plates from Laurie’s Federal Café. The café was known for its home-style meals and white decor, which Laurie kept scrubbed and polished: solid white tables, chairs and dishes. Laurie refused to use chintzy to-go containers, insisting that the locals were honest enough to return real dishes.

      Karen snapped back to the present as the thick garlicky scent of the lasagna got her attention. “What? Oh. Yes.”

      “Thinking about Mason again?”

      Karen СКАЧАТЬ