Intimate Portraits (5 page)

And Sarita’s photos, Reseda had
prophesied, would make Private Portraits by Merriwell known worldwide.

It’d be nice if his mom was right.
But Autumn ought to stay in Georgia. California might be touted as a place
where dreams came true, but far more dreams died there. He’d hate to see that
happen to Autumn.

She reappeared. “Besides,” she
said, taking up their previous conversation, “I don’t photograph naked women. Most
of the time, the vital spots are covered.”

“That can’t be fun for their
boyfriends.”

“You’d be surprised. I haven’t
had any complaints. Ready?”

After loading her groceries and
bags in the trunk, he got behind the wheel. “I noticed Francisco’s picture in
your bedroom upstairs. Did you do it?”

Damn, why did he bring that up?

“Yes.” Her crinkling eyes hinted
at agreeable recollections. “Did you like it?”

“It was great. You captured
everything about him in that one shot. Everything.”

So she
did
have something
going with Francisco. Mom, zealous in policing her children’s romantic
interests, had hinted that Francisco was serious, but Rennie had heard that
before. Autumn, elegant and refined as she was, should have been proof against his
brother’s volatile charm. Couldn’t she see that Francisco was all surface and
no substance?

From the looks of that
photograph, no.

She’d shot Francisco nude, sprawled
in a squashy armchair with his legs stretched out before him. Concessions to
modesty were the angle of one half-bent knee and a religious medal hanging around
his neck. An unidentifiable but unmistakably feminine garment lay in a frothy
pile at his feet. While one hand held a cell phone, the other held a condom
foil. His dark curls hugged an old-fashioned, wired telephone receiver, caught between
ear and shoulder. Sultry eyes challenged the camera.

The picture implied that Francisco
murmured enticements on the phone to one lover while simultaneously seducing a
second with his eyes and texting still another on his cell.

Autumn had to be the lover in the
room.

He turned the ignition key. It
was none of his business, but he couldn’t help himself. “I didn’t think you
photographed men.”

“I don’t. Just Fran.”

The indifferent words emphasized
her life separate from his, a life he had to guess at. Sunglasses covered her
eyes, further distancing her.

Rennie couldn’t imagine her
flailing beneath Francisco in passionate abandonment. Someone like Autumn
shouldn’t be with anyone remotely resembling his brother.

How the hell could she fall for
Francisco?

He pulled the Lexus away from the
curb slowly, smoothly, with no jerk or screech of tires.

Madre de Dios
, he hated seeing a fine girl—woman!—like
Autumn fall victim to Francisco’s charm.

****

As Rennie and Autumn started
their journey toward Helen in northeast Georgia, Sam Bogatti sat in a car
parked at a hamburger place. Cars whizzed by on the busy side street, several
entering and exiting beside where Sam dialed a throwaway cell phone.

“Yes?” came the tentative voice
over the phone lines.

“Me.”

“What’s wrong?”

Sam didn’t take the rudeness
personally. His call hadn’t been expected and wouldn’t be welcome. “We gotta
problem.”

A pause came, like Bernie was
searching his memory. “What kind of problem?”

A gray-haired couple got out of a
sedan and went inside, walking side by side without speaking to each other, complacent
like two people who’ve lived together for so long that each knows the other’s
thoughts.

He and his old lady would look
like that in fifteen or twenty years.

“I
said
, what kind of
problem.”

Sam dragged himself back to the
present. “Like some pictures.”

Silence, then: “What kind of
pictures?”

“Like of the stuff.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“No.”

“You mean she took pictures of
the stuff?”

Bernie might be a high-powered
lawyer, but he was dumb, dumb, dumb. Dumb enough to get on Sam’s nerves. “No, asshole.
Somebody else took pictures of her wearing it.”

A hiss came over the line, a long-drawn
exhalation. “You get the pictures?”

“Yeah, but somebody took ’em, saw
the stuff. Somebody here in town.”

“Do you know who?”

Bernie was scared. About time.

“Yeah. So here’s the thing. Do I
recover any originals and the camera? Or let it all slide and hope the
photographer’s got a bad memory?”

Sam knew what he’d do if it was
up to him, but he wasn’t about to call the play. Decision-making wasn’t his
job.

The line went silent. Sam
pictured Bernie chewing on his bottom lip like he did every time he got
nervous.

Dumb ass. What was there to think
about?

“We can’t let it slide,” came at
last. “If anybody sees, puts two and two together… We can’t risk somebody… And
if the guy who made the pictures remembers… I don’t know.”

A sturdy teenager in leggings and
tee shirt emerged from the hamburger place with a super-sized drink and paper
bag.

Kids. Eating that kind of stuff
and no exercise would make her sloppy-fat in five years. Good thing his boys
liked sports. They had to work out and watch their diet. His wife was good
about cooking lots of vegetables and fish, too. And that chicken broccoli
casserole she made…

Bernie was still thinking out
loud. “Probably on the computer, too. Damn digital cameras. You’ll have to, you
know, take care of it. Him, too. The photographer, I mean. We can’t risk him
recognizing the stuff.”

About time Bernie figured it out.

“Okay.” He’d already recalculated
his fee. “Two cleanings, double comp plus extra expenses.”

“Double? That seems kind of… How
about fifty percent more? You’re already there.”

“Double.”

“My clients may not wanna pay
that much.”

Lying weasel
. Bernie’s clients didn’t give a shit.
They paid through the nose expecting Bernie to deal with whatever. Bernie was
trying to keep his own cut intact, that’s what Bernie was trying to do.

I ain’t gonna be stiffed.
“Gotta go. I’ll call back in a
coupla hours. See what they say.”

“Wait!”

Sam put the phone back to his
ear.

Bernie sighed. “Okay. Do it ASAP.”

Without goodbyes, Sam disconnected
and rolled his head around to ease the bunched-up neck muscles.

Guess this screwed his getting
back for the hockey game tomorrow. His older boy would be disappointed, but it
couldn’t be helped. Maybe he could make it home by Sunday. His wife got pissed
when he missed church.

Like he got pissed when plans
didn’t work out.

All because of a few lousy
photographs.

Chapter 4

As the outskirts of Atlanta
rushed by, Autumn settled back against the plush leather of Rennie’s Lexus.

Thirteen years before, a raw
adolescent, she had flung herself on his neck and told him she loved him,
couldn’t live without him, and begged him to take her to California with him.
He must have thought her an idiot and maybe she had been.

No, just out of her mind at his
going away.

Rennie had assumed her hysterics stemmed
from problems with the aunt and uncle who’d taken her in after her parents died.
He had pointed out his leaving Georgia wasn’t the same as dying and told her
she’d feel better once she went off to college the next year. Then he’d dried
her tears, promised they’d be lifelong friends, and promptly forgot her
meltdown.

Time she forgot it, too. She was
a woman in control, remember?

“A Lexus,” she said. “I’m
impressed.”

“You’re supposed to be. After having
to drive that old clunker through high school, I swore I’d start driving nice
cars as soon as I was able.”

“There was nothing wrong with Amy
Jean. After you left, she took Elena and Norma and Fran all through school
before she went to that big junkyard in the sky.”

He chuckled, deep in his throat. “Yeah.
Amy Jean was dependable in her day. I guess that’s one mark in her favor.”

“Dependability is important.”

“In people more than cars.” Something
dusted his features.

Pain? Had Jane hurt him?

Autumn couldn’t ask. Instead, she
talked about the traffic, a nice safe topic.

A montage of gray tree trunks and
green pines pasted against bunches of brown leaves and mottled blue skies slid
past. Once the congestion and tall buildings of Atlanta’s northern suburbs fell
behind, the rural setting of wintry forests and pastures provided a welcome
contrast for jaded city-dwellers.

Her cramped muscles refused to
unwind. What could she say in their two more hours together that wouldn’t sound
flat-out thick?

See if you can’t reconnect
. “So. Tell me about this new
job.”

He did, for several minutes,
until they were past Lake Lanier and well up Georgia Highway 400. “The opening
at UGA came at the right time,” he ended. “Jane had left, and there was no
reason for me to stay.”

Her breath caught. “Jane left? Is
she not coming back with you then?”

On the wheel, his hands tightened.

Darn, he would think she was
prying. Why couldn’t she keep her mouth shut?

But he answered evenly. “No. We
decided to go our separate ways. Actually, Jane decided. She got a big
promotion last March that meant her moving to New York.”

So that explained the change in
him. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“I didn’t mean to bring up
anything painful.”

“You didn’t. I’m okay now. I’ve never
been up to Helen in the winter. What’s it like?”

Okay, so Jane was off-limits. She
plunged in, offering up facts about the Alpenlights, Helen’s holiday festival
currently running through the first of the year. Drivel, maybe, but anything
was better than offending him.

Not that her chatter kept her
from thinking about olive-skinned, energetic Jane.

During her one visit to Atlanta
for Laney’s wedding two years ago, tiny Jane had bossed Rennie around and
charmed the Degardoveras. She’d enthusiastically joined in every activity and
made Rennie take her on frenzied sightseeing excursions.

Autumn had seen Rennie, Jane in
tow, exactly three times the entire week.

Her well of conversation slowed. How
much could she say about Christmas in Helen?

Not that it mattered. Rennie hadn’t
heard a word. “I don’t think of Jane too much anymore.”

Forget the Alpenlights.
“Of course not.”

“We’d talked about getting
married, but… When she moved, we tried commuting. Didn’t work. She loved New
York and her job. I didn’t want to live there. She didn’t want to leave.”

“Her loss.” Foolish Jane. There
were things far more essential than ambition or location. “You’ll be at a new
place with new people now. That’ll help, Rennie.”

“Huh. Ya think?”

She’d offended him. “I’m sorry. You
know me. I say whatever comes into my mind.”

At least she always had to Rennie.
He was easy to talk to.

The upbeat Rennie she remembered resurfaced.
“That’s one of the nice things about you, Autumn. You do say what you mean. As
for Jane, that’s past. I’m okay with it. And I kind of like where I am right
now. In a nice car with a beautiful blonde. Who could ask for anything more?”

The chagrin from blurting out the
wrong thing faded. “The nice car I’ll give you, and I may be blonde. But beautiful?
Careful. I’ll get a swelled head.”

“No danger of that. You’re one of
the most beautiful people I know, Autumn. Inside and out.”

She didn’t miss the underlying
sadness.

He went on, “Inner beauty’s way
more important than outer.”

Jane had hurt him, and hurt him
dreadfully.

“Oh, Rennie.” She wanted to lay
her hand over his on the wheel, let him know she understood. If she were Reseda
or Laney or any of the voluble, empathetic Degardoveras, she would know
instinctively how to banter and draw him out of this uncharacteristic mood.

But she wasn’t. She was herself,
awkward and shy and inarticulate. Pitifully inadequate at reaching out. “People
sometimes aren’t what we want them to be,” was so lame.

“No, they aren’t. Lots of people
aren’t what we want them to be, but I guess you’ve found that out.”