Free A Grave Talent by Laurie R. King

living room.
    "That's not too likely. I don't suppose you want any coffee?"
    "That would be nice, thank you."
    "Breaking bread with a convicted murderess?" She smiled wryly and knelt down to load two split logs into the large, freestanding iron fireplace. A wide-bottomed black kettle sat on the flat top.
    "You have paid your dues, Miss Adams."
    She paused and studied him from under the hair, a log forgotten in one hand.
    " 'Paid my dues.' I haven't heard that phrase in years. Nearly ten years of my life gone as dues for the privilege of rejoining a society that neither wants nor trusts me. Rather high membership fees." Her mildly amused voice might have been discussing a slight inconsistency in the plot of a play.
    "High compared with the price paid by Jemima Brand?" Hawkin smiled gently, but his eyes were hard. Vaun Adams looked down at the log in her hand and finished the job, opened the stove vent, stood up, and brushed off her hands.
    "No, I would not consider the price high, if it had been I who killed her. But then I realize that nearly all felons claim that they were falsely accused, so I won't bore you with that. This will be a few minutes," she gestured toward the kettle, "and I'm sure you want to ferret about in my things. I give you my permission. I won't even ask you for a warrant. Just don't touch the wet paint on the canvases upstairs, or the charcoal. There are a couple of drawings I haven't sprayed yet." She disappeared through a swinging door, which revealed a glimpse of kitchen sink and cabinetry before it shut. Kate and Hawkin looked at each other and shrugged.
    "Do you want to 'ferret'?" Kate asked him.
    "Not much point, I shouldn't think. I would like to see the house, though."
    The house was well worth looking at, regardless of any evidence it might contain. The room they were in was a space of immense calm and simplicity, open to the rough, beamed ceiling two stories above their heads, its sides made of smooth redwood boards laid vertically, with large, uneven quarry tiles underfoot. One wall, to Kate's left, was glass. Its opposite, behind the freestanding wood stove (now radiating a comfortable antidote to the gray day outside) was an expanse twenty-two feet high entirely of redwood, broken only by the rectangular outline of the kitchen's swinging door and by one wide painting. A couple of thick, subtle Oriental carpets, a cluster of soft chairs and matching sofa, two low tables and a small cabinet were the only furniture, although the house's end wall ahead of them had built-in cabinets running the length of it, ending at a door that led (judging from a glimpse through its window) to a wood pile. Kate walked a few steps into the room and turned around to look up above the doorway through which they had come. To her surprise it appeared that the entire space above the rest of the house was one large, open room, divided from the living room below by a simple, waist-high railing, on the other side of which stood a pair of heavy easels. Various people along Tyler's Road had mentioned that Vaun Adams painted, but Kate had hardly expected to find her studio taking up one third of the floor space of a generously sized house.
    As she turned back to Hawkin her eye caught on the painting above the wood stove. It was actually a triptych, three panels depicting a mossy stream bed in which a minimum of brush strokes and a nearly monochromatic palette of grays and greens managed to convey an air of mystery and anticipation. Kate drew it to Hawkin's attention with a dry comment.
    "Unicorns and starry maidens it ain't. If that's her work, she's very good."
    There were three other rooms on the lower floor. On the right-hand side of the hall as it went to the front door was Vaun's bedroom. A subtly colored patchwork quilt made of hundreds of tiny squares lay on the double bed, its corners knife-sharp. The top of the bedside table held an electric lamp and a clock; a small gray vase with a sprig of dried flowers and