Free Art's Blood by Vicki Lane Page A

started running.”
    She hugged her knees tighter. There were no tears and her face was a mask. “When I got to the top of the hill by the old graveyard, I could see the flames. And then the black car. It was on the road above our house, just sitting there with its lights off. And when the fire truck came down the road, the black car took off around the mountain.”
    “Was it a car you recognized?” Elizabeth asked. “It might have been just someone passing by, maybe watching but then afraid of being suspected when the fire truck arrived—”
    “I recognized it,” said Kyra, her voice still lifeless. “It’s always around. The driver’s a mean-looking guy in sunglasses. Sometimes he pretends he’s reading a newspaper, or looking at a map, but really, he’s watching me. I call him my nanny.”

CHAPTER 6

    WILLOW

    (WEDNESDAY MORNING, AUGUST 31)
    T HE EARLY MORNING MISTS LAY HEAVY ON F ULL Circle Farm. “For ever’ fog in August, they’ll be a snow in winter” was the local saying, but though Elizabeth had tried keeping track of these fogs and the allegedly resultant snows, she had never been able to prove or, for that matter, disprove this particular old wives’ tale. What was important to her about these frequent morning fogs was that they provided a cool interval before the heat of the day— an interval she was using now to pick her tomatoes.
    Kyra was still asleep— exhausted after the events of the previous night. Ben was in the house— working on the farm accounts, he had said. “And when Kyra wakes up, I don’t think she should be alone. I’ll be right here if she needs me, and I can get that billing done.”
    The tomato vines, heavy with fruit, were sagging on their baling twine supports. The lower leaves were spotted and rusty with incipient blight. They would have to be clipped and burned, but the upper parts of the vines were continuing to put out tender new growth and starlike yellow blossoms. Elizabeth began to fill her plastic milk crate with the long, firm San Marzanos and Romas that would form the basis of herb-rich sauces to be stored in the freezer, as well as providing leathery oven-dried tomatoes bursting with the concentrated flavor of summer. There was also a small basket for the tiny grape tomatoes whose seeds a cousin had brought from France— the first choice for a tossed salad or eating out of hand. Finally, there were the enormous slicing tomatoes— the aristocracy of the garden— deep crimson Brandywine, dark Cherokee, Black Krim, and a bright yellow nameless beauty whose seeds had come from Miss Birdie, a little bland in taste perhaps, but so gorgeous in company with the others. Elizabeth laid these giants carefully in her big willow basket, envisioning a cobalt blue platter heaped with rounds of red and yellow interposed with slices of creamy fresh mozzarella, the whole glistening with generous amounts of olive oil, a prudent sprinkling of balsamic vinegar, shining crystals of sea salt, and fragrant ribbons of fresh green basil.
    She laughed as she realized that her mouth was beginning to water at the image she had conjured up. “Eight-thirty A.M. and thinking about dinner already. Elizabeth, you are hopeless!”
    The sound of a car’s straining engine cut through the peaceful morning air. What new adventure? She carried her basket to the end of the row and peered down the road. Too early for Jehovah’s Witnesses and it’s not the farm truck. Whoever it is, it doesn’t sound like they’re going to get much farther.
    Below the barn she could hear tires spinning desperately on the gravel, a moment of silence, and the sound of the vehicle backing. Probably just someone who took a wrong turn, she assured herself and began loading the crates and baskets of tomatoes into the back of her jeep. But then she heard the high-pitched whine of a car engine being pushed to the limit and around the corner of the barn shot an ancient green Volvo, bucking and swerving on the steep