There was more than one person involved?”
She nodded, which made her multiple chins bob. “They were a cooperative or something. All women.” She offered him a sample tray of nuts. “You want a spiced pecan? They just came out of the oven.”
He didn’t want a pecan. “These women—they were all artists?”
She took one herself and chewed it thoughtfully. “I guess. One made jewelry, and one did paintings, and one blew glass, and the other one—I don’t know what they call what she did.”
He narrowed his eyes, which were as green as a cat’s. “What would you call it?”
Velda gave an expressive shrug. “She made weird things. Scarecrows. Kites. These sort of doll things.”
“You mean like toys? For kids?”
She shrugged again. “Some of ’em was, some of ’em wasn’t. She sort of did her own thing, you might say.”
I’ll bet she did, he thought. He said, “You know where she went?”
Velda helped herself to another pecan. “I don’t know where any of ’em went. They’ve scattered. Like to the four winds.”
He was tired, he felt feverish, and the too-rich scent of chocolate made his stomach squirm queasily. He set his jaw and said, “Who might know where she is?”
Velda licked her upper lip thoughtfully. “They might know at one of the galleries. These artist types, they come and go. She might even be out on the street—it’s festival. Lots of booths and vendors. Just ask around. Somebody’ll know. You want to try a honky-tonk surprise? They got tequila filling.”
The last thing he wanted was a honky-tonk surprise. The pain was tripping in his temple like a tiny hammer. He thanked Velda and went back outside into the glare and the noise.
Sixth Street, with its bars and galleries and shops and restaurants, was considered the heartbeat of Austin, and today the heartbeat had gone mad with spring.
The arts festival was in full swing. The streets were roped off and bursting with tents that were cornucopia-full of Texas food and Texas merchandise. The scent of tacos and chili floated on the sun-warmed air. Young couples drinking champagne mimosas strolled the sidewalks, looking at the paintings, the pottery, the jewelry, the T-shirts.
The onslaught of the sun magnified the pain drilling at Sloan’s skull, and he slitted his eyes against the brightness. His eardrums danced with the street’s din. There were Native American dancers and lively Tex-Mex cajuno bands, country fiddlers, and even a harpist in medieval robes. A clown on tall stilts walked down the street with the swaying grace of a giraffe.
Fortune-tellers told fortunes. A face painter, crowned with flowers, painted the faces of children. Jugglers juggled. A large man with a bald head walked a pair of albino ferrets on a leash.
From a truck, a yellow dog wearing sunglasses watched the street with kingly indifference. Slowly, it turned its face toward Sloan, as if recognizing a fellow spirit. Its aloof expression seemed to say, Lord, what fools these mortals be.
Sloan thought, You’ve sure as hell got that right, dog.
But he set off on his own foolish errand, which was to find the woman.
The dog, looking more superior than before, stared after him a moment, then turned his attention back to the human carnival around him.
IN HER MAKESHIFT STUDIO beside the river, Darcy Parker worked alone. She had a deadline, and that meant she was spending her afternoon with a worm.
He was a bookworm, a comical soft sculpture that she had been commissioned to make for the children’s section of the main library. He was four feet long, his flexible body composed of cuddly green-and-yellow globes.
He had a yellow head with a benevolently mad smile. He wore red spectacles and sported twelve pliable lavender legs. He was not exactly a handsome worm, but he was a winsome one, and Darcy was pleased with him.
This morning she had finally got his antennae right. Now she experimented, trying him in different poses. Worm—reading studiously in an armchair. Worm—standing on a library stool, reaching for a book on an upper shelf. Worm—stretched out on his belly on the floor, his head cocked over the Sunday comic papers.
You look good, Worm, she thought. You just might be a star.
She took snapshots for her files. Around her, the room was crammed with her other projects: stuffed toys, quilts, puppets, experimental clothing, fabrics she had dyed and silk-screened by hand. It was a happy hodgepodge that probably made sense to no one but her. But there was method in her madness—a great deal of method, in fact.
In Darcy Parker’s nature was an equal mix of whimsy and practicality. She was successful at what she did, although she could not explain exactly what her profession was. Sometimes she was an artist, sometimes a craftswoman, sometimes a seamstress. She had a questing curiosity, and she followed where it led.
She was a whip-slender woman with a quick mind, lively eyes and clever hands. She was thirty years old. From her father she had inherited the midnight darkness of her hair; from her mother, her quick-silver smile and fair skin. Unlike her mother, she didn’t hide from the sun, so she had a dapple of freckles sprinkling her nose and high cheekbones.
Her studio was makeshift, temporarily set up in the guest cottage of her mother’s weekend house on Lake Travis. She hadn’t wished to impose on her mother. But when the lease in downtown Austin was lost, she’d had no choice.
The lake property was for sale, so Darcy didn’t want to grow overly fond of the little house. It was airy and full of brightness, and she loved the sweeping view of the lake and the looming limestone cliffs.
There were no neighbors. She lived in splendid isolation. On Saturdays, Rose Alice, the housekeeper in town, drove out to vacuum and dust the lake house. She was a tough-looking woman with tattoos on both biceps, but she was hell on every sort of dirt. Her spanking white pickup was parked in the service driveway today.
Rose Alice didn’t touch the guest house; it was Darcy’s responsibility as long as she stayed. Besides, she didn’t like anyone disturbing the disorderly seeming order of her studio, and Rose Alice attacked clutter with the energy and ferocity of a pit bull.
Rose Alice had taken one look at the studio room after Darcy moved in, winced, and shook her head. “No offense, kid,” she said. “I love ya. But I don’t think I ought to look in here again until you’re gone. I got delicate sensibilities.”
Before Rose Alice left the main house today, she would telephone Darcy and invite her over for coffee. She had known the family for almost twenty years, and, in her rough-spoken way, was fond of them.
“In the meantime, it’s you and me,” Darcy told the worm. “Want to curl up with a good book?” She wound him into a coil and put an oversize picture book in his grasp.
Darcy was kneeling to snap his picture, when her phone rang. It was Rose Alice.
“Hey, Darcy,” she said in her sandpapery voice, “storm warning. The kid just drove up. She don’t look happy. Something’s wrong.”
Darcy stiffened in apprehension. She loved
