Page 52 of The Grave Artist (Sanchez & Heron #2)

“Who is it?” Maddie whispered, looking down.

“It’s Her. With a capital H .”

They were standing in the workshop area of his den, over a large art table. Sitting in the middle was one of his most precious recent acquisitions.

He continued, “Demeter, Greek goddess of agriculture.”

It was an original drawing, 120 years old, in chalk and pencil on gray paper, by the famed British artist Evelyn De Morgan. She had created the piece as a study of what would become her most famous oil: Demeter Mourning for Persephone .

It depicted the goddess, racked with misery at the absence of her daughter, who had been seized by Hades and taken to the underworld, where she would remain for six months each year.

That original painting, the embodiment of bereavement, was on display at Wightwick Manor and Gardens in Wolverhampton, part of the British National Trust and, sadly, not for sale.

He explained to Maddie that the painting was his favorite piece of all time, and the study was a recent discovery. Damon had used an anonymous broker to buy the work instantly.

He set the box of blades on the table, opened it and mounted one in a matte cutter.

Damon did not trust a commercial outfit to frame the piece. He would do so himself and had ordered special matte boards and these particular razor blades, which were oil-free, to do the job. In addition to his talent as an art lecturer, and as a murderer, Damon Garr was a skilled framer.

He asked Maddie, “Which color matte?” He pointed to the shelves where they sat.

“Me?”

“Sure.”

“I don’t know. Wait. This one!”

She chose taupe. It was, not surprisingly, his first choice. The color that would complement the gray paper of the De Morgan study. He pulled on cloth gloves and handed her a pair. He nodded to the board and, after donning the accessory, she gave it to him.

He arranged the board on the table and set the cutter to a forty-five-degree angle. Then pressed it down, piercing the cardboard.

“Put your hand on mine.”

She hesitated.

“Go on. You’re safe. I’m not wearing high heels.”

A brief laugh. And she did as he’d instructed.

Together, they moved the cutter upward, in a fluid motion along the right-hand vertical side.

He enjoyed the sound of the cut.

It reminded him of the slasher movies Miss Spalding weaned him on, where you hear the knife make that swooshy sucky noise slicing into the bodies of blonde coeds and their randy boyfriends.

But in real life a knife rends in near silence.

He remembered this from his encounter with Sarah Anne Taylor and from his run-in with the LAPD detective bleeding massively beneath the enigmatic gaze of a bronze William Shakespeare statue.

“You’re strong,” she whispered.

He didn’t answer.

They made three more cuts on the board. And he held it up, examining the corners.

They were perfect.

“Do we do another one?” Maddie nodded to a print nearby, which featured two mattes, one white and one salmon.

“No. I don’t want to draw attention away from Her.”

He set the sketch on the backing and placed the matte over it, both acid-free. Pressure held the De Morgan in place. Never glue. Then he mounted the assembly into the frame, which was fronted with carefully dried and polished glass.

“Never glare-free panes,” he told her, explaining that diligent curators and collectors displayed the finished pieces on walls where lights were placed carefully to avoid flares.

He rested it on an easel and gazed.

Demeter’s sorrow . . .

She took his hand in both of hers. “You know that thing people say when they first meet sometimes, like a blind date?”

“You mean,” he said, “‘It’s so easy to talk to you. I can tell you things I’ve never been able to tell anyone else’?”

“Yep. Exactly. In our case, that line really takes the cake.”

Silence arose. She said, “I want to ask you something, Damon.”

A nod. He pulled off the gloves. She did, as well.

“What you told me about your friend, the criminal lawyer. You made him up, didn’t you?”

This might be a reason to be afraid.

Or to smile.

He did the latter, and he nodded.

“I think there’s more to you than meets the eye. You see me try to kill somebody and you have basically no reaction. Except to tell me how to get away with it.”

“I—”

“Shh.” She touched a finger to his lips. “Don’t tell me anything. Not yet. We’ve shared enough for one day.”

She glanced at his phone. The lock screen was a clock.

He saw her disappointment. “You have to go?”

“Beating assholes almost to death with my shoe isn’t a full-time job. I work in marketing, and I’ve got a meeting. But it’s in an hour. That leaves plenty of time.”

“For what?”

She gave him a do-you-really-need-to-ask look, took his hand and led him from the den, whispering, “Where’s your bedroom?”