Moving Target by Elizabeth Lowell Read Free Book Online

there will be no more barriers, no safety, nothing but the fate I wrought on my loom.
    Picky purred hard enough to make her hands vibrate. The dream-memories evaporated, leaving Serena feeling unsettled. Both the scarf and the purring cat were welcome distractions from the uncanny memories. No, dreams. She couldn’t possibly have remembered them, no matter how real they seemed at the moment.
    “Too bad somebody fixed you,” she said to Picky. “I’d like to have a couple more like you.”
    The look he gave her said: Eat your heart out. There aren’t any more like me on earth.
    “Scoot. I have to work.”
    As soon as she picked up the shuttle, Picky stalked off. He had learned that the fastest way to get locked out of the house was to be underfoot while Serena was weaving. He could watch. He could pace. He could lust after the rapidly moving shuttle. But if he made a pass at it or at even one of the dangling yarn-wrapped bobbins or lovely heaps of yarn piled around the room, he was out in the cold.
    Absently Serena snapped her fingers. A remote switch kicked over and music poured out of speakers all through the house. Normally she preferred chamber music, Renaissance motets, or twentieth-century blues, but the austere Crusader design seemed to call for martial music and laments. At the moment, American Civil War ballads wept in all their sad beauty. Not exactly the same war as the Crusades, but not all that different, either. Hell on earth in the name of a higher morality.
    The phone rang.
    She made no move to answer it.
    She had ignored the phone twice already. It was a bad habit of hers, one she had promised various galleries that she would break, or at least get an answering machine that was reliable. But Picky adored any blinking light, and batted with his paws until answering machine, computer, telephone, whatever, was well and truly fouled up. She had tried to explain this to people who insisted that she find a better way to receive their messages. She no longer bothered. People always found a way to get to her. If it wasn’t easy, that just gave her more time to weave.
    The phone rang. And rang.
    And rang.
    Serena finished the row and reached for the phone, hoping no one would be there. “Hello.”
    “Good afternoon. Is this Ms. Charters?”
    “If you’re selling something, I don’t buy over the phone. I don’t do surveys, either.”
    “This is the House of Warrick,” a woman’s voice said crisply. “Janeen Scribner speaking. May I please speak to Ms. Serena Charters?”
    “Oh. Sorry.” Serena put a lock of silky, wavy red hair behind her ear with a motion that was half exasperation, half embarrassment. “I’m Serena.”
    “You sent us four color copies taken from an illuminated manuscript, correct?”
    “Yes. I wondered if it was worth the trouble of getting a full, formal appraisal.”
    “The person who could best answer your question is Mr. Norman Warrick himself. His specialty is illuminated manuscripts.”
    “I’m reluctant to send the original pages to New York,” Serena said, “and I don’t have time to bring them myself right now.”
    “That won’t be necessary. Mr. Warrick divides his year between New York and Palm Desert. He and his family are presently in Palm Desert. They will expect you this evening, if at all possible.”
    “Tonight?”
    “Yes. Mr. Warrick is almost one hundred. He never wastes time.”
    “Oh.” Serena looked at the nearly finished wall hanging. Then she thought of the luminous pages lying inside their leather envelope in her locked van, where Picky’s curiosity couldn’t get to them. “Fine. What time and where?”
    Janeen gave her directions and added, “Naturally, Mr. Warrick will want to inspect the originals.”
    It wasn’t exactly an order. Nor was it a question. Serena’s full mouth firmed even as she told herself that she was being ridiculous. If she couldn’t trust the head of the House of Warrick, she couldn’t trust anyone.
    Even so,