Disclaimers:  Raven and company belong to Frank Lupo, et al.  Just borrowing them for a bit of angst and villainy.
time: c.  1994
place: Hawaii
spoilers: doubtful

"The Second Portrait"

© 2000, dragon

Daybreak.  Jonathan Raven woke up feeling tired.  He'd felt that way for weeks now, ever since Libby had died in the explosion that destroyed the small Lear jet in which she was traveling.  He was trying to continue his life, to go on, to find his son.  But it was an effort just to get up some days.

He slid out of bed and into the shower.  The hot water sluicing down his body felt good.  He dried off, got dressed and walked into his back yard.  He walked onto his meditation platform and sat down.  A cool breeze played over him as he tried to center down and clear his mind.

Something caught his attention.  He looked around.  He could have sworn he saw a light in the house next door.  Which was unlikely since the house was -- empty.  A light came on in the upstairs windows.  A shadow moved across the windows.  There was someone in the house, a very bold someone.

He padded across the yard and through the tall foliage separating his back yard from that of the house next door.  He walked around to the front door.  It was unlocked.  Déjà vu.  He slid inside and looked up.  There was a light on in the loft studio.  He could hear soft sounds as someone moved around up there.  He took the stairs silently.

A woman stood looking at one of the paintings still stored in the loft.  Her hair was dark, medium brown, flowing down over her shoulders, almost to the small of her back.  She wore black, slacks and shirt, and flat heeled shoes.

"What are you doing here?"

She jumped and froze.  Oddly, she did not turn to face him.  She carefully allowed the painting she was holding by the edge, to settle back against the one behind it.  "I'm sorry, I didn't -- I -- I didn't think I'd be disturbing anyone this early."

The voice was soft, apologetic, familiar.

He approached her, moving up on her right side.  She turned away from him, noticing the movement.  He frowned again.  "Miss Cheyne?"

"Yes.  I know, w e didn't have time to -- discuss -- I mean -- Oh, dear.  Harve just doesn't have much time and I -- I thought if I came really early I wouldn't disturb anyone."  Her voice trailed off.  She sniffed.

It dawned on him she was fighting very hard not to cry.  His heart went out to her suddenly.  He moved around to her left to see if he could get a look at her.  She kept her head down, her hair falling in a fine curtain, concealing most of her face.  She seemed intent on keeping her hands hidden as well, tucked under crossed arms.

"Why don't you just let Harve handle it?" The question came out more harshly than he had meant it to.  "Do I really frighten you that much?"

She shook her head.  He thought she was peeking at him through the curtain of hair.  "I'm sorry.  I -- I'm -- uh -- agoraphobic."  She swallowed hard.  "I'm -- not very comfortable away from home."

He reached a hand through the hair and caught her chin.  She stiffened, froze.  No one touched her, not even Harve.  He gently applied pressure to make her lift her head.  She did, wide hazel eyes frightened and wary behind the screen of hair.  The curtain fell away from a heart shaped face, the bones a little too prominent for beauty.  Her pupils dilated.  She looked like a deer caught in the headlights of a car.

He discovered the reason for hiding.  Her right cheek was scarred, as though she had been in a fire.  He looked at her, letting her know he had noticed.  The scarring was smooth, obviously already worked on to minimize the trauma.  "Not so bad, is it?" he asked her softly.

She sniffed.  Her eyes looked a bit watery.  "No," she answered in a very small voice.  She was amazed.  He was looking her in the eye, not avoiding the horrible scar, just gazing into her eyes, taking it all in.  He didn't look away, didn't look appalled, didn't look like he was fighting to keep his eyes on her.  She trembled under his touch.  "Uhm -- I -- " She faltered to a stop and dropped her gaze from those dark eyes.

"So, your brother is keeping busy?" Small talk, not something he was very good at, but he felt a need to put this woman at ease with him.  There was something off here, and he was curious enough to try to find out what.

"Yes.  There are -- a lot of arrangements to make and Libby was --," she sniffled and swallowed convulsively.  "Was using the lawyer here for a lot of the contracts."  Her face crumpled, tears overflowing her eyes.  Her hands flew to her face as she turned away, struggling to control the grief over the loss of her cousin.  Her hands were also scarred.

Jonathan reached out, pulled her into his arms, turning her to face him, stroking the long soft hair as her head settled against his shoulder.  "Let it out," he murmured into her hair, wishing that he could do so as well.

Her arms went around him and held on tightly as she sobbed almost silently against him.  He wondered at the silence.  Did she hide all her emotions?  And why?  Libby hadn't told him much about her cousins, only that she was fond of them.  And that she was worried about Kelly.

He murmured soothing things to the back of her head.  After a few moments she quieted.  "Sorry," she mumbled into his shoulder.

"What?" he asked gently.

She pulled back, sniffed a couple of times and tried for a smile.  "I'm sorry.  I really didn't mean to -- uhm -- soak your shoulder."  She wiped her fingers across the moisture in the hollow of his shoulder where her head had rested.

"It's all right.  I'm water proof.  I miss her, too."

"She loved you very much."  The wide hazel eyes met his.  "She told me."

He smiled.  Kelly decided he was not just nice looking, but nice inside as well.  "I know."  His brows drew together in a slight frown.  He fought for control of his emotions as the black hole of her loss welled up again.  He drew a long breath and released it.  "I still wake up expecting to see her," he admitted.

"Have you gone through the paintings?  To see if the ones she specified are here?" she asked, trying to steer the conversation to what she hoped would be a less painful topic.

He shook his head.  "No.  I wasn't sure I wanted to face going through them yet.  It makes things -- so final."

"I know.  Maybe if we do it together --?"

"Since your brother doesn't have time --"

"And we're due to leave soon --"

"Are you?"

"Yes.  There are business things Harve needs to get back to.  I don't know what exactly, but he seems to keep really busy."

She moved to where a number of canvases were stacked against the wall.  Carefully, as with practice, she pulled each one out so they could look at it.  Most of them were commercial commissions, all of them identified on the back with the date completed, the company and the release date of the work for which she had produced it.

There were only a couple of dozen canvases to look at.  Only two of them were the ones Libby had left to him.  None of them really caught his eye.  Finally, she turned to the draped canvas still sitting on the easel, the last thing Libby had worked on.  Libby has specified that this one would go to him.  She pulled the drape back, her eyes widening.  Jonathan reached out and twitched the cover back over the painting, his eyes suddenly like black holes in his face.  His color drained and he turned away.

"That's all," he ground out harshly.

Kelly's gaze, still fixed on the draped painting, nodded.  She accepted his decision, for now.  "Harve thinks we should sell the house," she told him.

Sell it.  Yes.  Right now, Jonathan wanted nothing so much as to walk out of this house, raze it to the ground and forget it ever existed.  He nodded his agreement and headed for the stairway.

Kelly watched him move away from her in fascination.  He moved like a cat, all silence and rippling muscles.  The dragon tattoo on his back caught the light of the sun and seemed to be grinning at her in secret knowledge.

"Jonathan?" Her voice caught him as he started down the stairs.

"Yes?" He didn't turn back to look at her.

"Don't let this shut you away.  Darkness isn't always the comfort you think it is."

Such a small, diffident voice.  So different from Libby.  Yet as discerning as her cousin had been.  He looked back at her.  She was a dark silhouette against the sunlight streaming through the windows.  "Come have breakfast with me."

Kelly blinked at that.  She hadn't expected -- she didn't know what she had expected.  "Thank you," she accepted and grabbed up her scarf and sunglasses before she joined him.  The scarf was in place, shielding her face, before they reached the door.  He wondered at that.

Outside, in the fresh morning air, they both felt better.  He led her over to his home, and inside.  He pulled on an embroidered black kimono and set about making breakfast.  Kelly looked around curiously.  Libby had said a lot about her fiancee, but not about his home, or his looks.  With all the Japanese influence Libby had mentioned, his tall, dark curly haired looks had come as a surprise.  Although the intensity of his being had not.

She carefully did not touch the katana displayed in his living room.  She smiled over the low dining table with its thick cushions.  Remembering Libby's descriptions of traditional restaurants and homes in Kyoto, she knew that he was showing concern for his guests with those cushions.  Normally there were mats of woven straw, not thick cushions.

He brought out a tray and asked her to join him at the more conventionally Western table outside on the covered patio.  From what little she did know about Japan, he seemed to have put together breakfast in a traditionally Japanese manner.  It was as esthetically pleasing to the eye as it was to the taste buds.

She surprised him by knowing how to handle chopsticks.  So very few people he met who were not of oriental background had any idea how to handle them.  Libby's knowledge had not surprised him, before he knew she'd been to Japan for several months.  Kelly caught his pleased look and smiled.

"Libby insisted I learn.  She said she refused to be disgraced by my inability to cope with eating utensils when she took me out."  She chuckled as she said it, a grin curving her pale lips.  "I don't think I ever told her that I'd picked it up while there was this trio of devastatingly cute Japanese exchange students at school."  She got a slightly far away look in her eyes remembering them.  Then she came back with a laugh.  "Of course, they were high school students and I was in elementary school, so even my proficiency with chopsticks was not inclined to get them to notice me."

That got a smile from her companion.  "I'm afraid teenaged boys are not particularly perceptive, regardless of their background."

"Yeah.  I noticed."

After breakfast, he walked her out to the car she'd hired.  She was standing next to it, saying goodbye, when her brother showed up in a second car.  He pulled into the drive next door, ignoring the two of them until he got out and realized that the slender, black clad woman was his sister.

Jonathan saw a look of -- disgust?  disapproval?  -- pass over the man's face before he strode across to join them

"Kelly."  The tone was almost accusatory.  "What are you doing here?"

"I came to take a look at the house --"

"I told you I would take care of this," he over rode her.  "You know how uncomfortable this sort of thing makes you."

Jonathan could watch the diffident young woman fold under her brother's eyes.  His own eyes narrowed, his face becoming colder.  "I believe the will left the house jointly to Miss Cheyne and myself," he interposed softly.

Harve's cold eyes traveled over Jonathan and dismissed him.  "Yes, it did," he agreed with a false smile.  "But, since I handle all my sister's financial matters, I shall be handling this as well."  His gaze shifted from one to the other.  "You've been through the paintings?"

"Yes."

"Found the ones you want?"

"Not all of them.  There are two dozen in New York , the rest are probably there."

"There's more than that," Kelly chimed in without thinking.  Something about Jonathan's proximity seemed to lend her the courage to speak up.  She opened the door and got into the car.

"Driving yourself?" Harve asked, a strange look on his face.  Almost one of -- accusation?

Kelly blanched under the look and question.  Her hands tightened on the steering wheel.  "I'm neither drunk nor driving at night on a road with deep ditches on either side.  I think I can manage," she told him.  Jonathan reached into the car and gave her hand a touch of reassurance.  Her gaze flickered up to him and away again.  Secrets.  Painful secrets.  He could see them in her eyes, in her brother's attitude.

Curiosity piqued, Jonathan moved back from the car to let Kelly go, if she wished.  Harve seemed to interpret his move as retreat, a victory to Harve.

"I'll see you back at the hotel," he told his sister curtly.  He nodded to Jonathan and strode back across to the empty house.

Jonathan watched him walk away, then watched Kelly drive off.  The girl was not happy.  Girl.  Hardly that, and yet there was an innocence about her that made her seem younger than her years, and moved him to want to protect her.

Ski drove up as Kelly's car turned the corner and disappeared.  He took one look at Jonathan's face and didn't know whether to be glad his friend had found something other than his bereavement to occupy his thoughts, or worried for the same reason.  He sensed that Jonathan was on a borderline between his old self and the life he had built while he looked for his son.

"Jonathan."

The younger man looked at his friend and smiled.  It was a genuine smile, pleasure in the presence of a friend.  Ski smiled back.  "Come in."

"So, how's it going?"

Jonathan looked thoughtful.  "There's something odd going on."

"Oh?  How so?"

He explained his impression of Kelly and her brother.  "I think he's taking advantage of her somehow."

"Something to do with the scarring?"

"Yes.  And a car accident, I think."

"Should be easy enough to find out.  I'll see what I can dig up.  Oh, and I got another lead."  Ski pulled a piece of creased and folded paper out of his pocket.  "Here."

Jonathan took it, looked at the few words scribbled on it and looked at Ski curiously.  The big graying golden bear of a man looked abashed.  "I didn't say it was major, just a lead."

Jonathan smiled.  "It's OK.  We'll find him.  In the mean time, I want more information on the Cheynes and -- Libby."

"Right."

It took a couple of days to track Kelly back to the accident that scarred her face and hands.  The official story from three years earlier was that she'd been drunk, driving home from a party and her car had gone off the road.  It had subsequently burst into flame and exploded.  The doctors had said she was lucky to be alive, if she had waited to get out of the car, she would have been incinerated by the explosion.

The doctors were also very confident that the scarring could be handled with skin grafts over the next two or three years, only a couple of the procedures having been done by now.  Given how lovely the lady was, it was curious that they were waiting so long between operations.

The brother was another matter.  His "business interests" were difficult to untangle and some of them seemed quite unsavory.  All of which made Jonathan feel that Kelly might need rescuing from her brother.

"Now, Jonathan --"

'It's all right, Ski.  I'm just going to visit her."

"Right."

Jonathan drove into town to the hotel where the Cheynes were staying.  He wasn't quite certain what was wrong, but he was certain that something was.  He had not heard from Kelly since the morning they met over Libby's paintings.  He had not heard from either of the Cheynes, or their lawyers with regard to the house, or the paintings not in Hawaii that Libby had bequeathed him.  He knew that at least three more paintings were somewhere in the States.

He went to the front desk and asked for the Cheyne's room.  The desk clerk checked his computer and told him that the Cheyne's had checked out the day before.  He thanked the clerk and left.

He called Ski on his cell phone.  "Ski."

"Yeah?"

"They've checked out."

"What?  That don't make any sense.  The house is still here and so are the paintings inside it.  When did they leave?"

"Yesterday."

"Jonathan, there's somethin' wrong here."

"My thought exactly."

By the time Jonathan got back to his home, Ski had some more information for him.  "I don't like the sound of this," was his pronouncement as he handed the printouts to his friend.

The official records were a little odd.  A one car accident.  The police report was concise and to the point: one car in the ditch, fire, explosion, damage to the only occupant.  Kelly had been drinking, her blood alcohol was over the legal limit.  She had been taken to the nearest hospital for burn trauma.  The side of her face and her hands had taken the worst of it.

Ski had managed to get copies of the site photos.  A deep ditch, a soft shoulder.  There were no skid marks, yet the vehicle had taken very little damage aside from the fire.  The front end was surprisingly uncrumpled.  Jonathan frowned at the pictures.  He read Kelly's statement.

"I shouldn't have been driving.  I was coming home from a party.  I'd been drinking.  I guess I didn't realize how much I'd had.  I got the keys from my brother and told him I was going.  I -- guess I fell asleep.  I don't remember losing control or going into the ditch.  I woke up after I was in the ditch.  I got out and it exploded.  I felt the heat, the pain, and that's it.  I guess I passed out."

"Short statement."

"Yeah.  Accepted responsibility for the accident and that was that."

"If she was passed out, the accident shouldn't have awakened her."

"Only damage to her was the fire."

"That's not logical.  If the damage to the car was enough to make the gas tank explode, she should have sustained more damage -- bruising, at the least."

"And if she wasn't damaged, what woke her up?  Jonathan, that wasn't an accident.  I mean, it wasn't --"

"I know what you mean.  The accident was arranged.  Kelly should have died."

"But she didn't.  She survived.  She was friends with Libby.  Somebody tried to kill her and did kill Libby."  He saw that blank, black look that had frequently crossed Jonathan's face in the weeks since he had lost Libby.  "There's a link here.  Someone wanted both of them dead, and killed a lot of other people besides when he killed Libby."

"And Kelly's the next victim," Jonathan said quietly.  Kelly's finding her own will to deal with Libby's estate was endangering her survival.  He looked at Ski, a hard look in his eyes.  "Her brother is involved."

"Looks that way.  His car.  And he runs the family business, handles all the finances.  And it looks like his finances are in trouble."

The phone rang.

Jonathan answered it.  "Hello?"

"Jonathan?  This is Kelly."  Her voice sounded small, breathless on the other end.

"Kelly.  Where are you?"

"I'm not sure.  Harve -- Harve is acting strange.  He checked us out of the hotel.  He's rented a house, outside of town.  Uhm -- I -- He's scaring me.  I think -- I think Libby's death has hit him harder than I would have expected.  I'm -- I'm going to see if I can get the car and leave, but I don't know the island very well.  If I get lost, may I call you?"

"Of course.  Kelly, if you -- Kelly?" The connection had been severed.  "Ski, we need to find her."

Continued

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