Obstruction of Justice by Perri O'Shaughnessy

Sean Connery in his heyday as James Bond—"someplace a bit more conducive?"
    She smiled slightly, responding to the familiar Scottish burr, as Paul always hoped they would, and thought for a long moment.
    "Let me see your ID."
    He handed it over and she studied it. "You live in Carmel. That’s a beautiful town," she said. "Lots of artists live there." She handed his card back, apparently satisfied.
    Paul had seen the acknowledgment of being from a wealthy community defuse suspicion of him many times before. From salesmen at his favorite clothing store who jousted for an opportunity to become his personal shopper for the day, to cashiers at the Lucky Market who waved away his credit card proof-of-bucks-in-the-bank, they fell like supplicants at the magic word Carmel. Anyone who could afford to live there had to be okay, right?
    "Great place for painting seascapes," he said, and when he saw the look on her face above the color-spattered clothing, added, "Of course, seascapes get so ... so boring."
    "How true." She stepped aside. "You can come in."
    She led the way through a hallway decorated with big terra-cotta pots and more cacti. Through the arched doorway most of the house seemed to consist of a twenty-foot-high studio, all glass on the back wall, providing indirect northern light. Stained cloth tarps served as carpeting. A conference table covered with another tarp held myriad jars and brushes, house paint, rollers, and all sorts of other equipment. Paintings and frames leaned in loose groups against the walls. Paul’s eye was drawn to a disturbing canvas, slashed through with orange and green and white. The violent clash of colors attracted his attention. The thick brush strokes suggested an ordinary house painter’s brush had been used in its execution, and he did mean execution. He walked over to examine it, but she stepped in front of him and threw a drape over it.
    "I don’t mean to be rude, but like any painter, I’m sensitive about my work. That’s a really old one. I think I’ve improved. Let me show you some more recent work, if you’re interested?"
    He nodded. The longer they spent together on these unrelated topics, the more time she had to warm up to the pending topic, and to Paul.
    She led him past a series displayed along a wall that ran the length of the room. Her main subject seemed to be needle-sharp cactus in extreme close-up, though the abstract splashes of paint made this debatable. They looked like tattooed cucumbers undergoing acupuncture, or portions of dead porcupines he would prefer not to think about.
    "I really don’t know much about art," he said finally, realizing that she was waiting for him to say something. "And I can’t compare your work to the Expressionists or the Impressionists, because I only know enough to appear knowledgeable in a pinch. Is ’wow’ going to do it for you?"
    He didn’t know what she had expected, but he guessed he had delivered when she threw her head back in a laugh. "That does me fine!" she said. "You’ve missed your calling as an art critic. You’re a pretty refreshing character, aren’t you?"
    Paul was by now enjoying himself. Her finely cut lips pursed as she looked upon these paintings that had a crudeness he actually found rather powerful. She went over to one large painting, leaned over, and brushed a speck away. Sun glanced through the tall windows and made a halo of her hair. She had broad shoulders and a deep waist, a swaying walk that had an impact.
    "Let’s go out back," she went on. "That’s my dining room, at least for another month until the weather’s too cold."
    Paul followed her rounded, denim-clad rump out the door. Why, oh why, were there so many foxy women in the world to tempt him? Like a cornucopia of luscious flesh, the world spilled them into his path, where there was no way to avoid them or step over them without taking a sample.
    The backyard was like the front except more densely potted, a veritable Mojave Desert of