Elizabeth Lowell - Blue Smoke and Murder

He cursed steadily as he squatted beside her. He’d seen enough bodies to know what death looked like. A simple black-bag job on an old lady’s house had turned into murder.

“What are you-stupid?” he snarled at her. “No way you were going to take me.”

He eased his fingers underneath her head. She still had her glasses on, crookedly, but that no longer mattered. Her eyes were dim from more than cataracts. Beneath thinning white hair he felt a depression in her skull. She must have been dead a second after she hit, because there was no blood.

“Crazy old bitch,” he said, standing up. “Why didn’t you listen?”

With a final disgusted curse, he went to search the pantry.

He didn’t find anything but canned goods and bags of rice and flour, sugar and beans. No trick shelves, no trapdoor, no false ceiling. Nothing but food.

He searched the rest of the house.

Nothing.

He went to the back porch and looked over at the sagging barn forty feet beyond the kitchen. The wind swirled around him, plucking at his coveralls with hard, impatient fingers, then racing away to batter the old barn.

He didn’t have time to search the old building. He’d let the wind take care of it.

He picked up the can of fuel oil from the back porch and went back into the kitchen. It wasn’t the first time he’d dressed a crime scene to look like an everyday accident.

If the paintings turned up, it wouldn’t be the last time, either.

AUGUST 27

8:00 A. M.

Holy shit,” Lane Faroe said reverently.

The lanky teenager looked at Jillian Breck, grinned, then realized what he’d just said.

“Oops,” he said. “Sorry.”

“No problem.” Jill smiled without looking away from the thunder and boil of a river narrowed to half its size by a bottleneck of basalt, a rock as hard as the water was determined to reach the sea. “That’s what I say to myself every time I see Lava Falls.”

And every time it’s different.

That’s why she loved it. The water flow from Lake Powell, two hundred miles upstream, changed from day to day. Rocks and boulders on the riverbank got undercut and tumbled into the current. Wherever they stuck, they piled waves in new ways, creating new currents, rips, holes, and eddies.

Running the Colorado was always different, yet always the same. Dangerous.

Exhilarating.

“Looks like a big chocolate snake somebody stepped on,” Lane said.

Jill nodded. “A mean one.”

That was the other thing she loved about the river. It tested her. She was going to miss river running when she gave it up, but she knew the time was coming. Soon. She had a restlessness that even the wild river couldn’t cure.

Maybe she would turn the old Breck homestead into a dude ranch. Bring back horses and buy more cattle, dig a trout pond, organize camera and painting and hunting safaris, feed people from kitchen gardens watered by the old windmill.

Maybe she would keep on being a river bum, following the seasons down Western rivers, teaching kayaking and rafting and wilderness survival skills.

And maybe I should concentrate on this river in front of me. Lava Falls changed with the last monsoon rain. I’ll need a slightly different approach.

Today she felt like an adrenaline ride, something for the tall, good-looking teenager to remember. Lava Falls would provide it. A hundred feet below her cliff overlook, rapids coiled and boomed and frothed. Whirlpools and back eddies hid behind the shoulders of huge rocks along the bank. The roar was constant, insistent, almost numbing.

The right side, she thought, nodding to herself. Plenty of room today. Head for that big boulder sticking out from the bank like a house, let the power of the river turn the raft, dig in hard with the right oar, and shoot across to the other bank.

Lane looked sideways at the river guide who was rowing him and his father Joe Faroe down the Colorado. Lane figured Jill was older than he was by at least a decade, but it didn’t stop him from noticing how hot she was. She had the lean, smooth body of a gymnast, but she had hips and boobs, too. Since everybody wore sunscreen and not much else in the summer heat, he’d had plenty of time to enjoy the scenery around camp.

The problem with being a tall sixteen was that a lot of the women who looked really hot to him thought he was too young, and girls his age wanted older men.

Sometimes life just basically sucked.

But the view was great.

Jill turned and started back down the steep, ragged trail that had been worn dusty by river guides coming to check out one of the most dangerous rapids on a river famous for its risk. The Colorado claimed some lives each year, mostly the drunk or careless, but sometimes the dead were simply unlucky.

When Jill and Lane walked back down to the waiting rafts, Joe Faroe cocked an eyebrow at his son. “Are we walking or riding?”

“You can always walk around,” Jill said before Lane answered. “The trail’s about four miles. We’ll wait for you downstream.”

“I’m riding,” Lane said to his dad. “I’m just wondering if a girl has enough strength to handle that water.”

Faroe shook his head. Lane had an excellent brain, but he still had some things to learn about women. Jill had hiked the teenager into the ground at least twice on this trip, but he always came back with the guy-girl needle. He hadn’t noticed how the other guides-female and male-deferred to Jill’s judgment and skill.

“If it will make you feel better,” Jill said innocently, “I’ll let your daddy row. He’s good and strong.”

“No thanks,” Faroe said. “I’ll leave Lava Falls to the experts.”

Lane grumbled. “Why him? You only let me row when the river is flat and the wind is against us.”

Jill winked at Faroe. “What I lack in strength I make up for in smarts.”

Faroe laughed and gave his son a one-armed hug. “She’s got you there. She knows more about leverage than an unarmed combat teacher. And that’s what running the river is about, leverage and smarts.”

Combat, too, of a sort. But not the sort Faroe was used to. On the river he was happy to have someone else looking out for danger. That’s what a vacation was all about-not having to figure out how to kill someone before he killed you.

“Huh,” Lane said, but smiled at Jill. “You ever dump in Lava Falls?”

“Twice,” she said, fingering the leather cord around her neck. It held a serrated folding knife with a hook on the tip. If she went over and got caught on something below the water, the blade was sharp enough to cut through the tough woven nylon flotation harness with a single stroke. She’d never had to use the knife. She hoped she never would. “You don’t fight the water, you just float with it. That’s why everyone wears the harness you’re always complaining about.”

“It’s too narrow across the shoulders.”

“Your dad’s is worse, but you don’t hear him complaining.”

Faroe smiled. The float harness was more comfortable than body armor, but he wasn’t going to point that out.

“Mom would have enjoyed this,” Lane said, watching the river with eyes that were just like his father’s.

“Not nearly nine months pregnant, she wouldn’t,” Faroe said dryly. “She was real clear on that. Wanted us to do the male bonding thing while she did the female gestating thing.”

“Hope she waits to have it until we get home.”

“She’s not due for almost a month.”

“She’s huge.”

“Don’t tell her that,” Faroe said.

They were the last raft in their party to take on Lava Falls. While the other rafts entered the current with whoops and shouts, Lane and Faroe followed Jill to their own small craft. They sat on the inflated gunwale and swished their feet in the water, making sure their gritty sandals were well rinsed before swinging their legs aboard. Then both passengers went to work on the straps securing their individual float harness.

“Ready?” Jill asked.

They answered with a thumbs-up.

Lane had the front of the raft, Faroe the back. Jill sat on the hard rowing bench in the center, facing forward, oars poised above the water. The rapids ahead was clearing of other rafters. She watched the river intently, correcting the angle of the raft as she entered the current. The approach to Lava Falls was crucial.

Do it right and get an adrenaline ride.

Do it wrong and suck rocks.

The current picked up, shoving the raft off to one side. She dipped her left oar and stroked once, correcting the line. The front of the raft started to buck gently as it picked up the first of the waves. She glanced quickly at her passengers, giving a last check to life vests. Sometimes Lane was careless about his. He resented the confinement.

The roar of the coming cataract was like a jet taking off.

“You buckled up, Lane?” she shouted.

He turned toward her, showing that he had pulled two of the three straps tight across his chest. The loose end of the third strap dangled free, eighteen inches of woven fabric ending with a tough plastic buckle.

“Fix it,” she shouted, nodding toward the trailing strap.

He looked down, saw the problem, and took one hand off the safety grip to tuck the buckle up out of the way. The strap was stiff, and stubborn, which was how it had worked free in the first place.

The front of the raft plunged into the first hole in the water, then pitched up in the air like a rearing horse. Cold water sprayed Lane as the raft sideslipped. He gave a rebel yell of delight.