Elizabeth Lowell - Blue Smoke and Murder

“The project is still under construction.”

The ironic tone of Zach’s voice made Jill wince.

“What happened?” she asked.

“The gallery importers ran up against the Russian mafiya, which was laundering money through Russian Impressionist art in its own American galleries. Those dudes don’t play well with others. Transnational crime is a down-and-dirty business.”

“God…” Jill let out a long breath. “Modesty had no idea what she was getting into. She just wanted to raise a few thousand for taxes. Instead, she raised a whirlwind and ended up dead.”

“Oh, we do real well with our own homegrown thugs,” Zach assured her. “The Russians are just some of the newer crooks at the international art money buffet.”

“Blanchard? The good old American thug? Is he one of the pros?”

“Maybe. It’s hard to tell the pros from the wannabes. A whole lot of kicking and gouging going on at this point.”

“And the last one standing wins,” she said unhappily.

“Pretty much.” Zach stretched his shoulders and legs. Charter planes were better than cattle class on commercial flights, but the seats still weren’t designed for long-legged people. “Research had some interesting things to say about Dunstan, too.”

“Such as?”

“He was one of the few Western artists who actually came from the West.”

She blinked. “Really? Where did the rest of them come from?”

“Moran and Bierstadt were Hudson River School. Easterners.” Zach swirled coffee in his plastic cup, then drank the rest.

Jill waited.

“Most of the painters of the time were the same,” he said, holding out his empty cup, looking expectant. “City boys. Paris trained, or learned at the knees of teachers who were schooled in Paris. The new kids on the block illustrated government surveys of the West and Eastern magazine articles to make a living. Or they taught.”

“For someone who claims not to have a degree,” she said, pouring the last of the coffee into his cup, “you sure know a lot about Western art.”

He shrugged. “Like I said, I can bullshit with the best of ’em.”

“It’s more than that.” She capped the empty thermos. “Why are you so prickly on the subject?”

Because I learned at the knee of one prickly son of a bitch. But all Zach said aloud was “Dunstan was Western born and bred. He specialized in what today is called the Basin and Range Country, with forays into Taos, Santa Fe, and the Colorado Plateau country for variety. Studied back east, came home to paint. But you probably already know that.”

She shook her head. “Modesty never talked about her sister, much less her sister’s lovers. And Mom…Mom was ashamed to be born outside of marriage. She rarely talked about her mother, and never said one word about the man who might or might not have been her father.”

“Sound like you had to stumble around some mighty big lumps under the family rug.”

Jill smiled, surprising both of them. “You trip a few times and then you learn to walk around the lumps. It’s called growing up.”

“Not everyone gets around to it.”

“You did, prickly and all.”

“Thomas Dunstan didn’t. He drank. He was born in Wyoming, son of a hard-luck rancher.”

“There are a lot of hard-luck ranchers in the West,” Jill said. “Fact of life in a dry land.”

“No argument from me. My mother’s family wasn’t dirt poor, they were dust poor. Do you want to know more about your grandmother’s sometimes lover?”

“I think it’s past time I learned about him.”

Zach handed Jill his half-full coffee cup. Then he opened the computer, selected the Dunstan file, and began reading parts of it to Jill, who might or might not be the granddaughter of the drunk who happened to be a fine painter when he was sober.

“…regarded as a chronicler of the empty quarter of the West, a painter capable of capturing the majesty of land before the white man came and blah blah blah,” Zach said, condensing what was in the file.

She snickered and sneaked a sip of his coffee.

He noticed, winked at her, and went back to picking facts from the computer file.

“…painted and destroyed canvases until he produced one that he liked. Sometimes it was years between new canvases.”

“Too bad more painters didn’t cull their work before it went public,” Jill said. “Picasso and Dalí come instantly to mind.”

Zach laughed and kept picking out tidbits. “Sold well for the era, despite the scarcity of paintings. He drank. A lot. And this was noticed at a time and in a place where hard drinking wasn’t remarkable.”

“Sounds like the money he made from art went into booze.”

“Back then, booze was cheap. Having a family and a mistress is expensive.”

“Don’t expect me to feel sorry for him.”

“I don’t. A man is born with two heads. Dunstan listened to his dumb one.”

Jill almost choked on another stolen sip of coffee.

“…sold for as much as ten thousand dollars a painting before he died,” Zach continued blandly. “Back then, ten thousand was today’s half million. Hell, maybe a million. Inflation happens.”

She cleared her throat. “Does the file say who collected him?”

“In the beginning, mostly cattle barons and railroad tycoons, the kind of Western men who saw themselves as powerful enough to tame the wilderness. But lately…” Zach called up another file.

Jill waited, sipped more stolen coffee, and watched the dry land race by beneath the airplane’s wings. She was having a hard time understanding that her wild-child grandmother’s life had intersected with that of a man who became an iconic artist of the West.

A very expensive artist.

Zach’s soft whistle came through the earphones, distracting her.

“What?” she asked.

He turned the computer screen so that she could see the record of Dunstan sales from the time of his death to the most recent sale a year ago.

Five hundred thousand dollars in the late twentieth century.

Four million dollars last year.

One painting.

Jill felt like the airplane had dropped out from under her. She swallowed hard. Then she turned to Zach, who was watching her with narrowed, intent eyes.

“Four. Million. Dollars?” she asked, her voice rough.

“Yes.”

She shook her head sharply. “I’m having a tough time grabbing hold of this. I mean, I can’t believe our family has twelve Dunstans, much less that they’re wildly valuable.”

“We don’t know that they’re Dunstans.”

“Well, they sure got someone’s attention,” she said, thinking of her poor old car. And the slashed-to-ribbons painting. And Modesty Breck.

Dead.

SEPTEMBER 15

10:04 A.M.

Ramsey Worthington waited with concealed impatience while Cahill carefully, slowly, delicately opened a shipping container from the estate of a wealthy collector of Western art. The paintings were among the stars of the upcoming auction.

As the owner of several galleries, and an auctioneer in high demand, Worthington knew that he wasn’t supposed to have a favorite artist. Or at the very least, he shouldn’t let anybody know that he did.

Yet Cahill knew his boss was daffy about Nicolai Fechin’s paintings.

The “Tartar” painter might have been born in Russia, but in the second quarter of the twentieth century he had painted the Native Americans of the Southwest with an impressionistic urgency and energy that was both personal and universal.

More than half a century after Fechin’s death, his paintings were more valuable than ever, well over one hundred thousand dollars a canvas, and that was for the smaller works. Yet it wasn’t the potential hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars the Fechin oils represented that lifted Worthington’s pulse.

Quite simply, he wanted to be in the presence of greatness.

Worthington cleared his throat. He’d seen various representations of the Fechins in this dead collector’s collection, but he hadn’t seen them in the original.

Cahill hid his smile. Perhaps it was petty to tease Worthington by dragging out the process of opening the shipping container, but it certainly was enjoyable. Intellectually and fiscally, Cahill understood the importance of Fechin’s portraits. Emotionally, they didn’t lift his pulse. Give him the sweep and radiant grandeur of a Thomas Moran landscape any day. Now that was an artist to bring a man to his knees.

After a few more unnecessary flourishes, Cahill relented and removed a canvas from its carefully constructed nest.

Worthington made a sound that was between a sigh and a moan.

Cahill freed more paintings.

More rapturous noises came from Worthington.

“Stop it,” Cahill said. “You’re making me hard, and you have a luncheon appointment with your wife.”

If Worthington heard, he didn’t comment.

Cahill didn’t bother to hide his smile. Worthington’s relationship with his wife was a source of amusement to both men. She was clueless about her husband’s cheerful bisexuality.

The phone rang in Worthington’s office. His private line, reserved for his best clients. Or his most useful ones.

Worthington ignored the phone. He was lost in the vivid colors and insights of Nicolai Fechin.

Cahill strode over and picked up the call. “Fine Western Art, Jack Cahill speaking. How may I assist you?”

“This is Betty Dunstan. Is Ramsey available? It’s about the auction.”