Elizabeth Lowell - Blue Smoke and Murder

An artist’s true signature was in the brushstrokes, the energy, the choice of colors, the feel of space or the lack of it, the feel of peace or the lack of it, all the thousands of small artistic decisions that added up to one uniquely Dunstan canvas.

These were Thomas Dunstans.

All Frost had to do was prove it.

Exhilaration bubbled through him, giving him the kind of charge that he thought he’d lost to age. But it was all there, all waiting, needing only the introduction of something worthy of interest into a life that had slowly gone stale.

He felt like waking up Zach and hugging him. But he suspected Zach wouldn’t welcome the interruption.

Smiling, Frost did what he’d done many times in the past few hours. He picked up each canvas in turn and examined it front, back, and sides. He was missing something important. He knew it.

He just didn’t know what it was.

With an impatient sound he opened the laptop that he used for research. He scanned again the mentions he had found of Dunstan, the old photos of his work, the learned words describing the indescribable.

“Idiots and fools,” Frost muttered. “Especially Lee Dunstan. Man no more knows art than horseshit knows heaven.”

Absently Garland ran his fingertips lightly over the side of the Indian Springs canvas, thinking about Dunstan and art and life and the unknown. When he realized that his fingertips returned to the same spot on the canvas stretcher again and again, he stopped, then repeated the light movement, this time conscious of what he was doing.

Definitely a different texture.

He flipped the canvas so that it was bottom side up to look at what he’d felt. It could have been just an extra-thick bit of paint that intrigued his fingertips, but he couldn’t be sure in this light. He took the canvas over to his desk, angled the bright light, and frowned over the bottom edge of the canvas wrapped around the stretcher, a part of the painting that wouldn’t show after the canvas was framed.

He switched to black light and turned off the desk lamp. He looked at the result for a minute, then began going over the bottom edge of each painting with the black light.

Halfway through the examination, he was grinning. By the time he was done, he was laughing with the sheer exuberance of having discovered something fresh and wonderful at a time in his life when everything had seemed old and flat.

“Zach, my boy, you’re going to kiss me on all four cheeks in the morning, and what’s more, you’ll thank me for the opportunity.”

Still grinning, Frost started nailing down the truth with some online research.

TAOS

SEPTEMBER 16

1:07 A.M.

Score finished peeing into the empty bottle of Gatorade, capped it off, and set it next to the other one on the floor of the passenger side of the van. When he left town later tonight he’d do what long-distance truckers working on piece rates did-throw the urine-filled bottles out the window along the Interstate.

He checked his computers, found nothing useful on the Breck woman’s phone bug, and decided it was time to go to work. Past time, actually.

The smell of gasoline was making him sick.

He slid out of the van, just one more shadow in the night. As he walked the block and a half to Frost’s place, a spring-loaded sap made his jacket pocket sag and bang against his hip. His silenced pistol dug into the small of his back. The bottle of gasoline he carried in a paper bag did what it had been doing for the past hour-it stank. The shredded Presto log that cushioned the bottle inside the paper waited to help the party along.

Nobody noticed him go up and over the adobe wall.

He walked quickly to the Dodge, saw that the shipping boxes were still inside, and smiled. He gave the rear window a swift, expert smack with the sap. At the impact, safety glass crumbled to glittering pebbles, just as it had been designed to do. No sharp edges to cut flesh.

The alarm yelped in the few seconds it took to light the makeshift fuse on the gas bomb and throw bag and bottle inside the vehicle.

The flash of flame was so fast and so violent, it nearly burned his face.

Mother. Next time I won’t use that much of the log.

But he’d wanted to be very sure that this fire caught and held. He stood beside the wall for a few more seconds, making certain that the flames wouldn’t fizzle.

They burned with a ferocity that cast shadows like a small sun.

Suddenly the front door opened. Score saw a flash of silver hair, yanked out his pistol, and took aim.

Frost’s pistol boomed an instant before Score fired.

TAOS

SEPTEMBER 16

1:11 A.M.

Zach had yanked on his jeans and was running for the guesthouse door before he consciously registered what had awakened him.

“Zach?” Jill asked, her voice husky from sleep.

“Stay here,” he commanded on the way out the door. “Gunshots.”

From the front of the compound, a car alarm barked urgently.

Zach shut the guestroom door and raced barefoot across the courtyard and through the house. His weapon was where he should have been-in the upstairs guestroom.

The front door stood open. Frost was down, red blood glistening in the hall light. A big revolver lay a few inches beyond his right hand.

Fire leaped in the driveway, engulfing the rental car and giving everything inside the adobe wall a hellish glow.

A bullet sang off the metal bell six inches from Zach’s head.

Silencer.

Zach snapped off the lights as he went down hard on the floor next to Frost. With one hand Zach felt for a pulse.

Fast, but there.

He picked up Frost’s revolver, took a two-handed grip, and aimed for a man-shadow that had paused at the top of the adobe wall.

Flames gleamed on dark metal in the shadow’s hand.

The sound of Frost’s gun thundered a second time, then a third, shattering the night. The revolver kicked hard against Zach’s hands, but he’d been expecting it. Frost always said that a gun that didn’t kick like a mule was for girls.

A cry, a curse, and the shadow disappeared over the wall.

Zach came to his feet in a rush and punched in the gate code. As he did, he heard bare feet running down the hall behind him, heard Jill yell his name.

“Call 911,” he shouted over her voice. “Frost is hurt. Stay out of the light. Could be more than one shooter.”

Zach ran to the gate, heard someone running away, and risked a fast look through the slowly opening gate.

A bullet screamed off the metal bars.

He dropped to his stomach and elbow-crawled forward just enough to see that the man was running again. Zach triggered two more closely spaced shots, a double explosion of sound.

A hesitation, then the shadow ran around the corner of the block and vanished.

Zach was on his feet and through the gate in a coordinated rush. Within three strides he was running flat out, chasing the deadly shadow.

TAOS

SEPTEMBER 16

1:12 A.M.

As Zach disappeared through the open gate, Jill dropped to her knees next to Garland Frost. She wanted to scream at Zach to be careful, but it was too late. He was gone and all she could do was try to help Frost.

Even without street or porch lights, she could see that blood was spreading out from above and to one side of Frost’s belt buckle, dripping onto the Navajo rug that warmed the tile floor.

Too much blood.

She snatched the cordless phone off the hall table, punched in 911, and tucked the phone between her ear and shoulder. Before it even rang, she was opening Frost’s shirt, trying to see the extent of the damage. She barely noticed the rental car burning, the stink of plastic, paraffin, particleboard, and raw gasoline. She was wholly intent on Frost.

The operator answered in a calm male voice. “Taos 911. What is the nature of your emergency?”

“Gunshots fired, one man down, a car fire burning out of control,” Jill said. “Garland Frost’s house, Taos. We need an ambulance and we need it now. Fire truck, too. A friend is pursuing the shooter. Both men are armed. I don’t know the address.”

“We just got an alert from the alarm company at Garland Frost’s address. Police units are on the way. Name and age of the victim?”

“Garland Frost, over seventy.”

“Your name, please.”

“Just get here,” Jill said curtly. “I’ll fill out forms later.”

Without hanging up, she set the phone aside and concentrated on Frost. His eyes were open, glittering with reflected flame. His jaws were clenched against pain.

“Garland,” she said in a clear voice as she ripped away his shirt. “Can you hear me?”

His head moved and his eyes focused on her for a few seconds. His mouth opened, but all that came out was a groan. His eyes closed and his body went slack.

One look at his wound told Jill that it was beyond her training. All she could do now was try to keep him from going into shock.

“Garland,” she said calmly, clearly. “You have to help me. Stay with me here. Look at me.”