Elizabeth Lowell - Blue Smoke and Murder

“Caitlin, what a pleasure,” Shilling said, hurrying toward her. “May I get you some coffee? It’s quite chilly out.”

The door shut with a sound that suggested complex, durable locks.

“That would be lovely,” Caitlin said, pulling off her black kid gloves and tucking them into a pocket of her black vicuna coat.

“No sugar, no cream, correct?” he asked as he helped her out of her cloud-soft black coat and went to the coffeepot.

“You’re such a sweetheart to remember. And I’m sorry to give you so little notice. Talbert just decided to fly over and check on the new resort. Naturally, I couldn’t pass up a chance to see you.”

Shilling smiled and handed her a fine china cup. The smell of the specially blended roast made an earthy counterpoint to the gallery’s restrained décor.

“You picked a good time,” he said. “I have some paintings I was getting ready to e-mail you about. Really quite thrilling pieces.”

“Dunstans?” she asked quickly.

His smile faded a bit. “Er, no, not really.” Unsigned Dunstans weren’t worth the canvas they were painted on. “There’s a wonderful Blumenschein, a quite nice Sharp, and a small Russell, a lovely little gem. The owner is considering placing them in the Reno auction next year, as it’s too late for proper publicity at the upcoming one in Las Vegas, but he’s willing to consider-”

“No, thank you,” Caitlin interrupted. “We’ll be at the Las Vegas auction, of course. It’s so rare that any Dunstans come on the market.”

“And Talbert always buys them.”

“But of course. As he tells me, what’s the point of collecting if you can’t have the best? All of it.”

Shilling bit back a sigh. Talbert Crawford had become a legend along the Western art circuit. Only the crème de la crème for him.

All of it.

Thomas Dunstan was the best of the best. Unfortunately, the artist hadn’t been the most stable of people. In fact, he’d been an alcoholic of the worst sort. Binge drinker, blackout drunk, and violent. He’d go years without showing a new painting to anybody. But at least he’d had the good sense to destroy his mediocre-or worse-paintings when he was sober. The paintings that survived had became iconic, the essence of the best of Western art.

Of the known Dunstans, Talbert Crawford owned thirteen. The rest were in museums or personal collections. Not for sale, in other words. And Tal had offered a lot of money. He’d even coaxed one out of the Dunstan family collection. Rumor said the cost was seven figures.

“Perhaps it might be time for both of you to expand your collecting horizons,” Shilling said gently. “There are many fine Western painters who-”

“I’m afraid not,” Caitlin murmured. “Not until we’ve bought all the available Dunstans. Talbert is quite firm on that.” Fanatical, in fact. “Breadth in a collection is all very well and good, but depth is crucial.”

“I don’t know of any available Dunstans with unclouded provenance,” Shilling said.

“But I keep hearing rumors of at least one new Dunstan. Perhaps as many as a dozen.”

Silently Shilling condemned the gossip network of Western art collectors. “I’ve heard some rumors, myself.” Seen JPEGs, too. Unsigned canvases, every one. “Naturally I called Ramsey Worthington. Neither one of us can pin down the rumor to a specific collector, curator, or anyone with credentials. It’s like trying to capture smoke in your hands.”

“I traced one rumor back to Park City, the Art of the Historic West gallery,” Caitlin said.

Shilling rubbed a palm over his thinning hair. “Yes, I know of that rumor. The gallery supposedly sent the painting out to several people for appraisal.” He shrugged. “The consensus was that it wasn’t a Dunstan.”

“Still, I’d like to see the painting myself.”

“So would I. In fact, I requested at least a photo.”

“And?” Caitlin said sharply.

“The painting has gone missing. Indeed, there’s growing question whether it ever existed in the first place. The closer the big Vegas auction comes, the wilder the rumors. It happens almost every year. With barely a week to go, you have to expect things like this.”

And Shilling had no intention of adding to rumors that undercut the sale of real, signed art.

Caitlin sipped coffee. A delicate frown line appeared between her dark, elegantly shaped eyebrows. “But this rumor had more substance. I was sure of it.”

Shilling put a professional smile on his face. “Believe me, I had great hopes, too.”

“You’ll tell me if anything else comes along with Dunstan’s name on it?”

“Of course. You and Talbert are always the first on my call list.”

“Good.” She smiled. “If I found out otherwise, I would be very hurt.”

And Shilling would never see another dime of Crawford’s millions.

Both of them knew it.

Neither of them was rude enough to say it out loud.

SEPTEMBER 12

LATE MORNING

Sheriff Ned Purcell rocked his high-backed chair away from the desk and stared at the ceiling.

“The fire was almost a month ago, Miss Breck. The ruling has already been made. Your great-aunt died in an unfortunate accident.”

“I understand,” Jill said evenly. “But considering her note to me, and the convenient loss of one of our family paintings, I feel we should look at things again.”

“Miss…” He bit back an impatient word and looked out the window. The Breck women had been nothing but trouble for a century. Ornery to the bone. “In the big scheme of things, Modesty probably had a part in her own death. Old ladies who live alone shouldn’t try to pour fuel oil into a stove that’s already burning.”

Jill straightened her back against the wooden chair on the other side of the sheriff’s desk. She was real tired of hearing how women shouldn’t be living without the protection and oversight of a man. That point of view was one of the biggest reasons she’d rarely looked back after leaving the Arizona Strip for a college scholarship in California.

“Great-aunt Modesty was born on that ranch,” Jill said. “She lived with that stove her whole life. She was used to doing her own chores, including maintaining old engines and pouring fuel oil, branding and cutting and haying. Frankly, I was having a hard time accepting that she tripped and scattered burning fuel oil all over the kitchen. Then, when I found her note and the old trunk, I really felt the whole matter should be looked at again.”

Purcell picked up the cream-colored Stetson that was as much a part of his uniform as the tooled leather belt with its gun, nightstick, handcuffs, and bullets.

Jill waited. She knew she was irritating the sheriff, but she couldn’t just let all the questions go because the man believed at a gut level that a woman living alone would naturally come to a bad end.

“Maybe Modesty had just been lucky all these years,” Purcell said bluntly. “A woman like her isn’t supposed to live alone.”

A combination of triumph and anger burned in Jill. She hated the assumption of every woman’s inferiority to any man.

“I’m not sure I follow,” she said.

Purcell leaned forward on his elbows. His face was clean-shaven, surprisingly pale for a man who spent so much time outdoors. His lips were thin and flat. He wore a white, pearl-buttoned Western shirt, jeans, cowboy boots, and a bolo tie. He was an elected rural lawman who ran for office every day of his term and dressed accordingly.

“Modesty Breck was a pain in the side to the folks around here,” Purcell said. “She flaunted views that decent people in this county find offensive. More than one person came to me, saying that they thought she was incompetent, that she ought to have more supervision, particularly in her declining years.”

“And there are those who thought she should have had more supervision, especially in her younger days,” Jill shot back. “Some people can’t abide the thought that a woman should choose never to marry, or worse, to leave a church-sanctified marriage and live on her own.”

Red stained the sheriff’s cheekbones. “Modesty Breck was a runaway bride.”

“She never married,” Jill said. “As far as I know, she never even agreed to an engagement.”

“She led on several good men, making them believe she would marry them.”

Jill held her tongue. If legend and gossip were true, Purcell’s father had been one of those eager men. But in the end, Modesty had never found a man she couldn’t live without.

Neither had Jill.

“Modesty’s sister Justine was no better than a prostitute and an adulteress,” Purcell said grimly. “Justine was a drunk who shot her married lover during an argument. My father brought them both in for drunk and disorderly. Justine’s lover was a good man led astray by a flashy, easy woman. He felt so bad about it that he hanged himself in this jail the night they were arrested.”

Jill’s eyes widened. “What?”

“You don’t believe me, I’ll show you the arrest records, fingerprints and all. Purcells have been lawmen here since before Arizona was a state. We take pride in our work.”

Jill didn’t know what to say. She’d heard hints and whispers and speculations, but nothing as plain as Purcell’s words.

“Justine’s bastard daughter, your mother, was a runaway wife who divorced a good man, changed her name back to Breck and never entered a tabernacle again,” Purcell said. “The Breck women are nothing but godless troublemakers.”

“It’s a free country,” Jill said, trying and failing to keep the bite out of her voice. “Including the freedom not to be religious.”