Elizabeth Lowell - Blue Smoke and Murder

Everyone except Jenson shifted uneasily, carefully not looking at each other.

“Jill went to Garland Frost, a very well known expert on Western art,” Grace said. “While she was at Frost’s house, Harry ‘Score’ Glammis shot Frost and burned the shipping crates he thought contained twelve unsigned Dunstan paintings.”

“What the hell?” Tal muttered.

Caitlin shut her eyes. Her nails cut deeper into her palm.

“The paintings weren’t burned that time, either,” Grace said. “Jill discovered that her paintings and Frost’s two signed, authenticated Dunstans all had the same thumbprint along the lower edge of the stretcher.”

Worthington sat up straighter and looked at the twelve paintings with a combination of lust and horror.

“Jill went to Canyon County to search for a set of Dunstan’s fingerprints. She found it. She also found that the thumbprint on her paintings and Frost’s wasn’t Thomas Dunstan’s.”

“Told you so,” Lee said fiercely. “Lying bitch was-”

“Jill Breck has all of you by the hair your barber doesn’t cut,” Grace interrupted coldly. “I suggest you shut up and listen.”

Lee’s jaw sagged open.

Faroe smothered a smile.

“The thumbprint belonged to Jill’s grandmother, Justine Breck, who was also an artist,” Grace continued smoothly. “Along with the thumbprints on the arrest cards, Jill found a letter in which Justine told Thomas Dunstan that she was through living a lie.”

Lee started ranting again, but it was under his breath.

Faroe stepped from the doorway long enough to let Jill and Zach in. Zach stayed with Faroe, leaning against the wall, wearing pretty much the same clothes as his boss, right down to the weapon harness.

Jenson, who had been taking notes, shoved the tablet away. “All the thumbprints prove is that Justine was with Dunstan when the canvases were painted, a fact that is already well known. She was his muse. He didn’t paint without her.”

Zach grimaced. The lawyer had been well briefed.

“Dunstan didn’t paint without Justine,” Jill said, “but she painted without him. I can prove it. Just as I can prove that Thomas Dunstan signed my grandmother’s paintings in order to sell them into the macho world of Western art.”

“Preposterous,” Jenson said flatly.

Grace’s smile was as cold as her husband’s. She pulled a final piece of paper from the folder. “This is a sworn deposition from Garland Frost, stating that it is his opinion the twelve unsigned canvases were painted by the same artist who produced the known, signed Thomas Dunstans.”

“Even if that proves to be correct,” Worthington said, “it hardly proves that the artist was a woman!”

Zach straightened, walked to the canvases at the front of the room, and picked up Indian Springs. He took it to Worthington.

“It’s unusual for Dunstan to-” Worthington began after barely a glance at the canvas.

“-paint buildings into the landscape,” Zach finished curtly. “But he did paint a few and you know it.”

Reluctantly Worthington nodded.

“Is there anything else about the canvas that makes you question that it’s a Dunstan?” Zach asked.

With an uneasy glance at Tal and Lee, Worthington cleared his throat. “I’d have to study it for-”

“Blah blah blah,” Zach cut ruthlessly. “We’re not in court. If someone walked in and plopped this on your desk, which artist would you immediately think of?”

Worthington sighed and gave in. He had his own reputation to consider. Anyone but an idiot could see what was in front of his face. “Thomas Dunstan, of course. The brushwork, the unflinching evocation of the land, the raking light…” He shrugged. “Dunstan.”

“When Indian Springs was painted, the gas station had just been built,” Jill said, putting a faded photograph next to the canvas. “And Thomas Dunstan had been dead for five years.”

SEPTEMBER 19

5:00 P.M.

Jill walked into a room that had a well-stocked wet bar, comfortable furniture, and a closed-circuit TV screen that was half the size of the wall. At present, the screen showed a mosaic of twelve pictures, various angles on a crowd of people drinking wine, champagne, beer, and whiskey, eating delicate lamb “lollipops” and clever pastries, chatting, and clutching catalogues.

“Wow,” Jill said.

Zach disconnected from his call, put the cell phone in his jeans pocket, and stepped into the room.

“Sports betting is big in Vegas,” he said absently, thinking about what he’d just learned. “The Golden Fleece is more than happy to accommodate the high rollers who want a private party. You can watch lots of games at once or you can have live feed of a single game on the whole screen.”

“Y-gene central,” she said, sitting down on a long, soft leather sofa.

Zach dropped down next to her, putting a dent in the cushion that made her slide toward him. On the low table in front of them there was a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket, an array of savory foods from the auction floor, and a remote controller that had enough buttons to put a satellite in orbit. He picked up the remote and flipped it end for end.

“Welcome to the biggest temporary casino and art bazaar in Las Vegas,” Zach said, aiming the remote at the huge screen. “In the next few hours, somewhere between twenty-five and fifty million dollars worth of art will change hands-not counting the Dunstans that have been withdrawn.”

“Brecks,” Jill said automatically. “They were painted by my grandmother.”

Zach hesitated, then shrugged. “That’s for the art community to decide.”

“But-” She stopped abruptly. Zach was right. She just didn’t like it.

So instead of thinking about the tangle that was Justine’s heritage, Jill watched the mosaic of screens covering the casino’s mammoth ballroom. A stage had been erected across the front of the room, with a podium for the auctioneer and a long bank of phone positions behind. The ballroom floor had been cleared, except for several bartending stations and a dozen banquet tables heavily laden with finger food.

Several hundred people milled around the free food and drink, but even more fanned out to the perimeter of the room, where hundreds of paintings and sculptures were arrayed behind metallic gold ropes.

“It’s not too late,” Zach said abruptly, putting the controller aside.

“For what?” Jill asked.

“To let Ramsey Worthington, Lee Dunstan, and Tal Crawford make you a multimillionaire.”

“I’d rather watch them eat their words about the greatest masculine painter of the American West.”

“You sure? Worthington is right-it will be some time before the art historians sort out the new status of Thomas Dunstan/Justine Breck.”

“Long enough to bankrupt that son of a bitch,” Jill said flatly.

“Which one?”

“The one who’s been pumping up the price of Dunstans and rigging an auction so that he can trade his Dunstans for a whacking tax debt.”

“Tal Crawford,” Zach said.

“That’s the son of a bitch I had in mind,” she agreed.

“By the time he goes bankrupt, your inheritance might be worth thousands, not millions,” Zach pointed out. “Western art collectors can be a macho, pigheaded lot.”

“All the sweeter,” she said with a grim smile.

He hesitated, then decided Jill might as well know what Faroe had just told him. “Even though it was Caitlin, not Tal, who hired Score?”

Jill turned toward him so fast her short hair flew. “What?”

“St. Kilda hacked some phone records,” Zach said, tucking a flyaway strand behind Jill’s ear. “Caitlin Crawford was the one pulling Score’s strings. Paying for it out of her household account, which Tal funded but never asked where it went.”

“Some account,” Jill muttered.

“The rich are different. Bottom line is that Tal didn’t know what his wife was doing.”

“Are you sure?”

“He swore he’d take a lie detector test,” Zach said. “Faroe believes him. Said the old boy about stroked out when his wife screamed at him that he’d ruined everything, that she’d die poor and it was all his fault because he’d lost his business edge.”

Jill didn’t say anything.

“Does that change anything for you?” Zach asked.

“Like what?”

“The auction. Your paintings.”

Jill’s eyes narrowed. Her fingertips tapped a slow rhythm on his thigh.

Zach let her think while he watched the TV. He recognized a surprising number of people from his years with Garland Frost. Men from Texas with beers and bolo ties, women with wineglasses held nipple-high, the better to display their five-and six-carat diamonds. The diamonds were real. Most of the breasts weren’t.

One screen showed a Montana art dealer who wore a rodeo cowboy’s championship belt buckle-one he’d earned the hard way rather than a pawnshop trophy. Another screen showed a pig farmer from Arkansas who owned the second-largest string of slaughterhouses in the West. His wife was the trophy variety, wearing second-skin designer jeans, a lacy flesh-colored bra, and a black suede vest that had been carefully tailored to barely cover her.

Others screens showed a prematurely bald Hollywood producer with so much vanity he shaved and polished his head. Near him was a pleasantly cutthroat venture capitalist with his intelligent, gracious wife.

“She thought she was helping her husband?” Jill asked finally.

“You mean Caitlin?”

“Yes.”