Elizabeth Lowell - Blue Smoke and Murder

Eyes closed, she listened to the wind playing with the cottonwood leaves. At the rate the temperature was falling, the leaves soon would be turning sunshine yellow and flying away.

What if Purcell is right? What if Modesty meant to die?

The wind blew harder.

Jill rolled over again.

What if she didn’t?

With a word she rarely used in front of clients, Jill kicked out of her sleeping bag.

“Never should have had that extra cup of coffee,” she muttered, coming to her feet in a rush.

But she didn’t have to pee and it wasn’t caffeine keeping her awake. If she was up and prowling around, it was because she was too restless to lie still anymore.

“Maybe one of the galleries has sent me an e-mail.”

And maybe not.

She thought of going to the hideout in the back of the pantry and looking at the paintings again, just to reassure herself that they were really real.

“It took you half an hour to wrap them and put them away. Do you really want to-”

The satellite phone rang, cutting across her words.

“Guess I’m not the only one awake.” She picked up the bulky unit, looked at caller ID, and saw “private caller.” Pretty much what she expected. Most cell phones didn’t register on the land-based system, much less on the satellite phone.

She hated accepting unknown calls at satellite rates.

It rang again.

“It’s got to be better than talking to myself. And the rates are real low right now.” She punched a button, and said, “Hello?”

“Jillian Breck?” The voice was oddly thick, like someone with a plugged nose.

“Yes. Who are you?”

“Blanchard. I’m a Western art dealer. I understand that you have some paintings I’d be interested in seeing. That true?”

Jill frowned. She didn’t remember sending an e-mail to anyone called Blanchard. But he easily could be working for one of the galleries she’d sent messages to.

“You have me at a disadvantage,” she said slowly. “Are you sure you’re calling the right number?”

“I understand a relative of yours tried to sell a canvas near Salt Lake City. That true?”

She shifted uneasily, remembering the sheriff’s warning: If you try to pass those paintings off as something they’re not, you could end up in real trouble. The criminal kind.

“Mr. Blankford-”

“Blanchard.”

“Sorry. I think you’ve been misinformed.”

“You don’t know about a dozen Western landscapes that have been in the Breck family for a long time?”

Silently Jill absorbed that Blanchard knew more about the paintings than had been included in her e-mail to various galleries.

What she didn’t know was if that was good or bad.

“My great-aunt submitted a canvas that had been in the family for appraisal,” Jill said neutrally, “but I wasn’t aware that she’d spoken to anyone about paintings other than the one she sent to Park City, not Salt Lake City.”

“The Western art world is small and real close.” The caller coughed hoarsely. “The canvas your relative sent made the rounds of a number of dealers. She hasn’t answered my follow-up letter, so I’m trying you.”

Jill’s voice tightened. “Modesty Breck is dead.”

“Huh. Sorry to hear it. Do you have the painting she sent out?”

“It was lost.”

Blanchard made a sound that could have been a laugh or a smoker’s cough or he could have been choking on something.

He cleared his throat. “What about the other paintings? They lost, too?”

Jill hesitated, then shrugged. She had put out lures in the shape of JPEGs, and someone had bitten.

“Which gallery are you with?” she asked.

“I work with several. Do you have any paintings like the first one your great-aunt sent out?”

“The paintings have been in the family so long nobody knows much about them. My great-aunt believed they were quite valuable.”

“Your great-aunt must have watched too much Antiques Road-show,” Blanchard said, impatience giving an edge to his hoarse voice. “We run into that a lot in this business. People look at a show on public television and get the idea that an old family trinket has huge value.”

“If the pictures aren’t valuable, why are you interested?”

The man blew his nose. “’Scuse me. I’m just trying to save you some trouble. Any family paintings of yours might have historical value, maybe a few thousand dollars, but they’re not by some great artist. If there are other paintings, you should be very careful with them. Passing counterfeits off as original works is called fraud.”

Jill felt a chill, then exhilaration, like the sensation she experienced when she pushed off into the maelstrom of a big rapid. As a river runner, she knew what she was doing, and there was always an element of risk.

That’s why she did it.

Blanchard, whoever and whatever he was, knew more about these paintings than she did.

And Modesty was dead.

“Funny thing,” Jill said. “This is the second time today somebody has warned me about the paintings.”

“Maybe we know more about the situation than you do.”

“That wouldn’t be hard,” she said dryly. “That’s why I’m asking questions of experts.”

“You don’t seem to like the answers.”

“What I really don’t like is the fact that the painting my great-aunt sent out is missing,” she said.

“I heard something about that. Wasn’t sure it was true, though.”

“As you mentioned, you’re a close community,” Jill said. As in closed. “Even people I don’t send JPEGs to hear about them.”

He coughed again. “’Scuse. Getting over a cold. I’m interested enough in those paintings to want to see them in the flesh, rather than electronically. How many did you say there were?”

“I didn’t.”

“You’re a lot smarter than your great-aunt was. How about this? We’ll set up a meet in a public place,” Blanchard said. “You choose it.”

“Where are you?”

“Anywhere you want me to be, any time, as long as you have those paintings with you. How about it?”

Jill hesitated the same way she did before nosing into the approach to Lava Falls.

I’ve chosen my course. Now I have to bail out or go with it.

She certainly didn’t want to meet Blanchard at the Rimrock Café. She wanted a place where she didn’t know anyone and no one knew her.

“Ms. Breck?” he asked.

She took a deep breath and headed toward the heart of the rapids. “Meet me tomorrow at 6:00 p.m. near Mesquite, Nevada, in the casino at the Eureka Hotel. I’ll be at the penny slots wearing jeans, river sandals, and a black T-shirt that says Spawn Till You Die.”

Blanchard gave a bark of laughter, coughed, and said, “I’m in east Texas now. Get a room in case I miss connections, okay? Weather’s tricky at this time of year. And bring those paintings with you. I really can’t tell what they’re worth unless I actually see them.”

He hung up before she could agree or disagree.

She punched out and stared at the phone. It was the first time she’d ever shoved off into bad rapids without getting a good look at the water. The adrenaline she was used to.

The fear was something new.

Again she thought of Joe Faroe and St. Kilda Consulting.

No. I’m not a little girl who needs her hand held in the dark by a big strong man. The casino is a public place with lots of money and therefore lots of guards and cameras.

I’ll be safer than I am on the river.

SEPTEMBER 13

3:00 P.M.

Jill parked in the huge, dusty lot of the Eureka Hotel. She looked at the belly pack on the passenger seat, weighed the satellite phone in her hand, and decided to leave the expensive means of communication in the car. The throwaway cell phone she’d bought for emergencies worked just fine in this location. She stashed the satellite phone under the passenger seat, locked the car, and walked through the parking lot toward the lobby check-in.

The desert wind had painted a fine layer of grit over the long-haul trucks and RVs parked at the back of the lot, and the cars of the tourists who had been sucked off the highway by the promise of excitement.

She didn’t understand the lure. The river took care of her adrenaline needs.

An inch beyond the parking lot and hotel, the desert waited, untouched and patient, knowing that wind, sun, and time would eventually grind down civilization and its sprawling greed.

She’d rather have walked into the desert. But she didn’t. She went to the hotel. The moment she opened the front door, she got a dose of stale, smoky air. Yet the huge neon sign out front advertised smoke-free lodging.

It also advertised instant money, loose slots, and the best gambling in Nevada.

Living proof that you shouldn’t believe everything you read.

“Sure doesn’t smell smoke free,” Jill said to the desk clerk.

The clerk wore makeup like she was still the showgirl she’d been twenty years and forty pounds ago.

“Rooms are smoke free,” the clerk said. “In fact, there’s a five-hundred-dollar room-cleaning charge if you smoke in your room. You want to smoke, go to the casino. It’s allowed there.”

“And the air-conditioning for the hotel and casino comes from a single central unit, right?”

“Yeah. Sign here, initial the notification of nonsmoking, the fine if you do, and length of stay,” the woman said automatically. “Your room is through the casino to the elevators, fourth floor. Turn right and follow the room numbers.”