Elizabeth Lowell - Blue Smoke and Murder

The price was six to eight million dollars.

Zach watched Jill’s eyes widen and knew that she’d reached the bottom line.

“That painting is one of the centerpieces of the Las Vegas Auction of Fine Western Art,” he said.

“Wow.”

“That’s one word for it. Worthington has pulled out all the stops on this one. Russell, Remington, Howard Terpning, Joseph Sharp, Blumenschein. If you believe the hype, this will be some of the best Western art in a generation to go under the gavel.”

“Does Whatshisname-the big Dunstan collector-own this?” she asked, pointing to the painting called Ruby Marsh.

“Talbert Crawford?”

“Yes.”

“No, this belongs to Dunstan’s son.”

“The one who savaged Waverly-Benet’s reputation?”

“The same,” Zach said.

“The one who said my paintings were frauds?”

“Yeah.”

“Jerk,” she said.

“Probably.” Zach leaned over her and scrolled back through some Web pages on the computer. “Take a look at this.”

Jill sat at the table, angled the computer screen again, and began reading an article with a Carson City logo and yesterday’s date.

Leading figures in the State’s art community are expected to announce major donations to the collection of paintings that will be showcased in a new wing of the Museum of Nevada and the West in Carson City.

Announcements planned for later in the week will involve contributions by such well-known collectors as Tal Crawford, prominent investor and owner of a large ranch east of the Carson Valley.

Crawford has been engaged in discussions with state arts officials about his plans to contribute a number of major works to the museum.

A spokesman for Crawford would not confirm specific donations but did acknowledge that the collector has accumulated “probably the biggest collection of Western art in the state, particularly a large number of works by Thomas Dunstan, who is regarded as one of the most important landscape painters in the West.

“Mr. Crawford has always prided himself on sharing these important works with the rest of the world,” the spokesman said.

Sources in the governor’s office said they hope to have an announcement regarding the exact donation by next week.

“So that’s what Frost meant by Bigfoot,” Jill said, looking at Zach.

“Saturday. That’s the auction, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Day after tomorrow,” he agreed absently, his mind on Crawford, Western paintings, politics, and auctions.

“I keep thinking that what Frost was trying to tell us had something to do with the paintings.”

“A thumbs-up for authenticity?”

She frowned. “Maybe. Or maybe it had to do with the auction itself. Got any more coffee?”

“I’ve been meaning to speak to you about your caffeine habit,” Zach said, reaching for the pot.

“Yeah, I know. I really should drink more coffee. Beginning now.” She held out her empty mug.

Smiling, Zach refilled it. “I don’t think Frost gave me a thumbs-up for the authenticity of the paintings.”

“Why?”

“As long as I knew Frost, he never used that particular gesture. He’d spent too much time in Australia, where it means something entirely different.”

“Really? What?”

“Up your arse.”

Jill sputtered, swallowed hard, and cleared her throat. “I’d like a spew alert when I’m having morning coffee.”

Zach smiled, kissed her slowly, and rubbed his bristly chin. “I’ll let you drink in peace. I’m going to call Faroe and have him put something on research’s pile. Then I’m going to do what I should have yesterday.”

“What?”

“Shave.”

“Itchy?” she asked.

“How’d you guess?”

“Guys on the Colorado always complain about grow-out itch. But not as much as they whine about monkey butt.”

He paused before he took a final drink of coffee. “Monkey butt?”

“You ever been to the zoo and seen the butts on female baboons when they’re in heat?”

He nodded warily.

“You sit on a rowing bench in a swimsuit, rubbing back and forth as you go down the river, getting doused with gritty water at the rapids,” she said, “and pretty soon you have monkey butt.”

“Bright red and tender as hell?”

She nodded.

“Shaving doesn’t help?”

She cringed. “Don’t even think it.”

“Okay. I’ll go shave my monkey face.” Zach started to leave, then stopped when he saw Jill eyeing his computer. “If you want to play, use Frost’s computer. Mine has some tiger traps built in.”

“Tiger traps and monkey butt. We’re quite the pair.”

Zach’s whiskey-colored eyes met hers. He smiled, but his eyes were very serious. “Yeah, we are.”

SAN DIEGO

SEPTEMBER 16

9:10 A.M.

Lane Silva Faroe watched his tiny baby sister sleeping in the antique cradle next to a bank of high-tech computers. His father was talking in one phone, had a second on hold, and was participating in a conference with Ambassador Steele via computer.

His mother was up to her ears in legal texts at a nearby desk. Something about the rights of foreigners in Zimbabwe. Or maybe it was Venezuela.

And every time his little sister twitched, his parents looked at her.

Must be some kind of built-in parental radar, Lane decided.

As much as he enjoyed having a new baby sister, he was getting restless. With everyone around him so overwhelmed by work, he felt useless.

Like a baby.

Faroe hung up one phone, picked up the other, listened, and said, “I’ll add it to the pile at Research, Zach. But since it isn’t a code three, don’t hold your breath.” He hung up and made a note.

“Dad?” Lane said.

“Yeah?” Faroe answered without looking away from his notepad.

“I’m done with my homework, I’ve wrapped up my special project, and I want to help with the Jill Breck, uh, project.”

“How?”

“Well, I heard you telling Zach that Research was jammed up and he’d have to get in line unless it was a balls-to-the-wall code three.”

Faroe’s mouth curved in a small smile. “Did I say that? Hope little Annalise was asleep.”

“All she does is sleep and poop. And eat.”

“Living is a full-time job for a baby.”

“I could swarm Zach’s topic.”

Faroe blinked and turned toward his son. Like him, Lane was long and lanky. Unlike him, Lane hadn’t grown into his frame.

Or his patience.

“Run that by me again in English,” Faroe said.

“Whatever Zach wants to find out about is a topic,” Lane said with exaggerated patience. “Swarming is getting together with a bunch of other key jockeys and researching a topic using all the different search engines.”

“Swarming.”

“Yeah. Can I? All I need is some search words.”

“Give it to him,” Grace said without looking up from the legal reference she was reading. “He wants to help the lady who saved his life.”

Faroe checked the computer screen again. Nothing new. He looked at the notes he’d taken from Zach, then ripped off the piece of paper and handed it to his son.

“Swarm on,” Faroe said.

Lane snatched the piece of paper and ran back to his room, mentally listing the online buddies he could get to help him. He knew five for sure. And each of them probably knew four or five.

And each of them…

Swarming.

TAOS

SEPTEMBER 16

9:14 A.M.

Jill gave up on the paintings and the black light. No matter how hard or long or where she looked, she didn’t see anything exciting. She glanced toward Frost’s computer. It was either shut down or sleeping. The screen was dark.

Maybe it wasn’t something he found in the paintings.

Maybe it was something he found online.

She went to Frost’s computer. Unlike Zach’s, this was a Mac, the kind she owned. Except this one was twice as big. The screen was huge. But the OS was the same. She could use it with her eyes closed.

A tap on the enter key woke up the computer.

So he was using it last night.

Or he’s one of those people who never shut down.

She sat at the desk and pulled the computer closer. The screen showed the same Web site that Zach’s had, but a different Dunstan painting.

Once more, Jill fell under the spell of a landscape that was both evocative and precisely detailed. Dunstan had a grasp of perspective-and an ability to execute his inner vision-that made the artist in Jill frankly envious. Dunstan’s works captured the broad sweep of the West in a way that was both nineteenth-century romanticism and twentieth-century hardheaded realism.

She sighed, hesitated, and told herself that she wasn’t invading someone’s privacy. She just needed to find out what Frost had tried to say before he went into shock. If the computer could help her, then she had every right to use it. Too many people had been hurt since Modesty had sent the first painting out for appraisal.

It still didn’t feel right to snoop in Frost’s computer.

“Maybe I should wait for Zach,” she said under her breath. “And maybe I should just sit in a corner and whine. Life isn’t fair, much less polite. Get over it.”

She went to the browser’s pull-down menu and opened the “history” file. A list of the Web sites that Frost had viewed recently appeared.

Even better, there was a memory cache on the computer that gave her a choice of searching sites that had been viewed in the past hours, days, and weeks.

Again, some of the sites were ones that Zach had visited. The same, yet there was a difference she couldn’t put her finger on. Not surprising. A search was as individual as the person and/or search engine that initiated it.

Web addresses for Thomas Moran dominated Frost’s search. Granted, Moran was the artist Dunstan was frequently compared to, especially in terms of emotional impact, but some of the other artists Frost had viewed ran the gamut from modern to post-modern to thin slices of the art world that she’d never studied.

Then she noticed that the word fingerprint was in bold type at all the sites.

The kitchen door opened and closed. “Jill?”

“In the great room,” she called out.

Freshly shaved and showered, Zach strode into the room. A mug of coffee steamed in his hand. He looked at her bent over the computer like a miser counting gold. Her body language was a study in intensity.

“Find anything useful?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

Something in her voice made adrenaline slide into his blood, more potent than any caffeine. “What do you have?”

“After we went to bed, Frost was on the computer.”

Zach smiled with hot memories. “Hope it was good for him, too.”

Jill snickered, but didn’t look up from the list of sites. “He was searching for fingerprints.”

Zach paused in the act of drinking coffee. “Keep talking.”

She gave him the highlights of the sites she’d hit so far. “In the second half of the twentieth century, it was fairly common for artists to authenticate their paintings with more than a signature. Finger-or thumbprints, mostly thumbprints.”

“Too bad Dunstan was dead by then.”

“So was Thomas Moran, and he used a thumbprint.”

Zach came to a point. “Yeah?”

“Moran started out signing his name just like everyone else,” Jill said, reading quickly from the notes she’d made. “In the middle of his life, he added a Y as a middle initial after art critics called him Yosemite Moran because he painted so many canvases there.”

Zach wanted to tear the computer out of her hands, but restrained himself. Barely. “Anything else?”

“Then, early in the 1900s, Moran began to sign his canvases and leave a thumbprint along the edge of the canvas that was rolled-pulled-over the stretcher. A lot of modern artists make that part of the canvas a continuation of the painting itself. Kind of a self-frame.”

Zach made a sound that said he was listening.

She read from the computer and paraphrased quickly. “One of Moran’s brothers tried to cash in on the master’s reputation by creating spectacularly inferior canvases and signing them ‘Moran.’”