Elizabeth Lowell - Blue Smoke and Murder

When he finished with all the court papers he said, “Nothing new. Just bureaucracy at work. Justine pleaded self-defense. The judge slapped her wrist for public drunkenness and discharging a firearm within city limits, and limited the punishment to time already served, plus a year of probation, blah blah blah.”

“Like Sheriff Purcell told us-the judge was new to Canyon County. Is that all that was in the file? What about the handwritten letter?”

“It was listed under Dunstan’s property. Must have had it on him when he was arrested.”

“So read it to me,” Jill said.

“Handwriting is spidery. The light wasn’t real good when I took the picture. Ink is faded.”

“Meaning you can’t read it?”

“Meaning I’ll have to PhotoShop it.” Zach called up another program, ran the JPEGs of the letter through the works, and came out with something that was close to readable. “Okay, here we go. It’s dated about two weeks before Dunstan died.”

Jill let out a long breath. And waited.

And waited.

She glanced over. Zach was reading with an expression of shock on his face.

“What is it?” she demanded.

“If it’s what I think it is, the last half of the pin just came out of the grenade.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Be glad you’re sitting down. The letter is from Justine to Dunstan.” Zach started reading aloud. “‘By the time you read this, I will be gone. My mother and grandmother both had husbands who raised their fists to their wives. Even if you were my husband, I would not take your beating with folded hands and pleas for mercy from you or your God.’”

Jill muttered something and flexed her fingers. “I wish she’d shot him in the balls.”

“Way too small a target.” Zach continued reading, “‘Whatever we had is as dead as yesterday’s fire. I should never have taken you as a lover. Not because it was a sin against God and society, but because you are a liar and a cheat. You used me for your own ends; then you beat me because your pride was humbled by my talent. We both know the truth, even if we never spoke it aloud. Without me, your fame as an artist is at an end, for I am far more than your Scarlet Muse.’”

Jill made an odd sound.

Zach kept reading aloud. “‘To paint honestly I must live honestly. Do not think to write me and tell me how much you love me. Do not think to beg forgiveness for something you will surely do again if I permit it. It is not within me to forgive any more than it is within you to leave your loveless, respectable marriage.’” Zach shook his head. “It’s signed Justine.”

“Now what?” Jill asked.

Instead of answering, Zach went back to the computer, opened files, compared JPEGs from the arrest with the best photos he’d taken of the bottom edge of Frost’s Dunstan paintings. Frowning, Zach zoomed in and compared some more. He was no expert, but it looked to him like a match.

He started laughing softly.

“What?” Jill asked.

“Just thinking of Worthington and his oration about the essence of masculinity and Duncan’s iconic status in Western art. Guess Justine must have clanged when she walked.”

“Are you saying…?”

“I sure am. Justine wasn’t Dunstan’s Scarlet Muse,” Zach said. “The thumbprints on the paintings are hers, not his. She was the artist. All he did was put a man’s name on the finished canvas.”

“That’s why the family paintings weren’t signed by Dunstan,” Jill said “But they’re as much a Dunstan as anything he did sign. What is the going rate for ‘Dunstans’ in the auction catalogue?”

“Enough to make murder real profitable.”

HOLLYWOOD

SEPTEMBER 16

3:35 P.M.

Score read the transcript, reread it, and then read it a third time. Though his face was flushed, his hand was fairly steady as he set the transcript aside and looked at his eager employee.

“Well, that wraps it up,” he said, forcing a smile. “You earned yourself a few days off. See you next Monday.”

“Yes!” Amy said with a force that made her hair bounce.

She rushed out of his office, shutting the door hard behind her in case her boss changed his mind.

Score fisted his hands and glared at the door like a man hoping for…something.

Anything.

Just not what he already had.

There weren’t many options left. St. Kilda had the paintings, which meant that it would take a truck bomb to destroy them. He didn’t fancy his chances of walking away from that kind of op free, much less alive.

At least Frost is out of the picture, Score thought angrily. Hurray for our side.

The Breck bitch is a lot easier to get to. Take her out of the game, and the game’s over.

And there’s just one op with her.

He sat in the chair for a long time, vibrating with anger, thinking about ways and means of “accidental” death.

Fire was his personal favorite, but he wasn’t inclined to use it again. Kidnapping and disposal was an option. Unfortunately, it would take more than one person to do it right. Another person was a potential witness for the prosecution.

Or a potential blackmailer.

Drowning was good, but the targets were a long way from deep water. Car crashes worked only if the local coroner had the brains of a flea. Otherwise an autopsy would prove that the victims were dead before the crash. A robbery gone wrong was an old favorite, but not his first or even his second choice.

He really didn’t want St. Kilda crawling up his ass. Word on the street was that if a St. Kilda op died on the job, Ambassador Steele got even. Always.

No matter how long it took.

But only if there’s a trail of blame to follow.

Score thought about calling the client and saying, Sorry, no can do. Here’s my bill.

It might be the smart thing to do.

And it would be really dumb for business. When word got out that he’d turned a straightforward black-bag job into a gigantic goat roping, he’d lose his high-end clients real quick.

When the reputation that kept him in business was part of the ante, busting out of the game wasn’t an option.

Motionless but for the pulse beating hard in his neck, Score went through everything again, thinking through the probable fallout from each course of action, all the ways of clouding the blame trail, leaving someone else to take the fall with St. Kilda or the law.

Then he went through the options all over again, searching for anything that he might have overlooked the first time through. When his temper was riding him, he had to be extra careful.

He read the transcript a fourth time. After a few more minutes of thinking, he put the sheets through the cross-shredder, along with every other piece of paper from this case. When the confetti machine finally fell silent, he was a little calmer. He keyed his way into the mainframe computer, accessed Amy and Steve’s machines, and erased everything to do with the case.

Then he wiped the master files.

And the hard disks that had held them.

Score had used enough computer files in court to know that they were a double-edged sword. He didn’t want anything coming back on this case to bite his ass.

When he was sure he’d cleaned up all traces of the case in the business computers, he reached for the phone. Blowing smoke was a long chance, but it was the best chance he had of winning the game.

And he would win.

They didn’t call him Score for nothing.

SNOWBIRD

SEPTEMBER 16

4:10 P.M.

Ramsey, you better take this,” Cahill said. “Lee Dunstan calling from Las Vegas.”

Irritably Worthington looked up from overseeing the last of the auction’s paintings being loaded into a van for the trip to the airport. “What’s his problem?”

“Something you don’t want me yelling across a crowded room.”

With a hissed word, Worthington turned to the people loading the van. “All right, you have your instructions. I expect to see every one of these paintings and sculptures fully and completely intact when I get to the Golden Fleece tonight.”

“Yes, sir,” the boss said. She turned and called over her shoulder at a young man who’d stumbled on the loading ramp, “Slow down, Murphy. You’re not at UPS anymore. Nobody’s holding a stopwatch on you.”

Worthington turned and stalked through the back entrance of the gallery, where Cahill was waiting.

“I don’t have time to hold Lee’s hand,” Worthington said savagely.

“You have time for him on this. Trust me.”

Worthington disengaged the hold button and said with false cheer, “Hello, Lee. Getting excited about the auction?”

“You could say that.” At the other end of the line, Lee gave his wife a defiant salute with a half-empty whiskey glass and took an eye-watering swallow. “Ramsey, old buddy, we have a problem. The bitch is back.”

“Are you drunk?” Worthington asked in a clipped voice.

“Getting there. So will you when the auction blows up in your face on Sunday. The ten million a painting that everyone is counting on will be lucky to be half that.”

“Sweet Jesus.” Worthington tried for patience. The closest he got was “I don’t have time to listen to your drunken blather.”

“Too bad.” Lee smiled grimly. He hadn’t allowed himself a tear-down-the-town drunk in a long time. He was looking forward to it. Maybe he’d never wake up. “You’ve got less than two days to prove that Justine Breck didn’t paint what Thomas Dunstan signed.”

Worthington looked at the ceiling, but there weren’t any answers. “Is Betty there?”

Lee looked at the pale, strained face of his wife. She was dressed in the worn jeans and faded work shirt of the rancher’s daughter she once had been.

“She ain’t the bitch I’m talking about,” Lee said.

With a silent curse, Worthington covered the phone pickup and snarled at Cahill. “What the hell is happening?”

“All I know is that Lee Dunstan is saying that his daddy didn’t paint the Thomas Dunstans we’ll be auctioning off Sunday,” Cahill said. “Justine Breck did.”

“Ridiculous,” Worthington snapped. He took his hand off the phone. “I don’t have time for this nonsense. Put Betty on the line.”

“Sure. I need another whiskey anyway.” Lee motioned to his wife. “He wants to talk to you.”

Betty watched her husband walk toward the hotel’s liquor cabinet. He wasn’t staggering yet, but he would be soon.

I knew it was too good to be true, she thought bitterly. Five million a painting was outrageous. Ten million was just plain greedy.

She picked up the phone. “I’m sorry, Ramsey. Tal just called and was screaming at Lee so hard I heard him clear across the room. So Lee called you.”

Worthington dug his thumb into the skin between his eyebrows, trying to shut down the headache that had come out of nowhere. “What the hell is going on?”

“His wife picked up a blind call warning that someone was going to try to sink the auction by claiming our paintings were done by Justine Breck, not Thomas Dunstan.”

“Betty, Betty.” Worthington’s thumb dug in deep enough to leave a crescent mark from his nail. “It would take far more than an unsubstantiated rumor to convince someone of any artistic sophistication at all that the Dunstans aren’t exactly what we know they are-paintings by one of our greatest Western artists. A competitor is simply trying to cause trouble before the auction. A tempest in a teapot, that’s all.” Or a bit of extortion. Hardly the first time-or the last.

“But what about the thumbprint?” she asked.

Worthington wondered how Betty knew that he was trying to dig a hole in his forehead with his thumb. “What thumbprint?”

“The ones on the Dunstan paintings that belong to Justine, not to Thomas Dunstan.”

“Betty.” Worthington took a better grip on the phone and his exasperation. It’s always something before a big auction, and it’s always at the worst possible time. “Even if his lover’s fingerprints were all over the canvases, all it would prove is that Justine was with Dunstan when the paintings were created. Since Dunstan didn’t paint unless his Scarlet Muse was with him, finding her fingerprints on the canvas would hardly be earth-shattering. Even if the identity of the owner of the purported fingerprints could be proved, which is highly doubtful.”