Blue Smoke and Murder (4 page)

The answer came as soon as the question was asked.

Money.

Those back taxes the lawyer mentioned. Modesty would have known that selling the breeding stock for tax money meant the end of the ranch.

Frowning, Jill thought about the gallery’s letter.

Modesty sent one painting to an appraiser, who sent it to unnamed “others,” and then she was told the unsigned painting was essentially worthless. And lost, by the way. So sorry.

Why would someone offer two thousand dollars for a worthless painting?

Simple. The painting isn’t worthless.

Or is it just that the insurance people don’t want a court hassle over a missing painting of problematic value?

“Probably a cheap way to avoid an expensive lawsuit,” she told herself.

Or not.

Jill looked at the other paintings. She really didn’t like what she was thinking.

Modesty wouldn’t have lugged the paintings, the leather portfolio, and the old steamer trunk to the homestead cabin unless she was worried about the safety of the paintings.

Or she was crazy.

Life isn’t as safe as it seems to the young.

Jill had a hard time thinking of her great-aunt as crazy. Snake mean? Sure. Hard as a whetstone? No problem. Man-hater? Definitely. Crazy?

Like a fox.

She looked at her watch. By the time she drove into town, the lawyer would have closed his office, the county records would be locked for the night, and the sheriff would be eating dinner at the Rimrock Café. He wouldn’t take well to being interrupted by anything less urgent than life and death.

Modesty’s death didn’t qualify. It was yesterday’s news.

“Looks like life isn’t real safe for the old, either,” Jill said to the paintings.

Silence answered.

Yet something had made Modesty move the paintings and family papers out of the ranch house. Within days or weeks of shifting the trunk, she’d died in a household accident while filling the old fuel stove in the middle of a cold night.

And the painting she’d sent out for appraisal was missing.

Unhappily, Jill looked from painting to painting, each breathtaking, each unsigned.

Why would a “great artist,” according to my mother, not sign paintings?

Why did Modesty keep the paintings secret so long?

No matter how long Jill looked at the canvases, they didn’t have answers for her. They simply murmured to her of the lonely grandeur of living in the demanding freedom of the West.

Modesty’s life.

Modesty’s death.

Jill looked at her watch again. She’d see the lawyer and sheriff in Blessing tomorrow. In fifteen minutes the rate on her costly satellite phone connection would go down, a reflection of local business hours.

She took her digital camera out of her backpack, hesitated over the paintings, and finally chose the three smallest. After taking several pictures, she pulled out her computer and downloaded the best images. Quickly she searched the Net for high-end Western art gal
leries within a day’s drive. She chose Fine Western Arts in Snowbird, owned by Ramsey Worthington. Worthington had several galleries, all in high-end Western resorts. Plus he was the owner of the Best of the West, an auction house that was setting up to be the new Sotheby’s.

If the ads could be believed.

After deliberating about who had the next-snottiest ad, she chose Vision Quest Gallery in Taos, owned by William Shilling. He’d been in business for thirty years at one location, which spoke well of his client list. She chose three more galleries almost at random. All of them were heavy on the Western theme, cowboys and Indians, hardships and manly hunts.

As for the Art of the Historic West gallery in Park City, forget it. They had already lost one of her grandmother’s paintings. That was why Jill was using the JPEGs instead of the paintings as her calling cards.

She didn’t want any more of her heritage getting “misplaced.”

TAOS, NEW MEXICO
SEPTEMBER
12
MORNING

W
hen the buzzer rang on the front door of the Vision Quest Gallery, William Shilling glanced up and immediately pressed the door release. Mrs. Caitlin Crawford was the kind of client gallery owners loved to see at the door. She was beautiful in a classy way, discriminating, and the wife of an older man who could afford to drop seven figures on a painting without his pulse raising.

“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 collect
ing 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.

BLESSING, ARIZONA
SEPTEMBER
12
LATE MORNING

S
heriff 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.”

Purcell scowled. He was an elder in the Mormon church. His au
thority as sheriff owed more to the church than to the badge clipped to his wide belt. Canyon County was a God-fearing place, one of the last frontiers of decency in an increasingly depraved nation.

“But the temple doesn’t forgive a runaway woman,” Jill said. “A male sinner, sure. A female? Never.”

Purcell straightened his spine. “Spoken like a true Breck. But that’s neither here nor there. You have a copy of the death certificate and the coroner’s report. Modesty Breck tripped, broke her thick skull on the iron stove, dropped the fuel can, and caused the fire that burned down the old ranch house and spread to the barn.”

For a long moment the room was silent except for the ticking of a grandfather clock in the corner. It had been keeping time in a lawman’s office since before the Arizona Territory became an official state of the United States of America. And that lawman had probably been a Purcell.

Jill grimaced.
Too bad a lot of people in the rural West haven’t caught on to statehood and the reality of the twenty-first century.

“There’s no motive, no reason for anybody to do anything to your great-aunt,” Purcell said, looking at his watch. “Whatever insult the Breck women laid upon the church was a long time ago. These days, believers don’t hold those kinds of grudges. Nobody around here wished Modesty any harm. Nobody thought about her at all unless some drifter was looking for work, and then we sent them out to the Breck ranch.”

“What about the paintings?” Jill asked.

“What about them? That letter you showed me was pretty plain about the fact that they weren’t worth anything. Take the insurance settlement they offered and consider yourself lucky.”

“But why would Modesty suddenly move the paintings to my place and leave me a note saying life isn’t as safe as I think?”

Purcell snorted. “I followed up with one of the appraisers your aunt tried to employ, a nice young man up near Salt Lake. He as good as said
right out that the painting she sent him was a fake or a forgery. Maybe Modesty decided the other paintings were dangerous because she tried to pass them off as valuable. That’s a crime, you know. Fraud.”

“But—”

“I’d advise you to keep that in mind, Miss Breck,” the sheriff cut in. “If you try to pass those paintings off as something they’re not, you could end up in real trouble. The criminal kind.”

Jill’s strong hands gripped the arms of the chair. She stared at the lawman and counted to ten. Twenty.

Thirty.

Purcell leaned forward and smiled almost gently. “I know death is hard to accept, especially for an overeducated young woman like you. I just want you to understand that I have acted in good faith in this matter. If I didn’t believe that Modesty’s death was an accident, I’d pursue it to the limit of the law.”

“But you believe that her death was accidental.”

“Me, the fire chief, the coroner, and everyone else who looked at the facts. Modesty Breck was a stubborn old woman, hell-bent on living alone. We also know she was getting more frail. Did you ever think that she might have moved the paintings and papers to your cabin and then not so accidentally killed herself so she wouldn’t be forcibly moved off that ranch for her own good?”

A chill went over Jill. “Are you saying that Modesty meant to die?”

Purcell shrugged. “Given what you told me, suicide is as much within the facts as the verdict of accidental death. If you insist, I’ll reopen the case. But it sure would make collecting any life insurance more difficult. As the beneficiary, that’s something you should think about.”

It took Jill several silent moments to get a grip on her temper.

Purcell was everything she and the Breck women had hated about the Mormon West. If Jill wanted any answers to her questions, she’d have to find them herself.

She thought again of the card Joe Faroe had given her, then dismissed it. She wasn’t being stalked. The only danger she was in was losing control and assaulting an officer of the law.

“Thank you for your time, Sheriff. I won’t be bothering you again.”