Blue Smoke and Murder sk-4

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “Just like the other ones.”

  Frost’s second canvas had a thumbprint as well.

  “I’ll get the rest of my paintings,” she said.

  Very quickly the vault was lined with upside-down paintings.

  All of them had a thumbprint along the bottom edge of the stretcher, a few inches in from the right side.

  “You’re frowning,” Jill said. “You should be grinning and giving me high fives.”

  “I’m just wondering how unknown thumbprints will stack up in court against droit moral and the entire Western art establishment.”

  “Unknown thumbprints? Don’t you think it stretches credulity to believe that someone other than Dunstan put his thumbprint on all these canvases?”

  “Lawyers live to stretch credulity. It’s how they make money.” Zach said something under his breath. “If only Dunstan had lived twenty years later, his fingerprints would be on file somewhere.”

  “They might be.”

  Zach’s head snapped around toward her. “Where?”

  “Canyon County jail in Blessing. That’s where he hung himself.”

  “They took fingerprints?”

  “All the lawmen in the Purcell family were medieval in their views of women,” Jill said, “but the men prided themselves on being on the cutting edge of law enforcement.”

  “Polygamy excepted?”

  “There’s no polygamy in the Mormon West,” she said sardonically. “That’s just a figment of prurient media imagination. Doesn’t exist.”

  “Makes it a lot easier not to find something if you aren’t looking for it.”

  “Is your middle name Purcell?”

  “God, I hope not.” He grabbed her, kissed her soundly, then released her slowly. “We’ve got too much to do for what I really want to do.”

  She took a deep breath. “Right. What comes first?”

  “I call St. Kilda and start spending money.”

  “Start? You’ve been doing that since we met.”

  “You ain’t seen nothing yet. Framing pictures costs as much as chartering planes.”

  “Why are you framing pictures?”

  “First thing Frost taught me was that when it comes to selling art, presentation is all.” Zach pulled his sat phone out of his back pocket and looked at the battery indicator. Deader than Kelsey’s nuts. “Where’s your sat phone?”

  “Cell is cheaper.”

  “St. Kilda will pay.”

  “I’ll get it.”

  Zach started making lists in his mind. When Jill returned, he took the phone and punched in some numbers. Then he punched in more numbers. Finally he talked to someone long enough to get transferred to Joe Faroe.

  “Faroe here. How’s Frost doing and what happened to your phone?”

  “As well as can be expected and the battery died,” Zach said. “I’m running barefoot, so listen up. I need the same cargo experts I had for yesterday’s flight, and I need them now. Make sure they come ready to party. Have them bring an extra car. And another airplane card. Mine’s about done and I need it for at least one flight immediately.”

  “How’s your own party gear?” Faroe asked.

  Zach felt the weight of the pistol in the holster digging into the small of his back. “Ready, willing, and waiting for an invitation to dance.”

  “Hold.”

  He waited with outward patience while Faroe called logistics and got everything in order.

  “Bet Faroe is regretting the day he insisted on running this whole op himself,” Zach said to Jill. “I outright love giving that man gofer orders.”

  “Have I mentioned that you’re a real Y gene?”

  “You didn’t complain about it after dinner.”

  She smiled slowly. “Sometimes Y genes have a place.”

  “Yeah, and it’s right between-” Zach broke off and listened.

  “You’ll have what you need in half an hour,” Faroe said. “And you’ll have a new sat/cell phone, too. Try not to kill it before the op is over. What’s your destination?”

  Zach thought quickly and then shrugged. They had to file flight plans, and flight plans were public. “Closest airport to Blessing, Arizona, and a car on that end.”

  “Hold.”

  Faroe was gone for only a few moments. “Go to the All West charter agency. A plane will be waiting for you. There will be a car on the other end. Where do you want the cargo to go?”

  “I’ll tell you when I’m not running barefoot.”

  “I’ll be waiting for your call.”

  Faroe punched out before Zach could.

  57

  BLESSING, ARIZONA

  SEPTEMBER 16

  2:30 P.M.

  Sheriff Ned Purcell made Jill and Zach wait for twenty minutes in his outer office. They sat side by side on two straight-backed wooden chairs, like truants waiting for the vice principal.

  Zach shifted on the hard chair and looked over at the receptionist, who also ran the sheriff’s communications center. The desk nameplate announced that she was Margaret Kingston.

  “Would things go a little faster if we told you we chartered a jet to get here?” Jill asked.

  Her voice was sharp. She was the designated bad guy for this duo. Zach hadn’t trusted her to hide her irritation with Purcell’s patriarchal Latter-day Saints approach to civil law.

  The receptionist held up a hand, asking for a moment, then continued toggling switches back and forth, checking records and relaying text messages to units in the field.

  “I told the sheriff that you were out here with a man,” the receptionist said finally, “and that you wanted to talk about your grandmother, who died a long time ago. Not exactly a life-or-death emergency.”

  With that the woman gave her attention back to situations that were more urgent than something that had happened before she was born.

  “All we really want is to go through some of the old jail records,” Jill said.

  “Still need the sheriff,” the receptionist said.

  “Why?” Zach asked.

  “That’s the way it’s done around here,” the receptionist said as she picked up a ringing telephone.

  Zach started to tell her what a waste of everyone’s time that was, remembered that he was the clean-shaved good guy, and shut up.

  The door to the inner office opened. Ned Purcell stuck out his head and gave them the kind of look a plumber gives an overflowing toilet. He jerked his head toward his office, then turned to the receptionist. “Hold my calls for a few minutes, honey.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jill looked at the sheriff walking back into his office and then at the receptionist. “Honey? In the real world, that’s called demeaning at best, sexual harassment at worst. Unless, of course, you’re one of his very own honeys?”

  Kingston ignored her.

  So did the sheriff.

  “Ease up, darling,” Zach said calmly. “The sheriff didn’t mean anything disrespectful.”

  Jill bit off what she wanted to say and gave Zach an adoring look. “I’m sure you’re right, sugar-buns.”

  “Close the door behind you,” was all the sheriff said.

  He settled down in his high-backed leather chair, reached for a can of Diet Coke that sweated on the leather blotter, and took a drink.

  Zach looked at Jill. “Diet Coke? I thought you said the sheriff was an elder in the Church of the Latter-day Saints.”

  “They call Diet Coke ‘Mormon tea,’” she said. “It wasn’t around when Joseph Smith got the good word about coffee and tea being evil, so a lot of Mormons figure soda is okay.”

  Zach closed the door. “Learn something new every day.”

  “You want something from me, or are you just polishing a comedy act?” Purcell asked.

  Zach knew the sheriff would prefer to do business with another man, but he was real tempted to give Jill her head anyway, just for the sport of it. He’d known many men in Purcell’s generation who just hadn’t gotten the message that
women were people. Men like the sheriff weren’t necessarily stupid or corrupt-they were just set in their ways. Like old concrete.

  “The last time Jill was here,” Zach said easily, “you told her that you had records from a time when her grandmother Justine Breck and Thomas Dunstan were brought in. Drunk and disorderly, I believe.”

  Purcell nodded, looking both official and bored-yet he watched Zach with the direct, hard eyes of a man used to summing up other men. He took another swig of Diet Coke.

  “Do you still have the record of the arrest?” Zach asked.

  “It turned out to be more than D amp; D,” Purcell said. “Justine had a.22 rifle. Said her lover was threatening her, so she shot him. He claims that she was the one doing the threatening. She was too drunk to aim good, thank the Lord. Sure did take the starch out of him, though. Bullet burns do that to a man.” He set down the soda. “Anything else? I’m busy.”

  “Were charges brought?” Zach asked.

  “Darn right they were,” Purcell said. “Can’t have a woman shooting a man right on the main street of Blessing.”

  “Might give the other women ideas,” Jill said sweetly.

  Zach quickly asked, “Was Justine Breck kept in the jail here?”

  “The old jail, actually,” the sheriff said. One-handed he crushed the soda can and tossed it into the wastebasket. “We used it for females after the new jail was built. Didn’t have but one or two of them. Women were too busy taking care of families to get into trouble.”

  Jill said something under her breath.

  “What kind of booking procedure was used in those days?” Zach asked, ignoring her comment about sister-wives with the fertility of rabbits and the intelligence of dirt.

  “The best available at the time,” Purcell said. “The men in my family have always been forward thinkers. Photographs, fingerprints, defense lawyers, speedy trials, everything they have back East, we have in Blessing. We might be at the end of the map, but we’re not stupid about the law.”

  Zach nodded and squeezed Jill’s shoulder in warning. They needed the records and the sheriff was the gatekeeper.

  “Yes,” Zach agreed. “I’ve heard good things about this county. Probably comes from having a long line of sheriffs who were raised to do the job right.”

  Jill bit her tongue hard enough to leave skid marks.

  Purcell nodded. His posture relaxed. “We take our obligations seriously. That’s not something a lot of city folks understand.”

  “Did Justine Breck go on trial?” Zach asked.

  The sheriff grimaced. “Breck’s lawyer was too smart to go for a jury trial. The judge was an outsider, new to the job. He felt sorry for Justine, because her lover up and hung himself, so he went against my father’s advice and let the Breck woman go after a few weeks. But the judge did tell her if he ever saw her in court again, he’d throw the book at her. For a wonder, she listened. We never had trouble with her again.”

  “We’d like to see the booking records,” Zach said.

  “Why?”

  “Zach’s boss was once a federal judge and is now a high-powered lawyer,” Jill said. “She assured me that such records are public. If you don’t agree with her, she’ll have a warrant here before you can say Mormon tea.”

  “She?” Purcell said, sighing.

  “Yeah, what’s the world coming to,” Zach said sympathetically. “Women lawyers and judges. Next thing you know, process servers and sheriffs will be women.”

  “Want to place a bet on the gender of the person who shows up with a warrant for the records?” Jill asked.

  “Slow down, darling,” Zach said. “The sheriff is just doing his job. It’s not an easy one. Some days the citizens are worse than the crooks.”

  Purcell looked at Zach for the space of a long breath. Whatever he saw tipped the balance. Zach wasn’t bluffing and he wasn’t insulting a small-town sheriff.

  Best of all, Zach was keeping the pushy Breck woman in line.

  “Hope you do better with her than other men have done with Breck women,” Purcell said as he reached for the telephone and hit the intercom to the receptionist. “Call the records department and tell them two people are coming by to get dusty.”

  58

  HOLLYWOOD

  SEPTEMBER 16

  2:25 P.M.

  As soon as the outer door opened, Amy leaped to her feet. “It’s about time you got back from lunch.”

  “My office, now,” Score said.

  He was in a pisser of a mood.

  The way this case keeps eating up my time, you’d think I had only one client.

  A really important one.

  “Shut the door,” Score said. He sat down at his desk and fought against the kind of burp that made his eyes water.

  Goat cheese. Who decided that men should eat that stuff on a pizza and be polite about it?

  But what really had given him indigestion was the client, a Hollywood mover and shaker who was getting shaken down by someone and wanted to kick some ass in return.

  When will they learn to leave underage boys alone?

  Not that Score was complaining. Much. When people turned into saints, he’d be out of a job.

  “Well?” he said to Amy.

  “She’s on the move again. Back to good old Blessing, Arizona.”

  “Huh.” He found a roll of stomach mints and crunched up three of them. “What for?”

  “She’s talking to the sheriff.”

  “About what?”

  “Her grandmother’s arrest.”

  What does that have to do with the paintings? Score thought. “So?”

  “Well, except for one call, she wasn’t close to the bug, so I couldn’t hear anything until they left for the airport from Taos.” Absently Amy tested the holding power of her hair gel with her fingertips. Starting to droop. So was she. She’d worked through lunch.

  “What call?” Score demanded.

  She flipped to the next page of the printout. “The op reported in to St. Kilda, using the subject’s sat phone.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “Asked for the same cargo handlers as yesterday and-”

  “I told you to get in touch with me ASAP if paintings were mentioned,” Score cut in.

  The bite in his voice made Amy flinch.

  “Nobody said anything about paintings,” she said quickly. “Is that what the cargo was?”

  Score didn’t know the answer to that question, but was afraid that the word “cargo” would cover twelve paintings quite nicely.

  They must have been in the house, not the car.

  There was nothing he could do about it right now. Except swallow hard, keep his temper, and chew up some more stomach mints.

  “When did this happen?” he asked.

  Amy winced. When Score got that tone in his voice, pink slips started arriving on desks. She didn’t want hers to be one of them.

  “The conversation took place at 9:42,” she said.

  “Any talk about where the cargo is going?” Score asked.

  “No.”

  Score went still. His stomach clenched, sending goat cheese on a burning return trip. “Anything else?”

  “The subject has already landed in Blessing, Arizona. The bug must be close because it’s real clear.”

  “What about the cargo? Is it with them?”

  “No. All the op said to her was that it was in a safe place.”

  Damn St. Kilda anyway. What are they doing involved in a totally domestic op?

  Goat cheese kept trying to claw its way back up Score’s throat. He fought it to a draw and snarled, “Cut to the chase.”

  “They went to see the Canyon County sheriff in Blessing,” Amy said, summarizing the transcript of the bug. “Wanted to look at Justine Breck’s arrest report.”

  “Huh. Why would they care? It happened a long time ago.”

  Amy shrugged. “I don’t know. Apparently the grandmother and some dude had the kind of drunken shouting match that
ended up with him being shot and both of them in jail.”

  “Him who? Did they say?”

  “Not by name. All I know is that he was her lover. And he hung himself in jail.”

  Score drummed his fingers on his desk and wondered what St. Kilda was up to now. This case had been nothing but one screw-up after another. He was getting real close to losing his temper and beating the crap out of the first person he got his hands on.

  It would feel so good.

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  “They’re going to look at the records. And the bug is working real clear.”

  “No mention of paintings?”

  “No. Just some comments about the Frost guy and the fact that he won’t be talking to anyone for a few days. Something about a coma.”

  Well, at least that worked, Score consoled himself. About time I caught a break. Now if only I could be certain that those paintings had burned.

  Or certain that they hadn’t.

  Worst case scenario: They didn’t burn and St. Kilda has them now. Which means this op is well and truly in the shitter.

  I should have shot the bitch instead of the old man. She’s the one causing all the trouble.

  Score belched and swore never to eat goat cheese again, no matter who the client was. “I want to know where they go after Blessing. Stay with it until Steve gets here.”

  “When will that be?”

  “When he taps you on the shoulder. If you hear anything about paintings-”

  “Tell you ASAP,” Amy cut in. “Got it the first ten times you told me.”

  She made it out the door before Score lost it and started kicking the desk.

  59

  SAN DIEGO

  SEPTEMBER 16

  2:29 P.M.

  Grace picked up the phone. “Zach? Faroe’s tied up.”

  “How about you?” Zach said.

  “Make it quick.”

  “Can St. Kilda have a warrant for public records regarding the arrest of Justine Breck and Thomas Dunstan in Canyon County, Arizona in…”

  Grace shifted the baby to her other arm and started writing. “Did you get photos of the thumbprints on Jill’s paintings?”