Blue Smoke and Murder sk-4

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “Ready?” Jill asked.

  They answered with a thumbs-up.

  Lane had the front of the raft, Faroe the back. Jill sat on the hard rowing bench in the center, facing forward, oars poised above the water. The rapids ahead was clearing of other rafters. She watched the river intently, correcting the angle of the raft as she entered the current. The approach to Lava Falls was crucial.

  Do it right and get an adrenaline ride.

  Do it wrong and suck rocks.

  The current picked up, shoving the raft off to one side. She dipped her left oar and stroked once, correcting the line. The front of the raft started to buck gently as it picked up the first of the waves. She glanced quickly at her passengers, giving a last check to life vests. Sometimes Lane was careless about his. He resented the confinement.

  The roar of the coming cataract was like a jet taking off.

  “You buckled up, Lane?” she shouted.

  He turned toward her, showing that he had pulled two of the three straps tight across his chest. The loose end of the third strap dangled free, eighteen inches of woven fabric ending with a tough plastic buckle.

  “Fix it,” she shouted, nodding toward the trailing strap.

  He looked down, saw the problem, and took one hand off the safety grip to tuck the buckle up out of the way. The strap was stiff, and stubborn, which was how it had worked free in the first place.

  The front of the raft plunged into the first hole in the water, then pitched up in the air like a rearing horse. Cold water sprayed Lane as the raft sideslipped. He gave a rebel yell of delight.

  Grinning, Jill worked the oars, port ahead, starboard reverse, snapping the raft back into the correct line. The shift in direction and momentum caught Lane off balance. He slammed forward, bounced off the round, slick flotation tube, and was mostly airborne when the second swell caught the raft.

  He shot over the side and into the roaring cataract.

  Faroe leaned out and grabbed, but Lane’s dark hair was snatched away from his grasp by the boiling current. The slick raft was faster than the leg-dragging swimmer.

  “Float with it!” Jill shouted to Lane. “Don’t fight it!”

  She marked the spot where she’d seen him go in, then leaned hard on both oars, abandoning the carnival ride for a back eddy on the right-hand shore. The raft shot forward, angled off the current, and slowed as she caught the eddy behind a big bolder. She pinned the raft’s nose against the back of the boulder and stared at the cataract upstream of them.

  “There!” Faroe said, pointing.

  Lane’s red life vest winked against the frothing water. He lifted his hand and waved.

  Jill let out a long breath.

  The river sucked him under again for another whitewashing.

  Faroe kicked off his sandals, ready to go over the side of the raft after his son.

  “No.” Jill’s command was sharp. “He’s doing fine. I don’t want two of you in there.”

  Lane bobbed back to the surface on an upwelling wave. He was moving swiftly with the current, bobbing merrily past them. Jill knew without looking that the other rafts would be standing by at the end of the rapids to pick him up.

  Suddenly Lane stopped like a bronc snubbed off on a corral post. The current kept going, which dragged him down below the water. He struggled back to the surface for a breath before water dragged him under again.

  And kept him there.

  That damn loose strap!

  But all Jill said aloud was “Take the oars.”

  She was in the river before Faroe could object.

  Even as she hit the water, she knew she had to get rid of her life vest. It would push her quickly down the rapids and past Lane before she could help him. As the current caught her, she unsnapped catches and let the river whip the vest away. Treading water, she gauged the wild current, the jutting boulders, the holes that could suck people down and drown them. She slanted her body and swam hard at an angle so that the rapids would carry her to the place downstream where Lane had disappeared.

  Lane flailed to the surface again, grabbing at air, getting water along with it, choking, disappearing again.

  Jill rolled onto her back and slipped the cord holding the knife over her head, gripping the knife tightly in her right hand. She’d get only one chance to grab Lane. If she missed, the river would push her past him like a rocket.

  She would probably survive.

  Lane wouldn’t.

  With the current boiling wildly around her, she hooked the teenager underneath one arm as she was swept by. She dragged him up and yelled, “Breathe, then dead man’s float!”

  He took a gasping breath, hesitated, then went limp, facedown in the river. The current stretched his body out in the water, showing Jill where he was anchored against the torrent. She clung to Lane with her legs like a lover, inching down his torso until her right arm found the strap. She thumbed the blade open, felt it lock in place, and slashed across the strap.

  They shot to the surface together. Lane flipped over onto his back, gasping and coughing. Jill kept her grip on him, letting his life vest keep both of them afloat. Suddenly she scissor-kicked hard, again and then again. Soon they were sliding into the back eddy where Joe was working the oars to keep the raft in place. Slick river rocks came up to meet their dangling feet.

  Jill released Lane, watched him gain his feet, and felt a relief that made her lightheaded.

  He looked down at the severed end of the strap dangling from his vest. Then he looked at the four-inch cut in his swim trunks. The nylon mesh of the built-in athletic supporter showed through the gash.

  “Your-knife?” he asked, still panting and coughing.

  Breathing hard, Jill nodded. She’d let go of the knife the instant Lane was free. Bouncing around in the rapids with a lethal blade wasn’t smart.

  “Sharp-sucker,” Lane said. “Glad it-wasn’t any-longer.”

  Jill threw back her head and laughed. Then she hugged him hard. He hugged her the same way.

  Faroe watched and wished Lane was old enough for Jill. She was one of the good ones. Smart, quick, cool under pressure, strong in the best sense of the word. She reminded him in some ways of Mary, St. Kilda Consulting’s long-gun expert.

  He steadied the raft while Lane and Jill levered themselves aboard. Lane sprawled in the bow, coughing occasionally, but breathing just fine.

  Before Jill took up the oars again, Faroe said simply, “Thank you.”

  She flashed him a smile. “Just trying to cut down on the paperwork. We hate losing clients.”

  Faroe smiled back. “My boss is the same way. Where’s your waterproof ditty bag?”

  Jill blinked at the change of subject. “Um, under my seat.”

  He unfastened the waterproof belly pack around his waist, searched for a few seconds, and pulled out a laminated business card. “Put this in it.”

  Automatically she took the card, glanced at it. A telephone number and a few words: st. kilda consulting, joe faroe. She looked at him, puzzled.

  “If you ever have a problem that worries you-any problem-call that number,” Faroe said.

  “Problem?”

  “Stalkers, a pissed-off boyfriend, something that frightens you, no one to talk to, no money for bills. Anything, Jill. Any time. Call that number, ask for me. You’ll get help immediately.”

  “Well, thank you, but…”

  Faroe smiled at her confused look. “I know, you have everything under control. I used to feel the same way. Then I found out how many wicked curves life can throw. Keep the card with you always, and hope you never need it.”

  3

  HOLLYWOOD

  LATE AFTERNOON

  SEPTEMBER 3

  Zachary Balfour tried not to look bored, which he was.

  Or irritated.

  Which he definitely was.

  Nothing chapped him quite as much as a client who wanted to wear a “bodyguard” as an accessory when what she really needed was a muzzle and a r
abies shot.

  Not that he had any particular fondness for dodging bullets. He supposed he should be grateful this job could have been phoned in. But he wasn’t thankful to be doing no-brain work at combat rates.

  Seven days with DeeDee Breitling made a bullet look good.

  You owe me for this one, Faroe. Little Ms. D-cup and dirt-for-brains might be the beloved niece of a D.C. official St. Kilda Consulting wants to please, but she’s wasting my time. The only stalker she has is in her dreams.

  She needs me like a snake needs stilts.

  The D.C. official knew it. The client had just wanted to have a tall, dark, and safe escort for her niece while DeeDee did Hollywood.

  At least the gig would pay for a few weeks of roaming the West, looking for collectible old cars forgotten in even older barns or wrecking yards. That search was both Zach’s passion and a way to keep food on the table, some of the time. The rest of the time he took contracts with St. Kilda.

  But not as a nanny, for the love of God. What was Faroe thinking?

  Maybe the boss was still sore about Zach cleaning him out in poker.

  “Isn’t that right, darling?” DeeDee Breitling asked.

  She cooed, actually, but Zach was trying not to notice. Having four older sisters had taught him way too much about females for him to fall for this lip-licking idiot’s act.

  Too bad the surgeon didn’t expand her brain along with her breasts. Or sew her mouth shut.

  The idea made Zach smile.

  DeeDee took that as agreement. She turned to the art dealer waiting expectantly. “It’s perfect for my living room. Have it wrapped and sent to my Manhattan address.”

  Zach looked at the art she’d just bought and decided it was a match made in heaven. The two tiny gray splotches on the black background at the bottom left of the canvas represented her two brain cells groping for each other in the dark. The horse’s butt outlined in gold in the upper right-hand corner of the frame needed no explanation. It represented the buyer.

  At least the artist had a sense of humor, as well as a fine understanding of flow and line. Evoking an equine ass with a few spare strokes of the brush wasn’t easy. Like creating a fine haiku, it took a lot of training, work, talent, and intelligence to pull off. Painting a whole horse and making it work took all that, plus technique.

  Making the horse transcend the canvas took genius.

  But DeeDee only liked the kind of art that other people told her she should. The great painters of the American West didn’t have much traction in Manhattan. If you painted Paris scenes in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was art. If you painted Wild West scenes in America during the same time, it was called genre painting and generally ignored by East Coast museums and collectors. Thomas Moran-and lately, Frederic Remington-was the exception that proved the rule.

  “Now, what about dinner?” she asked Zach.

  What about it? Three leaves of lettuce and a carrot shaving doesn’t take much discussion.

  “This isn’t Manhattan, of course,” she said, frowning, “but there are still some decent restaurants.”

  “Sure you don’t want to try Tommy’s Burgers?” he asked hopefully. What was the point of getting close to L.A. if you didn’t eat at the original Tommy’s?

  She shuddered. “No. I thought our last night in Hollywood should be special.”

  Zach told himself she was making a joke. But he knew DeeDee didn’t have any sense of humor. He’d found that out within the first five minutes of his week-long assignment.

  How do you owe me, Faroe? Let me count the ways.

  4

  NORTHERN ARIZONA

  SEPTEMBER 11

  LATE AFTERNOON

  Jill drove past the ruins of the ranch house and the burned skeleton of the barn. She didn’t stop. She would later, when she’d had more time to absorb the reality of her great-aunt’s death. Modesty Breck had seemed to be one of those people who just got harder and leaner, not old so much as ageless. Like the land itself, spare and unrelenting. Something you always respected yet always took for granted.

  No guilt trip, Jill told herself firmly. After Mom died, the old witch barely put up with having me live in the original homestead cabin over the ridge from the ranch house.

  Modesty was a woman who liked her own space. A lot of it. Solitude and hard work were her chosen gods.

  She died the way she wanted to live. Alone. So lose the guilt.

  Easier said than done.

  Dust and grit flew beneath the little Honda SUV’s tires as the eight-year-old vehicle bounced and rattled over the rough dirt road. No one had been here since the last monsoon rains had pounded the dry land. There wasn’t any other sign of life except for the occasional coyote and rabbit tracks preserved in dried mud on the road’s low spots. Water had washed away everything else, even the tire tracks leading to the ranch house where Modesty had died.

  When Jill topped the steep ridge, she saw the original homestead cabin lying sheltered in a small valley, built right on top of the spring that had attracted her Breck ancestors in the 1840s. When Jill and her mother had moved from-fled, actually-Utah, they had lived with Modesty in the “new” ranch house just long enough to fix up the homestead cabin.

  As a young girl, Jill had loved climbing the red cliffs and spires that were the rear wall of the cabin. As an adult, she hadn’t been back in six years.

  The closer Jill drove to the cabin, the more relieved she felt.

  At least I won’t have to waste money on a motel while I take care of whatever needs to be done with Modesty’s estate.

  Some of the chinking had fallen out between the weathered logs and a shutter hung drunkenly over half of the kitchen window, but the rest looked just as she remembered-old, small, oddly comforting. A piece of history that had survived past its time.

  All Modesty’s lawyer had told Jill over the phone was that her great-aunt had died in the fire that burned the ranch house and outbuildings down to their rock foundations. Jill had stayed with her job on the river until she found a replacement guide. It had taken three weeks. The lawyer had assured her there was no reason to rush back. Modesty’s remains had been cremated and scattered according to her will, and the stock didn’t need tending because every last animal had been sold for back taxes. The lawyer had already filed for an exemption on further taxes due to the ranch house and barn burning down.

  Taxes. God.

  How much could an all-but-abandoned ranch be worth?

  Jill parked in the overgrown yard, climbed out, and stretched before she went to wrestle with the old padlock that secured the front door. Not that there was much to steal-worn cowhide chairs, an old plank kitchen table, and bunk beds whose “springs” consisted of rope strung between two-by-fours.

  Despite its rust-pitted appearance, the padlock opened easily to her key. Modesty must have oiled the lock recently. Or maybe she’d rented the cabin out to someone for a time. Cash was always welcome on a bare-bones Western ranch.

  Inside, the cabin was surprisingly clean. Jill wouldn’t have to camp out in the yard while she put the place in order. There was even a covered bucket of water near the ancient long-handled pump in the kitchen. She lifted the bucket to prime the pump, then stopped when she saw the neat rectangle of folded paper that had been tucked beneath.

  Her name was written across the paper in Modesty’s elegant, archaic handwriting.

  Jill set the bucket aside and unfolded the paper. An odd sensation prickled over her arms.

  She was reading a note from the dead.

  GO TO YOUR OLD HIDING PLACE.

  LIFE ISN’T AS SAFE AS IT SEEMS TO THE YOUNG.

  “Well, that’s weird,” she said. “Wonder if the old bat was senile? God knows her sister was no model of sanity.”

  But Grandmother Justine was a long-dead family legend, and Great-aunt Modesty had always had a death grip on reality.

  Jill tucked the paper into the hip pocket of her jeans, primed the pump, and smiled as
clean water gushed into the old iron sink. With the supplies she had picked up in Page, she was set for several weeks. After that…well she’d worry about what came next when she knew how long she’d have to stay at the ranch. She didn’t have any idea of what went into settling someone’s estate.

  With a sigh, she opened the cranky shutters on the east side of the two-room cabin, letting in the late-afternoon air while she unloaded the Honda and made coffee on the camp stove she’d brought. She took a mug of coffee into the front yard to enjoy the sound of the wind moving through the huge old cottonwood. The tree was one of the things she had truly missed after leaving the Arizona Strip.

  The massive cottonwood had taken root near the spring long before any Brecks ever arrived in Arizona Territory. As a child, she had used the tree for a living ladder to climb partway up the cliff. The rest of the cliff she had climbed the hard way, when she was older.

  “I suppose you’ll die someday, too, old friend,” Jill said, tracing one of the deep ridges in the cottonwood’s bark with her fingertip. “I won’t be alive to see it. You’ve got a few hundred more years in you than I do.”

  Modesty’s note echoed back like a ghostly agreement.

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

  “Oh, all right,” she said, annoyed by the cryptic message. “I’ll do it.”

  Irritating people was something Modesty had raised to an art. Jill should be too old to have her buttons pushed so easily.

  But she wasn’t.

  Muttering under her breath, she grabbed a flashlight from her backpack and looked around the cabin. There was an obvious root cellar outside. In the days before electricity came to the rural West, root cellars and springhouses had been as close to refrigeration as it got. Sometimes she had hidden in the root cellar.

  But her favorite hideaway was inside the cabin, at the back of the pantry, where a handmade cupboard pulled away to reveal a rough opening. Behind the cupboard was a six-foot-square room. The space had been hammered from the sandstone cliff that was the back wall of the cabin. In the days before banks and police, when Indians and outlaws roamed the land freely, the hidey-hole had kept safe everything of value to the Brecks-including their own lives when raiders came.