Blue Smoke and Murder sk-4

by Elizabeth Lowell

  She ran her fingers behind the third shelf, slid aside a concealed wooden bolt, and tugged on the edge of the cupboard. The tin-backed cupboard creaked and protested when the concealed door swung open. As a girl, Jill had always felt a delicious shiver of secrecy when she crawled into the small space and hid among the burlap bags of rice and beans and sugar.

  She switched on the flashlight and looked inside. Instead of supplies, she found Grandmother Justine’s ancient, battered steamer trunk. It was big enough to put a small pony inside. Once it had held her grandmother’s art supplies.

  Curious as to what the trunk held now, Jill tugged the lid open. The leather hinges were so old they were almost frayed through. She propped the lid against the rock wall and shined the light inside.

  No crusted brushes or hardened oils or color-splotched palettes. Instead, there were six rectangular parcels, standing on their sides like giant filing cards. Each parcel was wrapped in oilcloth.

  Jill felt a surprising sense of relief that everything hadn’t turned to fire and ashes. Something remained of Modesty’s heritage.

  And her own.

  I hope these packages are what I think they are. Even if they got me in some of the worst trouble of my life.

  Modesty really smacked me when she found me looking at them. How old was I? Ten? Eleven?

  Whatever, she was spitting mad.

  Now Modesty was dead and the paintings were Jill’s. She could look at them all she wanted. No more sneaking peeks at the forbidden fruit while Modesty and her mother were working cattle, mending fence, or opening and closing irrigation ditches for the little orchard, the big garden, and the pastures growing winter hay.

  Carefully Jill took the packages out and leaned them against the stone wall. Only then did she notice the leather portfolio. She knew from the time before her mother died that the portfolio was filled with old photos and papers-the homestead filing, proof of water rights, wedding invitations, birth and death announcements. All the things that people collected on the way through life.

  “Good. That should take care of any questions the lawyer might have.”

  Ignoring the portfolio, she eagerly took the large parcels inside the cabin. When she unwrapped the first, she found it was indeed two paintings. They were vivid, wild yet disciplined, intensely realized. Grinning, she unwrapped all the packages with the greed of a child at Christmas.

  She hadn’t seen the paintings since the time Modesty found her admiring them in a storage place in the attic of her great-aunt’s house. She’d smacked Jill silly, smacked her some more, then marched her grandniece back to the homestead and told her mother that the child wasn’t welcome at the ranch house anymore unless her mother was along.

  “Years ago,” Jill said with a bittersweet smile at how things had changed. She propped the paintings against the wall, marveling at their clean, unsentimental, yet profoundly emotional effect. “I wonder why Modesty didn’t want me looking at them. But then, she was a quirky, cranky bitch.”

  It felt good to say it aloud. Her mother had always told Jill that she should be grateful that Modesty had taken them in when they had no other safe place to go.

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

  “Okay, can’t argue that,” Jill muttered. “But I was a kid, and I loved these paintings at first sight.”

  The Western landscapes were as big and wide and untamed as the land itself. The paintings captured the power of mountains, the bite of a snow wind, the sweep of the big sky, and the utter freedom of living on your own terms in a land that was rarely generous.

  When she was a child, the paintings had enchanted her.

  When she was an adult with degrees in art history and fine art, the paintings impressed her.

  Now, as then, she felt a deep kinship with the painter, who had captured Jill’s own spirit in oils. Maybe it was simply that all the landscapes had human figures in them-small in most cases, dwarfed in every case by the wild land-and somehow female.

  Jill hadn’t noticed that when she was a child. She did now, and wondered at it.

  “Wait. Weren’t there thirteen paintings?”

  Frowning, she went back to the trunk. Nothing was left in it but the scarred leather portfolio. She pulled it out and looked inside. No painting, but there was a letter addressed to Modesty Breck. It had been postmarked a week before Modesty died, and bore the return address of an art gallery in Park City, Utah, outside of Salt Lake City. Apparently her great-aunt had felt the letter was worthy of being added to the family mementos.

  Jill unfolded the heavy embossed stationery from the Art of the Historic West gallery and began reading.

  Dear Ms. Breck:

  Thank you for sending us the painting that you say has been in your family for so long. It is an interesting genre work. However, it is not signed. Therefore the painting cannot be attributed, despite your suggestion that it may be the work of a noted Western artist.

  We are not able to agree with your suggestion that the painting has great monetary value, although we are sure that it has great sentimental value to your family. We have conferred with other experts on Western landscape painting and they share our belief that the work, while pleasing and well rendered, has only a limited resale value.

  Under normal circumstances we would return the painting to you with this letter, but the canvas seems to have been misplaced. We believe it happened after it was in the custody of the second appraiser, and are earnestly endeavoring to locate and return it.

  In the meantime, we have contacted their insurance carrier and our own and are awaiting instructions on how to proceed. We will contact you again as soon as we can resolve this matter. We are sorry for any minor inconvenience this may cause you.

  Should you wish, we are presently prepared to make you an offer of cash compensation for what may be the permanent loss of the work. Judging by the limited market for unsigned landscapes with unproven provenance, of this approximate age, we believe the sum of $2,000 represents more than a fair settlement.

  Please advise us if you are willing to accept this offer along with our sincere apologies and best wishes.

  The letter was signed Ford Hillhouse. Jill read the letter again, this time translating the words into plain English.

  Modesty had sent one of the canvases to a high-end art gallery for appraisal and got a polite sneer in return.

  Jill knew enough about art and appraisals to recognize that when it came to putting a price on something, the lack of a painter’s signature was usually crippling. Artists signed works. Anything unsigned was automatically suspect. Without a definitive way to identify the painter, the work became a kind of aesthetic orphan.

  Or, in real English, barely worth the canvas it was painted on.

  Jill remembered her mother saying that there was a long, unhappy story behind the paintings, which were the work of a great artist. Then her mother had said never, ever, to speak about the paintings again or Modesty would kick them off the ranch forever.

  “Well, I kept up my silent end of the family bargain,” Jill said to the paintings. “Why did Modesty suddenly decide to pull one of these out of the attic and shove it into the public light?”

  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 galleries 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.”

  5

  TAOS, NEW MEXICO

  SEPTEMBER 12

  MORNING

  When 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 collecting 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.

  6

  BLESSING, ARIZONA

  SEPTEMBER 12

  LATE MORNING

  Sheriff 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.”