St Kilda Consulting 04 - Blue Smoke and Murder

clothes as his boss, right down to the weapon harness.
    Jenson, who had been taking notes, shoved the tablet away. “All the thumbprints prove is that Justine was with Dunstan when the canvases were painted, a fact that is already well known. She was his muse. He didn’t paint without her.”
    Zach grimaced. The lawyer had been well briefed.
    “Dunstan didn’t paint without Justine,” Jill said, “but she painted without him. I can prove it. Just as I can prove that Thomas Dunstan signed my grandmother’s paintings in order to sell them into the macho world of Western art.”
    “Preposterous,” Jenson said flatly.
    Grace’s smile was as cold as her husband’s. She pulled a final piece of paper from the folder. “This is a sworn deposition from Garland Frost, stating that it is his opinion the twelve unsigned canvases were painted by the same artist who produced the known, signed Thomas Dunstans.”
    “Even if that proves to be correct,” Worthington said, “it hardly proves that the artist was a woman!”
    Zach straightened, walked to the canvases at the front of the room, and picked up Indian Springs. He took it to Worthington.
    “It’s unusual for Dunstan to—” Worthington began after barely a glance at the canvas.
    “—paint buildings into the landscape,” Zach finished curtly. “But he did paint a few and you know it.”
    Reluctantly Worthington nodded.
    “Is there anything else about the canvas that makes you question that it’s a Dunstan?” Zach asked.
    With an uneasy glance at Tal and Lee, Worthington cleared his throat. “I’d have to study it for—”
    “Blah blah blah,” Zach cut ruthlessly. “We’re not in court. If someone walked in and plopped this on your desk, which artist would you immediately think of?”
    Worthington sighed and gave in. He had his own reputation to consider. Anyone but an idiot could see what was in front of his face. “Thomas Dunstan, of course. The brushwork, the unflinching evocation of the land, the raking light…” He shrugged. “Dunstan.”
    “When Indian Springs was painted, the gas station had just been built,” Jill said, putting a faded photograph next to the canvas. “And Thomas Dunstan had been dead for five years.”

94
    LAS VEGAS
SEPTEMBER 19
5:00 P.M.
    J ill walked into a room that had a well-stocked wet bar, comfortable furniture, and a closed-circuit TV screen that was half the size of the wall. At present, the screen showed a mosaic of twelve pictures, various angles on a crowd of people drinking wine, champagne, beer, and whiskey, eating delicate lamb “lollipops” and clever pastries, chatting, and clutching catalogues.
    “Wow,” Jill said.
    Zach disconnected from his call, put the cell phone in his jeans pocket, and stepped into the room.
    “Sports betting is big in Vegas,” he said absently, thinking about what he’d just learned. “The Golden Fleece is more than happy to accommodate the high rollers who want a private party. You can watch lots of games at once or you can have live feed of a single game on the whole screen.”
    “Y-gene central,” she said, sitting down on a long, soft leather sofa.
    Zach dropped down next to her, putting a dent in the cushion that made her slide toward him. On the low table in front of them there was a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket, an array of savory foodsfrom the auction floor, and a remote controller that had enough buttons to put a satellite in orbit. He picked up the remote and flipped it end for end.
    “Welcome to the biggest temporary casino and art bazaar in Las Vegas,” Zach said, aiming the remote at the huge screen. “In the next few hours, somewhere between twenty-five and fifty million dollars worth of art will change hands—not counting the Dunstans that have been withdrawn.”
    “Brecks,” Jill said automatically. “They were painted by my grandmother.”
    Zach hesitated, then shrugged. “That’s for the art community to decide.”
    “But—” She stopped abruptly. Zach was right. She just didn’t like it.
    So instead of thinking about the tangle that was Justine’s heritage, Jill watched the mosaic of screens covering the casino’s mammoth ballroom. A stage had been erected across the front of the room, with a podium for the auctioneer and a long bank of phone positions behind. The ballroom floor had been cleared, except for several bartending stations and a dozen banquet tables heavily laden with finger food.
    Several hundred people