St Kilda Consulting 04 - Blue Smoke and Murder

it.”
    “Where are you?”
    “Anywhere you want me to be, any time, as long as you have those paintings with you. How about it?”
    Jill hesitated the same way she did before nosing into the approach to Lava Falls.
    I’ve chosen my course. Now I have to bail out or go with it.
    She certainly didn’t want to meet Blanchard at the Rimrock Café. She wanted a place where she didn’t know anyone and no one knew her.
    “Ms. Breck?” he asked.
    She took a deep breath and headed toward the heart of the rapids. “Meet me tomorrow at 6:00 p.m. near Mesquite, Nevada, in the casino at the Eureka Hotel. I’ll be at the penny slots wearing jeans, river sandals, and a black T-shirt that says Spawn Till You Die.”
    Blanchard gave a bark of laughter, coughed, and said, “I’m in east Texas now. Get a room in case I miss connections, okay? Weather’s tricky at this time of year. And bring those paintings with you. I really can’t tell what they’re worth unless I actually see them.”
    He hung up before she could agree or disagree.
    She punched out and stared at the phone. It was the first time she’d ever shoved off into bad rapids without getting a good look at the water. The adrenaline she was used to.
    The fear was something new.
    Again she thought of Joe Faroe and St. Kilda Consulting.
    No. I’m not a little girl who needs her hand held in the dark by a big strong man. The casino is a public place with lots of money and therefore lots of guards and cameras.
    I’ll be safer than I am on the river.

10
    EUREKA HOTEL, NEVADA
SEPTEMBER 13
3:00 P.M.
    J ill parked in the huge, dusty lot of the Eureka Hotel. She looked at the belly pack on the passenger seat, weighed the satellite phone in her hand, and decided to leave the expensive means of communication in the car. The throwaway cell phone she’d bought for emergencies worked just fine in this location. She stashed the satellite phone under the passenger seat, locked the car, and walked through the parking lot toward the lobby check-in.
    The desert wind had painted a fine layer of grit over the long-haul trucks and RVs parked at the back of the lot, and the cars of the tourists who had been sucked off the highway by the promise of excitement.
    She didn’t understand the lure. The river took care of her adrenaline needs.
    An inch beyond the parking lot and hotel, the desert waited, untouched and patient, knowing that wind, sun, and time would eventually grind down civilization and its sprawling greed.
    She’d rather have walked into the desert. But she didn’t. She went to the hotel. The moment she opened the front door, she got a dose of stale, smoky air. Yet the huge neon sign out front advertised smoke-free lodging.
    It also advertised instant money, loose slots, and the best gambling in Nevada.
    Living proof that you shouldn’t believe everything you read.
    “Sure doesn’t smell smoke free,” Jill said to the desk clerk.
    The clerk wore makeup like she was still the showgirl she’d been twenty years and forty pounds ago.
    “Rooms are smoke free,” the clerk said. “In fact, there’s a five-hundred-dollar room-cleaning charge if you smoke in your room. You want to smoke, go to the casino. It’s allowed there.”
    “And the air-conditioning for the hotel and casino comes from a single central unit, right?”
    “Yeah. Sign here, initial the notification of nonsmoking, the fine if you do, and length of stay,” the woman said automatically. “Your room is through the casino to the elevators, fourth floor. Turn right and follow the room numbers.”
    Jill looked over the form, signed and initialed, and pushed the paper toward the clerk. “Any messages for me?”
    The woman looked at the name on Jill’s registration form and queried the computer. “No. Expecting someone?”
    “A Mr. Blanchard might call. If he does, put him through to my room.”
    “Sure thing. Need help with your luggage?”
    “No, thanks. Which part of the casino complex has penny slots?”
    “The part that doesn’t serve free drinks. North side. You get better odds on the dollar machines and the drinks are free.”
    “Thanks, I’ll keep it in mind.”
    Jill set off through a casino whose machines flashed and beckoned at every step. She saw the distant neon sign that guaranteed penny slots and million-dollar payoffs. The stink of cigarettes smoldering unnoticed in flat tin ashtrays near “Nevada’s loosest slots” almost covered the smell of anxiety and greed.
    She