St Kilda Consulting 04 - Blue Smoke and Murder

amused and charmed her. She was used to hauling her own weight—and then some—when it came to any job. The men on the river had joked about it, but they were intimidated by her. She’d hiked, rowed, and worked every one of them into the ground.
    It was the only way to get their respect.
    “Thanks,” Jill said. “But it wasn’t necessary. I can do with very little sleep.”
    “No problem. It gave me time to go over some of Shawna’s research. So tell me, what’s a woman with degrees in computer science, art history, and art doing as a river guide?”
    Jill’s answer was a lifted eyebrow.
    “You were home-schooled,” Zach said, “went to Pomona College on a full-ride scholarship when you were seventeen, left four years later with three degrees, and went to work as a river guide—raftsand kayaks. I was just curious why you did that rather than teaching or selling art or making money in the tech sector.”
    “I like being outdoors.” Then the last of the sleepy fuzz vanished from Jill’s brain. She hadn’t told Zach or Faroe that much about herself. “Did Shawna investigate me?”
    It was more of an accusation than a question, but Zach answered anyway. “Of course.”
    “I asked for help, not an intrusion into my privacy.”
    He almost smiled. “Hard to have one without the other. But don’t worry, everything so far has come from open sources. The Canyon County Gazette followed you like paparazzi. Big file of news clips. You smoked your SAT. Perfect score. Quite an accomplishment for anybody, much less a girl home-schooled on the Arizona Strip.”
    “Why did you investigate me?”
    “Because you’re in trouble. Hard to help if you don’t know much about the person you’re helping.”
    She chewed on that for a time. She didn’t like it, but it made a sideways kind of sense.
    “Mom worked out a deal with the satellite company,” Jill said. “Kind of like a scholarship for bright, dirt-poor kids. Forty hours a week of free computer time.”
    “Most kids would have spent it playing games.”
    “I loved learning things as much as I loved working on the ranch. Freedom everywhere I looked.”
    “Freedom, huh?” Zach absorbed the fact. “Where did you live before your mother came home and took back her maiden name?”
    “What does that have to do with paintings and death threats?”
    “Nothing. Everything. I won’t know until you tell me.”
    “I lived in a place like Hildale,” she said curtly. “I wasn’t quite a Creeker, but close enough.”
    Jill watched Zach. His eyes were slightly narrowed, looking at a horizon she couldn’t see.
    “Creeker,” Zach said after a moment, flipping through mental files. “Based on the days when Hildale and Colorado City were a single city on two sides of the creek. Fundamental Mormon community. Multiple wives required for a man to get into heaven. Bonnets, long sleeves and longer skirts, minimal education for girls, followed by real early marriages, usually to a much older man. Kids. Lots of them. Brings an entirely new meaning to the term ‘blended family.’ Midwives, not doctors. No birth certificates.”
    “Yeah,” Jill said. “It makes it easier for the poofers to vanish and no questions asked.”
    “Poofers?”
    “People—women, babies, or kids—who are here one day and gone the next. Dead and buried without ceremony or notice. Nobody ever says their name again or talks about how the poofers died.”
    The idea left a nasty taste in Zach’s mouth, but all he said was “How many sister-wives did your father have?”
    She flinched. “You didn’t get that out of the Canyon Gazette. They avoid the whole subject of plural marriages, poofers, and anything else that might make the patriarchy frown. Then there are the Sons and Daughters of Perdition, the men and women who leave the church. My mother was a Daughter of Perdition.”
    “Are you?”
    “Does it matter?”
    “Not to me,” Zach said. “As for knowing about fundamental Mormons, I soak up all kinds of learning from a variety of sources. No multiple degrees, though. Formal education didn’t do it for me.” Between Garland Frost and working for the feds, I learned more than most people ever do, or ever want to. “Is that why your mother left your father? She didn’t want a sister-wife?”
    “What does this have to do with—”
    “The paintings came down through your family,” Zach said neutrally. “That means your family is important to the investigation.”
    Jill