St Kilda Consulting 04 - Blue Smoke and Murder

you on hold while I pry him away from a client.” Cahill punched the hold button and looked at Worthington. “Well?”
    “You take it. I’m tired of holding her hand. And you have a monetary interest in the auction, too.”
    “Not as much as you do.”
    “I’m the auctioneer as well as the organizer,” Worthington said. “Of course I’m better paid.”
    The hold button blinked like a red lightning bug.
    “About her call…” Cahill said.
    “Oh, hell. Give it to me. You don’t understand women.”
    “Big duh on that one.”
    Worthington laughed. “Betty is a nice person, if a bit tightly wrapped. Don’t know how she puts up with the pompous donkey she’s married to.”
    Shaking his head, Cahill punched the hold button again and handed over the phone.
    “Hello, Betty. Always a pleasure,” Worthington said. “Sorry you had to wait for me. How may I help you?”
    Cahill tuned out the one-sided conversation while he began tidying up the shipping/receiving room. As he worked, he kept looking at the Fechin oils, trying to understand their appeal emotionally as well as intellectually.
    Maybe if he stopped thinking about the vermin situation during the time Fechin painted the natives, he’d appreciate the work more. But Cahill just couldn’t get past the queasy certainty that many if not all of the models for Fechin’s portraits likely had needed a goodscrubbing down with lye. The thought of all the fleas and lice underneath the rustic costumes made him twitchy.
    It was the same thing that had kept him from traveling in the poor places of the world. For him, hygiene wasn’t a choice, it was a religion.
    Give him Moran’s elegantly wild landscapes any day.
    “…assure you,” Worthington said evenly, though loudly, “if there were any loose Dunstans running about the Western art scene, I’d be the first to know.”
    He listened impatiently.
    “Yes, yes, I know, the JPEGs,” he said. “But JPEGs are simply electronic bits of nothing. Only the flesh and blood of canvas is real. The rest is—”
    As Worthington listened to her interruption, his face flushed. His anger was visible if not audible.
    “Betty, dear, you’re working yourself up over nothing,” he said, trying to sound soothing. “If any unknown Dunstans exist—and there is no proof that any do—Lee would still have the last word as to authenticity. As the author of Dunstan’s catalogue raisonné, Lee’s imprimatur is absolutely necessary to anyone wishing to sell any Dunstan canvas.”
    Cahill gave up pretending to be busy and listened. As Worthington had pointed out, Cahill had a financial interest in the outcome of the auction.
    “Yes, I’m very certain,” Worthington said. “Please don’t worry. When the auction is over, you and Lee will be quite pleased. No unauthenticated Dunstans, assuming any exist, can prevent that.”
    Worthington shifted the phone to his other hand.
    Cahill waited.
    “No problem at all, my dear,” Worthington said soothingly. “We’re all excited about the upcoming auction. I’m glad I could put your mind at ease.”
    Worthington opened his mouth, closed it, and bit his tongue.
    Cahill paced.
    “I understand,” Worthington said. “Of course, you would be the first to know if I see or hear anything substantial about the existence of unknown Dunstans.”
    Cahill pretended to look at Fechin’s portrait of a young Pueblo Indian girl. Her black eyes were both innocent and already old, almost eerily so. To hell with vermin, he thought. The ancient understanding in the girl’s eyes transcended her time and circumstances.
    And vermin?
    Cahill sighed. He simply couldn’t get past reality to the art beneath.
    Worthington hung up the phone and looked at Cahill.
    “Still bothered by head lice?” Worthington asked sardonically.
    “I almost got past it. Something about that girl’s eyes. Remarkable. Riveting.”
    “The eyes are the living, breathing center of all Fechin paintings. That’s what makes him such a brilliant portrait artist.”
    “True.” But not for me. Can’t get past the creepy crawlies. “I take it that Mrs. Dunstan is in a knot about the JPEGs.”
    Worthington grimaced. “Between her and Mrs. Crawford, I’ll be ready for a straitjacket before the auction even opens.”
    “Lee Dunstan has bent my ear a time or three,” Cahill said. “The man is obsessed with his father’s former lover.”
    “Since Justine Breck was the cause of Thomas Dunstan’s erratic output, I