St Kilda Consulting 04 - Blue Smoke and Murder

book.”
    “Good for you. As soon as I find a long nail and a hammer, I’ll mount a gold star on your forehead.”
    “You didn’t paint the canvases in Modesty’s trunk,” Zach said, ignoring Jill’s sarcasm.
    “Is that what Pomona College told St. Kilda?”
    “That’s what your paintings told me. You understand being alone, but not lonely.”
    “So did whoever painted what I found in the trunk.”
    “Yes and no,” Zach said. “In those dozen paintings there’s a corrosive kind of anger, a trapped animal’s rage at whatever is keeping it from the freedom all around it. Your paintings don’t have rage. You accept life and the land as it is. You’re alone with the land, not alone on it.”
    “And you’re a professional liar,” she muttered, not wanting to be lured by the belief that Zach understood her paintings.
    And her.
    He ruffled her nerves enough on a physical level, without adding all the complications of intelligence into the mix.
    “Sometimes I’m a liar,” he agreed. “Right now isn’t one of those times.”
    Jill blew out a hissing breath. “I keep thinking about the ruined painting and Ford Hillhouse’s suggestion that it was all a fraud, but he’d pay Modesty a couple thousand to go away. How do you ‘lose’ a painting?”
    “You send it out to three or four other dealers for their opinion, one of them has a foul-up in shipping, and a painting goes missing. It happens. That’s why shipments are insured. Ask anyone in the trade.”
    “But—”
    “I wouldn’t be surprised if Hillhouse showed the painting to a few Dunstan collectors, just to see if one of them would be willing to roll the provenance dice.”
    “That’s fraud.”
    Zach shook his head. “Not if both seller and buyer are aware that the painting hasn’t been authenticated. Then it’s just business.”
    “Then why did Hillhouse as good as call the painting a fraud?”
    “That was one of the questions I was going to ask him,” Zach said, “but he never took St. Kilda’s calls, the painting is now a pile of scraps, and there’s no point in wasting time nailing his balls to the wall. If anything in that equation changes, I’ll get whatever answers I need from him, whenever I need them.”
    “But if he won’t talk to you, how can you—” Her words stopped when she looked at Zach’s eyes. She swallowed and reminded herself that just because people lived in civilization, they weren’t always civilized.
    “She’s wrapping up her conversation,” Zach said, indicating the woman.
    “How can you tell?”
    “Body language. You ready to play?”
    “I’ll never have a career in fine art,” Jill said muttered. “I can’t paint and hold my nose, which is what I’d have to do to keep from smelling the bullshit that seems to be a big part of the scene.”
    “That’s how you get blue smoke,” Zach said. “You build piles of bullshit and set fire to them. Now lose the inner bitch and look pleasant for the nice saleslady.”
    Jill gritted her teeth. “It’s a little hard to make nice with a stranger who won’t answer e-mails and might have had a part in my great-aunt’s death.”
    “Do it or take a walk. Now.”
    A single look told Jill that Zach wasn’t kidding.
    She forced her mouth into a smile and turned toward the elegant brunette who was approaching them.

32
    SNOWBIRD
SEPTEMBER 15
11:07 A.M.
    Z ach watched the woman as she walked up to him. She wore a cashmere sweater that showed discreet cleavage, painfully stylish high heels, and the kind of black wool slacks that cost more than most people made in a week. Her black pearl earrings and elegantly simple gold-and-pearl pin looked real, and really expensive.
    “Hello, I’m Jo. I see you’re admiring our Russian Impressionists. Their technique is—”
    “Well known to dealers and consultants,” Zach cut in, smiling to soften the words. “I’m here with Ms. Jillian Breck in regard to the unsigned Thomas Dunstan painting that you may have seen last month, and the JPEGs of unsigned paintings that were e-mailed to you recently.”
    At Dunstan’s name, the woman’s eyes widened and her hand went to her throat.
    Zach saw the reaction for what it was—an involuntary effort to hide a strong emotional reaction. Fear, most likely.
    Adrenaline slid sweetly into his veins.
    It’s about time someone noticed us.
    “Is something wrong?” he asked, his expression and body language concerned.
    “Wrong?” Waverly-Benet’s voice was too