St Kilda Consulting 04 - Blue Smoke and Murder

“The destruction of the canvas really angered him.”
    Worthington gave Zach a wary glance.
    Zach gave him two rows of hard white teeth.
    “I came here because I wanted to know what you thought of the painting,” Jill said.
    “It’s not my practice to discuss privately held paintings with anyone except the owner.”
    “No problem,” Zach said. “Modesty Breck is dead. You’re talking to her grandniece.”
    “I’m sorry for your loss,” Worthington said automatically. “But that doesn’t answer the question of ownership.”
    “I’m her heir,” Jill said. “Would you like a letter from my lawyer? A death certificate from the coroner? Testimonial from an elder in—”
    Zach spoke over her, “I know it upsets you to talk about it.” He squeezed her shoulder—hard—and turned back to Worthington. “So what did you think of the painting?”
    “Surprisingly good,” Worthington said. “Reminiscent in many ways of Thomas Dunstan’s work. But the lack of signature, plus other issues, made the painting an unlikely Dunstan. Very unlikely.”
    “Issues, huh?” Zach said. “Such as?”
    Jill’s smile asked Worthington to be more polite than Zach was being.
    “Just how are you ‘advising’ Modesty Breck’s heir?” Worthington asked.
    “Any old way she wants it,” Zach drawled. “She’s real upset by her loss. You’re real busy with your auction. The quickest way to get rid of us is to answer our questions.”
    It took Worthington about four seconds to come to the same conclusion.
    “The historical record is the first issue,” he said. “By comparison to other artists, Thomas Dunstan painted remarkably few works. So far as we know, every single one of those paintings has been authenticated and accounted for. His heirs have been very jealous of his reputation. They guard his heritage very closely.”
    “And make money doing it,” Zach said.
    “There is nothing unusual about paying for expertise.”
    “Since when has being someone’s heir made the heir expert on anything?” Zach asked.
    “It’s called droit moral, and I have no time to explain it to you,” Worthington said impatiently. “The second issue is that the subject of the painting is unlike anything in Dunstan’s catalogue raisonné.”
    “More French words,” Zach said.
    “If you aren’t familiar with them, you have no business advising anyone on fine art,” Worthington said in a clipped voice.
    “I understand French just fine,” Jill said, hoping her anger wasn’t coming through. “But the painting was a landscape, which is well within Dunstan’s oeuvre.”
    Zach wanted to laugh, but it would have spoiled his bad-boy sex-toy act. He stroked her arm instead, fiddling with the silky edges of her sleeve.
    “Dunstan seldom painted human figures into his work,” Worthington said to Jill, ignoring Zach entirely. “Less than four percent of Dunstan’s paintings had human figures. The figures were invariably male. Dunstan had an uncanny ability to paint landscapes that conveyed enormous masculine strength measured against the power of a raw, untamed land.”
    “I thought it was pretty well tamed by the time Dunstan was painting,” Jill said.
    “That’s why Dunstan’s work has always been so sought after bythe very men who subdued the West,” Worthington said, glancing at his watch. “His paintings were a tribute to the brute male power it took to survive in, much less to tame, the West.”
    Zach wondered how he would defuse the coming explosion. Jill wasn’t about to take that kind of chauvinism without giving feedback. A lot of it. He squeezed her arm, reminding her that she was supposed to be the good cop in this duo.
    Her muscles were tight.
    He wondered if prayer would help.
    Jill didn’t give him time to find out.
    “Are you saying that women didn’t exhibit strength and courage in the old West?” she asked, wide-eyed. “I’d think that kind of bigotry would get you bounced from the national association of politically correct art critics tout de suite, mon ami. ”
    “You make my point for me,” Worthington said, smiling without warmth. “Western art has been politically incorrect from its inception. For better and for worse, Western art is an almost exclusively male domain. Dunstan not only knew that, he celebrated it. His homage to male strength is the very core of his iconic status.”
    “Gee, and here I thought art was universal,” Jill said, shaking her head. “Goes to show you what