St Kilda Consulting 04 - Blue Smoke and Murder

through the gate. No problemo.
    But the house?
    Big problemo.
    He’d bet real money that Garland Frost’s house was wired for sound and pictures. Not like the old lady with her piece-of-crap rifle for security. Frost had a lot of valuable goods inside.
    Score wasn’t going to risk a black-bag job on that house unless he was certain there was no other way.
    What really steamed him was that he couldn’t even use his directional microphone to pick up conversation inside the house. Those adobe walls were a real sound sponge, and he couldn’t get to any windows without exposing himself all over the place. Stalemate. His second computer beeped. He looked over, then activated the voice-calling feature. Steve’s voice came out over the built-in speakers.
    “Score?”
    “No, it’s the Easter Bugger. What do you have?”
    “Definitely a third voice,” Steve said.
    Ya sure? Score thought sarcastically. I could have told him that myself.
    “Dude’s got a mouth like a sewer,” Steve continued. “It’s all in the transcript.”
    “Individual words or just the general direction of the conversation?”
    “Words. Want me to read the script?” Steve asked.
    “Not unless it’s talking about paintings.”
    “Plural? Nope. Everything was really muffled, just like it has been,” Steve said, “then suddenly it was clear. The new dude was on a rant about assholes who destroy art.”
    “Anything else?”
    “The new voice faded into the other two voices, like the dude walked away from the bug. Things got soft again, but not like before.”
    Score came to a point like a hunting dog. “What’s different?”
    “Difference between turning the volume down and burying a speaker in mud. I’ve got a new sound-booster program that I’d like to try, but I didn’t want to without ask—”
    “Do it,” Score interrupted curtly. “Get back to me soonest.”
    “It may be several hours. This program uses complex algorithms that take a lot of time, especially on my laptop.”
    “No matter how late, call me. And I mean call. Cell phone. Got it?”
    “Got it.”
    “Then do it.”
    Score ended the voice program and stared out the window. All he could be certain of was that a painting had been destroyed. Since he’d been the one with the machete, he already knew that.
    Why is it always the simple jobs that go from sugar to shit?
    He went to the back of the van, opened a small silver suitcase, and pulled out a semiautomatic pistol. He screwed the silencer on, checked the magazine, and went back to the front of the van.
    When it was fully dark, he’d look around Frost’s grounds. There might be a window where he could safely set up shop. From what he’d learned about the cargo at Taos Regional, six crates of goods had been unloaded from the plane St. Kilda chartered. It looked like the op was putting all his eggs in one basket.
    Or maybe not.
    If it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck…
    It could be a red herring.
    And Score knew just how to fry fish.

44
    TAOS
SEPTEMBER 15
7:15 P.M.
    T he breakfast nook in Frost’s big kitchen seated three. Barely.
    The constant heat and flex of Zach’s hard thigh pressed against Jill’s was making her hotter than Lupita’s tamales. Zach didn’t seem to notice anything unusual. Except that with every motion, however small, he ended up closer to her.
    It had to be accidental.
    And chickens lay chocolate eggs, she thought, feeling the heat of a fit, big male body all the way from her ankle to her hip.
    “I hear what you’re saying,” she said to Frost, “but I still don’t understand the problem. Experts disagree all the time. Any lawyer can tell you that.”
    Zach leaned over to get more hot sauce. Coming and going, his arm slowly brushed against her breast. It was a good thing Frost was speaking, because right now Jill couldn’t have said a word if her next breath depended on it.
    “Experts can, and do, disagree,” Frost said with a shrug. “I’ve seen litigation over attributions that go on for years, even in nineteenth-and twentieth-century Western art, which is relatively well documented.”
    Zach went for a second helping of hot sauce.
    Or something.
    “I’ve seen more money change hands in lawsuits over attribution than the art was worth in the first place,” Frost said. “There’s a case up in Montana right now, a picture I thought was a Charlie Russell and some others thought wasn’t. One of the dealers went public with his doubts. The owner of the piece