St Kilda Consulting 04 - Blue Smoke and Murder

didn’t like thinking about how close Frost and Zach had come to dying a few hours ago.
    “We’ve got guards on Frost. And I’m going to stay with him until his daughter gets here. I want you with me.”
    He turned into the hospital parking lot and stopped close to the emergency entrance.
    Jill saw two patrol cars and hoped the questions wouldn’t start all over again. She didn’t know if she had the patience for it.
    When Zach saw the plainclothes unit next to the patrol cars, he wondered who had been assigned the case. The answer came as soon and he and Jill walked through the automatic doors into the hard-shelled sterile waiting room. Three uniformed officers were conferring with a tall, redheaded man in jeans, boots, and a hooded sweatshirt.
    “Well, there’s a break,” Zach said under his breath. “Alton Corrigan is still in town.”
    The redheaded man turned and looked at them, then shook his head wearily. He crossed the waiting room, hands in the belly pocket of his sweatshirt.
    “Zach, you should have stopped by to say hello before you got yourself involved in a shooting,” Corrigan said. “It would have saved me a lot of trouble. Now I can’t even shake your hand until my men have cleared you.”
    Zach nodded. “Sorry about that. How’s Frost doing?”
    “Surgery,” Corrigan said. “One of the nurses came out a minute ago to tell us that the bullet nicked an artery. If you hadn’t gotten him here quick, he would have died.”
    “That’s her doing,” Zach said, nodding toward Jill. He introduced her and added, “Alton used to be chief detective, but if he’s talking about ‘my men,’ I’m guessing he made chief of police.”
    Corrigan looked hard at Jill, then back at Zach. “You two are both friends of Frost?”
    “She’s my client,” Zach said. “We were researching some family paintings she owns. Frost was an obvious place to start.”
    “First time you’re back in, what, five years?” he asked, looking at Zach.
    “Something like that.”
    “And Frost didn’t kick your ass right out on the street?” Corrigan shook his head. “Must be pretty special pictures you brought him.”
    “That’s what we were trying to find out,” Zach said.
    “Are those pictures related to the fire-bombing of your car?”
    “One minute I was asleep and the next I heard a gunshot and was up and running,” Zach said. “That’s all I know for sure.”
    “Why do I feel like you aren’t telling me everything?” Corrigan asked.
    Zach’s smile was as weary as it was real. “Because I’m not. I’m working as an investigator for an attorney named Grace Silva Faroe. Ms. Breck is Judge Silva Faroe’s client, so there’s privilege attached to some of this.”
    Corrigan grunted.
    “I’ve told the cops everything I know for a fact,” Zach said.
    “What do you suspect?” Corrigan shot back.
    “Last time I checked, New Mexico law doesn’t require that I tell you any or all of my speculations. But I can guarantee that I want to find out who shot Garland Frost even more than you do.”
    “I don’t much care for it,” Corrigan said bluntly, “any more than I care for hard-assing you or Ms. Breck. But if I have to, I will.”
    “No news there.”
    “Do you really think you shot the perp?” Corrigan asked.
    “Not enough to send him to a hospital.”
    Corrigan grunted again. Then with a curt nod to Jill, he went back to his men.

53
    HOLLYWOOD
SEPTEMBER 16
8:00 A.M.
    T hat’s right,” Score said into the phone. “The six shipping cartons are charcoal, and so is anything that was inside them.”
    “Stay with them anyway.”
    Score bit down hard on his temper. He really didn’t have the patience for stakeouts, short sleep, and twitchy clients.
    “How long?” he asked through clenched teeth.
    “Until after the auction.”
    “It’s your money.”
    “Keep that in mind.”
    He looked at the dead phone and slammed it into the cradle in disgust.
    “Yo, boss,” a voice said from outside his locked office door.
    Score hit the button to release the lock. “Get in here.”
    “You look like hell,” Amy said as she walked in. She tossed a printout on his desk.
    I should fire the mouthy bitch.
    “I work hard on it,” Score snapped.
    But not as hard as Amy did. Today her hair was pink and silver.
    Score tried not to notice. He was used to the studs and rings shewore in painful places, but the ever-changing hair colors still threw him. It was like employing a chameleon.
    “I was