St Kilda Consulting 04 - Blue Smoke and Murder

itself. Kind of a self-frame.”
    Zach made a sound that said he was listening.
    She read from the computer and paraphrased quickly. “One of Moran’s brothers tried to cash in on the master’s reputation by creating spectacularly inferior canvases and signing them ‘Moran.’”
    “Cheesed off old Tom, did it?”
    “Sure did. Thomas Moran began to use his unique thumbprint to prove that there was only one Moran worth owning.”
    “Not a thumbs-up after all,” Zach said, heading for the Dunstan canvases leaning against the wall. “A thumb print .” He reached for the first canvas. “Which side?”
    “Could be anywhere, even in the painting itself. Moran put it on the part of the painting that wrapped around the stretcher. That way it didn’t disturb the elements of the painting. But Dunstan’s paintings are more textured, so it could be anywhere and not stick out like a—”
    “Don’t say it.”
    “Sore thumb?” she asked innocently.
    Zach smiled but his eyes were fierce as he examined the canvas. Indian Springs was certainly textured. He flipped it over and looked at the canvas wrapped around the stretcher frame.
    “Right,” he said. “No one could see it if canvas was framed.” And I’m not seeing it now.
    He moved to better light.
    Jill picked up another canvas and held it a few inches away from her eyes, examining its surface. She saw nothing but brushstrokes and blocks of color. Then she remembered the reference to Moran’s placement of his trademark on the wrapped edge of the canvas.
    “Black light,” Zach muttered.
    “What?” she asked, caught in her own examination of a painting.
    “Frost left it on,” he said, holding out the lamp, pointing to the switch, which was in the “on” position.
    “So?”
    “So he was using it after we went to bed, and forgot to turn it off. Batteries are dead.”
    Zach went to the kitchen, banged around in drawers, and found batteries. He popped out the light’s old batteries and replaced them. Purple light glimmered.
    “Bring a painting,” he said, grabbing a Dunstan at random.
    Jill followed him into the walk-in vault that stored some of Frost’s most valuable pieces of ancient and more recent art.
    “Shut the door and turn off the light,” Zack said.
    As soon as she did, black light blossomed. The painting glowed in eerie transformation. All colors changed. Forms became almost three-dimensional. Brushstrokes took on an even deeper, very distinct texture. Thin spots in the coverage of the canvas and places where the artist had laid down extra pigment for esthetic effect were as clear as black print on a white page.
    “Do you see anything in the painting itself?” she asked.
    “Not at first glance.”
    “Try the edges.”
    He shifted the canvas in his grip, turning it so that the top edge was within the black light’s magic sphere.
    “See anything?” she asked.
    “Paint.”
    He flipped the canvas at a ninety-degree angle.
    Both of them stared at the new strip of canvas.
    “Nothing but paint,” she said.
    “Yeah. Hope we don’t have to go over the face of the canvas itself,” he said, turning the painting another ninety degrees. “It could take for—” His voice cut off like a switch had been thrown.
    “Toward me, just a little,” Jill said, her voice husky with excitement.
    He tilted the painting very slightly, throwing the textures into higher relief.
    “Is that what I think it is? “she said, touching the canvas lightly.
    “Yeah, it is.” He flipped the painting again. “On the bottom edge of the stretcher. No mistaking those ridges and whorls. Give me the canvas you have.”
    Jill turned the painting she carried upside down, presenting the bottom edge of the stretched canvas to the black light.
    “I will be damned,” Zach breathed. “Another thumbprint. Same place.”
    “How can you tell it’s a thumb rather than a finger?”
    “Experience.”
    “So Dunstan ‘signed’ even his unsigned canvases?”
    “Looks like it. I’ll get Frost’s paintings.”
    Jill took the black light he handed her and tried to wait patiently for him to return with the other Dunstans.
    She would have paced, but the vault was too small.
    It got even smaller when Zach returned with the two larger canvases. He turned them bottom side up and leaned them against a case of ancient red and black pottery. He tilted the black light.
    Jill stared at the strips of canvas. “There, a few inches from the corner.”
    “Just like the other