St Kilda Consulting 04 - Blue Smoke and Murder

was built. Didn’t have but one or two of them.Women were too busy taking care of families to get into trouble.”
    Jill said something under her breath.
    “What kind of booking procedure was used in those days?” Zach asked, ignoring her comment about sister-wives with the fertility of rabbits and the intelligence of dirt.
    “The best available at the time,” Purcell said. “The men in my family have always been forward thinkers. Photographs, fingerprints, defense lawyers, speedy trials, everything they have back East, we have in Blessing. We might be at the end of the map, but we’re not stupid about the law.”
    Zach nodded and squeezed Jill’s shoulder in warning. They needed the records and the sheriff was the gatekeeper.
    “Yes,” Zach agreed. “I’ve heard good things about this county. Probably comes from having a long line of sheriffs who were raised to do the job right.”
    Jill bit her tongue hard enough to leave skid marks.
    Purcell nodded. His posture relaxed. “We take our obligations seriously. That’s not something a lot of city folks understand.”
    “Did Justine Breck go on trial?” Zach asked.
    The sheriff grimaced. “Breck’s lawyer was too smart to go for a jury trial. The judge was an outsider, new to the job. He felt sorry for Justine, because her lover up and hung himself, so he went against my father’s advice and let the Breck woman go after a few weeks. But the judge did tell her if he ever saw her in court again, he’d throw the book at her. For a wonder, she listened. We never had trouble with her again.”
    “We’d like to see the booking records,” Zach said.
    “Why?”
    “Zach’s boss was once a federal judge and is now a high-powered lawyer,” Jill said. “She assured me that such records are public. If you don’t agree with her, she’ll have a warrant here before you can say Mormon tea.”
    “She?” Purcell said, sighing.
    “Yeah, what’s the world coming to,” Zach said sympathetically. “Women lawyers and judges. Next thing you know, process servers and sheriffs will be women.”
    “Want to place a bet on the gender of the person who shows up with a warrant for the records?” Jill asked.
    “Slow down, darling,” Zach said. “The sheriff is just doing his job. It’s not an easy one. Some days the citizens are worse than the crooks.”
    Purcell looked at Zach for the space of a long breath. Whatever he saw tipped the balance. Zach wasn’t bluffing and he wasn’t insulting a small-town sheriff.
    Best of all, Zach was keeping the pushy Breck woman in line.
    “Hope you do better with her than other men have done with Breck women,” Purcell said as he reached for the telephone and hit the intercom to the receptionist. “Call the records department and tell them two people are coming by to get dusty.”

58
    HOLLYWOOD
SEPTEMBER 16
2:25 P.M.
    A s soon as the outer door opened, Amy leaped to her feet. “It’s about time you got back from lunch.”
    “My office, now,” Score said.
    He was in a pisser of a mood.
    The way this case keeps eating up my time, you’d think I had only one client.
    A really important one.
    “Shut the door,” Score said. He sat down at his desk and fought against the kind of burp that made his eyes water.
    Goat cheese. Who decided that men should eat that stuff on a pizza and be polite about it?
    But what really had given him indigestion was the client, a Hollywood mover and shaker who was getting shaken down by someone and wanted to kick some ass in return.
    When will they learn to leave underage boys alone?
    Not that Score was complaining. Much. When people turned into saints, he’d be out of a job.
    “Well?” he said to Amy.
    “She’s on the move again. Back to good old Blessing, Arizona.”
    “Huh.” He found a roll of stomach mints and crunched up three of them. “What for?”
    “She’s talking to the sheriff.”
    “About what?”
    “Her grandmother’s arrest.”
    What does that have to do with the paintings? Score thought. “So?”
    “Well, except for one call, she wasn’t close to the bug, so I couldn’t hear anything until they left for the airport from Taos.” Absently Amy tested the holding power of her hair gel with her fingertips. Starting to droop. So was she. She’d worked through lunch.
    “What call?” Score demanded.
    She flipped to the next page of the printout. “The op reported in to St. Kilda, using the subject’s sat phone.”
    “What’d he say?”
    “Asked for the