St Kilda Consulting 04 - Blue Smoke and Murder

door is called a cover charge.”
    He snickered. “Can’t figure out which chaps you the most—hypocrisy or patriarchy.”
    “I’ll let you know when I decide.”
    “Seems like your grandmother and Dunstan had been celebrating the Fourth of July, but things went south.”
    “What happened?” Jill asked.
    “Well, according to the bartender—can you believe his name was Truly Nolan?”
    “Unfortunately, yes.”
    Zach shook his head. “Anyway, the bartender heard Justine and Dunstan arguing. A real shouting match.”
    “Over what?”
    “Didn’t make sense to anyone listening, but that’s the way it goes with a lot of drunken brawls. According to the bartender, Dunstan ‘took it’ for a bit. Then he hauled off and backhanded Justine across the mouth.”
    Jill’s hands flexed on the steering wheel. “Sweet guy.”
    “You know how those artists are. Real sensitive. He hit her so hard her chair fell over backward and she was tossed into another table’s drinks. Then he jumped on top of her and tried to strangle her. Things got real lively after that.”
    “Strangle her?”
    “Yeah. He lost it, big-time. This was in the days before air-conditioning, and something tells me it gets real hot around Blessing on the Fourth of July,” Zach drawled.
    “Well over a hundred degrees. And that doesn’t include the wind, dry as sandpaper and hot as hell,” Jill said. “Wonder what they were doing in Blessing?”
    “Besides drinking and fighting? Painting. At least that’s what Dunstan said, and his clothes had the stains to prove it. Seems he loved to paint the area around the Breck ranch, from Blessing to the canyon rim, Indian Springs to the places where sagebrush died and creosote took over.”
    “Is that in the report?” Jill asked, surprised.
    “It’s called reading between the lines. And some research I did while we were waiting to see if Frost would make it out of surgery.”
    “Dunstan’s catalogue raisonné. You were reading it like it held the secret of life or death.”
    Or maybe just sanity.
    All Zach said was “Good old Truly Nolan broke up the brawl with the ax handle he kept under the bar. When the dust settled, Justine was gone. Dunstan took off after her. He was about fifty feet inside the city limits when she started yelling, ‘You’ll never hit me again, you son of a bitch!’ Then she shot him with a .22 rifle.”
    “The Breck family snake gun,” Jill said. “Modesty still used it—when it didn’t jam, which was most of the time.”
    “It didn’t jam that night. Justine fired and kept on firing until she ran out of bullets.”
    “Or it jammed.”
    “Other than burning Dunstan’s butt with a shot, she missed,” Zach said.
    “Pity. If I’d been around, I would have given her my Colt Woodsman. Or I’d have shot the bastard myself.”
    He slanted her a sideways look. “Remind me never to piss you off.”
    “Don’t worry. The family snake gun didn’t survive the fire.”
    “It’s your Woodsman I’m worried about.”
    She smiled crookedly. “I pawned it to get money for school books.”
    He wanted to hug her. Instead, he kept talking. “Once Justine ran out of ammo—”
    “—or the rifle jammed,” Jill said.
    “—the deputy arrested her and hauled her off in cuffs.”
    “What about Dunstan?” Jill demanded. “He was the one trying to strangle her.”
    “Oh, they got around to arresting him, too,” Zach said. “Just as soon as the local doc finished pouring whiskey over the bullet burn and bandaging Dunstan’s butt.”
    “Then what?”
    “The patriarchy you know and love kicked in.”
    “Meaning?”
    “Justine was charged with attempted murder. Dunstan went down for public drunkenness. He got a night in the cooler.”
    The knuckles on Jill’s hands showed white on the wheel, but all she said was “Strangling doesn’t count as attempted murder?”
    “Not when she was a mouthy bitch who had it coming.” Zach’s lips twisted into something a lot colder than a smile.
    “You sound like you agree with Dunstan,” she said.
    “More like I’ve read one too many domestic disturbance reports. Makes me wish I had a time machine.”
    “Why?”
    “I’d finish what Justine started. I have no patience for a man who belts women around.”
    The very neutrality of Zach’s voice made Jill’s stomach clench. She hoped he never used that tone on her.
    She let out a long breath. “Sorry. I was taking out what I was feeling on you.”
    The back of his