St Kilda Consulting 04 - Blue Smoke and Murder

followed.”
    Faroe’s smile made him look deceptively gentle.
    “I’ve got a bunch of stuff on Crawford from the financial angle,” Lane said.
    “Let’s stick with Dunstan for now.”
    “There’s not much to stick with. All the really recent hits have to do with the museum. Most of the other recent hits on the Dunstan name have to do with the upcoming auction. The art bloggers are all over it like a cat covering—” Lane glanced up, saw his mother nursing the baby, and cleared his throat. “All over it like a cat in a sandbox.”
    Faroe bit back a smile. Lane was really trying to keep his language clean around his baby sister.
    So was Dad.
    “A month or so ago there was a thread on some art blogs that some new Dunstans had been discovered,” Lane said, “but nothing came of it that got posted on the Internet. Other blogs said anything new by Dunstan would be a fraud or a scam of some sort.”
    “Copy the blogs to me,” Faroe said.
    “Already did.”
    “Despite what you sometimes think,” Grace said without looking up from her computer or the baby, “your son actually listens to you. Sometimes.”
    Lane snickered. “The blogs are saying that the four to six million dollars per Dunstan is low end, because he comes on the market so rarely that there’s a lot of demand. The figure ten million dollars keeps coming up again and again in the really recent hits. Some serious buzz going down.”
    “Good news for the art business,” Faroe said.
    “Bad news for Uncle Sam,” Lane said, “according to one source.”
    “Yeah?” Faroe asked. “In my experience, the government always gets its cut of the action.”
    “Something to do with taxes,” Lane said.
    “Are we talking Crawford?”
    “Yeah, but you said you wanted to talk about Dunstan.”
    “Do you have anything else on Dunstan?” Faroe asked.
    “Just secondary and tertiary sources quoting primary sources and then each other. For example—”
    “Quit jerking Joe’s chain,” Grace cut in. “He may be in the mood for it but I’m not. Bottom-line time.”
    Lane started to defend himself, then thought better of it. He knew he was yanking his dad’s chain, but only in a sideways, sort of buddy kind of way. Nothing serious.
    “About two years ago,” Lane said, drawing up a new document on the computer, “Crawford’s business manager was busted on some bad tax shelters. He got bail on appeal, then hopped a plane to Paraguay with two showgirls and a lot of money in offshore accounts. Turns out that some of the deals he cut for Crawford weren’t what they looked like on the surface. Certainly not when it came to claiming federal tax deductions on losses.”
    “Bottom—” Faroe said.
    “—line,” Lane finished. “Crawford owes over a hundred million in taxes and penalties to our favorite uncle. He’s fighting it, but he’s lost two appeals already. The third one is still in the works.”
    Faroe’s soft whistle was all the reward Lane needed.
    “I don’t really understand a lot of this,” Lane continued, “but one of the swarmers has real financial smarts. She said that a cheap way to pay taxes is to give away stuff you already own to charity and take its value off your taxes.”
    “Stuff?” Faroe asked.
    “You know. Art, jewelry, property, that sort of thing. Stuff. Give it to a charity or a public trust.”
    “Or a museum,” Faroe said. “Good job, Lane.”
    His son grinned.
    “Giving away ‘stuff ’ works especially well if you can somehow inflate the cost of the donation,” Grace said, turning away from her computer without disturbing little Annalise. “That way you never paid full price, but you’re taking a full-price deduction. Or the sale price says one thing, but the buyer pays only a fraction. Under the table, of course. Deductions all around.”
    “Nothing like auction fever for raising prices,” Faroe said. “Or plain old bid-rigging works, too.”
    “Does Crawford own any other art?” Grace asked Lane. “Or just Western art?”
    “I came across something about a really important Picasso or two, plus some Warhols and a huge painting by the splatter dude.”
    “Jackson Pollock?” Grace guessed.
    “Yeah. Him,” Lane said.
    “Why wouldn’t Crawford sell or donate those?” Grace asked. “Modern art is at an all-time high. No need for inflating prices, artificial or real.”
    “Yeah,” Lane agreed. “Can you imagine paying over a hundred million dollars for a picture of a guy kissing a