Blue Smoke and Murder Read Online Free PDF

isn’t as safe as it seems to the young.
    Jill had a hard time thinking of her great-aunt as crazy. Snake mean? Sure. Hard as a whetstone? No problem. Man-hater? Definitely. Crazy?
    Like a fox.
    She looked at her watch. By the time she drove into town, the lawyer would have closed his office, the county records would be locked for the night, and the sheriff would be eating dinner at the Rimrock Café. He wouldn’t take well to being interrupted by anything less urgent than life and death.
    Modesty’s death didn’t qualify. It was yesterday’s news.
    “Looks like life isn’t real safe for the old, either,” Jill said to the paintings.
    Silence answered.
    Yet something had made Modesty move the paintings and family papers out of the ranch house. Within days or weeks of shifting the trunk, she’d died in a household accident while filling the old fuel stove in the middle of a cold night.
    And the painting she’d sent out for appraisal was missing.
    Unhappily, Jill looked from painting to painting, each breathtaking, each unsigned.
    Why would a “great artist,” according to my mother, not sign paintings?
    Why did Modesty keep the paintings secret so long?
    No matter how long Jill looked at the canvases, they didn’t have answers for her. They simply murmured to her of the lonely grandeur of living in the demanding freedom of the West.
    Modesty’s life.
    Modesty’s death.
    Jill looked at her watch again. She’d see the lawyer and sheriff in Blessing tomorrow. In fifteen minutes the rate on her costly satellite phone connection would go down, a reflection of local business hours.
    She took her digital camera out of her backpack, hesitated over the paintings, and finally chose the three smallest. After taking several pictures, she pulled out her computer and downloaded the best images. Quickly she searched the Net for high-end Western art galleries within a day’s drive. She chose Fine Western Arts in Snowbird, owned by Ramsey Worthington. Worthington had several galleries, all in high-end Western resorts. Plus he was the owner of the Best of the West, an auction house that was setting up to be the new Sotheby’s.
    If the ads could be believed.
    After deliberating about who had the next-snottiest ad, she chose Vision Quest Gallery in Taos, owned by William Shilling. He’d been in business for thirty years at one location, which spoke well of his client list. She chose three more galleries almost at random. All of them were heavy on the Western theme, cowboys and Indians, hardships and manly hunts.
    As for the Art of the Historic West gallery in Park City, forget it. They had already lost one of her grandmother’s paintings. That was why Jill was using the JPEGs instead of the paintings as her calling cards.
    She didn’t want any more of her heritage getting “misplaced.”

5
    TAOS, NEW MEXICO
SEPTEMBER 12
MORNING
    W hen the buzzer rang on the front door of the Vision Quest Gallery, William Shilling glanced up and immediately pressed the door release. Mrs. Caitlin Crawford was the kind of client gallery owners loved to see at the door. She was beautiful in a classy way, discriminating, and the wife of an older man who could afford to drop seven figures on a painting without his pulse raising.
    “Caitlin, what a pleasure,” Shilling said, hurrying toward her. “May I get you some coffee? It’s quite chilly out.”
    The door shut with a sound that suggested complex, durable locks.
    “That would be lovely,” Caitlin said, pulling off her black kid gloves and tucking them into a pocket of her black vicuna coat.
    “No sugar, no cream, correct?” he asked as he helped her out of her cloud-soft black coat and went to the coffeepot.
    “You’re such a sweetheart to remember. And I’m sorry to give you so little notice. Talbert just decided to fly over and check on the new resort. Naturally, I couldn’t pass up a chance to see you.”
    Shilling smiled and handed her a fine china cup. The smell of the