Blue Smoke and Murder

26

SEPTEMBER 15

6:00 A.M.

Zach drove to the edge of the small airport’s paved strip and parked. The plane he’d chartered should be on final approach. He looked up.

No incoming lights.

He told himself to be patient. Headwinds, tailwinds, sidewinds, storms, and the rest of Mother Nature’s bag of tricks had the last word when it came to keeping schedules.

The small lounge near the tie-down area was dark. None of the private planes waiting patiently in the light breeze were being checked out for an early morning joyride.

Beside him in the truck, Jill poured coffee from the thermos she’d filled at the ranch and handed him a cup. “You still mad at me?”

“I wasn’t mad at you to begin with, so there’s no ‘still’ about it,” he said, searching the early-morning sky for signs of an incoming plane.

“I know you didn’t want me to come along.”

She looked at the side of his face, shadowed and modeled by the early morning light. He looked unreasonably good. She wanted a taste.

She settled for coffee.

“Thanks,” he said as he took the cup. “As for having you along, I just wanted to make sure you were on Faroe’s karma, not mine.”

“Well, that sounds reassuring.”

“Your great-aunt is dead, your car is trashed, you have a death threat. You want reassuring? You’ll find it in the dictionary between real and stupid.”

She chewed on the words and swallowed them with coffee from the thermos. “I don’t scare easily.”

“More important, you don’t lie worth a damn.”

“We’ve been down this river before.”

“And we’ll go down it again,” Zach finished the coffee and handed the cup back to her. “You stay with me and you play a role. Until further notice, I’m the sleaze job and you’re the sweet young thing.”

“I’m neither sweet, nor young, nor a thing.” She lifted the thermos in silent toast and took another drink.

“The whole point of an undercover op is to make people believe you’re something you aren’t,” he said.

“Like sweet, young, and thingy?”

He laughed and shook his head. “I’m beginning to appreciate what Faroe is up against with Grace. Of course, he gets some really nice side benefits.”

“Intelligent conversation?” Jill asked blandly.

“I don’t know anyone who made a baby just by talking about it.”

She tried not to smile, failed, and just shook her head. “I’m beginning to sympathize with Grace. Truce?”

“We’re not at war.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s not a game,” Zach said. “The only reason Faroe kept me with you is because I’m real good at making people believe I wrote the book on crooked. I also know enough about Western art to bullshit with the best of them.”

Jill blinked. “Okay. You’re a good liar. We’ve established that. And?”

“Lying is the best way to get down with the crooks who are running the scam.”

“We’re talking art?”

“And scams. Blue smoke, remember? That’s how you separate the marks from their millions.”

“We barely touched on fraud in my fine art classes,” she said, frowning.

Zach scanned the sky that was getting brighter with each heartbeat. Where is the damn plane? He sipped coffee and went back to the education of Ms. Jillian Breck.

“A good forger can embrace today’s art history bullshit, turn out the next missing Old Master from his grandmother’s attic, and embarrass the shorts off the art establishment,” Zach said. “No salesman, critic, or curator likes to talk about really good forgery with a mark. Raises too many questions about the nature of art and value. Worse, it makes the marks real nervous. He or she is trusting the experts to know good art and suddenly the experts are telling the buyer there ain’t no such thing as certainty.”

“Everyone who collects art isn’t a mark.”

He shrugged and sipped coffee. “Depends on your point of view. In China, old calligraphy sells for a lot of money. It’s considered the highest form of art in a civilization that reveres art.”

“Calligraphy? Really?”

“You make my point. You majored in fine arts and yet you’ve barely heard of Chinese calligraphy. It sells real well among the wealthy Chinese, though. In art, context is everything.”

Jill remembered Zach’s care, expertise, and pure esthetic enjoyment of her paintings. “Were you, um, blowing blue smoke about my paintings?”

“No. That was personal. This is business.” He held out his empty cup and looked hopeful. “It’s all about con artists and marks.”

She poured coffee carefully. “You sound like there’s no intrinsic, transcendent value in art.”

He sipped coffee and almost sighed. Strong enough to float horseshoes. Perfect.

“Before you lecture me about the transcendent nature of true art,” Zach said, “think about how well fine Chinese calligraphy sells in the U. S. of A.”

“How well?”

“Outside of the overseas Chinese communities, it doesn’t sell worth a handful of spit. Cultural context makes the difference in value.”

He scanned the sky again. Still empty.

“And context is another word for bullshit?” she asked.

“It can be. Especially when it comes to positional art.”

“Positional art? Must be another thing we didn’t cover in my fine arts classes,” Jill said, shaking her head.

“What do you do when you’re the newest billionaire on the block?” Zach asked, watching the sky. “You have the mansions in trendy spots all over the world, you have enough expensive cars for ten showrooms, you have a yacht bigger than Monte Carlo; and so does every other billionaire. How do you separate yourself from the herd?”

“Buy something the rest can’t buy. One-of-a-kind art.”

He turned and looked at her. “Have I mentioned how much I like smart women? That’s exactly what people do, whether it’s a Japanese corporation driving Impressionist art out of the stratosphere to impress the Western world, or a tech billionaire outbidding everyone else for a Jackson Pollock. Positional art is a statement of importance that has damn little to do with love of art and everything to do with ego.”

“A wealthy version of the old mine-is-bigger-than-yours game.”

Zach laughed. “Yeah. In the context of an auction, you’re buying the spotlight as well as the painting. Spend big bucks. Impress your business associates. Get known as an important collector. Get the red carpet treatment at high-end galleries. Don’t give a hoot whether you personally like the art you buy or not. Welcome to the world of blue smoke and positional art.”

“Interesting context,” she said blandly.

“It leaves plenty of room for scams. At auctions, gallery owners have been known to front bidders on artists they represent and/or personally collect. Totally illegal, of course, but so are a lot of things that work. Suddenly your Unknown Artist is setting six-figure records. Gallery owner calls his favorite positional-art suckers, churns out a butt-load of blue smoke, and sells the New Best Thing at a 200 or 300 percent markup.”

“I’m beginning to think my education was wasted.”

“Education is never wasted.”

“You sound like you mean that.”

“I do.” Zach thought of Garland Frost. “And the education you resent the most teaches you the most.” He hesitated, then shrugged. “That’s the kind of education you’re in for now.”

“You think my paintings are forgeries?”

“I don’t know what they are, besides really, really good. The point is, until we find out more, you’re going to have to lie like a fine carpet when we meet some gallery owners. At least one of them likely will know a lot more than we do about shredded paintings and death threats.”

She stiffened, then sighed. “I keep forgetting about that.”

“I don’t.” Ever.

“What did you do before St. Kilda Consulting?”

“Intelligence.”

Jill waited.

Zach sipped coffee and watched the sky. “The thing about positional art is that the more money you have looking for status, the higher the prices get in the art world.”

Okaaay, she thought. He can know all about my past, but his past is closed.

For now, anyway. Later, though…

Jill didn’t give up on the things that were important to her. She couldn’t figure out why, but Zach was important.

“Given the money top art brings,” he said, “no one should be surprised that the art trade attracts criminals. I’ve recovered stolen artworks by pretending to be a crooked museum curator. I’ve negotiated ransoms for kidnapped statues. I’ve passed myself off as the evil madman with a private gallery full of the world’s stolen masterworks.”

Jill didn’t know whether she was intrigued or appalled. “You’re going to laugh, but you seem so…straightforward…to me.”

“With you, I am.”

“I feel better. I think.”

Zach gave her a sidelong look. He’d like to know how she felt. Literally. In the early morning light she looked tousled and sexy, like she’d just come in from a hot night in someone’s bed. He really wished it was his.

The distant hum of an airplane’s engines penetrated the cab of the truck.

He sighed. Back to work.

Probably just as well. What I want to do with Jill doesn’t come under the heading of good client relationships.

But I’ve got a feeling it would be really, really good.

A bright dot in the sky to the north grew quickly into a twin-engine plane. The aircraft flew over the runway, turned, and landed. It shot past the truck, turned smartly, and taxied back toward them.

“Someone you know?” Jill asked.

“One way or another.”

Zach got out, stretched, and unlocked the hard metal top that covered the bed of the black pickup, protecting everything inside. He hadn’t bothered hauling Jill’s big trunk along. He’d wrapped the paintings in tarps-very carefully-and packed the documents and photos in a cardboard carton. Then he’d secured everything to the bed of the truck.

The plane pulled up on the strip near Zach’s truck and shut down. One of the crew opened a door in the fuselage and let down a set of steps. He began unloading six large aluminum suitcases. Behind him, six slightly larger, hinged wooden boxes with dead-bolt locks waited to further protect the suitcases and their contents.

Zach talked to another of the crew, handed her the first package of two paintings, and watched. With great care she unwrapped the tarp, matched the paintings inside to the cutouts in one of the foam-lined aluminum cases, closed the case, and slid it into a plywood shipping box. She secured the dead bolt on the box and turned to receive the next package of paintings.

He nodded and returned to his truck, sure that the paintings were in the hands of people who knew what they were doing.

“Get out and stretch your legs,” he said to Jill. “You’ll be cooped up in the plane soon enough.”

“I will?”

“Yeah.”

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Into the wild blue yonder.”

Zach pulled his soft canvas duffel from the truck bed, followed by Jill’s backpack. Her belly bag was looped through one of the backpack’s many fasteners.

“You want your ‘purse’ with you or with the rest of the luggage?” he asked her.

“If it’s with the luggage, can I get to it during the flight?”

“Not easily.”

“Give it to me, then.”

He unfastened the waist pack and tossed it toward her. Though stuffed to bursting, the pack didn’t weigh much.

“Any special reason you’re keeping the canvas scraps?” Zach asked. “Even if the rest of the paintings are solid gold, the shredded one isn’t worth anything.”

“When I want to strangle you, I think of the rags. My temper improves dramatically.”

Zach smiled. “Good plan. Let’s go.”

He headed toward the plane.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Up, up, and away.”

“Zach-”

“Try something new,” he cut in. “Trust me.”

“I’d rather count canvas rags,” she shot back.

“And I’d rather be reconditioning the muscle car I left in the Eureka’s parking lot. In or out, Jill. Your choice.”

Without a word she headed for the plane.