Blue Smoke and Murder

64

SEPTEMBER 16

4:10 P.M.

Ramsey, you better take this,” Cahill said. “Lee Dunstan calling from Las Vegas.”

Irritably Worthington looked up from overseeing the last of the auction’s paintings being loaded into a van for the trip to the airport. “What’s his problem?”

“Something you don’t want me yelling across a crowded room.”

With a hissed word, Worthington turned to the people loading the van. “All right, you have your instructions. I expect to see every one of these paintings and sculptures fully and completely intact when I get to the Golden Fleece tonight.”

“Yes, sir,” the boss said. She turned and called over her shoulder at a young man who’d stumbled on the loading ramp, “Slow down, Murphy. You’re not at UPS anymore. Nobody’s holding a stopwatch on you.”

Worthington turned and stalked through the back entrance of the gallery, where Cahill was waiting.

“I don’t have time to hold Lee’s hand,” Worthington said savagely.

“You have time for him on this. Trust me.”

Worthington disengaged the hold button and said with false cheer, “Hello, Lee. Getting excited about the auction?”

“You could say that.” At the other end of the line, Lee gave his wife a defiant salute with a half-empty whiskey glass and took an eye-watering swallow. “Ramsey, old buddy, we have a problem. The bitch is back.”

“Are you drunk?” Worthington asked in a clipped voice.

“Getting there. So will you when the auction blows up in your face on Sunday. The ten million a painting that everyone is counting on will be lucky to be half that.”

“Sweet Jesus.” Worthington tried for patience. The closest he got was “I don’t have time to listen to your drunken blather.”

“Too bad.” Lee smiled grimly. He hadn’t allowed himself a tear-down-the-town drunk in a long time. He was looking forward to it. Maybe he’d never wake up. “You’ve got less than two days to prove that Justine Breck didn’t paint what Thomas Dunstan signed.”

Worthington looked at the ceiling, but there weren’t any answers. “Is Betty there?”

Lee looked at the pale, strained face of his wife. She was dressed in the worn jeans and faded work shirt of the rancher’s daughter she once had been.

“She ain’t the bitch I’m talking about,” Lee said.

With a silent curse, Worthington covered the phone pickup and snarled at Cahill. “What the hell is happening?”

“All I know is that Lee Dunstan is saying that his daddy didn’t paint the Thomas Dunstans we’ll be auctioning off Sunday,” Cahill said. “Justine Breck did.”

“Ridiculous,” Worthington snapped. He took his hand off the phone. “I don’t have time for this nonsense. Put Betty on the line.”

“Sure. I need another whiskey anyway.” Lee motioned to his wife. “He wants to talk to you.”

Betty watched her husband walk toward the hotel’s liquor cabinet. He wasn’t staggering yet, but he would be soon.

I knew it was too good to be true, she thought bitterly. Five million a painting was outrageous. Ten million was just plain greedy.

She picked up the phone. “I’m sorry, Ramsey. Tal just called and was screaming at Lee so hard I heard him clear across the room. So Lee called you.”

Worthington dug his thumb into the skin between his eyebrows, trying to shut down the headache that had come out of nowhere. “What the hell is going on?”

“His wife picked up a blind call warning that someone was going to try to sink the auction by claiming our paintings were done by Justine Breck, not Thomas Dunstan.”

“Betty, Betty.” Worthington’s thumb dug in deep enough to leave a crescent mark from his nail. “It would take far more than an unsubstantiated rumor to convince someone of any artistic sophistication at all that the Dunstans aren’t exactly what we know they are-paintings by one of our greatest Western artists. A competitor is simply trying to cause trouble before the auction. A tempest in a teapot, that’s all.” Or a bit of extortion. Hardly the first time-or the last.

“But what about the thumbprint?” she asked.

Worthington wondered how Betty knew that he was trying to dig a hole in his forehead with his thumb. “What thumbprint?”

“The ones on the Dunstan paintings that belong to Justine, not to Thomas Dunstan.”

“Betty.” Worthington took a better grip on the phone and his exasperation. It’s always something before a big auction, and it’s always at the worst possible time. “Even if his lover’s fingerprints were all over the canvases, all it would prove is that Justine was with Dunstan when the paintings were created. Since Dunstan didn’t paint unless his Scarlet Muse was with him, finding her fingerprints on the canvas would hardly be earth-shattering. Even if the identity of the owner of the purported fingerprints could be proved, which is highly doubtful.”

“But Tal was so upset.”

“I’ll call Tal and straighten things out. Are you in Las Vegas now?”

“Yes.”

“Keep a lid on Lee. The less said, the better.”

Betty looked at the man pouring whiskey into a tumbler and sighed. “I’ll do what I can.” She hesitated. “This will make the paintings less valuable, won’t it?”

“Don’t worry,” Worthington said. “And keep Lee away from the public until he’s sober. If you get a call from anyone offering to sell new Dunstans to you, pass the call on to me.”

“Why would anyone want to sell us Dunstan paintings? We don’t have that kind of money.”

Extortion, you silly twit. What else? Worthington’s thumb ached almost as much as his head. Lee verifies fake paintings and everything is sweet-except Crawford will have my balls if I don’t generate enough auction excitement to support a minimum of eight million dollars per Dunstan. Ten is what Crawford really wants. That will make the kind of waves that nobody can question, not even the IRS.

Worthington was, in his own way, as eager as Crawford to make a huge splash. It would bring his new auction house to the attention of the big players in the art world in a dazzling way. But that would be hard to pull off with a dozen dubious Dunstans coming out of the woodwork at the last moment.

Crawford didn’t have the money to soak up twelve new paintings at four million each, much less at ten. And if the new paintings went for less, they would devalue the ones Crawford already owned.

“Don’t worry about anything except keeping a lid on Lee and calling me if someone contacts you about the paintings,” Worthington said. “Do you understand?”

Betty sighed. “I don’t understand anything, but I’ll do what you say.”

Worthington hung up and dialed Crawford’s cell phone number from memory.

Answer, you bastard. Time is running out.