Blue Smoke and Murder

6

SEPTEMBER 12

LATE MORNING

Sheriff Ned Purcell rocked his high-backed chair away from the desk and stared at the ceiling.

“The fire was almost a month ago, Miss Breck. The ruling has already been made. Your great-aunt died in an unfortunate accident.”

“I understand,” Jill said evenly. “But considering her note to me, and the convenient loss of one of our family paintings, I feel we should look at things again.”

“Miss…” He bit back an impatient word and looked out the window. The Breck women had been nothing but trouble for a century. Ornery to the bone. “In the big scheme of things, Modesty probably had a part in her own death. Old ladies who live alone shouldn’t try to pour fuel oil into a stove that’s already burning.”

Jill straightened her back against the wooden chair on the other side of the sheriff’s desk. She was real tired of hearing how women shouldn’t be living without the protection and oversight of a man. That point of view was one of the biggest reasons she’d rarely looked back after leaving the Arizona Strip for a college scholarship in California.

“Great-aunt Modesty was born on that ranch,” Jill said. “She lived with that stove her whole life. She was used to doing her own chores, including maintaining old engines and pouring fuel oil, branding and cutting and haying. Frankly, I was having a hard time accepting that she tripped and scattered burning fuel oil all over the kitchen. Then, when I found her note and the old trunk, I really felt the whole matter should be looked at again.”

Purcell picked up the cream-colored Stetson that was as much a part of his uniform as the tooled leather belt with its gun, nightstick, handcuffs, and bullets.

Jill waited. She knew she was irritating the sheriff, but she couldn’t just let all the questions go because the man believed at a gut level that a woman living alone would naturally come to a bad end.

“Maybe Modesty had just been lucky all these years,” Purcell said bluntly. “A woman like her isn’t supposed to live alone.”

A combination of triumph and anger burned in Jill. She hated the assumption of every woman’s inferiority to any man.

“I’m not sure I follow,” she said.

Purcell leaned forward on his elbows. His face was clean-shaven, surprisingly pale for a man who spent so much time outdoors. His lips were thin and flat. He wore a white, pearl-buttoned Western shirt, jeans, cowboy boots, and a bolo tie. He was an elected rural lawman who ran for office every day of his term and dressed accordingly.

“Modesty Breck was a pain in the side to the folks around here,” Purcell said. “She flaunted views that decent people in this county find offensive. More than one person came to me, saying that they thought she was incompetent, that she ought to have more supervision, particularly in her declining years.”

“And there are those who thought she should have had more supervision, especially in her younger days,” Jill shot back. “Some people can’t abide the thought that a woman should choose never to marry, or worse, to leave a church-sanctified marriage and live on her own.”

Red stained the sheriff’s cheekbones. “Modesty Breck was a runaway bride.”

“She never married,” Jill said. “As far as I know, she never even agreed to an engagement.”

“She led on several good men, making them believe she would marry them.”

Jill held her tongue. If legend and gossip were true, Purcell’s father had been one of those eager men. But in the end, Modesty had never found a man she couldn’t live without.

Neither had Jill.

“Modesty’s sister Justine was no better than a prostitute and an adulteress,” Purcell said grimly. “Justine was a drunk who shot her married lover during an argument. My father brought them both in for drunk and disorderly. Justine’s lover was a good man led astray by a flashy, easy woman. He felt so bad about it that he hanged himself in this jail the night they were arrested.”

Jill’s eyes widened. “What?”

“You don’t believe me, I’ll show you the arrest records, fingerprints and all. Purcells have been lawmen here since before Arizona was a state. We take pride in our work.”

Jill didn’t know what to say. She’d heard hints and whispers and speculations, but nothing as plain as Purcell’s words.

“Justine’s bastard daughter, your mother, was a runaway wife who divorced a good man, changed her name back to Breck and never entered a tabernacle again,” Purcell said. “The Breck women are nothing but godless troublemakers.”

“It’s a free country,” Jill said, trying and failing to keep the bite out of her voice. “Including the freedom not to be religious.”

Purcell scowled. He was an elder in the Mormon church. His authority as sheriff owed more to the church than to the badge clipped to his wide belt. Canyon County was a God-fearing place, one of the last frontiers of decency in an increasingly depraved nation.

“But the temple doesn’t forgive a runaway woman,” Jill said. “A male sinner, sure. A female? Never.”

Purcell straightened his spine. “Spoken like a true Breck. But that’s neither here nor there. You have a copy of the death certificate and the coroner’s report. Modesty Breck tripped, broke her thick skull on the iron stove, dropped the fuel can, and caused the fire that burned down the old ranch house and spread to the barn.”

For a long moment the room was silent except for the ticking of a grandfather clock in the corner. It had been keeping time in a lawman’s office since before the Arizona Territory became an official state of the United States of America. And that lawman had probably been a Purcell.

Jill grimaced. Too bad a lot of people in the rural West haven’t caught on to statehood and the reality of the twenty-first century.

“There’s no motive, no reason for anybody to do anything to your great-aunt,” Purcell said, looking at his watch. “Whatever insult the Breck women laid upon the church was a long time ago. These days, believers don’t hold those kinds of grudges. Nobody around here wished Modesty any harm. Nobody thought about her at all unless some drifter was looking for work, and then we sent them out to the Breck ranch.”

“What about the paintings?” Jill asked.

“What about them? That letter you showed me was pretty plain about the fact that they weren’t worth anything. Take the insurance settlement they offered and consider yourself lucky.”

“But why would Modesty suddenly move the paintings to my place and leave me a note saying life isn’t as safe as I think?”

Purcell snorted. “I followed up with one of the appraisers your aunt tried to employ, a nice young man up near Salt Lake. He as good as said right out that the painting she sent him was a fake or a forgery. Maybe Modesty decided the other paintings were dangerous because she tried to pass them off as valuable. That’s a crime, you know. Fraud.”

“But-”

“I’d advise you to keep that in mind, Miss Breck,” the sheriff cut in. “If you try to pass those paintings off as something they’re not, you could end up in real trouble. The criminal kind.”

Jill’s strong hands gripped the arms of the chair. She stared at the lawman and counted to ten. Twenty.

Thirty.

Purcell leaned forward and smiled almost gently. “I know death is hard to accept, especially for an overeducated young woman like you. I just want you to understand that I have acted in good faith in this matter. If I didn’t believe that Modesty’s death was an accident, I’d pursue it to the limit of the law.”

“But you believe that her death was accidental.”

“Me, the fire chief, the coroner, and everyone else who looked at the facts. Modesty Breck was a stubborn old woman, hell-bent on living alone. We also know she was getting more frail. Did you ever think that she might have moved the paintings and papers to your cabin and then not so accidentally killed herself so she wouldn’t be forcibly moved off that ranch for her own good?”

A chill went over Jill. “Are you saying that Modesty meant to die?”

Purcell shrugged. “Given what you told me, suicide is as much within the facts as the verdict of accidental death. If you insist, I’ll reopen the case. But it sure would make collecting any life insurance more difficult. As the beneficiary, that’s something you should think about.”

It took Jill several silent moments to get a grip on her temper.

Purcell was everything she and the Breck women had hated about the Mormon West. If Jill wanted any answers to her questions, she’d have to find them herself.

She thought again of the card Joe Faroe had given her, then dismissed it. She wasn’t being stalked. The only danger she was in was losing control and assaulting an officer of the law.

“Thank you for your time, Sheriff. I won’t be bothering you again.”