Read St Kilda Consulting 04 - Blue Smoke and Murder for Free Online Page A

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 saidright 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