Cyanide Wells (13 page)

“Quite a history. Never had any desire to return to Ellenburg, Ohio?”

“About as much as you have to return to Saugatuck, Minnesota. You and I, Lindstrom, are brother and sister under the skin.”

“Meaning?”

“You left Saugatuck because everybody thought you were a murderer. I left Ellenburg because everybody knew I was a lesbian.”

The corner of Matt’s mouth twitched, and for a moment he didn’t speak. Then he asked, “You want to tell me about it?”

“No. Not now.”

“Why?”

Because for all our common suffering, I don’t know you that well. May never know you that well.

“This isn’t the right time. I brought you here so we could both clear our heads and have the privacy to talk about some things I found in Ard’s notes.”

She pulled from her daypack the legal pad on which she’d highlighted certain entries. “When Natalie was small, she had an odd conversational style. We’d be driving along in the car, for instance, and she’d be talking about something that had happened to her in school. Then all of a sudden she’d interrupt herself and exclaim, ‘Oh, look—horses!’ And next thing, without breaking stride, she’d go right back to whatever she’d been saying before. Some of Ard’s notes remind me of that.”

“Read them to me.”

She flipped to the first of the pages she’d marked. “ ‘Ronnie Talbot had made the decision to sell the mill a year before the deal was Meryl Travis finalized…’ ”

“Huh?”

“Exactly my reaction. The name Meryl Travis is circled.”

“Who is that?”

“The mother of Mack Travis, the man who confessed to the killings and hanged himself in his jail cell.”

“Odd. What else?”

“ ‘Members of both the gay and straight communities came to the support of the friends of the victims as Ronnie Talbot and Deke Rutherford were laid to rest, but then the Andy D’Angelo process of fragmentation began.’ ”

“D’Angelo? That’s my landlady’s last name. Her father…”

“Killed himself recently. That’s Andy. How’d you meet the daughter?”

“In a bar in Talbot’s Mills. But it wasn’t the way you think. She’s a nice woman.”

“Did I say anything, Lindstrom?”

“No.”

“I flat-out hate people telling me what I do or don’t think.”

“Sorry.”

“I mean, how can anybody assume—”

“Sorry.”

“Oh, hell, I’m—”

“Sorry.”

“We sound like a bad comedy routine.”

“Maybe we should work on it, take it on the road. So is Andy D’Angelo’s name circled?”

“Yes. And there’s another reference of the same kind. ‘Guns are common in this county, but the sheriff’s department ballistics expert maintains the markings on the fatal bullets are distinctive and Rawson or Payne the missing weapon has never been found.’ ”

“Rawson or Payne—the developers of the Meadows.”

“Right.”

Lindstrom’s blue eyes grew intense; they locked on hers and held. “Is she naming them as the killers?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are these references some kind of code?”

“I doubt it. Ard’s mind doesn’t work that way. She runs out of patience with crossword puzzles or rebuses. She hates mystery novels because she can never figure out their solutions. Natalie loves to do jigsaws, spreads them out on the dining room table, but Ard doesn’t have the vision to fit the pieces together.”

“Then what
do
these things represent?”

“Possibly reminders to herself to check something out.”

“She’d break in the middle of a sentence to note them?”

“Given how distracted she’s been lately, it wouldn’t surprise me. Here’s something else I found on the last page of this pad.” Carly flipped to her marker. “It’s a list: Wells Mining. They owned the Knob mine in its heyday—the eighteen-sixties. Denver Precious Metals. That’s the firm that bought it around the turn of the twentieth century and used a cyanide-based process to extract the remaining gold from the waste dumps and low-grade ore. They donated the land to the national parks system in the nineteen fifties. Neither company had anything to do with Ronnie or Deke. The next item is CR ninety-two. I have no idea what that is. And then there’s Moratorium ten-slash-zero-zero. Again, I haven’t a clue.”

“Anything else?”

“Just a name—Noah Estes. And a date—nineteen seventy-four. Estes is a fairly common name in this county; the manager of the mine under Denver Precious Metals was John Estes, and he and his wife had a number of descendants. I don’t recall a Noah, however.”

Lindstrom nodded but remained silent. A breeze started up out of the northwest, blowing about the branches of the newly leafed aspen trees in a declivity below. Carly studied the play of light and shadow on them. She loved this time of year, when spring crept up into the foothills; its arrival always invigorated her, gave hope. But this year she felt sluggish and despondent—had felt that way even before Ard pulled her latest disappearing act.

Matt said, “Andy D’Angelo—did he have any connection to you, Ardis, or your friends?”

“I wasn’t aware the man existed till he committed suicide.”

“As owner of the mill, could Ronnie Talbot have known him?”

“I doubt it. He never took an active role in its management.”

“Well, why don’t I talk with Sam D’Angelo? See if she knows of a connection.”

“Good idea. In the meantime, I’ll check on the items on Ard’s list.”

He stood. “You coming?”

“Not yet.” They’d driven there separately. “I want to stay for a while.”

“I’ll call you later, then, after my talk with Sam.”

After Matt’s footfalls faded on the other side of the Knob, she moved to a more sheltered spot and propped her back against the smooth rock wall. Tried to empty herself of thoughts and emotions—a bastardized Zen technique that she’d developed after attending a couple of weekend retreats. It worked about forty percent of the time, but not today. Finally she abandoned it and fell back on the mantra often quoted by her brother, Alan, during their troubled teenage years: “Everything ends. Everything ends.”

The mantra had helped both of them survive their parents’ deteriorating marriage and their increasingly disturbed mother’s unreasonable restrictions and unfounded accusations. (“I saw you with that Watkins kid. You’ve been smoking, haven’t you?” “I caught you smiling at that boy on the street. You’ve been messing around, haven’t you? You tramp!”) It got them through long periods of punishment for the most minor of transgressions. (“You didn’t make your bed right. No TV for thirty days.” “You fed the cat five minutes late. No desserts this month.”) And it helped them endure the long, chilly silences that were somehow more disturbing than the spates of verbal abuse.

Today the mantra didn’t work at all. Instead it reminded her that, for Alan, everything had indeed ended: twenty years ago on an icy country road in upstate New York, when he’d been trying to outrun a storm to get home to his wife and baby son. A year later his wife had died of breast cancer, and the son had been spirited away by his maternal grandparents, who didn’t want him exposed to the “evil influences” of the family their daughter had married into.

The foremost of the evil influences they cited being his lesbian aunt.

My brother, my best friend, the only family member besides Aunt Nan who accepted me for who I am—lost to me forever. My sister-in-law, also my friend, who understood the pain I’d been through—also lost. My nephew—I didn’t know him, will never know him.

And now what if Ard and Nat are lost, too?

Old grief welled up, choking her; fresh grief made her eyes sting. She stood, hefted her pack, began climbing down the steep trail. She’d go home, get on the computer, tackle the problem.

But then, when she was in her truck, another old grief made her turn in the opposite direction.

The redwood-and-glass house stood in the shadow of pines and live oaks; the rose garden that Ard had helped Deke plant showed robust new foliage. Carly got out of her truck and breathed in the mentholated scent of the eucalyptus that lined the long driveway. Everything here was well tended, courtesy of the Talbot estate, of which Ardis was executor; in the years since the residents had been murdered, no one, not even the most pragmatic of potential buyers, had made an offer on the property.

She still had a spare key to the house on her ring; she and Ard and Ronnie and Deke had traded plant-watering and pet-caring duties during the times they traveled. She fingered the key, studying the windows whose closed blinds had blocked out the stares of the curious in the days after the killings. She hadn’t been back here since Ard’s frantic summons, and she found she couldn’t get past the memories of her partner lying on the lawn next to a pool of vomit, her friends lying dead in their bloodstained bedroom, the impersonal bustle of the officials’ activity. She would have given anything to envision Ronnie coming through the front door to envelop her in a welcoming hug, Deke following close behind to offer a glass of excellent cabernet. But while she knew such moments had occurred many times, it was as if they had happened in a film she’d seen and half forgotten. Here, in this peaceful place, she could only feel pain and the remnants of horror.

Still, she felt drawn to the house.

Don’t do it, McGuire. It’s not healthy.

She went up the walk, slid the key into the lock, opened the door.

The tiled hallway whose big window overlooked the swimming pool at the opposite side of the house was cool and shadowy. The living plants that Deke had cultivated under the skylights had been replaced by silk imitations, but otherwise nothing was significantly altered. She moved along, glancing into the living room, the library, the den, the exercise room, the dining room, the kitchen…

Something unexpected there. An odor. She sniffed, recognized it as bacon. An aroma she encountered frequently in her own kitchen on Saturdays and Sundays. One of the household bonds was a love of bacon, the crisper the better.

She moved slowly into the room, taking in small details. Stove: clean, but some streaks showing where it had recently been wiped. Scattering of crumbs on the edge of the pullout breadboard. Purple smudge on the handle of the double sink’s faucet. She touched it, smelled her fingers. Blueberry jam.

Ard was a neat freak in her office, but seldom in the kitchen.

Carly went to the refrigerator and looked inside. Only a box of baking soda. But in the adjoining laundry room she found a damp and stained dishtowel inside the hamper.

She started upstairs to the bedrooms. Stopped, remembering what she’d found there the last time, then steeled herself and went on.

Guest rooms, three of them. Those who came to dinner parties here at the end of the long, winding road preferred to stay over, and Ronnie and Deke had provided accommodations. The first room showed no signs of occupancy; in the second the blinds on the two windows were closed in different directions—a mistake the realty people wouldn’t have made. And in the third the comforter on the bed hung lopsided—exactly as the one on Nat’s bed at home always did.

Carly didn’t have the heart to search further. It was clear that Ard and Natalie had stayed here last night. Slept in a place where Ard knew no one would ever look for them, while Carly agonized and spent the night trying to find clues to their whereabouts.

They’d gotten up this morning, and Ard had prepared their traditional Saturday breakfast: orange juice, bacon, eggs over easy, toast with blueberry jam from a mail-order house in Montana. Had Nat asked why they were staying at Uncle Ronnie and Uncle Deke’s house? Asked why Carly wasn’t with them? How had Ard explained that?

And how had she summoned the courage to spend the night in this place where their friends were brutally murdered? Or had she visited here many times without Carly’s knowledge?

Her breath came ragged and fast; then black spots danced across her field of vision. As dizziness overcame her, she sank to the floor, pressed her face into the comforter.

After a few moments her physical reactions subsided, but her emotions swung wildly—from rage to despair to rage and back to despair. She pounded the mattress with her fists, twisted the comforter with vicious fingers, and finally wept.

Why, Ard? Why?

It was after seven when she left the house. Pink and gold streaks lingered in the sky over the coastal ridgeline, but shadows enveloped the valley, and to the east the foothills were dark. The temperature had dropped sharply, and a chill was on the air, along with the scent of damp earth and growing things…

Movement in the underbrush—slow, stealthy.

She stopped, listening.

“Who’s there?”

No reply.

“Who’s there?”

Nothing.

She must’ve imagined it. Probably had caught Ard’s paranoia. Feeling foolish, she ran for the truck.

Once inside she turned on the dome light and twisted the rearview mirror so she could see her face. It was blotchy, her eyes red and swollen. She looked, in short, like shit. But her emotional fit—something she hadn’t permitted herself in years—had proved cathartic: She was in control once more and hungry as a wolf.

At home she fixed a huge sandwich from a leftover roasted chicken, took it and a glass of Fume blanc to the table by the windows, shutting the blinds before sitting down. She ate the sandwich, drank the wine, went back to the fridge for potato salad and more wine. She was back again, in hot pursuit of ice cream, when the blinking light on the answering machine caught her attention.

Lindstrom: “Carly, I talked with Sam, and now you and I need to talk.” He gave a number.

Mayor Garson Payne: “Have you given any more thought to what we were discussing the other day? Call me. You have my numbers.”

Arts reporter Vera Craig: “Hey, honey. You looked kinda peaked when you and Johnny Crowe rushed in and out this afternoon. Need some of Aunt Vera’s TLC?”

Sev Quill: “Hi, boss woman. What’s happening with Crowe, a.k.a., well, you know? I’ll be home till six, not back till morning, if I get lucky. Redheaded tourist, and she’s just fascinated with newspaper reporters.”

She listened to Matt’s message again, then dialed the number he’d left. The phone rang ten times—no answer, no machine. The mayor’s message she deleted; she was not open to further discussion with him—now or ever. Vera’s message she’d ignore; if the big-hearted woman caught the slightest hint of something gone amiss, she’d be over in a flash to smother her with affection and eventually glean all the details. Sev, of course, was now busy charming the redheaded tourist.