Cyanide Wells (18 page)

“The guy in five? He’s not here very much. I don’t really know him.”

“Is there anybody else in the building who does?”

“Uh…Mrs. Matthews, maybe. She kind of functions as the manager—at least she’s the one who calls the owners when something in the common areas needs fixing. She’s lived here forever. Number two.”

Matt thanked her and located the apartment at the rear of the first floor. Mrs. Matthews looked to be in her sixties, a petite blonde-haired woman in jeans and a blue sweater. “Of course I know Chase,” she said. “What’s he done now?”

“To tell you the truth, I’ve never met the man. I’m trying to locate him on behalf of a family member who was involved with him about ten years ago—Ardis Coleman.”

“Ardis. Of course. Lovely girl. She didn’t deserve the way Chase treated her. I was happy when she left him.”

“How did he treat her?”

“Abused her, both verbally and physically. Threatened their little girl, too, and she was only a baby when they moved here.”

“When was that?”

“September of ninety two.”

“And Ardis left him when?”

“In November.”

“What were the circumstances of her leaving?”

Mrs. Matthews looked uncomfortable. “You say Ardis is a family member. I’d think you’d know.”

“She doesn’t like to talk about that part of her life, but I understand there was some unpleasantness. If I’m to deal with Lewis, I think I should be prepared, don’t you?”

“Well, yes. On the night Ardis left, I heard a lot of yelling and screaming up there.” She motioned toward the ceiling. “More than the usual. Then it got very quiet, and someone ran out of the building. An hour later Chase came to my door reeking of alcohol, with his shoulder wrapped in a bloody towel, and asked me to drive him to the emergency service at S.F. General. He said Ardis had left him and taken the baby, and he got so upset he stabbed himself accidentally.”

“Did you believe him?”

“Of course not. To me it was obvious what had happened, but it was no business of mine. And he managed to convince the emergency room personnel of his story.”

“Did Chase ever try to find Ardis and the baby?”

“No. He drank even more afterwards, and I think he was using drugs as well. He kept getting fired from his jobs, but somehow he managed to support himself and keep the apartment. Then, a few years ago he got himself into a program and has been clean and sober ever since.” Mrs. Matthews frowned. “Of course, he’s as mean as ever, although he controls himself better. Why do you want to see him?”

“A legal matter involving the little girl. Do you have any idea when he might be coming home?”

“No, I don’t. Last month he mentioned that he’d landed a long-term gig at Lake Tahoe.”

“Where?”

“He didn’t say.” She hesitated. “When you talk to Ardis, will you tell her hello for me? She may not remember me after all these years, but just say I wish her well.”

Back at the motel he paced nervously, contemplating his next move. A drink from the bottle he’d brought along failed to calm him, so finally he sat down and dialed directory assistance in the 612 area code, copied down the number he received, and called it. Seconds later, Bonnie Vaughan’s soft voice answered.

“Bonnie, it’s Matt Lindstrom. Don’t hang up. I have good news.”

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, calling me.”

“Gwen’s alive, Bonnie. She’s been living in a small town in California since shortly after she disappeared. I’ve seen her, photographed her.”

A long silence. “I don’t believe you.”

“It’s the truth. Let me tell you how I found her.” The story spilled out of him like water rushing through a sluiceway. He ended by asking, “The two of you were lovers, right?”

“…Oh, Matt, what difference does it make?”

“It’s important to me. It explains a great deal.”

“All right, yes. You must’ve suspected. That time you nearly caught us at your house…She was so afraid you’d figure it out and hate her. Hate me, too. The thing was, she loved both of us, but she loved you more.”

“Why d’you think that?”

“Because she stopped sleeping with me after that night. In a way, I was relieved. If there had been a scandal, I’d’ve lost my job. A high school principal having a lesbian affair with a married woman…Well, you know.”

“She broke it off with you, but she still asked me for a divorce.”

“Because she was afraid if she stayed with you, she’d end up really hurting you. She planned to wait till the divorce was final and then leave town, claiming she’d gotten a job in another state.”

“If you knew her plans, how could you think I murdered her?”

She sighed. “I didn’t at first, although I thought it was strange that she disappeared before the divorce was final, without saying good-bye to either of us. But Gwen was impulsive and didn’t always act rationally, so I decided something had happened to make her run. But then two years went by, and she never got in touch with me. Everybody else thought you were guilty, and I started believing it, too.”

“And now?”

“It all makes sense. These disappearing acts, they’re part of a lifelong pattern.”

Her phrasing gave him pause. “Lifelong?”

“Well, she did run away from home in her teens. She spent a couple of years in Chicago before she came to Saugatuck. Where she got the money to attend college, I’m not sure. She didn’t volunteer the information, and I guess I really didn’t want to know.”

“She told me her parents had died in a plane crash and that she was using their life insurance money for school. And she told me a lot about being raised by an ultraconservative grandmother in Muskegon, Michigan.”

“She was raised in Muskegon, yes, but her parents are very much alive.”

Yet another revelation. Why had Gwen lied to him about a thing like that? “Did she give a reason for running away from home? Was she neglected? Abused?”

“No. She said her parents and Muskegon were boring. She wanted more from life than they could offer.”

“I suppose she also found Saugatuck boring. And me.”

“Matt? Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I just need some time to take all this in. We’ll talk again soon, Bonnie, I promise.”

Carly sounded depressed when he called her an hour later, and he hated to relate news that would further deflate her spirits. As he told her the things he’d found out that evening, she listened silently.

Finally she said, “I lived with her all those years and never knew any of this. I accepted everything she told me without question. How could I be so stupid?”

“You had no reason to doubt her. Neither did I.”

“She told me she stabbed Chase Lewis because he was pressuring her to have an abortion. Now it turns out she’d already had Nat. What’s the sense in a lie like that? Or the lie about her parents being dead and her awful childhood with her grandmother?”

He’d thought about that as he’d nursed a drink in his dark motel room after talking with Bonnie. “I think there’s some deficiency in her that makes her need drama in her life. The running away, the lies—they’re all a part of that. When we were married, she would create situations that would throw our lives into chaos: a fire in the kitchen, ramming the car into the garage door. Nothing major, but it got her a lot of attention.”

“The same’s been true with us, now that you mention it.” Carly hesitated. “So are you coming back now?”

“No. I still want to find out the details of the night Ardis stabbed Chase Lewis. I think I’ll make a run up to Lake Tahoe in the morning.”

Monday, May 13, 2002
Stateline, Nevada

E
xpensive-looking hotels that Matt didn’t recall from a previous visit to Lake Tahoe hugged the shoreline, blocking views of the water. A major building boom was under way on both sides of the Nevada border; cranes rose high against the sky, the noise of piledrivers was deafening, and scaffolding covered the sidewalks. Traffic on the boulevard linking the two states crept.

By contrast, the interiors of the casinos seemed curiously deserted, even for early afternoon. The stools at the long banks of slot machines were largely empty, and many of the gaming tables were covered. The brightly lighted rooms were too quiet, too chill, too cheerless. Even the newest and most opulent of the gambling establishments seemed shabby and fouled by stale smoke. A paradox, given the near-frantic construction going on outside. Although the casinos were the victims of an economy that had never recovered from the aftermath of the horrific events of the past September 11, the developers would eventually fall victim to their own false optimism and greed.

He tried to canvass the casinos quickly but became frustrated by layouts designed to force a person to pass through most of the moneymaking attractions before arriving at a place where information could be had. Finally, while stopping for a badly needed drink at one of the bars in Caesar’s Palace, he encountered a waitress who knew Chase Lewis and had heard that a group he frequently played with, the Fillmore Five, was currently engaged at the Hyatt Regency at Incline Village.

He drove north past pleasant-looking enclaves called Zephyr Cove, Cave Rock, and Glenbrook, bypassed the road to Carson City. Incline Village was near the tip of the lake, on the Nevada side, and the Hyatt Regency, some dozen stories tall, dominated the shoreline. He left the Jeep with the valet, went inside to speak with the concierge, and was directed to a smaller building on the beach, which housed a restaurant. When he stepped into its dim interior, it took a minute for his vision to adjust; then he saw wood beams, massive iron chandeliers, and a huge stone fireplace. At the far end, in a bar area, a slender black man with a receding hairline was adjusting sound equipment on a platform. Not Chase Lewis.

The man straightened and turned as Matt approached. “Sorry, man, they’re not open yet.”

“I’m looking for someone with the Fillmore Five.”

“You found him. Dave Rand’s the name.”

“Can you put me in touch with Chase Lewis?”

He frowned and stepped down from the platform. “Wish I could. We’d be sounding a whole lot better if he was with us on this gig, but he pulled out at the last minute. Guy we got to replace him’s pretty lame.”

“Why’d he pull out?”

“Something came up. With Chase, something always comes up. He called last Monday, said we’d have to do without him.”

“He say why?”

“Nope. Chase doesn’t let other people know his business, especially when he’s got a mad on. And from the sound of his voice I could tell he was pissed off. I’ll tell you, he’s a good trombone man, but as a human being”—he shook his head—“mean as a rattlesnake, and then some. Why you lookin’ for him?”

“I need to settle a legal matter with him, for a family member.” The lie came easily; he half believed it himself.

“Huh. You a lawyer?”

“No, just helping out.”

“This family member suing him?”

“Nothing like that. I just need for him to sign some papers.”

“This wouldn’t have to do with Ardis?”

“Ardis Coleman? Yes.”

“She and the little girl all right?”

“They’re fine.”

“Good. It’s a goddamn shame the way Chase treated her. She was one sweet thing. Nobody was surprised when she split and took the kid—except for Chase. He’s had a mad on for the whole world ever since.”

“He must’ve loved her.”

“Nope. Chase doesn’t give a rat’s ass for anybody but himself, but no woman’s supposed to turn her back on him. Or take something from him.”

Matt spotted a stack of cocktail napkins on the bar, took out a pen, and wrote Sam’s phone number on one. “If you hear from Chase, will you call me?”

“Sure, but I doubt I’ll be hearing. When he canceled out, I told him he’d never get another gig with us, and he knew I meant it.” His eyes clouded. “You might warn Ardis that he’s still gunning for her.”

“You think he’d go after her if he found out where she is?”

“Damn straight he would. And she’d be one sorry mess by the time he was through with her.”

Tuesday, May 14, 2002
Talbot’s Mills, California

A
s he approached the exit, Matt yawned widely. It was nearly one in the morning. There had been no easy way to get to Soledad County from Lake Tahoe, so he’d been forced to detour south to Sacramento and Highway 5, then take a secondary road east to Highway 101. A long trip, and he drove without pleasure, his thoughts on the puzzle that was Gwen.

A lifelong pattern of lies and running away. Parents who had presumably loved her living in limbo, never knowing what had become of their daughter. Two years as a runaway in Chicago. God knows who she’d conned there in order to get the money for college—or how she’d cast them aside after collecting. And then she’d abandoned him and Bonnie Vaughan. Abandoned Carly numerous times. Even as vile a person as Chase Lewis probably didn’t deserve to be stabbed and left bleeding. God knew how many other lives she’d poisoned…

The personal history that he’d learned didn’t square with the woman he’d married: gentle, vulnerable, dependent, needing constant reassurance. But neither did the scene Carly had described: Ardis efficiently taking her notes at the Talbot house after she’d discovered their friends’ bodies. Could such opposite components exist within one person? Apparently so.

A deer appeared in the wash of his headlights, standing by the side of the road. For a moment he feared it would leap into his path, but then it whirled and plunged into the underbrush. After that he emptied his mind and simply concentrated on driving.

Now as he pulled up to Sam’s house, he saw lights in the front room. He’d phoned her from Willits and told her he’d be very late, but apparently the call hadn’t kept her from worrying. But why should she worry? And why should he care if she did? She rented him a room, nothing more, although he had to admit he’d grown fond of her in a big-brotherly way.

He got out of the Jeep and mounted the porch steps. Sam must have heard him, because she had the door open before he could find his key. Carly stood in the hallway behind her, and from the look on her face, he knew something very bad had happened.

Without preamble, she said, “Chase Lewis is dead. He was shot sometime over the weekend in a motel in Westport.”