Thicker Than Blood (32 page)

Selenium.

The same substance that was killing wildlife at Farwell Ponds.

Could enough selenium be sprayed from a crop duster to kill wildlife?

But why would anyone want to kill wildlife?

Money. It had to be money.

It couldn’t be Hank by himself. He must work for someone who would stand to gain a lot of money by…by what? Killing wildlife? How would that produce money?

By ruining farmland. Buy it cheap, stop the selenium dusting, and in a year or so, with new soil analyses to prove the problem was gone, sell the land at an enormous profit.

Exactly as Hank had led her to suspect Bruno of doing.

Mind in a sickish spin, Rachel lost sight of the vehicle ahead.

The road ended abruptly in a small, level parking area, but no splotchy-white panel truck was in sight. Had she missed a turn-off somewhere? She parked the Toyota in a cluster of cars.

Through the open gate of a chain-link fence a wind sock was writhing, trying to escape its pole. Half a dozen small planes sat like dogs at a pet show, eagerly awaiting their owners’ command to fetch.

Was the guy in the black jacket involved, or was his appearance in her parking garage that day just a coincidence?

Was he one of El Jefe’s men?

Whoever Black Jacket was, he seemed to have disappeared.

Her racing thoughts slammed into something else: Goldie. I have to warn her about Hank.

Chapter Fifty-four

Rachel was exhausted, as if she had reached another planet where gravity was greater. With cold, jittery fingers, she opened the car door, got out, and headed for the cinder-block building that seemed to be both waiting room and office.

The pay phone was just outside the glass door. Clumsy with haste, she extracted a phone card from her wallet and began dialing the endless numbers needed to make a call. She miscalled and had to start over. When the ring on the other end finally came, Goldie didn’t answer. And there was no answering machine.

Leaving the phone, Rachel glanced down the row of parked cars. The panel truck was there, stopped directly behind her Toyota, trapping her car. Preventing her from driving.

Deliberately? Had to be. But why?

Maybe it was just coincidence.

Above the chain-link fence that lined the airfield, the sky was cloudless except for a black speck moving toward a strip of land shaved bare among the perpetual crop rows. A whirring sound rose as the speck became a plane that touched down gracefully and rolled to a stop some 20 yards away.

The pilot appeared. A woman, slender and agile, with hair like smoke. Alexandra Miller was making her way toward the building. She caught sight of Rachel and stopped. “What a nice surprise!”

Rachel fumbled for her manners. “Yes. Good to see you.”

“What are you doing here? You look upset.”

“It’s nothing, really. Well, maybe I’m a little jumpy. Someone is blocking my car.”

Alexandra’s eyes darkened as they skimmed Rachel’s flushed face. She patted her shoulder, then took a cell phone from her pocket, flipped it open and pushed a single key with her thumb, turned away and said something into it.

She took Rachel’s arm and began walking quickly. “I have an idea. Guaranteed to change your mood.”

“I’m okay, really.”

“You don’t look okay. You look miserable. I seem to be making a habit of finding you when things are going badly.”

Rachel managed a smile. “I guess I’m a little unstrung. And yes, you sure rescued me from those muggers.”

“Let’s have a quick cup of tea,” Alexandra said, opening the door to the small waiting room. An urn of hot water sat on a card table. She took two Styrofoam cups, filled them, tore open two teabags, dropped them into the water, and handed a cup to Rachel.

They moved to the window where several people were watching the airfield. “So, what has unstrung you?” Alexandra asked.

Rachel was wondering what Hank would do when he returned and found her gone. She took a sip of the tea and winced as it burned her tongue. “Nothing much.” She blew gently on the tea and took another sip. “Well, there are some problems. Someone I really trusted.…”

Where could she go now? What should she do?

Alexandra shot her a look. “Bad idea trusting anyone.”

“Too late now.”

“A man?”

Rachel nodded, thinking Alexandra couldn’t possibly imagine the degree of betrayal. “I need to find a place to stay for a while.”

“That’s easy. Come with me.”

“Oh, no,” Rachel said. “I couldn’t.”

Alexandra was gazing at the airfield. “Of course you can.” She turned to Rachel. “Look, do me a favor.”

“What?”

“Just let me rescue you again. I have a wonderful idea. I guarantee it will change your mood.”

Alexandra crossed the room to the door. Rachel followed her into the unpaved parking area. The van was still blocking her car. A pickup truck was pulling away, throwing dust.

“This will be perfect,” Alexandra said as she reached a black Jaguar.

Rachel was thinking that might be true. Alexandra’s place might be the perfect place to hide for a while.

They got into the car. “Not afraid of heights, are you?” Alexandra asked.

“A little.” Oh, no. She had forgotten that flying was Alexandra’s favorite way to unwind. The last thing she wanted was another plane ride. “I don’t think—”

Alexandra cut her off. “Trust me.”

Rachel wiped sweaty palms on her jeans. “Okay.”

Alexandra backed the car in a semicircle, then it sprang forward like the cat it was named for. A few miles later, she pulled off the road into an open field where two pickups were parked.

The field seemed nearly filled by an enormous pool of bright yellow.

Alexandra laughed at the expression on Rachel’s face. “That’s Delilah. My hot-air balloon. Ever been up in one?”

“No.” Rachel didn’t want to now, either. But Alexandra seemed so pleased at the prospect, and the woman had offered her a place to stay. The least she could do was humor her. It was probably perfectly safe. People went up in balloons every day. And maybe she could tell Alexandra the truth. Maybe the two of them could figure out what to do.

“I was planning to go up,” Alexandra was saying. “Pure luck that you caught me.”

The balloon’s basket seemed oddly small against the sea of yellow. Alexandra strode toward it. Four men who had been sitting on the grass rose and followed.

The pool of yellow became a huge bubble.

Alexandra climbed easily over the side of the basket. Rachel followed clumsily. Her companion was studying the small array of valve handles and gauges on the console.

Pulling a glove onto her right hand, Alexandra called, “Never mind the safety chute. We’re in a hurry.”

Rachel turned, searching what she could see of the road. A cloud of dust was moving along it.

A whooshing sound rose. The bubble began to rise. The basket followed.

After a moment someone shouted, “She’s up.”

Another whoosh, like a furnace igniting, was followed by a series of short, hissing blasts, like air being pulsed into an enormous tire. The basket rocked, then slowly followed the balloon into the air.

Rachel stifled an impulse of panic as the ground quietly fell away. This was probably the safest place she’d been in weeks.

It’s perfect. No one can get to me here.

Then she saw that a white van had joined the two pickups.

Backing away from the edge of the basket, she asked, “Who is that?”

“Where?” Alexandra asked from behind her.

“There. The guy in the black jacket getting out of that van.”

Alexandra glanced at the ground. “He works for me.”

“He works for you?”

The words congealed, almost closing Rachel’s throat as she turned. The barrel was very short but it belonged to a gun and it was pointed at her face.

Alexandra’s glove was gone. The long fingers looked as elegant gripping the derringer as they would holding a teacup.

Chapter Fifty-five

“If you so much as move a finger,” Alexandra said conversationally, “you will die. There will be no warning. So do keep your hands still.”

Her words hung in the air like birds that had stopped flying but didn’t fall.

The hissing sound continued for what seemed a long time. Then there was silence but for a wheezing sound, like the breathing of an asthmatic, and a feeling of floating.

Rachel fought a wave of dizziness.

Above them was only sky, and ropes that led to a huge, open, yellow mouth.

“Lovely, isn’t it?” Alexandra asked, as if they were two chance passengers on an airliner.

Adrenaline surging now, Rachel’s senses hit red alert, nerves and muscles demanding action. But there was nowhere to flee. Struggling to slow her mind enough to think, she said nothing.

Alexandra moved toward her with the deadly grace of a panther. “My compliments. You have been very slippery.”

Rachel only stared—an animal caught in onrushing, lethal headlights. The wheeze came again and the huge yellow orb swayed above them like the head of a giant adder.

Gazing at the sky behind her prey, Alexandra said in a tone one hears at cocktail parties, “Pity you’ve never gone ballooning. Nothing compares. Hang gliding should, but somehow it doesn’t. Planes conquer nature. Balloons join us to nature.”

Rachel was thinking that she was shorter, but probably the stronger of the two.

“Of course the main advantage of the moment is that there’s no need to file a flight plan. No record of balloon flights at all. And the flying is quite simple. The air heats, the balloon ascends.” Alexandra said the words slowly, as though teaching a rather dull child. “Pull the rip line—that cord over there—the deflation panel opens, the warm air escapes, and we descend. Direction, of course, is the problem. So much depends upon wind. And wind is so capricious.”

“How…how do you get back to the same place?”

“We don’t. The ground crew will follow us in the truck. Isn’t this a splendid view?”

“I can’t see much.”

“Of course you can’t. How thoughtless of me. Turn around. But do it very, very slowly.”

Rachel eyed the gun’s muzzle. The last thing she wanted to do was turn her back on it.

“Go ahead,” Alexandra was saying. “The basket is quite sturdy. Quaint, isn’t it, to use a basket. A throwback to the era of the bustle. There’s even champagne. If a farmer takes offense at your landing in his field, you can invite him to a party. Now, slowly, turn around.” The gun barrel moved ever so slightly, indicating that this time, it was a command.

The floor of the basket was surprisingly stable, but Rachel’s legs wouldn’t hold her. She staggered against the wicker wall.

Something rigid pressed into her ankle. For a moment, she couldn’t think what it was.

The air had become noticeably cooler, and very quiet. Not even the sound of wind disturbed the silence. She pulled her jacket around her.

“There’s no wind because we’re traveling with the wind,” Alexandra said, as if she’d read Rachel’s mind.

Mountains purpled at the far side of the valley. Rocks showed between the tufts of trees that climbed the hillside. Stretched between the mountain ranges was a patchwork quilt—squares of brilliant greens, a few yellows, a few browns.

“It’s simply delicious to drift.” Alexandra’s voice was dreamily sensuous. “Look.”

Rachel cast a quick glance over her shoulder, wondering if this was a ploy to divert her attention before the kill. In the distance, three ponds glittered in the sun, roundish chunks of scattered mica amid row upon undulating row of naked farmland. The drainage ditch, betrayed as man-made by its precise straightness, aimed directly at the ponds.

Alexandra was gazing at them. “Bruno’s great hope for a truce with Mother Nature.”

“What does Bruno have to do with this?”

A small smile flirted with Alexandra’s mouth. “With this? Not a thing.” Her eyes had drifted lazily over the scene. Now they pierced Rachel’s. “Remember that drought a few years back? It was phony. Jason trumped it up with bogus statistics. He got in bed with agriculture. Jason and the Farm Bureau were going to set the environmental movement back thirty years.”

She gave a low, harsh laugh. “Fourteen million people saving the dishwater for the roses and paying four-ninety-five a pound for the tomatoes that could still be irrigated. People don’t forget that in a few short years. Jason and the farmers thought they had bought fourteen million votes for more dams, more canals, more destruction.

“But the final part of the plan was even worse—more evil than I could have imagined.” Her eyes riveted on Rachel’s. ”You know what they intended to do?”

Rachel could only stare as Alexandra’s mouth twisted with rage.

“They were going to privatize it. Put our water in the hands of a corporation. Our water. At the mercy of profits and profiteers.

“Even now it’s being whispered that water will become the oil of the coming century.”

Rachel's head swam. She gazed at the other woman thinking that despite the threat to herself, Alexandra was not entirely wrong. Her methods were appalling. But her reasons were sound.

“They thought they had me cornered.” The words floated on the clear, smooth oil of her now almost serene voice.

“Jason was putting together a mountain of twisted information to show how we,” Alexandra’s eyes hardened, “how we, the environmental community, had lied to the public. He wrote the proposition and had the signatures to put a peripheral canal on the ballot in November. It would have killed the delta. And privatizing it would kill much more than that. It would kill the environment. It would kill California. And maybe, eventually, America.”

“So you killed him,” Rachel said, voice raw in her throat.

“For a while, I hoped Charlotte would. I think she just couldn’t bring herself to arrange it. But then Jason found something in his own water quality laboratory. Not the drugs,” she said to Rachel’s look. “That was Harry’s own little game. Dear Harry was full of tricks. But the only one I cared about was that he obliged me by acquiring the sodium selenate.”

Rachel’s eyelids flicked closed, then opened slowly. “So you could poison your own ponds,” she said, more calmly than she could have imagined. She was thinking that at least it was not Hank who had betrayed her. “How did you do it—get the poison into the ponds? Just send a dump truck?”