She looked away from the tortoise. “Sounds serious.”
“It is. Besides,” he added sheepishly, “the archaeologists would have my balls if I went back in there. They’re still screaming about the stuff I already took out. But I couldn’t leave everything there. What if the rest of the ceiling came down and buried the tortoise forever?”
“May I assume the tortoise is what inspired your new fashion collection?”
“Naughty, naughty,” Hutton said, shaking his finger slowly at Christy. “You can’t be a reporter until tomorrow tonight. Tonight is just for a few of my friends.”
“No problem. I really came to see Jo-Jo.” Christy looked around at the glittering crowd. “I’m surprised she isn’t here.”
He gave Christy a puzzled look. “I haven’t seen her since yesterday, when she flew off to New York to meet you.”
Chapter 8
Xanadu
Saturday evening
“Damn!”
Another dead end.
Christy slammed the phone into its cradle and leaned back against the headboard of her hotel bed. Her shoulders were stiff and her neck muscles were in knots from seventy minutes on the telephone. She’d checked every message center, every link, every point where she and Jo-Jo might have missed connections.
Nothing.
No messages at the Horizon office.
Nick, groggy and grouchy from being awakened, said no one had called her since she left.
Jo-Jo’s modeling agency hadn’t heard a word, and her favorite Manhattan hotels had not seen her. Same for Hutton’s headquarters in New York.
Christy’s mouth was a flat line of frustration and…fear. With clipped politeness she battled the hotel switchboard long enough to reach the private number Hutton had given her. It was answered immediately.
“Autry speaking. May I help you?”
“This is Christa McKenna. Is Mr. Hutton available for a moment? It’s rather urgent.”
“For you Peter is available anytime, anywhere. But he’s up to his ass in party alligators, so don’t keep him too long, okay?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
“Hang on.”
A few moments later Hutton answered the phone, sounding harried. “What’s up?”
“I can’t find Jo-Jo.”
“Did you try the Beverly Hills Hotel?”
“They haven’t seen her for a month.”
“How about—Wait a minute.”
Hutton’s voice faded as though he was holding the receiver aside while he fixed a petty crisis involving vegetarian guests who might be offended by barbecued meat.
“Did you try her agency?” he asked finally.
“She hasn’t checked in for a week.”
“Even with her personal agent?”
“Yes.”
“Then maybe…”
Hutton’s voice faded again into a muttered dialogue with Autry.
“Sorry,” Hutton said into the phone a minute later. “It’s a little crazy here.”
“Aren’t you worried about Jo-Jo?”
There was silence, then laughter. “That’s a joke, right?”
“No.”
“Babe, Jo is thirty years old. We are, as they say, an item, but not of the till-death-do-us-part variety. She comes and goes as she pleases. So do I.”
“Without telling you?”
“If she wants me to know where she is, she’ll be the first to tell me. Until then, I might as well whistle for the wind. It will come to heel sooner than Jo will.”
The flat certainty in Hutton’s voice told Christy that he’d tangled with Jo-Jo on that subject.
And lost.
“Isn’t she modeling tonight?” Christy asked.
“The regular runway girls can fill in for the private showing.”
“What about the press showing tomorrow night?”
“If—wait, Autry, I’d better talk to him myself—Christa, I’ve got to run. You’re coming tonight, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know. Either way, I’ll be at the formal press showing.”
Her last words were spoken into a dead line.
She hung up, stared at the phone for a few minutes, and felt tension knotting her nerve endings. Some things never changed. Jo-Jo was still manipulating the people around her with sulks and disappearing acts.
Come out, come out, wherever you are.
But Jo-Jo wouldn’t. Not until she was good and ready.
Christy jumped to her feet and began pacing. She wished she had a big swimming pool within reach. Twenty laps would have gone a long way toward working the tension out. She measured the length of her room three times, but only felt more confined for it. Like a wolf in a cage.
She needed to be outside.
A barbecue at Xanadu was better than waiting around her hotel room for a call that likely wouldn’t come.
I don’t play your games anymore, Jo-Jo. When are you going to outgrow them?
Christy showered and dressed in black silk slacks, a loose black silk pullover, and a pair of low black shoes that were dressy enough for a barbecue and comfortable enough for a hike. There was a lot of Xanadu to pace around in.
When she finished tying off her French braid, she checked her appearance in the mirror. With a grimace, she turned away from her reflection. Basic black went everywhere, but it required at least one piece of jewelry. She’d brought this outfit expecting to showcase Gramma’s necklace against the black silk.
But the necklace was still beyond Christy’s reach, and she hadn’t brought anything else suitable.
So what? I’m not the one on display.
She yanked on an unstructured black linen jacket and went to the hotel lobby. She thought about driving herself to the ranch and decided it wasn’t worth the hassle at the gate. She’d ride the shuttle with the rest of the hotel guests—the B-list folks who hadn’t been invited to stay the night at Xanadu.
Outside, the evening air was cool. A full moon was just sliding up over the San Juan Wall, pouring silver light over the land. A gleaming white van wheeled up to the entrance of the hotel. A driver in a cowboy hat leaned out.
“Xanadu?” the driver asked.
Three couples who had been waiting climbed into the rear seats of the van, leaving Christy to take the front seat next to the driver. She didn’t feel like being chatty, so she simply turned her head and looked out the side window.
Even without joining the conversation, she learned a great deal about her fellow guests before they reached the top of the rocky mesa. The most vocal of the group was a wealthy Seattle brain surgeon and his wife who collected Anasazi artifacts. They were traveling with a primitive-art gallery owner from Houston and his wife.
Conversation swirled around the van, the boasting and shouldering of full-time, wealthy collectors.
“At the Tucson show, he paid twenty-nine thousand for a pot I wouldn’t have pissed in.”
“That’s nothing. Herman was bidding on a basket that went to fifty-three.”
“Did he get it?”
“Shit, yes. He always gets what he wants.”
Christy looked out at the moon-silvered land and tried to imagine what it would have been like to live and die within the same handful of square miles, having known nothing but the sun, the sky, and the land itself. The idea seemed a melancholy counterpoint to the avaricious conversation behind her.
“…grave goods from Springerville. Only these were special.”
“Turquoise?”
“I should hope to shout. Buckets of it.”
“So?”
“So it was wrapped around seven skeletons like a winding sheet.”
A soft whistle came out of the silence. “Were they complete?”
“Except for a few toe bones, and those will probably turn up. Even had some hair.”
“Male or female?”
“Female.”
“Why wasn’t I called? I’ve got a standing order for female bones. Nobody pays more than I do.”
/>
“These aren’t for sale.”
“Everything is for sale. Look at the McElmo grayware that came on the market last month. We both know where we saw that last.”
“Yeah, and we know where it is now. Damn Japanese are driving prices over the moon.”
“The Germans are worse. They’ll buy anything Anasazi, even a piece-of-shit potsherd I wouldn’t step on. In fact—”
“Shelby, can you talk about something besides dead Indians and greedy foreigners for just two minutes?”
There was laughter at the woman’s long-suffering complaint. The conversation shifted locale but not subject matter, from Colorado to a private showing in Sedona—pots, fetishes, and the skull of a baby inlaid with turquoise.
Christy watched the moonlight on the top of the mesa, grateful she had never been possessed by the urge to collect. The only object she’d ever really wanted was Gramma’s necklace.
I’ll get it and to hell with Jo-Jo’s games. That necklace is mine.
The conversation shifted to real estate prices in Telluride, Aspen, Santa Fe, and Taos.
She began to get the feeling that the West was being overrun by looters of all kinds—those who sacked archaeological sites for artifacts and those who sacked old ranches for condominium sites. Like that young cowboy-turned-deputy. He’d been crowded off the land when a fashion designer’s millions had changed the way his part of the West was run.
Shutting out the voices, Christy watched the land flow by in dreamlike shades of black and silver. If the light was just right, her window became a bottomless mirror reflecting her and the country in strange unity. She stopped thinking and let herself be mesmerized by light and dark flowing through her and the land.
When the shuttle arrived at Xanadu, some thirty couples were already dancing on the rough-lumber floor she’d seen being built earlier that day. Another hundred people—fashion groupies, Hutton executives, and art collectors—had gathered around tables laden with food, wine, and beer.
In what had once been a pasture and now was a carefully groomed meadow, hired pilots had tied down small planes near a moon-bright runway. Other planes circled in the high, clear air, waiting for their turn in the landing pattern.
A Range Rover waited off to the side, ready to whisk newcomers a whole one thousand feet away to the party.
Peter Hutton appeared for a moment, framed in the doorway of the barn, talking to someone who was out of sight inside.
When Christy reached the big, gambrel-roofed building, she saw that it had been turned into a makeshift dressing room. In a quiet frenzy, seamstresses and dressers made last-minute adjustments for a dozen models.
Jo-Jo wasn’t one of them.
Chapter 9
Lighting technicians went over the script with the narrator, who was a New York stage actor brought in for a one-night gig. He was the kind of beautiful celebrity that Jo-Jo loved drawing into her orbit.
But Jo-Jo wasn’t here.
Christy caught glimpses of flowing fabric with lightning-stroke designs that reminded her of the Anasazi pots in Hutton’s house. She saw several pieces of jewelry in the turtle’s turquoise, black, and mother-of-pearl motif. There was a breathtaking gown in white silk with a glittering black design that was like a curving variation of a child’s stick figure. The design had extraordinary energy.
When Hutton spotted Christy he walked toward her, flashing his trademark smile. “Glad you decided to come tonight. You class up the place.”
“Thanks,” she said politely.
“I’d like to show you around, but—”
“No problem,” she cut in. “Just one quick question.”
Hutton raised his pale, arching brows. “Sure, babe.”
“Do you know a man named Aaron Cain?”
Hutton’s eyes narrowed. “That bastard. What about him? Last I heard he was in a hospital in Grand Junction.”
“He’s in Remington now.”
For a moment Hutton looked as primitive as a stone club. Then he shrugged casually. “Doesn’t matter. He won’t be around long.”
“Would he know where Jo-Jo is?”
“Jo did lots of slumming around Remington and Montrose. I doubt if she kept in touch afterward.”
Someone yelled Hutton’s name.
“Sorry, babe.” He brushed a fast kiss across Christy’s cheek. “Catch you after the show.”
Within seconds he’d disappeared into the whirl of fabric and female flesh that would miraculously become a fashion show.
The smell of food drifting from the barbecue pits reminded Christy that it was well past dinner hour, Manhattan time. She hadn’t eaten much on the plane or during the drive to Remington. She hadn’t eaten at all since she’d arrived. She’d been too busy, too angry, or both.
But now the cool night air and the fragrance of the barbecue teased her appetite. She walked over to the buffet tables groaning beneath platters heaped with three kinds of meat. Pans of chili, bowls of salads, and plates of vegetables filled in the spaces between mounds of fresh bread and tortillas. Beer chilled in a tub, side by side with white wine for the city types and Dom Pérignon for those foolish enough to think champagne really did go with everything.
Christy ate barbecued pork tenderloin, a square of tender buttered cornbread, and a casserole of red-and-white Anasazi beans with chilies and molasses. She washed it down with a pale Colorado ale. She half expected the combination of Xanadu’s seven-thousand-foot altitude, jet lag, and alcohol to knock her on her butt. Instead, the food gave her new energy.
And the tastes and scent of the barbecue, the textures of the western night itself, brought memories. She pushed them away as she’d done for so many years.
Restless, edgy, not knowing what to do about it, she set aside her plate and glass. She strolled around the edge of the crowd, looking for the flash of Jo-Jo’s blond hair, listening for the husky laughter that made everyone who heard it feel part of a delicious conspiracy.
When the band took a break, the workmen descended, carrying a runway into position for the fashion show. The separate knots of people slowly began to converge on the stage, anticipating a preview of the fashion event of the year.
Without warning all the anger and disappointed hope exploded in Christy. She was damned if she’d wait around like ugly wallpaper for Jo-Jo to make her entrance.
Jamming her hands in her pockets, Christy strode away from the strings of lights and groups of laughing people. A hundred feet from the perimeter of the barns, she was alone. She let out a long breath of relief. She wasn’t up to the demands of her professional role as a Horizon reporter or her social role as the dirt-plain sister of the heavenly Jo-Jo.
Once, just once, Christy wanted to rock her sister back on her perfectly shaped butt.
The thought was tantalizing.
Jo-Jo knows what the necklace means to me. That’s why she dangled it in front of me when she thought I might not come.
All Christy had to do was sneak into the house, take what was hers anyway, and then enjoy the look on Jo-Jo’s face when she finally swept in—and saw Gramma’s necklace around her sister’s throat.
A quarter mile away the beautiful glass and wood house gleamed like a beacon on the knoll. A road wound up to the front door.
Christy didn’t follow the road because she wasn’t sure whether Hutton’s security troops would be on duty. What she wanted to do was too personal to explain to some stranger. She’d just have to play Hide and Seek with all the ex-cowboys wearing badges.
Sparse brush and grass covered the knoll. She stumbled a few times until her eyes adjusted to the darkness. The altitude and the beer she’d had made her a bit light-headed. Moonlight added to the sense of unreality.
By the time she reached the edge of the lawn that wrapped around the house, she was breathing rapidly. Dew sparkled on the grass, drenching her shoes. Lights burned inside the house, but she didn’t see anyone moving around. At the far end, away from the display room and its walls of glass
, there was a kitchen big enough to service a restaurant. Pans hung from hooks on the wall.
As Christy walked closer to the house, she saw that the kitchen was empty. All the caterers were busy out at the barn. Feeling slightly foolish and very determined, she looked around to make sure she was alone before she went up to the open kitchen window and listened. Somewhere inside a radio was playing country music. No one was singing along with Merle Haggard. No one was making any noise at all.
The kitchen door was locked.
She circled around behind the house, trying several more doors. She was about to give up when she found one open. Walking softly, she entered and closed the door quietly behind her. Then she looked around, trying to orient herself.
Her heart beat frantically.
She hadn’t felt this foolish and little-girl frightened since Jo-Jo had talked her into hiding spiders in the teacher’s desk.
And guess who paid for that bit of mischief? It sure wasn’t the beautiful little angel.
After two attempts Christy found the corridor leading off in the direction of the house’s residential wing. The dew-wet soles of her shoes squeaked on the tile floor. To her adrenaline-heightened senses, the tiny sounds were as loud as clashing cymbals.
The corridor opened into the huge room where Xanadu’s treasures were on display. Flames danced cheerfully in a fireplace big enough to roast an ox.
The room was empty.
Christy retraced her steps and found another hallway. This one led to what she hoped was Hutton’s quarters. She walked down the hall very quietly, not sure if Jo-Jo and Hutton shared a bedroom as well as a bed.
The hall was lined with paintings. Each canvas had its own light. She glanced at the art as she went through the hall. One of the paintings stopped her cold.
The painting was a surrealistic drawing of a sunset storm sweeping across the red-rock mesa country. Inside the dark crimson storm cell lurked faces of ghouls whose eyes and cruel smiles were human skulls. The squall itself was a vicious demon raking the land with talons of lightning.
Wherever the talons touched, wounds appeared.
Within the wounds were headless skeletons. Their gleaming ivory arms were extended upward, fingers clawing toward the missing skulls that would be forever beyond their reach.
The Secret Sister Page 6