A Nest in the Ashes

by Christine Goff

  “Still, she had no business yelling at Forest.”

  Lark inched along watching Forest Nettleman work the room, with the sisters bickering absently in the background. He was always the politician, thought Lark. Always on, pumping a hand here, clapping a shoulder there. Too bad there weren’t any babies around to kiss.

  Gene Paxton, on the other hand, hung back, skirting the edges of the room. He flirted with the corners, like a wallflower afraid of being noticed. Was he embarrassed to be there, or simply trying to maintain a low profile?

  It was odd the two men had come. Odder still that Jackie didn’t seem to mind.

  In front of Lark, the buffet table stretched the length of the dining room, sagging under the weight of the pot luck. Platters heaped with ham, turkey, and roast beef ladened one end, followed by bowls filled with rolls and a variety of salads. Casserole dishes heaped with all sorts of pasta and potatoes came next, then beverages. Against the far wall, a sidebar was buried under a mound of high calorie desserts.

  Lark groaned in sympathy with the furniture, then did her part to relieve their burden. Picking up a paper plate, some plastic flatware, and a napkin, she generously sampled the offerings.

  Somewhere between the bean salad and marshmallowed fruit, Eric caught up to her in line.

  “There you are” he said, his hands cupping her waist, his deep voice stirring a flood of warm pleasure that welled up from her belly.

  “Hey, no butting,” said Gertie Tanager.

  “Sshhh!” whispered Cecilia, poking Gertie in the ribs. “Can’t you see he wants to be beside Lark?”

  Eric ducked his head, keeping his voice low. “I’ve got some good news.”

  “What?” Lark asked, heaping a spoonful of mustard potato salad onto her plate. His breath stirred her hair, making her shiver.

  “Nora just paged me. They found Wayne’s missing pickup.”

  Lark’s head snapped up, bashing Eric in the nose.

  “Oh dear,” said Cecilia. “What happened? Are you all right?”

  Eric nodded, covering his nose with a napkin. A spot of red blood seeped between his fingers.

  “I’m sorry. And you’re not all right. You’re bleeding,” cried Lark mortified. Grace was not her middle name, hence two broken ankles in one year and now Eric’s nose.

  “Here, let me help,” said Dorothy, reaching into her glass of lemonade and pulling out an ice cube. “Tip your head back.”

  Eric blocked Dorothy’s hand. “I’m fine.”

  Everyone gathered around the table stared.

  “Hold on,” said Gertie, bubbling with excitement. “Back up the truck. Didn’t he just say they found the missing boys?”

  “No,” said Dorothy. “He said they found Wayne’s pickup. There’s a difference.”

  “They found Wayne’s truck? Where?” demanded Gene Paxton.

  “They found the truck,” someone whispered, spreading the word.

  Lark could tell by Eric’s expression that he didn’t like being grilled.

  “Okay, everyone,” she said. “Back off. Can’t you see the man’s bleeding?” Setting down her plate, she steered him out of the dining room. Several people followed.

  “Give him some space,” she ordered.

  Lark pushed Eric ahead of her, then into the tiny bathroom at the end of the hall. Slamming the door in Gertie’s face, she turned on the cold water. “Here, let me help. I’m so sorry.”

  “I’m fine.” Eric tipped his head back and shoved a wad of toilet paper into his nose.

  The sight of blood made Lark feel queasy, and she moved away from the sink, sitting down on the closed toilet seat. “So, where’d they find it?”

  Eric removed the bloody wad of toilet paper from his nose and pitched it into the trash. “Parked in a student lot on the Colorado State University campus,” he said, craning his neck in order to check the bleeding in the mirror. “Nora didn’t give me any more details, but she wants me to ride down to Fort Collins with Vic and drive it back.”

  “When?”

  “Now.” Eric splashed water on his face, then used the hand towel to dry off. “I told him to pick me up at home in half an hour.”

  “Do they think those boys took it?”

  “Vic didn’t say, and neither did Nora.” Eric rehung the hand towel on the holder and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his trousers. “Do you think you could get a ride back to the Drummond? I need to get home and change, and make a phone call before I leave.”

  “You can drop me off.” Lark hoped she didn’t sound too eager. The truth was, she wanted out of there.

  “But you haven’t eaten yet.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll grab something at home.”

  “Okay, then.” He opened the door and gestured for her to go first, but they were blocked by a mob standing outside the door.

  Lark grimaced. Since when was a bloody nose or two people in a bathroom a spectator sport?

  “They’re saying the sheriff found Wayne’s truck,” said Jackie. “Is it true?”

  Lark slipped to the side. Eric’s eyes crinkled at the corners, and he ran his hand through his hair. “Ja, they found it.”

  Jackie’s face crumpled. For a moment, Lark thought she would cry, but no tears came.

  “Nobody knows anything yet,” said Eric. “I’m going with Vic to pick it up. I’ll let you know what we find out.” He reached for Lark’s hand, but Jackie stepped between them.

  “Do you promise you’ll call?” she said.

  Eric gripped her shoulders. “I promise. Now, do me a favor?”

  Jackie nodded.

  “Try not to worry.”

  Chapter 16

  Linda Verbiscar had been ejected from the funeral reception, but she hadn’t gone home.

  Eric dialed her room number for the third time and listened to the phone ring. He’d left her an earlier message, apologizing for not being able to be there as planned, and promising to stop by on his way up from Fort Collins. But he wanted to talk to her personally. He wanted some reassurance that she wouldn’t deny him access to the film.

  The crunch of tires on gravel signaled Vic Garcia’s arrival, and Eric hung up the phone.

  Vic laid on the horn. “Hey there, son,” he shouted. “Are you ready to go?”

  Eric nodded, wondering if Vic called men “son” like some waitresses called people “honey.” Eric would lay odds the tag wasn’t exclusive to him.

  Jumping into the passenger seat, he belted himself in and took stock of his surroundings. There was no doubt that the orange and black cruiser had seen better days. A 1996 Chevy Caprice, the cloth seats were worn, the carpets matted and thin. A vintage radio spewed Country Western music from the console, while a state band radio hissed accompaniment from the center floorboard.

  Eric gestured toward a cracked shotgun holder on the floor, and Vic answered before the question was formed.

  “I quit carrying it about a year ago,” he announced. He didn’t expound, and Eric decided not to probe.

  Traffic was stop-and-go through town, signaling the onset of summer. It was a relief when Vic veered left onto U.S. 34, leaving behind the steady stream of cars headed for Denver on U.S. 36.

  Eric watched for the Inn on 34. Verbiscar had said it was on the left on Big Thompson Avenue. Sure enough, within a quarter mile, he spotted the two-story motel. It clung to a flat piece of ground high above the river, horseshoed around a square pool and surrounded on all sides by miniature cabins. Two cars were parked in front of the motel office, but there were no cars in front of any of the cabins, and no people in sight. His hunch had been right. She hadn’t gone home.

  “Don’t see her?” asked Vic.

  Eric tilted his head. “How did you know I was looking for someone?”

  “Just a hunch.” Vic goosed the 5.7-liter, V-8 engine, and the Caprice hurtled into the canyon. “If you want my guess, she got wind of the truck’s recovery. Hell, she’s probably halfway to Fort Collins by now.”

&
nbsp; If he was right, she would beat them there, no matter how fast Vic chose to drive.

  Eric glanced out at the canyon walls rising on either side of them. For the next thirty miles, there was only enough room between them for a river, a two-lane highway, and an occasional building. He felt squeezed in.

  “Who do you think took the truck?” he asked.

  “It was the boys,” Vic admitted. Regret hollowed his voice. “The policeman who called in the vehicle report said there appeared to be two backpacks on the floor of the cab, along with an opened box of fusees.”

  That puzzled Eric. “Why leave their stuff behind?”

  “Good question. Unless they’re planning to come back.”

  Eric reached for the dashboard. “Why not stake it out, then? Catch the boys?”

  Vic hands tightened on the wheel. “We did. The Fort Collins police officer kept an eye out until Deputy Brill was in place, but your boss kiboshed the whole thing. She wants the vehicle recovered. I tried convincing her, but she insists. At this point, my hands are tied.”

  Eric wondered why Nora wouldn’t cooperate. Maybe she was afraid catching the boys would cast doubt on the NPS hard line accusing Wayne of starting the fire. Considering her desire to have Wayne’s job, that would make sense. Her aspirations for permanent placement in his vacated position might be thwarted if it was discovered she’d helped fabricate Wayne’s culpability in the Eagle Cliff Fire.

  “Did you ever learn anything about the missing boys?” Eric asked.

  Vic tugged his seat belt tighter and settled himself deeper in his seat. “A little. I was right about Suett.”

  “Which one was he?” Eric tried remembering the photograph of the two boys. One was fair-haired, the other dark. If Eric remembered correctly, the blond was the scruffier-looking of the two.

  “Suett’s the dark-haired one. Your clean-cut, all-American, typical ‘kid next door who cuts the grass’-type.”

  “He’s the one you pegged as trouble,” recalled Eric.

  “That’s the one.” Vic swung the car around a sharp corner, and Eric braced himself against the door.

  “Tres looks more like a felon,” continued Vic. “But he’s the quiet type. A follower. Suett’s the one with problems. Big problems.” Vic turned the car in the other direction. “He’s a fire starter.”

  “An arsonist?” Eric shifted his weight, watching the road and anticipating the curves.

  “Yep.”

  Their conversation stopped while Vic negotiated a series of hairpin turns. The car hugged the turns, snaking through the canyon carved by years of river wash. On all sides, steep slopes jutted toward the sky in craggy ridges, and high on the right, a herd of big horn sheep graced the rock outcroppings.

  The road straightened out, and the canyon widened. A few houses sprung up along the river’s edge, and Eric reinitiated the conversation. “Is that why Suett was at the Youth Camp? Because he’d been caught lighting fires?”

  “He was there on the recommendation of a police officer. Every kid there has to be referred. Usually, and definitely in Suett’s case, it is a last-ditch effort to save the kid. The boy has quite a history.” Vic shook his head and downshifted the Caprice as the canyon narrowed again.

  “At age five,” said Vic, “he was caught torturing the family cat, a long-haired Persian named Prudence. He’d set it on fire with his dad’s butane lighter.”

  Eric scowled. “Did the cat live?”

  Vic shrugged. “I don’t know, but six years later, a week before Christmas, the family home burned down. Seems he and his cousin Leon were playing with matches. They set the tree on fire. Leon suffered third-degree burns over most of his body. He died two weeks later.”

  Eric calculated the years. “Suett was eleven at the time.”

  “Right. And he’s fifteen now.” Vic’s knuckles turned white on the wheel. “Leon, the cousin, lived to be nine.”

  “Anything else happen?”

  “Not that anyone knows of. Suett’s been in and out of juvenile detention and foster care ever since. He’s sort of an Eddie Haskell-type, a real charmer. From the report, I gathered he’d just recently moved back into his parent’s home in Castle Pines.”

  Eric whistled. “That’s a pretty upscale community.”

  “Nobody ever claimed crime rested solely with the underprivileged class,” snapped Vic.

  Eric figured he deserved the rebuff, if only because the comment sounded classist. “I didn’t mean—”

  His statement was cut short as Vic yanked the steering wheel, and the car lurched toward the river.

  A huge rock lay in the middle of the road, forcing Vic to swerve the car hard to the right. The tires squealed on the asphalt, and the front bumper clipped the boulder, sending the car into a slide.

  Vic overcorrected, and the tires spun on the soft shoulder, causing gravel to skitter onto the road.

  Eric felt the car sway from side to side. The motion reminded him of schussing through a slalom course, the shifting of weight from one side to the other. A symphony of rhythm, until you caught an edge.

  The tires finally grabbed on the road, and the rocking motion ceased. Vic braked, and the car slowed. Eric loosened his grip on the chicken bar. “Just a whiffle,” he said. “It could have been worse.”

  “How so?” asked Vic, raising an eyebrow.

  “We could have crashed.”

  They drove in silence after that, each watching the rock walls for signs of rockfall. It was an annual problem in most of the Colorado canyons. During the winter months, snow crept into cracks in the granite and froze, fracturing the rock faces. During spring thaw, the rocks broke free and tumbled into the depths of the canyons.

  In summer, the monsoons brought the added danger of flooding. Up and down the road in Big Thompson Canyon, signs warned drivers to abandon their vehicles in case of flash floods and climb to safety. Good advice, offered for good reason. In 1976, a Big Thompson Canyon flood had killed one hundred thirty-nine people and injured scores more when a late afternoon rainshower had dumped eight inches of rain at the headwaters of the Big Thompson River. Unable to absorb the water, the canyon walls funneled the rain into the river, causing the Big Thompson River to overflow its banks and sending a wall of water tumbling toward Loveland. In all, three hundred sixty-one homes, and fifty-two businesses were destroyed in its wake.

  Eric glanced up at the sky. Sunshine warmed the canyon rims, and the sun’s rays reached down to kiss the canyon floor. There wasn’t a cloud in sight.

  “You know, for what it’s worth, both of those boys came from money backgrounds,” said Vic, picking up the thread of conversation where they’d left off. “Their parents doled out the cash, then loosed the boys on the world. Hell, it’s no wonder they got into trouble.”

  “Did they know each other before camp?”

  Vic looked surprised and stroked his mustache. “Not that I know of. They were sponsored by different officers. A Cherry Creek officer recommended Tres. He thought it would do the boy good to get out of the city. Douglas County referred Suett. According to the Sheriff’s Department, the boy had been keeping his nose clean and just needed a break. Looks like he may get one.”

  Was he referring to Nora’s edict that they recover the truck? wondered Eric. But that didn’t make sense. The backpacks inside the vehicle were enough to incriminate the boys.

  A few minutes later, they squeezed through “the narrows,” a spot where the canyon walls closed in, rising sheer on both sides. Then, the mouth of the canyon opened, spitting them onto the plains.

  Fields of blue and side-oats grama, little bluestem, prairie sandreed, and needle-and-thread grasses spread in all directions. Before long, split rail fences sectioned the land into small acreages. It was a landscape of short prairie grasses; home to the prairie chicken, the mountain plover, long-billed curlew, burrowing owl, lark bunting, and Cassin’s sparrow.

  To the north, Eric spotted a prairie falcon hunting at the base of a small butte. Above
him a gull wheeled in the air. Near the road, a horned lark sunbathed on a wire.

  At the junction of U.S. 287, Vic turned left. Ten minutes later, they crossed into Fort Collins, where U.S. 287 became known as College Avenue.

  “Okay, start watching for the campus,” ordered Vic. “We need to find Pitkin Street.”

  Eric picked out the campus road just past the visitor center.

  Vic turned, and they headed west. “Now keep your eye out for Ellis Hall.”

  The CSU campus looked like any of a dozen other universities Eric had seen. Nondescript brick buildings plopped down in the middle of wide-open lawns, surrounded by sidewalks teeming with young men and women on foot or on bikes. Music blared. Laughter rang out.

  Eric had taken an extension class as CSU once. Founded as an agricultural school in 1870, it was considered to be one of the top “aggie” schools in the country. The signs on the buildings reflected the school’s history. They passed the Greenhouse, the Animal Sciences Building, and the Stock Judging Pavilion before a barricade in front of the Anatomy Building blocked the roadway, forcing Vic to turn around.

  “Which way now?” Vic muttered after they’d driven back to the first cross street. “Left or right?”

  Eric shrugged. “Right.” It was a guess, based on the layout of the buildings.

  Vic turned south onto East Drive, then west again at Lake Street. He paralleled Pitkin for several blocks, then turned back, ending up at a crossroads again in front of Newsom Hall.

  “We’re looking for Ellis,” said Vic.

  “Try over there.” Eric pointed to a six-story building a block down on the left. Sure enough, it was Ellis Hall. Constructed of metal and glass, the sprawling dorm sat in the middle of a huge grassy area dotted sparsely with trees and surrounded by parking areas on three sides.

  “Okay, Brill said the truck was parked in the resident parking lot along Ellis Drive.”

  Even squinting into the setting sun, they easily spotted the NPS truck. Painted pale green with a large white circle on the side, it stood out in the sea of black SUVs and small, brightly colored compacts.