by Carly Bishop
Kiel’s thoughts turned inward. He didn’t know or remember the specifics of the case she was talking about, but Keller’s emotional memory pulsed. The guilt connected with having sent up an innocent man, the internal battle between wanting to keep his own record of righteous prosecutions untainted and knowing better. Knowing his integrity was on the line.
“The tragedy of it all was that Willie Sandoval died three days before Keller thought he was going to get the appellate courts to release him.”
A long, shuddering sigh escaped Kiel. He suddenly understood. “Willie Sandoval is the reason—” He stopped midsentence. He couldn’t say to Robyn that the injustice Keller had caused Sandoval was the reason that he had been assigned to the Avenging Angels as Ezekiel. Those were the injustices that needed redeeming, so in the Hereafter, Keller was given that kind of responsibility.
“Willie Sandoval is the reason for what?” Robyn asked.
“For Avenging Angels,” he answered, truthful if not totally forthcoming. “People like Sandoval, I mean, and the injustices that happen to them.”
“Sort of like a karmic payback? If you cause injustice, you’re condemned forever to fight it?”
“Like that, yes.” Kiel couldn’t restore Willie Sandoval’s life, but he could make sure other injustices like that didn’t go unavenged. He wondered what had become of Sandoval in the Hereafter.
Then there was the matter of Robyn’s trust. She believed he’d said what he was going to say, but he hadn’t. Sandoval was the reason Keller had become Kiel, but he’d generalized because if he hadn’t, he’d have to tell her that he was in fact Keller. He had to wonder again how he was going to keep from blurting out the truth to Robyn. Every turn in their conversation seemed littered with the time bombs of Keller’s awareness just waiting to explode into his consciousness.
“Do you know,” she asked, her face solemn and interested, the firelight arranging a spectrum of light colors around her that his gifted, special sight saw as an aura, “what it was that you did, what injustice you caused?”
Chapter Six
Like the needle of a magnet pulling faithfully to true north, Robyn had honed in. He couldn’t lie to her. This was a direct question, and very much against the rules to evade or lie about. “Yes.”
She waited for him to elaborate.
His altogether human Adam’s apple pitched like a shooting star through the night sky. “Maybe another time, Robyn.”
Her lips pursed. He felt her disappointment like a tidal wave. Her life was an open book to him; his was slammed shut and locked tight against her. He watched her snatching a deep breath, repressing the emotion she felt. She shoved aside the comforter and arose quickly from the sofa. “I should try to sleep now.”
She moved, wraithlike, jerkily, toward the bedroom door in the flickering orange-yellow light of the waning fire. Kiel didn’t want her to go, especially like this, feeling so slighted, but he couldn’t think of anything to say to stop her. “Sleep well, Robyn.”
She turned back to look at him. A long, keen, somehow vaguely familiar moment stretched unbearably. A pocket of dry sap in the burning pine bough exploded. The physical awareness between them that he had been so careful to tamp down flared. She stared at him.
Her pulse quickened. He knew it.
She turned and fled. Kiel’s angel heart staggered. As an angel he had no need for tear ducts, but now he discovered how they worked.
THE HEART OF MODERN-DAY Aspen could be seen inside five blocks, between Main Street and Durant Avenue. The most renowned photo shots were of the iron-front Aspen Block in the foreground of Aspen Mountain, but the most famous landmark, the Hotel Jerome, where celebrities partied, and the county courthouse, sat on Main Street, the Park Avenue of the Rockies.
The courthouse hummed with activity. Even this, Robyn thought, was quintessentially Aspen. The building was a hundred-and-five years old, but cops also drove thirty-thousand-dollar Saabs.
Detective Crandall wasn’t in, but the police here were friendly and helpful to a fare-thee-well. The police officer who took down Robyn’s name to leave a message glanced up when she heard the name Trueblood.
“That’s an unusual name. Are you any relation to Keller Trueblood?”
“Yes.” She felt pleased for Keller’s sake, that he was remembered here even now, more than a year later. “He was my husband.”
Giving Robyn the once-over, the female officer nodded a bit forlornly. “We all knew he was married, of course, but…well. Don’t get me wrong. I’m happily married, too—” She stopped herself from carrying on. “Let me see if I can track down Detective Crandall.”
“If it’s no trouble,” Robyn said. “I just wanted to make a courtesy call. Otherwise, I can catch him later.” She gestured to Kiel. “This is my associate, Kell… urn—“
“Kiel,” he said, covering her near miss with his name, as smooth as butter. “Kiel Alighieri.” Offering his hand, he turned on the thousand-candle smile.
The policewoman couldn’t seem to take her eyes off him, or let go of his hand.
Subtly stepping on Kiel’s toe, Robyn cleared her throat. His smile faded to maybe a hundred candles. A hundred bright ones.
“I’m…we’re staying at The Chandler House. We’ll be in town researching Colorado v. Candelaria for a few days, and we’d like to speak to Mr. Crandall. Do you know where we could find him?”
The woman checked a watch schedule. “Actually, he’s off duty today. I’m afraid you’ll have to wait and come back tomorrow.”
Robyn didn’t intend to wait. She’d find the policeman at his home if that’s what it took. She thanked the woman and turned to go. On their way out of the suite of offices, Kiel blustered, “Why did you do that?”
“Step on your foot, you mean? Do angels experience pain?” she queried sweetly. “Dante?” she mocked, for good measure, still not over that one.
“Kiel,” he corrected her snappishly, “and no, we don’t feel physical pain, exactly, but—“
“Well, I did it to stop your egging on that poor defenseless cop,” she answered primly, heading toward the exits. “Shame on you.”
“Jealous, Robyn?” he teased her in a playful tone, but he couldn’t leave it at that. He was an angel—friendly, sure, but nothing more. “I wasn’t egging her on. You introduced me, I smiled and shook her hand.”
“Whatever.” She gave him a sideways glance. “I suppose it’s not your fault that you’re gorgeous.”
His stunning bronze eyebrows pulled together. “Am I? Gorgeous?”
Robyn burst out laughing at his credulous tone, drawing curious glances from passersby in the old courthouse building. He really didn’t know…or else, angels had no vanity. But surely it wasn’t possible, was it, not to know, not to see, that redheaded, blue-eyed and as intensely male as he was freckled, he outshone the heartthrob Caruso a thousand times? “Don’t tell me no one else has pointed this out to you, Kiel.”
He shrugged in his loose-limbed way. “No one has, Robyn.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“It’s the truth.”
She turned suddenly, angry for reasons she couldn’t even make come clear in her head. She backed him into a very small vestibule. “The truth is you must just have sprung out of the heavenly cabbage patch. Where did you come from, really? Mars, Mr. Call-Me-Dante?”
“Robyn—“
She held up a hand. “I don’t want to hear it,” she warned. “Not if you’re going to tell me you’re unaware of the effect you have on women. For heaven’s sake, Kiel, the policewoman was all but drooling, and that little commandant Elsa Kautz melted. Even I—“
“You what, Robyn?” He felt that curious lack of oxygen afflicting his lungs again.
She clapped her mouth shut. This wasn’t going anywhere, and what did it matter whether or not he admitted to knowing he had any effect at all on women? Because she was attracted to him and she wanted him to be—and admit it out loud—attracted to her?
; Folly.
Complete, unadulterated folly. Angel or not, the absolute bar-none worst reason in the world to be attracted to him was that he reminded her of Keller. Refusing to be so horribly clichéd and predictably dysfunctional, she plucked up her shoulders, tossed him a devil-may-care glance and turned away. “I have a murder to solve.”
She stalked to a telephone booth and checked the directory for the address of Ken Crandall. As she would have expected, had she been thinking instead of fuming, the police officer was not listed.
Kiel had followed. He took the book from her and let it fall on the chain that poked through a hole punched in the upper left corner. “Crandall lives at 0934 Carbondale, back down the valley a way.”
She eyed him suspiciously. “How do you know that?”
“No tricks, Robyn.” He stood slouched against a granite pillar and held up two fingers. Laughter played at his eyes. “Scout’s honor.”
“Oh, please.” He was teasing her, and she couldn’t stay mad at him for two minutes. Did an angel need to swear on Scout’s honor? No. Well, maybe one conceited enough to call himself Alighieri and naive enough not to know a woman in the early stages of a swoon. But she shook her head. Deluded or not, she’d already bought in, lock, stock and barrel, to Kiel being an angel. “How do you know where Crandall lives?”
“I got Keller’s Day-Timer out of his briefcase after you went to sleep last night. There’s even a sketchy map. C’mon. I’ll show you.”
He took her hand and led her out into the bright mountain sunshine. Main Street looked deserted in this off-season time. Her car, like all the others, was parked on a slant to the curb. She unlocked the driver’s door of her coupe and flicked the unlock button for Kiel. Once inside, he produced the Day Timer from the floor and flipped to the page where Keller had noted the address and drawn a rough map to Detective Ken Crandall’s property.
Robyn studied the drawing. Keller obviously hadn’t found anything to be amused about by Crandall. The sketch was perfunctory, a crude map and nothing more, with not even the likeness of a street sign anywhere.
“Okay. Let’s go see what light Detective Crandall can shed on the story.”
She drove to the outskirts of town, back down Main toward Killer 82. Crandall lived out in the country, northwest of Aspen near the town of Basalt. Bouncing down tracks of the ungraded road that Keller’s map indicated, wincing when the underbelly of her car scraped against the hardened earth, Robyn pulled up between a small white Ford Escort and a ‘96 model four-wheel-drive import.
“Pricey vehicle,” she murmured.
“How much?”
She shifted into park and switched off the engine. “Forty thousand, I’d bet.”
Kiel looked at her, his amazing blue eyes clear as the Rocky Mountain skies.
She laughed. “You don’t have a clue, do you.”
He puffed up his chest and looked askance at her. “I can fly, Robyn. I don’t need a clue.”
“Well, for us mere mortals, forty thousand dollars is a hefty chunk of change. Maybe more than a police officer makes in a year.” She would rather know what it was like to fly, but she didn’t want to be shut out again as she had been in the middle of the night by asking questions Kiel couldn’t—or wouldn’t—answer.
She released her seat belt. “On the other hand, just FYI, not because you need a clue,” she teased, “the house is boxy. Ordinary. As inexpensive as any property in Pitkin County gets.” With its minuscule size, reddish brown aluminum siding and a sagging stoop, Crandall’s house wouldn’t have met design standards or covenants anywhere but back down these remote mountain roads.
Still, this was prime mountain property. The chilly air smelled fresh and clean. Blue skies stretched beyond the neighboring fourteen-thousand-foot peaks. She plucked up her shoulder bag from the center console, shut her car door and breathed deeply.
A woman opened the front door and came out onto the porch wrapped in an oversize sweatshirt. “Can I help you,” she called out.
“Yes, thank you very much.” Robyn crossed the small yard. “My name is Robyn Delaney. I’m looking for Detective Ken Crandall.”
The woman folded her arms over her chest and tilted her head. She could have been no more than thirty and had a very pretty face, but she was way too thin. Her green eyeliner had run, giving her a bruised look around the eyes. “He’s my father, but it’s his day off.”
“I understand. This is not police business, but personal. Is he around?”
She jerked her head in a direction behind the house. “He’s fishing.”
“Miss…Crandall?”
“Yes. Miss. Betsy.”
Kiel introduced himself. “Would it be all right with you if we just walk down there and talk to your dad?”
She tucked her hair behind her ear in an embarrassed gesture. She smiled tentatively. “I don’t think he’ll mind.”
Kiel nodded. “Thanks, Betsy.” He tempered his smile. Crandall’s daughter turned back into the house. Kiel took Robyn’s elbow and guided her around the house.
The snow had all melted but the earth was still damp. Robyn followed in what would have been Kiel’s footsteps, if he left any, which he didn’t. They came to a steep decline. She could tell they were nearing a mountain stream.
She first saw a fly fishing line whipping through the air, then Crandall in hip waders, expertly casting the line. He pulled a trout from the stream as they came within shouting distance. He must have glimpsed them from the corner of his eye. He released the fish and tossed it back into the swirling stream, then waded back toward the shoreline.
Robyn picked her way nearer. “Detective Crandall?”
“Who’s askin’?”
“Sir, my name is Robyn Delaney. This is my associate, Kiel Alighieri. I’m sorry to interrupt your day off.”
A very fit man in his late forties or early fifties, suspicious by nature and profession, Crandall pulled the bill of his baseball cap lower against the intense sun and waited for information relevant to the interruption.
“My husband was Keller Trueblood,” she offered.
Nodding, he strode to the bank of the glacial streambed. The flesh around his eyes relaxed. He glanced at Kiel, then trained his attention on her. “Keller was a stand-up guy in a world full of stand-down clowns. Cryin’ ass shame, that cave-in. How are you doing?”
“I’m fine. Fully recovered.” She tossed her hair back, annoyed now that she hadn’t bound it up in a braid this morning. “But right now, my problem is that I’m not convinced that cave-in was an accident, Detective Crandall.”
He tilted his head and his eyes narrowed again. The sun glinted off a small gold St. Christopher medal nestled in the graying hair at his collar. “Come again?”
“The cave-in,” Kiel repeated. “Ms. Delaney has reason to believe that was no accident.”
Crandall planted the hook on his line in the grip of his pole and leaned the fishing gear up against a tree stump. “What reason would that be?”
“I believe someone wanted Keller out of the picture.”
“To bring Candelaria’s trial to a screeching halt?”
“Exactly.”
“Well, we know who that someone would be, now, don’t we? Stuart Willetts was going to have to turn around and kiss his ass goodbye if your husband had his way.”
Robyn exchanged glances with Kiel. “Over what, Detective Crandall?”
“Mr. Stuart Willetts had set himself on the do-not-pass-go path straight to hell.”
Robyn lifted a brow. “How, specifically?”
“Professional misconduct, obstruction of justice at the low end. On the bright end, accessory to murder after the fact.”
Robyn shivered. “Keller threatened that?”
Crandall shrugged. “My guess. Willetts was boinking the Candelaria dame. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to read the writing on the wall.”
“All right. Stuart Willetts had a lot to lose,” she granted. “Detective Crandall, did Kelle
r ever ask you to follow up on any evidence that anyone else murdered Spyder Nielsen? The reason I ask is that if someone else did the murder, then whoever that was had to believe getting rid of Keller was the only way out.”
Crandall began shaking his head the minute Robyn asked about anyone else. “Sorry. That don’t wash.”
“Why?”
Crandall spat in the direction of the streambed. “Two reasons.” He held up his thumb. “One, the Candelaria woman committed that murder sure as I’m standing here in God’s own country. And two,” he added, holding up a soiled forefinger, “even if someone else did the deed, whacking your husband the prosecutor was in no way going to prevent me from bringing said make-believe perpetrator to justice.”
Recoiling from the fishy smell of Crandall’s fingers, Robyn nodded thoughtfully. “I see your point.”
“‘Course you do, because it makes logical sense. Because, for instance, you take Chloe Nielsen.” He bent down and picked a weed from the ground and stuck it in his mouth like a toothpick.
“Who else had more to gain?” he went on. “Chloe gets every cent of Spyder’s estate, with none bein’ siphoned off to Candelaria, and it’s bye-bye to the wicked stepmother in one fell swoop.”
“Then she must have been a suspect,” Kiel said. “Is it possible that Chloe killed her father and left Trudi Candelaria to find Spyder and take the blame?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?” Robyn persisted.
Crandall started to say something, then his mouth slapped shut. “Let’s just say her alibi was tight as a spinster’s…well. Leave it to your imagination.”
Robyn didn’t need her imagination, or appreciate Crandall’s crudeness. His language was far from the worst she’d heard. It had taken years of practice and a lot of mental steeling to let remarks like that go by for the sake of getting at the truth.
And the truth was, however crudely stated, Crandall was quite right. If Keller had come to believe, even in the middle of his prosecution of Trudi, that Chloe Nielsen or anyone else had really committed the murder, the problem would not be solved just by getting rid of Keller. Crandall would have had to be silenced as well.