by Carly Bishop
The foyer was paneled in dark mahogany. The patina must have been acquired for well over a century. An Oriental carpet runner graced the hardwood floor, and an enormous bouquet of exotic hothouse flowers, birds of paradise, orchids, lilies of the valley and hybrid roses, sat in a four-foot-high fluted crystal vase on the floor at the maitre d’ station.
The staff fawned over Lucy in as discreet a fashion as they could manage. She greeted each of them by name, ordered vintage wine and a cold cucumber soup for an appetizer, then turned to Robyn. “Where were we?”
Robyn smiled, sipping at her ice water. The slice of lemon touched her lip. “About to sink,” she said, using the raw linen napkin, “into a pity party. I may never get over losing Keller, Lucy, but I’ve…I’ve come to think I’ll survive it. Be a little stronger. Find a way to be happy on my own.”
Lucy covered her hand encouragingly. “I know you will. I won’t see nearly enough of you because you’ll find some new case to write about that will take you off to some exotic locale.”
Robyn laughed, interrupting. “Aspen is about as exotic as the locales get, Lucy. I mean, think about it. For my first book I got to spend eight stellar, fun-filled months in and out of Ryker’s Island.”
“Ah, New York’s finest place. But you eventually got to come to Denver.” The chilled cucumber soup arrived. Lucy picked up her spoon, but went on. “Are you going to attend my birthday party tomorrow evening? It will be quite the occasion.”
Lucy’s black-tie parties always were occasions. “I wouldn’t miss it. I talked to Jessie yesterday, since I knew you’d asked her to come.” Jessie wasn’t really thrilled to be coming. Covering VIP birthday parties for the TV audience wasn’t what she’d prefer to be doing with her broadcast expertise, but station management wanted it, anyway. “She’s going to bring up one of my evening gowns and shoes and jewelry.”
“Is she coming with Mike and Scott, or with her camera crew?”
“The guys.” Michael Massie, of course, had grown up around Aspen. Scott Kline, Robyn’s friend on the Denver Post, was trailing along for the hell of it. “Kiel has rented a tux.”
Lucy’s features hardened. “That concerns me, Robyn. Do you think it’s wise, jumping into a relationship with someone else when you haven’t really laid Keller to rest in your heart?”
Kiel. Robyn’s heart thumped. “Not Kiel,” she said.
“Well, yes. Kiel.”
Robyn shook her head and took her time with a few spoonfuls of the chilled soup. “Lucy, correct me if I’m wrong here, but wasn’t I just saying I thought I would eventually find a way to be happy on my own?”
“It’s the eventually that troubles me, Robyn. You may never get there. You need space. Time. I’d hate to think you were being pressured out of the time you need to…you know, get over Keller.”
“I’ve had space and time, Lucy.” Besides which, all the space and time left her weren’t going to be enough. Not to mention that Kiel, if she believed him, was not going to be around after Keller’s murder, and Spyder Nielsen’s, were avenged.
They had no future, and she had no chance of falling in love with a real man, anyway, so long as every other thing about Kiel plucked at her memories of Keller. But these weren’t protests she could possibly lodge aloud.
The waiter came and went, taking their order, bringing their food. Robyn guided the conversation on to other topics—the rest of the guest list for Lucy’s birthday, the local gossip, the latest celebrity DUI’s and contretemps.
But Robyn’s own thoughts scattered, fragmenting and flowing like iron filings to a magnet, back to Kiel. When her frozen dessert had melted and lost its exquisite swan shape before she took so much as one bite, Lucy touched her arm.
“What, Robyn? What are you thinking?”
She snapped out of her unintended reverie, put down the spoon and pushed the now unappetizing, drooping confection away. “Lucy, you wouldn’t believe me if I could tell you.”
“Try me, Robyn.”
“No, really. I…my mind is just off in some crazy mixed-up place.”
“Robyn, don’t be ridiculous. We came to lunch to let down our hair and…just be,” Lucy urged, sitting forward. “We haven’t been friends such a long time, but I thought we grew very close very quickly—like fate. Like we were meant to meet.”
She felt inexplicably crowded by Lucy’s concern. A year ago Robyn had felt that way, too. Some people presumed too quickly on acquaintances, sticking like glue too fast, calling too soon, too often, making too many invitations, asking and offering too much. Until this moment, that hadn’t seemed true of Lucy, but Robyn wanted her friend to understand.
The real truth was, she needed someone who would understand when she confessed to having fallen into bed with an Avenging Angel, but that wasn’t an option.
“I was just thinking,” she said, “that everywhere I turn, I see Keller—or maybe I just keep looking for him. It’s like this trick my mind is playing that I’ll see a gesture that was Keller’s or hear a tone of voice he used, or see a light in someone’s eyes like the twinkle in Keller’s eyes was. Sometimes I even feel this eerie sense of recognition.”
“With Kiel.”
Robyn sucked in a breath and nodded. She’d gone too far, been too obvious, said too much, but the milk was spilt, and Lucy, despite her shock at this admission, was a friend. “I know. How looney tunes is it to think Keller could be lurking in someone else’s body pulling off this elaborate twilight zone stunt?”
Lucy shook her head slowly, meeting Robyn’s eyes. “I had no idea, Robyn. How awful for you. I always thought that memory must fade. That by now maybe you would even be grieving that you couldn’t remember the sound of his voice.” She lifted her brows, her eyes filled with pity, or something too much like it. “Your memory hasn’t dimmed one iota, has it?”
“No.” She cleared her throat to knock back the dull throb.
“Have you thought, perhaps, that you need to get away from Kiel?”
Robyn’s heart twisted. She broke off the eye contact. “I can’t, Lucy—“
“Of course you can,” Lucy chided gently. “I wouldn’t say this to you if we weren’t friends, Robyn, but we are. If he keeps you so in mind of Keller, get rid of him. You don’t owe it to anyone to put yourself through this, Robyn, least of all some man.”
But that wasn’t fair, and Robyn knew it. “Lucy, it’s my fault, not Kiel’s, that I see Keller in him. It isn’t fair to blame Kiel.” Together, she and Keller had each been whole, larger than life. One.
One.
She was like the jam on his toast. He was as essential to her as the cream in her coffee. It was only that she couldn’t get used to being “jam” without purpose or place. “I’ve been drinking my coffee black for a while now,” she mused.
“Is that something I’m supposed to understand, Robyn?”
She shook her head and gave a smile. “No. Lucy, I’m not going to curl up and die. I’m not a shadow of my former self, and…even if I thought I could get rid of Kiel, he won’t be dispensed with.”
“I would help you,” Lucy offered. “I have staff I can turn over to your use this minute—“
“Lucy,” she interrupted, touching her friend’s hand, “I can’t. I’ve never run away from anything in my life, and if I start now, how will that make me better? Is there some other reason you believe I should get rid of Kiel?”
Lucy straightened and set aside her napkin with a thump. “I’ve said too much, haven’t I, even between friends? Of course you must do what will finally make you better. If I overstepped, Robyn, please forgive me, but it’s because by your own admission, he’s making you crazy.”
“Or…maybe he’s making me well.” Like flypaper, her great-grandmama Marie used to say. Flypaper traps flies; so your soul captures what it must learn, and the people to learn from. Or in this case, Robyn thought, the angel.
AFTER ROBYN LEFT with Lucinda Montbank, Kiel sat staring into space for a long time. Every bit
as troubled as Robyn by their lack of real progress in resolving the murders of Spyder Nielsen and Keller, he knew they must be edging closer. And he knew it was the nature of the beast, of investigating, that a certain amount of time was likely to be spent chasing leads that went nowhere. But his own frustration had more to do with Robyn, with keeping her in the dark as to his true self, than anything else.
His eyes fixed on the lighted display cabinets along the wall of the office and the collection of Wild West lore, everything from old decks of cards to bullets, recovered doorsills and pictures of dead bodies from drunken, brawling shoot-’em-ups in the mining camp saloons. Old Lucien Montbank, Lucy’s great-grandfather, had owned one of the brothel-saloons, and must have had an unexpectedly forward-looking bent of mind to save such things for posterity. For instance, the bullet that killed Blackjack Turner, the notorious gambler.
Just for exercise Kiel split his consciousness, focusing both inward, on thoughts of Robyn, and outward, on that bullet. His eyes trained on the misshapen metal bullet, focused sharply and zoomed in until a part of his being and awareness shrank and actually entered into the molecules of the lead itself.
This was truly what Kiel would consider an angel trick. David Copperfield could make the Great Wall of China appear to disappear, so it wasn’t so amazing, to Kiel at least, that he himself had the power to both materialize, and then make disappear, that mountain cabin—or anything else, for that matter. But this…this ability to be in consciousness in two different places, this was a feat befitting an angel. He could at once explore the inner contours of the spent and deadly bullet, and at the same precise time, be sitting in a chair in an office as would any mortal being, thinking.
He knew there were times when Robyn believed she had taken a startling left-hand-turn into madness. He would either have to resolve this case quickly and get out of her mortal life, or finally explain to her who he was.
The deception was sanctioned as the most humane and compassionate choice, but every minor piece contributing to it now corroded his angelic sense of fairness and truth. And with or without the memories of Keller Trueblood, Kiel’s human manifestation was falling deeper in love with Robyn’s earthbound one.
He couldn’t handle it much longer. Since the last thing he wanted to do was to deal with a look of betrayal in Robyn’s eyes, he had to do something—and fast. He ended his little exercise with the bullet in the display cabinet and sealed the division in his consciousness to get on with the business of resolving the murders.
He cloaked himself in invisibility and followed the path Robyn and Lucy had taken, then sat in for a moment on their conversation in the dining club.
He didn’t like Lucinda much. He had the sense that despite all her obvious help, she was hanging around to throw roadblocks in their way. She manufactured disputes with him where there were none, and goaded him every time Robyn went out of earshot. He was tired of messing with her, and he would have loved to flare up into his fearsome angelic visage just to put her in her place. He couldn’t see what it was that Robyn admired in Lucinda Montbank, but instead of taking her on, he went out of his way for Robyn’s sake not to get into power struggles with Lucy.
He didn’t like her and didn’t like the tone of her lunch conversation, but he left the restaurant telling himself he had to have faith that for the next hour, Robyn would be fine without him.
And if she wasn’t, by the carving of ivory wings he had made for her, he would know it. He soared in his invisible state of being around the mountains surrounding Aspen in search of Tee Palmer, the crusty old miner Lucy had promised but so far had been unable to deliver.
Kiel traveled in ever-widening circles, searching for the consciousness of the old man. He found him taking a smoke break from his labors in an obscure old mining shaft that would have been closed down cold inside a week had government safety inspectors ever seen it.
Kiel materialized out of sight in clothes the old man would not automatically mistrust—which were ones about as filthy as those Tee Palmer wore.
He walked up the hillside for about fifty feet so as not to surprise the old man, either. “Tee Palmer?” he called out from a distance of thirty feet.
“Depends.” The old guy squinted hard though the sun was at his back. “Who in the billy hell are you?”
“Name’s Ezekiel. A friend of Lucinda Montbank.”
“She didn’t say you could find me up here, ‘cuz she don’t know what I’m doin’,” he answered suspiciously. “So how’d you find me?”
“Lucky break, I reckon. Need some help. Mind if I sit awhile with you?” Kiel asked, tailoring his words to the old man’s speech patterns.
They sat and talked awhile. Palmer smoked another cigarette, then another, while he listened to Kiel explaining what it was Tee could help him with.
The old man sat soaking up the sunshine for a moment, dozing. He startled awake when a bird screeched at a squirrel, still in mind of what Kiel had been talking about.
He settled his backside differently on the hard, downward-sloping ground. “That old Hallelujah cavin’ in like it did that day set me t’thinking. Came a runnin’ m’self when I heard it go. In that bunged up ol’ Jeep, anyway,” he said, jerking his head in the direction of a vehicle Kiel would bet had seen thirty years on some army base, and another thirty in Tee’s possession.
“Were you at the Hallelujah when they rescued that woman and her husband?”
“Dead-as-a-doornail husband, yep. Can’t figure it. Dumb-ass people get theirselves killed all the time going where they oughtn’t oughta go, but I had a sense about this not being a case of dumb asses,” he went on, “but somethin’ nefarious goin’ on instead.”
Amused as he was by Tee Palmer’s mix of quaint and sophisticated words, the sentiment, the skepticism, shook Kiel. “Why is that, Tee?”
“Just a feelin’. About as much logic as fits in a pinhead, but the feelin’…” Tee shook his head. “That lack o’ serious reasoning don’t change the feelin’. Only times in a long life I’ve ever been in real trouble was when I ignored m’gut and went with logic.”
“Is it possible that someone set off charges?”
“More’n possible. Likely. Had to set off a few more to rescue them kids, too—that lawyer fella ‘n’ his wife.”
Kiel had a powerful sense of himself being one of the kids Tee was talking about, only the mortal body of Keller Trueblood had been stone-cold dead. But the point the old man had made was an important one.
More blasting had been necessary to clear a path into the tunnel where Robyn and he, or rather Keller, had been found—which meant new traces of explosives residue were to be expected.
“So there’d be no way of telling, would there? No way to prove someone intended for the Hallelujah to collapse on those two?”
“No way on God’s little green earth I know of,” Tee said. “You know anybody had it in for that mouthpiece fella?”
Kiel nodded. “There were some. Nobody such as yourself, though, who’d know how to do the dirty work.”
Tee shook his head. “Wish I’d been around, maybe I’d a seen who done it. I mighta been in the gen’ral vicinity,” he reflected, “‘cept I was five miles away chasin’ off after some damn-blamed fool New Age hippies gettin’ naked in my hot springs.”
Kiel grinned. It was too bad Tee Palmer had not been in the vicinity to see who’d been anywhere near the Hallelujah planting explosives. He stood up when Tee shoved himself up to his feet, and shook hands with the old miner. “Thanks for your help.”
“Ain’t much, come to that.”
“Did you get rid of the hippies?”
“I fixed their wagon good,” Tee said, cackling a bit. “Filled in the springs with boulders, that’s what.”
Chapter Ten
Judge Vincent J. Ybarra kept a dark courtroom every Friday afternoon. Robyn and Kiel checked in with his clerk, and he had, in fact, gone home for the weekend. She told them it was the Judge’s habit to go soak in
the mineral hot springs at the back of his property. That was where they found him.
His aging housekeeper had taken their names, and he’d sent her back to invite them in.
The trek out had to be a quarter mile over a footpath just worn through the weeds. Covered to his bare neck in a pool cut out by the natural springs, Judge Ybarra smiled broadly and waved an arm at the two of them. He had a full mustache, head of snowy white hair and distinctive Hispanic features. He was one of the most respected magistrates on the Western slope. “Robyn Delaney,” he said. “I’m quite a fan of yours, young lady, I’ve read all your books. Found them quite good, in fact. And you’re not a trained attorney, are you?”
“No, sir, I’m not,” she answered. “Thank you. It’s always nice to hear that someone enjoyed my work, but doubly so, coming from you.” She turned to Kiel. “You’ve not met Judge Ybarra.” Kiel introduced himself.
“An alias, or a descendant of the great Italian poet?” the old judge asked, his eyes sparkling with the devil.
“I chose it, sir,” Kiel answered. Smith, he swore, next time. Smith.
“Well, if you’re going to choose a name, why not?” Ybarra asked. “A dear friend of mine, a civil rights attorney, went from Ken to Sebastian. Quite fitting, I believe now, though in my younger days, I thought changing one’s name a bit on the side of overweening. Take off your shoes, both of you, and dip your feet while we talk. You’ll find it really very therapeutic.”
Robyn peeled out of her light knee-highs and loafers inside thirty seconds. Kiel took a few seconds longer.
Ybarra’s expressive face went solemn. “Your husband was a very fine young man, Robyn. His loss must be very difficult for you, as it is to all of us who respected his work so highly.”
“Thank you so much for that. Keller held you in the highest regard, too.”
“As he should, as he should,” Ybarra joked. “You’ll find I am not a falsely modest man.”
Kiel finally stuck his feet in the hot springs. “Judge Ybarra, I’m working with Robyn, going through Keller’s files. We think there may be reasons to doubt the integrity of one of the investigating officers in Colorado v. Candelaria.”