Tainted Gold

by Lynn Michaels

  “Oh, pardon me. Rosalie Sipp, this is Tucker Ferris. Tucker—”

  “Hello, Mrs. Sipp.” He reached past Quillen and offered his hand. “I’m the new tenant.”

  “Oh,” she fluttered, her fingers barely touching his. “How nice.”

  Quillen gave him a since-when? glance, then turned again toward Mrs. Sipp. “Did Mr. Phillips say anything?”

  “No, Miss McCain, not a word.” She pursed her shell pink lips and shook her head. “But I must say, he certainly seemed agitated.”

  “I think I’ll drop by the bank tomorrow. Mr. Phillips is head teller,” she explained to Tucker over her shoulder as she took Mrs. Sipp’s elbow and guided her up the stairs. “This is really odd.”

  “I wouldn’t do that, Quillen,” Tucker put in quickly as he hit the bottom stair behind her.

  “Why not?” she asked. “He’s a very nice man and this worries me.”

  “That’s exactly why I wouldn’t,” Tucker continued, moving to Mrs. Sipp’s left side and taking her arm. “It must be pretty personal or he would have said something, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, I agree with Mr. Ferris, Miss McCain,” Mrs. Sipp chimed in, her voice sounding giddy. “You wouldn’t want to pry!”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “I’m ready, willing, and eager to move in—you haven’t lost anything,” Tucker said as they rounded the landing.

  At Mrs. Sipp’s second-floor front apartment, they stopped and waited while she let herself in. With the door half-closed, she waggled her fingers at Tucker.

  “If you need a cup of sugar or, oh, just anything, Mr. Ferris, I’m right across the hall.” She closed the door gently, and Quillen could have sworn she heard her swoon on the other side.

  “Is she real?” Tucker whispered.

  “Don’t let the spun glass exterior fool you,” Quillen whispered back as they crossed the hall and she unlocked Mr. Phillips’s vacant apartment. “That’s one tough old lady. She’s known around town as the Iron Marshmallow. She watches this place like a broody hen when I’m not here.”

  As Quillen opened the door, Tucker stepped past her into the spacious, beige-carpeted living room. He nosed around the galley kitchen while she checked the bath and the bedroom. They crossed paths there, then met again in the living room.

  “This doesn’t look like a pick-up-and-move.” Quillen frowned. “The place is spotless.”

  “I’ll take it.” Tucker swung his duffel bag to the floor. “What’s the rent? My checkbook’s in the Jeep.”

  “Well, let’s see, the security deposit is—” Her sentence died in her throat and a shiver iced up her back.

  Tucker cocked his head at her. “What’s the matter?”

  “Oh, I was just remembering Realgar’s prediction.” She laughed, rubbing the gooseflesh beneath her sleeves.

  “I told you he’s hardly ever wrong.” He tucked his hands in his back pockets and smiled.

  “So you did.” She rubbed her arms harder and hurried toward the door. “Let’s talk downstairs while I—”

  “Can I shower up here?”

  With one hand on the knob, she turned and looked back at him. He still stood in the middle of the room, smiling. A very satisfied-looking smile, she thought. “Sure, that’s fine. See you soon.”

  Pulling the door shut behind her, Quillen raced down the steps. It’s coincidence, that’s all, she told herself as she closed her apartment door behind her and escaped to the bathroom for a shampoo and shower.

  Afterward, in a loose, ivory gauze blouse and baggy denims, she partially dried her hair, then pinned the half-damp length on top of her head. Barefoot, she padded into the kitchen, her mouth drawn in a pensive line.

  The water had rinsed away the dirt, but not the doubts. Okay, she asked herself, as she diced a carrot for tossed salad, if it’s not coincidence, then what is it?

  A Communist conspiracy? A CIA covert action? An IRS audit? Grinning at her own silliness, Quillen turned on the cold water, switched on the garbage disposal to chop up the carrot tops—then shrieked and whirled around with the knife in her hand as something warm and damp sucked the back of her neck.

  “Holy sshhiiii—!” A wet-headed Tucker, in his glasses, jeans, and a white T-shirt, leaped backward across the kitchen, his hands raised over his head. “Is this the Bates Motel?”

  “Oh, my God!” Quillen sagged against the sink, the knife limp in one hand, the other pressed to her throat as she swallowed her heart. “I didn’t hear you,” she said, then asked, “What’s the Bates Motel?”

  “What?” Tucker echoed as he came toward her, picked up her wrist and pried the knife out of her hand. “You’ve never seen the movie Psycho?” Then he tossed the knife on the cutting board as he reached over her and turned off the disposal. “Quillen, I’m not trying to be crude,” he murmured soothingly in her ear, as he slipped his arms around her and drew her to him. “But is this the wrong phase of the moon for you?”

  “I’m not sure,” she sighed as her fright ebbed away. “I can’t count backward in my head.”

  “Let me make the salad.” He kissed her temple lightly. “You do something safe—like supervise.”

  She did, perched on the high, red-tiled countertop as she watched him whistle his way around her kitchen. “Obviously, you can cook.”

  “You bet.” He pushed his glasses up his nose with the middle finger of his left hand. “My mother writes cookbooks.”

  “Why are you wearing your glasses?”

  “I have a headache.” With the back of the knife blade, he swept the celery he’d just chopped off the board into a wooden bowl.

  Fear tightened Quillen’s throat. “You aren’t lightheaded, are you? Or nauseated?”

  He turned on the taps to rinse the iceberg lettuce, then smiled at her. “No, Quillen. There aren’t any noxious fumes in the mine. I whacked my head on a ceiling beam.”

  “Oh, good,” she sighed.

  “Good?” He notched an eyebrow at her. “If I hadn’t had the helmet on, I would’ve knocked myself cold. I’ve got a lump.” He picked up a washed tomato and moved back to the board. “Want to feel it?”

  “Maybe later.” She smiled. “Why did you ask Desmond Cassil for the assay reports on my mine?”

  “Ouch!” The tomato fell open, neatly sliced in two, but Tucker wheeled away from the counter, his left index finger stuck in his mouth.

  “Good thing you’re not a brain surgeon,” she teased, scooting along the counter to open a small upper cabinet.

  “That was my minor in college.” He moved the faucet to the empty side of the sink, rinsed his finger, and shut off the water. “Frontal lobotomies are my specialty. Takes a delicate hand, y’know.”

  “Why the assay reports?” she repeated as she took down a white tin of Band-Aids from the shelf and peeled one open for him.

  “Because, I’m comparing them to what I’m finding now.” He held his finger out to her. “This is a rare opportunity for me. Usually I have to rely on data collected from the surface, but with all the old mine shafts around here, I get a look at things inside and out. The chemical breakdowns tell me what kind of ores your grandfather and the other old-timers dug through, and I’m looking at that against what’s down there now, plus rates of settlement, seepage, and sediment levels—”

  Logical, Quillen sighed silently with relief. All perfectly logical and scientific.

  “You know, I’m not the only one with a grudge against the Cassil family,” she told him. “Jeremiah, that’s our illustrious mayor’s grandfather, set up the one and only assay office and charged killing rates. He got richer than the miners.”

  “I believe that was a common practice of the time.” Tucker looked at her askance as he scooped tomatoes into the wooden bowl. “It was, and still is, called free enterprise.”

  “On my end of the pickax,” Quillen replied tartly, “it’s called robbery.”

  Shrugging offhandedly, he turned quickly away from her as he bent his head
over the colander to shred lettuce. This time, despite the reflection of the sink light on the lenses of his glasses, Quillen knew she hadn’t imagined the subtle, almost wary flicker in his blue eyes. Again, she was certain that something she’d said had precipitated it, although she still couldn’t figure out what.

  He finished the salad, doctored a pound of ground beef, then left Quillen to make patties while he started the fire in the hibachi on the back porch.

  “You make great hamburgers,” she told him over the round oak table in her kitchen once they’d finished eating. “What’s in them?”

  “A little Worcestershire, a little onion”—he munched on a pickle and swallowed—“a little egg, and a little garlic.”

  “Delicious. Thank you. You cooked, I’ll clean up.”

  “Terrific.” He dropped a kiss on her forehead and sauntered out of the kitchen. “I hate K.P.”

  When Quillen joined him in her studio fifteen minutes later, the dishwasher gurgling behind her, Tucker stood in front of her board, the Luxo lamp on, his hands in his back pockets as he gazed at the painting of the prince on the mountaintop. He turned toward her and lifted his glasses to the top of his head.

  “This guy’s virtually naked. I couldn’t see that last night without my specs.”

  “Most of them are. I almost got to do some of the Conan posters.” She sighed wistfully. “All I could think of was oooh, oooh, would I love to draw Arnold Schwarzenegger’s muscles.”

  “Sorry, kid, you’ll have to settle for mine.” He unsnapped and began to unzip his jeans.

  “Your face, Tucker.” She cupped his chin lightly in her hand. “All I need is your face.”

  One corner of his mouth dipped disappointedly. “You don’t want to see my little maroon jockey briefs?”

  “Not tonight, thank you.”

  The doorbell rang.

  “Oh.” He zipped his jeans and looked crestfallen. “I guess that means you don’t want to feel my lump, either.”

  “Tucker!” She laughed, glancing back at him as she crossed the living room to answer the bell.

  “Hi, Quillen.” Paula Clarke, a petite brunette who occupied one of the rear singles, came through the door as Quillen opened it. Two feet inside the room she stopped, her eyes riveted on Tucker, then she winked and backed out into the hall. “See you later.”

  “No, wait.” She glanced at Tucker. He nodded and she followed Paula into the hall, pulling the door shut behind her. “You’ve been a stranger.”

  “We’re just swamped at the shop.” She flipped the envelope in her hand nervously against her fingers, then handed it to Quillen. “Here’s my rent and”—she winced—“my notice.”

  “You’re moving?”

  “I love my apartment,” Paula went on in a rush, “but this salesman from Cassil Realty came by the shop yesterday and left a brochure about The Towers—you know, that new condo they just built? Minimal down payment, low interest rate, and since I own my own business, too, I need all the tax breaks I can get.”

  “I understand. It’s just—this is two in one day. Mr. Phillips moved out this afternoon.”

  “Sorry, Quill, really. Listen, I gotta go. I’ve got five silk flower arrangements to make for Mrs. Desmond Cassil’s bridge party tomorrow.” She made a hoity-toity face. “We’ll have lunch, okay?”

  “Sure.” Quillen nodded absently and stared at the envelope.

  “Psst!”

  She glanced up at Paula, paused between two stairs with her hand on the rail. Her brown eyes slid toward the door.

  “Where’d you find him?”

  “Oh.” Quillen smiled wanly. “Under a long white beard.”

  “Some Santa Claus.” She winked and hurried up the stairs.

  Slowly, a pensive frown on her face, Quillen reached behind her and turned the knob. She backed through the door, shut it, then leaned against it as she tapped the corner of the envelope on her chin.

  “Quillen?” His hands in his back pockets, Tucker walked into the room, one eyebrow raised. “Something wrong?”

  “I just lost another tenant.” She sighed, moving toward the mantel and sliding Paula’s envelope on the smooth oak slab between two of Grandma Elliot’s porcelain bells.

  “You’re kidding!”

  She smiled at him weakly. “I think I said that.”

  “Hey, you found me,” he said brightly. “Come on, let’s sign the lease and I’ll write you a check. That’ll perk you up.”

  It did, a little, but afterward, while Quillen stood at the front window and watched Tucker unload his sleeping bag from the back of the Jeep, her momentary cheer faded. Unmindfully rubbing her left arm as she watched him lug his gear up the walk, she remembered Desmond Cassil’s statement: “There are other methods of persuasion available.” Oddly, she wasn’t mad. She was scared.

  “Could I borrow a pillowcase?”

  Looking toward the hall and Tucker framed in the open doorway, Quillen did her best to smile. “Sure. Need a blanket?”

  “Nope, my bag’s nice and snug. Plenty of room for two.” He leered at her, then frowned as he walked toward her and lifted her chin on one finger. “Don’t look so bleak. Hey, let’s ask Realgar. He was right last night.”

  In that same instant, Quillen felt the floorboards beneath the gray and burgundy shag carpet tremble, and the stained glass panel in the top half of the window rattled. Behind her, the porcelain bells on the mantel tinkled and she spun around as the Luxo light on her drawing board flickered.

  “What the—” She gasped, her scalp prickling.

  “Tremor—a biggie.” Tucker bolted out the door.

  Quillen followed on his heels. He flipped the light on as he flung open the door and stepped out onto the porch, staring toward the east, in the direction of the festival grounds.

  “How big?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.” He wheeled around and so did Quillen to watch him shoot up the stairs three at a time.

  He came back down in ninety seconds, pulling on a brown flannel shirt and carrying a jacket, his boots, and his duffel. His glasses slipped off the top of his head and landed, crooked, on his nose.

  “You may not see me for a couple days.” He brushed a wet, sloppy kiss on her cheekbone as she reached up and straightened his glasses. “Depending on what the seismometer says, I may stay out there.”

  “Tucker, you’re scaring me.” She held out her arms to take his clothes as he shoved them at her and bent over to pick up the sleeping bag. “I’m coming with you.”

  “As much as I want you in my sleeping bag—” He grinned at her as she followed him outside. “You’d be in my way, and I wouldn’t get any work done.”

  “But, Tucker—” she objected as she trailed him down the steps and the walk.

  He opened the back of the Jeep and lifted his sleeping bag and duffel inside. He kissed her again as he took his clothes out of her arms. “Don’t worry, Quillen, I’m an earth doctor.”

  “Tucker, be serious—”

  “I am.” He spun around and caught her shoulders in his hands as she followed him into the street beside the Jeep. “I’m an honest-to-God doctorate in geology, but if you ever call me Dr. Ferris, the wedding’s off.” He landed another off-the-mark kiss on her chin, opened the door, slid into the seat, and started the engine.

  Rubbing her arm again, Quillen backed away, the pavement cold on her bare feet as the Jeep squealed away from the curb. It roared down the block and Tucker honked the horn at her as the brake lights flashed around the corner and the Wagoneer disappeared into the night.

  Chapter Four

  There were no more tremors that night. But on Monday afternoon, when Quillen laid her brush down on her palette and left her drawing board to answer the doorbell, disaster struck again.

  Miss Deidre Smythe (Smythe, not Smith), president of the Junior League, Mrs. Desmond Cassil’s bridge partner, and the bad apple in Quillen’s barrel of tenants, stood in the hall. Her severely styled hairdo
was as blue as the knit walking suit she wore, and her sharp, ferretlike nose wrinkled distastefully at Quillen’s faded jeans and paint-stained, oversize denim shirt.

  “Obviously you are busy, Miss McCain, so I shall make this brief.” She opened the black leather purse clutched in her liver-spotted fingers, shut it with a snap that made Quillen start, and handed her an embossed beige envelope. “I am vacating my apartment forthwith. I realize, since I am breaking my lease, that I forfeit the damage deposit placed on the premises. I hope you will find a good use for it.” Her agate-hard brown eyes flicked dismissively over Quillen’s clothes again, her nose twitched, and she marched up the stairs, her spine regimental straight.

  Any other day, Miss Smythe’s notice would have been cause for celebration, but Quillen’s knees felt like half-set Jell-O, her heart like stone as she closed the door, crossed the room, and slid the envelope, unopened, next to Paula’s on the mantel.

  On the wide, ivory-painted sill above the windowseat, Grandma Elliot’s china clock counted the seconds in faint, chimelike ticks. Frowning at the hand-painted face as she entered the studio, Quillen sat down heavily on her high navy leather stool. She bent and threaded her cold, leaden fingers together, leaned her elbows on the bottom edge of her board, and pressed her thumbs against her chin.

  It was four-twenty-seven. Mrs. Desmond Cassil’s bridge luncheons began promptly at one o’clock on the first and third Monday of every month, and ended just as promptly at four.

  “There are other methods of persuasion,” Cassil had said, though Quillen wouldn’t exactly call this persuasion. Coercion and intimidation seemed better words—but extortion was by far the most apt.

  Untangling her fingers, Quillen clenched her hands into fists and tried to muster anger. She couldn’t. For the only time in her life that she could remember, the McCain Irish failed her and she sat, trembling and ashen, at her board.

  With all her heart she wished Tucker were here to gently cuff her chin and tell her to pluck up. Oh, God, how she wished it. She was bone-aching tired of being alone and being strong. She wanted somebody to hug her and tell her it was going to be all right…and more than anything, she wanted that somebody to be Tucker.