never discard avenues of attack or of escape out of hand. But even I
would have been hard-pressed to come up with such an inelegant solution
as to murder Keller Trueblood. Wouldn't it have been a thousand times
easier, and more certain, to... well, you know, just attack him in some
dark alley?"
Robyn understood Lucy's aversion to suggesting other ways Keller was
more likely to be killed. "The thing is, I
don't think it would have been easier."
"Why not?"
"Aspen isn't exactly your usual site of drive-by shootings or dark
alley stabbings."
"Amen to that" Lucy put in.
"But I don't think Keller would have been easy or reliably easy, at
least, to catch alone. He was always either working on the case with
someone over dinner, at least in public, or he was at home with me."
"Come on, Robyn," Lucy answered skeptically. "He went home alone every
night for eight or nine weeks."
"That's just it, Lucy," Robyn argued. "He didn't. I could count on
one hand the times he came home without an entourage--including Stuart
Willetts and a minimum of two or three law clerks, not to mention--"
"All right." Lucy held up a hand. "Still, the Hallelujah would seem
to me to be even more 'unreliable. As a way of making sure Keller was
put out of the picture, I mean."
"It's possible," Kid said, "that if someone did cause the mine shaft to
collapse, it didn't really matter what the outcome was. Keller was not
going to escape unscathed. Maybe the reasoning went, even if Trueblood
survived,
there was no way he was going to wind up his prosecution, either.
Effectively, he was stopped."
Lucy grimaced. "It makes me sick to admit it, but it's possible. It's
all entirely possible. How can I help you? What do you need?"
"Three things, just off the top of my head," Robyn said, going on with
the train of thought she and Kiel had followed. "One, we would like
you to come up with a list of people with the expertise to pull this
off, and two, a list of experts in the detection and identification of
explosives residue."
"The second coming first, most logically," Kiel said. "We have to know
if the Hallelujah was sabotaged in the first place."
"And the third thing, Lucy, is your opinion. Kiel and I talked to Ken
Crandall this morning. He believes that Stuart Willetts had the most
to lose." Briefly, Robyn related Crandall's theory about Willetts's
career and blind passion. "I keep second-guessing myself. I can't see
Trudi doing this stuff. You have such a keen insight into people-"
"No more than you, Robyn."
"Maybe, but I'm not exactly a disinterested, objective party. If
Keller had never come here, or if I hadn't wanted to go see the
Hallelujah for myself... You sec what flaming hoops I put myself
through." She sat forward, her hands clasped around her knees.
"Please. You hear things. You know as much or more about what goes on
in this town as anyone. I value your judgment. Do you believe Trudi
Candelaria killed Spyder? And if you do, is it a logical extension to
think she or Wiiletts would have the stomach for taking Keller out like
that?"
"Logic is pretty useless in a situation like this. I tend to think of
murder as a crime of passion." Lucy's eyes slid to Kiel.
He nodded. "Motivated by passions, of course. At least one like
Spyder's murder. But it would have to take a lot more reasoned
thinking to have murdered Keller by the collapse of a hundred-year-old
mine shaft."
"True enough." Tapping her lips with her forefinger, Lucy sighed. "But
honestly, I don't know if Trudi killed Spyder or not. She had reason,
she had all the opportunity in the world, and she had that bronze
statue at her fingertips."
Robyn nodded. "Even Stuart Willetts admits all the evidence pointed to
Trudi. He swears she didn't do it, of course, but his vouching for her
doesn't count for much."
"No, it doesn't. If you want my opinion, I'll give it to you. Yes. I
personally believe she did knock old Spyder off, and again, personally,
I wouldn't blame her. He was a world-class jerk. I never heard
anything less than completely self-serving coming out of his mouth. So
if she whacked him over the head with his own bronze, then again...
yes. She'd have the moxie to hire out the so-called accident that
ended Keller's life. Since she and
Willetts are so cozy--I assume you know that?" Robyn nodded.
"Then you have a case of one hand washing the other. Is Trudi smart
enough to hoodwink the prosecution second chair? Or just sexy enough
to short-circuit his real brain?" Lucy smiled coldly. "You bet she
is. Crazy like a fox. Even I would think twice before tangling with
her."
"So if she said to me that she didn't kill Spyder, and I believed her,
I would be a fool?"
"Not at all, Robyn," Lucy argued. "No one knows who killed Spyder.
You're fight. I do hear a great deal,
though nothing ever to exonerate her. It's highly unlikely we'll ever
know for sure. But if she didn't kill Spyder, she had an even stronger
motive to get rid of Keller. Don't you see? If she was going to be
sent up the river for something she didn't do, she might have been just
desperate enough to get the trial derailed--whatever it took."
"We've thought of that too." Kiel got up and began pacing around, idly
examining mining memorabilia, antiques set in glass eases that were
discreetly and expertly spotlighted along one wall of Lucy's office.
"Is it possible for you to come up with a list of people in the area
with the expertise to have mused the mine to collapse?"
"Almost impossible, I'm afraid. Aspen isn't a very eclectic place.
Filthy rich or dirt poor about covers the territory, because in
between, you just can't afford to live here. But in those two, you
have two very distinct populations. The rich and very rich, who live
here in summer, jet in and out, and take only the most cursory interest
in the heritage and history--and then' polar opposites. The
descendants of the ones who came here a hundred years ago, hacked their
way through granite to precious metals or marble, and made it big only
to lose it, or didn't ever quite make it to begin with. Robyn, Kiel,
you have to understand. It wouldn't take a scientist or engineer to
blast the Hallelujah to kingdom come."
Her bubble pricked, Robyn nodded. "Basically, what you're saying is
that all it would take is one person with the nerve to light a stick of
dynamite and run."
"Yes. High school kids could do it."
Kiel's brows drew together. "Did anyone ever make any effort to find
out if that's what happened the day Keller was killed and Robyn's leg
was crushed, or was it just assumed that the Hallelujah collapsed on
its own?"
For a moment Lucy stared blankly at him. "I doubt any attempt was
made. There was no reason to think anyone would do such a thing. And
there weren't that many of us who even knew Robyn and Keller would be
there."
<
br /> "Who knew?" Robyn asked softly.
"I knew. I'm sure Smart Willetts did as well, which meant Trudi knew."
Lucy shook her head in disbelief. "If Trudi knew, or Stuart, eithel;
one, that's pretty telling, isn't it? But I believe the hikers who
reported that the mine had collapsed never told the rescue parties or
authorities that they heard a blast that might have caused the collapse
first."
"We'll check those records," Kiel said, "but in the end, it all comes
back to whether or not someone set charges that caused the Hallelujah
to collapse." He shrugged. "Unless we find proof of that all the rest
is sheer speculation."
Lucy warmed her cappuccino from the carafe, then pressed an invisible
buzzer concealed in the arm of her chair. The twenty-fiveish young
minion poked his head in the door in about two seconds. "See if you
can get hold of Adelmeyer or Palmer for me."
When Lucy's young aide left, Robyn looked at her for an explanation.
"They're both mining engineers. Gene Adelmeyer is ex-FBI, and an
explosives residue expert, in addition. Tee Palmer is just an old
miner with an instinct that won't quit. He's a cousin of mine,
actually. Lives like a busted-down hermit, but he has several hundred
thousand dollars salted away--and that's only what he trusts the bank
to hold." She smiled fondly. "I'd bet there is a million more in ore
he's stashed beneath his cabin in leather pouches."
Robyn felt encouraged. "They both sound perfect for the j oh."
Lucy shook her head. "They are, Robyn, but I hate to hold up such hope
of proving anything."
Staring at an 1880s vintage cabinet displaying rock picks, axes,
blasting caps and a couple of six-shooters behind authentic period
glass panels, Kiel turned back. "Why is that?"
Lucy smiled, her expression somewhere between seductive, admiring and
regretful. "Because it wouldn't necessarily even take a stick of
dynamite to cause a collapse. I could show you stopes--the spaces left
after the ore has been taken out--where huge slabs of rock have
separated from the ceiling and fallen down all by themselves. It
doesn't take much."
"Are you saying it's impossible, Lucy?"
"Not at all, Robyn. Don't get me wrong. I'll go to the ends of the
earth if necessary to find the top men--but the Hallelujah is an old
mine. All I'm saying is that in the realm of possibilities, even you
or Keller could have in. advertently caused the collapse."
"Lucy," Robyn protested, "when the mine began collapsing Keller and I
were standing in the middle of the end of a small tunnel--"
"It doesn't matter, Robyn. Even if we discount the possibility that
your being there somehow upset the balance, a lot of blasting took
place down in those shafts. Every hundred feet, a new level, new
blasting. There'll he trace evidence of powder and dynamite all over
creation that could be well over a century old."
"How does that keep us from identifying new blasting activity?" Robyn
asked. "Granted, it's a year old now, but--"
"If I were going to try to make an old mine shaft collapse in an
attempted murder," Kiel interrupted, catching Lucy's implication, "and
if I wanted to cover my tracks, I'd use plain old-fashioned dynamite."
He looked to Lucy. "Isn't that right?"
"Exactly." Lucy blinked slowly. "You sure as hell wouldn't use
signature materials, or even anything remotely modern."
Chapter Nine
Robyn and Kiel met with Gene Adelmeyer at Planet Hollywood that night.
He promised to take surface and core samples, based on Lucy's computer
graphics representations of the Hallelujah. The samples would be
tested in his Denver labs for explosives residues, but as Lucy had
suggested, if dynamite had been used and not any modern-day explosives,
dating the blast residues would likely prove impossible.
Tee Palmer proved more elusive. If he kept a cell phone, Robyn
thought, he wasn't particularly slavish about keeping a functional
battery. If he'd gone prospecting, there was no telling when he could
be reached.
In the meantime, Lucinda Montbank provided Robyn and Kiel with under
utilized office space in her building. Cartons of records were checked
out of the county courthouse vaults, with nothing more than a Montbank
personal guarantee, and transported the three blocks down Main Street
to the building her company occupied.
Robyn put in calls to the Savannah Beach, Georgia, couple and the
University of Colorado students who had been hiking independently in
the vicinity of the Hallelujah the day of the accident.
Lucinda's memory was accurate. Neither group, upon reporting the
collapse, had mentioned hearing a blast that could have created the
cave-in, and when Robyn finally got through to them, they all repeated
that they hadn't heard a blast.
"Which doesn't mean it didn't happen, Robyn"' Kiel said.
She sat at a desk in an office Lucinda had provided, layers deep in
files and court records. Tossing her pen down, she leaped up and began
to pace.
"Kiel, this is all feeling like a wild-goose chase to me. Like some
ridiculous notion I latched onto as if it were a lifesaver, when really
it's an anchor pulling me down!"
Kiel exhaled sharply and put aside the notes of interviews Keller had
conducted with Detective Crandall. "Robyn, look. I know this has to
be frustrating. I'm frustrated. But there is something screwy in all
this. Maybe Candelaria didn't murder Spyder--or even Keller. Maybe
Willetts is getting the short end of the stick here. But I was sent
because some injustice was done, I think we just have to be patient and
work through what we have until something turns up."
Rubbing her hands up and down her arms to dispel the chill, Robyn
nodded. "I know. But it sure fee, is like we're going in circles.
Have you come across anything useful in Ken's notes?"
"One thing. A sort of recurring theme in his cartoon figures. Come
look."
He showed her the first several pages of notes Keller had taken in
interviewing the witnesses he had thought were going to be key to the
presentation of the prosecution case. There were drawings all over the
place, quick impressions Keller had recorded in that fashion. Then
Kiel narrowed what he showed her to the pages devoted to discussions
with Ken Crandall.
Keller had perfectly captured the square shape of Detective Crandall's
body, and a more triangular head--aspects he caricatured that Robyn had
not noticed but recognized immediately as Crandall.
"Look. This is the first time." The doodle was just a caricature.
"The second." Beside Crandall, a heap had been sketched in, like a
pile of smelly manure.
Robyn laughed. "Look at how you can tell this pile of doodoo
stinks."
Kiel smiled. Keller had used what cartoonists call a waftarom to
indicate the stench, but Kiel had the presence of mind not to name it,
not to reveal he knew what Keller knew.
He flipped between pages as if he had Keller's perfect recall to
several more. Beginning with the third one, the cartoon figure of
Detective Ken Crandall was wielding a shovel.
"What do you think Keller was indicating here?" "One of two things, I
guess," Robyn said. "Either Crandall was digging through piles of
manure to get at the truth, or he was shoveling manure at Ken. Stuff
he couldn't believe. Is that what you were thinking, too?"
"Yeah. And it would seem to me that by the time Keller signed on as
special prosecutor, digging for the truth of the matter should have
been a done deaL" He pulled another notebook full of Keller's
scribbling, from later dates. "This is how it changes."
Looking at the next one of Keller's sketches that Kiel showed her,
Robyn frowned. The pile in the margin, sketched at the edge of
Keller's notes, had been reduced now, half behind Crandall's blocky
figure and triangular head, half still before him. A fire lay
submerged in the remaining half.
"This must mean Crandall Was looking for the tire that left that tread
mark in the snow at Spyder's estate."
"Looks like it. And now this." In the next one Kiel showed her, the
tire was barely visible in the smelly heap behind Crandall's
caricature, only the waftaroms had gotten thicker. Kiel turned pages
once more. "We're almost to the end. See here?"
It was difficult to pick out in the margin, but she could see the
outlines Kiel traced with his freckled finger.
Bishop,_Carly_-_The_Soul_Mate.txt Page 15