Crystal Clear

by Jane Heller

  “Then you were just doing your job, Uncle Will,” said Annie. “I don’t understand why the police think you killed the lady. She’s not dead, she’s meditating. She’s up there on Cathedral Rock right now.”

  “She isn’t. That’s the trouble,” Jean said, wringing her hands. “After the hotel guard told the police about Will driving off with Mrs. Reid this morning, they brought him in for questioning. He explained about the Vision Quest. One of the detectives said, ‘Okay, Sitting Bull.’ That’s how he spoke to Will, with disrespect. ‘If you know where she is, take us to her. Show us where she is and you’ll be off the hook.’ Will took them up to his spot on Cathedral Rock. Mrs. Reid wasn’t there. Mrs. Reid wasn’t anywhere.”

  “Maybe she wandered off in the dark and couldn’t find her way back,” said Terry. “The woman probably got bored, picked up the blanket Will had given her to sit on, and parked herself somewhere else on Cathedral Rock.”

  “They organized a search party,” said Will. “They even flew over Cathedral Rock in a police helicopter. They could not locate her. They think I hid her body, threw it off a cliff or something.”

  “Cathedral Rock is one giant rock formation after another,” Terry pointed out. “A person could be up there for months and you’d never find him. Or her.”

  “No matter,” said Jean. “The police are sure Will is a murderer. To them, the simple fact is that he took her from the hotel and now she’s gone.”

  “What about the blanket?” I asked suddenly. “Was that gone, too, when the police came to look for Amanda?”

  “You know, I do not remember,” Will admitted. “I was so surprised not to find Mrs. Reid where I left her that I forgot all about the blanket.”

  “Jean, a few minutes ago you mentioned that the police think Will had the means, the opportunity, and the motive to murder Amanda,” I said. “Opportunity, I understand. He was alone with her. But means? Isn’t that another way of saying he had the murder weapon?”

  Jean shrugged. “Maybe they believe he killed her with his crystals or his totems or his deck of Tarot cards,” she said with disgust. “Hit her over the head with them.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Terry. “And what about motive? What reason was Will supposed to have had for killing her?”

  “Money,” Jean said. “Amanda Reid has it. Will Singleton doesn’t.”

  “Will doesn’t give a damn about money and he never has,” Terry said angrily.

  “We know that but the police don’t,” Jean reminded him, her tone tinged with bitterness. “To the cops in this sleepy little town, Will Singleton is just another redskin who got loose from the reservation.”

  “Did Amanda pay you, Will?” I asked. “For the Vision Quest?”

  “She did, yes,” he said. “In cash. I charge one hundred sixty-five dollars for the twenty-four-hour quest.”

  “Now I really don’t get this. Do the police think you wanted more than that?” Terry said. “Do they think you demanded more, she wouldn’t give it to you, so you killed her and disposed of the body? Give me a break!”

  “We should call up the President,” Annie suggested. “I bet he could help Uncle Will.”

  “Nice thought, honey, but the President’s a pretty busy guy,” said Terry. “I don’t think he has time to help.”

  “What are we going to do?” Jean Singleton asked. “How are we going to keep Will from going to prison?”

  Before I could stop myself, before I realized what I was saying, before it dawned on me that I might be biting off more than I could chew, I announced resolutely: “I, for one, am going to find out what really happened to Amanda Reid. That’s what.”

  Everybody looked relieved then, as if it were a given that I would save the day. Sure, I was tenacious when it came to solving my clients’ tax problems, but tracking down disappearing heiresses wasn’t exactly in my line of work. What’s more, I still couldn’t find my way around Sedona without the map that the rental car lady had given me at the airport. And, of course, I had only just met Will Singleton and his wife; I had no particular allegiance to them other than that they were important to Terry and Annie. For all I knew, Will had murdered Amanda, stolen all her money, and stashed her body in one of those Indian ruins.

  “It’s nice of you to offer to help me, Crystal,” Will said. He walked over to me and shook my hand. Then he chanted something at me—something in his native language. It could have been: “Sure, I killed her, you gullible tourist.” But since I didn’t understand Lakota Sioux, I simply nodded.

  “Crystal is a kind woman, Terry,” Jean Singleton told my ex-husband. She smiled for the first time all evening. “You always spoke of her great drive and determination, but now I see her caring nature, too. I will never forget the fact that she has taken up our cause—and after spending only a short time in our company.” She faced me, pressed her hands together, and said, “Bless you, dear.”

  Yikes, I thought. What have I gotten myself into?

  The Singletons said they were going home and that they would be sure to include me in their nightly prayers to “Spirit.” I thanked them and said they shouldn’t worry about the police investigation.

  “Sleep well and don’t let the bedbugs bite,” I chuckled, then realized that I wasn’t sure if the Singletons slept on a bed; that it was entirely possible that their primitive cabin didn’t have a phone, a TV set, or a bed. Not only that, for all I knew, people in Sedona considered bedbugs to be sacred and getting bitten by one was an honor.

  “Crystal and I will do some poking around tomorrow,” Terry promised his friends. “I’ll talk to people, ask if anybody knows anything. And she’ll go and see the folks Amanda was traveling with. She’s on a friendly basis with them, right, Crystal?”

  “Well, ‘friendly’ might be overstating the—”

  “She had dinner with them last night,” Terry told the Singletons. “She came away from the evening thinking they each had some kind of hidden agenda.”

  He glanced at me for confirmation. I smiled weakly, feeling the pressure building.

  “Maybe she can wear them down,” he went on. “Get one of them to take responsibility for this mess.”

  He glanced at me again.

  “What do you say, Crystal?” he asked expectantly.

  I straightened my posture. “Sure I can,” I said, wondering how.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It was nine o’clock by the time the Singletons left, closer to Annie’s bedtime than her dinnertime, but Terry was reluctant to let her go to sleep without a decent meal.

  “What kind of a father would I be if I sent you to bed without your supper?” he said, tussling her hair.

  “I’ll be in bed by ten,” she promised. “First, you and I can make scrambled eggs and bacon for everybody.”

  “That’s breakfast stuff, honey. Maybe Crystal wants real food,” Terry said.

  “I’d love some scrambled eggs and bacon,” I said, thinking they should only know that what I usually ate for dinner came in a can.

  “Then eggs and bacon it is,” said Terry. “Let’s go.”

  Within seconds, he and his daughter were at work together in their yellow-and-red country kitchen, Annie whipping up the eggs, Terry frying up the bacon, each one knowing just what to do—no standing around waiting for instructions. It was as if they were performing a well-choreographed dance, each sliding effortlessly into his part. They were obviously a very close father and daughter, a father and daughter who were in sync with each other, who interacted seamlessly, who enjoyed a relationship entirely different from the one I “shared” with my own father.

  I felt envious, of course, and a bit left out. But then I reminded myself that, as perfect as the Hollenbecks’ home life appeared, Annie didn’t have a mother, had never laid eyes on her mother, had no idea whether her mother might ring the doorbell someday and say, “Guess what? I’m back!” That had to be rough for a kid: the abandonment, the uncertainty, the it-must-have-been-my-fault. And what of my s
udden appearance, I wondered, my sudden “Guess what? I’m back!” Was it confusing to Annie to have her father’s ex-wife waltz into her world? Did she have fantasies that I would stay, step right into the role of her mother, and make us a real family, whatever that was?

  “Hey, Crystal. Do you still like your bacon extra crispy?” Terry asked, interrupting my fantasies.

  “I do,” I said. “I’m surprised that you remember.”

  “I remember a lot of things,” he said as the bacon sizzled in the pan, filling the kitchen with a wonderfully smoky aroma.

  “For instance?” I prodded.

  “He remembers that you sleep with the window open, even in the winter,” Annie giggled, “and that you keep a glass of water next to your bed but never drink any of it.”

  So Terry really had told her about me. Even the silly little details.

  “Your father has a good memory,” I said. “But I remember a few things about him, too, Annie.”

  “Like what?” she asked, fascinated.

  “Well, have you noticed that when you try to wake him up in the morning, he’ll say, ‘I’m already awake,’ and then go right back to sleep?”

  She giggled again. “Sometimes it takes me six tries to get him out of bed. Especially on Mondays.”

  “You see? And I’ll bet he still talks about wanting to learn how to play the saxophone.”

  “Nope.” Annie shook her head. “He knows how to play it now. Cynthia taught him. She can play just about any musical instrument there is.”

  “Who’s Cynthia?” I asked.

  “My friend Laura’s mom. She and Dad go out.”

  “They go out. How about that?” I said cheerfully, my face frozen into a smile, my appetite suddenly gone.

  “Don’t worry, Crystal. They’re just friends,” said Annie, who, I decided, was not a ten-year-old; she was a forty-year-old in a ten-year-old’s body.

  While she went on about Cynthia and her musical talents, I realized that there were probably lots of Cynthias, lots of women to amuse Terry. However devoted he was to raising his daughter, he couldn’t have been living like a monk since Gwen skipped town. He was an attractive man. He liked women. Women liked him.

  Some things about a person don’t change, I thought, imagining Terry making slow, sensual love to the sirens of Sedona, even as I ordered myself to cut it out.

  “She’s not worried,” Terry assured his daughter. “Crystal has a rich, full life of her own. Now, how are those eggs coming, honey?”

  “Done,” she said, lifting the pan off the gas stove and dividing the spoils among the three plates she had laid out. Once we all sat down to eat at one end of the Hollenbecks’ long, pine kitchen table, there was no further talk of Terry and his saxophone teacher. There was talk of some of the people he and I had gone to college with: He had heard that Dick Pelton was a cardiologist in Chicago now and I had heard that Beth Valk was a housewife in La Jolla and both of us had heard that Chip Gilbert was a golf pro knocking around on the senior circuit. It was interesting that neither of us had kept in touch with any of our friends from school—I, because I’d been so focused on my career; Terry, because his life had been so nomadic until he’d settled in Sedona. Still, it was fun invoking the names of those we’d known once upon a time, fun summoning up the old faces, the old feelings, fun remembering what it was like to be nineteen, twenty, twenty-one years old.

  “Bedtime,” Terry told his daughter eventually, after we had finished dinner and dissected the lives of practically everybody in our graduating class.

  Annie, who had enjoyed our reminiscing at first, was tired now and offered little resistance. She got up from the table and kissed him good night. She hesitated as she stood next to my chair.

  “Are you going back to New York as soon as the police say you can?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.

  I wasn’t sure if she was hoping for a yes or a no.

  “Yes,” I said. “New York is where I work, Annie. It’s where I live.”

  “Crystal is getting married, sport,” Terry told her. “Her fiancé is coming to Sedona on Saturday so they can be together. When their trip is over, they’ll be going home for the wedding.”

  Annie pondered the information for a second or two before leaning over and kissing my cheek. After she pulled away, she sashayed out of the kitchen, wagging her finger at Terry and flashing him a mischievous grin.

  “Crystal is marrying that man like I’m marrying Trent Lott,” she said and bounded up the stairs.

  When she was gone, Terry shrugged. “Don’t blame me. I’m just her father.”

  I smiled, but Annie’s words had stunned me. Did she know something I didn’t? Did she know me better than I knew myself?

  “You okay?” Terry asked as we sipped coffee. “Annie was being Annie. She likes having fun with people, likes being the smarty-pants. She didn’t mean anything, honest.”

  “Terry, I have a confession to make,” I blurted out before I could stop myself. “Steven isn’t exactly my fiancé.”

  “He isn’t?”

  I shook my head. “We’d been seeing each other for three years when I found out his ex-wife was back in his life. I threatened to break up with him. He panicked and asked me to marry him. That’s the long and short of it.”

  “So you haven’t said yes?”

  “No. There’s no wedding date. We’re not engaged. I don’t even know if I’m going to marry Steven. Ever.”

  “Then why did you let me think the marriage was a foregone conclusion?”

  “The same reason you let me think Annie was your wife.” My eyes met his. “I wanted to impress you.”

  “Is that right,” he mused, looking surprised and delighted. He reached out and tugged playfully on the ends of my hair, another reminder of the past. “Why did you want to impress me, Crystal? I thought you resented me.”

  “I thought I did, too.”

  “I see.” He continued to play with my hair. I was glad I had washed it that morning with Tranquility’s Spiritually Herbal Shampoo and Conditioner. “Should we talk about this?” he asked.

  “Talk about what?”

  “About the fact that you don’t resent me anymore. About the fact that I’m so happy to see you again that I don’t know what to do with myself.” As he posed the questions, he let my hair slip through his fingers and moved his hand over to the cleft in my chin, inserting his thumb there and rubbing the tiny crevice gently, back and forth, until I was practically purring. “One of my favorite places on your body,” he murmured.

  I didn’t ask what his other favorites were. I removed his hand from my chin so I could speak. But no words came out.

  “Look, Crystal. I’m not going to pretend I’m sorry you showed up in Sedona,” he said, his hand on my knee now. “Running into you was one of the nicest things that’s happened to me in a long, long time—a miracle, if you really want to know. I always felt there was unfinished business between us. I always hoped I’d see you again so I could show you I turned out okay. I always hoped I’d see you again—just, well, so I could see you again. So this is a big deal for me, having you here. There’s no downside to it. Sure, I wish your lawyer friend wasn’t coming the day after tomorrow, because I’d rather have more time alone with you. But I’ll take these few days. I’ll take them because I never expected to have them. I’ll take them and make the best of them.”

  Oy vey, I thought, as Terry’s fingers traced little circles on my kneecap. Rona was right: I am getting sucked back in. I still find this man achingly appealing. I still—what? Still want him? Love him? Want him to love me? Did I? Or was it all a cruel case of déjà vu? Was my heart beating for him now because it used to beat for him then, the way people who lose a leg can still feel the limb? Were my feelings real or were they Memorex?

  “I’m confused,” I told him. “At a fork in the road, so to speak. That’s why I came to Sedona, Terry. To reevaluate everything—Steven, my work, my relationship with my father, the whole mess.” I pause
d. “And I came to have my aura cleansed, of course.”

  “Of course.” He smiled.

  “So, given all my confusion, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to run your fingers through my hair or rub your favorite places on my body or anything of that nature.”

  “No physical contact of any kind?” he teased.

  “No.”

  “No discussion of how good you still feel to me?”

  “Please.”

  “What if I can’t hold myself back?”

  “Try.”

  He laughed.

  “Listen, I want you to know that I’m happy to see you, too, Terry,” I admitted. “It just makes me nervous to talk about it.”

  “What’s safe to talk about then?”

  “Amanda. I told Will Singleton I would find out what happened to her. That takes precedence over whether or not you and I find each other irresistible, doesn’t it?”

  “For now,” he agreed. “But only because Will’s such a good friend.” He leaned back in his chair. “So. Talk.”

  I removed Terry’s hand from my knee and placed it in his lap. “Okay,” I said, trying to refocus. “Amanda.” I took a deep breath. “It’s certainly possible that one of her traveling companions is responsible for her disappearance. Take Michael, for example.”

  “The magazine reporter?”

  “Yes. He kept complaining about what an airhead Amanda was, about how he was dying to cover a real news story, about how he wanted to be an investigative journalist again like the good old days.”

  “You’re not suggesting he killed her so he’d be a media star, are you? I can’t believe reporters have gone that crazy.”

  I shrugged. “It’s just a theory.”

  “Tell me about Tina. She’s the one who gives me the creeps.”

  “Me, too. There’s a lot of pent-up rage there,” I said, “but conflicting feelings, too. On one hand, she acted as if she despised Amanda. On the other hand, she’s stayed with her for so many years. If she’s the murderer, then what set her off? Why kill her boss now? What was the trigger?”