A short, white-haired man in a beige suit soundlessly entered the room. He had pale skin and white hair, and a quiet, assured air. I couldn’t decide if he was a CEO or a yogi.
“Mrs. Schulz,” he said serenely, as if he were greeting me after a church service instead of here in paramilitary purgatory. He extended his hand and I shook it. He did not introduce himself. “You have brought food for our friend. The kind of food he craves, he tells me.”
“Yes. I … used to work for him, and … he loves chocolate. We … have been friends for several years,” I added carefully, as if to explain that I usually didn’t meet the general’s buddies under circumstances like these.
“I see.” He gestured and we both sat down. He steepled his short fingers. “We are extremely worried about General Farquhar. He is being treated for depression by one of our doctors. He is also finishing an important project for us here. We do not think it wise for him to leave the compound.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
His colorless eyes regarded me somberly. “We would be very happy if you could help him in any way he asks.”
I was feeling increasingly uncomfortable, but merely mumbled, “Well, sure.” What I thought but didn’t add was, We’re not talking about illegal or immoral help here, are we? The pale man stood: I was dismissed. I was led by Greeter Number One down a joyless, undecorated corridor to a long, windowed room that resembled the day room of a hospital. The guard opened the door and waited for me to pass through, then stationed himself by a window, sentrylike.
In the far right corner, General Bo Farquhar was slumped in a turquoise plastic chair. When he heard us come into the room, he moved slowly to get up. He turned to face me, then held out his arms. I walked forward and hugged him. He smelled of fresh detergent and starch.
He pulled back and assessed me. “I’m so happy to see you, Goldy.” His voice seemed gravelly with disuse. Tears filled his eyes. “It has just been too long.”
In the months since my last visit to the correctional facility at Cañon City, General Bo’s hawklike features had gone distressingly slack. His skin had grayed and his expression was distracted. After he had dabbed them with a handkerchief, his blue eyes—eyes that had always reminded me of equal parts of ice and sky—were cloudy. When I’d first met him, his hair had been so close-cropped that it was hard to determine its color—ash blond or white. In prison it had looked like an unevenly mowed hay meadow. Now the general’s hair had grown out in loose, pale yellow waves. I found myself wondering how this compound could have a shrink but no barber. Bo’s muscle-hard constitution had registered at least a fifteen-pound gain since the last time I’d seen him. He still looked fit, but the olive green uniform he wore hugged the new folds on his stomach and splayed out over his hips like pajamas.
“Let’s go for a walk.” Again the dulled voice surprised me. In fact, everything about him—his painstaking movements, perplexed expression, lack of focus—made him look twenty years older than the fifty-five I knew he was.
“Will they let us?” I whispered. “We could just stay here and have cookies.” His expression immediately turned crestfallen, and I was sorry I had suggested hanging around. To tell the truth, this place gave me the creeps after just ten minutes. It was no wonder Bo was depressed. “Why don’t we go for a walk,” I said cheerfully. “I’m dying to see the sights at this place.”
He managed a pinched laugh. “Let me get us an escort, then,” he said. He ambled over to the man who had brought me into the room and murmured to him. The guard disappeared. When he came back, he brusquely nodded and gestured to a side door.
One thing about hiking up a Colorado mountain: Unless you know the trail very well, it’s hard to talk while you’re doing it. I huffed up the dirt path at the general’s side. If you’re not as surefooted as a mountain goat—and it was questionable that I possessed any such balance—all you focus on is getting to where the hiking stops. Conversing is out of the question. With clouds still threatening overhead, and our guard close on our heels, we veered to a narrower, steeper path and entered dark woods. I was very glad I hadn’t brought along Arch and Jake.
The general took long strides over the rocks ahead of me. For all his extra weight and unhealthy look, Bo was hiking without effort. Behind us, our dark-haired guard, who clearly could have won a speed-walking race to Vail, easily kept pace with us. After about a quarter mile of this torture, the general decided to ask, “So, how is everybody, Goldy? Arch? Julian? Tom? You didn’t invite me to your wedding,” he said accusingly.
“Yes,” I panted. “I got … married.” What was I supposed to do, send him an invitation in jail? “Arch is fine. Has a new dog.” Another mile of this, and I’d be dead.
“I heard. And Marla, how is she? I sent her flowers when she had the heart attack….”
“Fine.” My own heart was pounding. Would he send me flowers if I collapsed? “Everybody’s great. Marla’s got a boyfriend. He’s with that firm you’ve invested in—”
“I know, I know, that’s why I invested in it, so I could see her sometime. I would love to get together with her, Goldy, if you could arrange it,” the general interrupted, his tone very serious. “When I was in prison all I could think about was reconnecting with Marla. She’s my only connection to my dear Adele….”
My shins were on fire. Ahead, the trees thinned to reveal a grassy area. To the left, a sudden view of overcast sky indicated that we were on the edge of an overlook. In the distance, I could hear roaring water.
“Please,” I panted, “let’s … stop.”
“Keep going,” was the barely audible command from our dark-haired companion.
Oh, marvelous. I fastened my eyes on the ground, put one foot in front of the other, up, up, up, and tried to think about energy, white light, and running the bases in softball when I was ten. These did not help.
“Look, let’s take a break,” the general said finally. He stopped and put his hands on his hips. “It’ll be okay,” he told the guard. “Let’s go to where we can see the creek. It’s across from the spot where we’ve been doing some testing—”
“Not a good idea, sir,” countered the guard. “There’s a full moon …”
Bo gave him the ice-blue gaze I knew of old. “I don’t think we’re in any danger.” The guard looked away. I guess Bo got whatever he wanted from everybody. And why should a full moon matter, anyway?
We threaded through the trees until we reached the rocky overlook. Water roared close by. Where were we? I held out both arms to keep my balance as I teetered between granite boulders the size of elephants. I inadvertently stepped into a mud puddle and quickly hopped out. The ridge lay ten yards ahead.
Thunder cracked overhead. Or was it an explosion nearby? To my astonishment, the earth seemed to be moving, crumbling under my feet. The enormous rocks on either side of us skewed sideways.
“Rock slide!” the guard cried as he vaulted back.
I swerved instinctively and caught a glimpse of General Farquhar’s grim face. I grabbed his large hand and we leapt. I cried out to him, but my voice was lost in the clamor of exploding earth.
Together we somehow scrambled in the direction we’d come. The deafening noise of snapping trees filled the air. Behind us, rocks thundered on their way downhill. Move, move fast, I commanded my feet. Instead, I slid in deep mud. Mud, mud, everywhere. And rocks. My hand held tight to General Bo’s. We both bounded up, up over rocks and cracking earth. A final fast hurdle brought us onto solid, but still shaking ground. We fell down, gasping. Miraculously, we had been on the very edge of the slide. Thank God. Another five feet forward, and we could have been killed.
How much time had gone by? Ten seconds? I shivered uncontrollably. Beside me, the general winced and cursed softly. I glanced back. Where we had been standing was air.
“General Farquhar, sir!” our guard shouted.
The general croaked a response. The guard appeared from within a stand of pine trees. There was mud on h
is face and uniform. He pulled out a radio and began hollering into it. There was another reverberating ka-boom: A last boulder tumbled into the stream. The same stream that had so treacherously undercut the bank we’d been climbing, no doubt. Again I cursed my own idiocy. After all my warnings to Tom about being careful on the trail! I shuddered. The radio crackled and a high, excited voice showered the brand-new silence with coded questions that sounded like Alpha Bravo Charlie, et cetera, ten four.
The guard spoke into his radio, then told us to stay still, HQ would be bringing a stretcher. Very, very carefully, I touched Bo’s left leg. He cried out with pain.
“It’s just a sprain,” he insisted. He looked appreciatively at the guard. “I should have listened to you.”
The guard turned his glittering dark eyes on me. “During a full moon,” he explained to me in a curt tone which indicated that every moron already knew what I didn’t, “the lunar gravitational pull acts on rocks in the continental crust the way it does on the ocean. Rocks rise in a tide, up to a foot. Plus we’ve had all this rain, and we’re working with explosives nearby, which makes the entire area, especially above a stream, unstable.” He shrugged.
I was soggy with rain and slick with mud. What I needed was a long hot bath—and this guy was giving me a geology lesson. I murmured, “Good Lord.”
“The full moon adds to the earth’s instability,” our guide concluded knowledgeably.
So does explosives testing, I added silently.
A four-wheel-drive vehicle cracked through the undergrowth. The two camo-suited men I’d seen earlier hauled out a stretcher and loaded a protesting General Bo onto it. Then we all climbed into the all-terrain makeshift ambulance.
When we got back to the compound, Bo didn’t ask me to stay, which was fine with me. He was in a great deal of pain and needed attention. And as I said, I needed a bath.
“Call us,” I urged. “Let us know how you are.”
“The ankle, will be fine,” said Bo with a rueful smile. His voice turned pleading. “But Goldy, could you please have Marla call me? I want to talk to her about the Eurydice Gold Mine, about any old environmental studies that have been done of that area. Also, I’m wondering about this guy who did the geological study that their ore projections are based on. I’m too tied up to look into these details myself. Would you get her to call?”
“I’ll try.”
He studied my anxious, filthy face. Chocolate cookies, a military compound, weird people, explosives nearby, and a rock slide. Normal excitement for him, maybe, but not for me. His look became indulgent. “Poor Goldy. Ready to go back to Aspen Meadow and your kitchen?”
I decided not to reply.
Chapter 8
As my van splashed home, I had a hard time blocking out the memory of the ground giving way abruptly under my feet, or the din created by the fall of boulders and trees. I tried instead to concentrate on the swish of the windshield wipers. When I’d left the compound, the dark, low-lying clouds had delivered a furious downpour of icy rain. At least it wasn’t snow. I ran from the van to our porch steps and pushed inside, my heart thumping.
Arch was in the kitchen heating pizza. I was so happy to see him I rushed over and gave him a hug. Jake’s tail whacked the floor happily in greeting. His red-rimmed eyes, furrowed brow, and long, floppy ears made even an old cat-lover like me smile. Jake panted excitedly, and, it seemed to me, smiled back. Maybe we were bonding after all.
“Gosh, Mom, where have you been?” Arch eyed my filthy jeans and jacket. “I thought you hated hiking. Is that where you went with the general, that you wouldn’t let me come because you wanted to check it out first? Hiking? I swear, Mom, you look like you fell into a mud pit.”
“I did, sort of. And you’re right,” I replied, “I do hate hiking. Unfortunately, that’s what I had to do with Bo Farquhar. Sort of hiking and sort of climbing.” And sort of scrambling for our lives.
“In this weather?” It was hard to ignore his friendly mimic of my voice, but I did. Upstairs, I quickly stripped out of the muddy clothes and ran the bathwater. And to treat myself, I poured in double the amount of perfumed bath salts.
Soon I was back in the kitchen, sipping piping hot Formosa Oolong, snugly wrapped in Tom’s green terry-cloth robe. I tried to think. After a few minutes, I put down my teacup and dialed Tom, only to get his voice mail. I left a message. Somehow I couldn’t imagine going out on my evening catering assignment alone. Not right after I’d survived a natural disaster that had very nearly deprived my son (and his dog) of a mother. Which gave me an idea.
“Arch,” I said. “Macguire can’t help me tonight—”
Arch swallowed his last mouthful of pizza. “Why not?”
This was no time to get into a discussion of why Macguire had chosen this evening to watch all the Die Hard movies so he could learn how to be a policeman. I rushed on with: “Would you please shower and get into a black-and-white outfit so you can come help me tonight? I’ll pay you.”
After we’d negotiated a suitable salary and fed Jake, we quickly packed up the ingredients for the shrimp pilaf I was preparing for the dinner at the Trotfields’ mammoth house on Arnold Palmer Avenue in the Meadowview area of Aspen Meadow Country Club. The rain had turned back to mist by the time we set out. On the way over, I asked Arch if anyone had called while I was gone. He said no and wondered suspiciously why I was asking. Of course I wasn’t about to tell him that I wondered how the general was recovering from his rock slide injury.
“Jake wasn’t outside barking, if that’s what you’re getting at. The neighbors weren’t complaining. He’s a good dog. Mom. After what he’s been through, he just needs a lot of affection.”
“I know, I know. That’s why I let him stay on your bed while we’re gone.”
“He probably misses me already.”
“We’re only going to be away a few hours.”
“With Meadowview clients?” Arch huffed. “You’ve got to be kidding. Cook this, clean up that. Call so-and-so and get more chardonnay delivered. Oh, better make that six cases, looks like we’re running out. Then go take Mrs. Smith some aspirin, because she’s got a terrible headache and is upstairs lying down. And you just want to say, ‘Well, if she hadn’t drunk all that chardonnay—’”
“Arch! That has never happened.”
“Just about.” We swung through the elegant stone entryway to Meadowview. Large, pale houses sailed past in the dusk. “These people have too much money,” Arch said. “They are too stuck-up.”
“The Farquhars used to live over here,” I reminded him.
“They were different. The general was doing cool bomb experiments and he had all that nifty security. And he wasn’t stuck-up.”
Crazy, maybe, but not stuck-up. Thank goodness for small blessings. I wheeled the van onto Arnold Palmer Avenue. “The place where we’re going has good security.”
Arch shot me a fierce look. “I bet they’re not guarding a batch of state-of-the-art explosives.”
“No, they have paintings. You know, art. The husband flies all over the world, but the wife’s the one with the money. She uses it to buy paintings by famous artists.”
He snorted. “See, I told you. They’ll have a teensy-weensy yard that their kids can’t even play in. And then they’ll have a great big house filled with gross paintings. There’ll be pictures of people with horses, people with dogs, horses with dogs, dogs with—”
“Arch, please. You’re acting prejudiced against these people, and you don’t even know them. Besides, with the money you earn tonight, you can buy some rawhide for Jake. And if you want a portrait of him, you can paint it yourself.”
He hrumphed. But he was right about the area where we were catering. Less than twenty years old, Meadowview is a posh development that features enormous houses that resemble yachts anchored to small grass lots. The lots might boast one or perhaps two pine trees. But the heavy demand for the residences in this expensive mansionhood had come from East Coasters and Ca
hfornians fleeing high crime rates and even higher living costs. These new Coloradans could now look forty feet across their property and find themselves peering into their neighbor’s bedroom. Would that make them feel perfectly secure, I wondered? Probably not.
“Gosh, this is valuable?” Arch asked half an hour later, when we were setting up the buffet. “This is what they have all that security for? Do you suppose somebody meant to paint this way?” He was staring at a large Motherwell canvas on the Trotfields’ foyer wall. In the dining room, Amanda Trotfield had hung Giacometti and Henry Moore sketches. A Franz Kline and a de Kooning graced the living room. The Motherwell that Arch was regarding so skeptically featured a large section of blue, with a fragment of a cigarette painted in one corner. Not a painting I would have chosen for the entryway to a smoke-free house.
“I don’t know, honey, but yes, I think the artist probably meant to paint that way. At least it’s not people on horses. Let’s serve the appetizers and then we’ll be able to take a break.”
While Arch passed trays of filo-wrapped spinach triangles, I tossed fat, juicy strawberries with chilled, steamed sugar-snap peas in a light vinaigrette. It was a delicate, unusual salad that would contrast well with the Plantation Pilaf—a rich-tasting lowfat dish featuring succulent shrimp bathed in sherry and tomato juice. Marla had told me she was invited tonight, and I was eager to see her again. She had looked so bad when she’d told me the news about Albert absconding with the money that I was deeply worried about her. I hoped she’d have some news about either the teller or the missing money tonight. Then again, maybe someone else would have news. The Trotfields were Prospect Financial investors; Sandy Trotfield had called Albert Lipscomb’s office the morning the infamous partner hadn’t shown up for work. According to Tom, the Trotfields were friends of Tony, Albert, or both. Tony Royce himself, as well as the Hardcastles, would be in attendance tonight, too. One of the guests ought to know something.
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