Blood Memory

by Margaret Coel

  She had to force herself to step back and look away from the hard set of his jaw and the disappointment in his eyes. She was a little wobbly, the living room moving about her. “Gilly stocked the fridge,” she said, making her way past him into the kitchen. “Hungry?”

  “Starved,” he said. Even the tread of his footsteps behind her was familiar.

  They ate in the dining room, a rectangular space at the far end of the living room, connected to the kitchen through a hallway lined with cabinets and counters, what Lawrence called the “butler’s pantry.” There were butlers in the guest cottage in the old days. Lawrence had found a pair of bronze-colored place mats somewhere and arranged them on the mahogany table. He had set the table with the china and the silver from the credenza that stood against the dining room wall. He had restarted Gershwin, “American in Paris.”

  “All this for roasted chicken?” Catherine placed the plate of chicken and a bowl of couscous she’d found in the refrigerator in the center of the table.

  “I’d say this calls for a celebration,” Lawrence said. He was extracting the cork from another bottle of Chardonnay. He filled two wine-glasses at the credenza and handed her one across the table.

  “Celebration? What are we celebrating?”

  “You’re here again. We’re at the cottage together.” He lifted the glass in a toast. “Here’s to old times.”

  Catherine rolled the stem of the glass between her fingers. “Lawrence . . .”

  “Drink up.” He saluted her.

  “The old times are gone.”

  “But they were good, weren’t they? We have some good memories. Let’s drink to those.”

  Catherine hesitated. Then she held out the glass. “To the good memories.” She took the smallest sip, enough to taste the wine on her lips. She was already drunk. She put the glass on the table and sat down.

  “Any word from Detective Bustamante?” Lawrence settled himself across from her and sipped at his wine.

  “Not since this morning,” she said, shoving the chicken and couscous in his direction.

  “He came to see me.”

  This was interesting. She watched Lawrence help himself to pieces of chicken, a couple of spoonfuls of couscous. Detective Bustamante was working the concentric circle theory: start with the closest people and work out to neighbors, acquaintances, and, finally, strangers. Most crimes are solved in the inner circles. She could hear his voice in her head, and her own protests. Lawrence and I parted on good terms.

  “Asked a lot of questions. Why we got a divorce, that sort of thing. Started me thinking, why the hell did we get a divorce?” Lawrence picked up his knife and fork and sliced absentmindedly at the chicken. “I think about you all the time,” he said. “Now your divorce lawyer shot! Ironic, wouldn’t you say?”

  Catherine slid a piece of chicken onto her own plate, then took a little of the couscous. She felt light-headed and queasy from the wine and the adrenaline that had been pumping all day. The drift of the conversation made her feel even more uneasy. She stopped herself from reminding Lawrence of the reason for the divorce: the secretary that one of Catherine’s friends had spotted him having dinner with at the Brown Palace; the other affairs that she’d suspected and that he’d finally admitted one Saturday night after a charity event, when he’d been drunk enough to think he should start confessing.

  “Look, I know I didn’t play by all the rules.” Lawrence lifted his glass again and held it out in a mock toast. He had a crooked smile that had always made her heart turn over. “What I did was wrong and unfair to you, plain and simple. It never meant I didn’t love you. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Let it be,” Catherine said. “We’ve both gone on.” She had never blamed him, not totally. He had wanted children. One of the first questions he had asked her—their second date, dinner at a trendy east Denver restaurant that didn’t exist anymore—was if she wanted a family. She’d been focused on her career, the stories about the comings and goings of Denver’s social elite that appeared in the Journal every other day under her byline. She had been hoping for a position as an investigative journalist. She hadn’t thought much about a family. “Maybe someday,” she’d told him.

  But for Lawrence, having a son was his duty. There had been four generations of Stern sons to run the family’s businesses and carry on the family name in Colorado. Lawrence’s job was to produce the fifth. In the six years of their marriage, there had been only two pregnancies, and both had bled out of her, leaving her feeling depleted and inadequate, as if his grandmother were right: Catherine McLeod wasn’t quite up to the Stern standards. The lost babies clamored in the empty space that had opened between them. If they had lived, everything would have been different. How many times she had told herself that.

  Lawrence was quiet. He poured himself another glass of wine, took a long sip, then a bite of chicken, giving her time, she realized. Finally, he said, “I’m worried about you. Some nut out there tried to kill you. I suppose that’s the risk journalists take. You know, kill the messenger.”

  “Not really,” she said. And yet, she knew it was the truth. She told him she had been reading through a month of stories, looking for something that might have brought last night’s intruder.

  “The ex-state treasurer?” Lawrence opened his eyes wide. He set his fork down and clasped his hands over his plate. “The bastard got what he deserved,” he said. His voice was streaked with vehemence. Public office was a sacred trust in the Stern family. Lawrence’s great-grandfather had been one of the first senators from the new state of Colorado. His father had been serving his second term in the Senate when he’d had the heart attack that killed him and left Lawrence, only a few months out of Princeton, virtually an orphan. His parents had divorced when he was still in prep school; his mother had married a man who’d made millions in fiber optics and moved to Scottsdale. His father’s death had also left Lawrence in charge of the family businesses— the real estate, the cattle ranches, the stock investments. Elizabeth Stern had never doubted his ability. He was a Stern, after all, and encoded in the DNA was the ability to carry on in the family’s interests. She had given him total control.

  “You were the reporter who got onto the story first. He could blame you.”

  “He’s in prison,” Catherine said. She gave a dismissive shrug.

  “So nobody in prison ever ordered a revenge hit on somebody outside?”

  “The Mirror went at him as hard as we did. Nobody’s burst into Dennis Newcomb’s home.” Catherine took another drink of the Chardonnay. The warmth spread through her; her hands felt tingly. The tension had leaked out of her muscles. “It has something to do with the articles on Sand Creek,” she said, surprised at the insistency in her voice, as if she were certain of the truth when she wasn’t certain at all.

  “Sand Creek took place . . .” Lawrence hesitated. “In 1860 . . .”

  “November 29, 1864.”

  “Ah, you’ve been doing your research, all right.”

  “The Arapahos and Cheyennes held a rally this afternoon on undeveloped land out by the airport. They intend to build a casino there.”

  Lawrence was looking at her. When he didn’t say anything, she went on: “They claim that Sand Creek was an act of genocide that negates the reparations paid more than forty years ago and that Congress should return their Colorado lands. At first they were talking about tribal ranches. Now they’re willing to settle the land claims for five hundred acres and a casino.” She waited a moment. “That’s the next story I intend to write.”

  He looked genuinely worried now. “Maybe you should back off for a while, stop working. If it’s money . . .”

  She held up her hand. “You don’t understand, Lawrence. I have to work. I have to stay in control of some part of my life.” She threw a glance toward the kitchen and the living room. Last night she had been in her own townhome. Now she was in a cottage in the mountains behind an iron gate with an armed guard.

  She got to
her feet, stacked her plate—she’d only managed a few bites—on top of Lawrence’s empty plate, and carried them into the kitchen. She still felt light-headed; her legs were wobbly. She was rinsing the plates in the sink when she felt the warmth of Lawrence’s arms encircling her waist.

  “Let me take care of you, Catherine.” He was turning her toward him, and she was helpless to stop the motion. “At least until this is all over.”

  “No, Lawrence.” She wanted to explain that it wasn’t necessary; the argument was forming in her mind, the words fitting themselves into place, but he was kissing her, holding her so close her own breath stopped in her lungs, as if he were breathing for both of them. She wanted to pull away, and yet she couldn’t seem to summon the strength. “We shouldn’t do this,” she managed. The protest sounded so feeble she wanted to laugh. She was kissing him back, melting into him, conscious of her nipples responding to the touch of his hands. It was as if time had folded back on itself and everything was the way it had been before. There was no divorce, no stumbling through the last year, no town house where she lived alone, and no bastard bursting through the door. There was no Maury and his friends and her weak attempts to fit into another life. There was only Lawrence, the man she loved, who was kissing her and leading her through the living room. Then they were fumbling their way down the darkened hallway and into the master bedroom.

  A telephone was ringing, loud and persistent, breaking through the blackness. Catherine fought her way out of an ocean of sleep and flung her arm across the table next to the bed. There was the sound of something skittering across the floor. She gripped the cold metal of her cell. Rex pushed his wet nose into her neck as she struggled to sit up. “Hello,” she muttered.

  “You got your interview.” The voice was familiar. Still it took her a moment to register that it belonged to Norman Whitehorse.

  “What?” Lawrence’s side of the bed was empty; the comforter rolled back. The imprint of his head was still on the pillow. She looked for the alarm clock, then realized that she had knocked it off the table.

  “Peter Arcott. You still want the interview?”

  “Yes, of course,” she said. She felt herself snap back into her own life—the life she had now. It seemed right somehow that Lawrence was no longer beside her. She’d had a story to write last night, and now she wouldn’t turn it in until sometime today. But an interview with Arcott would flesh out the story on the rally and scoop whatever Newcomb had written in today’s Mirror.

  “He’ll see you at four o’clock, his office. Equitable Building on Seventeenth Street.” He swallowed the suite number, and she had to ask him to repeat it. She was fumbling in the night stand drawer for a pen and something to write on.

  “Arcott operates on white time,” Whitehorse said.

  “Meaning?”

  “He’ll expect you on time.”

  “Has he talked to anyone else?”

  “He doesn’t like interviews. He’s very reclusive. He likes to conduct his business in private.”

  “How did you manage . . .”

  “You ask a lot of questions for an Arapaho.” Then he was gone, the cell a dead thing in her hand. Norman Whitehorse was the only person who had ever called her an Arapaho.

  She got out of bed, wrapped herself in an old terrycloth robe that belonged to Lawrence, and went down the hallway looking for him. Rex stayed at her heels, his nails tapping the floor. Lawrence would be in the kitchen, reading a copy of the Journal that Gilly would have delivered. The air was filled with the odor of fresh, hot coffee. She let Rex out the front door, then she crossed the living room into the kitchen. There was no sign of Lawrence. The glass coffeepot was almost full.

  She poured a mug of coffee and checked the clock on the stove: my God, almost nine o’clock. Of course Lawrence had left for the office. He liked to arrive before the rest of the staff. It was his quiet time, he used to say. The only time he could get some work done.

  It was then that her eyes fell on the piece of paper and the thick white envelope at the end of the counter. They hadn’t been there last night. Sipping at the hot coffee, she moved along the counter. She spread open the folded paper with one hand and stared at the black words scrawled across the center. She would recognize Lawrence’s handwriting anywhere, the odd way that he liked to capitalize important words:

  Remember that I Love You.

  She set down the mug, picked up the thick envelope, and ran one finger under the sealed flap. She regretted opening the envelope the minute she’d pulled back the flap. It was filled with bills, a lot of money. More than a thousand. Five thousand perhaps, maybe ten, and it made her complicit with Lawrence’s offer to look after her. Last night was fuzzy; she’d been weak and more than a little drunk and scared. Yes, she was scared, but this wasn’t what she wanted. Not this money that she had taken, that she held in her hand.

  She had the sinking feeling there was more to it than that. If Lawrence had left ten thousand dollars, then he must believe she should stay in hiding for a long time. She shouldn’t continue writing for the Journal. Maybe she should go somewhere else; with ten thousand dollars cash she could disappear in Phoenix or Los Angeles without ever tapping into her own funds and possibly leaving a trail for Erik. She could be just another face among hordes of people. And when the cash ran short, she could call Lawrence for more.

  The realization hit her like a slap in the face. Her situation could be worse than she had allowed herself to imagine.

  She went back into the bedroom, pulled on a pair of blue shorts and a tee shirt and her running shoes. Then she retraced her steps to the front door and stepped onto the porch. Before she could call for him, Rex bounded through the pines that stood on the other side of the clearing in front of the cottage.

  They started running, a slow lope around the side of the cottage with Rex alongside her. There was an opening in the trees, and she could see the log fence bending through the brush. A brown sedan crawled along the road on the other side of the fence, raising puffs of gray dust. Her heart gave a little lurch. She slowed down and let her eyes follow the sedan until the road wound out of sight behind the stand of trees. No one knew she was here, she told herself. No one that she’d written about. Yet there had been the dark sedan on the road to the ranch yesterday. She’d spotted it every time she’d come around a turn—far below, climbing up the road behind her.

  It was ridiculous. How many brown sedans were there in the Denver area? Thousands? So what if one had been on the road yesterday or driving past the ranch this morning? It meant nothing. She broke into an all-out run and the dog sprinted ahead. She knew the trail—she and Lawrence had begun almost every weekend morning at the ranch with a two-mile run. The trail curved at the edge of the trees for a quarter mile, then rose into the trees in a steady uphill climb that started to narrow. The branches scratched at Catherine’s arms. The air was hot and dry; her nostrils filled with the smell of pines. Familiar, all of it. She stumbled on a rock and kept going, trying to plot the way ahead. And wasn’t that like life, she thought. Stumble and keep going, plot the way ahead?

  She was breathing hard when she came out of the trees into a meadow near the top of the mountain, but it was cooler here. Rex was already chasing a wild rabbit that bounded this way and that, as if it were a game the rabbit felt confident of winning. She slowed down and walked toward the dog. The peaks of Mount Stern, named for Lawrence’s great-grandfather, lifted above her, steep, bare rock with gullies of last winter’s snow. White clouds streamed below the peaks, bifurcating the mountain slopes. They were alone here, she and Rex, and the realization gave her a sense of freedom and determination. She would spend the morning reading through her notes on the rally and writing a rough draft of the story. Then she would drive into downtown Denver and interview Peter Arcott. Tonight she’d finish the story—who knew what twist might come from the interview—and e-mail it into the copy desk at the Journal. She would go on.

  She swung back across the meadow, callin
g Rex over one shoulder. It was a moment before he caught up, but then he ran ahead down the narrow path through the trees. She jogged after him, keeping a steady pace until she emerged from the trees into the open stretches of wild grasses around the ranch buildings. She was almost at the cottage—Rex already on the front porch—when the green SUV came down the road alongside the creek. The engine thrummed into the quiet. It swung right, bounced across the log bridge, and skidded to a stop a few feet from her.

  The door flew open and Elizabeth Stern stepped out. She was one of those small women who seemed much larger, dressed in white slacks and a blue blouse with silver buttons down the front that glistened in the morning sun. She wore a wide-brimmed tan straw hat that covered most of her curly, reddish hair and threw a shadow across the top part of her face. Her lips were parted in a frozen smile.

  “Hello, Catherine,” she said. “Lawrence told me you were visiting.”

  “It’s nice to see you again,” Catherine heard herself saying. God, if she never saw Elizabeth Stern again it would suit her fine. “Rex and I have just had a run up to the meadow.”

  “Yes. Well, I’m sure it must seem good to get away after all your trouble.”

  “The police are investigating,” Catherine said. Then she added, “I’m sure it will be over soon.”

  “Oh, yes. I’m sure it will be. A dreadful experience, no doubt. Wasn’t that the lawyer who represented you in the divorce who was shot?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see. Well, he was at your home very late at night.”

  Catherine didn’t say anything. The news stories had explained why Maury came to her home. In any case, what did the woman expect? That she should remain faithful to the man who had divorced her? She wondered what Elizabeth Stern would think if she knew that she and Lawrence had spent last night together.