Nevada Rose

by Jerome Preisler

  “About the Nevada Rose?” Sara said, stepping up closer to the deck. “I heard you had some friction over it.”

  Charlie raised his eyebrows, looking almost startled. “Who told you?”

  Sara merely shrugged and regarded him through her sunglasses. “We’ve talked to a few people,” she said.

  Which, Grissom thought, was a neat way of giving a truthful answer without revealing exactly how much they knew or whom they’d spoken to.

  He waited beside Sara. Belcher, meanwhile, stood with Gloria weeping into his chest.

  “We had separate ideas about what to do with our find,” he said after a moment. “I don’t suppose it’s a secret.”

  Sara looked confused. “You and Adam are in the middle of trying to hash out what to do with the crystal, and then one day he just doesn’t come home,” she said. “What did you suppose he was doing?”

  “I didn’t know,” Charlie said. He was shaking his head. “Guess I figured he wanted to set off on his own and think things out.”

  “And it didn’t occur to you to check? Just to be on the safe side?”

  Charlie shook his head again. “You got to know Adam,” he said. “You knew him, you’d understand.”

  “But he was missing for two weeks.”

  Charlie shook his head mutely. After a moment, Grissom gave Sara a look that signaled he wanted to lower the temperature.

  “I think Miss Sidle was just asking whether you were at all concerned about Adam. If it occurred to you at any point that he might have gone up to the mine and gotten in trouble.”

  Charlie was starting to answer when Gloria lifted her head from his chest.

  “My son already told you,” she said, swiping aggressively at her tears as she tore free of her son’s embrace.

  “Told us?”

  “We wasn’t worried about it,” she said. “Not at first.”

  Grissom narrowed his eyes. “Forgive me, Mrs. Belcher…but how could you not be?” he said. “Four people are officially known to have died in the flood. And the total hasn’t stopped climbing.”

  Gloria dragged a hand across her eyes again, then stood squinting a little as she looked down from the deck. Grissom thought about the glasses she’d thrown off her face, lying in the dirt near his feet now.

  “My boys ain’t fools,” she said. “Adam knew about the storm warnin’. I don’t care what he meant to work out in his head…he been prospectin’ since he was sixteen, seventeen years old. With that weather near, there’s no way he’d go up onto the slopes without tellin’ one or the other of us.”

  Grissom spent a few moments trying to decide what to make of her insistence. Then he shifted his attention to Charlie. “Have you been to the quarry since the rain?”

  “Maybe three, four days ago,” Belcher said. “I might’ve gone up sooner, but the road’s been closed.”

  “And you saw nothing to make you think Adam was there.”

  Charlie shook his head. “I looked everywhere around our camp. Just to be sure, you know.”

  Grissom thought some more. “Can either of you tell us if Adam had any enemies?” he said.

  His sudden change of tacks visibly upset Gloria—and revived her antagonism. She gave Grissom a hard look.

  “Why you come to me with that crazy talk? Askin’ that kind of question?” she said. “People like Adam. Respect him. Nobody would want to do him harm.”

  “You’re sure?” This from Sara in a coolly assertive tone. “Because our questions aren’t crazy, Mrs. Belcher. We came because your son is dead, and we think there’s a fair to good chance he was murdered.”

  Gloria shook her head with a kind of livid, defiant anger, her cheeks blotchy and tear-streaked, her gray hair flying wildly around her shoulders.

  “Don’t you talk that garbage here. Don’t you dare try ’n’ tell me somebody killed my son!”

  Grissom shot Sara a quick look. He was thinking they would have to back off before Gloria’s volatility led her into a total meltdown.

  First, though, he needed something from Charlie. He turned in his direction. “If you don’t mind,” Grissom said, “I’d like your permission to inspect the mining site.”

  “It wouldn’t do us no good,” Charlie shot back. “I told you, I looked everyplace for some sign of Adam.”

  “We have experienced people who may be able to pick up clues you missed,” Grissom countered.

  “No,” Charlie said. “You wouldn’t find any more ’n I did.”

  Grissom’s calm blue eyes betrayed no hint that he was suddenly positive Charlie was hiding something important up there at the quarry. “I don’t see what’s to lose,” he said.

  Charlie looked at him, opened his mouth as if to speak, and seemed to change his mind. Grissom’s eyes didn’t waver from his face.

  “Though we prefer it wouldn’t be necessary to go this route, my lab can obtain a court order to gain access to the camp,” Grissom said, keeping his tone level and nonconfrontational.

  “Get away from here,” Gloria snapped. “You got no business with us.”

  Grissom slowly transferred his gaze to her. “Ma’am—”

  Gloria cut him short with a sharp, hissing expulsion of breath through her front teeth. Then she took a shuffling step toward her son, grabbed his arm, and tugged him back toward the trailer.

  Charlie Belcher stayed where he was on the deck long enough for Grissom to pick up Gloria’s eyeglasses and hold them out to him. Taking them from Grissom’s hand, he nodded and went inside with his mother.

  Grissom watched the trailer door shut behind them, looked at Sara, and nodded toward their car. A minute later, the CSIs drove off the way they’d come.

  Turning from the access road onto Route 612, Grissom kept one hand on the wheel and reached for his cell phone with the other.

  “You calling Brass?” Sara said.

  “We need a warrant to search that mining camp,” he said.

  Sara thought quietly. “Interesting that the Belchers didn’t want us to take a look,” she said.

  “Very.” Grissom thumbed to the phone’s address book and scrolled down to the captain’s name. “I don’t want them getting up there before us.”

  “You think they have something to tidy up?”

  “Could be.”

  They jolted on over the pits and ruts of the flood-damaged local road.

  “Guess I’d better fish my nonpremium leather hiking boots out of the closet,” Sara said.

  Grissom looked across the seat at her. “Let’s be ready to set out tomorrow morning,” he said, and pressed the call button on his phone.

  6

  THE MOVEMENT AWAKENED him. Or he supposed it was the movement when his thoughts snapped together. It was the jostling, the slight creak of bedsprings, the bounce of the mattress. He was a naturally light sleeper, although the medications sometimes put him out deep.

  Startled, he lifted his head off the pillow. His door was partially open—he wasn’t sure whether or not he’d left it that way—and he could see her face close to his in the light spilling through from the hallway.

  Suddenly, he wasn’t alone.

  His eyes widened. She had gotten into his bed, slipped under the blanket with him.

  “What are you doing here?” he said. “How did you get in?”

  A soft laugh. “Those are some kinds of questions to be asking me,” she said. “I used my key, to answer the second one. As for the first, that depends a little on you.”

  He suddenly wondered what time it was, glanced at the glowing face of his clock, and saw that it was almost two in the morning. Goddamn it, he should have changed the locks. Every last one of them. The complicated inconveniences aside.

  “Look, I think you’d better leave,” he said. “This is crazy…”

  “Crazy that we’re in bed together? I can remember when we looked forward to it. The more often, the better.”

  He saw her face above him in the dark. This really was insanity. He couldn’t co
ntrol where it would lead, and that was dangerous.

  “You’re remembering, aren’t you?” she said. Moving closer to him under the blanket. “I didn’t think you could forget in such a short time.”

  She slid against him, and he realized she was naked.

  “This is a mistake,” he said.

  “Maybe.”

  “It’s a mistake.”

  “If so, we’ve made worse. Much worse. And managed to live with our regrets.” She put her lips close to his ear, tickled his ear with them. “‘Still in my heart’s a sorrow, I’d thought that time would fade, guess it’s the kind of love you give, the kind of love we’ve made.’”

  “Where did you—?”

  “I heard you listening to the stereo.”

  “You…when?”

  “It doesn’t make a difference. I heard.” She shrugged her bare shoulders, and sang in a quiet voice. “‘A love of pain and pleasure, a love that lasts forever…”

  “Stop.”

  She laughed. “Why? Is my voice that awful?”

  “You’re taunting me.”

  “No, you’re wrong,” she said. “I’m trying to understand finally…and give you what you want.”

  He felt his pulse quicken. It was what she’d said. The way she had said it. He couldn’t deny it excited him. Yet at the same time, there was a kind of angry loathing—for her, for himself.

  Neither feeling was unfamiliar.

  He felt her naked body press against him.

  “I don’t know what you’re doing,” he said.

  “I think you do, but it isn’t just up to me.” Her hand moved over his, guided it to her lips, then down. “There. Go ahead. Show me what you want.”

  “No…”

  “Show me.”

  He turned fully onto his side, pressed his fingers into the soft swell of her flesh, and moved the other hand to her throat.

  “You never…”

  “I do now,” she said. “Show me how to be what you want.”

  He pressed harder with the one hand, squeezed her throat with the other, trying to imagine that it was Rose beside him under the blanket. To imagine the swell of her body, its nearness, its warmth…its life…

  He stopped.

  “What is it?” she said.

  “Nothing.”

  “Something’s wrong.”

  “No,” he lied. But something was. He couldn’t picture Rose. Try as he did, he could not see her in his mind. “I…”

  “What?”

  “Rose,” he said huskily. “Rose.”

  Knowing how that would cut into the woman in bed with him now. Knowing how it would hurt.

  Wanting to hurt her.

  But she’d asked what he wanted, and he had told her.

  He groaned then, his stomach tightening as he rolled on top of her.

  “Go ahead,” she said. Digging her nails into him. “Go ahead, you son of a bitch, don’t you stop.”

  His rage sustaining him, he didn’t.

  Warrick could have spotted Mark Baker anywhere. The strong jaw, the broad shoulders and slab-muscled arms, the erect, confident posture. A man of colossal stature in size, reputation, and athletic prowess, Mark Baker was the kind of imposing, instantly recognizable figure who would dominate his surroundings wherever he might be. In fact, even his deep, masculine voice was an unmistakable signature as it carried across the sunbathed green at the Las Vegas Country Club, where at any given moment, mega-wealthy residents of the club’s gated mansions could look out their windows to see famous personalities honing their golf strokes in their very backyards…and where Baker’s slick, high-priced lawyer, Vince Millar, had finally, finally agreed to let him talk to Warrick about Rose Demille after several arduous haggling sessions on the phone.

  “Mr. Brown,” Baker said. He took one hand from around his putting iron and extended it. “Glad we could meet.”

  Warrick nodded in acknowledgment as they shook. He was glad Baker said he was glad, since it would go a long way toward making things go smoothly between them. He was, however, not quite persuaded that his gladness was at all for real, considering that Millar—who was standing alongside his client on the closely mown grass—had argued against allowing their get-together until Warrick angrily threatened his client with a subpoena.

  “What happened to that young woman is a frightful tragedy,” Millar said. “I sincerely hope we can be of help to you.”

  Warrick gave him a nod similar to the one he’d given Baker. The shyster claiming he now wanted to cooperate with the investigation might have been cause to be doubly glad, except Warrick did not think for an instant that his declaration was remotely truthful.

  “As I told you over the phone, Rose Demille’s unexpected passing has left Mark devastated,” Millar went on. “I hesitated to have him speak with you prematurely…in my opinion, he ought to take more time to recover. But while we’ve all seen the grit Fireball displays on the field, it’s a testament to his makeup that he overruled me and insisted on—”

  “Thanks, Dave, I think he hears you.” Baker had placed a large hand on the attorney’s back to interrupt him and steer him aside. “I can speak for myself.”

  Warrick looked at the former ballplayer. His expansive chest filling out a lemon yellow Lacoste shirt, Baker wore a white golf visor over his short, spiky, and very subtly blond-highlighted hair.

  “If you don’t mind my asking,” Baker said, “could you tell me what is it you do?”

  Warrick shook his head a little. “Do?”

  “At your crime lab,” Baker said. His eyes firm. “I’d guess you have people with different kinds of know-how.”

  Warrick was silent a moment. He’d watched Baker pitch dozens, if not hundreds, of times on television and had seen the same sharpshooter’s gaze that was right now trained on him sizing up batters at the plate, evaluating their stances, measuring their confidence, almost seeming to dissect every swing before it was taken. It might have been his imagination that those eyes were looking at him in that same way, but he really felt as if they were, and it was an odd thing. They commanded a force that was intense and tangible.

  “My specialization is audiovisual analysis,” Warrick said. “But we all pick up a little of this and that.”

  Baker nodded, half leaning on his golf club. “Happens when you stick around the game long enough,” he said.

  Warrick was quiet again. Baker looked at him steadily in the sun, the bright golden sunshine adding luster to his blond-streaked hair. Sunbeams struck the bright red flag flapping gently on its stick above the hole.

  “The reason I’m out here today’s a charity tournament,” Baker said. “People bid on getting invited and going a few rounds with me. Been doing it since my third year in the majors…makes it my twelfth year.”

  Warrick glanced past Baker at the fluttering red banner. Written across it were the words “The Fireball Baker Make-a-Pitch for Needy Kids Invitational.”

  “This time, we raised over three hundred thousand dollars,” Baker said. He’d noticed Warrick checking out the flag. “A hundred percent of it goes to the charity, and I’m as serious about my commitment as I am about anything in the world. But if it wasn’t that the bidders already paid their money, I would’ve canceled.” He halted a moment, swallowed thickly. “If that doesn’t tell you where I’m at, nothing will. I can’t believe Rose is gone. It just feels like a bad dream to me. And I didn’t want to talk about it with you or anybody else.”

  Warrick nodded. An actor he recognized from a cable TV drama about mafiosi with family problems came walking by in golf clothes, his caddie carrying his bag. He paused to lay a fond hand on Baker’s shoulder.

  “How’re you doin’, Fireball?” he said with an interested look past him at Warrick.

  “All right.” Baker gave him a thumbs up. “Glad you could come, man.”

  The actor smiled. “You asked, I’m here,” he said. “See you for lunch?”

  “You bet.”

  The a
ctor squeezed his shoulder, gave Warrick another brief glance, and moved off across the course.

  Warrick waited till he was out of earshot. “I’ll try to make this quick,” he said.

  “My client would appreciate that.” Millar had stepped forward. “Mark will be teeing off at the tournament’s opening ceremony in less than an hour.”

  Warrick shot the attorney a look of annoyance. He had not thought he’d given the impression he was talking to him. After a moment, he turned back to Fireball.

  “Mr. Baker, what was your relationship with Rose Demille?”

  “She was my partner.”

  “And by that you mean…”

  “We were best friends, lovers, soul mates, whatever words you want to use.”

  “The press has called you her fiancé. Would you say that’s accurate?”

  “We talked about getting married. But it wasn’t like they reported it.”

  “How so?”

  “There wasn’t a definite plan. We were happy with the way things were between us and didn’t want to rush.”

  “Can you tell me what happened the last time you and Rose were together?” Warrick asked.

  Baker looked at him. Warrick deliberately tried to act oblivious toward Millar, who he knew would be looking at him, too.

  “I have trouble talking about it,” Baker said. He cleared his throat. “It isn’t any other night.”

  Warrick nodded again. “That was the case, I wouldn’t be here with you right now,” he said.

  Baker grunted. “No, I guess you wouldn’t,” he said, and then expelled a tidal breath. “You might know my birthday was a couple days before. But I was in New York to talk about a promotional deal, and Rose said we ought to go out and have a good time when I got back.”

  “Which of you suggested going to Club Random?”

  “She did,” Baker said. “But it wasn’t like I could’ve picked a better place. We’d been there a couple times since it opened, and I figured it would be fun.” He gave a doleful smile. “What I didn’t know was that Rose and some of my buddies were setting me up for a surprise party.”

  “And when did the party start?”

  “I must have picked Rose up at nine o’clock. Got there half an hour or so later.”