Fire and Rain (37 page)

She watched him walk across the living room, and she kept her eyes on the door long after he had closed it behind him. She didn’t dare look at her sister until Laura stood up and began clearing the table. There was a splotch of crimson low on her throat.

“He’s got a mean streak,” Laura said. “You’d better watch out for it.”

In another minute, Mia heard the angry rattling of the dishes from the kitchen. She poured herself another cup of coffee and sat back with a smile, raising her feet to the chair Jeff had vacated. She would let Laura do the dishes.

TOM FORREST AND HIS
New Jersey connection tracked down the first company Jeff had worked for after receiving his Ph.D. and passed the information on to Carmen. The company was Environmental Classics in Passaic, New Jersey, and Carmen planned her phone interview carefully. She wasn’t certain how much national media coverage had been given to Jeff and Valle Rosa, but she couldn’t take the chance that someone she interviewed might be able to link Jeff Cabrio and Robert Blackwell. So when she reached Warren Guest, an old co-worker of Jeff’s, she didn’t even identify
News Nine
. She was calling from a station “out West,” she said. Robert Blackwell was involved in a “small environmental issue,” and she was interested in learning more about him.

“I just wanted to verify that he worked at Environmental Classics,” she said.

“He worked here all right.” Warren Guest laughed. “And we were glad when he left, because he made the rest of us look like slouches with a collective IQ of about 50. Seriously, it wasn’t his fault his brain didn’t work the same as everyone else’s. When I see a problem, I see a problem. Rob would look at the exact same thing and see a solution.” Warren paused, then added, “He was a pretty good guy, though.”

Carmen now knew first hand that Jeff was a “good guy.” He had rescued her from covering that bus accident. He hadn’t allowed her inside the warehouse as he and Rick moved the equipment to the roof, and there hadn’t been much to see from the ground, but she’d managed to get a story out of the morning nevertheless.

“How long did he work at Environmental Classics?” she asked.

“Oh, let’s see. Seven or eight years I’d say.”

“Was he married or involved with anyone during that time?”

“Yeah, actually, he got married while he was here. I didn’t go to the wedding. It was one of those small, quiet kind of deals. His wife’s name was Leslie.”

Leslie Blackwell. Where was she now? Could she and Jeff still be married?

“Do you happen to know Leslie’s maiden name?” she asked.

“No, sorry. Don’t have a clue.”

“What was she like?”

“She seemed nice, though I didn’t really know her. I just saw her at office picnics and that sort of thing. They had a baby a few years after they got married. A girl. I remember the pink ribbons on the cigars.”

Carmen thought of the picture in Jeff’s wallet of the two little blond girls on the elephant.

“Were Rob and Leslie still married when he left your company?”

“Yeah.” Warren hesitated. “You mean he’s not with her now, huh?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t know too much about his personal life, but it appears they’re no longer together.”

“Well, that’s too bad, but what is it these days—one out of every two marriages ends in divorce? Not the greatest odds, and he’d be a strange guy to be married to. He was strange enough to work with.”

“In what way?”

“Well, he was different. The rest of us sometimes felt as though we’d been hired to clean up after him.”

“What do you mean? Do you mean he was sloppy at the office, or—”

Warren Guest laughed again. “No. It was his
work
that could be sloppy. He would come up with ideas—brilliant ideas— and do what he wanted to with them, and the rest of us mopped up after him. At first I resented it. Then I realized that he wasn’t merely a scientist; he was an artist.”

Carmen frowned. “I’m afraid I’m not following you.”

“Well, picture an artistic genius. Picture Picasso, right?”

“Right.”

“You don’t try to contain genius. You don’t try to put limits on it. You watch him work, and he’s frantically mixing colors, creating a work of art on the canvas, and if he happens to mix a color he doesn’t like and tosses the brush on the floor as he starts to mix a new color, you don’t say to him, ‘pick up that brush before you continue.’”

Carmen laughed.

“You get it? So that’s how it was with Rob. Once he was on a roll, you didn’t stop him. You just stood out of his way and let him do his thing, and if he happened to screw up along the way, you cleaned up after him.”

“Wow.” Carmen was struck by Warren’s creative analogy. She wondered how efficient Rick Smythe was at cleaning up. “When did Rob leave Environmental Classics?”

“Hmm. Five years ago, maybe? He started his own business as a consultant, he and a guy he knew from college, Kent Reed. Another whiz kid.”

“Really. Do you know where I can find Kent Reed?”

Warren groaned. “He’s the kind of person you try to figure out how to lose, not find.”

“Why do you say that?” It seemed that, even as an adult, Kent Reed had won no popularity contests.

“Oh, he’d hang around here all the time, sticking to Rob like glue. The supervisor finally told him to get a life of his own, but Rob left shortly after that, and he and Kent started their business together.”

“Do you remember the name of the business?”

“Probably have it in my Rolodex,” he said. “I never get around to updating that thing. Hold on.”

She heard him flipping through the cards.

“Blackwell and Reed Environmental Consultants,” Warren said. He gave her an address in Morristown, New Jersey, along with a phone number. “This is old info, though. I know they’re not still there. I’m not even sure they still work together. But you really should try to talk to Kent if you want to learn more about Rob. He knew Rob Blackwell better than anyone.”

Carmen tried to find a number for a Leslie Blackwell with no success, and the phone number Warren had given her for Jeff and Kent’s Morristown business now belonged to an elderly man who was overjoyed at hearing her voice, thinking she was his long-lost daughter. Carmen was nearly in tears by the time she managed to convince him that she wasn’t.

Finally, she called Tom Forrest.

“Check old business licenses,” he suggested. “No, never mind. I’ll take care of it and get back to you.”

“I can do it myself, Tom.” She didn’t like his paternal attitude.

“Come on, Carmen,” he said. “You’ll do all the work once I get the information. Let me do this much for you.” After a moment’s hesitation, he continued. “You’re doing great, Carmen. That article in the
Union
was terrific.”

An article in yesterday’s
San Diego Union
had stated that getting a taste of Carmen Perez again “points up what has been missing from Channel Nine these past four years.” Carmen had read the article three times.

Tom called her back in less than an hour. “Reed left the state a couple of years ago,” he said. “I’ve got a forwarding address to Lamar, West Virginia, but it’s a post office box. Tried to get a phone number for him there, but looks like it’s unlisted.”

Carmen wrote down the address. “All right,” she said, “I’ll take it from there.”

SHE FLEW TO DULLES
International Airport in Virginia on a red-eye flight the following evening. Dennis Ketchum had given her the time off with some reluctance, and as she stood in line at the car rental window, exhausted from the fitful sleep she’d had on the plane, she hoped this wouldn’t be a wild goose chase.

The drive to West Virginia took her two hours, the last half hour seeming to go straight uphill. The countryside was beautiful and green. Even with the rise in altitude, though, the day was sticky hot, and she was grateful for the rental car’s air conditioner.

She followed the map spread out on the passenger seat, and as she neared the town of Lamar, she realized that the jade green crepe suit she was wearing wasn’t the appropriate attire for this region. The terrain ranged from thick woods to open fields. Houses were spread far apart, and they were small and, for the most part, in need of paint and repair. Rusting metal furniture graced lopsided front porches, and statues of flamingos and baby ducks and upright, fully-clothed, kissing pigs adorned the yards.

She passed a small sign for Lamar, barely visible in the leafy overhang of a tree. This was it? Sighing heavily, she continued driving along the narrow wooded road, passing the occasional house, the occasional horse and cow. Lamar made Valle Rosa look like a metropolis.

Finally, she came to a cross street with a small store on one corner. She pulled into the parking lot, stopping near an old gas pump. The air bore down on her with its damp, sucking humidity as she stepped out of the car, and she pulled a clip from her purse to pin up her hair. Why would anyone choose to live here in this heat, she wondered, although she supposed the residents of Lamar might wonder why anyone would choose to live in a place where they could flush their toilets only once a day.

It took her eyes a minute to adjust to the dim light of the store after being out in the late morning sun. She appeared to be the only customer. A middle-aged man sat on a stool behind the counter, reading a newspaper and smoking a cigarette, while a woman arranged cans of soup on one of the shelves. They both turned to look at her as she walked in.

She approached the counter. “I’m looking for the post office,” she said.

“You’ve found it.” The man nodded to the row of post office boxes behind him.

“Oh,” she said, surprised. “Well, I’m trying to find a man who has a P.O. box here. Kent Reed.”

The woman and man exchanged looks.

“He lives up in the hills,” the woman said.

“I thought this
was
the hills.”

The woman smiled. She was in her mid-fifties and very pretty, her gray hair pulled back in a bun. “It gets hillier than this, honey.” Then she cocked her head at Carmen. “You’re not an old friend of his or something, are you?”

“No. I’ve never met him before.”

The man chuckled, a puff of smoke escaping his lips. “That explains it,” he said. “Only someone who never met Kent Reed before would want to meet him in the first place.”

The woman joined him in the laughter, and since their mirth didn’t seem to be at her expense, Carmen smiled herself. She liked their accents and wondered what they made of hers.

The woman moved behind the counter to stand next to the man, and Carmen decided they must be husband and wife. Both wore gold wedding bands.

“Why on earth would you want to see Kent Reed?” the woman asked bluntly.

Carmen slipped off her suit jacket and folded it over her arm. Her back felt sticky with perspiration. “I’m a reporter,” she said, “and I need to ask him a few questions for a story I’m doing about an old colleague of his.”

“Well, good luck.” The man stubbed out his cigarette in a metal ashtray.

“What do you mean?”

“He won’t talk to you, honey,” the woman answered. “He never talks to anybody.”

“No one?”

The man folded his arms across his chest and leaned his back against the post office boxes. “He’s lived here a couple of years, and he comes into the store once a month or so to pick up his mail and get groceries and—”

“He buys everything in cans,” the woman interrupted him. “It’s a wonder he doesn’t have scurvy.”

“He’ll come in a little more often than that if he’s ordered parts from somewhere for one of his inventions,” the man continued.

Carmen’s mind suddenly kicked into high gear. Could Jeff and Kent be running from the same thing? They’d split up their partnership and taken off in opposite directions, trying to cover their trails.

“Do you think he’s running away from something?” she asked.

“Civilization, I’d say.” The man ran a hand over his chin. “He likes machines. He doesn’t like people, and he’d be the first to tell you that. Kent Reed is your typical mad scientist, miss. That about sums him up.”

She felt disconcerted by the word “mad.”

“Am I in any danger going to see him?” she asked.

“Nah.” The woman shook her head. “He’s got a nasty bark, but I don’t think there’s much bite behind it.”

“Well.” Carmen swept a stray hair off her cheek, “I guess all that explains why his phone is unlisted.”

“He doesn’t have a phone,” the woman said. “Or a television. Or a radio. He could be living in the year 2050 or 1962 for all he keeps up with things. I bet he doesn’t even know who’s president right now.”

Carmen bought an ice-cold can of diet Coke and drank it as the man and woman gave her a lengthy set of directions to Kent Reed’s house. She was surprised when the shopkeepers suggested she borrow their four-wheel drive truck. She declined the offer, but as her car chugged up the dirt road that cut through the wooded hillside, she began to regret that decision.

Nearly thirty minutes after leaving the store, she rounded a bend to find herself at the end of the road. She stopped the car and studied the woods in front of her. There was a foot path, they had told her. Leaving the tape recorder in the car—she wouldn’t risk asking Kent Reed if she might tape their conversation—she got out and located the overgrown path. After taking a few cautious steps into the thick woods, she was relieved to see a house come into view behind the trees..

The house was, as the general store owners had described it, an old log cabin. It was fairly large, but as she neared it, she could see that the rear of the building was a recent addition, the logs there a warm brown in comparison to the age-darkened logs in the rest of the house.

She knocked on the door. Sounds came from inside the house. Metal sounds. Clanking sounds. But it wasn’t until she’d knocked for the sixth time that the door flew open.

Carmen took an involuntary step backwards as Kent Reed appeared in the doorway. He was tall and extraordinarily thin, as though some disease had eaten away his flesh. His hair was dark and unwashed and hung limply around the crew neck of his graying white T-shirt. He wore loose-fitting jeans and brown moccasins, and his beard was long and streaked with gray. From inside the house drifted the unmistakable scent of tuna fish.