Silver Sparks (24 page)

“Expensive.”

And his credit card had already taken a beating. But he had money he hadn’t touched, money that felt tainted somehow, since it came from Diane’s life insurance policies. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to profit from her death by buying a new house, but it had felt okay to live off part of it while he took a leave from work to look for his sister’s killer. And it felt okay to use more of it to spy on Rafe De Luca.

“I can manage,” he told Todd. “Think I can find those supplies around here?”

“Hell yeah, no problem. B-Pass gets lot of climbers in the summer. But I don’t want you poking around De Luca land without letting me know first. Someone has to cover your ass.”

“It’s not De Luca land,” he reminded Todd. “We don’t know whose land is on the other end of that mine.” He smiled at Todd’s narrowed eyes and gave him a friendly slap on the arm. “I’ll let you know before I go. First I have to get Maggie to arrange for us to visit the commune.”

Maggie stood under a mounted moose head in the hunting section of High Country Outfitters, talking into her phone. “I’m doing great,” she assured Zoe. “I don’t need a shopping trip to cheer me up, but thanks for asking.”

She watched Cal as she talked. He was across the aisle selecting climbing and caving equipment. He seemed to know what he was doing.

“How about dinner?” Zoe persisted. “I can make that chicken teriyaki dish you like so much.”

“No, thanks, really.”

“Come on, we should do
something
. You want to catch a movie?”

“Not tonight.” She had other things in mind that were far more fun than a movie. Unless Cal was interested in watching something a little racy . . .

“What’s going on?” Zoe sounded suspicious. “Are you and Cal stalking Rafe tonight?”

“No. Cal’s working with the police, and I’m not doing anything.” That she wanted to talk about. She watched Cal try on some gloves and wondered how he’d look in a bathtub full of bubbles, and if he’d sit still for it. Probably, if she was in it with him.

Zoe was silent for a few seconds. “Why don’t you sound tired and depressed?”

Maggie thought she must have lost the thread of the conversation. “Why should I sound tired and depressed?”

“Didn’t you just spend the whole day in your demolished store talking with contractors and claims adjusters?”

“And suppliers. I have a lot of orders coming in still.”

“So why do you sound as relaxed as if you’re on a beach in Jamaica?”

“Do I?”

“Yes, you do.”

“I guess it’s because I have everything under control.”

“Uh-huh.” Zoe had gone from suspicious to decisive. “Or maybe it’s because you’ve been working out all your tensions in the bedroom.”

Maggie wasn’t sure if she should deny it, and she couldn’t even pretend to be outraged. “Why does everyone think we’re sleeping together?”

“Because you are.”

“Yeah, but they thought so before we actually were.”

Zoe didn’t respond for several seconds, and the silence cracked with tension. “I thought you were trying to be more selective about who you went to bed with.”

“I am.” It came out sounding defensive, but she didn’t like the thought of Cal being lumped in with her past mistakes.

“Do you even know much about Cal?”

“I know his half sister, and I know how he rejected his irresponsible mother.”

“I mean romantically? Does he have a girlfriend back in Oklahoma? A fiancée? A wife?”

Maggie wanted to say, “Of course not,” but she didn’t really know. A wife? He didn’t wear a ring, but he wouldn’t be the first man to take it off when he left the house.

Her silence was enough for Zoe. “Maybe you should find out,” her sister said quietly.

She had to come up with some defense. “He would have told me. He’s a good guy, Zoe.” She glanced at the good guy in question, who held up a pair of boots much too small for him as he waved her over.

“I hope so, sweetie, I really do.”

“I have to go, Zoe. Talk to you later.” She pocketed the phone and smiled at Cal as she walked over to him, loving the way she could see both affection and desire in his eyes when he looked at her. There wasn’t a wife back home, she was sure of it. Not even a girlfriend. Cal was better than that.

Right. And she had a history of flawless decisions about men.

She would find the right time, and ask.

They didn’t leave for the commune until nearly noon the next day. Maggie liked waking up with Cal too much to rush out of bed. It should have been the perfect time to ask him some personal questions, but it had turned into a giggling, crazy tangle of arms and legs and constantly changing positions that left her exhausted and happy. Too happy to let doubts about his marital status and general availability intrude.

The drive to the commune almost had a feel of adventure, with all the caving supplies loaded in the back of the truck and a warm breeze sucking away the last crusty patches of snow. The truck wound up fifteen hundred feet of switchback roads with high granite cliffs pressing in on one side and sheer drop-offs on the other. Dense growths of spruce clung to the steep sides, filling the air with the scent of pine. Cal rolled down the windows and gaped like a tourist.

They parked amid the commune’s usual pack of barking dogs. After taking a few minutes to pass out pats and ear scratches, Cal dropped the tailgate and hauled out their large backpacks. Maggie tied her jacket around her waist before strapping her pack on. She’d need the jacket in the mine, but it was too hot to wear it now.

Her mother found them just as they were ready to start their hike to the mine.

“Cal! How lovely to see you again!” She hugged them as well as she could with the supplies on their backs, then turned a stern look on her daughter. “Maggie May, were you going to go off without saying hello?”

“I didn’t want to disturb your work. I’ll stop by when we get back from the mine. I’m sure Pete will want to know where that other tunnel goes.”

“Good. If you see Amber, would you tell her Marcy picked up the supplies we were waiting for and we can do her piercing now?”

Maggie gave a cautious nod, expecting Cal to make another attempt to veto the piercing, thereby incurring a lecture on free expression and a young woman’s right to decide what to do with her own body. But Cal’s thoughts had taken another direction.

“Amber’s not here?”

“Oh, she should be back any minute now. She went for a hike.”

“A hike? Amber?”

“Um-hmm.” Kate nodded and repositioned a purple flower in her hair as she talked. “We were talking about the mine and how you thought it might connect to our neighbor’s land, and she said she wanted to see it.” Realization dawned, and she touched Cal’s arm. “Oh! You’re worried about her going inside the mine? No, no, don’t worry. Pete warned her about not going in there alone, and she promised she wouldn’t.”

“And you believed her?” Cal obviously didn’t.

“She promised,” Kate stressed. “Amber wouldn’t lie to us.”

Cal raised a skeptical eyebrow. “She wouldn’t mind bending the truth till it screamed.”

Maggie grabbed a coiled nylon rope and shoved it at Cal, pushing him toward the path up the mountain. “We’ll give her the message, Mom.” She gave Cal another push, but he was already moving.

Kate waved. “I’m sure you’ll run into her soon.”

Maggie skipped to catch up with Cal. “Maybe Amber’s starting to like the mountains,” she said. “She might be looking for spring flowers. Communing with nature.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I’d like to, but . . . no.”

“She’s up to something, and I’m afraid it has to do with sneaking onto De Luca land.”

“To do what?”

He set his mouth in a grim line. “I’m afraid to guess.”

They made the hike quickly. There was no sign of Amber along the trail, but the boards covering the mine entrance didn’t appear to have been moved.

“You think she’d close it up behind her?” Maggie asked doubtfully as Cal pulled boards aside.

“I don’t know. If she didn’t want anyone to find out where she’d gone, then yes, she probably would.”

“But she’s smart enough to know it would be dangerous to go inside alone.”

“That didn’t stop you.”

She didn’t have an answer to that. Even after she’d moved to her grandmother’s house, she’d spent every summer at the commune. They were all her family. But communal living could be overwhelming, and sometimes she’d needed to get away, to go off on her own.

She guessed Amber was like that, too. She probably would have gone in the mine alone.

Their mission to follow the new shaft suddenly had a more serious overtone. Wordlessly, they slipped out of the backpacks, put on jackets, gloves, and headlamps, then repositioned the packs. Pulling out two Maglites, they ducked under the boards and turned on the flashlights. Twin beams cut through the black maw of the mine, adding to the slightly weaker lights atop their heads. All of them faded quickly as the inky blackness swallowed them. Maggie aimed her light briefly at the floor, but the hard-packed dirt and rock held no footprints.

Cal didn’t hesitate. He started down the tunnel.

They walked with surer steps this time, reaching the star cavern quickly. This time they didn’t shine their lights at the ceiling, but headed straight for the other side. Maggie couldn’t suppress a quick rush of heat remembering what had happened the first time they were here, but the feeling disappeared quickly. Uncertainty about Amber made any thought of romance impossible.

Ahead of her, Cal found the boarded-over hole. Maggie shrugged out of her pack as she approached and shone her light on the boards, half afraid of what she’d see.

They looked undisturbed. No rope dangled into the gap on the far side where Amber might have managed to slide through. “I don’t think she’s been here,” she said with relief.

Cal was already pulling a hand pump out of his backpack, but he paused to look at Maggie in the shadowy gloom. “Unless she fell through the gap. Or her rope came untied and dropped in after her.”

Maybe it came with being a cop—he always thought of the worst possible scenarios. She shuffled closer to the gap and aimed her light straight down. Dark walls became slightly wider as they fell away into a deeper darkness. At the bottom water glistened faintly, black and smooth. There was no sign of Amber or a rope—which meant nothing, she reminded herself. If they’d fallen through they would have been swallowed by the water.

Rubber slid against the mine floor with a soft rustling sound. Ten feet away Cal opened the inflatable kayak. If its air pump worked as advertised, it wouldn’t take long to inflate the narrow craft. She’d better get busy.

She found the weighted measuring line in her backpack and squatted near the hole, letting the line play out. She allowed it to fall quickly at first, then more slowly, listening for the sound of a splash. A possible soft sound was drowned by the rhythmic click and hiss of the air pump.

“Cal.” Her voice was hollow in the empty mine shaft, but it carried well. He was only a shadow in the perimeter of the Maglite’s beam so she couldn’t tell if he looked at her, but he stopped pumping. “Stop for a second,” she said, pulling the line back and letting it fall again. This time she heard the splash clearly. She shone her flashlight directly on the part of the line she held, leaning close to see the numbers. “Twenty-seven feet,” she said.

“Good.” He resumed pumping.

She recoiled the line and put it away, pulling out the rolled rope ladder. They’d selected the longest one in the store, thirty-three feet. It would work.

A few minutes of searching with her flashlight revealed what she wanted on the low ceiling—anchored iron rings used for raising and lowering men and supplies to the tunnel below. She played her light around. The rings looked rusty, but the ceiling was dry. “You were right,” she called out. “Four rings. Huge ones.”

Cal came over, dragging the kayak behind him. “We’ll use them all. One could come loose, and I don’t want to take any unnecessary risks.”

What they were doing was risky enough.

Cal wove a rope through every ring and tested its strength. Nothing moved but a few flakes of rust that drifted into the hole. He attached the ladder and turned to her. “I’d feel better if you stayed up here.”

They’d already covered this. “I know you would,” she told him gently. “But that’s not going to happen.”

He made a resigned sound and didn’t argue. She wasn’t about to stay behind in a dark mine tunnel, staring into a black pit, wondering if Cal was okay. Or even knowing he was but not being able to see what was happening. She was going with him.

With a rope on one end of the kayak, it lowered easily through the hole, landing softly on the still water below. With the other end of the rope tied near the Maglite on his belt, Cal let the ladder unroll over the edge of the hole. It hung centered from the ropes, and easy to reach. He grabbed it and started to step onto one of the thin rungs.

“Wait!”

He stopped. “What?”

She gave him a quick kiss.