Sleeping Beauty (67 page)

Halloran nodded. “Four kids, two grandchildren, another on the way.”

“Then you know what I mean. Family. Christ, what else is there that really means anything to a man? And I'll bet you've got your family around you, in Denver.”

“Aurora. Same thing. Yeah, we're lucky; they all stayed close.”

“You're more than lucky; you're blessed. I'm stuck in Washington; how much can I do to help these people? Not that I don't love the Senate; it's become a real passion with me, working for my state and my country. But I see this son of a bitch trying to take advantage of my family, and I'll tell you, it damn near drives me crazy. Well, anyway, I gather he said his so-called friends, these foreigners, didn't want a controlling interest in the company. But who knows what he really had in mind? By this time he probably thought the family could use some help. Maybe he even thought they'd be anxious to sell. But Leo and his wife didn't want to, and said so. I gather there was quite a debate at Christmas, and the most Durant could get from them was a willingness to talk to the Egyptians if they came over here. In the past couple of days, it's occurred to some of us”—Vince paused—“that Durant might have thought there were ways to convince them to sell, and at a price he and his Egyptian friends could afford.”

“ ‘Convince them to sell,' ” Halloran repeated. “By causing an accident that could make the company less attractive?”

Vince held his hands up, the fingers spread wide. “I'm not accusing him. Let me just tell you what else I've put together. It seemed to all of us that Durant never forgave my daughter for breaking off with him; we think he's had it in for the family ever since. But here he is, sucking up to them and buying a house in their neighborhood. And one of the ways he tried to get close to them, and maybe to the gondola, too, was to go along on Leo's inspection trips up the mountain. Leo went every morning at one minute to nine; you could set your watch by it. And Durant went along whenever he was in town. They'd ride up in the gondola, ski around the mountain to check in with the lift operators, talk to some tourists, and ski down. The only day Durant missed was the morning of the accident. That morning, he got out of town. A long way; all the way to Egypt. He'd had a crew digging there for months, looking for a tomb, as I understand
it, but all of a sudden it became urgent that he go that very morning.”

They drank thoughtfully, and Vince refilled their glasses. “You say he bought a house here,” Halloran said.

“In Riverwood,” Vince replied. “Just down the road from the Calders. He's having extensive remodeling done.”

“He'd be a fool to throw away the bolt at home,” Halloran mused.

Vince shrugged. “He has no reason to think anyone would look for it. Or maybe he thinks a bolt is a bolt and the Dumpsters at his house are full of materials torn out in the remodeling, and what better place to hide another piece of hardware?”

“It doesn't look like any other bolt in the world.”

“So you said. An archaeologist probably wouldn't know that.”

Halloran revolved the glass in his fingers. “He's still in Egypt?”

“I don't keep track of him, but I think so.”

Halloran drained the glass and stood up. “Can I use your phone? I'm going to call the sheriff.”

“Of course. I'll leave the room.”

“I don't have any secrets from you, Senator. In fact, you've got a better right than anybody to hear this, especially if it leads to something.”

Vince walked to the windows and looked up at the bright planets moving slowly down Tamarack Mountain, smoothing the slopes. Not planets, he thought. Stars. My very lucky stars. Making things smooth. Beloit is happy; Leo and the family will be out in the cold; we're taking care of Durant. And then we'll get to Anne.

If you wait long enough, he thought cheerfully, everything comes to pass the way you want it.

*   *   *

The Tamarack County sheriff, with two of his men, spent the next day patiently sifting through the construction debris in the Dumpster outside Josh Durant's garage. About halfway down, shoved beneath torn pieces of drywall and
old flooring, they found the bolt, winking at them in the sunlight.

And on Wednesday evening, when Josh stepped off the plane at the Tamarack Airport and was raising his hand to greet Anne, the sheriff blocked his way, and told him he was under arrest.

I
t
was done very quietly; no one around them knew what was happening. But Anne saw Tyler Schofield's hand on Josh's arm, and the sudden anger in Josh's face. They were standing at the foot of the steps that had been wheeled to the plane's door, and as other passengers walked the short distance to the terminal, Anne slipped through the door and went to Josh. She had never seen him so angry.

“—what the hell you're talking about—” he was saying.

“I can't tell you now, Josh,” Tyler said, almost whispering. “You've just got to come with—”

“Can't tell me?
You'll damn well tell me; I'm not going anywhere until I know what the hell is going on.”

“Damn it, Josh, you've got everybody and his aunt looking at—”

“What difference does it make? I'm not hiding anything; you're the one who's playing games.”

“Not me, by God. Listen, mister, you're in big trouble here and you'd better watch—”

“Hello, Tyler,” Anne said. “Welcome back,” she said to Josh.

Their hands gripped. And she did not pull away. “Did I interrupt something?” she asked.

“Yes,” Tyler snapped.

“I'm glad to see you,” said Josh. He heard the anger and bewilderment in his voice and wondered if he looked as
adrift as he felt. “I don't know what's going on here, but Tyler tells me I'm under arrest for the gondola accident.”

Anne looked at Tyler in disbelief.
“Josh?
You're not serious. Why? Tyler, this is crazy. He doesn't know anything about it. He wasn't even in Tamarack that day.”

“Listen here,” Tyler said in exasperation. He looked around the tarmac and into the terminal. They were not crowded, since most tourists had canceled their trips, but there were enough people to make him nervous, and a few of them were casting glances at him and Josh. “We can't talk here. Let me get this part over with—”

“Anyway, why arrest him?” she asked. “Ordinarily, you'd just take someone in for questioning.”

“There's too much at stake! Oh, Christ.” Tyler lowered his voice. “Listen, Anne, you don't have anything to do with this, okay? I shouldn't even be talking to you. Now you just go on home—”

“She has everything to do with it,” said Josh firmly. “She's my lawyer.”

Anne's eyes met his in a quick look, bright and pleased. She took her hand from his and stepped back, cool and professional. She could have been wearing a pin-striped suit, Josh thought, instead of black stretch pants and a sleek blue-and-black ski jacket. “So there's no question of my going home,” she said to Tyler. “You don't want to be in the position of denying Mr. Durant legal representation at his booking.”

“Oh, hey,” said Tyler. “Listen, we're all friends here, Anne. We've got a hell of a mess is all; the newspapers and TV are shafting us every day; and we've got to do something to show that we're on the ball . . . well, shit, I shouldn't even be saying that.”

So they'd panicked, Anne thought, and made a quick arrest. But of all people, why Josh?

“Tell us about it on the way into town,” she said.

From then on, she and Josh listened, and she did not let him talk until he had been charged and fingerprinted and was out on bail with the money he had had wired from his
bank in Los Angeles. “You'll be around here for a while?” the judge asked.

“I have a class to teach in two weeks, in Los Angeles,” Josh said.

The judge contemplated him. “We all know each other around here; it'd be hard for me to make a case that you're a threat to anybody or that you'd skip bail. You can go where you want, Josh, but let me know in advance. I don't want any surprises; the last few months we've had too damn many of those.”

Outside, in the quiet of Main Street, snow had begun to fall, a steady curtain of flakes that seemed to encircle them as they walked to the car.

“It looks like Gail's,” Josh said.

“It is.” Anne walked around to the driver's side. “I'm using it while they're away.”

“How is Leo? I haven't had a chance to ask about him.”

“He'll be fine; he doesn't need surgery. We were very lucky. They'll be back tomorrow morning. Have you had dinner?”

“No. I'd forgotten about it. As I recall, we planned to go out tonight, after you met my plane.”

She smiled. “Yes. Would you like a restaurant, or Leo and Gail's?”

“I'd rather not go out.”

“Neither would I.” She drove down Main Street, through the falling snow. The flakes rushed toward them in the headlights, as if the car were plunging into an illuminated cone. The street was almost empty and they drove in silence to the turn that led out of town. “The bolt couldn't have gotten into the Dumpster unless someone put it there,” Anne said, letting her thoughts flow into words.

“Someone who went there for that reason.” Their thoughts merged, and so did their voices. “No one strolls around Riverwood in the middle of the winter.”

“It may not have been that deliberate. What if one of the carpenters or plumbers or electricians brought it with him?”

“Why would a carpenter or plumber or electrician sabotage the gondola?”

“Why would you?”

There was a pause. “There's no reason for anyone to do it,” Josh said. “It's insane. To risk all those lives . . . No reason is compelling enough to do that.”

“Hatred,” Anne said. “Greed, envy, fear. Maybe all of them at once. I've never stopped being astonished at the cruelty they bring out in people.” She turned onto the road that climbed to Riverwood. “I was impressed with the way you controlled your anger tonight.”

He gave a wry smile. “I was thinking about that when I told the judge I had classes in a couple of weeks. The infinite flexibility of the human spirit. I'd already learned to live with this craziness and I was making plans around it. I guess we can do that with almost anything; it just requires constant adjustments.”

“Yes,” Anne said quietly. In a few minutes they reached the house and she drove into the garage. When they stood together in the brightly lit silence beside the two cars with Leo's cluttered worktable and Gail's gardening tools along the back, skis lined up in racks, and four bicycles hanging on the walls, there was something so domestic and intimate about the scene that they hesitated, caught in its spell. “We have a lot to talk about,” Anne said at last, without looking at Josh, and they went into the house. “And the first thing,” she added as she hung her ski jacket in the closet and used a bootjack to pull off her high boots, “is the fact that I'm not licensed to practice law in the state of Colorado.”

Josh paused in hanging up the sports jacket he had worn from Egypt. “I didn't think of that. You're only licensed in California?”

“And New York. You'll have to retain someone here. I've met a couple of people I could recommend; one in particular, Kevin Yarborough, seems very good.”

“But you'd work with him.”

“If you want me to. And as much as I can. I'm going back to Los Angeles tomorrow, Josh; I have a lot of catching up to do.”

He smiled ruefully as they went into the kitchen. “Do all
your clients behave as if you have nothing to do but think about them?”

“All of them. I would, too.” She opened the refrigerator, and then the freezer, rummaging through them. “I think I'll call Kevin and ask him to come over tonight; you should get to know him as soon as possible. And we can talk about what we're going to do. I wish I didn't have to leave. I may be able to get back in a week or two, at least for a day; I'll let you know.”

She set a carton and two packages on the counter and turned back to him. Josh took her hands in his: cold, slender fingers that lay within his warm ones. In her stockinged feet she seemed smaller than he remembered. “Anne, listen to me for a minute. There were a lot of things I planned to tell you tonight, starting with how much I thought about you in the past few days, and how that whole miraculous time wasn't complete for me because you weren't there.” He watched her eyes, wide and startled, a little stunned. But not frightened, he saw.
Not frightened.
He felt a wild elation. But beneath it was the current of his anger and bewilderment, and the beginnings of alarm at what might be ahead for him. “I'm sorry; I'm trying to juggle everything. I want to concentrate on you, but other things get in the way.”

“That's what we have to talk about. What we're going to do next.” She turned away, becoming busy at the counter. Josh worked with her, easing open a foil wrapping and putting a cake on a glass plate. He unwrapped bread and put it in the oven to thaw. Anne was aware of him looking in cabinets for plates and glasses, opening drawers to find silverware. She had thought about him so vividly on the gondola, and pictured him so clearly when he called from Egypt, that now, as they worked together in silent harmony, it seemed like a continuation of her thoughts; as if, somehow, they had become a part of each other.

Outside, snow was falling heavily, whirled around by gusts of wind. The kitchen was warm and hushed, its pine cabinets and table and chairs glowing golden in the light. Anne felt at peace. The anxiety of the past few days had
dimmed for the moment; her fears about Josh's closeness, though they had flickered for a moment in the garage, had faded; her tension over his inexplicable arrest was held in abeyance. As they moved about, coming close and parting, she felt neither wariness nor excitement; what she felt was a sense of rightness. How amazing, she thought. She had never felt it before, except in her work.