Vengeance: A Reece Culver Thriller - Book 1 (20 page)

Chapter Sixty-Two

C
rystal watched Michael
Zimeratti’s body plummet toward the rock-covered slope below. Michael let out a faint scream just before he hit the ground with a splash of snow. She smiled, then turned back and yelled.

Crystal saw the top of the mountain coming. She started smiling broadly, thinking about how easy it was to fool Zimeratti. Now he wouldn’t be able to carry out whatever foul mission Sam Shanks had planned for her stepfather.

Crystal saw the ski patrol sign next to the lift and knew she needed tears to be convincing. She took herself back to the day the police found her and her two brothers alone in the bus station. A feeling of true sadness and dread came to her. Crystal bit down on her lip, feeling the pain and fear of her childhood. She thought about the last time she saw her brothers. She felt the flush rise up within her, and was back at the day she rode to the orphanage with a female social worker in Tulsa. Tears bubbled up in the corners of her eyes. Crystal was afraid and all alone. Soon she was crying and moaning, rocking back and forth on the chair lift.

The look on the face of the young ski lift operator in the lift booth confirmed she was in the right state of mind. Crystal skied off the lift but almost immediately kicked off her skis and hobbled in her bulky ski boots toward the lift operator’s hut. The man jumped out of his seat and opened the door.

“Oh God, I need your help. My friend. He fell, oh God, oh God, I hope he’s…” Crystal screamed through her tears.

“Your friend fell off the lift?” the lift operator yelled, hitting the bulbous red button on his operator’s console. The ski lift wheel above their heads groaned as it slowed and came to a halt. The lift operator ran out his hut and looked down the long line of the lift carriages, dumbfounded.

Crystal saw the faces of two skiers that had been following her up the slope about ten chairs back. The horror they showed confirmed that Michael didn’t make it. She fought off the urge to smile.

“Come this way,” someone said from behind. A handsome ski patroller in a red ski suit had appeared. “It’s okay we’ll take you down to him,” the man said, taking her arm. The ski lift started back up, and then she followed the man in his red ski patrol outfit with a large white cross on his back. He was talking on a radio and pulling her with him. The handsome man stopped and motioned for Crystal to get her skis on.

Together they headed down the slope, him towing an orange plastic sled, the kind they use to take injured skiers off the mountain. Two other ski patrollers joined them. She kept concentrating on the orphanage. The tears came easy. She was sniffing and snorting and crying as she followed the others down the steep slope toward Michael Zimeratti’s broken body. Crystal had seen him fall head first off the chair and slam into the jagged rocks. She knew he couldn’t survive a fall like that. He had to be dead.

That was good. She wouldn’t want him to be able to tell anyone what happened.

Chapter Sixty-Three

R
eece took a
long swig of his scotch and savored the relaxation he felt coming. Charlie Anders was on his feet coming toward Reece with the bottle. Reece held up his hand, signaling he didn’t want more, but the old man ignored him and poured the liquid into his highball glass until it was half full. Reece watched him retreat to his recliner. His dog Manchego was now permanently parked at his side, and every once in a while the old man would reach into his box of treats and reward the dog.

“So, what were we talking about?” Anders said. “I mean, I know what we were talking about, but what was your questions?”

“When the police reported your sister missing. Did you suspect her husband, Owen Roberts?”

“Well, Reece, I guess I did at first. I guess I thought she and Owen might have gotten into a fight and something happened, but the few times I met Owen, he didn’t seem like that kind of a guy.”

“What kind of a man did he seem like?” Reece asked, not knowing anything other than what he’d heard from his client.

“He seemed like a caring man, vulnerable somehow.”

That was completely at odds with the portrait he’d gained so far. “Mr. Anders, do you know why Owen didn’t take custody of the children?”

“Call me Charlie,” he said. “Well, I guess I’d say he didn’t have the money to take care of three children on his own. A few weeks before Tracey disappeared, she came over to the house. We were living up in Claremore, Oklahoma, back then. I remember how upset she was when she’d found out he was gambling away their savings.”

“Did you or your wife ever hear from Tracey again after 1989?”

“No, not a word, which if she was still alive seems very odd to me. Tracey and I were pretty close growing up, and during the few months she lived in Tulsa with the kids, we saw her at least once a week if not more.”

Reece pulled out the concert ticket he’d borrowed from Ann Fletcher’s house and handed it across the couch to the old man. “Does this mean anything to you?”

Anders took the ticket from his hand and read the date off the top of the Rolling Stones Concert ticket. “Where’d you get that?”

“I visited Crystal’s Aunt Fletcher a week ago. I saw this on the bulletin board in the room Crystal used to stay in when visiting. I did some quick math and came to the conclusion that this had to be something from her mother Tracey,” Reece said, hoping he wouldn’t be irritated by the small theft.

“How is Ann Fletcher?”

“She seemed reasonably well for an old woman on oxygen with a tobacco habit,” Reece answered in full honesty.

“Still smoking those damn cancer spikes,” Charlie said. “Reece, this concert ticket has a lot of history to it. My sister was very unhappy back then. That was when she first discovered the true character of the man she’d married.” Charlie raised his glass and drained the yellow liquid down into the ice. “That was the summer after she started nursing school. Sometime during the previous winter she’d discovered Owen had a compulsive gambling problem, and had squandered their entire bank account, and the boy’s college fund to support his habit,” Charlie said, looking sad for the first time. “I remember asking her about her concert after she came back.

Reece had been idly studying the walls of the den as he listened, and he noticed that almost every picture contained the old man and his wife.

“It took a long time for her to tell me the whole story. She went to the concert that November of 1981 with a pack of girls from school. They met some guys and she liked one of them more than the rest. His name was Vinton. He was tall with piercing green eyes and long blond hair. I think she used the term dreamy.”

Reece came sharply to attention with the mention of the name. Vinton was an unusual name, and in this context there couldn’t be more than one of them.

“Tracey left the concert with this guy, and they spent the next three months touring the west in his Volkswagen bus. I remember Owen calling in a panic the day after the concert. He was going to call the police and file a missing person’s report, but then he told me about a fight they’d had, and he decided to wait a few days. I got a postcard in the mail from Tracey telling me she was okay. She just needed a little break from Owen.”

Reece was paying close attention. That ticket stub had turned out to be gold.

“Three months into her trip with this guy Vinton, she found out she was pregnant with his child. They had a big fight, and he left her at the Berkley bus station with fifty bucks,” Charlie said with a frown.

“Do you remember this Vinton guy’s last name?” Reece asked.

“Yeah, Vinton Blackwell.”

“What happened next?” Reece asked, wanting to hear the end of his story.

“Tracey called Owen, and he told her to come back home. She had the baby the next August, and they named their new baby girl Crystal, after Owen’s mother.”

Chapter Sixty-Four

C
rystal took the
exit off I-70 for Minturn. The traffic had been light, and she gunned the Mercedes, enjoying the slingshot effect as she cruised around the circular exit ramp. She watched the speedometer climb past seventy on Highway 24, then slammed on the brakes as she neared the exit for Line Shack Road. The car slowed instantly, handling like it was on rails. She jerked right onto a gravel road, slowing as she tapped the brake pedal. She smiled breathing in the fresh scent of the pine trees.

“Papa, I’m on your road. Can you get the gate for me?” she announced into her cell phone.

“You made good time. I’ll meet you out in the drive,” he said in his usual rough voice. The road straightened and she passed the point where Meadow Mountain road broke off, running south. She continued onward downshifting the transmission and curved around the switchbacks descending toward her stepfather’s home.

A large black decorative entry gate rose in front of a river rock two-story villa, set in the valley below snow-covered peaks. She felt warm and calm. She approached the property and saw Vinton dressed in brown corduroy pants and a blue down jacket, sitting on his black Polaris ATV beside the gate. She stopped just inside the property and left the engine running while she got out and ran up to him. He scooped her up into his strong arms and hugged her.

“Oh, Papa, it’s so good to see you.”

“You too, Crystal. I’ve missed you,” the man said.

As always, her gaze focused on the clouded green cataract in his left eye. She could smell his aftershave, and she admired his strong chin and longish white hair. They held one another in a prolonged hug. She thought back to the day she had met him at the orphanage and first admired his green eyes, wondering if he was a sorcerer. Since she’d grown up, her estimation had sunk quite a bit. He wasn’t perfect, but he was all he she had. He was the only man who’d ever taken care of her.

“Let me get the gate and I’ll ride up to the house with you,” he said, pulling away from her.

Crystal watched him walk back toward the gatehouse. He was fit for a man in his early sixties. She’d always been attracted to him in a way that felt different than a father. She’d told herself the attraction was okay since they weren’t related. She knew he felt the same way somewhere deep down in his heart.

Crystal followed Vinton into the house and deposited her bags on the bed in the upstairs guest bedroom. She joined him in the kitchen, and the smell of his famous ham, egg, and cheddar sandwiches pleased her.

“Are you hungry?” he asked, turning toward her with a plate full of steaming food.

“I’m always hungry for your sandwiches, Papa,” Crystal said, feeling herself relax for the first time since the plane ride to St. Louis.

“Here, take a plate, and come this way. I want to show you something,” he said, walking toward a door on the other side of the kitchen. Crystal followed, and they descended the stairway into the basement. The room was finished in rich oak paneling with a large pool table in the center, and an assortment of black and white photos hung eye level on three of the exterior walls. On the east wall there was a mahogany desk and matching chair.

“I couldn’t tell you about this until now, Crystal. This is what we’ve all been working for the past year.” He pointed at a large easel near the knee-high windows on the west wall. It was covered with a large map of North and South America. Crystal walked up to it and ran her finger down a blue magic marker line that stretched from Vail, Colorado, to Guayaquil, Ecuador, and then downward to a circle in Uruguay, South America.

“What’s this, Papa?” she asked, pointing at the circle.

*

Later that day Crystal scooped up a box of forwarded mail at the Minturn post office and retreated to her red Mercedes. The thick veil of clouds that had brought snow the night before had lifted, and bright sunshine was streaming down on her car. She set the box on the passenger seat and scanned through the letters in the pile until she spotted what looked like another letter from her mother. She slid her thumbnail under the envelope flap and tore it open. Pulling out a single piece of stationery, she read the letter.

Dear Crystal,

I hope the time is near for you and I to reunite. I still fear Vinton, and hope I can trust you. I know you guys are close, but there are things you still don’t know. I don’t want to be the one to break these things to you, dear, especially not in a letter.

I know he has most likely done things to you, dear. Especially when you were young. He is a bad man and you are good. Don’t ever let him convince you otherwise.

I’m hoping we can meet one day soon.

Love, Mom

The mention of “bad things” set in motion a train of thoughts. As they whirled about in her mind, she let the letter drop into her lap and drifted into a distant memory. She saw Vinton Blackwell and his wife Diane. They were all eating breakfast together back in Oklahoma. She remembered having her long hair twisted into braids like her favorite character on television. She was excited to be going camping with her stepfather. Diane had loaded up one of her horse trailers and was going to compete in a horse show.

They’d set up the tent and gone for a hike together in the wooded slopes of northeastern Oklahoma ,near Tahlequah. She remembered how special she felt having Vinton all to herself. Later that night, after roasting hotdogs and marshmallows over a campfire, she’d watched him change as he emptied what was left of a bottle of booze. Vinton became quiet and sullen. They went to bed in their tiny tent and she remembered being scared of the noises she heard outside the tent.

She remembered how good it felt when he wrapped his arms around her from behind and held her close. She wasn’t scared anymore and didn’t care what kind of animals were out past the thin fabric walls of their Sears tent. All was good.

Then Vinton Blackwell did something no parent does.

Crystal was jerked sharply into the present. She found herself staring at the floor of the Mercedes and shouted, “No!” That cruel memory hadn’t visited her in so long. As she sat there, numbed by the realization, she paid no attention to the tears streaming from her eyes.