by Carly Bishop
Kiel had never seen anything quite like the silent drubbing doled out to Candelaria and Willetts. He hoped he never would again. He hadn’t understood what social pariahs this glitzy fickle town had made them into, but it was clear the high rollers and VIPs in this town believed she had murdered their most famous and infamous celebrity, and gotten away with it.
If Candelaria and Willetts had come thinking, or even hoping, that the fickle winds would have started blowing their way by now, they were terribly mistaken. All it took to seal their painfully short appearance was the bitchy behavior of Spyder’s spoiled and self-righteous daughter.
The whole incident left an indelible impression in Kiel’s mind. If they were in fact innocent of the murder, of covering it up and of killing Keller Trueblood, and Kiel was not convinced they were innocent, then they had been pretty badly persecuted. The impression in his mind as he sought out Robyn to go meet with Chloe Nielsen was that this was a piece, perhaps a major part, of the injustice he had been sent to set right.
CHLOE NIELSEN’S mystery man had turned up in Aspen four years before, bored with life in the small Nebraska town where he grew up and disappointed in the pedestrian New Age fare he found in Boulder. He drifted to Aspen looking for something more real. What he found was Crystal Star Rhapsody and her former chiropractor husband, Divine Light Rhapsody.
“You create your own reality” was their message, but after Curt Wilson coughed up every cent he had buying into their message and still got plowed into on his bike at the corner of Main and Third, he tossed out the notion he’d created that reality. Busted and broke, he had to take a job driving for Mellow Yellow. He’d taken what he thought was at least one step up since then to tend bar.
The liquor storeroom where they met was one floor below the grand ballroom of the hotel. The ceiling above them reverberated with the music. Shelves ten feet high lined every wall, and a dim, bare light bulb hung from the floor joists.
Chloe stood with her elbow resting lightly on a tube of paper towels she had found, trying not to touch anything. Disliking her condescending attitude as much as he had her behavior, Kiel sat on a crate of unpackaged wine, and Robyn stood beside the closed door. Curt sat straddling a shipment of pricey liqueurs.
He was an attractive-enough guy, but he was never going to amount to anything. If Chloe Nielsen hadn’t known that before she took up with him, she clearly knew it now. Her disdain for Curt was almost palpable; his resentment toward her just as thick. When her father was murdered and Chloe had no one left to rebel against, Robyn thought, she must have dropped Curt like a hot and essentially rancid potato.
He didn’t want to talk to Robyn, and even less to Kiel, but when Chloe made it clear he had no choice, he began to tell his story.
“After I got run down by that clown, I was in the hospital for three weeks. I hooked up with this physical therapist chick.”
“You were cheating on me,” Chloe put in, goading him. “Go on.”
He gave her a look that said die. “Yeah, I was cheating and, yeah, you were paying the bills. None of which has a damn thing to do with anything, Chloe, so shut the hell up or get the hell out of my face.”
Chloe closed her mouth and folded her arms over her exquisite cream jersey gown.
“Curt, what does this have to do with anything?” Robyn asked.
“Well, I wasn’t the only one cheating, see. This chick was having a fling with Chloe’s old man. So you see, we had this twisted little menage, a foursome, whatever. Me and Chloe, me and this chick, this chick and Chloe’s old man.” Curt looked from Robyn to Kiel and back. “I know what you’re thinking. If this chick had a thing going with the high and mighty Spyder Nielsen, why’d she shack up with me? Likewise, why’d I screw around on someone like Chloe?”
“People do things for a lot of different reasons, Curt,” Kiel said quietly. “Nobody’s judging you here.”
“Well, the truth is, this chick and I, we knew the score. There was no way we were ever going to be invited into the bosom of the family.
“But then, this chick turns up pregnant. She tries this number on old Spyder, but Chloe here blows the whole thing wide open, saying it’s probably my kid, anyway. Spyder and Chloe have this knockdown drag-out fatherdaughter fight, and meanwhile Trudi Candelaria coughs up five grand on the spot to buy off this chick.”
Robyn’s heart clinched. “Did she use it to get rid of the baby?”
“No. She would have never done that…. Her old man woulda gone nuts. But she got so drunk that night she fell and lost the baby, anyway.”
Robyn and Kiel exchanged glances. Someone’s father had a powerful motive to have murdered Spyder Nielsen and frame Trudi Candelaria.
“Did this girl have a name, Curt?” Kiel asked in the same quiet tone.
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat and shuddered. “Betsy Crandall.”
Chapter Twelve
“Oh, my God,” Robyn whispered. “Detective Ken Crandall’s daughter?”
“That’s the one.” He stood and slung a case of beer up to his hip. “See yourselves out. I gotta get back to work.”
“Curt, please,” Robyn said, jumping to her feet. “Didn’t you go to the police with this?”
He snorted. “Once. I showed my face in that county courthouse once. Guess what? Crandall walked me outside and offered to make me buzzard bait if I didn’t keep my mouth shut.”
“So why are you telling us now?”
He jerked his head toward Chloe. “Ask her. I’m out of here.”
After he’d gone, Chloe closed the door again in case anyone else should happen down to the cellar.
Robyn drew a deep breath, waiting for Chloe to talk. For a few moments she only paced, holding the skirt of her gown up off the floor.
“What’s up, Chloe? Did you know this stuff?”
She shook her head. “I never knew this Betsy’s last name.” Chloe even spoke the first name as if it made her physically ill. “You know, I despised my father. He threw me out and took me in and gave me things and took them away. I finally just wanted to deserve some of that treatment for once, so I took up with Curt and threw it in Spyder’s face every chance I got.”
“But you didn’t kill him,” Robyn said.
“No. I might have. I wished he’d die often enough, but I didn’t kill him. You know where I was.”
“In jail,” Kiel answered.
“Yeah. Driving under the influence. And you were right. Crandall was the one who nailed me. Spyder refused to bail me out. I never saw my father alive again.”
“Did Crandall already have reason to be picking on your family?”
“Other than being a prick, you mean?”
“Chloe, did Crandall know at the time he arrested you that your father had been hitting on his daughter?”
Still pacing, Chloe shook her head. “I don’t know. I didn’t put any of this together until I ran into Curt a year later. He spilled the whole thing, but of course, he wouldn’t come forward—and I really couldn’t make him do it. For all I knew, Crandall would kill him.”
“And now?”
She gave a bitter smile. “Now? Curt is ready to go home to Nebraska, anyway. This town finally does that to people who really can’t afford to live here. I still wish Trudi had done it and been convicted. But Crandall did this, and Spyder was my father. He can’t get away with it.”
KIEL SAT WATCHING while Robyn danced with Massie and Kline and then Massie again. She had looked forward to dancing again, to the sheer joy of moving with a modicum of grace, but her heart wasn’t in it. Curt Wilson’s tale had all but ruined the party for her.
Kiel cut into Massie’s third dance with her. “You should try to enjoy yourself a little, Robyn. Cut loose, you know?”
“I do. And I know it’s too late to really do anything about Crandall tonight, but I can’t stop thinking about it. Do you think it’s possible he killed Spyder Nielsen?”
Kiel led Robyn more toward the center of the dance floor where
people standing around were less likely to hear them. “If what Curt told us was true, Crandall had a powerful motive. But the missing piece is that we don’t know if Betsy Crandall told her father anything, or even if she told him who was the father of her baby.”
“We have to talk to Crandall tomorrow, Kiel.”
“Or take what we know to the chief of police.”
She didn’t argue, for once. He didn’t trust her silence but he let it go. The band segued into a set of oldies. Something in the way she moves… Kiel pulled her closer. His hand settled in the small of her back. The music, the scent of her hair, the feel of her, the warmth between them seeped into him.
It had occurred to him when he heard Curt Wilson’s story that they had come very near now to resolving the murder of Spyder Nielsen, so near that his time with Robyn might be very short.
It was clear to both of them that Detective Ken Crandall was dirty, one way or another. That he had either murdered Spyder Nielsen himself, and as his retribution against Trudi, made her the chief suspect in the largely circumstantial case—or else he had hired the dirty work to be done, and again, let Trudi take the fall.
What wasn’t clear to Kiel, and had never been, was whether or not his mission was in fact one to avenge his own death. Keller Trueblood’s death. Neither he nor Robyn believed Trudi Candelaria or Stuart Willetts capable of instigating Keller’s death. Perhaps that crime was Crandall’s, as well. But Kiel had never been able to discern an aura of evil intent surrounding his own death.
He would have given anything to be able to share these doubts with Robyn. It wasn’t so much that he thought her mortal insight might prove more telling than his own, given his angelic prowess, but talking things over with her made him ask different questions.
These were not thoughts he could reveal to Robyn, but he knew that uncovering Crandall’s involvement came very close to cracking the case, and if that were true, Kiel’s time with her was nearly spent.
He would never dance with her again. He wanted to give her something to remember him by, and so he cloaked her in an enchanted space. For a time, no one existed in that ballroom but the two of them.
“Something in the Way She Moves” segued into “Country Road” into “You’ve Got a Friend,” then into “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight.” Every song was theirs, every sentiment, but the set came to an end.
The glittering ball overhead cast sparkles around the ballroom, but none so bright as the sparkle in Robyn’s eyes. When the music began again, a vibrant, pounding Latin beat, Kiel danced the tango with her like no one had since Pacino in Scent of a Woman.
The floor cleared and the crowd watched, dazzled by them. His spell had created a sliver in time in which Robyn Delaney Trueblood, the soulmate of a man now an angel, was more fully alive, more herself, more heightened and vital and uninhibited than she had ever been in her entire buttoned-down life.
When the Latin music ended, and she clapped for herself, her friends gathered round and added their congratulations. Kiel stood back a moment and let them crowd around her, let them welcome her with their hugs back to the land of the fully living.
He ached with deep pleasure for her. He wanted to hold her, but they were her friends who would remain when he must go. He couldn’t prevent himself from moving in again to claim her, anyway. Talking animatedly, Lucy tried to ease Robyn outside her circle of friends. Kiel put his arm possessively around Robyn’s shoulders and stood firm.
Lucy grew annoyed. “Dear God, Mr. Alighieri! One would think you’d single-handedly reinvented Robyn. Let her go.”
Turned into Kiel, touching his chest, Robyn cajoled her friend. “Don’t be silly, Lucy. Kiel is only—“
“Only what?”
“Showing me a good time, Lucy!” The music resumed, but no one around them moved. Massie and Kline exchanged looks. Jessie could only stare dumbfounded at Lucinda’s sudden, inexplicable tantrum. “I don’t understand what you’re getting so upset about!”
“He rarely lets you out of his sight,” she snapped. “He controls your every waking moment. He behaves as if you’re able to dance again solely because of him. I’ve quite had it up to my gills.”
“Gills?” Kiel knew discretion, and he should have used it, but she’d goaded him one too many times. He was done pulling the punches where Lucinda Montbank was concerned. “An apt description.”
“Kiel, don’t,” Robyn cried softly. “It’s not worth it!”
“Res ipsa loquitur, Robyn,” he said, eyes clashing with Lucy’s. “If a thing has gills, it must…“
But in the same instant, in the way he had of dividing his consciousness, he sensed the color draining from Robyn’s face, all the pleasure emptying from her body. She pulled away and turned on him. “What did you say?”
Res ipsa loquitur. An odd term Keller had used. Often. He looked at her stricken face, at her breasts heaving, at the pulse pounding in the thin, delicate column of her neck, and he knew what the slip had cost him. What it had cost her.
Heat streaked down his belly. He tried to cover the mistake. “’the thing speaks for itself’…. Gills and illtempered creatures—“
“That’s not what you said. You said—” Res ipsa loquitur.
He heard it as surely as if she had uttered the words only Keller would have said. “Robyn—“
“Keller. You are Keller, aren’t you? That’s your real name, isn’t it? Not Kiel!” Her heart slammed and her head throbbed. Her friends were looking at her as if she’d lost her mind, when the truth was she’d just found it. She thumped his chest. “Aren’t you? You’ve been lying to me…you said angels couldn’t lie. You said, oh God, I can’t even believe this. You—“
Massie moved in from behind her, and Jessie, who interrupted her and took hold of her arm and tried to reason with her. “Robyn, sweetie, no! What are you talking about? This is Kiel—“
She jerked her arm away from Jessie. Reason told her the truth no one else could guess. “Don’t tell me this isn’t Keller, Jessie…can’t you see it, don’t you see?”
Her whole world seemed to collapse and go silent. The music continued, but she stopped hearing it. The air never stirred. She was making a spectacle, but she couldn’t stop herself. Kiel’s eyes were-shuttered, his face closed to her. “Don’t you see that’s why I went to bed with him, because I sure as hell wasn’t—“
“Oh, for God’s sake, look what you’ve done now,” Lucy railed angrily. “You’ve pushed her right over the edge, babbling about going to bed with you in public. Are you satisfied? Now will you finally leave her alone?”
“Leave me?” Robyn cried, despising the hysteria climbing in her own voice. “Leave me? He’s already done that, and come back pretending—no, lying—“
“Robyn, stop,” Kiel commanded, stepping forward, slowing time so that everyone and everything around them in the grand ballroom of the fanciest hotel in Aspen all but stopped. The music persisted in a constant, nerve-racking hum, every note drawn painfully long.
She looked around her at the frozen expressions of confusion and pity plastered on the faces of her friends who believed she’d snapped.
A deadly calm rose in her when she looked at Keller in the disguise of Kiel. A furious and deadly calm. “How could you? How could you do this to me? How could you lie? Keller never lied to me.”
“Robyn, you needed me.”
“I needed Keller.”
“I knew that.”
She backed up. “I made love to my husband.”
He stepped forward. “I am your husband.”
The throb in her head darted clear to her bare, chilled shoulder. “You lied to me, Kiel.”
“Robyn, it’s not so simple.”
“Keller believed the truth is simple.”
“I believed that.” He hung his head. He jerked loose the white tie around his neck. “This wasn’t so simple. Do you think for one minute that I wanted to hurt you?”
“Do you think it matters at all to me what you wa
nted? What should I think?” she cried. “Should I believe you could possibly have thought so little of me? Or should I just accept that in heaven they think every mere mortal must be too simpleminded to guess the truth. Is that it?”
“No. There is no—“
“And even when I knew, even when I said that if they could send me an Avenging Angel, surely they could have sent back my Keller, that maybe you were Keller, even then you stood there and let me believe I was losing my mind. What am I supposed to think, Kiel? Or is it Keller? Kiel. You tell me.”
He lowered his head. The terrible silence mocked him, the still-frozen faces of her friends, his friends, shamed him. He had denied her time and time again so he would never be confronted with her loss or this anger.
He had never felt so heavy, so laden, so much less a being not subject to gravity and space and time. He had to get out of here, had to get her away from here.
He stilled her with his angel tricks and touched her so that together they could be transported away, and then he sealed the rift in the continuum of time on earth and moved with her in the blink of an eye back to her suite at the bed and breakfast. He thought it, and a fire to warm her began to blaze in the hearth.
She blinked and looked around the now familiar surroundings. Clamping her mouth shut, she turned away from him. The irony clawed at her heart. Heaven had sent her Keller and tried to make her believe he was not.
She swallowed her tears. “Why, Kell?”
“You needed me, Robyn, but no one wanted to see you go through losing me twice in one lifetime.” He stripped out of the tux coat and slumped into the easy chair behind her. “Seemed like a good idea at the time. Seems monumentally wrong now—but…that’s not true. I knew it was wrong a long time ago.”
She sank down on the hearth to the fire. The supple fabric of her sparkling blue dress gave easily enough. In another life, another time, no matter that neatness had never been her strong suit, she would never have risked so expensive a dress so close to the fire, or on a hearth where soot could so easily spoil the gown.
