She ran her finger along the edge of the parapet. “It looks clean.”
He agreed. There were no obvious physical indications that a killer had rappelled down the building, but he wasn’t going to give up on the idea until he tried it himself. Precious few clues had presented themselves, and he didn’t want to miss any opportunity to investigate.
Dropping to his knees, he prepared the equipment. The sadness he felt about his uncle’s death was turning into something more complicated. Nick found it nearly impossible to believe that Samuel had taken his own life. He enjoyed living too much, playing games and surprising people. And the cryptic “I’m sorry” suicide note wasn’t like him. Samuel had no regrets. He did what he wanted and damned the consequences. His lifestyle might drive other people—like Julia and Marian—to desperate acts, but Samuel was pretty much immune.
When he had the ropes prepared, he secured the grappling hooks with Kelly’s assistance. On the off chance that he slipped, he was confident that she could use the belaying ropes to get him back up to the roof. She passed him the helmet. “Put this on.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I take safety very seriously.”
He peered over the edge. “We’re well over a hundred feet high. If I fall, a helmet isn’t going to save me.”
“Don’t make me give you a lecture about how you could lose your grip and slam into the building and knock yourself out. Or you could bump your head against a ledge. Or you—”
“Fine, I’ll wear the helmet.” He plunked it on his head and fastened the chinstrap. “Anything else?”
“Your shoes aren’t great for climbing. The soles are too thick. And the ropes are going to ruin that nice tweed jacket. I’d give you mine, but there’s no way it’d fit.”
He slipped off his sports coat and adjusted the ropes. “You’re kind of a pain in the rear.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m a drag.” She handed him the climbing gloves. “But I’ve never had a serious injury while rock climbing.”
Ready to make the descent, he gazed into her eyes. Standing in the morning sunlight with the wind in her hair, she was everything he wanted in a woman. Without thinking of the consequences, he leaned down and stole a quick kiss. “Wish me luck.”
“Wish I was the one climbing down,” she said. “Good luck.”
Using the ropes, he walked backward down the building. His shoes, as Kelly had pointed out, weren’t the best for traction, but he didn’t slip. As he passed the window to his own office, directly above Samuel’s, he peeked in. Though his office was smaller, the layout was exactly the same as Samuel’s. There was a large window on this side and a smaller on the other. Instead of a square room, the office was a pentagon shape with the closet door on the corner wall at a slant facing the slanted wall with the entry door.
The wind at this height was more aggressive than on the ground. His cotton shirt was virtually no protection against the chill, but his physical exertion was enough to keep him warm. Outside his uncle’s window, he inspected the bricks and ledges, looking for a device that might have been used to gain access.
Kelly called down to him. “How’s it going?”
“I’m good. If I had enough rope, I’d climb all the way down to the ground.”
“Finding anything?”
“No luck. I’m coming back up.”
Another dead end.
* * *
WATCHING NICK CLIMB back up, Kelly felt her heart racing—not that she was worried about his safety. He knew what he was doing, and they’d set the gear to avoid mishaps. It was his casual kiss that sent her pulse into high gear.
His kiss had been natural and friendly, and she hoped with all her heart that it signaled a better direction for their relationship. She wanted to get over last night.
As she helped him over the parapet and onto the roof, she wanted another fast embrace as a reassurance that everything between them was fine. But her cell phone was ringing.
She took it out of her jacket pocket. Even though she didn’t recognize the number on caller ID, she needed to answer. She was on call for several pregnant women who could go into labor at any time. She answered.
“Damn it, Kelly. What the hell is wrong with you?”
She didn’t recognize the caller. “Who’s this?”
“Your husband.”
Her first instinct was to throw the phone off the edge of the building, but she was smarter now. She wouldn’t let him hurt her. “You’re my ex-husband, Ted, and I have nothing to say to you. Don’t call me again.”
She disconnected the call and turned back toward Nick. He’d already peeled off the helmet and was raking his fingers through his thick black hair. Looking at him, she couldn’t remember what she’d ever seen in Ted, the pretty boy.
“Who was it?” Nick asked.
“The scumbag I used to be married to.”
“Are you okay?”
She’d promised him honesty, and she searched her emotions for a truthful answer. “I had a flash of anger. I mean, who does he think he is? He has no right to bother me. I don’t care about him anymore.”
Her rage wasn’t completely gone, but it was minor, no more than a hangnail. Her hands weren’t shaking. Tears weren’t rising up behind her eyelids. She’d gotten to a point where she simply didn’t care. She was ready to forget the past. And that was the truth.
Chapter Twelve
Wednesday, 12:45 p.m.
In Nick’s SUV riding toward Denver, Kelly fired up her cell phone and got busy. She needed to make sure that her trip to Denver didn’t cause undue problems for any of her clients. Being a midwife wasn’t a regular job with regular hours. She might go days without seeing a single client, but when the call came and the client was in labor, she was there for the duration.
First, she checked in with Serena, who had already bestowed her wholehearted approval to the plan for Kelly to stay at Nick’s condo. Serena reported no major problems at the Bellows farm, just the usual loveable madness with Fifi and the kids. Then, Kelly chatted with the two women who seemed most likely to go into labor within the next twenty-four hours.
She snapped her cell phone closed. “How quickly can we get back to Valiant?”
“On the highway, it’ll take less than forty-five minutes,” Nick said. “Are you expecting an emergency?”
“Daisy—the woman in our Lamaze class who is organic all the way—might go into labor real soon. Her water hasn’t broken, but there are other symptoms.”
“What happens if you’re not there?”
“If the baby wants to come, that’s what happens. Ready or not. If necessary, Serena can fill in for me.” There was another midwife that Serena could contact if both she and Kelly were tied up, but that woman lived more than an hour away. “Let’s just say that I’d like to be there for Daisy when she calls.”
“We won’t be in Denver for more than a couple of hours,” he promised. “I’m not sure what I’ll find at Radcliff’s office, but I want to see the place. And I also wanted to stop by my ex-wife’s house and talk to my daughters. They’re kind of upset about Samuel’s death.”
“Is he the first of their relatives to die?”
“He’s the first person they knew personally.” He massaged his jaw, thinking. “This is hard. How am I going to explain to them about suicide? They’re just kids.”
But she knew he couldn’t avoid the topic. Between the media reports and well-meaning friends, the word would certainly be spoken. “It’s better if they hear about suicide from you. And also about the possibility of murder.”
“I hadn’t even thought about explaining a murder. These kids ask a hundred questions when a leaf falls from a branch. Why, why, why, why? I don’t know what to tell them.”
“A really smart guy told me to be honest,” she said. “That’s all you can do. You might explain what happens to a person’s body when they die.”
“Really?”
“I was always interested in the biology, but I suppose that�
��s obvious since I grew up to be a nurse.”
“What else? How can I talk about Samuel killing himself?”
“When you don’t know the answer, that’s what you say.” She didn’t envy him that conversation. “Where do you stand on Heaven?”
“I’m for it.”
“Then that’s where their great-uncle Samuel has gone.”
Meeting his children also meant meeting his ex-wife. Nick hadn’t said a negative word about her, and that made Kelly curious. After her experience, it was hard to imagine such a civilized end to a marriage. “You’ll do fine with your kids. It sounds like you have a good relationship.”
“I wish I could be with them more often. Breckenridge is too far from Denver for them to see me every weekend, plus they have activities that keep them in town. Still, we get together at least a couple of times a month. In the summer and over Christmas vacation, they stay with me for an extended time.”
A note of sadness in his voice told her that he wasn’t overjoyed. “You’re okay with the arrangement?”
“To be honest, I’d like to have my girls with me 24/7, but I want what’s best for them. They like Denver, and their mom provides a more stable home environment than I could, because I have to take off on building projects and be on-site.”
“When was the last time they saw Samuel?”
“Last Thanksgiving we had a big get-together in Valiant. Some Spencer cousins flew in from the East Coast and all of Lauren’s family, even Julia’s two adult children were there. Samuel took my daughters aside.”
“Did he usually pay attention to the kids?”
“Not so much.” The tension in his jaw relaxed as he smiled. “I remember him sitting with them in front of the fireplace and telling them stories about the heroic gold miners and the Valiant mine. He was a good storyteller. I’m glad they had that time together.”
“They’ll have good memories.”
“I hope so.”
They rode in companionable silence, watching as the skyline of downtown Denver came into sharper focus, and her mind drifted. She’d lived twelve years in the city before her divorce, and she missed the urban atmosphere. Though she liked to think of herself as someone who appreciated museums, culture and live entertainment, the truth was that she missed shopping in stores where she could find anything she wanted, from antique salt-and-pepper shakers to thermal underwear. And she missed the variety of restaurants. At the thought of food, her stomach growled.
“It hasn’t been that long since breakfast,” she said, “but my belly is thinking lunch.”
“Radcliff’s office is in lower downtown. We’ll park and grab something to eat.”
“Not a hot dog,” she said quickly. “I can get a hot dog anywhere. There used to be a Greek place on Blake Street.”
“We’ll get you a pita.”
They parked in a lot near Union Station and went to the corner where she’d remembered the restaurant. It had been replaced by a gourmet taco stand. She ordered two soft tacos—one with salmon, and the other with jalapeño and cream cheese. He got teriyaki beef, ground beef and a beef-and-potato combo.
They found a seat on a bench on the opposite side of the street from BR Drilling, Radcliff’s local office. They’d learned that his main headquarters were in Reno, and this storefront office sandwiched between two Realtors had a minimal crew. As she dug into her salmon taco, trying not to dribble sauce down the front of her red-and-tan jacket, she peered through the steady stream of traffic at the front window. “What are you hoping to find?”
In one bite, he consumed half of his beef-and-potato taco. “There was something that drew my uncle to this place, someone who introduced him to Radcliff. I want to get inside Samuel’s head, to figure out what he was thinking.”
“Why would your uncle be interested in BR Drilling?”
“They’re in the business of oil leasing and development. If Samuel was doing something in the mountains, he might have crossed Radcliff’s path.”
“But if he was developing a project in the mountains, wouldn’t he contact you?”
“You’d think so, but he liked to come up with surprises.”
She wondered if Nick was hurt by not being included in his uncle’s plans. In many ways, he and Samuel were similar, but Nick was more grounded in reality. He had a family and loved his kids while Samuel had never been able to settle down, not even with Julia, his long-term lover.
The sun shone full on her face as she nibbled her taco. It was a beautiful day in Denver. “I like this part of town.”
“So do I. A lot of these buildings are renovations, and they’ve tried to keep the character of original downtown Denver.” He waved his second taco toward the building crane looming over the skyline. “The city is changing. Colorado is changing.”
“Growing,” she said. “That’s good.”
“Not always. Samuel didn’t think change was always good. He liked the past, the romance of the past.”
After they finished their tacos, they crossed the street. In the Realtor’s office next door to BR Drilling, Nick paused to study the photographs of mountain property for sale. He paid particular attention to an open field behind a barbed-wire fence with a jagged rock formation in the background.
“I know this area,” he said. “It’s not far from the original Valiant gold mine.”
“Does your family own the land in that area?”
“We own several acres around the mine and the road leading to it. I’m not sure how much. I’d have to look it up.”
She followed him into the Realtor’s office, where a smiling young woman informed him that other people were interested in the property near the Valiant mine. She wouldn’t give him names, but when Nick guessed Barry Radcliff, she reacted.
They didn’t enter the BR Drilling offices. Nick didn’t want Radcliff to know that he’d been poking around, and it was almost time to see his kids. Nick had timed his visit for the two-hour window between when his daughters got home from school and when his ex-wife’s husband was off work.
They hadn’t learned much by stopping at BR Drilling, and Kelly had already figured out that the primary reason Nick had wanted to come to Denver was to see his kids and soften the blow of their great-uncle’s death. She appreciated his sensitivity. A lot of people dismissed the feelings of children in a family tragedy, thinking that kids didn’t need to understand death and dying. A difficult issue—she wasn’t sure how she felt. The death of her child in a miscarriage had nearly destroyed her.
She braced herself to meet Nick’s former wife, Wendy. Her home was a stately two-story in the Cherry Creek area. It was still too early in spring for the grass to be green, but the trees were beginning to bud and tiny shoots poked through the manicured flower beds on either side of the entrance.
Wendy opened the door for them. She was, of course, stunning. In spite of the easygoing style of her chestnut-brown hair and her casual jeans and sweater, she had an aura of polish and elegance. Kelly knew enough about clothing to recognize a designer’s touch. Wendy’s eyes were as blue as Nick’s, but not welcoming. This was a woman who knew how to keep her distance.
She showed them into the gracious, marble-floored foyer of her home. After greeting Kelly and offering a perfunctory condolence to Nick, she said, “This situation with Samuel has gotten so ugly. A reporter contacted me for a statement.”
“What did you say?”
“I referred him to my attorney. Don’t worry. I won’t get involved. Have the police completed their investigation?”
“Not yet.” He looked toward the staircase. “Are the kids upstairs?”
“Please talk to them. I haven’t known what to say.”
He needed no further prompting. Nick took the stairs two at a time. A few seconds later, Kelly heard him being greeted with delighted squeals from his daughters. It was easy to imagine Nick enfolding the two girls in his arms.
“I’ve always thought it was important,” Wendy said, “for the children to k
now as much as possible about their father and his family. The Spencers are an integral part of Colorado history.”
Her poise was impressive. If she harbored any hostility toward Nick, she kept it well hidden. “You have a good attitude.”
“I hate messy divorces, don’t you?”
“You have no idea,” Kelly said.
“Can I offer you a cup of coffee? Or a snack?”
“I just had lunch.” And she had a dribble of taco sauce on her blouse to prove it. “But I’d love coffee, if it’s no bother.”
In the huge kitchen with state-of-the-art appliances, Wendy prepared two coffees using a single-cup coffeemaker. She carried the mugs to a marble-topped table in a sunlit breakfast nook. Everything about this house was organized and beautiful.
“You have a lovely home,” Kelly said.
“When my husband and I bought it, the house needed a tremendous amount of renovation. Nick helped with the designs and lining up workmen. He was very useful.”
And how did the new husband feel about that? It was none of Kelly’s business, and she didn’t ask.
“I’d hate to pry,” Wendy said as she sipped her coffee, “but I simply have to ask. Are you and Nick dating?”
“I only met him a few days ago.”
Kelly launched into the story about her Lamaze class and her mistaken impression that Nick and Lauren were a couple. “Lauren set me straight.”
“I’ll bet she did. She’s a very forceful woman.”
“Then Nick took me to the ninth floor to see the gold.” Until this point, Kelly’s narrative had been light and frothy as a cappuccino. She sounded the negative note. “That’s when we found Samuel.”
Apparently, Wendy was still interested because she asked about the locked room and how they tried to save the old man’s life. When the story was done, she reached over and patted Kelly’s hand. “Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”
“Go right ahead.”
“I heard that you’re Ted Maxwell’s ex-wife. What can you tell me about him?”
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