“That’s why I’m here today, Clovis. There are things I need to find out before I can tell you more. You’ll have to trust me on that. But for now, be careful around those four.”
Clovis didn’t seem surprised. “So not just Paul and Zoey. You’re concerned about the others.”
“Alex and Maddy are a little off too,” Anna said, making a rocking motion with one hand. “Don’t you think?”
“More than a little. I hate being alone around them. They’re always watching me.”
“Clovis, that’s what Russell said. He was being watched.”
“I haven’t forgotten.” She looked down at her nails and then over to Liz as she took a seat at the end of the table and began to arrange her stacks of books into new, more meaningful stacks.
“That brings me to what I wanted to ask you,” Anna said, waiting until Clovis looked back at her. “Forgive me for being so blunt, but are Maddy and Alex having an affair?”
Clovis leaned back in her seat. Her face puckered up as though she were about to launch into a verbal pummeling that would once and for all set Anna straight.
Anna braced herself.
“My goodness,” Clovis said. “Of course they are. They have been for at least the past month.” Her face opened up and she hooted with laughter. “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment. “But you look so worried, and the fact is, we’re all aware of what’s going on between those two. All of us except maybe Paul.” She laughed again. Anna couldn’t see the humor in adultery—or in a husband unimaginably blind to his cheating wife. She waited for Clovis to regain her composure before continuing.
“That’s what Zoey meant when she said Paul didn’t grasp the obvious,” Anna said. “After my talk at Alex’s house.”
“I don’t remember that, but I’m sure that’s what she meant. There have been many comments along those lines at our meetings. Why Paul doesn’t see it . . .”
“Have you considered that maybe he does?”
“If he does, he refuses to do anything about it.” Clovis stood, picked up her can, and took another gulp. “I’d better get to work or I’ll be here all day. Let me know if you need anything.” She exited the library, her heels echoing in the empty hall.
“That was interesting,” Liz said, pushing three books Anna’s way.
“One minute I like her and the other I don’t,” Anna said. “What are these?”
“Three Colorado history books with chapters on Emerson Sadler and his riches. I’ve got more here.” She laid her hands on two stacks of books.
“You really were organizing,” Anna said. She took up the first book and examined the spine. “The Men Who Made Colorado. I wonder if Russell found any of these useful,” she said, opening to the contents page. She ran a finger down the page, coming to a stop at “Emerson Sadler’s Golden Opportunity,” the title for chapter 12. “Let’s crack this,” she said, turning to the chapter.
Fifteen minutes later she had learned little more about Emerson Sadler than she already knew. Esther was right—honey made his fortune. He reveled in what the book called “high society,” especially of the Denver variety, and spent a great deal of money on his house, going so far as to import chandeliers from England and, as his fortune waned, hire an Italian craftsman to create a spectacular stained-glass window that no one approaching the house from the street could even see. What would such a man do to preserve what was left of his fortune?
“Liz, would you take a high-resolution photo of that stained-glass window we passed?” Anna asked, flipping the book’s pages.
“Sure.” She tapped the pages of the book before her. “This says Sadler never married but was rumored to be in love with a woman who worked for him.”
Anna looked up. “What’s the date of that book?”
Liz turned to the copyright page. “Nineteen eighty-six.”
“Does it say who the woman was?”
“No, but Sadler had a house and honey-farm work force of twelve at the time this was written. And there are photos of the honey farm.” She slid the book across the table.
Anna eagerly searched the black-and-white photos of the farm and its hives. The only employees in them were mere dots in the background, except for one shot of a man scraping wax and honey from a frame. In fact, there wasn’t a single woman in any of the photographs. Jennifer Toller might not have been an employee, not technically, but the book’s comment about Sadler’s love for an employee jibed with Esther’s memory of his fondness for Jennifer. It had to be her.
“A photo of the great man himself,” Liz said, sliding another book Anna’s way. “Kind of an old guy to have a thing for a young woman.”
Standing proudly by one of his hives was Emerson Sadler, dressed in jeans and a dark shirt and sporting a beard and an oversized moustache with long, walrus-tusk ends—the kind that trapped bits of food and had to be combed out now and then like a shaggy dog’s fur. “This photo was taken in 1982, so Sadler would have been about sixty-four.”
“Yeah, old.”
“Not according to him, I’m sure.”
“Jennifer would have been thirty. Maybe Sadler had her killed when she rejected his advances.”
“And ritually sacrificed?” Anna said, rising to her feet. “I hear a car.” Keeping out of sight by pressing close to the bookcases, she made her way to the library’s front window and peered outside.
Alex stepped out of a white Honda, opened the rear door, and waited, his fingers drumming impatiently on the car’s roof. A moment later Zoey exited the car from the passenger side and walked to the open door. She dipped her head inside the car and backed out, holding a large pumpkin. It hung heavy in her arms, and she walked swiftly in the direction of the front steps, trying to make her destination before it slipped from her hands and tumbled to the concrete. Alex shut the car door, staring after her but not making the slightest move to help.
“Why would Zoey decorate this empty house for Halloween?” Anna said, glancing back at Liz.
Lost in a book, Liz shrugged. “A lot of people do that,” she said absentmindedly.
“After cancelling her own Halloween party?”
“I’m glad she did.”
A red hatchback pulled slowly alongside Alex’s Honda. “Oh, cripes, it’s Maddy,” Anna said. “She’s going to see our cars here and want to talk.”
“She’s never seen my car.”
“She’s getting out . . . and now she’s slinking up to Alex.”
Liz groaned, slammed her book shut, and pushed away from the table. “I’m going to take some shots of the stained glass before they make their way up here,” she said.
“Good idea,” Anna said, her attention absorbed by the scene playing out before her on the driveway. When it came to their affair, Maddy and Alex had lost all timidity. Locked in an embrace, their arms grappled. Alex’s mouth swooped and dove, fastening itself onto Maddy’s face before grinding then retracting. A second later it swooped, dove, and fastened again.
“OK, that’s enough,” Anna said as she retreated from the window. There was nothing appealing or even sexual in their embrace. They were eating more than kissing. One insect devouring the head of another after an encounter. She shivered involuntarily.
At the table she grabbed one book after another, quickly checking their titles and flipping through them for photographs or anything jammed between their pages. Those with no Sadler photos or stories she pushed to the other end of the table. They would go back into the crates. The promising books she would pack into her Jimmy. Somehow—because she wasn’t going to stay here one minute more than necessary—she’d talk Clovis into letting her take them home.
Anna made quick work of the sorting, and after returning from the stained-glass room, Liz helped her load the unneeded books into the crates.
“I took a shot of the stained glass as a whole and then in six sections,” Liz said, dropping the last of the books into the crates. “I didn’t realize how detailed that glass is until I tried to get a
close-up of it.”
“I wonder if it has a story to tell,” Anna said, examining the remaining eight books on the table. “Like these books, I hope.” She wiped dust from her hands onto her jeans and took a last look around the library. “I’m going to run upstairs and tell Clovis we’re leaving—with the books.”
Anna set out for the stairs on the opposite side of the entryway, praying Maddy and Alex would stay outside or drive off together, someplace far away. She hadn’t heard Zoey since seeing her with the pumpkin, but surely she’d found a spot for it by now. Would Alex drive her home?
She jogged up the steps, coming to a stop on the landing. This was where she’d seen Alex do his candy dance, in the room directly to her left. She darted a quick look to her right then ducked into the room. There was nothing extraordinary about it, other than it needed extensive repair work. Water stains spotted the plaster ceiling, and flowery paper drooped from the walls, revealing yet more paper, more discolored and unattractive flowers. Someone had brushed a coat of white paint on the window frames and sills, probably in an effort to freshen the room, but they’d only succeeded in making the room look sadder and more like an empty warehouse.
Movement in the distance along the flagstone path caught Anna’s eye. An olive-colored jacket, a clump of gray where the neck should be—it was Zoey. A moment later the jacket passed through the trees and vanished from sight. Clovis would have to wait.
Anna sped down the stairs and out the back door, racing as she hit the flagstones but slowing when she neared the trees. She crept along the walkway as she made her way through the grove, her eyes seeking a flash of olive green. Smashed pumpkins still littered the field beyond the trees, and it looked like some of the larger pieces had been kicked like soccer balls at the hives.
Anna saw green and stopped. Zoey was crouching by a hive, running a finger along the wood near the top, under the lip. The crime tape was gone, but Anna was almost certain it was the hive with the reddish smudge. Zoey bent close, sniffed the hive, then stood. Anna moved forward and Zoey gasped, wheeling back.
“What the hell, Anna? You’re sneaking up on me now?” Her stance was wide, her fists curled. She was ready for a fight.
“I saw you from the house,” Anna said, knowing very well that wasn’t an answer. She decided to placate Zoey by throwing her an information bone. “Did you know police think there are two murderers in Elk Park?”
Zoey relaxed. “Yeah, I heard.”
“That’s right. I forgot you have a contact too.”
“Contacts. Plural.”
“How many?”
“More than one. Plural.”
“One of whom you used to inform Paul Gilmartin that I was looking into his family history?”
Zoey’s face registered surprise, which she immediately set about disguising. “Look, there are all sorts of people saying all sorts of things right now, especially in a gossip swamp like the Municipal Building.”
“I didn’t say anything about a contact in the Municipal Building.”
“Where else would a contact be?” Zoey smiled at what she imagined to be her game point.
Anna glared. “Don’t do it again, Zoey. You put me in a very bad position. I know you like trying to shake Paul up and put him on edge, hoping he’ll crack, but don’t involve me. Not ever again. He’s a dangerous man.”
Zoey tossed her short dark hair. “Like I’m unaware of that after what he did to my father.”
“Why don’t you go back to North Cliff and drop this revenge thing? Go live your life. Don’t you have thousands of acres up there?”
“With turbines next door, churning day and night.” Zoey focused once more on the hive. “Go away, Anna.”
Anna started to leave but spun back for what she hoped would be a final, biting word. “And stop sniffing the hive. That’s not blood.”
Zoey drew a sharp breath. “It’s some kind of paint, isn’t it? How do you know?” She threw a hand up, begging Anna to stay. “You have to tell me.”
Somehow that simple gesture placed in doubt everything Anna had come to believe about Zoey. Everything Zoey had wanted Anna to believe. “Where’s your car?” she asked.
“Parked at the Harvest Festival. Why?”
“I’ll give you a lift. We need to talk.”
15
On a quiet stretch of Elk River Road, Anna waved Liz’s SUV around her, pulled the Jimmy to the curb, and shut off the ignition. “I keep running into Maddy and Alex downtown, so let’s talk here.”
“That’s fine with me.” Zoey shifted sideways in her seat. Her voice was firm but no longer belligerent, and her annoyed-with-the-world expression had softened.
“Why did you think the smudge on the hive was paint?” Anna asked.
Zoey opened her mouth but Anna interrupted her before she could speak. “And tell me the truth, Zoey. People’s lives are in danger. Including Esther’s.”
“Two people are already dead.”
“I realize that. The red smudge?”
“A murder took place in Elk Park in 1983. A woman—”
“Jennifer Toller.” Halloween, and whatever was brewing with it, was less than twenty-four hours away. The time for Anna to hold her cards close to the vest had ended.
“What do you know about her death?” The urgency had returned to Zoey’s voice.
“I know paint was used. But how do you know that?”
“Same way you do. Contacts.”
“Why are you interested in her?”
“If you know about her murder, then you know whoever killed Russell was copying it. And I think Russell was murdered by someone in the historical society.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Are you kidding?”
Anna stared out the windshield onto Elk River Road and the smattering of houses along it. The road dipped just ahead, then rose again farther on as it neared downtown. Zoey knew far more than Anna had suspected, and either she was opening up now or she was drawing Anna in, setting her up. “Have you told the police what you think?”
“No, have you?”
Anna ignored the question, her eyes on an autumn leaf spiraling to the hood of her Jimmy. There was no sense in talking to the police. They knew the person responsible for Russell Thurman’s murder had worked to make his crime scene echo Jennifer’s. “I don’t understand how this fits in with your wanting to destroy Maddy and Paul.”
“They’re evil.”
Anna jerked her head around.
“That’s right, go ahead and laugh, but they’re sick. Alex is too.”
“I’m not laughing, Zoey. I’m just surprised you and I came to the same conclusion.”
“Maddy, Paul, Alex. I’m not sure about Clovis yet.”
“I don’t think Clovis is—”
“Don’t be taken in by these people. Clovis let them join the society.”
“That’s because she and Russell thought their money would help restore the Morgan-Sadler House. I still don’t get how Jennifer Toller is going to help you ruin the Gilmartins.”
Zoey became serious, her voice dropping in volume a notch though no one was in sight of the Jimmy. “I might not be able to prove the wind-farm deal was a scam, but I can put a few reputations on the well-deserved chopping block. Alex is running for county commissioner, and he’s president of a group involved somehow in a Jennifer Toller copycat murder, right? Plus, he’s an astral freak. And Paul and Maddy are members of the same group and they’re into demons. I’d bet anything Paul has political ambitions.”
Paul’s real identity should have been number one in Zoey’s arsenal, but she hadn’t mentioned it. Either she didn’t know Paul was Raymond Toller or she wasn’t prepared to let Anna know. “So without a lot of proof, you’re just going to throw reputation bombs?”
“You’ve gotten to know these people a little. Do you honestly think I’m off target?”
No, I don’t. Anna still wanted to throttle Alex for dragging Jazmin into his world—for talki
ng to her at all, in fact. She suddenly remembered what Zoey had said at the Harvest Festival about wanting to destroy the turbines by setting dynamite charges here and there, all around them. That was what she was doing. She didn’t have a master plan because she had no proof that the Gilmartins’ wind-farm deal was illegal. Her only option was to hurl sticks of dynamite everywhere she could—at Maddy and Paul, at Alex, at the Elk Valley Historical Society—hoping a couple sticks would strike their mark or ruffle the Gilmartins into making a crucial error.
“Trouble is, Zoey, when you throw dynamite at a turbine, you may bring it down, but you’re still left with its foundation. And in the meantime, you make a lot of crazy people angry.”
“Yeah.” Zoey’s fingers played over her braided leather necklace. “The foundation’s the thing. Otherwise they just truck in a new turbine and in two days it’s up.” There was immense sadness in her eyes, and she slouched a little in her seat, as though she suddenly knew she might never avenge her father—not by forcing removal of the turbines but by proving he had been right to battle them.
“Has Alex threatened to tell the others your real name?”
“Not yet.” Zoey dropped her hand and straightened. “As long as I keep massaging his ego, buying him giant pumpkins.”
“Oh, is that what you were doing at the house?”
“Yeah, but I made him put it in his car.” She grinned. “Now he’s got mud on his back seat. Funny how something small like that makes me happy.”
“Did he ask you to buy it?”
“Nah.” Zoey waved her hand. “I suggested it. He’s nuts about Halloween decorations, and I told him the house needed something. He’s like a child, easy to distract with shiny objects.”
“What if Alex does tell the others?”
“If he does, he does. And eventually he will.”
“Esther must know your real name now.”
“Of course she does. I couldn’t sign my fake name to bank papers.”
Anna was astounded by Zoey’s offhand manner. Confessing her real identity to Esther could have been, and probably should have been, a deal breaker. “And she didn’t want to call off the sale?”
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