The Mountains Bow Down

by Sibella Giorello

  “Hi, Mac. I’m returning DeMott’s calls. Is anything wrong?”

  I wasn’t exactly MacKenna’s favorite person. Not that I blamed her. I’d already managed to delay her wedding, get her father investigated for tax evasion, and put her fiancé on the FBI’s domestic terrorism watch list. And we weren’t even related yet.

  There was a loud thunk, followed by silence, leaving me to guess that she had either gone to get DeMott or was literally going to leave me hanging. Waiting to find out which, I leaned against the wall outside the medical clinic and listened to the background noise in the phone. Music was playing. Voices. A girl laughed.

  When DeMott answered, he was out of breath.

  “Raleigh, is that you? Hey. How’s it going?”

  “You sound winded.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Well. Mac . . . Mac’s throwing a party.” He cleared his throat, mumbled something.

  “Pardon?”

  “It’s just for some old friends, back in town.”

  It was something in his voice. Something tentative. False. I’d known DeMott Fielding since grade school and one of the things I most admired was that he was a terrible liar. “Who’s back in town?” I asked casually.

  “Oh, just old friends.”

  “So you said. Anyone in particular?”

  He rattled off some names, Flynn Wellington among them. She lived on a neighboring plantation. But Flynn, like the other names he offered, was local. DeMott saw them often. And it was only as he continued down the list that he tucked one name in among the regulars. “And John Coker and Tinsley Teeger and—”

  Tinsley. Beautiful scheming Tinsley. My classmate at St. Catherine’s school, she was a bright blond bombshell who blew out of Richmond right after graduation, headed for Manhattan. She sold high-market real estate and from eighth grade on, she’d carried a torch for DeMott.

  “Tinsley,” I said, feeling something acidic at the back of my throat. “Didn’t she get married?”

  “How’s vacation?”

  I turned, staring into the glass doors of the medical clinic. Nurse Stephanie had found her broom and ridden back to work. “It’s great,” I said. “Everything’s great. I thought Tinsley married that guy from Dartmouth?”

  “Mmm. They got divorced. And your mom’s having a good time?”

  “Oh, super. Just super.” Tinsley comes back in town, a free girl. Mac throws a party. Conveniently, I was gone. That knife named jealousy nicked my heart. I could hear the music playing in the background. The words were muddy but there was no missing the slow beat, the crooning in a love song. I stared through the clinic’s glass doors. The elderly woman staying with her sick husband came out of their room and spoke with Nurse Stephanie, her tired face full of tender worries. “DeMott, is something wrong?”

  “Wrong? No. Nothing’s wrong. I just . . .”

  “What?”

  “I just wanted to hear your voice. I feel like . . .”

  I waited. “Like what?”

  “I feel like you’re a million miles away and never coming back.”

  The woman inside the clinic nodded, thanking the nurse and walking back to her husband’s room. My heart ached. I didn’t like his structured life, his stringent family of snobs, but were those good enough reasons to throw away love? Wasn’t it when circumstances got difficult that love showed its true colors? Like the couple in the clinic. Like my parents. True love was never easy.

  “I’m sorry.” The words struggled out, strangled in my throat. “I’ve been so busy—”

  “Busy? Raleigh, you’re on vacation.”

  “DeMott, listen—”

  “Or maybe you mean you’re busy with that guy who answers your phone.”

  “Please listen. I’m working. On a case.”

  “You can’t stop. All you do is work. You can’t even take a vacation—without your fiancé.”

  “Right now is not a good time, DeMott.”

  “It’s never a good time. When were you planning on telling me?”

  “Telling you what?”

  “About that guy. Is he why you didn’t want me on that cruise?”

  “DeMott, don’t do this—”

  “Oh, here we go again. Don’t pry. Don’t bother Raleigh. She needs her privacy. Everything’s all bundled up inside.” He gave a dry sort of laugh. “You must take me for an idiot.”

  Every bit of tenderness had evaporated. I felt a bitter resentment climbing up my back and crystallizing around my heart. The words left my mouth before I could stop them. “You want me to open up? Fine. Here it is, DeMott. I work. I work while y’all are lazing around Weyanoke dreaming about the past and throwing parties. I work because I have to make a living. So go on, have a good time, because I’m sure Tinsley is very happy to see you. And I’m sure the feeling’s mutual.”

  “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”

  “Of course you are.”

  “Excuse me?” he asked.

  “Life at Weyanoke. One long game of Let’s Pretend.”

  Snapping the phone shut, I stormed into the medical clinic and prayed Nurse Stephanie would pick a fight so I could rip her head off. But as if to annoy me further, she politely dabbed at her mouth with a paper napkin. A bowl of chicken soup waited on the desk. She used the napkin to point at my mother’s room. “The doctor’s with her,” she said. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  Behind the door, his Irish brogue was lilting through a series of casual statements that disguised probing questions. The same tactic FBI agents used with reluctant witnesses.

  “Hard to believe tomorrow we’ll be back on land,” he ventured.

  No reply.

  “They say it’s been raining in Seattle. I don’t care much for the rain. It’s why I left my family back in Ireland.”

  He kept on. But there was only silence. When finally he stepped from the room and saw me, he gestured silently and I followed him to the room where I spent last night.

  He closed the door. “What’re your plans?” he asked.

  “After tomorrow? We go back to Virginia.”

  He wore a somber expression, that distillation of Irish melancholy, the face that says, It will be a struggle until the end of days.

  “Why do you ask?” I asked.

  “There’s a doctor, he works with the Washington state facility.”

  “Facility?”

  “Lassie, I’ve given your mother enough tranquilizers to drop the draught horse in green sod.”

  “Then take her off them.”

  He opened his arms, looking almost helpless. “She needs help.”

  “Yes, but not from some facility run by the state.”

  He drew his hands over the cumulus of white hair. “She can’t get on an airplane.”

  “I’ve thought of that. We can stay in Seattle for a few days. My aunt lives there. Soon as she’s better, we’ll go home to Virginia.”

  “And who’ll watch over her night and day, you? Rising with both the roosters and the owls?” He shook his head. “They’ll bring the vehicle right to the dock.”

  “Thank you for your concern. I appreciate it. But we don’t need the facility.”

  His hands went into the pockets of his white officer’s uniform. “That stubbornness of yours, ’tis done you some good in your life, I’m certain. But now it’s not. Your mother’s had a psychotic break. She’s as sick as I’ve seen in twenty-four years practicing medicine.”

  “It’s the ship.” I could feel the headache from her reading glasses, pounding with new force. “As soon as we’re off this ship, she’s going to feel better.”

  He shook his head. “I wish it were so. But we walk beside walls, all of us. You’re getting a good look at yours. It’s your mother. And that wall ’tis made of stone.”

  The headache moved down to my neck, my shoulders. I was suddenly very tired and sat down on the bed. “How long?” I asked. “How long do you think she needs?”

  “Walls are odd things,” he said. “Nobody knows how
far they go. But you’re not close to the end.”

  “How long?” I repeated.

  “It’s not days. And not weeks.”

  “Months?

  ”

  He gave a noncommittal nod.

  “Then I’ll find her help in Virginia.”

  “Can you?”

  “Of course.”

  “She’s afraid of you. You want her breaking down on the plane?”

  “I’ve already considered that and I’m looking for another way to get home. I can rent a nurse, buy her a plane ticket, whatever it takes.”

  “Lassie, you might get your mother home,” he said, “but I’ve seen people not come back.”

  His words hovered in the air between us, gathering their full meaning.

  On the upper deck, Jack stood with his back to the rail. The steady wind that blew into Skagway ran its fingers through his hair, tousling it like a boy’s. Above him the sun continued to burn through the clouds, illuminating a lush green valley between the mountains.

  “You look like somebody died,” Jack said.

  The movie crew had set up tarps for windbreaks across the deck. The plastic sheets rippled in the wind, sounding like distant thunder, and the extras were scattered as if directed by that same wind. Vinnie stood scowling at a lone passenger who was getting some exercise by walking laps around the deck; he forced her to turn around. I didn’t see Aunt Charlotte anywhere. Or Claire. But to the port side Sandy Sparks conferred with his new director whose blond ponytail filled with the wind, looking like a dandelion blossom.

  “Sparks is keeping some interesting stones in his safe,” I told Jack. “And in his shaving kit.”

  “His what?”

  “His safe, in his room.”

  “No, the other thing.”

  “Shaving kit.”

  “Harmon, what did you—?”

  “I didn’t take anything. Geert sent me in, dressed as a maid. They’ve got blue stones in the safe. And some others are in his shaving kit.”

  “Some other what?”

  “Amethyst, I think. Moonstone. Maybe jet and cut glass.”

  “Hey, scientist, bring it down to my level.”

  “The amethyst might be worth some money. Not a lot but not chump change either. And definitely not something you keep with toiletries.”

  Sandy Sparks was pointing toward his wife. In her butter-pat bikini, Larrah stood shivering, though the cold wind wasn’t enough to keep her from another opportunity to display her figure. She was a striking sight, and only one person wasn’t watching her: Milo. He leaned against the ship’s smokestack wall, his skin as green as pool water. In his hand, he held a silver flask.

  “What scene is this?” I asked. “She’s supposed to be the bartender.”

  “Beats me. I’m guessing it’s something the new director dreamed up.”

  “And how’s Milo?”

  Jack sighed. I couldn’t remember ever hearing him sigh. “I quit trying to keep Milo sober. Like teaching an octopus to run.” His blue-green eyes stared at me, evaluating. “I expect the full answer to this question. How did you get into his safe?”

  “Geert showed up.” I explained the Dutchman’s story and how he told Larrah that some safes had been compromised due to failing batteries. “Apparently, it happens. When the batteries fail, the safe suddenly pops open automatically.”

  “The crazy Dutchman’s on our side?”

  “I wouldn’t say that. He wants the bracelet to save his job. But he’s starting to realize something’s not right with these people.” I described the money hidden in Vinnie’s room. “Vinnie’s also got a big blue stone, just like the Sparks have in their safe, and Martin Webb had in his jackets, and your buddy Milo—”

  “Milo is not my buddy.”

  “All of them, Jack. They’re all hiding these stones.”

  He watched them for several minutes. Milo was swigging from the flask. Larrah looked cold as a popsicle. And Sparks had taken a seat behind the windbreak, pulling on a jacket that had that same Spartan mascot on it.

  Jack said, “I don’t suppose you found the jewelry box.”

  I shook my head.

  “Too much to hope for.” He sighed again. “Short black dress, white apron?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Your maid’s outfit. Was it a short black dress with a white apron? C’mon, Harmon, I need some cheering up.”

  I grabbed my phone, flipping it open.

  “You’re reporting me for harassment?” he asked.

  “No, I’m calling Kevin Barnes. I just thought of something.” I kept my eyes on Vinnie, still scowling at the wind. “The forehead might’ve tried to unload stones in Juneau. Maybe even some black prisms.”

  Kevin Barnes’s voice mail said he was often away for days and usually somewhere so remote he was unable to return phone calls. Must be nice, I decided, leaving him a message anyway, asking him to call immediately.

  “Now what?” Jack asked.

  “Now you can call the jewelry stores in Ketchikan and see if Vinnie tried to sell them anything.”

  “Me? I’m busy.” He placed a hand on his chest. “I’ve got a movie star to babysit. Why can’t you call the stores?”

  “Because tonight’s our last chance.”

  “Harmon, I’ve waited a long time to hear you say that.”

  “Keep waiting. Tonight’s our last chance to catch these people.”

  Hardcover books lined the library walls, but since they were locked behind stabilizing doors, the computers seemed like the most important part of the room. At a desk by the window, a woman was typing on a keyboard. She looked up as I came into the room, then acknowledged me with a sad smile. The elderly woman from the medical center. I nodded and she returned to typing, using only her index fingers.

  I sat down across the room from her and searched public domain information only, quickly realizing why benitoite escaped my radar. Not only was the mineral rare, but in terms of geologic time, it was discovered last week.

  In 1907 some California prospectors were searching the Diablo Mountain Range for gold when they stumbled across some blue rocks, randomly distributed around the headwaters of the San Benito River. The stones looked like sapphires and the prospectors carried them quietly into town, to a geology professor at the University of California. The geologist found the gemstone was a silicate mineral containing traces of barium and titanium. Beautiful, stunning, and there was nothing else like it on earth. The geologist named it benitoite, for the location where it was found in San Benito County, near the San Benito River.

  Although some later geochemical matches were found in places such as Japan and Australia, gem-quality benitoite still came from only one tiny region in the California mountains. And even there, benitoite played hard to get.

  Only a few thousand carats had been mined, cut, and polished. By the 1970s the mines were basically abandoned because so few gemstones came out, making benitoite rarer than rubies and emeralds—by several orders of magnitude. It was even rarer than Tanzanite, the bright blue gem found only in Tanzania. When an earthquake struck the Coalinga fault line in the 1980s, hitting 6.7 on the Richter scale, prospectors poured into the Diablo mountains, hoping the hills had shaken loose their benitoite. But the mountains refused to cooperate and these days rock hounds had resorted to night searches, clamping on ultraviolet headlamps to expose the gem’s singular quality: powerful fluorescence.

  Mineralogically, benitoite was what was called a dichroic mineral, meaning the color shifted depending on the type and angle of light. It was also birefringent, with a “fire” more powerful than diamonds. Colorless varieties had been found, along with some pink and orange specimens, but those were considered even rarer than the blue specimens. Geologists attributed benitoite’s changing color to small inclusions of yet another rare mineral, Neptunite.

  Neptunite was pitch black.

  Under ideal conditions, it grew into perfect prisms.

  Leaning back in my chair, c
onsidering all the information, I watched the woman from the medical center stand up. She gathered a sweater off the back of the chair, then looked around as if forgetting something. The back of my mind seemed to tingle, as if an idea was forming yet still out of reach.

  I watched the woman walk across the library, into the empty atrium. Standing alone at the elevators, she waited for the descent back to the medical clinic, back to her ailing spouse, a trip where they had not been able to venture beyond the ship. As she watched the numbers above the elevator door, her back was straight, her chin raised. And in her defiant posture, I took all the hope it offered.

  “The magistrate already called me about it,” Kevin Barnes was saying. “Something about a blue rock?”

  I shifted the phone to my other ear, leaving the library and heading for the purser’s office. “Why did the magistrate call you?”

  “Because his wife runs a jewelry store in town. Some guy walked in, asked her to buy a blue rock, and she told her husband the guy gave her the creeps. He called me but I haven’t had a chance to call him back.”

  “That didn’t seem urgent to you?”

  “Raleigh, we get ten thousand people walking off those cruise ships every single day from May to September. You’re lucky she even saw the rock.”

  “I don’t believe in luck.”

  “Why should you?” he said. “You’re working with Jack.”

  “Did the magistrate say anything else about the guy who came in?”

  “Heavy.”

  “He was fat?”

  “No. Heavy, as in, heavyweight. A guy who breaks kneecaps. That’s all I got.”

  “That’s more than you know,” I said, stopping near the concierge desk. A man and woman were talking to the clerk. I turned my back, speaking low into the phone. “Anything from your LA contacts?”

  “No. And now it’s the weekend.”

  “If by some miracle you talk to them, see if they have any local information on a guy named Sandy Sparks, aka Lysander Sparks. And the ‘heavy’ is named Vinnie Pinnetta.”