Cyanide Wells

by Marcia Muller

  “Jenny, I’m out at the cove. Something’s come up, and I’ll probably stay the night. See you tomorrow.”

  “Ben, what the hell’s the story on our interim financing?…Yeah, I know…Okay, we’ll talk in the morning.”

  “Sandra, we got your Visa bill this week, and your mother and I are seriously upset with your spending. Hold the plastic, will you?”

  “Cheryl, did he call in?…He wants what?…A double, two olives. Got it.”

  Next came a discussion with the waiter about a Bombay gin martini to be delivered as soon as his partner arrived. Then Payne made several other calls, none of consequence. Obviously he was an individual who couldn’t bear to be disconnected.

  Fifteen minutes later a rotund, red-faced man in chinos and a hideous lime-green shirt waddled through the entrance, paused to look around, then crossed the room toward the sofa where Payne sat. He didn’t even glance at Matt as he went by.

  “So where’s my drink?” he demanded.

  “David’s bringing it. Sit down. We’ve got a problem.”

  “The financing…”

  “Is the least of our worries. That photographer Carly McGuire hired, John Crowe, showed up at Salt Point this afternoon. She knows about my call to Matthew Lindstrom and sent Crowe to inform me of her displeasure.”

  Matt listened as Payne related the gist of their conversation. “I’m afraid she’s going to use it against me, ruin my political career before it gets off the ground, plus make sure we never get our hands on that property.”

  “Yeah, that’s the sort of thing the bitch would do. The…other, does she know about that, too?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, even if she does, she wouldn’t dare use it. Not after—”

  “Here’s David with your martini.”

  Silence. Then, “Thanks, David.”

  After a pause during which, Matt assumed, he was partaking of his long-awaited drink, Rawson said, “We never should’ve brought the second husband here. What if McGuire figures it out? We could be implicated in—”

  “Get a grip, Milt. There’s no way they can connect us to it. Besides, McGuire wants to protect Coleman and the kid. She’s not going to make their relationship to him public.”

  “Speaking of them, where are they? I keep watching the house, following McGuire, and there’s no sign of them.”

  “Maybe she sent them out of town. That’s what I’d do. And stop following McGuire. You said she almost caught you a couple of times.”

  “Well, I never said I trained as a private eye!”

  “Dammit, keep your voice down. I don’t want to broadcast our business to the entire north coast.”

  More silence. Then Payne stood, saying he needed the restroom.

  Matt was off his chair and on the way to the door.

  At a service station in Calvert’s Landing he shut himself in a phone booth and got the number of the Incline Village Hyatt Regency from directory assistance. The Hyatt’s operator located Dave Rand, the musician with whom he’d talked yesterday, in the restaurant. Yes, Rand said, he had time to answer a few more questions.

  “Was Ardis Coleman married to Chase Lewis or just living with him?”

  “They got married in September of ninety-two. Down in San Fran. I stood up for him.”

  “When was their baby born?”

  “Their baby?”

  “Natalie.”

  “Oh, guess I didn’t make that clear. The kid wasn’t Ardis’s. She was Chase’s, with a woman he’d been seeing a while back. I never knew that one.”

  So Ardis was not a mother after all, any more than Carly was. This was certainly going to surprise her.

  “How’d he end up with the baby?”

  “Bitch dropped her off with him right after he and Ardis got married. Was supposed to be just for the weekend, but she didn’t show on Sunday like she said she would. They called the number they had for her, but it was disconnected. Nice wedding present, huh? Chase was pissed, but Ardis said she’d raise the kid as her own. But hey, how come you’re askin’ these things, when you’re a family member?”

  “It seems Ardis hasn’t been completely honest with me. Did she legally adopt the baby?”

  “Nope. Couldn’t find the mother to get her consent.”

  “So when Ardis took off with the child, technically she kidnapped her.”

  “I suppose.”

  “But Chase didn’t go to the police.”

  “Chase didn’t want nothing to do with the cops in those days, if you know what I mean. And what the hell was he gonna do with a baby, anyway? He didn’t even try to find them, just stepped up his intake of controlled substances.”

  Matt thanked Rand and headed across the ridgeline to Cyanide Wells.

  It was clear to him what Payne and Rawson had been talking about: After their attempt to disrupt Ardis’s life by summoning him hadn’t worked immediately, they—or more likely their detective—had found the record of her marriage to Chase Lewis. Probably he’d also unearthed the record of Natalie’s birth and pieced together what had subsequently happened. Payne and Rawson, realizing they had their hands on very damaging information, had reasoned that bringing Ardis face-to-face with Chase Lewis would make her more willing to deal.

  Unfortunately, they hadn’t counted on murder entering the equation.

  Carly McGuire

  Tuesday, May 14, 2002

  She didn’t know why the house near the Knob continued to draw her, but as she stood in its central hallway, door open to the cool evening breeze, she realized it no longer had the power to haunt her. It was simply a house where happy times had been lived out and a tragedy had occurred. A house that had been cleansed of all signs of that tragedy and rendered bland for sale.

  She walked along the central hallway, looking into the silent rooms she knew so well. What struck her now was the lack of clutter. Ronnie had inherited a great many things from his father, a consummate collector, and all of it—books, a model railroad, stamps, coins, firearms, sculptures, animal heads, Indian artifacts, old typewriters—had found its way from the architecturally overwrought mansion where he had grown up to this new, simpler house on the land that once had belonged to Noah Estes. The things Ronnie didn’t care for, such as the animal heads and firearms, were kept out of sight, but most of it had been on display. Carly supposed the real estate agent had packed it up so that the house would show better, but its absence made the house seem ordinary. The decor was nice, the curve of the staircase graceful, but the kitchen was badly designed and the rooms were too small.

  No, the house—even if two people hadn’t been murdered in it—was not what made this property desirable; it was the beauty of the land, the privacy. The house could be razed and another, more attractive one built. A prospective buyer would be a fool not to realize that.

  So why hadn’t there been offers?

  Maybe there had. Maybe Ard, as executor of the Talbot estate, had turned them down. Because she knew about the vein of gold running under the property? Because she was holding out for a better offer than those, or Payne and Rawson’s? An offer that would allow her to pocket some of the money?

  I’m really starting to doubt her now. Whatever shreds of trust in the relationship that remained are gone.

  She took hold of the banister and started up the stairs. Going to the bedroom where Ronnie and Deke died. Going to face her demons a final time.

  Of course, it was no longer the room where she’d viewed their bloodied and ruined bodies. New paint, wallpaper, and carpeting had made it innocuous. But when she closed her eyes, she could picture the bodies on the bed, clad in Japanese silk robes, their features shattered by the gunshots to their heads. Blood on the pale-green sheets, the dark-green head-board, the nightstand…

  What, McGuire? What is it?

  She’d lost the image.

  She moved to the center of the room, looked around. It was easily the most attractive in the house: French doors led to a balcony ov
erlooking the pool area; window seats were tucked into alcoves on either side of them; bookcases flanked a stone fireplace. There was a large bath with a Jacuzzi tub, a huge walk-in closet.

  The door to the closet was open, and out of idle curiosity she looked inside. Cardboard cartons were stacked there—probably containing the collections that had formerly cluttered the main floor. They would fetch a good price at an auction house, but apparently Ard had yet to get around to arranging for their sale. She stepped inside and followed a path through them, confirming their contents from their labels. Felt a thump on her head as it connected with the long, heavy chain that lowered the folding stairs to the attic.

  Deke’s studio—the one prospective buyers and the occasional interviewer or photographer were invited into—was in an out-building beyond the garage and greenhouse, but he’d done his actual work in the attic, under several big skylights. When Ronnie built the house, he hadn’t yet met Deke, and by the time his partner declared his fondness for the attic space and had the skylights installed, it would have been prohibitively expensive to create easier access. Deke didn’t mind—he was the only one who went up there, even barring Ronnie from the place where he entertained his muse. In fact, he liked to joke about entering his work space by way of a “secret passageway.”

  But Deke was dead, and now Carly wanted to see the studio where he’d created his paintings. She’d neglected to turn on the overhead fixture, though, and she couldn’t see all that well. Craning her neck, she looked up to gauge if there was enough clearance to pull the stairs down, and saw something striped suspended from the framework of the trapdoor. A bag? Odd place to hang something—

  A man’s voice called out to her from downstairs.

  “Detective Grossman. What are you doing here?” Nervously she ran her hand over her hair, brushing at a spiderweb that must have caught there while she’d been poking around in the closet.

  “So formal, Carly.” The tall gray-haired man smiled thinly. In his conservative blue suit, the recently appointed head of the Soledad County Sheriff’s Department Investigations Bureau looked out of place for the countryside.

  “Sorry, Ned. You startled me. Why’re you here?”

  “I could ask you the same.”

  “I, uh, received a message that the property is being shown tomorrow. Ardis is out of town, so I decided to make sure everything’s in shape.”

  “Isn’t that the real estate agent’s job?”

  “Well, yes, but we can’t always count on her. Did you follow me here? It’s not a place that you’d be driving by and decide to stop in.”

  “Actually, Deputy Stengel followed you and reported your whereabouts to me. I ordered him to maintain a surveillance on you.”

  “For what reason?”

  “We’ll discuss that at headquarters in Santa Carla.”

  When she entered the interview room, the first person she saw was Rhoda Swift.

  “Carly.” Swift nodded and motioned for her to sit. Grossman shut the door and sat next to Rhoda.

  Carly said, “What’s this about, Rho?”

  “It’s come to our attention that your interest in our West-haven homicide is more than professional.”

  It was what she’d feared. “I don’t understand.”

  “I think you do. But let me fill you in on our investigation so far. In the absence of witnesses, fingerprints, and the murder weapon, we began by building a profile of the victim, Chase Lewis. Born, San Francisco. Only child—both parents deceased. Graduate, Balboa High School. Two semesters, City College. Talented trombonist, played with pickup bands while working as a security guard, and eventually turned professional musician. The lifestyle caught up with him; he was arrested several times for drug-and-alcohol-related offenses but served no serious jail time. Known to become violent when high, particularly against women. In September of nineteen ninety-two he married one Ardis Lynette Coleman in a civil ceremony at City Hall.”

  “Married?”

  Rhoda nodded. “Apparently they were still married when he died.”

  She felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach. This news made Ard’s betrayal of her complete.

  “You didn’t know?” Rhoda asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Well, there’s no record of a divorce, either in California or Nevada. And another interesting thing: There’s no record of Natalie’s birth, at least not to Ardis. But Chase Lewis did father a child, by a woman named Marisa Wilson, in July of ’ninety-two. And the child was called Natalie.”

  “My God.” She pressed her fingers to her lips. After a moment she asked, “This Marisa Wilson—where is she now?”

  “She died of a drug overdose in San Diego eight years ago.”

  “Did Ardis adopt Natalie?”

  “There’s no record of it.”

  “So she has no legal right to her?”

  “We’d like to question her about that—among other things.”

  Meaning Chase Lewis’s murder.

  Rhoda went on, “I understand you told Deputy Stengel that Ardis has taken Natalie out of town on an educational trip.”

  Carly ignored Rhoda’s words and asked, “If it turns out that Ardis has no legal right to Natalie, what’ll become of her?”

  “She’ll be made a ward of the court and placed in a foster home while Social Services searches for blood relatives. If there aren’t any, or they don’t want her, she’ll be put up for adoption.”

  “An older mixed-race child? She’s not a very likely candidate. Why would they take her from a perfectly viable home, one where she’s loved and cared for?”

  “The decision as to the viability of that home would be up to the individual judge. But to get back to the original subject: Do you know where we can reach Ardis?”

  Make up something to buy time. Camping in Yosemite, maybe.

  No, you’ve lied enough, McGuire. Don’t put yourself at further risk. They think Ard—or maybe even you—killed Chase Lewis.

  She said, “I want to speak to my attorney.”

  Matthew Lindstrom

  Wednesday, May 15, 2002

  Matt leaned across the Jeep’s passenger seat and opened the door for Carly as she stepped from her attorney’s car in the alley behind the Spectrum’s offices. She slumped in the seat, slammed the door, and stared straight ahead.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  A shrug.

  “Talk to me, Carly.”

  She sighed, and then the words came—haltingly at first, but soon tumbling out so fast that it was difficult for him to understand her; several times he had to ask her to speak more slowly. When she got to the part about Rhoda Swift telling her Ardis had married Chase Lewis and later taken his child, her voice broke.

  Quickly he said, “I know about that. Doesn’t matter how I found out. Go on.”

  “They suspect either Ard or me of killing Lewis. After my attorney got there, they asked if I owned a gun, had been to the motel in Westhaven prior to the time I showed up there on Monday. Kept pressuring me to tell them where Ard is. Wanted to know if there was trouble in the relationship. That’s when my attorney cut off the interview. They’ve got no evidence, so they can’t hold me, but I’m sure they’ll continue the surveillance. A car followed us from Santa Carla, and it’s probably parked at the end of the alley.”

  “How long d’you suppose they’ve been watching you?”

  She shook her head. “Don’t know. I need you to do something for me.”

  “What?”

  “Drive me to the house by the Knob to get my truck.”

  “No problem.” He reached for the ignition.

  She stayed his hand with her fingertips. “There’s more. When I was there this afternoon, I went to the master bedroom, and I had an impression—one of those half-memories that won’t quite come to the surface. Something related to what I saw the morning after the murders. I think it’s important, and I need to get at it.”

  “Carly, under the circumstances I don
’t think it’s wise for you to go back to that house.”

  “I don’t, either. But you could. Do you have your camera with you?”

  “My camera? Why…?”

  “Good. After I drive away, take it and photograph the master bedroom from a lot of different angles. Maybe when I study the prints they’ll trigger—”

  “No.”

  “The deputies aren’t interested in you. They’ll follow me.”

  “No, Carly. I’m not breaking and entering.”

  “I have a key to the house. And you have my permission.”

  “The key was given to you by Ronnie Talbot?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s dead, and Ardis is executor of the estate.”

  “So?”

  “Then only she or the real estate agent, acting on her instructions, can give me permission.”

  “Since when’re you a lawyer?”

  The familiar testiness in her voice relieved rather than annoyed him; at least some measure of the old Carly remained. “I was prelaw in college and have done extensive reading in the field.”

  “Well, aren’t you the renaissance man!”

  Now she was pissing him off. “Look, I know you’re upset, but—”

  “Okay, sorry. Maybe I’d be handling the situation better if it only involved Ard and me. At this point I’d probably have no trouble saying fuck it and cooperating fully with the sheriff’s department. But it also involves Nat.”

  “No matter what, Ardis would never hurt her.”

  “She’s not the one I’m worried about. It’s the sheriff’s department.” She twisted to face him, her back against the door. “In spite of people like Rho Swift and Ned Grossman, it’s one of the worst in the state. The county doesn’t have enough money to attract many good people, and there’s still a stigma attached to the department.”

  “What kind of stigma?”

  “You remember I said Rho Swift cracked an old case a few years back? It was a mass murder that had gone unsolved for thirteen years. Eight people, two of them children, shot to death in an isolated canyon south of Signal Port. The department mishandled it, but you can scarcely blame them; they’d simply never encountered a crime of that magnitude. By the time the feds stepped in, much of the evidence had been lost or tainted, so they weren’t able to solve it, either. In the aftermath, a lot of the departmental personnel moved to other jurisdictions or got out of law enforcement entirely. The rest just became more and more demoralized.”