Cyanide Wells

by Marcia Muller

  “What? What’s so important that she’d risk arrest for it?”

  “Natalie, of course.”

  “But wouldn’t she think it best for Natalie if they went far away?”

  “I can’t fathom what she would or wouldn’t think anymore. I feel as if you and I are operating in a vacuum. I wish we knew what the sheriff’s investigators have found out so far.”

  “Well, since they suspect you of being an accessory, if not a murderer, I don’t think they’ll be forthcoming if you ask.”

  She studied him thoughtfully. “No, they’re not about to share with me. But you…”

  “Oh, no. Don’t go there.”

  “From what you told me about your talk with Grossman yesterday, you handled him very well. You could go see him.”

  “On what pretext?”

  “You could tell him you need to go home to B.C. Ask his permission; then get him talking about the case.”

  “He doesn’t strike me as the garrulous type.”

  “But he is—at times. I’ve heard rumors about him: He’s a lonely man and likes his Scotch. He’s particularly fond of single-malt.”

  “Oh, yeah, I’m supposed to walk into the station carrying a fifth—”

  “I happen to have his home address.”

  “You’re insane. It’d never work.”

  “It might. I think Ned cares more about the truth than his clearance rate. He’s one of the good guys. So are you, Matt.”

  He stared at her face, which wore a pleading little look. Noted the slyness underlying it. “Did you learn this from Ardis?”

  Wide-eyed innocence now. “Learn what?”

  “The art of getting your own way.”

  She laughed—hooted, actually—stripped of her guileless mask. “I learned at the knee of my late aunt Nancy. Compared to her, Ard is a mere novice.”

  “Then your aunt must’ve been a truly frightening woman.” He fell silent, considering the situation. The detective hadn’t believed he’d told him his full story during their interview at the hospital; perhaps his distrust could be worked to an advantage.

  “Okay,” he said, “I’ll go try to bond with Grossman.”

  The detective lived in Santa Carla on a narrow, tree-lined street whose small stucco bungalows differed only in their colors. In that area, however, diversity ruled: standard white, cream, gray, and beige intermixed with garish turquoise, orange, lime, and fuchsia. What was it about stucco, Matt wondered, that inspired some people to excess?

  Grossman’s house was in the more subdued camp: cream, with a tidy patch of grass inside a chain-link fence. An enormously fat black-and-white spotted dog of indeterminate breed sprawled on the concrete path; at first Matt hesitated to open the gate, but then the animal looked up and yawned, revealing a largely toothless mouth. Matt entered, said, “Hi, dog,” and went up to the door. The dog heaved itself to its feet and followed, snuffling at his shoes as if it thought they might be good to eat.

  Grossman, clad in a pullover, jeans, and moccasins, opened the door and raised his eyebrows. “Mr. Lindstrom, what brings you here?”

  “I’d like to talk with you.” He held up the bottle he carried. “And I’ve brought refreshment.”

  The detective smiled thinly. “Attempting to bribe an officer of the law, are you?”

  “Not really, but I heard you like single-malt. It’s also a personal favorite of mine, and I don’t like to drink alone.”

  “Neither do I, Mr. Lindstrom.”

  “Matt, please.”

  “Ned.” He opened the door wider and admitted Matt to a small room where a TV was turned to a golf game, the sound muted. The dog entered, too, wheezing.

  “That’s Everett,” Grossman said, switching off the TV. “The critter who I told you doesn’t much like me. Frankly, the feeling’s mutual. He’s a canine garbage can. Scarfs down stuff even I wouldn’t eat. Take a seat; I’ll get us glasses. No ice, right?”

  “No ice.”

  “Good man.”

  He sat on the sofa, and Everett followed on his owner’s heels, probably hoping for a snack. In their absence Matt studied the room. A diploma from Humboldt State University and a number of framed certificates hung on the wall behind the TV. A couple of bowling trophies sat atop a bookcase full of thick volumes, most of them dealing with police science. No personal photographs, nothing that revealed the inner man. The room smelled stale, as if it were uninhabited a great deal of the time, and a thin film of dust overlay everything.

  Grossman returned, shadowed closely by Everett, whose hopes of a snack apparently had been fulfilled, since he was licking his chops in an extremely satisfied manner. After pouring a round, the detective settled into an armchair that faced the TV. As he swiveled it toward Matt, the dog sat at his feet and rested its head on his knee; Grossman began rubbing the floppy ears.

  Sure the two of you don’t much like each other. Matt raised his glass in a toast, sipped.

  Grossman followed suit, smiling in appreciation. “Whatever you want to talk about must be damned important. This is quite a bribe.”

  “It’s important, all right. I need to get back to British Columbia. I’m concerned about my charter business. You didn’t tell me not to leave the county, but I thought I should ask your permission.”

  “A problem up there?”

  “Nothing serious, but we’re getting into our peak season now, and my deckhand’s not going to be able to handle the volume of business.”

  “I understand. My grandfather was a commercial fisherman, out of Calvert’s Landing. When the fish were running, he needed all the hands he could get—mine included. I imagine it’s the same with tourists.”

  Everett farted noisily. Grossman wrinkled his nose and glared at him but went on rubbing his ears. “How close are you to Carly McGuire, Matt?”

  “Carly? Why?”

  “Just wondering. You do have something in common—Ardis Coleman.”

  “Does she strike you as a good reason for closeness?”

  Grossman shrugged. “You were with Carly when Natalie’s backpack turned up in the well—retrieved it, in fact. You drove her to the Talbot house Tuesday night, even though her attorney could just as easily have done so.”

  “I told you she was having trouble with her truck—”

  “Yes, she was, until you disarmed the alarm the week before. She’s had no problems with it since, according to the folks at the paper. And in addition, she paid your hospital bill.”

  “She felt she ought to, since I was injured while doing her a favor. My health insurance—”

  “And after she eluded our surveillance last night, she slept at Sam D’Angleo’s house, where you rent a room.”

  “How d’you know that?”

  “Deputy Stengel went to the door around two-thirty this morning to ask her to refill the thermos of coffee she’d given him. The lights and TV were on in the living room, but Carly didn’t answer the bell. He was mightily disgruntled about that when he reported in this morning—Shawn likes his creature comforts—and it made me wonder if she’d slipped out on him, and if so, where she’d gone. So I asked myself, ‘Who’s she been hanging around with lately?’ Your name came up high on the list.”

  “That doesn’t prove—”

  “Later I talked with a neighbor of Ms. D’Angelo’s, who said she’d looked out her bathroom window and seen the two of you arriving. She recognized Carly because she used to houseclean for her and Ardis.”

  “So what is it you think? That I’m having an affair with Carly?”

  “Hardly. But I’m curious as to what the involvement between the two of you is.”

  “We’re friends, that’s all.”

  “And where does Ardis Coleman fit in?”

  “She doesn’t. She’s left Carly.”

  “Then this story of the educational trip…?”

  “Face-saving on Carly’s part.”

  “Face-saving, in spite of the fact that Ardis’s husband was just murdered?”<
br />
  “Carly’s confused and fragile right now. And naturally she doesn’t want to believe that her partner—former partner—could murder someone.”

  Grossman stood and poured them another round, sat down, and fixed Matt with a flat, knowing stare.

  “Okay, Matt,” he said, “you want to go back to British Columbia? Well, I’ve got a proposition for you.”

  As he drove north from Santa Carla, Matt felt like a double agent. Or maybe a triple agent. Which one, he wasn’t sure. He’d read spy novels with pleasure but had never been fully able to comprehend the twists and turns of their plots. Who was on which side? Who was on both? Who was acting strictly on his own? And now he couldn’t fully comprehend his present situation. Whose side was he on? Carly’s? Grossman’s? Both? His own?

  The proposition the detective had offered him was simple: The surveillance on Carly would be lifted, and over the course of the next few days Grossman would feed Matt bits of information about the Lewis investigation. He, in turn, would pass them along to Carly and observe her reactions, which he would then report to Grossman.

  “You’re going to have to let go of this misplaced loyalty to Carly, unless you want to be charged as an accessory in the Lewis murder,” the detective had told him. “She knows a great deal more than she’s letting on, and the information I give you may trigger a telling response that will help us solve it.”

  What he offered Matt in exchange for his cooperation was also simple: He would be allowed to leave the country by the following weekend. In addition, Grossman would personally inform the authorities in Sweetwater County, Nebraska, and Saugatuck, Minnesota, that Gwen Lindstrom was alive and had been living in his jurisdiction for the past fourteen years. And when the Lewis investigation was closed, he would make sure that the solution to her disappearance received national publicity.

  “Maybe then,” Grossman said, “you’ll feel free to return to your home and your people.”

  Matt shook his head. “Port Regis is my home. I have no people.”

  No people. No real friends, either.

  Except for Carly.

  When she let him into her house at a little before ten that evening, he stepped into chaos. A heap of clothing lay in the entry, and cardboard cartons filled with cosmetics, underwear, shoes, and books stood by the door. Gracie, the little white cat, cowered just inside the living room. Carly held a black-and-red lacquered jewelry box, which she dumped on the floor.

  “What’s all this?” he asked.

  “Housecleaning. I’m getting rid of Ard’s shit.” She swept her arm at the accumulation. “She’s dead to me. When people’re dead, you clear out their stuff.”

  He was silent, staring at the things his former wife had left behind.

  “Why’re you pulling that long face?” Carly demanded. “Isn’t this what you did when she disappeared?”

  “Not exactly. When the lease ran out on her apartment, I asked a friend to do it.” Bonnie Vaughan. Later she’d told him she cried the whole time.

  “Not nearly as satisfying.” Carly started for the hallway to the bedrooms.

  “Don’t you find it sad?”

  “No. I’m too pissed off.”

  “Maybe you should wait till you can feel something other than anger.”

  She paused, turning. “Why?”

  “Because I didn’t, and I regret it. Before our friend cleaned out Gwen’s apartment, I went over there. Tore it up in a rage, looking for clues to what happened to her. And all I came away with was a bitter taste and the realization of how completely she’d banished me from her life. There were photograph albums, you see. Pictures of the two of us. Our wedding photos. She’d spent a lot of time putting the albums together, so when we split, it was natural she should have them. But apparently the only reason she wanted them was to destroy them.”

  “Oh, Matt, no.” Carly shook her head. “Go into the kitchen; pour us some wine. There’s a bottle next to the cooktop. I’ll be right back.”

  He did as she told him. Apparently household items belonging to Ardis were also being ousted: dishes and vases and a pasta maker sat on the floor; the table by the window was covered with pots, pans, and small appliances. A calendar of famous rose gardens that he’d seen on the wall lay beside them. But Natalie’s drawings remained on the refrigerator door.

  He poured wine from the open bottle of merlot. Carly entered, carrying a manila envelope, and held it out to him.

  “I found this at the back of her closet,” she said. “I never knew it was there.”

  The envelope was stuffed full of photographs: their wedding, holidays, the two of them on his father’s boat. Gwen stood in front of him, and he had his arms wrapped around her, his chin resting on the top of her head. A happy young couple, their whole lives ahead of them…

  “I can’t deal with this, Carly. Get rid of them.”

  “No, I’ll put them away for you. Just like I’ll keep her stuff—for now.”

  He was sitting at the table when she came back, his eyes closed. Her hand touched his shoulder briefly; then she sat and picked up her glass. “How did it go with Grossman?”

  On the drive back he’d realized he could hold nothing back from her. She was his friend, and besides, he was the one who had insisted that they, and they alone, should bring the situation to its conclusion.

  “He wants me to spy on you. Here’s the deal.”

  “Okay,” Carly said when he’d finished, “I don’t blame him for using whatever means he can to work his case. In fact, I think it’s damned clever of him. What information did he feed you?”

  “Ballistics. And you’re not going to like what you hear. The bullets they took out of Chase Lewis and his motel room wall were unusual. Short thirty-two caliber, copper-jacketed, of a type not manufactured in this country. The lab technician thought he’d encountered something similar before, so he accessed past records for county homicides. The bullets were a match for those that killed Ronnie and Deke.”

  “I never heard anything about the bullets that killed them being unusual.”

  “It was never revealed by the department, even after Mack Travis killed himself and they closed out the case. Grossman said the sheriff never believed in Travis’s guilt.”

  “Then Ard didn’t kill Lewis, after all. Whoever killed Ronnie and Deke did.”

  “Possibly.”

  “Gar Payne? Milt Rawson?”

  He shrugged.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know much about ballistics. Could they tell what kind of gun the bullets were fired from?”

  “Not the exact make, but from the bullet, the tech thinks it’s an older gun, perhaps a collector’s item.”

  Carly swirled her wine, stared into its depths. Matt could tell that the information had disturbed her.

  “The technician couldn’t be wrong?” she asked.

  “Grossman said that kind of evidence, like fingerprints or DNA, doesn’t lie.”

  She nodded, still staring down. When she finally looked up, her face was pale.

  She said, “Let’s go, Matt. There’s something I need to check out.”

  He shut off the Jeep’s engine and lights. The night was oppressively dark, the Talbot house a black hole before him. Carly slid out and slammed her door, then looked back through the open window and said, “You coming?”

  “Yeah.” He unlatched his seat belt, took his time. Easing into it. All the way here she’d been silent, refusing to answer his questions, her tension palpable. He knew without a doubt that whatever her reason for coming back to the house, it would lead to yet another unpleasant revelation—perhaps the most unpleasant of all.

  By the time he caught up with her, she was through the door and taking a flashlight from her daypack. He followed as she switched it on and moved along the hallway to an open door about halfway down. Inside was an office with a row of file cabinets and a computer workstation that was at odds with a handsome rolltop desk. She went to the desk, opened it, shone the light around.


  “Carly, what…?”

  “In a minute.” Her voice was grim. She fumbled with an ornately carved panel, pressing it in several places till it popped open, then took out a set of keys that were its only contents. “Come on.” She led him across the hall to a facing door.

  The room was a library, furnished in leather, with bookcases built into the walls. Below the heavily laden shelves were carved wooden doors with brass fittings. Carly went to one of them, squatted down, and slipped a key into the lock. It wouldn’t turn, so she tried another and then another until one did.

  Matt moved closer. She was removing a glass-fronted display tray, one of several that were stacked inside the cabinet. “Help me with this, would you?” she asked.

  He grasped one end, and they lowered it to the floor. She turned the flashlight’s beam on it.

  Handguns. Sunk into velvet-lined indentations specially contoured for them. Each depression had an engraved brass plate positioned below it.

  And one was vacant.

  Carly made a sound close to a sob.

  Matt read the label: “Austrian Rast and Gasser Army Revolver, Manufactured eighteen ninety-eight.”

  Carly said, “Ronnie’s father’s collection. The missing gun is probably the one Ard used to kill Chase Lewis. And Ronnie. And Deke.” Her voice shook.

  “Not them, too! My God, Carly. Killing off a man who abused her and was threatening to take Natalie away is one thing, but Ronnie and Deke were her friends.”

  She was silent.

  Still not believing it, he asked, “Where would she get ammunition for that kind of gun?”

  “The collection includes it.” She motioned at spaces for cartridges—eight of them, all empty.

  He took the flashlight from her hand, shone it upward at her face, and had a sudden vision of how she would look as an old woman.

  She shaded her eyes and said, “Ard has known for years that these guns are here. And she’s also known where the keys to the cabinets are kept.”

  “But so do you. And probably any number of people. Mack Travis—”

  “Would have had no way of knowing about them. Ronnie didn’t like the guns, locked them up, but kept them out of sentiment—or guilt. He couldn’t get rid of any of his father’s stuff, because while he loved him, they didn’t get along. His father was always after him to give up on the lifestyle he’d ‘chosen.’ As if he’d gotten up one morning and said, ‘I think I’ll turn gay now.’ ”