stream. Shading his eyes, he looked up at Crandall. "We're talking to
everyone involved, Detective. Yes, we have spoken to both Trudi
Candelaria and Stuart Willetts. We need a full record, and we need
answers to the questions he raises."
Crandall's brows drew together. "Even knowing he's more than likely
the one who killed Trueblood, and damned near got his wife as well?"
"Especially knowing that Detective," Robyn answered firmly. "According
to Smart Willetts, Keller was interested in the tire tracks. Wflletts
said they were never accounted for."
"That's right, and there's a reason. Willetts would like to pretend
otherwise, but those tracks were leading us nowhere. And the only
thing your husband was interested in was bringing in a guilty verdict
on Trudi Can-delaria."
Robyn swallowed. Crandall's characterization of Keller didn't sit well
with her. She knew prosecutors who wouldn't get off their pet theories
short of being blasted off with a stick of dynamite, but Keller? He
would never in a hundred years have discounted real evidence.
"Why don't you tell us what you found out about the tread, anyway?"
Kiel suggested, his tone of voice as lethal as an Avenging Angel's
might well get.
Eyeing Kiel warily, Crandall pulled a pack of Marlboro's from his
breast pocket and lit one, dragging heavily. "The tread pattern was as
common as ditch water. Not new, not old."
He recalled the brand, the size, and that there were at least seven
dealers in a hundred-mile radius who could have sold the tire. A list
of buyers was unrevealing. No one even remotely connected with SPyder
Nielsen drove a car that had those tires mounted on it at the time he'd
conducted the investigation.
"So, one of two things happened," Robyn suggested. "Whoever had those
tires replaced them right after the murder, or else there were people
coming and going from the Nielsen residence that you knew nothing
about."
"Sure," he acknowledged easily. "Or else," he went on in a sarcastic
tone, "that tread print was meaning-less--maybe from some coke-brain
ski-bum with too much money taking a spin around the neighborhood."
Crandall dragged on his cigarette one last time, flicked it into the
stream, then reached for a beer. Kiel shot Robyn a glance.
"Detective," he asked, "did you run a check to see who among Spyder's
friends and enemies might have bought new tires after the murder?"
"Yes, sir, I did," Crandall snapped, twisting the cap off his beer.
"But it was a freaking waste of time and energy, and everyone but
Willetts knew it. We had our murderer dead to rights." He swigged the
beer and exhaled sharply.
Robyn let him stew, waiting for her to say something. "Look," he said
at last, "I don't know what you're after here. Trudi Candelaria
whacked Spyder. Period. Your husband was going to send her up for a
very long time. Did she do Keller, too? Or cause him to be whacked?
You want my opinion, it's possible. But for my money, Willetts stood
to lose the most."
Detective Crandall's answers corroborated what Robyn had thought she
wanted, but she found herself disliking Crandall. She wanted to ask
why, if Keller's murder was such a clear possibility, if Willctts did
in fact have so much to lose, or Trudi herself, why Crandall hadn't
thought of it himself before now.
But as a matter of course the coroner had called Keller's death
accidental, and she needed the cooperation of the police on the case
too much to risk alienating this man with that kind of question.
She knew highly successful true-crime writers, peers and friends of
hers who antagonized cops left and right as a matter of style. There
were just too many roadblocks cops could throw up if they were crossed.
She'd resorted to the tactic with cops she suspected were dirty, but it
had never been her first choice of a way to deal with cops who were out
there risking their own necks day in and day out to protect the
community and keep the peace.
Crandall polished off his bottle of beer. "Anything else I can help
you with?"
"The capacity," Kiel suggested.
She nodded. "Trudi would have had to have bought the expertise,
someone who knew how to make a mine shaft collapse like it did. Stuart
Willetts wouldn't have that kind of specialized knowledge, either. Any
ideas?"
Picking up his fly rod, Crandall shook his head. "None. Explosives
are out of my league. But you know what they say... follow the paper
trail. Money talks."
"THE TROUBLE WITH following the money," Robyn mused, pulling back onto
the two-lane road leading back to the resort town, "is that everyone in
Aspen has plenty."
"Could you get to Trudi's bank records, anyway?" She shook her head.
"That would require a subpoena, and that would take convincing the D.A.
in Aspen to look into the possibility that someone hired expert help to
blow up the Hallelujah. How likely is that based on no more than my
suspicions?"
Kiel shrugged. "Not likely at all. Not unless you hire your own
experts and they come up with evidence of explosives."
"Kiel, that's a great ideal Why didn't we think of that in the first
place?"
He grinned. "Too obvious, maybe. But the trick is finding someone you
trust to do the job."
"Actually, I do know someone. Lucinda Montbank. Keller and I leased a
condo up here a month or so before the trial start date. I was fooling
around, looking for some useful way to spend my time. About that time
I was offered a chance to do a piece for the Smithsonian on historical
murders and mayhem in mining towns."
"So Keller was here prosecuting a high-profile celebrity murder, and
you were rooting around looking for some juicy historical scandal?"
"Not exactly," she protested drolly, snapping down her sun visor. "I'm
a serious writer, Kiel, as opposed to a scandal-mongering one."
"Oops."
Good Lord, but his smile left her half witless. "Don't 'oops' me," she
scolded. "This piece was pitched to me by one of the most venerable
institutions in the country."
"But you were having fun."
"Okay. Sure. True-crime writing isn't your usual barrel of monkeys.
The whole idea sounded like fun." She paused. Reality pitched in its
two cents. Keller was dead because the idea sounded fun to her. "It
didn't turn out that way... of course."
Kiel noticed, maybe more than Robyn did, that for the first time the
memory of Keller's death hadn't slammed her on the spot for an
emotional loss. "How did Lucinda Montbank fit into the picture?"
"She's an old flame of Mike Massie's. Mike and Keller were best
friends. Old college roommates. When I mentioned my writing
commission, he gave me Lucy's name. She's a mining engineer. Very
wealthy. Her great-great-grandfather was one of the movers and shakers
when the big legal battles over mining rights were going on in the
1880s. He was half owner of the Hallelujah."
"So that's why you and Keller were in the
Hallelujah that day?"
"Yes. Lucinda still owns the rights."
"Where were you in the story, embroiled in the legal battles?"
"Yes. Not only that. There was a lot of skullduggery, claims jumped,
frauds. Some of these guys would sell off a claim and be glad to get
out with five hundred bucks and then want it back when a strike was
made. But the big boys fought big battles. More than ten million
dollars finally came out of the silver mines."
Kiel grinned. "Not exactly spitting contests, were they."
"Not hardly."
"So what was the big battle about?"
"It came down to this. When a strike was uncovered on the surface,
what they called the apex, Colorado law held that the owners could
follow a continuous vein as far as they could into the mountain."
"No matter if the vein led into the underground space of a dozen other
surface claims?"
"Exactly. It was a classic battle of what's good for the few versus
the good of the many. A couple of men would have outrageous fortunes
at the expense of dozens of others with perfectly legitimate surface
claims. The 'apexers' would have an unfair monopoly. The newspaper
editor called the whole thing a racket, and local juries turned the
statute on its head all the time. These surface claim guys would
secretly build barricades. To retaliate, the apexers would force steam
and sulfur fumes down the shaft to drive them out."
Kiel shook his head at the lengths humankind would go to for treasures
that finally bankrupted their souls. "How did it all shake out?"
"When it came to one of the biggest claims of all, a Denver jury upheld
the apex claim. Not long after, the guy who won the suit, a man named
Jerome Clarke, was killed in an avalanche--or at least that's how the
books have it ."
"End of clash, then?"
"Yes. Lucy's great-grandfather, old Lucien Monto bank, crafted the
compromise. A new company was formed with everyone's holdings, then
interest in the new company was doled out to both the apexers and the
side-liners. Montbank made out like a bandit--but without the
compromise, the mining operations were all shut down and idle, anyway.
Lucy was a huge help in my research for the article."
"Lucien. Lucinda." Keller cocked a brow. "Any Lucifers in the family
tree."
"Probably," Robyn said, laughing. "Lucy has gotten away like a bandit
for a lot of years, loom she'd be the first to tell you about it.
Butshe knocked herself out getting me access to records that are in
temperature-and-humidity-controlled library collections. She also has
an incredible collection of period pieces--weapons, tele graph stuff,
flyers, wanted posters."
"And the Hallelujah."
"Yes. She gave me permission to explore the Hallelujah. She actually
offered to go with me, but--" Robyn gripped the steering wheel and
sighed. "We, that is, Keller and I... God help me. We were so much in
love." She scraped a tear from the corner of her eye. "He'd done a
lot of rock climbing and cave exploring--spelunking. I wanted him to
go with me. Whenever we had a chance, we..". took off and did things
alone, so... I refused her offer."
Blindsided by her too-quick, unexpected flash of grief and the catch in
her voice, Kiel felt himself sucked back into Keller Trueblood's
memories, the fearsome dark hole lying in wait behind the boarded-up
entrance to the old Hallelujah mine .... KELLI AND ROBYN had packed a
lunch of sandwiches and Granny Smith apples, blue corn tortilla chips
and a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon.
Robyn wore a scoop-necked peach-colored tank top over her bare breasts,
cutoffs and a bright red bandanna around her neck. Already aroused
just from being around her on a braless day, which they had intended to
squander, an already sunburned Keller wore jeans and a long-sleeved
plaid shirt he had to go out and buy for the occasion.
Robyn had loaded her camera and bought four more rolls of film while
Keller walked down the street to borrow a hammer and crowbar from a
construction crew working two blocks from the condo they'd leased in
Aspen. He left the crew with- a couple of hundred dollar bills for a
deposit. Piling into a Jeep, with only a roll bar and no roof, singing
at the top of their lungs with a Jimmy Buffet oldie on the radio, they
headed for the Hallelujah.
Chapter Seven
Keller and Robyn hiked in, guided by one of Lucy's detailed maps,
spread out the picnic blanket at the entrance, ate their lunch and
drank a little wine. Keller would have made love to her then and there
and skipped the damned Hallelujah altogether, but Robyn put him off.
One of them was always making the other wait. FPT, they called it.
Fever-pitch training.
There was no shaft house at this entrance. Robyn took up the crowbar
and started trying to loosen the nailed-up boards. Even at ten
thousand feet the early afternoon sun bore down relentlessly. The
going was tougher than either of them expected even though Lucy had
warned her this secondary entrance, while safest, would be tough
getting into.
Keller stripped to the waist. Robyn's skin shone with perspiration. A
stain of sweat soaked her tank top between her breasts.
At last they broke through. Keller grabbed her by the sweat-dampened
bandanna around her neck, pulled her close enough to kiss her long and
hard to celebrate... and then didn't.
Her turn at FPT.
She took a deep breath and blew off the rush of hormones that felt like
adrenaline. "Do you think you can keep your hands to yourself for an
hour now?"
He matched her stance. "Two hours."
"Half an hour, then. Have it your way." He stuffed a bicycle helmet
on her head and one on his, switched on the battery-powered lantern,
took her by the hand and led the way, crouching low to clear the wooden
slats remaining at the entrance.
Robyn was captivated. The dark, dank smell, the cool fifty degrees,
the age of it all. The history lured her on. Creaking wooden rafters
and stale air were no deterrents for her.
Keller didn't much care for it, but soon Robyn was leading and he
wanted her to have this. He'd spent days, weeks on end, wrapping up
his cases in Denver so he could take on this celebrity murder trial as
special prosecutor.
He could give Robyn's interests a few hours, especially since he felt
guilty that because they were married, she was steering clear of the
highest-profile murder case to come along in the last few years. The
Candelaria case was troubling him. He needed her insight. He no
longer wanted himself cut off from her observations, as he had once
thought. Their agreement to stay out of each other's work was, he
thought, not liberating or even ethical, just truly misguided.
He intended, tonight, to spill his concerns, and get her take on the
issues he faced regarding Candelaria. For now, he wanted to share what
was consuming her interests.
For the sake of returning safely, they turned left at each of three
&n
bsp; forks in the shaft. An hour in, scribbling notes to capture every
grubby, claustrophobic, magnificent detail, searching out tiny veins of
ore, her imagination firing, Robyn went through five rolls of 1600 ASA
film while Keller took out a penknife and started carving their
initials in the bark of a tree trunk used for a beam to shore up the
ceiling of the mine shaft.
Her eyes were lit up like moonbeams on mink. "Oh, Ken, what do you
think?"
A menacing pop rang out, far back up the tunnel. What he thought was
dust passing through the beam of their lantern he realized was really
water vapor, but that was small comfort. In a cave created by nature,
you could trust that the vast cavernous spaces down to the smallest
crevasses weren't going to cave in, but he didn't have that kind of
faith in the winding branches of some old silver mine. "The truth?" he
asked.
She nodded.
He thought she knew what was coming because of her off-center grin. "I
think this place scares the crap out of me."
"Come on, Ken. Can't you feel it?"
"Death and doom, you mean?" He owed her the truth of his feelings,
didn't he?
"Well, that... but really, Ken, I mean, this is almost as good as time
travel! Some of these tunnels go a mile-and-a-half in, right below a
restaurant, and come out on the other side of the mountain. Think of
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