if they could ever prove someone had intentionally caused the
cave-in.
"Are you thinking about picking up the threads of your story?" Margaret
asked.
"I don't know, Margaret. It's hard to get passionate about the story
idea again when you've been buried alive and excavated out."
The old newswoman laughed because Robyn had made a joke of it. "But of
course, it must be really hard to marshal any enthusiasm."
Her last word came out loud as a shot when the band abruptly ended a
set. Everyone standing around the three of them laughed, teasing
Margaret.
Kiel went back to the subject of the article. "I dn't think you've
given up the idea of returning to your article altogether, though, have
you, Robyn?"
She didn't know where he was going with his question, but his pointed
tone cued her to go along. "Not entirely."
He turned to Margaret. "Robyn was just telling me the other day about
her research before the accident. Weren't you thinking, Robyn, that
Jerome Clarke couldn't have been killed in that avalanche?"
Where was he getting this stuff?. "I had some questions, yes."
"That day was one to go down in history," Margaret admitted, raising
the level of her voice when the band started another set. "My father
was a small boy at the time. Grew up, as you know, to write several
history texts and to teach at the university."
"What was his opinion?"
"Oh, there was never any doubt about Mr. Clarke's demise. The whole
town was in an uproar, all the rescue teams and such. I believe
there's even a photo of the volunteer fire department. They had a
wagon on which they could interchange wheels and sled runners."
"And Jerome Clarke? Was he in any of the photos?" Margaret frowned.
"None that I can remember. I believe it was said Mr. Clarke went up
the mountain to see how he could facilitate the res me and was then
killed in the second wave of the avalanche."
"where was this all going, Robyn?" Scott asked, trading his empty
goblet of champagne for another as a waiter passed by.
"I barely remember anymore. I think... yes. I saw something in the
Denver newspapers about Clarke falling ill at the conclusion of the
apexer's lawsuit."
A small clutch of more rowdy guests crowded their way through to the
dance floor. "I do believe Mr. Clarke was stricken with some
pneumonia or other," Margaret said.
"Then would he have been out and about in the middle of an avalanche?"
Robyn put her ann through Kiel's.
"I remember- also thinking it was pretty odd that his body was never
found."
"That wouldn't have been uncommon, unfortunately," Lucy said, sailing
into the group, her spirits high. She laughed. "Shame on me for
eavesdropping--but really! This is a party!" She threaded her arm
through Robyn's other arm. "I know the concept is not entirely lost on
you. Come. I want you to meet a few friends I don't think you
know."
Kiel gave Robyn's hand a squeeze to indicate she should go on without
him. It was ten-thirty by then, forty-five minutes until he and Robyn
would find their way to the liquor storeroom to meet Chloe Nielsen and
the mystery man. Kiel wanted to become invisible and move among Lucy's
guests just to see if Robyn's presence in town had set someone on
edge.
He moved around in his physical form for a while, finding it
unnecessary to use his powers to become invisible because so few people
knew him. By a few minutes before eleven o'clock he'd taken up a
position and cloaked himself in invisibility near the door, just in
time to see the arrival of Trudi Candelaria and Stuart Willetts.
Fascinated to see what would happen, he followed them from the time
they arrived to the time they left. Despite their formal clothes and
the fact that the party would go on for at least another two or three
hours, the couple stayed less than ten minutes, having been snubbed at
nearly every encounter.
Kiel had never seen anything quite like the silent drubbing doled out
to Candelaria and Willetts. He hoped he never would again. He hadn't
understood what social pariahs this glitzy fickle town had made them
into, but it was clear the high rollers and VIPs in this town believed
she had murdered their most famous and infamous celebrity, and gotten
away with it.
If Candelaria and Willetts had come thinking, or even hoping, that the
fickle winds would have started blowing their way by now, they were
terribly mistaken. All it took to seal their painfully short
appearance was the bitchy behavior of Spyder's spoiled and
self-righteous daughter.
The whole incident left an indelible impression in Kiel's mind. If
they were in fact innocent of the murder, of covering it up and of
killing Keller Trueblood, and Kiel was not convinced they were
innocent, then they had been pretty badly persecuted. The impression
in his mind as he sought out Robyn to go meet with Chloe Nielsen was
that this was a piece, perhaps a major part, of the injustice he had
been sent to set right.
CHLOE NIELSEN'S mystery man had turned up in Aspen four years before,
bored with life in the small Nebraska town where he grew up and
disappointed in the pedestrian New Age fare he found in Boulder. He
drifted to Aspen looking for something more real. What he found was
Crystal Star Rhapsody and her former chiropractor husband, Divine Light
Rhapsody.
"You create your own reality" was their message, but after Curt Wilson
coughed up every cent he had buying into their message and still got
plowed into on his bike at the corner of Main and Third, he tossed out
the notion he'd created that reality. Busted and broke, he had to take
a job driving for Mellow Yellow. He'd taken what he thought was at
least one step up since then to tend bar.
The liquor storeroom where they met was one floor below the grand
ballroom of the hotel. The ceiling above them reverberated with the
music. Shelves ten feet high lined every wall, and a dim, bare light
bulb hung from the floor joists.
Chloe stood with her elbow resting lightly on a tube of paper towels
she had found, trying not to touch anything. Disliking her
condescending attitude as much as he had her behavior, Kiel sat on a
crate of unpackaged wine, and Robyn stood beside the closed door. Curt
sat straddling a shipment of pricey liqueurs.
He was an attractive-enough guy, but he was never going to amount to
anything. If Chloe Nielsen hadn't known that before she took up. with
him, she clearly knew it now. Her disdain for Curt was almost
palpable; his re-sent merit toward her just as thick. When her father
was murdered and Chloe had no one left to rebel against, Robyn thought,
she must have dropped Curt like a hot and essentially rancid potato.
He didn't want to talk to Robyn, and even less to Kiel, but when Chloe
made it clear he had no choice, he began to tell his story.
"After I got run down by that clown, I was in the hospital for three
&nbs
p; weeks. I hooked up with this physical therapist chick."
"You were cheating on me," Chloe put in, goading him. "Go on."
He gave her a look that said die. "Yeah, I was cheating and, yeah, you
were paying the bills. None of which has a damn thing to do with
anything, Chloe, so shut the hell up or get the hell out of my face."
Chloe closed her mouth and folded her arms over her exquisite cream
jersey gown.
"Curt, what does this have to do with anything?" Robyn asked.
"Well, I wasn't the only one cheating, see. This chick was having a
fling with Chloe's old man. So you see, we had this twisted little
montage, a foursome, whatever. Me and Chloe, me and this chick, this
chick and Chloe's old man." Curt looked from Robyn to Kiel and back.
"I know what you're thinking. If this chick had a thing going with the
high and mighty Spyder Nielsen, why'd she shack up with me? Likewise,
why'd I screw around on someone like Chloe?"
"People do things for a lot of different reasons, Curt," Kiel said
quietly. "Nobody's judging you here."
"Well, the truth is, this chick and I, we knew the score. There was no
way we were ever going to be invited into the bosom of the family.
"But then, this chick turns up pregnant. She tries this number on old
Spyder, but Chloe here blows the whole thing wide open, saying it's
probably my kid, anyway. Spyder and Chloe have this knockdown drag-out
father-daughter fight, and meanwhile Trudi Candelaria coughs up five
grand on the spot to buy off this chick."
Robyn's heart clinched. "Did she use it to get rid of the baby?"
"No. She would have never done that .... Her old man woulda gone nuts.
But she got so drunk that night she fell and lost the baby, anyway."
Robyn and Kiel exchanged glances. Someone's father had a powerful
motive to have murdered Spyder Nielsen and frame Trudi Candelaria.
"Did this girl have a name, Curt?" Kiel asked in the same quiet
tone.
"Yeah." He cleared his throat and shuddered. "Betsy Crandall."
Chapter Twelve
"Oh, my God," Robyn whispered. "Detective Ken Crandall's daughter?"
"That's the one." He stood and slung a case of beer up to his hip.
"See yourselves out. i-gotta get back to work."
"Curt, please," Robyn said, jumping to her feet. "Didn't you go to the
police with this?"
He snorted. "Once. I showed my face in that county courthouse once.
Guess what? Crandall walked me outside and offered to make me buzzard
bait if I didn't keep my mouth shut."
"So why are you telling us now?"
He jerked his head toward Chloe. "Ask her. I'm out of here."
After he'd gone, Chloe closed the door again in case anyone else should
happen down to the cellar.
Robyn drew a deep breath, waiting for Chloe to talk. For a few moments
she only paced, holding the skirt of her gown up off the floor.
"What's up, Chloe? Did you know this stuff?"
She shook her head. "I never knew this Betsy's last name." Chloe even
spoke the first name as if it made her physically ill. "You know, I
despised my father. He threw me out and took me in and gave me things
and took them away. I finally just wanted to deserve some of that
treatment for once, so I took up with Curt and threw it in Spyder's
face every chance I got."
"But you didn't kill him," Robyn said.
"No. I might have. I wished he'd die often enough, but
I didn't kill him. You know where I was."
"In jail," Kiel answered.
"Yeah. Driving under the influence. And you were right. Crandall was
the one who nailed me. Spyder refused to bail me out. I never saw my
father alive again."
"Did Crandall already have reason to be picking on your family?"
"Other than being a prick, you mean?"
"Chloe, did Crandall know t the time he arrested you that your father
had been hitting on his daughter?"
Still pacing, Chloe shook her head. "I don't know. I didn't put any
of this together until I ran into Curt a year later. He spilled the
whole thing, but of course, he wouldn't come forward--and I really
couldn't make him do it. For all I knew, Crandall would kill him,"
"And now?"
She gave a bitter smile. "Now? Curt is ready to go home to Nebraska,
anyway. This town finally does that to people who really can't afford
to live here. I still wish Tmdi aad done it and been convicted. But
Crandall did this, and Spyder was my father. He can't get away with
it."
KIEL SAT WATCHING while Robyn danced with Massie and Kline and then
Massie again. She had looked forward to dancing again, to the sheer
joy of moving with a modicum of grace, but her heart wasn't in it. Curt
Wilson's tale had all but mined the party for her.
Kiel cut into Massi 's third dance with her. "You should try to enjoy
yourself a little, Robyn. Cut loose, you know?"
"I do. And I know it's too late to really do anything about Crandall
tonight, but I can't stop thinking about it. Do you think it's
possible he killed Spyder Nielsen?"
Kiel led Robyn more toward the center of the dance floor where people
standing around were less likely to hear them. "If what Curt told us
was true, Crandall had a powerful motive. But the missing piece is
that we don't know if Betsy Crandall told her father anything, or even
if she told him who was the father of her baby."
"We have to talk to Crandall tomorrow, Kiel'." "Or take what we know
to the chief of police."
She didn't argue, for once. He didn't trust her silence but he let it
go. The band segued into a set of oldies. Something in the way she
moves... Kiel pulled her closer. His hand settled in the small of her
back. The music, the scent of her hair, the feel of her, the warmth
between them seeped into him.
It had occurred to him when he heard Curt Wilson's story that they had
come very near now to resolving the murder of Spyder Nielsen, so near
that his time with Robyn might be very short.
It was clear to both of them that Detective Ken Crandall was dirty, one
way or another. That he had either murdered Spyder Nielsen himself,
and as his retribution against Trudi, 'made her the chief suspect in
the largely circumstantial case--or else he had hired the dirty work to
be done, and again, let Trudi take the fall.
What wasn't clear to Kiel, and had never been, was whether or not his
mission was in fact one to avenge his own death. Keller Trueblood's
death. Neither he nor Robyn believed Trudi Candelaria or Stuart
Willetts capable of instigating Keller's death. Perhaps that crime was
Crandall's, as well. But Kiel had never been able to discern an aura
of evil intent surrounding his own death.
He would have given anything to be able to sham these doubts with
Robyn. It wasn't so much that he thought her mortal insight might
prove more telling than his own, given his angelic prowess, but talking
things over with her made him ask different questions.
These were not thoughts he could reveal to Robyn, but he knew that
uncovering Crandall's involvement came very el se to cracking t
he case,
and if that were true, Kiel's time with her was nearly spent.
He would never dance with her again. He wanted to give her something
to remember him by, and so he cloaked her in an enchanted space. For a
time, no one existed in that ballroom but the two of them.
"Something in the Way She Moves" segued into. "Country Road" into
"You've Got a Friend," then into "Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight."
Every song was theirs, every sentiment, but the set came to an end.
The glittering ball overhead cast sparkles around the ballroom, but
none so bright as the sparkle in Robyn's eyes. When the music began
again, a vibrant, pounding Latin beat, Kiel danced the tango with her
like no one had since Pacino in Scent of a Woman.
The floor cleared and the crowd watched, dazzled by them. His spell
had created a sliver-in time in which Robyn Delaney Trueblood, the
soulmate of a man now an angel, was more fully alive, more herself,
more heightened and vital and uninhibited than she had ever been in her
entire buttoned-down life.
When the Latin music ended, and she clapped for herself, her friends
gathered round and added their congratulations. Kiel stood back a
moment and let them crowd around her, let them welcome her with their
hugs back to the land of the fully living.
He ached with deep pleasure for her. He wanted to hold her, but they
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