Broken Trust

by Shannon Baker

  They scrambled over the ridge toward the trail. “If Sylvia is sending out beams to bounce off the ionosphere, wouldn’t that require a lot of energy? I don’t see bills that would show that.”

  They made it to the switchbacks. Abbey trotted ahead.

  Petal stopped beside the cliff wall, out of the wind. “Tesla came up with all sorts of discoveries, but they were stolen by the government and kept secret. They use them at HAARP. One study they did is an expansion of the Tesla Coil and it’s what we’ve adapted here. That’s an electrical resonant transformer used to produce high-

  voltage, low-current, high-frequency alternating-current electricity.”

  Nora gaped at Petal.

  Petal wore a shy smile. “It’s like this: the tower here uses electricity from the atmosphere. Like in a thunderstorm with a lot of lightning. You know that impressive energy? That energy is the most dominant outward factor in all kinds of storms. So the energy at just the right ELF frequency can create the power of storms.”

  They walked down the trail in single file. Petal first, then Cole, and Nora last. Nora studied her feet to choose each step on the rocky path. She had to project her voice over the wind and with her shortness of breath, her sentences came out in two- or three- word bursts. “So she gets all this energy and she’s going to shoot out a beam to collect climate data and she’s figured out how to aim it down here, in the Rockies?”

  Petal stumbled. Cole jumped forward to help her up.

  “And you just checked to make sure it’s all functional but she sets it where she wants it to go with her equipment at the Trust?”

  Petal mumbled and kept her head down.

  “I’m sorry,” Nora shouted. “I didn’t hear you.”

  Petal stopped and faced Nora. “She’s going to run it tonight.”

  thirty-one

  Sylvia paced the foyer, her heels pounding. She’d chosen three-inch pumps tonight because of the solemn occasion. It wouldn’t be appropriate to dress flamboyantly with a dead body in her bedroom.

  She’d left Eduardo a voice-mail over an hour ago. Why didn’t he call her back? She told him she needed to speak to him immediately. There was nothing to do but wait.

  Eduardo must have a fixer who handled situations like this. Maybe Juan.

  The sheer volume of blood surprised Sylvia. It splattered the white walls and carpet and ruined the black lacquered furniture. It soaked her silk duvet, clashing with the scarlet orchids. All of that would be ruined.

  Maybe she’d change it up now. Go contemporary with splashes of primary colors. On second thought, she would avoid red.

  The phone distracted her from redecorating plans. She punched it on. “Eduardo. Oh thank god.”

  He didn’t greet her. “Juan says there’s problem.”

  How did Juan know? “He came at me. He wanted to kill me.”

  Silence met her outburst. “Are you talking about the Director?”

  “Mark. Yes. Mark. It was awful.”

  “Why did Mark Monstain want to kill you?”

  His voice made her think of her father’s yellowed toenails. “I don’t know. He was crazy.” She broke off and swallowed horrified tears.

  “So you shot him?”

  “He was going to rape me! He would have exposed our plans. I protected you!” Sylvia stomped up the foyer stairs and pounded down the hallway. She paced back.

  Again, the dead-sounding voice. “Do you know the problem you’ve created?”

  Why wasn’t he outraged? He should have wanted to kill Mark himself for attacking Sylvia. “I didn’t ask Mark to defile me.”

  Despite his velvety accent, Eduardo’s voice drove ice into her veins. “First you kill Darla and now Mark.”

  “I didn’t kill Darla!” What was that odor drifting down the stairs? Death smelled like a rotten forest.

  “And you didn’t take thousands of dollars from the Trust?”

  He was turning on her. She dropped down the two steps into the great room and stared at the foothills outside her windows. “I’ve been set up, Eduardo, I swear. Nora Abbott is behind all this.”

  “If you’ve not taken money from them, how do you afford the Ferrari? The crystal? The leather, furs—my god, the shoes?” He paused. “And the Chihuly? Don’t worry about that. Your order was cancelled.”

  Her glass? “That was mine!”

  “Where did the money come from for all your indulgences if it didn’t come from the Trust?”

  How did they know all of this? Eduardo was out to get her. But he didn’t know everything. He thought she got money from the Trust. He didn’t know of her masterful system of borrowing from one card to another and juggling money from friends willing to donate to a brilliant scientist.

  “You’re a liability.”

  A spike of fear drove into her heart. Damn him for upsetting her like this. She needed to play it cool. “I’ve done it, Eduardo. I’ve given you a taste of what I can do. Watch the news tonight.”

  “Have you really accomplished our task?” Eduardo asked, a little perk to his voice.

  “Yes. And now I need you to clean up this mess.” She thought of the blood splattered across her bedroom.

  “We’ll see.” Eduardo said.

  “The police might come here. I’m still under suspicion for Darla’s murder. If you don’t take care of Mark it will all be over. You won’t get what you want.”

  “How about this, Sylvia.” His tone was slow and deliberate. “You give me what I want and we’ll see about cleaning up your mess.”

  He hung up.

  She stood at the foot of the stairs staring up, the coppery stench of blood filling her nostrils.

  thirty-two

  Another day done. In the glow of the eternal parking lot lights, Nora trudged up the stairs to her apartment. The air smelled of snow and wood burning in someone’s fireplace. A door below her opened and loud music momentarily disturbed the night before the door closed again.

  They’d returned from the mountain at dusk. Cole left in his pickup and Petal disappeared to Sylvia’s office. Nora had spent the next few hours creating a spreadsheet to trace the missing money’s journey, and then she waited for Mark. She wanted to show it to him before taking it to the police. She eventually gave up, resolved to take the spreadsheet to the police in the morning, and headed home exhausted.

  Maybe Abigail had a delicious dinner cooked and waiting. More likely, she had reservations for some fancy restaurant Nora couldn’t afford. What else were credit cards for if not to overspend on her mother one month and live on cheap noodles the next?

  First things first. She’d take Abbey for a long walk. She’d convince Abigail to come along. They’d stop and get a few groceries for dinner and instead of going out, prepare it together. And maybe, just maybe, she and Abigail could enjoy each other’s company.

  She slipped the key in the lock and opened the apartment door. Abbey stood in the mini-entry square, tail wagging in delight. See? The evening already seemed brighter. She dropped her bag and squatted down to hug him. “Hiya.”

  A burst of laughter drew Nora’s attention to the living room. She blinked at what she saw.

  Abigail sat on the floor in yoga pants and tunic, legs spread out. She bent from the waist to grasp her bare feet. She let out another bout of giggles.

  Petal sat across from her in a similar pose. Her bare feet stuck out from black leggings that disappeared under three layers of skirts. “You need to breathe, Abigail. That’s the essence of yoga.”

  Abigail swung her head around to the doorway, tears of hilarity shining in her eyes. “Oh Nora. I didn’t hear you come in.”

  Nora pulled off her jacket. “How did you not notice me? The door is right here.”

  Petal giggled. “I guess we were preoccupied.”

  Abigail burst out laughing. She
covered her mouth with her hand. “We were concentrating.”

  The both cracked up. Abigail fell back, her chest and belly rising and falling with her howls. Petal fell to her side with her head resting on Abigail’s stomach. She snorted and laughed all the harder.

  Nora addressed Abbey. “What’s up with them?” She inspected the galley kitchen, hoping for some kind of dinner. Instead, chip bags and a package of Oreos littered the counter.

  Nora stepped into the living room and her nose itched with the telltale smell. She stared at the giggling women on the floor. “You’ve been smoking pot!”

  Abigail sobered. She lifted Petal’s head off her belly and sat up. She grew serious for five seconds and then cracked up. “I told Petal you’d know.”

  Fear clouded Petal’s eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  Abigail stoned? With Petal? The whole scenario twisted so far from reality Nora could only stand mute and watch as Abigail and Petal fell back into giggles.

  Nora reached for her jacket and the leash. “I’m taking Abbey for his walk. We’ll discuss this when I get back.”

  The labyrinth of paved paths running through Boulder intersected with the parking lot in her apartment complex. Students used these trails as bicycle highways to campus. Runners trod up and down at all hours and the general, outdoor-loving Boulder population found them necessary to their lifestyle. Access to the trail system was one of the big advantages of Nora’s apartment.

  Nora and Abbey tromped along the Boulder Creek trail. The creek babbled and leaves rustled in the brisk wind. For the first fifteen minutes Nora railed in her head about Petal. How dare she get Abigail stoned? The next ten minutes involved blaming Abigail. After that came the question of why Abigail would experiment with pot. And just before they returned to the apartment, Nora started to chuckle at the idea of her mother, Abigail the Perfect, sprawled on the floor experimenting with yoga. Smoking a little pot might not be such a bad thing for someone as uptight as her mother.

  By the time Nora and Abbey stepped from the cold into the apartment, Petal and Abigail had cleaned the kitchen. They sat in the living room with steaming mugs, watching the evening news.

  It seemed strange to have the television on. Nora rarely watched it.

  Abigail stood. “Can I get you a cup of tea?”

  Nora motioned her to sit. “I’ll get it. Are there any more of those cookies?”

  Abigail smiled sheepishly. “A few. In the cupboard.” She leaned against the counter bar.

  Nora fixed her tea and found the cookies. “You didn’t drive to get your snacks, did you?”

  Abigail regarded her tea mug. “I … I rode Petal’s bike.”

  Nora stopped dunking her tea bag and gaped at Abigail.

  The only sound was a commercial chirping in the living room.

  They held each other’s gaze for a heartbeat and Nora lost it, nearly spewing cookie crumbs at Abigail. “I wish I’d seen that.”

  Abigail smiled. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

  Nora carried her tea into the living room and sank into the green chair while Abigail settled herself on the couch next to Petal.

  Petal hadn’t said anything, just watched Nora with big, fearful eyes.

  Why was it that Petal could get stoned with Abigail, laugh and carry on, yet she seemed afraid of Nora? Furthermore, how old was Petal? It was impossible to tell under all that hair. “You know,” Nora said to her, “I’m not mad.”

  “ ‘Let not anger snuff out the youthful delight of new life.’ ” Abigail considered the line and wisely shook her head rejecting it.

  Petal twisted her hands in her lap. “You’re not?”

  “I was at first. It’s not every day I discover my mother is a pothead.”

  “Nora!” Abigail exploded in indignation. “One shared joint does not make me a pothead.”

  Nora struggled to keep a straight face. “I think you should be able to cut loose once in awhile. In fact, why don’t we do it together? Have you got any more, Petal? We could make brownies.”

  Petal looked from Nora to Abigail and back again. She didn’t say anything and kept wringing her hands.

  “So why are you smoking pot, Mother?”

  “I wanted to see what all the hoopla is about. Is there anything wrong with that?”

  Nora sipped her tea. “The ‘hoopla’ has been going on for decades.”

  Petal’s voice squeaked from the end of the couch. “It’s not her fault. I invited her. I was feeling so sad about Darla and I asked if she’d mind if I smoked a little, just to take my mind off Darla for a while.”

  “So Abigail joined in to be supportive?”

  Petal stared at her hands.

  “This has something to do with Charlie, doesn’t it?”

  Abigail pursed her lips. “Charlie is out of my life. I don’t even think about him anymore.”

  Might as well talk about this now. “There’s no way Charlie had an affair.”

  “Of course you’d defend him.”

  A low moan escaped from Petal. Abigail and Nora both turned to her.

  Even paler than usual, Petal’s eyes formed giant dark circles in her face. Her mouth gaped and she seemed drawn into the television.

  The news announcer’s voice spoke over the image of what might have once been a meadow but now appeared to be a field of mud. The wide-angle shot showed an open area ringed by trees with fall leaves. As the view closed in, the trees faded and the ground came more into focus.

  Petal dropped to her knees in front of the screen. “No. No. No.” She covered her mouth with her thin hands.

  Abigail grabbed the remote and punched up the volume.

  While the camera narrowed in on the ground, showing mounds of black feathers, the announcer said, “Hundreds of thousands of blackbirds fell from the sky in an unexplained rain of death.” The image on the screen showed piles of dead birds. “Apparently the kill happened sometime in the late afternoon when the birds dropped onto this Georgia meadow. No explanation is forthcoming although Timothy Peterson, Professor of Ornithology at the University of Georgia had this to say.”

  The screen switched to a tall man standing outside a collegiate-looking brick building. “It could be the result of a washing machine–type thunderstorm extremely high in the atmosphere. This type of storm would agitate and create a vortex, suddenly appearing and sucking the red-winged blackbirds into its midst and spitting them back onto the ground.”

  Petal rocked back and forth. “How could she?”

  The announcer, a blonde woman with skin like rosy plastic and eyes so rimmed in makeup they might have been painted on, held the microphone to her full-lipped mouth. She stood at the edge of the meadow with a view of the carnage behind her. “Of course, there are other explanations for the bizarre phenomenon.”

  The camera drew back to reveal a bony woman with gray hair down to the middle of her back. Her face burned with intensity. “This is obviously a government conspiracy. It’s the result of a WMD experiment. Wake up, America!”

  Behind her, a small group carried signs and chanted. The scene reminded Nora of the activists who had hounded her about manmade snow on the peaks. Her stomach churned.

  The announcer smiled knowingly. “According to conspiracy theorists, there is such a doomsday weapon, in development since the 1970s. The HAARP facility in Gakona, Alaska, is home to what was once touted as the Star Wars Defense.” The screen flipped from the announcer’s face to a photograph of a group standing in front of an array of towers.

  Petal gasped. She pointed. “Sylvia,” she whispered.

  Nora leaned forward. It was difficult to tell with the grainy shot, but a petite woman with curly black hair stood in the front row. It could be Sylvia.

  The announcer continued. “The government and private contractors insist they are performing ionospheric research for better
communications. But some, including former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, say HAARP is creating weapons of mass destruction.” The screen flashed a video of Jesse Ventura at the gates of a government facility, presumably HAARP, being pushed back and refused entry.

  Back to the announcer. “Midnight thunderstorms, government weapons testing, or signs that the world is coming to an end? Whatever the reason, residents of Harris County will be cleaning up for some time.” The plastic-faced reporter signed off on her segment of the day’s bizarre stories from around the country.

  The program cut to a commercial and Petal collapsed into sobs. “I did this. It’s my fault!”

  thirty-three

  Petal fell to the floor in a heap and Abigail patted her back. “You had nothing to do with this, dear.”

  Nora’s first instinct was to console and protect Petal’s total vulnerability. That’s the thing, though. You can’t protect people from the world.

  Abigail jabbed the Off button and huddled over Petal. “I know it’s hard to see all that death.” With her facial gyrations, Abigail signaled Nora for help.

  Petal pulled away and rolled into a ball, sobbing. “She promised. Never again. She promised. She promised.”

  Abigail sent Nora a puzzled expression. Maybe Mark and Sylvia were right about Petal: don’t feed the drama.

  Abbey whined. He sniffed at Petal and came to Nora, thrusting his nose into her hand.

  “Who promised? What did they promise?” Abigail asked.

  Petal inhabited her own world. “No more death. She said it. No more.”

  Abigail and Nora half-lifted Petal and plopped her on the couch. Abigail snugged in beside her and Nora knelt in front. “Calm down, Petal. Tell us what you mean.”

  Petal swiped her sleeve across her eyes and nose. “First it was the fish kill in Missouri. And now this.” Sob, sob, sob. “They were innocent birds. They didn’t need to die.” Even more sobbing. “She lied. She lied.”

  Maybe Nora should call an ambulance to take Petal to the nearest psych ward. “You’re going to have to start at the beginning if you want us to understand.”