Inherit the Bones

Chapter Nine

In my second-grade class, our teacher, a lovely woman named Mrs. Hornsby, gave us an assignment to “draw our town.” That was it-with pencil or pen, in color or not, draw the town. It’s harder than it sounds, especially when you are seven and your perspective tends to skew to grandiose scales or tiny little creatures.

Most of the other kids did sketches of the ski slopes and the Rockies, with wildflowers that looked like poppies, and stick figures of their moms and dads and dogs, each drawing complete with a perfectly square house and a charcoal-colored smoke plume puffing up from a redbrick chimney into a sky filled with, inexplicably, a sun, a moon, a half-dozen stars, and a few puffs of clouds, all at the same time.

I turned in a piece of graph paper with the town divided into four directional segments.

I still think of Cedar Valley that way, broken up into rough quadrants, each with its own subculture.

The south end of town is the working man’s land, a busy hub of gas stations and fast-food restaurants, pubs with neon beer signs (half of them missing important vowels), and mechanic garages, and trailer homes spread out on lots teeming with rusted bicycles and washing machine parts and plastic toys. Head to the east, and you’ll eventually hit Denver; head to the west, and you’ll find yourself in a maze of ski lifts and mountain bike trails and fishing holes and campgrounds.

And to the north, well, to the north is where the beauty and the brains of Cedar Valley reside. It’s where the main street becomes Main Street: a quaint row of shops, and Victorian houses, and modern municipal buildings all built to look vintage.

Head north and you hit money.

It was to the northwest part of town that we were headed, Sam Birdshead and the chief and myself. It was just before eight in the morning and we had an appointment with the Bellingtons.

After my lonely and melancholy night, I had been glad to see the chief and Sam. Then I remembered where we were headed, and a cold feeling crept into my belly and remained there, heavy as a rock. Even the Peanut had slowed her kicking and I wondered if she could pick up on my mood, if we shared some kind of sentient connection like that.

I wasn’t looking forward to our meeting with the mayor and his wife.

Chavez was driving. He took a left at an unmarked turnoff and we climbed a narrow dirt road. I caught glimpses, through the wall of pine trees that lined the road, of big sprawling estate homes with log sidings and brick chimneys and private driveways. In the mountains, money has always bought seclusion. At the angle we were climbing, I was going to expect nothing less than jaw-dropping views of the valley.

We drove with the windows down. The air was cool, with a hint of early morning moisture and a sweet, pure scent. Temperatures would reach the nineties by early afternoon and the air would be dry then, dry and hot and not so sweet smelling.

We rounded a tight curve and Chavez said, “This is it.”

I gasped as the house came into view. Cedar Valley’s wealthy tended to favor what I called the Swiss Miss style, big timber chalets built to look as though they sprung from the forest, homes that made use of natural resources and aimed to blend in, not stand out.

But this… this was an entirely different sort of animal. The Bellingtons had taste; I just wasn’t sure you’d call it good taste.

Solid sheets of glass hung suspended between concrete pillars, meeting one another at sharp right angles and varying heights, so that the house was one big, cold, alien geometrical sculpture. It was, in the words of Brody’s twelve-year-old nephew, butt ugly. I couldn’t imagine seeing it in the design stage and saying, with all seriousness, yes, let’s spend a few million dollars to build this.

I glanced at the chief, but he was preoccupied with wedging the Expedition into a narrow spot between a hill of gravel and a shed. Although the house itself seemed completed, it was obvious there was still work being done on the grounds; what looked like the beginnings of a greenhouse sat a few hundred yards beyond the main building.

From the backseat, Sam Birdshead tapped me on the shoulder and pointed up at the house.

“Look,” he said.

In the eastern sky, the sun had cleared the tree line and bathed the structure in an amber glow. A dozen rays of early morning light winked back at me, reflected from the enormous mirrorlike windows and glass walls. It was as though we were inside a prism.

“It’s beautiful,” I whispered, and blinked as a flash of white from within the wonderland caught my eye. From a second-story window, a pale face stared down at us. But the same sunlight that softened the harsh angles of the house blurred the edges of the face and I couldn’t make out any features.

After a few seconds, the person withdrew and a curtain fell down against the windowpane.

Satisfied with his parking job, Chavez turned off the engine and we climbed out. My heart rate increased with the exertion at the higher altitude and I took a moment to catch my breath, one palm on the edge of the warm hood of the SUV.

At the front of the house, Sam searched for the doorbell. Smooth walls flanked twin steel doors. There didn’t seem to be any button or bell so I shrugged, reached around him, and knocked sharply on the doors.

The chief let out a short cough and when I glanced at him, I was surprised to see he looked nervous. I gave him what I hoped was a reassuring smile.

I was nervous, too.

The door swung open and a tall, middle-aged woman in a simple, dark blue dress beckoned us in. She introduced herself as Hannah Watkins, the Bellingtons’ longtime nanny. She looked shell-shocked and I saw firsthand the pain of reliving Nicky’s death. Chavez placed a hand on her shoulder and murmured condolences. I was reminded again of the deep friendship the Chavez family shared with the Bellington family, and I told myself to tread carefully.

We followed Mrs. Watkins down a long hallway.

The interior of the house was as cold and sterile as the exterior. The walls and tile floors were shades of gray, the monotony broken only by large pieces of black and white leather furniture and dramatic canvases of modern art. The paintings were abstract images that followed no rhyme or reason, all swirls and waves and crisscross curves that left me with a vague sensation of nausea, as though I’d been on a boat and gotten seasick.

Mrs. Watkins left us in the living room, a plush, sunken space with a view of the valley below. I walked to the floor-to-ceiling window and peered out. The living room must have hung right over the mountainside, because when I looked down, I was standing at the edge of a cliff, looking at the tops of the same trees that minutes before, I had been driving below.

A fresh wave of nausea washed over me and I closed my eyes and rested my forehead against the cool glass.

“Angel, wonderful of you to come out.”

I opened my eyes and watched, in the window’s reflection, as Terence Bellington strode into the living room and embraced the chief in that half-hugging, half-handshaking way that men of power use with one another.

When I turned around, I saw clearly the deep shadows that darkened the skin under the mayor’s eyes. He was comfortable in his body, on the tall side, trim from years of competitive tennis. If you didn’t know he was sick, he would seem the picture of health. But the signs were there, if you looked closely. The cancer treatments had left him completely bald. His scalp was free of age marks and freckles and it shone as smooth as an egg, and his eyes were a dark olive green that made me think of wet army fatigues. Up close, he wasn’t trim; he was too thin, and his skin hung in places it shouldn’t.

The rumor in town was that Bellington saw Cedar Valley as a stepping-stone to the big leagues. He’d won the mayoral election with an unheard of 75 percent majority; with that kind of popularity, he might just be able to skip a term in the governor’s seat and go straight to Washington. And after that, the sky was the limit. He certainly didn’t have to stop at the Senate; there’s always a cabinet post, or an ambassadorship, or the golden egg itself: the White House.

If he lived.

His was a dodgy cancer; many people survived it. Many more did not. The last article I’d read on him, in People a month or so back, had quoted his doctors as saying he had a solid 30 to 40 percent chance of kicking this cancer in the teeth. Still, the word “dying” never entered his speeches, never appeared on his Web site.

Mrs. Watkins, the housekeeper, appeared behind Bellington and silently placed a silver tray on a lacquered sideboard and poured tea into four china cups. She whispered something to the mayor. He nodded at her and then she left the room as silently as she’d entered it.

Bellington said, “Ellen will join us in a few minutes, she’s upstairs with Annika. They’re having a hell of a time with this, as you can imagine.”

Chavez nodded solemnly. “Of course. Terry, you remember Detective Gemma Monroe, don’t you? And this is Sam Birdshead, the newest member of our department.”

I nodded hello at the mayor.

“Gemma, Sam,” Bellington said, and handed us each a cup of tea. He sat with his back to the sun, in the room’s only armchair, a black leather number that shone like obsidian. The rest of us spread out on the two sofas flanking the narrow coffee table.

“We’re so sorry for your loss, sir,” I began. “I can’t imagine how difficult this must be.”

The mayor sipped his tea. “Gemma, you’re right, this is extremely tough news. You know, I thought losing my child was the worst thing that would ever happen to me. Now, knowing all these years he was actually alive and allowed us, allowed his mother, to think he was dead… it turns out I don’t even know who my boy was. It goes against everything this family stands for. Cancer is nothing compared to this hell.”

Chavez said, “Terry, we’re going to get to the bottom of this, I swear. Nicky was a sweet kid. He must have had a damn good reason to do this.”

“Easy to say, Angel, harder to believe. He wanted for nothing. Anything he asked for, he got. When I was his age, I worked three jobs just to buy a bike,” Bellington said. He crossed his legs, deep in thought. “Why would he do this?”

The mayor set down his tea and rubbed his hands over his face vigorously as though to wash away the thoughts that prickled him. Red streaks bloomed on his cheeks and just as quickly faded away. His hands were small for his stature and I watched him, knowing I might be looking at Nicky’s killer.

You always look to the family first. Fair or not, mothers and fathers and spouses are the quickest and most direct connection to any victim. That was something I had told Sam; always start your suspect list small and tight and widen as you go.

Sadly, sometimes you never need to look beyond the family.

The mayor picked up his cup of tea and took another sip and repeated, “Why would he do this?”

“Sir, when we find your son’s killer, we might be able to answer that,” I said. “Perhaps the two-his disappearance, and now his death-are connected. Murder is usually never as complicated as it first seems.”

“Imagine that, Terry. We’re now the parents of a murdered child,” a woman’s husky voice said.

I hadn’t heard Ellen Bellington come down the hallway, but there she was, all six feet of her. She moved like a cat, slinking into the room and perching on the arm of the mayor’s chair, her severe black pantsuit blending into the leather.

Ellen was stunning, more beautiful at fifty than she had likely been at twenty. A former actress, the years had softened her striking Nordic features and rounded out her angular frame. Hair as pale as corn silk cascaded over her shoulders and down her back like a waterfall, and I couldn’t help thinking of that other waterfall, Bride’s Veil, that her son had gone over three years ago. Her eyes were the same shade of arctic blue ice as Nicky’s.

“I wonder, does it feel any different than being the parents of a child who died in a tragic accident?” she mused. “I suppose only time will answer that particular question.”

She patted her husband on the head and then began running her fingers over his hairless scalp as though playing the keys on a baby grand.

“Ellen, please,” Bellington began, but she shushed him and dropped her hand from his head to his back. She patted him again like one pats a dog, affectionately and absentmindedly, more because the dog is there than because of any strong desire to do the patting.

Ellen smiled at the chief. “Hello, Angel. Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends?”

“Yes, of course, this is Gemma Monroe. Her grandfather-step-grandfather, sorry Gemma, is Bull Weston, who of course you know. And this is Sam Birdshead, he just joined us from Denver. A recent graduate of the academy.”

Ellen said, “Pleased to meet you, Gemma. Bull was the best judge this town ever had. Nothing like that idiot Swanson, he presides over the courtroom like it’s a reality show. And Sam. I know that last name. Are you related to Wayne Bird Head, up in Wind River territory? Yes, you must be, I see a resemblance in the skin and the nose. He’s your grandfather, isn’t he? What was that charming expression I heard? The ‘godfather of the Rez?’”

Sam flushed and I felt like punching her. I knew who Wayne Bird Head was and I also knew that family ties or no, Sam was nothing like his grandfather.

Ellen walked across the room and stopped at the window where I’d gotten dizzy. She pressed a palm against the glass. I wondered if hers had been the face I’d seen when we’d pulled up the drive. She remained there, staring out at the valley below, and we watched her until the silence grew uncomfortable.

Chief Chavez cleared his throat. “Ellen, Terry, we don’t know a whole lot at this stage, certainly nothing more than we discussed last night on the phone. Nicky’s body was found at the old fairgrounds. He was part of a traveling circus doing a clown routine, working there for the last two years. He was hired on in Cincinnati. From all accounts, he was a good worker. We’ve got a few of the officers interviewing some of the other circus employees today.”

Ellen let out a bark of a laugh. It was hard and short and brusque. “A circus, of all places. What kind of freak did my baby become?”

Chavez sighed. “Not a freak, Ellen. Not our Nicky.”

Ellen drew her hand down the window slowly, leaving a long streak on the window. She said, “He was my favorite. I know you’re not supposed to say that, but he was, since the day the twins were born. Nicky was the best of us. He was too good for this world, in some ways, I suppose. Do you think me a terrible person? I love my daughter. But I loved my son more.”

No one knew what to say to that.

I waited a moment and then spoke directly to the mayor. “Sir, you said your daughter Annika is home? May we speak with her?”

Ellen turned from the window and shook her head, answering for her husband. “She won’t come down. She doesn’t want to talk with anyone right now. She is devastated.”

I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile. “May I go upstairs? I won’t bother her for too long. Maybe she’ll talk for a few minutes, if it’s just me?”

A look passed between Terry and Ellen that I couldn’t decipher.

“Sure, Gemma, you can certainly try,” Bellington said. He shrugged. “Maybe it would be good for Annika to talk with an outsider.”