Yeah right, she thought, taking the box. She snapped it open and was dazzled by the sight of gemstones, blue stars. She blinked, hardly able to see. Star sapphires. A bracelet of star sapphires set in platinum. She peered closely and recognized immediately they were real, not synthetics. Each one was different, each one slightly flawed, each one with its very own nuance of color and hue and personality. She turned the box in the light, seeing the stars on each stone move, the light reflecting off their rutilated depths. She swallowed, feeling a sudden lump in her throat. No one had given her anything like this, ever. Ever. She felt a hot tickling in her eyes, which she instantly blinked away, horrified to discover herself so vulnerable.
She said in an offhand way, 'Nice collection of aluminum oxide you got here.'
'I was hoping you would like star sapphires, Melodic.'
Crookshank swallowed again, keeping her face turned to the bracelet so he couldn't see her eyes. She didn't think she had ever loved anything so much as this bracelet. Sri Lankan star sapphires, her favorite, each one unique, forged in the depths of the earth by immense heat and pressure-mineralogy incarnate. She knew she was being shamelessly and openly manipulated, but at the same time she thought: Why not? Why shouldn't she take it? Wasn't that the way the world worked?
She felt Corvus's hand come to rest on her shoulder, giving it the gentlest of squeezes. It was like an electric shock. To her mortification a tear escaped and ran hotly down her cheek. She blinked rapidly, unable to speak, grateful that he was standing behind her and couldn't see. Another hand took the other shoulder, squeezing just a little in unison, and she could feel the heat of his presence on the nape of her neck. An erotic charge ran through her like a bolt of lightning, and she flushed and tingled all over.
'Melodic, I'm awfully grateful for your help. I know how good you are at what you do. That's why I entrusted this sample to you-and to no one else. That's why I gave you the bracelet. It's not just a bribe-although it is a bit of that.' He chuckled, patting her shoulder. 'It's an expression of my faith in you, Melodic Crookshank.'
She nodded, her head still turned away.
The hands squeezed, rubbed, caressed her shoulders. 'Thank you, Melodic.'
'Okay,' she whispered.
8
WHEN TOM'S FATHER had died, and he had inherited an ocean of money, his sole
indulgence had been buying his truck. It was a 1957 Chevy 3100 pickup with a turquoise body and a white top, chrome grill, three-speed on the floor. It once belonged to a classic car collector in Albuquerque, a real fanatic who had lovingly rebuilt the engine and drive train, machined the parts he couldn't find, and rechromed everything down to the knobs on the radio. As an ultimate touch, he'd upholstered the interior in the finest, creamiest white kid leather. The poor man had died of a heart attack before he could enjoy the fruits of his labor, and Tom had picked it up from an ad in the Thrifty Nickel. He had paid the widow every penny it was worth-fifty-five grand-and still he felt he'd gotten a bargain. It was a work of driveable sculpture.
It was already noon. Tom had driven everywhere, asked around at the Sunset, and had wandered as many of the forest roads that he knew near the high mesas, to no avail. All he learned was that he was merely retracing the footsteps of the Santa Fe Police, who were also trying to find out if anyone had encountered the murdered man before his death.
It seemed the man had been very careful to hide his tracks.
Tom had decided to visit Ben Peek, who lived in the funky hamlet of Cerril-los, New Mexico. A former gold- mining town that had seen better days, Cerrillos lay in a cottonwood-filled hollow off the main road, a cluster of old adobe and wooden buildings scattered along the dry bed of Galisteo Creek. The mines had played out decades ago but Cerrillos had avoided ghost-town status by being revived by hippies in the sixties, who bought up abandoned miners' cabins and installed in them pottery studios, leather shops, and macrame factories. It was now
inhabited by a curious mixture of old Spanish families who once worked the mines, aging freaks, and curious eccentrics.
Ben Peek was one of the latter, and his place looked it. The old battenboard house hadn't been painted in a generation. The dirt yard, enclosed by a leaning picket fence, was crowded with rusted mining equipment. In one corner stood a heap of purple and green glass insulators from telephone poles. A sign nailed to the side of the house said,
THE WHAZZIT SHOP EVERYTHING FOR SALE
Tom stepped out. Ben Peek had been a professional prospector for forty years until a jack mule broke his hip. He had grudgingly settled down in Cerrillos with a collection of junk and a stock of dubious stories. Despite his eccentric appearance, he had an M.S. in geology from the Colorado School of Mines. He knew his stuff.
Tom mounted the crooked portal and rapped on the door. A moment later the lights went on in the dimness beyond, a face appeared, distorted by the old rippled glass, and then the door opened to the tinkle of a bell.
'Tom Broadbent!' Peek's rough hand grasped Tom's and gave it a bone-crushing squeeze. Peek was no more than five feet five, but he made up for it with vigor and a booming voice. He had a five-day growth of beard, crow's- feet around a pair of lively black eyes, and a brow that wrinkled up so much that it gave him a perpetual look of surprise.
'How are you, Ben?'
'Terrible, just terrible. Come on in.'
He led Tom through his shop, the walls covered with shelves groaning under heaps of old rocks, iron tools, and glass bottles. Everything was for sale, but nothing, it seemed, ever sold. The price tags were yellowing antiques themselves. They passed into a back room, which functioned as a kitchen and dining room. Peek's dogs were sleeping on the floor, sighing loudly in their dreams. The old man snagged a battered coffeepot off the stove, poured out two mugs, and gimped over to a wooden table, seating himself on one side and inviting Tom to sit on the other.
'Sugar? Milk?'
'Black.'
Tom watched as the old man heaped three tablespoons of sugar into his, followed by three tablespoons of Cremora, stirring the mixture into a kind of sludge. Tom sipped his coffee cautiously. It was surprisingly good-hot, strong, brewed cowboy style the way he liked it.
'How's Sally?'
'Fantastic, as always.'
Peek nodded. 'Wonderful woman you got there, Tom.'
'Don't I know it.'
Peek rapped a. pipe out on the edge of the fireplace and began filling it with Borkum Riff. 'Yesterday morning I read in the New Mexican that you found a murdered man up in the high mesas.'
'There's more to the story than what was in the paper. Can I count on you to keep this to yourself?'
Of course.
Tom told Peek the story-omitting the part about the notebook.
'Any idea who the prospector was?' he asked Peek at the end.
Peek snorted. 'Treasure hunters are a pack of credulous half-wits. In the whole history of the West nobody ever found a real honest-to-God buried treasure.'
'This man did.'
'I'll believe it when I see it. And no, I haven't heard anything about a treasure hunter up there, but that doesn't mean much-they're a secretive lot.'
'Any idea what the treasure might be? Assuming it exists.'
Peek grunted. 'I was a prospector, not a treasure hunter. There's a big difference.'
'But you spent time up there.'
'Twenty-five years.'
'You heard stories.'
Peek lit a wooden kitchen match and held it to his pipe. 'Sure did.'
'Humor me.'
'When this was still Spanish territory, they say there was a gold mine up there north of Abiquiu called El Capitan. You know that story?'
'Never heard it.'
