“Whoever hit Marla that night has been here,” I told him. “I think. Been and gone, it looks like. The guy … left trash… a disguise that makes you bald.”
General Bo shook his head. “Hold out your arms.” I did so and he handed me the logs. He was already moving in Arch’s direction. “We shouldn’t have taken the working harness off the dog. He could have told us if what he’s smelling up here is Tony. Maybe that’s why he’s barking so much.”
“We could try him with the harness,” I said as I hustled along behind him.
“No. It’s too dark to get any tracking done. The dog needs to eat and rest. Start the fire. I’ll get Arch, Marla, the dog, and the supplies inside.” He pulled out the Glock. Suddenly Jake howled more fiercely than ever.
The general called impatiently, “Come on, everybody inside! Carry as much as you can.”
I stumbled with the wood to the cabin door. Jake yelped. If a person or persons was indeed nearby, they could be in no doubt of our presence now. Arch grabbed the bucket and Jake’s leash. Marla limped toward us. I couldn’t believe she was carrying a bag from the Jeep trunk. When the two of them were safely through the door, I brought it almost closed. A moment later, the general backed into the cabin, his non”-gun-holding hand grasping a last bag of supplies. He bolted the door.
While I stuffed wood into the stove, my mind raced. Not believing he or she would be followed, this criminal had left evidence gleefully. Catch me if you can. But] where was he going? Did he have Tony with him? And : most important, would we sort out what had happened before the Furman County Sheriffs Department caught up with us?
Food, I told myself. We’ll eat first and worry later.
By the time Arch had poured Jake a bowl of water and’ Marla had dished out some kibble, I had the beginning of a fire going in the stove. Arch assured us that Jake would let us know if there was anyone in the vicinity of the cabin. I knew that to be true, as Jake had certainly alerted us to every rustle of movement on our street. We all agreed to relax. If possible, Marla said with a sigh.
The general built a fire in the main fireplace, and soon the cabin was lit with a cozy glow. I poked through the cabinets lining the cabin walls. The corner cupboard yielded an array of crockery and pewterware that looked authentically nineteenth-century. I thought with a pang that Tom, with his great love of antiques, would have admired the tankards and chargers. The Hardcastles had stocked two sets of plates: a collection of plain ironstone, and a lovely set of spatterware with a rose in the center of each plate. This, too, Tom had taught me the name for ? Adam’s Rose. Soon, I thought with a pang, he would return to an empty house, see my note, and wonder if we were still alive. Perhaps he was already home. As the rain beat down on the roof I was thankful, finally, for one thing. At least we weren’t outside.
While Marla and Arch tried to figure how the four of us would make do with two small beds, Bo unpacked the bags of food. A large bundle of fresh asparagus lay next to a package of chicken breasts, a bag of rice, and several small jars of condiments. He had brought half a dozen eggs. Five of them were now broken.
“Thought you’d like to do a stir-fry,” he announced solemnly. “Since I didn’t know what our cooking situation would be.”
Marla burst out laughing. Arch gave me ashy, oh-well sort of smile. I asked Bo to set us up on the small table while I hunted for, and found, a heavy cast-iron skillet that would do for a wok. In another pot, I started water for the rice and then turned my attention to the chicken. Anything to get away from thinking about the unknown lurking in the mist. And speaking of the unknown, why shouldn’t I call Tom? That would at least put my mind at rest, if not his.
“Did you bring the cellular phone in from the car?” I asked General Bo.
He shook his head grimly. “No, and I don’t want anyone going out until morning. Too risky.”
Oh, great. I assessed the Oriental-style ingredients. I started the rice and sliced the chicken breasts. While the chicken marinated in egg white, sherry, soy sauce, and cornstarch ? a tenderizing trick I’d learned from a television food show ? I pressed a pungent garlic clove and sliced a pile of bright green asparagus and fragrant white onion. Soon the chicken, garlic, and onion were sizzling in the pan and a mouth-watering scent filled the cabin. I steamed the sliced asparagus and stirred in dark, tangy black bean sauce. At least I was making something for Marla that was lowfat, I thought grimly.
“Marla, I need to talk to you about something,” I said when we dug into the heaps of steaming Chinese food. “I’d like you to take a good look at that map. You know the partners and the investors better than any of us. There could be a bank, an airstrip, somebody these guys know in a nearby town… anything that looks reasonable as a possibility of where one or both of them could have gone. We could skip going back to where we were tracking Tony, and try to assess his direction, pick up a fresher scent.”
When we finished, Bo and Arch washed the dishes in water they’d brought in from the pump and heated on the cookstove. Marla and I spread out the map on Lady Maureen’s striped back. We studied it and tried to peer into the mind of Albert Lipscomb. Or were we trying to psych out Tony Royce? Or both? Or someone else?
The campsite was a stopping point amid a network of trails that ran through the Arapahoe National Forest: The trail we’d been on with Jake was clearly marked. It followed Grizzly Creek and then crossed it, then came down to a four-wheel-drive road that led to Interstate 70 and Georgetown to the west, Idaho Springs to the east.
I pointed to the map. “Whoever we’re tracking, whoever has Tony, has a two-day lead on us. So where would one or both of the Prospect partners, or one of their clients be going?”
Marla nestled her large body into the tiger skin and stared down at the map. A scarlet-painted nail pointed. “If one of the clients is behind all this, then I have no idea. They could be at Denver International Airport, they could be in the Nevada desert.” She paused. “But if it’s Tony and/or Albert, we could look in one of two places, I’d say. The two of them shared a house, sort of a mountain hideaway, in Estes Park. What’s that, seventy miles from here? But you’d have to go east and then north from here. That’s not the way Jake was leading us.”
“Seventy miles,” I repeated. I was suddenly so tired. My wet hair had dried, finally, but my muscles ached from the strain of the day. “What’s your second idea?”
Marla said, “If Albert has three and a half million in cash from the Prospect account, he wouldn’t want to carry it in this weather across a mountainous forest trail to find his partner, for whatever reason. So he’d have to stash it someplace.” She tapped the map. “This is the direction we were heading. Northwest. Straight in the direction of the Eurydice Gold Mine.” She looked at me. “Someone could have stashed the cash in one of those buildings by the mine. There’s nobody up there, since they haven’t hired a team to start exploration work. Plus, there’s that safe deep in the Eurydice Mine, about a half-mile in. You know, that’s where they keep those gold bars and samples.”
I said, “And guess what I’d be willing to bet? They weren’t samples from the Eurydice. But why wouldn’t somebody, Captain Shockley especially, have gone inside the mine in the last week to check whether the samples were still there? I know he went up there when Albert was first missing, but the place was all locked up.”
Marla shrugged. “Well, Albert knows the place well.
Stir-fry Chicken with Asparagus
4 chicken breast halves (approximately 1 ? pounds), cut into 1/2-inch-thick, bite-size pieces
1 egg white
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon dry sherry
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 small (6-ounce) onion, halved and thinly sliced
1 garlic clove, pressed
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 ? cup water
1 pound fresh asparagus, trimmed of woody stems and cut diagonally into 2-inch slices
? cup canned water chestnuts, drained and sliced
? cup black bean sauce (available in the Oriental food section of the grocery store)
Freshly ground black pepper Approximately 4 cups of cooked, hot medium-grain rice In a glass pie pan, thoroughly mix the egg white, cornstarch, sherry, soy sauce, onion, and garlic. Marinate the chicken pieces in this mixture for 30 minutes to no more than an hour.
In a large frying pan or wok, heat the oil over moderately high heat. Stir-fry the marinated chicken for several
