friend’s, or camping with the Cub Scouts in the wildlife preserve. I’d face in the direction of my son’s location and send him good vibes. This was not a spiritual exercise sanctioned in your neighborhood Episcopal church. But I’d always found it reassuring, and believed that God would understand.
I quietly maneuvered through the set of double doors to the southeast tower. My boots scraped the floor. The sharp air was dense with ice crystals. The dim light illuminating the tower cast long shadows on the dark stone.
John Richard’s house lay southwest of the castle, in the Aspen Meadow Country Club area. I shivered, oriented myself, then stood by the window that faced southwest. I closed my eyes. Then I brought up the vision of Arch sleeping. I willed myself to be very still.
After a few moments, I could have sworn I heard breathing. It was not my own breath, but the rapid, shallow inhale-exhale of a child. Fear rippled through my veins. I opened my eyes and glanced around quickly: nothing. When I tipped forward to check out the window, there was only the barely lit black water of the moat below, and across the moat, a small neon light by the castle Dumpster. Ghosts didn’t usually breathe, did they? Being dead and all? I’m losing it, I decided, as I tiptoed back to our room, shed my outerwear, and slipped into bed. I need sleep.
But I lay awake for a long time, thinking about what to do next.
Dawn brought frigid air and charcoal clouds hemmed with a bright blue sliver of sky. To my chagrin, my neck had stiffened from my nasty encounter with the computer thief. What sleep I’d managed to get had brought some clarity, however. Boyd and Armstrong had promised to touch base today. I would call them first, with some questions of my own. And I had to talk with Eliot about the new arrangements for the next day’s labyrinth lunch. With Tom still asleep, I rolled quietly out of bed, emptied my mind, and began a slow yoga routine. Breathe, stretch, breathe, hold. Before long, I felt better.
As I started to get dressed, I remembered the disk and Sara Beth O’Malley. I frowned, remembering Tom’s story. Talk about a ghost.
Tom’s snoring was deep and sonorous. With my laptop tucked under my arm, I tiptoed into the bathroom. I didn’t give myself time to think, much less feel guilty. I plugged in the computer and booted it up, covered the toilet seat with warm towels, and sat down to break into my husband’s e-mail.
There were seven messages: three from “The Gambler,” as Andy apparently called himself, three from “S.B.,” and one from the State Department. I had already opened the first of S.B.‘s messages: Do you remember me.p You said you’d love me forevet: Now I went straight to the second.
I need to prove myself to you? I smiled. Good old Tom. Figure out if she is who she says she is. I’m putting myself in danger just writing to you. Nobody knows I’m here. Remember our secret engagement ring? We didn’t want people to criticize us for being too young to know what we were doing. So you picked out a tiny ruby, my birthstone, set in platinum. In answer to your other question, I’ve been in a little village. After my so-called death, I went from being a nurse to being a doctor.: - S.B.
At least she wasn’t calling herself “Your S.B.” anymore. I battled guilt as I opened the third and final communication from her, dated three weeks ago.
Tom, I saw your wife and son today. I read in the paper that she?s a caterer: I don’t want to upset your life. I just would like to see you. Why am I here, you asked. An anonymous donor is giving us medical supplies. I’m pilling them up. I also have a dental abscess and need a root canal. They don’t have neighborhood endodontists in my country, although they can manage fake passports and counterfeit checks. I’m taking the risk to tell you all this for a reason. I have an appointment at High Country Dental on February 13 at 9 A.M. I’d like to see you before my appointment, if possible. S.B.
Wait a minute. My country?
The next communication, the one from the State Department, was unemotional and to the point.
Officer Schulz: As you were notified by the DOD in 1975, Major Sara Beth O’Malley, R.N., was listed as missing, presumed dead. Her Mobile Army Surgical Hospital unit was destroyed during on attack three months before American forces withdrew from Saigon. Her body was not recovered, and the DOD has not had reason to change its assessment.
From time to time, we get unsubstantiated reports of war-era Americans still living in Vietnam. Neither we nor the Defense Deportment has any way of investigating these claims.
We urge all persons who have eyewitness reports of missing veterans to fill out a Form 626-3A, available on- line at the above address.
This happy epistle was signed by a minor dignitary of the Department.
So: Sara Beth O’Malley had somehow survived the war, unbeknownst to Washington bureaucrats. She’d also become a doctor for a village whose plumbing facilities undoubtedly wouldn’t appeal to Sukie. The part I couldn’t fathom was why she’d risk coming back to Colorado after twenty-five years to pick up supplies and have her teeth fixed, and oh, by the way, to check on her old fiance, who had long believed her dead.
I don’t love her. Tom had probably been afraid that if he died from the shot, I’d find the e-mails. Which I had anyway. She thought Arch was his son. If she read in the paper that I was a caterer, she knew I did local events, like the one at Hyde Chapel. Had she been waiting for me to show up for the labyrinth lunch, and shot Tom by accident, instead of me? I wondered if the army or her villagers had taught her to shoot, after all.
I stared at the blinking cursor. Was Sara Beth O’Malley telling the truth? Where was she staying? If she wasn’t in Aspen Meadow, where was she?
Suddenly I remembered what Captain Lambert had quoted from the owner of The Stamp Fox: If you have contacts in the Far East… you can fence anything.
Maybe this was too far-fetched. Could Sara Beth O’Malley possibly be hooked up with Ray Wolff and his thieving gang? And, most importantly for my psyche and I marriage: In the last month, has Tom seen her?
I sighed, rode a wave of caffeine-craving, and opened the first of the e-mails from “The Gambler,” Andy Balachek himself. Whoever had shot Tom must have known about Andy’s body right there in the creek. If I was going to figure out who the shooter was, it might help to know what had been going on with Andy before he died.
Hey, Officer Schultz, he wrote on January 20, I really appreciate you letting me write to you. Look, all I want is to get enough money to pay my dad back for his truck. I don’t want him to die with my stealing hanging over my head. And I don’t want to go to prison. I didn’t want anybody to die. I didn’t kill the FedEx driver. So you can tell the D.A. that, too. Ray whacked him.
Where?s Ray Wolff? Where are the stamps? You don’t want much, do you? Day after tomorrow, Ray will be casing places to store the stamps. When you think Storage in Furman County, what do you think of?
His next communication was equally defensive, written in the same flip, bravado tone. Tom, man, are you trying to get me into more trouble? You got Ray Wolff, you got THE GUY who whacked the drivel; why can’t I come in now and collect the reward? My dads not going to live much longer. Now you’re telling me I can’t get out of the theft and complicity charges without rolling over on my partner and telling you where the loot is? Come on, Tom, give me a break.
The third and final letter was his farewell. Tom, I’ve got a stake, and a chance to make big money to pay my dad back. Why do you keep asking me the same questions? No, I can’t turn in our other partner. No, I can’t tell you where the stuff is, or how we’re going to sell it. It?s getting hard writing you, I’m being watched all the time. I think my partner suspects I turned Ray in. But I had my reasons. I’ll call you from Atlantic City. If I can.
Well, there was one question answered, at least for me: our other partner. One person. Probably our shooter.
And as to Andy’s movements? He had called me from Central City, not Atlantic City. Then he’d disappeared, and turned up dead in Aspen Meadow. Unless Pete Balachek was incoherent from his illness, the police would have questioned him about his son and his associates. I didn’t have a clue as to who the “partner” was. Nor did I have the slightest idea where the stolen stamps were. So what was my next move?
One thing was sure: I wanted to visit with Sara Beth O’Malley. She might or might not be expecting Tom to meet her at the dentist’s the day after tomorrow. But I had a very easy way of finding out if she was telling the truth on that score. I knew where the endodontist’s office was. Oh, the glories of living in a small town.
-16-
While my disk coughed up recipes and menus for Tudor feasts, my mind traveled back to the fight between
