Double Shot

club area. We passed a few cars—luckily, all the gapers had left their decks—and within moments were crunching over the gravel washout on Stoneberry. The evergreens, aspens, and Alpine roses ringing the cul-de-sac shrouded the pavement in darkness. When we stopped in front of the rental, Tom drew out a Maglite from the floor of the backseat. He held it in his lap for a moment, as if unsure if he should give it to me.

“What did you drop?” he wanted to know.

“A piece of jewelry. Several pieces of jewelry. They’ll just take a sec to find, if they’re still there.”

“You don’t wear jewelry, Miss G.”

“Are you going to give me the light or not?”

When I slid out of the front seat, I snapped on the Maglite and tried to remember exactly where I’d seen what Tom is always telling his investigators to look for: something out of place. The smoke seemed to have dissipated, thank God, and the mountain breeze was sweet as sugar. Alpine roses by the curb bobbed to and fro. I trod gingerly over the asphalt and lustrous flood of gravel, sweeping the Mag as I went.

And then I saw them: a spill of pearls glowing in the moonlight, among a fall of creamy rose petals. I directed the flashlight’s pool of light to where the wash of tiny, uneven stones had deposited the oyster’s perfect nuggets. I reached down and picked them up, one by one. When they were securely in my pocket, I turned off the flashlight and returned to the sedan.

Maybe they were nothing. Maybe they were something. Should I bother Blackridge and Reilly again?

If the pearls were significant, there was a logical explanation as to why the crime-scene investigators hadn’t found them. Everything—grass, trees, pavement—had been coated with dust when I’d discovered John Richard on Tuesday. The pearls would have been easy to miss. But that night the hailstorm had bathed away the dust. Gravity and a stream of dirt had swept the pearls out of John Richard’s yard and into the street, where anyone looking could have found them.

19

So they’re not yours,” Tom said. “What good will a handful of pearls do you? Scratch that. What good will pearls do the investigation?”

“It depends on what kind of pearls they are. Pearls from the Persian Gulf aren’t cultured. Cultured pearls, which are the great majority of the pearls sold in this country, usually come from Japan.”

“And you’re going to tell me how you know this, right?”

I gave him a sheepish smile. “I grew up as a middle-class girl in New Jersey, and then went to a girls’ boarding school. You don’t think I know from pearls? On the way home, we can drop some of them at Front Range Jewelry, leave the owner a note.”

“Humor me. Your theory is that if Courtney’s the killer, they would be…what?”

“Cultured. But if we’re looking at, say, Ginger Vikarios, it could be something else together. Holly Kerr and Ginger Vikarios are inseparable, now that they’ve reconciled. Ginger Vikarios’s life was ruined by her daughter having a child out of wedlock. And if my theory, and Ted’s theory, is that the Vikarioses just discovered that the Jerk impregnated their daughter, then that certainly would be a motive for murdering him.”

“So…how do the pearls fit in?”

I sighed. “If the pearls are from the Persian Gulf, then Holly could have given them to Ginger! Holly has more pearls in her house than Tiffany’s.”

Tom chuckled and started the car. “Thin, Goldy. Wafer thin.”

“I don’t know from wafers.”

“Clearly. But you’re going to have to tell the detectives investigating the case about finding the pearls. You might not want to share these theories, though.”

“You can tell Boyd tomorrow. I don’t want the cops to know I was here. Now can we please make our other stop?”

He grunted assent and pulled out his spiral notebook. He looked up the address he’d jotted down and eased the sedan around the Stoneberry dead end. It was a good thing, too, because lights had begun to wink on in the houses rimming the cul-de-sac. Several faces appeared at windows.

I certainly didn’t blame the Stoneberry residents for being nervous. Their neighbor had been murdered and his house had been vandalized. I just didn’t want these folks to call the sheriff’s department to come out and check on a car belonging to an investigator from…the sheriff’s department.

When we had wound down one street and then another—the concept of blocks was foreign to Aspen Meadow—Tom drew to a stop under a streetlight. The wind rustled the aspens close by as Tom peered up at the sign for Club Drive. When he turned right, the smell of fire smoke drifted into the car. I exhaled, suddenly thankful that Boyd was staying with Arch.

The country-club condominiums had been built along an embankment that sloped down from Club Drive. Facing east, the condos could not boast the coveted view of the mountains, but some of them overlooked the golf course, and their clever design as multi-storied duplexes gave them the look of large, mountain-style houses. Like the clubhouse itself, their beige exteriors—no change of color allowed—and cedar-shake-shingle roofs screamed Upscale Mountain-Resort Holiday Inn, but for retirees who wanted proximity to the clubhouse, they were perfect.

When Tom slowed to read mailbox numbers, I wondered how, exactly, the rift between the Vikarioses and the Kerrs, not to mention between the Vikarios parents and their daughter, Talitha, had been healed. Had Ginger written an angry letter to Holly, Your husband impregnated our daughter out of wedlock, and now we’re ruined? Or had Ginger been so dumbfounded by Talitha’s claim that she’d been embarrassed even to ask Holly if it could be true? Holly must have heard the story from someone. Knowing that Albert couldn’t have fathered Talitha’s child, Holly’s forgiveness and generosity toward her old friends—a club condo alone cost half a mil—didn’t look like a payoff at all, no matter what Nan Watkins said. It looked like true charity—all the more so because it wasn’t widely known.

Tom pulled up to a dark driveway, turned off the lights, and cut the motor. My palms were damp. Tom lifted the binocs and focused. Then he moved them slowly until he stopped and refocused. He waited for what seemed like a very long time, but probably wasn’t more than five minutes.

“Bingo.”

“What?” I demanded. “Show me!”

He pointed to the northernmost of a set of three duplexes, then handed me the binoculars. “Condo on the left of the far one. Lower level. Looks like a family room. Shades are up, windows open, TV on.”

As I’d learned on an ill-fated birding expedition, I wasn’t too adept with binoculars. Still, after a few minutes I was able to make out Ginger, clad in a dark top and pants, sitting in a rocking chair. Ted was perched on a couch directly across from a brightly lit color television. On a coffee table in front of him, I could just make out…three glasses? My fingers began to hurt. I didn’t even know what I was looking for.

“I’m not seeing,” I said. “Oh God.”

Just then, a young teenager—maybe fourteen—strode into the room. He was holding what looked like a bowl of popcorn. Ted and Ginger both said something to him, and the teenager laughed. He had toast-brown hair, glasses, and a thin face.

He was the boy I’d seen in town, of course. Once I’d seen him beside a herd of elk and the other time in front of Town Taffy. He looked just like Arch.

“That threesome doesn’t look as if they harbor murder in their hearts,” Tom observed. “Wouldn’t you say? Pearls or no pearls? Victim’s hair clipped or not? Of course, I’ve been fooled by criminals before. But if one of them was a killer, you’d think they’d at least close the shades.”

I put down the binoculars. “Then why is Ted following Arch?”

“Because his daughter’s dead and he wants to know the piece of her history that’s missing? Because he wants to fill in a piece of his grandson’s history? Had enough?”

“So what’s your theory on John Richard’s murder?”

Tom tapped the dashboard. “I don’t have one yet. We’re missing something. Or some