Dark Tort

long?”

“A few years.”

The cop closed his eyes and raised his eyebrows, as in, Too bad. He told me the detectives would want to talk to me after a bit, and I shouldn’t go anywhere. Then he walked away.

I swallowed and watched him. Why hadn’t he asked more about Dusty? I knew what questions I’d face once the detectives arrived. The same ones I’d gotten from Officer Nelson. And then there were the questions that were important to me, questions the cops were very unlikely to ask.

Why was Dusty so special to you? Because I still thought of her as a high-school kid. Because she and her low-income family lived in a Habitat for Humanity house, just down the street from us, and people in town still made fun of them. Because until her uncle Richard, who didn’t believe in handouts, had agreed to pay off her student loans for community college, foot the bill for her paralegal training, and hire her, she’d never seemed to have a bit of luck.

She’d been a scholarship student at Elk Park Prep. Julian Teller, my part-time assistant and our occasional boarder, had been a classmate of Dusty’s at EPP. He, too, had been a scholarship student, and he and Dusty had been boyfriend-girlfriend for a while. He said Dusty had been smart…not just bright, but brilliant. And then she’d been expelled from Elk Park Prep because she’d become pregnant…not by Julian.

That spring, I’d been dealing full-time with the Jerk, who, even though we were divorced, managed to make my life miserable. I had taken meals over when Dusty had miscarried, but the Routts hadn’t offered any details of the misbegotten pregnancy. Nor had I asked any. I did know that Dusty had managed to get her GED after the Elk Park Prep meltdown. The next time I’d come in close contact with her, she’d been working at a cosmetics counter at a department store.

“Those bastard Routt children,” the mean-spirited had snorted. “We wonder if Dusty is selling those free samples she gets.”

Dusty had taken everything in stride. She’d worked her way up to being a highly compensated cosmetics associate before being lured away to a full-service spa. When the spa had gone belly-up, she’d enrolled in community college. Sometime later, she’d told me about her uncle, previously unknown to the family, getting altitude sickness on his way back from an attorneys’ conference in Vail. Dusty’s mother, Sally Routt, may not have known about Richard, but he had known about her, and he’d called his sister-in-law and begged for help, having just vomited all over his rental car. Not sure of the cause of Richard’s distress, Sally and Dusty had rushed him down to the Southwest Hospital ER, where he’d ended up mewling and puking in his doctor’s arms, and that doctor had been K.D.

Richard’s recovery had been near miraculous, and he had proceeded to sweep K.D. off her feet. He’d sold his partnership in a Los Angeles firm and opened his own office in Aspen Meadow. A year ago, he and K.D. had bought their big place in Flicker Ridge, and Richard had offered to pay off Dusty’s loans, give her a job, and pay for her training.

Maybe Richard had seen it as an investment in having his very own paralegal, with on-the-job training in estate law, to boot. Perhaps his guilt at having so much in the material-goods department had finally begun gnawing at him. I had no way of knowing, because between a polite, solicitous manner with clients and staff, occasional bursts of regal temper, and showing a nutty tendency to pull practical jokes, King Richard was pretty hard to read. Dusty hadn’t complained about him to me, in any event. Nor had she lauded him. She’d only laughed her wonderful tinkling giggle and called her uncle “the King.”

In any event, Dusty had confided to me that now she was working to build a career, a real life, as she put it. She was going to push to quit her humble surroundings. She was moving, moving, moving, as she put it, moving up in the world!

I stared at the bustling parking lot. Cops were turning away bystanders. Other law enforcement folks began to unroll yellow crime-scene tape around the imposing stone-and-wood entry to Hanrahan & Jule. Donald and Alonzo appeared to be pestering the cops with questions, but their curiosity was met with a grim silence. Was I imagining it, or was the officer in charge wearing a happy smirk as he asserted his authority over the attorneys? I did not have time to contemplate this question, because a detective ordered a sergeant to whisk me down to the department for questioning.

CHAPTER 3

The detective, who identified himself as Britt, handed me my car keys. I’d actually dropped them between two of the steps going up to the law firm. He also gave me my office keys, which K.D. had apparently asked to be returned to me.

As the coroner’s van pulled up, Britt drove me around the back of the law office, where I jumped out and grabbed my coat and purse from my own van. We took off just as another pair of cars from the Furman County Sheriff’s Department showed up. The H&J crew were scattered along the sidewalk outside where the cops were now finishing unrolling the crime-scene tape. Donald and Alonzo still stood together, their heads bowed in conversation. Richard Chenault, looking stricken, sat alone on the curb. There was no sign of K.D. or Louise Upton.

The glaze of frost that had whitened the streets was beginning to melt, and a breeze moved through the stiff brown grass that bordered the road to the interstate. I asked the detective if I could please call my husband. He seemed to know who Tom was, and nodded. After fishing my cell phone from the bottom of my purse, I punched in Tom’s cell number.

“Thank God you called,” Tom’s gruff voice announced, before the first ring had finished. “Where are you? Did your van die again? I’m dressed and ready to go.”

“Oh, Tom. I’m at, well, I was at H&J. Dusty Routt…well, it looks as if Dusty is dead,” I blurted out. My voice cracked.

There was shuffling in the background. “I’m writing Arch a note.” A moment later, I could hear a door closing. “Wait. I’m on my way to my car.” I imagined Tom’s tall, muscular body, of which I knew every groove, even the old scar from a bullet wound. I saw his handsome face drawn into a frown as he folded himself into his car, turned on the engine, and pulled out his trusty spiral notebook that went everywhere with him. “Okay, start over,” he said in that commanding voice that made subordinates smile and suspects cower.

“I was supposed to give Dusty her last cooking lesson tonight, the way we’ve been doing for the last five weeks. We were working on bread baking and she said she wanted to talk to me about something, too. But I fell over her in the reception area…” A sob erupted from my throat. “I’m on my way to the department now with a fellow named Britt.”

“I’ll meet you down there.”

“But I want to tell you how I tried to do CPR—”

“Stop talking,” Tom commanded. “All cop cars are wired for sound. Don’t tell me any more about what you found, because they’ll compare it with what you say at the department.” In the background, his engine growled. “You were supposed to be there at ten, but you didn’t make it because I had to give you a jump, right? Just answer yes or no.”

“Yes. I think I got there about—”

“Stop.” He considered. “Arch is all set, so don’t worry. If he wakes up early, he’ll know where we are. He can get his own breakfast, and the car pool will pick him up at the usual time. Listen. I don’t know if you want to think about this right now. But Gus’s grandmother called right after you left tonight. Wants to know if Gus can come over after school to sell candy in the neighborhood.”

My mind reeled. Gus Vikarios was Arch’s recently discovered half brother. I truly did want Gus and Arch to spend time together, get to know each other, and all that. But trying to make those plans now, after what I’d seen tonight, felt too trivial to contemplate.

“Tell you what,” Tom said. “I’ll take care of it. You want me to call Marla?”

Marla Korman, the Jerk’s other ex and my best friend, wouldn’t want yes or no answers to any of her questions. Marla craved gossip more than a crack addict needed a daily hit. As the patrol car sped down the mountain to the department, I could just imagine the details she’d demand. Who else knew you were there at night? Was Dusty involved with someone? Someone I might know?