The Soulmate Page 11

  “The ones with murder in their hearts, you mean?” The work, the tons of rock and ore hauled out of here, boggled the mind, and the truth was, nothing about it fired his imagination, not even considering the vast fortunes made and lost.

  “Well, you’d almost have expected more murders by far than there apparently were. When you consider what was at stake—“

  “Silver crashed in ‘93,” he reminded her.

  “They couldn’t know that then, though. And murder sure adds a touch of mystery and danger, doesn’t it?”

  She lined up another shot of a railcar track heading across a chasm where the earth had fallen down. “Do you think they could hear the avalanche down here?”

  Keller hesitated halfway through her initials. He’d read through some of her research materials last night, and knew the death of Jerome Clarke in an avalanche at the Hallelujah had changed the course of local mining history. “I’d say that’s a safe bet.”

  The thought of an avalanche, or a rock slide, or even a timber shifting, gave him the creeps again. “Remind me again,” he cracked, “what we’re doing down here.”

  “Something’s not right, Kell. I can’t put my finger on it, but I don’t think Jerome Clarke was killed in that avalanche.”

  He cocked an eyebrow at her. “That’s why we’re down here? This hellhole is a place only Dante could really appreciate, Robyn.”

  “Well,” she said, cocking a hip, planting her hand, “I had this sort of half-baked notion that someone used the avalanche for an excuse to toss Jerome Clarke down a mine shaft. I was so sure, Kell, that we’d stumble over Clarke’s skeleton.”

  He blinked at her outrageousness, then finished the T standing for Trueblood, for him, in her initials. Smart alec, he thought. She hadn’t expected to stumble over any skeletons at all. “Clarke died in the avalanche, Robyn. Didn’t you read his wife’s memoirs?”

  She stopped clicking pictures and glared at him playfully. “Oh, Mr. Perfect Recall again, is it? Just because it’s written down doesn’t make it so, Kell. Was Mrs. Clarke there? No. Hearsay.”

  “History is hearsay, Robyn.”

  “But there weren’t enough bodies found afterward for his to be one of them. Clarke wasn’t one of them. Res ipsa loquitur, counselor,” she quoted him.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. ’the thing speaks for itself.’ Trouble is, we’re talking historical accounts here, Mrs. Counselor.”

  “Kell, Jerome Clarke lost a hand in a blasting accident years before. How likely is it that he died in the avalanche but his body was left unrecognizable?”

  “Bodies can get pretty smashed up in avalanches, Robyn. Anyway, what’s the point? The guy died. Lucien Montbank brought the opposite camps together, they got back to mining and everyone lived happily ever after.”

  “Everyone but Jerome Clarke,” she muttered darkly.

  “Sorry to rain on your parade, sweetheart, but no one cared one way or the other—which probably means he died in the avalanche and that was the end of everyone’s troubles.”

  “Or someone did him in, and that was the end of everyone’s troubles.”

  He stopped carving again and twirled a pretend handlebar mustache. “You wanna bet?” he dared her. “Costs you, you know.”

  “How are we going to prove it, one way or the other?”

  He shrugged. “It’s your baby, Robyn. I’ve got my hands full with putting Trudi Candelaria behind bars.” He frowned, just thinking of the case. Something was not right there, either, and he knew it.

  “Okay, then sure. I’ll bet you—darn straight. Clarke’s death was just too neatly timed, Kell—and you know I don’t believe in coincidence.”

  “Or neatness,” he teased.

  “Neatness is for little minds,” she retorted, because she needed an excuse, he always thought, not because she really believed neatness precluded intelligence.

  It was true that she didn’t buy into easy coincidence, which basically spelled out the source of all their arguments, their biggest differences. Robyn was always looking for trouble. He wasn’t naive, but he never went looking—he just dealt with trouble where he found it. Prosecuting the perps. Bringing justice, although he didn’t believe for a second that justice was truly served in any sense when people had been murdered.

  Between him and Robyn, the issue came up in different ways. Her darker suspicions sometimes made him mad, but he knew in his heart she was just trying to protect a more innocent core in her heart that really didn’t want to believe people could turn out to be as rotten as they sometimes were.

  He’d married her. Taken up protecting her heart. He loved her more than life, so he forgave her the way she forgave his obnoxious upbeat attitudes and perfect photographic memory.

  When she started spouting off those dark suspicions, that’s when he knew she was feeling threatened, and he knew it was time to make her feel less threatened. His best bet was always making love to her, and since he came away feeling less isolated and alone in the world himself, their relationship only got deeper. Richer.

  “Proof, although forthcoming, will have to wait,” she said, bringing his mind back to the moment. “Right now I’m occupied with my camera.”

  He just grinned and started hatching his collection process for the kisses she would owe him on her lost bet while he carved the heart around their initials and shot it through with an arrow.

  She only stopped snapping photos when she ran out of the high-speed film. She put her camera away, and her notebook. Inspecting his work, she touched him in a breathtakingly intimate way and dropped a distracted kiss on his bare shoulder.

  He put the lantern down on the floor by an old set of tracks for the ore carts, aiming its beam in the direction they would return. Beyond a cone of six or eight feet, pitch black resumed.

  “Thanks for coming with me, Kell.” She leaned in the shadows against a jagged wall of stone, facing him. The cold, he thought, had finally punched through her enthusiasm and she shivered. The dark stain of damp sweat at her breasts still remained. Her neck shimmered with the sweat of exertion and her nipples beaded in the cold, poking through the flimsy fabric. Keller ached.

  He let his gaze travel the twisting, decaying beams. He couldn’t touch her passion for this hellhole with a tenfoot pole, and he called himself a moron for resenting a hole in the ground sparking her like this. He stuck his fingers in his jeans pockets to ease the fit and shrugged. His voice dropped. Thickened. “Whatever turns you on, Robyn Jeanne Delaney Trueblood.”

  “This place interests me.” She swallowed and blinked and swallowed again. Her nipples thrust harder. Keller ached worse. “You turn me on.”

  He let his head fall forward until his chin touched his chest. The pain of wanting her was such an exquisite buzz. The play of their shadows on the far wall caught his eyes. He pointed them out to Robyn, then reached for her. Eyes glued to the wall, they watched the shadow of his hand approach the peaking shadows of her breasts, his fingers hovering, straying, never quite touching her.

  At last he hooked his fingers into the scoop neck between her breasts and pulled her to him. He took off her helmet, she took off his. They dropped them to the ground and the noise echoed.

  Coming together, the shadows lost resolution. Keller lost his mind and flattened his hand to her breast and kissed her neck until she lost her mind, too.

  His lips traversed her bare shoulder, past the bandanna, up her neck to her ear. He played with her nipple and stroked the curve of her breast, and he wanted her as much in that nasty, dank creepy place as he had ever wanted anything in his life, but his reverence for her finally swamped him.

  She knew who he was, what he was about, and God knew, what he was about wasn’t all hearts and flowers or perfect by anyone’s standards. But Robyn Delaney brought him laughs and rare insight, peace and a place to hang his hat no matter where either of them were. His time with her was too precious and fleeting.

  He whispered things in her ear he had never admitted before, ev
en in his secret heart. He lifted her and tasted her, and she came to him open as a book, wrapping her legs around his waist, and when the earth began to move, neither one of them knew that the earth had in fact begun to shudder and collapse and disintegrate.

  The horrible, twisting yawn of splintering beams rocked their dark and dank world. Robyn cried out and clung to him, trying to protect his head and body with hers, but the force of the rock-hard granite, heaving and collapsing, cleaved them apart.

  He shoved her toward the solid rock wall and dove sideways to save the lantern, but above them the supporting beam, the one with their initials carved in a heart, crashed down.

  His back was broken, his body crushed. Keller Trueblood died with Robyn’s name on his lips and her desperate, keening cry ringing in his head…but the last image Kiel beheld was one in which the devastation happened all over again, only it was Robyn, in his vision, whose body lay twisted and broken and lifeless beneath a splintered beam and deadly briffitts of dust.

  “KIEL?”

  He twisted in his seat. Pain roared through his head. “Dear God, how do you stand it?” he croaked.

  “Stand what? Kiel, what’s wrong? Are you all right?”

  He wasn’t. Even Robyn’s car felt stiflingly small to him. Keller’s memories faded and died, as his human form had died, but Kiel was left with the overwhelming sense of what it was to have the life crushed from his body. He recovered. Even Keller, from the instant of his death, had not suffered long.

  The one left to suffer sat beside him. Kiel could not look at Robyn without knowing the scope of the battle she had waged to survive. The heart-pounding terror of any darkness after she was buried alive, unable to see her hand in front of her face. The physical trauma she had overcome in the face of memories of Keller dogging her every step of the way.

  The torrent of Keller’s memories lasted no more than a few seconds in real time, but Robyn knew something was wrong, that something had happened to Kiel.

  She put her hand on his left forearm. “Kiel, what is it?”

  “I just…I just witnessed the Hallelujah collapsing.”

  Struggling to stay on the road, Robyn shuddered. “How?”

  He could not lie. “As if I had been Keller. Robyn, it’s a miracle you survived at all.”

  “I didn’t think so, Kiel. Not for a long time. Where was my Guardian Angel then? Where was Keller’s?”

  The question haunted Kiel, too. “Some things are destined, Robyn. I don’t really know the answer. I had no sense of how hard it really is to be human.”

  He didn’t know either how she coped from day to day with such devastating memories lurking below the surface, ready to spring on her at the slightest crack in her guard.

  “It’s easier, being an angel?”

  He gave her a sideways smile. “We aren’t usually troubled by painful emotions or memories. Every time you turn around, Keller is there, isn’t he.”

  “Yes.” She sniffed. “Not only Keller, though. I still remember the shame when my dad cracked my knuckles for not using a knife. I remember my great-grandma brushing my hair. I loved that brush. It was this amber color with a cameo lady on its back. I don’t know what became of her brush, but in my memory it’s still the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. She made all my littlegirl problems feel like fairy dust I could gather up in my hand and blow away.”

  “You loved her very much.”

  Again, filled with complicated emotions, she nodded. “Grandmama Marie was old country right down to her Bible. Austrian. She had this thing she used to say—I’d almost forgotten. I guess it’s like the Austrian national theme. ’veil, my deeer,’ she’d say to me,” Robyn quoted, mimicking her grandmother’s accent, “‘ze situation iss hopeless, but not so serious.’“

  Robyn took her eyes off the road and glanced at him. Her eyes, moonbeams on mink, Kiel thought, glittered. She took a deep breath and expelled it. “Guess that about says it for the human condition, doesn’t it? Everyone of us is a hopeless pit of emotions, but it isn’t so serious after all. Life goes on. We get over it or we don’t. Either way, life does go on.”

  Kiel smiled for her. “You’ve come a long way, Robyn.”

  She smiled. “I have, haven’t I. Anyway. What do you think of going to Lucy?”

  “You like her?”

  Robyn nodded. “I do. She’s very down-to-earth for a woman who owns whole chunks of Aspen real estate. We spent a lot of time together. I’m sure she could turn us onto explosives experts.”

  “So how do you handle it? Alone? Together?”

  “Do you want to meet her?”

  “Sure. But I’d like to spend some time going through Keller’s trial transcript notes.”

  “Not to mention interviewing Chloe Nielsen, Shad Petrie and Pascal Candelaria.” Robyn came to a stop at the intersection of the county roads. She waited on a couple of high-end, pricey four-by-fours, then turned back to Aspen. “We’ve got two things going here. One, was it really Trudi who murdered Spyder? and two, was she or whoever did kill Spyder threatened enough by Keller to want him dead? Did you think Crandall was telling us the truth?”

  “The truth according to him. But he made the case against Trudi Candelaria. Why would he play devil’s advocate to his own work?”

  “For the sake of the truth?” Robyn suggested.

  “The truth is set in concrete for guys like him.”

  “Mmm. A ’don’t confuse me with the facts’ kind of guy.”

  Kiel laughed. “That’s a good one. But to be fair, the weight of facts had to be on Crandall’s side, or Keller would never have signed on as special prosecutor.”

  “I don’t agree with you, Kiel. Keller—er, Kiel—” The juxtaposition and similarity of the two names had her tongue tied in knots. Laughing at herself, she started again. “Keller said it often enough. A prosecutor’s case is only as good as the weakest link. Crandall was the crucial link, and I think, after listening to him today, that he had his mind made up. Once the grand jury indicted Trudi Candelaria, the die was cast.” She darted through a yellow light and pulled into a slanted parking place in front of a popular cappuccino bar.

  Ready to lambaste her theory, Kiel rolled up the window to prevent any passersby from overhearing him. “Think about what you’re saying now, Robyn. Based on one interview with Ken Crandall, you’re saying Keller Trueblood, your husband, a man whose instincts and integrity you trusted to the nth degree, caught and ran with the ball of a man whose instincts turn you off and whose integrity is yet to be proven.”

  “That’s not—” Robyn broke off. Propping her hands over the steering wheel, she gave a weary sigh. “You’re right. What can I say? I guess, deep down inside, Kiel, I believed Trudi Candelaria.”

  “You want to believe her, or you do?”

  “I don’t think she killed Spyder. I think the evidence must have been compelling. I can’t imagine how Crandall could have slanted it so much in her direction if it wasn’t already pointing that way. Enter Stuart Willetts. Keller had to have been caught between a rock and a hard place with her story, because his co-counsel was already embroiled in an affair—or at least an infatuation—with her.”

  Kiel watched the pedestrians passing by. All of them seemed to be wearing designer clothes. A town for the very rich. “So where does that leave you? If you believe Trudi didn’t kill Spyder, can you believe she would buy someone to make sure Keller was stopped?”

  “I can’t, Kiel. I don’t know where this is coming from, or if I’m losing my mind. I know she’s lived in Aspen a long time and she has connections out the wazoo, but I just can’t see her getting so desperate, when she didn’t do the murder, that she’d murder the prosecutor, instead. And no matter how much was at stake for Stuart Willett, I can’t see him plotting Keller’s murder, either.”

  Kiel ran his fingers back and forth over the fine leather grain of Keller’s Day-Timer, thinking, saying nothing.

  “Am I wrong, Kiel?”

  He gave a
quick shake of his head. “Your instincts are always clean, Robyn.” He reached for her hand. “I’m just concerned that you’re second-guessing yourself.”

  “Just adjusting theory to fact. But even if I am, Kiel, it’s because even though I may believe her, I don’t like Trudi Candelaria. She knew she could wrap Stuart Willetts around her little finger.” She turned her hand in Kiel’s and held tight to him. “And that’s exactly what she set out to do.”

  “I’m not sure I get the connection.”

  “Michael Massie told me the only thing Trudi Candelaria cared about was Trudi Candelaria. Is that enough to suggest she would murder Keller?”

  “Not necessarily…but—” he looked askance at her, teasing her “—I’m still not following this tortured piece of reasoning, Robyn.”

  Her own brows raised. “If the logic seems tortured,” she said, “it’s because things didn’t stay simple for Trudi. She actually fell in love with Stuart, and that had to come as a surprise to her. If they are in love, bully for them. But she used him first. I think she absolutely was prepared to let Stuart sacrifice his credibility and his career and flush his reputation trying to save her bacon. That’s not what I call love.”

  “Me, either.”

  “The problem is, all of this leads us back to square one—and I could be dead wrong.” She pulled a moue at her choice of words there, but went on. “Stuart had so much to lose that it makes sense, if anyone killed Keller, if anyone had to kill him, it would be Stuart Willetts.”

  “And the problem with that,” Kiel said, still holding her hand, still stroking his thumb along the life line carved in her palm, “is that with all Trudi’s money, what did he have to lose, really? With that kind of backing, he didn’t need his credibility or his career—and the risk was minimal. Who was ever going to uncover all this?”

  Robyn sighed in frustration and let her head fall back against the headrest. “I keep thinking it’s all too paranoid by half to believe Kell was murdered, anyway.”

  Kiel understood her frustration, which paralleled his own. Angelo’s answer to his questions had never really satisfied Kiel.