“Why?”
“Adrian collects. She wanted to give him a gift. I suggested a crinoid and told her an easy place to find them.” Lindsay hiked a shoulder at the boulder.
I moved it for a closer look. The boulder was limestone — unlike the rock of the surrounding cliffs. It was clearly an erratic, transported here ages ago by glacial action. The gray limestone was studded with white disks the size of eight-penny nailheads. In one spot there were visible cuts where a couple of the Paleozoic sea lilies had been hacked out.
Lindsay said, “The gift was a success and she followed up by bringing Adrian here to show him her ‘find.’ And here,” Lindsay waved a hand at the little pool, “is where they had their first romp.”
I gaped. I said, repeating myself, “How do you know?”
“Because she was grateful. She brought me a crinoid as a thank-you gift. Appropriate, I thought — a fossil flower.” Lindsay smiled. Not a mean smile; a real one. “And we ended up the first time in our association having a nice little chat about men and sex, us two old fossils.”
“Lindsay, I didn’t mean…”
“Of course you did. You’re young.”
I reddened, and turned my face to the boulder. And it was then that I noticed how the limestone jutted out enough to shield a patch of ground from falling snow. I knelt and examined the soil there. My nose stung. The soil was studded with yellow crystals — hydrothermically deposited sulfur, now oxidizing.
I thought about the boot soil evidence, studded with calcite and sulfur.
Lindsay came over and studied the soil alongside me. She sniffed. She looked at me. “As I recall,” she said, “there is sulfur in your evidence soil.”
I nodded.
“If I were you, I’d be taking some samples here.” Lindsay stood. She looked around. “In fact, I’d be wondering if Georgia and Adrian returned here at some point. And he, perhaps, showed his bizarre feelings for the creek. Or he talked about sacrifice. If I were Georgia, that would concern me. It might even alarm me.”
I nodded. I saw where Lindsay was going with this.
“Perhaps Georgia decided she had put her town in the hands of an unstable man. In which case, perhaps she told him — in her inimitable manner — that she’d be calling for his replacement.”
“So he killed her to shut her up?”
Lindsay gave a graceful shrug.
“But what about the notes?” I asked. “When did she have time to write in her Weight Watchers notebook?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“That’s kind of a hole in your theory.”
She lifted her chin. “Other than the question of the notes, do you find the theory credible?”
“Not without evidence.”
I borrowed a box of baggies from Lindsay and began to take my samples. Just eyeballing the soil, I was doubtful of a match. Another concern was the lack of a source for the gunpowder. But then, I supposed, Georgia and Adrian might have walked at the biathlon range and then gotten into his Blazer and driven here for another romp. Doubtful, but not out of the question.
As I worked, Lindsay produced a thermos of coffee and two plastic mugs from her Guatemalan bag. When I finished, she pressed a warm mug into my hands. “It’s a Neopolitan blend.”
Naples. The Campi Flegrei caldera.
She poured herself a mug and lifted it. “To our hometown.”
I touched my mug to hers.
“And don’t worry, honey, about vendettas.”
She said it the same way she says don’t worry about the volcano. Meaning, she’ll let me know when it’s time to worry. Meanwhile, she’s taking care of things. I drank, but the coffee tasted bitter and I dumped the rest into the creek.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
In the shower that night, after my afternoon in the field with Lindsay, I took her theory apart.
Some people sing in the shower. I deconstruct.
Of course the samples I’d taken would tell the story — and I’d get to that first thing in the morning — but the story Lindsay’d concocted had a major flaw in logic. Adrian Krom, who was single-mindedly rebuilding his reputation, would not risk killing the mayor at Hot Creek. He was bizarre, certainly, in his relationship with the volcano. Ruthless, absolutely, in his continuation of the drill, in his campaign to destroy Lindsay’s reputation. But he wasn’t stupid. The creek’s a very public place. The creek’s a very long way from the glacier, so how does he get the body there? If it’s by horse, where does he get the horse and how does he go from creek to glacier unnoticed with a body across the saddle?
I’d have had the same questions about Casa Diablo as the site of death, had the soil there not ruled it out. The biathlon course at Lake Mary had been a better candidate, geographically, until the soil ruled it out.
As for Adrian Krom as a killer… I didn’t like to consider it. We needed to be able to rely on him. It was one thing to blame him for what happened to Stobie. But Georgia? That’s an order of magnitude beyond.
My eyes suddenly stung. Shampoo leaked down from my hair and I had to stick my face into the hot water flow to flush the contaminants.
Tension drained along with the Pantene.
By the time I was toweling dry I had pretty much desconstructed the lovers quarrel.
I still liked the idea of a hot spring, though, as a source for the sulfur. Some other hydrothermically active area, someplace else. Some place where people had been discharging firearms.
I opened the bathroom door to release the steam and heard the doorbell ringing. Once, twice, three times, four.
I wrapped in my robe and went to answer.
Eric stood on the porch. He seemed surprised to see me. Or, maybe it was my robe, decorated with grinning trout. Old boyfriend; Fish and Game; didn’t work out but this was one fine fleecy robe. Eric stared until I flinched.
I said, “Hey Eric.”
He said, “Jimbo here?”
I thought, that’s a little abrupt. How about, hey Cassie, good to see you — is your brother around? I regarded Eric Catlin — the guy who simply by standing there made me feel very naked in my trout robe, the guy I’d trust with my life if it ever came to that, the biathlete and cop who posts bullseye targets on his office wall — and I said, “You know that gunpowder in the evidence boot soil? Nearly half of it’s Fiocchi.”
Eric stiffened. It was the way he had recoiled, ever so briefly, when he missed the third shot in the 20K. He had recovered to ace the fourth shot and now he brought himself around as quickly. “No shit?”
“Jimbo says you guys shoot at Casa Diablo and Lake Mary. Anyplace else?”
“That’s where we shoot,” Eric said.
“Does Stobie shoot too? I mean, he’s the armorer and…”
“He shoots too. In practice. At least, he did.”
“Got any theories that explain where Georgia picked up all that gunpowder?”
“No theories.” Eric’s voice was rough. “When do you expect Jimbo back?”
I shook my head. “Should I give him a message?”
“Yeah. Tell him he’s a real…” Eric considered. “Jerk.”
Before I could ask, he thrust a folded newspaper at me then pushed down the steps and when he’d been fully consumed by the night he called back, “Didn’t mean to take it out on you, Cass.”