Dark Paradise (16 page)

friend hadn't been a better person.

"You don't seem much like her, luv," Drew said gently.

A sad smile pulled at the corners of her mouth as she slid down off the

rock. "No. We didn't have much in common . . . except that we were

friends. That doesn't make much sense, does it?"

He slid a brotherly arm around her, gave her shoulder a squeeze. "It makes as

much sense as relationships ever do. I can't say that I found Lucy to be

of sterling character, but I liked her as well. She had a rare sense of

humor and if she found you worthy of friendship, she would fight to the

finish for you."

"She was just . . . well, she was just Lucy. And now she's gone."

For several moments, they stayed side by side, leaning against each

other as if they had been friends forever instead of a day. The sunlight

spilled over the shoulders of the Absarokas like liquid gold, and the

valley began to come to life. A meadowlark trilled. Halfway up the side

of the mountain an eagle soared above the tops of the Douglas fir and

lodgepole pine, wings outstretched to catch the updrafts.

Marilee watched in silence, letting the peace seep into her and wash the

rest away. She took a deep breath of cool, clean air that was scented

with pine and cedar and the soft perfumes of a dozen wildflowers, and

let it soothe her as the line from the poem soothed her. I'll tell you

how the sun rose - a ribbon at a time.

She was eating breakfast when Miller Daggrepont descended on her. She

saw him coming across the dining room and knew with a sense of fatalism

that he was homing in on her. Everyone in the dining room paused with

forks and spoons in midair as he passed, their expressions ranging from

horror to amusement.

He was as wide as he was tall, a virtual cube of a man, with a face like

a bulldog's and a shock of ratty gray hair that stood straight up from

his head in a style reminiscent of fight promoter Don King. A gold and

black brocade vest stretched around his rotund frame over a white shirt,

and a black string tie lurked beneath the folds of his wattle. A huge

silver belt buckle set with nuggets of turquoise perched at the

forefront of his belly like a hood ornament on a Mack truck. The legs

of his black trousers were tucked into a pair of snakeskin boots that

looked ridiculously tiny beneath his enormous bulk.

Marilee froze with a slice of cantaloupe halfway to her fingertips, as

he slid in right across from her.

Through Coke-bottle lenses, his dark eyes were weirdly magnified behind

them.

"Little missy," he said, his voice booming in the high-ceilinged room.

"You'd be Marilee Jennings?"

Her automatic desire was to say no in the hope that he would go away and

embarrass someone else, but her head bobbed in affirmation. You're too

honest for your own good, Marilee.

He stuck out a hand that resembled an inflated rubber glove, gripping

hers before she could wipe the cantaloupe juice off. "Miller Daggrepont,

Esquire," he announced in a voice loud enough to wake the ghost of Madam

Belle.

"Attorney-at-law and renaissance man. I've got a surprise for you,

little lady."

"I'm not sure my heart can stand it," Marilee said, only half joking.

"Come on along," he ordered, tugging her up from her seat. "This is

important. You can eat anytime."

He appeared to be an expert on that subject. Stomach grumbling a

protest, Marilee shuffled after him, thinking that wild elephants

probably couldn't drag Miller Daggrepont away from a table. He towed her

down the lobby of the Moose and outside, rumbling along like a freight

train. Hustling down Main Street, he jaywalked across to First Avenue,

and continued on, oblivious of the curious looks people cast their way.

The buildings here, as on Main Street, were a jumble of styles and ages.

The shops were a mix of practical and pretentious - a dentist's office, a

wilderness outfitter's post, the Curl Up and Dye hair salon. Designer

fashions hung in the window of the Beartooth Boutique. Next door an old

man sat on one of several riding lawn mowers parked out in front of

Erikson's Garden Center.

They turned in at a brick building with an ornate front window. EDEN

VALLEY AssAy across the glass in gold gay-nineties-style lettering, but

the brass plaque on the door itself read MILLER DAGGREPONT, ESQUIRE.

ATTORNEY AT LAW.

"This is where I keep my collections," he said, thumbing through an

enormous ring of keys. "I collect everything. Signs, toys, farm

equipment, you name it. Never know when the next big rage will hit. I

made a killing on Indian artifacts when all the Hollywood types started

moving in. They think they're going native when they hang an old horse

blanket on the wall. Damned fools, I say - not because of the collecting.

Nothing wrong with collecting. They're just damned fools in general."

He swung the door open and went in, pulling Marilee along behind him

like a recalcitrant child. Shelves lined the walls from floor to

ceiling. A row of low display cases ran down the center of the floor

from the front of the room to the back. Old advertising signs and

license plates hung by wires from the ceiling. The floor was littered

with a jumble of junk. Toward the back of the main room two of the tall

cases had been tipped over, dumping a mountain of toys, glassware, tin

canisters, wooden boxes, and God-knew-what onto the floor.

"Watch your step," Miller ordered, grunting his disapproval at the mess.

"Some damned drunk broke in the back door last night and turned the

place upside down. You know we're just catercorner from the Hell and Gone.

Cowboys come into town and they go crazy. It's like bringing a wild pony into the

house."

Marilee picked her way along behind him, stepping over the prone form of

a cigar store Indian and a woman's straw hat decorated with faded silk

cabbage roses. "Mr. Daggrepont, I've worked with lawyers for six years,

and I have to say I've never come across an office quite like this."

His booming laugh rattled the tin signs overhead.

"Well, little missy, I'm not your run of the mill attorney. Like I said

before, I'm a renaissance man."

He led her down a hall and into a smaller room that was an even worse

mess than the front had been. An old desk sat in the middle of it all.

Somewhere on the desk, beneath a drift of fishing tackle and assorted

debris, a telephone rang. Daggrepont ignored it. He let go of Marilee to

work on the combination lock of an old vault set into the back wall.

"This was the assay office back in the 1860s," he explained. "Gold was

discovered up in the Absarokas. The place went bonkers with gold fever.

The town boomed. Didn't last long though. The lode wasn't rich enough

and it was too damned hard to get to. Those mountains are rugged sons a'guns."

Marilee had read all about it in her guide books, but she didn't comment

on it as she picked her way across the office. He heaved the vault open

and she raised up on tiptoe in an attempt to peer over his shoulder.

"Uh, Mr. Daggrepont, would it be too much to ask what this is all

about?"

He shot her a look of annoyance, his eyeballs swimming behind his thick

glasses. "Lucy MacAdam," he said, cigar stub bobbing above his chins. "I

was her attorney. You're her heir."

The news knocked her in the head like a mallet. Marilee swayed a little

on her feet and stumbled back. "I'm her heir?
 
That can't be. I mean,

why- what-?"

Daggrepont ignored her stammering, searching for the proper file among

the boxes on the shelves that lined the vault. "Thank heaven for this

vault," he grumbled.

"There'd be hell to pay if some drunk dumped these files. Inez would be

sorting paper from now till kingdom come. Ah!
 
Here it is. Lucy MacAdam."

He pulled the file and herded Marilee back out into the office, where he

swept off a chair and ordered her to sit.

He leaned his bulk back against the desk and told her the gist of Lucy's

last bequests.

"She didn't have any living relatives. Left everything to you. Her

place, her bank account, this letter-" He held out a sealed envelope to

her. Marilee took it with limp fingers and held it in her lap. "All

subject to inheritance taxes, funeral expenses, and, um, my fees, of

course."

"Of course."

"But it's all yours as soon as it clears probate. Oh, and there's one

other thing. Damn near forgot."

He trundled back into the vault and came out with a foot-tall old tin

replica of Mr. Peanut, which he thrust into Marilee's hands. She stared

at the smirking peanut, then up at Daggrepont and back again.

"What is it?" she asked at last.

"Why, it's Lucy. She had herself cremated."

She drove out to the ranch with Mr. Peanut strapped into the passenger

seat beside her. Daggrepont had immediately tried to persuade her to

sell the ranch. Inheritance taxes would be astronomical, considering how

property values had gone up. What would she want with a ranch anyway?

She had a life back in California, didn't she?

No, she didn't, but she didn't tell that to Daggrepont or to his

weaselly real estate buddy who had just happened to drop by. The same

way a vulture just happens to drop by road kill.

"I can sell that property for you, little lady. I can sell anything,

anytime, anyplace."

On the verge of giddiness, she had nearly asked him if he could paint

her car any color for $99.95.

"Lucy," she said, cutting a look at the tin peanut.

"You always did have a bizarre sense of humor, but this is really too

much."

The peanut just smirked at her.

She had to get away, to think, to try to sort through it all in her

mind. The ranch seemed the best place to do it.

Somehow she thought an answer might come to her there. But another part

of her knew there would only be more questions, and her stomach churned

at the prospect.

By daylight the place Lucy had called home for the last year was as

picturesque as anything Marilee had ever imagined. The log house was set

on high ground overlooking a broad valley with a wide, glittering stream

running through it. The hills above were covered with pine and aspen.

The valley beyond the stream was dotted with grazing horses. She fell in

love with it the minute she stepped out of the car. It radiated a sense

of peace, a sense of constancy. Nothing about it struck her as being

Lucy's style at all.

She climbed the steps onto the porch and followed it around the side of

the house to a broad deck that overlooked the stream. The bent willow

furniture and Adirondack chairs had escaped the vandals' zeal. Setting

the tin on the glass-topped table, she sank down onto the cushions of a

high-backed chair and stared out at the panorama.

It was hers. The idea wouldn't penetrate. It made no sense. She had

never even been here to visit Lucy. She had never thought of their

friendship as being something that went so deep as this. They had shared

laughs and gripes over a few beers. They had been drinking buddies,

comrades in arms against the vicious lawyer hordes who never wanted to

pay them and always wanted to get them into bed. The thought that their

relationship had been anything more to Lucy left her feeling confused and

vaguely guilty, the way she had felt in high school when one of the nerd

boys had revealed that he had a crush on her.

Hoping for an answer or at least a clue, she pulled the envelope

Daggrepont had given her out of her jacket pocket and opened it with a

nail file from her purse. Inside was a strip of green paper folded in

half, torn on both ends. Stenographer's notes, a set of hieroglyphics no

one but another court reporter would have been able to decipher. How