Sleeping Beauty (71 page)

“Truly? My favorite, monsieur?”

“Yes, of course.” He had already turned back to Anne. “They have their own problems to deal with. But it's hard to be in Tamarack these days. It looks the same, as beautiful as ever, but people are frightened, and they can't stop talking about it. They're closer than ever, which is good, but it's an embattled closeness: them against the world. They stand on the mall in little clusters, or sit in the cafés, huddled together, no one laughing, looking for someone to blame. So far nobody's been throwing rocks at me—”

“What?” Anne asked.

“They're not; they've been defending me and calling Tyler an ass. It's made me feel more a part of Tamarack than anything else that's happened. But they haven't anyone else to hold responsible. Oh, Leo and the company for not having a twenty-four-hour guard on the gondola, but that's just talk. They want a villain, and there isn't one available, except for me, and some people are beginning to point a finger because that's the only way they can tell the world they're cleaning house. Of course they don't know the family voted to sell. You know about that?”

Anne nodded. “Gail told me. But I can't worry about it right now; we have to worry about you.”

The wine steward held a bottle so Josh could read the label. “Fine,” Josh said.

“Monsieur, this is more than fine; this is a miracle!”

At that, Josh gave him his attention. This man's pride in his wines was no different from his in Tenkaure's tomb. “Then we should savor it,” he said, and watched closely the steward's reverent ritual of opening and decanting the wine. He tasted it. His eyebrows rose. “Excellent,” he said. “Thank you.”

Mollified, the wine steward nodded solemnly, and filled their glasses.

When he was gone, Josh and Anne raised their glasses. “To the time when this is over,” she said.

Josh was about to add something about all the things they would talk about when that time came, but he did not. They might be sitting amid the floral displays and Persian rugs of L'Ermitage, but this had turned into a business dinner, not a romantic one, and he would stick to that. Until it was over.

Anne sat back, holding her glass, a small pad of paper and a mechanical pencil beside her. “Let's go over the background again. I want to fix some times. Leo said the bolt could have been taken anytime in the five days between the last inspection and the accident, but I want to be able to show you couldn't have done anything the morning of the accident itself. So let's start there. I know we've done this, but let's do it again. What time was your plane that morning?”

“Nine-fifty. I was at the airport about nine twenty-five.”

“So you left your house about nine?”

“A little after.”

“And you saw no one before that?”

“No, I was packing.”

“What about the workers on your house?”

“They weren't there; it was Sunday.”

“And your maintenance man?”

“I'd talked to him on Saturday. We always get together the day before I leave.”

“You didn't get any mail because it was Sunday. You must have gotten telephone calls.”

“No, it was quiet.”

“Did you call anyone?”

“No.”

“When did your people in Egypt know you were coming there?”

“On Friday. Hosni called and asked me to get there as soon as possible.”

“So we can prove you didn't decide at the last minute to leave town. The trouble is, you had plenty of time to get to the gondola and get back home before eight o'clock when the ski patrol arrives.”

“How did I get in?” Josh asked suddenly.

Anne frowned. “I don't know. Of course the building is locked; I've seen Leo open it. Who else would have a key? Keith, probably; he's the assistant mountain manager. Maybe one of the ski patrol or one of the attendants, but I doubt it; they change schedules. I guess it's Keith and Leo or someone we haven't thought of. And you didn't have access to their keys.”

“I was at Leo's for dinner on Christmas and I stopped in a couple of times after that. If I'd been looking for it . . .”

“But Leo would have noticed it was gone.”

“Would he? He wouldn't need it unless he was scheduled to open the building. And he usually didn't get there until nine, after Keith or someone else had opened up.”

“It's awfully thin,” Anne said.

“They're building a very thick file on awfully thin material,” Josh said dryly. He looked up as the waiter stood beside them, and they gave him their order.

“We have to find out who did it,” Anne said. “It's not that Kevin and I can't defend you, and probably get an acquittal because there's really so little here, but it would be by exposing the holes in their case, not by unequivocably clearing you. I'm not saying that's not a lot better than being found guilty, but I'd rather prove your innocence. So we need a villain. Just like everybody else in Tamarack.”

“Where do we begin?” Josh asked. “We don't even know what the motive was. If it was what Tyler seems to be accusing me of, trying to lower the price, then blame it on what's-his-name, the guy from Denver who's been dickering to buy The Tamarack Company for months. Beloit.”

“Ray Beloit,” Anne murmured. “No, wait, not Denver. Josh, somebody was talking about him, not so long ago. You were there; do you remember—?”

“Christmas,” Josh said. “It was Charles; he said something about . . . no, it was Fred. Asking Charles if he'd talked to Vince.”

“About Beloit!” Anne exclaimed. “Because he's his campaign manager. And they were business partners in Denver. They go back a long way.”

“Amazing,” Josh said dryly. “Out of the whole world of people who might want to invest in a ski resort, the one we get is Vince's campaign manager.”

They were silent. “I don't know what it gives us,” Josh said slowly. “He'd want a lower price, but he couldn't gain by destroying the very company he's trying to buy. And how could he be involved in anything that's been going on up there?”

“Maybe he hired it done,” Anne mused.

“How could he find anyone he trusted enough? And suppose he did. Why hide the bolt in my house? Why not just throw it in the nearest trash can? You were wondering that, before.”

“He probably wanted a villain, too. Everybody does; it makes everything seem so simple.”

“But we can't have a villain until we know the motive. It's probably something so obvious we just don't see it. Like your list a couple of weeks ago: hatred, greed, envy, fear. Pick one.”

The waiter served their soup; they were so absorbed, they barely noticed. “Fear causes all of them,” Anne said. “I think anyone who is greedy or envious or full of hate must be terribly afraid, of many things. Fearful people who don't admit they're afraid are the most dangerous people in the world, I think. Which do you find most often on the walls of your tombs?”

“All of them,” Josh said thoughtfully. “It's almost like reading today's newspaper. People play out the same dramas over and over, through the centuries; they use the same words; even the expressions on their faces are the same. I told Gail and Leo the story of Tenkaure and his son, and they said it sounded like your family.”

Anne went very still. “What story is that?”

Josh hesitated, angry at himself. He had been so absorbed he had not realized where he was heading. But he could not back away from it now without making it worse. Briefly he outlined the story. “They wouldn't tell me why Ethan sent Vince away; they said it wasn't theirs to tell.”

Anne was looking across the room without seeing any of its activity.
Tell him, tell him. Gail and Leo opened the door for you. You can trust him. See what you can build with honesty and trust.

But she could not say the words. A feeling of shame she thought she had buried welled up in her the minute she thought of talking about it. She felt anguished and helpless. She remembered that moment on the gondola, holding Robin and Ned.
Oh God, oh God, it never ends.

Josh was silent. Slowly Anne let out her breath. She didn't have to explain anything. She was afraid he might have drawn some conclusions from knowing that Ethan had banished Vince, but why would he? Why would it even occur to him that anything about her might have something to do with Vince's quarrel with Ethan? Someone would have to look very closely to imagine any connection. She picked up her soup spoon. Her hand was steady. “I suppose there are endless reasons for family quarrels, but after a while they do begin to sound the same.”

“Probably.” His voice was low and sad, as if she had disappointed him, Anne thought. They ate in silence. “But the stories aren't really alike,” Josh said at last. “Vince didn't organize a coup against his father.”

“No, he went his own way. Anyway, what would he have fought for? The Chathams hardly had a kingdom for him to grab.”

“They had a thriving company.”

“But he didn't pay any attention to it. He made his fortune in Denver and then was elected to the Senate.”

“People hoard their anger, though,” Josh said thoughtfully. “Don't you find that in divorces? Anger, resentment, whatever it is, simmers for a long time until one day it boils over.”

“Yes, of course.” Anne watched the waiter refill their wineglasses. “Sometimes—in fact, a lot of the time—people hug their anger to themselves, almost enjoying it. It becomes important to them to be angry, not to enjoy life too much, because they think if they did, they'd lose some kind
of advantage. And their anger becomes so much a part of them, so deep inside them, that no one sees it except at very close quarters.”

“You're describing Dora,” Josh said. “And her father, as far as I could tell. But even if he did hang on to his anger all these years, and let it grow, what did he do with it? He didn't try a coup like Tenkaure's son after he was banished; he didn't raise an army to destroy his father . . .”

“He didn't have to,” Anne said suddenly. “That's the whole point. He did try a coup, only a much more modern one. He didn't need an army, he didn't need to destroy his father, he didn't even need to attack the family. All he had to do was harm the family's company. Maybe even ruin it.”

Their soup plates were removed, their bread replenished, fresh silverware was brought. Anne and Josh were looking at each other. “That highway that never happened,” Josh said.

“It just seemed to vanish,” Anne said. “One day it was going to be built and the next no one knew anything about it. And Vince was on the committee.”

“And maybe gave them reasons to cancel it.”

“Gail says he apologized to all of them; he told them he'd done his best to keep it.”

“And maybe he did.” Josh toyed with his spoon. “After all, he had nothing against the family; it was his father who kicked him out.”

“But he was dead,” Anne mused. “And if Vince's anger was still there, would it go away because my grandfather was gone?”

“It might not. Then he'd kill the highway because it would do serious harm to Ethan's company, and Ethan's eldest son, and the whole family.” Josh smiled. “Somebody could accuse us of making a case as thin as Tyler's, about me.”

“Josh,” Anne said. “If he wanted to hurt Chatham Development, he might have wanted to hurt The Tamarack Company, too.”

The waiter brought their dinner plates and placed them carefully on the table. “The ditch that broke,” Josh said. “The reservoir being polluted.”

“And the EPA all of a sudden telling them the entire east end of town was poisoned.”

“And the gondola.”

Anne shook her head. “No, wait, it's just too much. I can't believe . . .”

They thought about it. “You're probably right,” Josh said. “It would make a great story, but it would mean he's a monster.”

There was a long silence. Anne stared at her plate. Josh looked at his, admiring the artistry of the arrangement, the balance of color, texture, and shape. You need the right pieces and then you put them together, he thought. Like finding a tomb beneath centuries of earthquakes. And identifying a villain. He picked up his fork. “Of course there could be explanations we haven't even thought of, that have nothing to do with causing harm to the family or lowering the price of the company. Maybe someone was out to get the company that manufactured the gondola. Or it was random vandalism. Or it really was an accident, pure and simple, start to finish. Of course the bolt is a problem, but we could probably find an explanation for that, too.”

But he is a monster.
“He would have needed people there,” Anne said, having heard nothing of what Josh said. “He's been in Washington. Anyway, he wouldn't go crawling around a reservoir to contaminate it.”

“That's not how it happened.” Josh let his speculations go; he did not believe any of them. “Leo said the polluted water got into the reservoir because a ditch that diverted it was broken. By a slide, he thought; he said they happen all the time. Of course . . . I suppose one could help that along.”

“By some kind of explosion? Dynamite, maybe, somewhere above the ditch. I don't know if that could do it; I don't know anything about drainage ditches. Or dynamite either. I wonder if that could be checked. Oh, probably not in the winter; there would be three or four feet of snow up there.”

“That may not stop them. We'll ask Leo. If there was a
dynamite charge, the rock above the ditch would show signs of it. If Vince hired someone, all he had to do—”

“But who would that be? Whom could he trust enough? It's like putting your life in someone's hands.”

“I don't know. I don't think that matters now. If they find evidence of dynamite, we'd concentrate on that. I'm going to call Leo; I'd like to
do
something instead of sitting around waiting for Tyler to make a move. Is that all right with you?”