Swift Justice (7 page)

I dragged a forty-pound bag of mulch from the small shed at the back of the property and started tamping it into place beneath my barberry bushes and lavender, taking care to avoid the barberry’s inch-long spines. The musty cedar smell made me sneeze, but I liked it. The pull in the muscles of my back and shoulders felt good, and I went through three bags of mulch before straightening. With a hand at my waist, I arched back.

“Must’ve been a hard day,” said a familiar voice from behind me.

I turned to see Father Dan, still in black shirt, clerical collar, and gray slacks, observing me from the hillock that separates my property from the church’s. The last of the sun’s fingers played over his rugged features and struck sparks from his blond hair. It glinted on a beer can as he raised it to drink.

“How’d you know?” I smiled, glad to see him, and bent to yank a dandelion from a river rock border.

“You always end up in the yard after you’ve had a particularly tough day. You missed one,” he added, using the can to point at a weed. “Why don’t you just let nature take its course?”

“That would be admitting defeat,” I said, only half joking. “Xeriscape is a compromise between the gardener and nature in Colorado,” I told him. I gestured at the area behind my house. “I get to impose a pattern, some colors, on my yard, and the weather can’t ruin all my efforts by refusing to rain, because most of the plants need very little water and a lot of the texture comes from rocks and stuff.”

“So you win?” Father Dan asked with a grin. He crumpled the beer can in one large hand.

“Absolutely.”

“That attitude’ll only make nature try harder.”

“She can bring it on.” I stooped to pull some more weeds from the border, stuffing them into a plastic bag. I cut a look up at him from under the bangs flopping in my eyes. “Well, don’t just stand there looking priestly, lend a hand.”

“Can’t. Vestry meeting in fifteen minutes. I’ll bring you a beer, though.”

“Slacker.”

He returned with a Sam Adams, and I decided to call it quits for the night. We settled cross-legged on the grass and drank our beers in companionable silence as the sun sank behind the mountain and shadows crept into the garden, coaxing the bunnies to come out and forage. I inhaled the hoppy smell of the beer and savored its cold bite as it slid down my throat. Um. The combination of the beer, peaceful silence, and hard work had lulled me half to sleep when Dan squeezed my shoulder and pushed himself to his feet.

“Meeting time.” He extended a hand, and I put mine in it, conscious of its warmth and strength as he pulled me up.

“Knock ’em dead.”

“Don’t think the thought hasn’t crossed my mind on occasion, especially when we’re talking about the budget.”

Showing him a shocked face, I waved as he strode back toward the church; then I headed for the deck and my hot tub. If any of Dan’s vestry members wandered this way they’d get a jolt, because I wasn’t going to bother with a swimsuit.

(Thursday)

No one, not even the bear, observed my skinny-dipping, and I set out for Denver the next morning feeling rested and rejuvenated. I was ninety-nine percent sure I’d seen the last of Gigi Goldman; I’d call her later to see if we could work out some sort of payment plan where I bought her out a little bit at a time over the next couple of years. Then I could hire the part-time assistant I really needed, someone to answer the phone, greet customers, and do some database research while I was in the field. It would all work as smoothly as my hooking up with Aurora Newcastle this morning. When I’d called Purple Feet again just after eight, a different clerk told me Mrs. Newcastle was expected by eleven. Unless traffic screwed me up, I’d be there on her heels.

Using my cell phone, I called Melissa Lloyd to update her and tell her I’d drop by her store that afternoon. With any luck, I’d have the name of her daughter by then. If she lived on the Front Range, maybe we’d be able to turn baby Olivia
over to her sometime tomorrow. Melissa sounded tense—the baby wailing in the background might’ve had something to do with that—and agreed to remain at work until I showed up.

Most of the commuters were safely incarcerated in their soulless cubicles by now, and I traveled the fifty-odd miles to Denver in well under an hour, only slowing when I reached Park Meadows Mall on the outskirts of the city. Downtown’s skyscrapers loomed on the horizon, emerging from the prairie like stalagmites. Mountains to the west, snowcapped even at this time of year, made me prickle with ski fever. In another six weeks, maybe, some of the runs would open and I could spend my weekends rocketing down the runs. If I could afford lift tickets. The thought of my rocky finances and the bite Gigi would take out of my bottom line brought my spirits down, and I finished the drive to LoDo in a gloomy mood made worse by the struggle to find a parking spot. Finally wedging my way into a spot just vacated by a Volkswagen Beetle, a good three blocks from my destination, I locked the doors and headed down Seventeenth Street to Purple Feet, the plastic bag containing the baby blanket bumping against my shin.

Purple neon outlined the store’s logo of grape-stained feet and made it easy to locate my destination between a boutique and a store selling collectible maps and prints. I considered the bikini in the boutique’s window for a moment, until I noticed the two scraps of fabric—not large enough to make a decent-sized dinner napkin—were priced at four hundred dollars. Eep. I pushed through the smoked-glass doors of Purple Feet and found myself in a hushed atmosphere reminiscent of a library or a cathedral, but with a heady scent far removed
from dusty books and hymnals. Bottles of wine stacked in crates, arranged in sale barrels, and chilling in glass-fronted refrigerator cases took up every available inch of floor space. The price of the first bottle I looked at would’ve bought me half of the bikini. The Lower Downtown district was too rich for my blood.

“Are you here for the tasting?” A woman in a gray linen dress and a headscarf tied into a mini turban of pearl, lavender, and turquoise paisley that completely covered her hair approached me. “It doesn’t start for another half hour, but I just opened a bottle of sauvignon blanc to train the staff”—she gestured to a man and a woman wearing lavender polo shirts with the Purple Feet logo on their chests—“and you’re welcome to try it. Here.”

She handed me a stemmed glass with an inch of pale yellow wine in the bottom and filled glasses for herself and the two clerks. Following their lead, I swirled my glass and peered at the liquid as if it might be the cure for AIDS.

“Strong scents of grapefruit and herbs,” said the male clerk, burying his nose in the glass like a dog sniffing a new crotch. He had thick brown hair and wore a bow tie.

“And just a hint of apricot, don’t you think, Roger?” the woman added. She was younger than the man and edgier, in black capri leggings, a white and black tunic top, and razor-cut black hair. She tipped the glass and rolled the wine around on her tongue. She closed her eyes. I’d had sex that didn’t make me look that happy. “Mellow on the finish with a touch of licorice.”

“Bright acids,” put in Roger.

The three looked at me expectantly, and I took a sip. I liked
it, and I surprised myself by actually tasting the grapefruit Roger had mentioned. No parsley or oregano, though, and definitely no Twizzlers. “Yum.”

A hint of a smile played around the older woman’s lips. “You’re not here for the tasting?”

“No,” I confessed, smiling back, “but I liked it. I’m looking for Aurora Newcastle.”

“I’m Aurora. What can I do for you?” She took the glass I handed to her and set it and her own on a tray. Roger whisked them away, and both clerks drifted off to tasks in other parts of the store.

“My name is Charlotte Swift, and I’m a private investigator.” I gave her my business card, which she studied. “I’m looking for a teenager who recently had a baby, and I believe you might know her.”

“Really?” She arched penciled-in brows. “What’s her name?”

“I don’t know. I was hoping you could help me with that.” Pulling the Delicia blanket out of the bag, I handed it to her.

Her thin fingers dug into the cashmere, and for a moment I thought she was going to faint. She nursed the blanket to her cheek; its vibrant pink made her skin look milk-pale. She was ill, I realized, finally catching the significance of the turban and the brows that were skillfully penciled on. Makeup did a good job of hiding the circles under her eyes, but it couldn’t hide the weariness and pain lurking in them, or completely cover the almost blue tinge in her skin.

“Where did you get this?” she whispered, reaching out one hand to clutch my forearm.

I told her about Melissa finding a baby on her doorstep and the note that accompanied it. “My client just wants to reunite
the baby with her mother,” I said. “Delicia Furman said you bought this blanket, and I was hoping you could tell me who you gave it to.”

Mrs. Newcastle took a deep breath. “Let’s go back to my office. I get tired if I stand too long. Erica,” she called. “Please conduct the wine tasting. I’ll be in my office for a while.”

“Yes, Mrs. Newcastle,” Erica said, gliding forward to greet a gaggle of business-suited men and women coming through the door, eager to expand their knowledge of wine on their lunch hour . . . or just get snockered.

I followed Mrs. Newcastle’s slim figure through a gap in a counter spread with cheeses and crackers and into a utility room with a sink and a dishwasher. The top rack was pulled out, loaded with identical wineglasses. Steam curled up from the dishwasher, filling the air with humidity and the smell of detergent.

“Lemon,” I said, sniffing deeply, “with just a hint of ammonia.”

Mrs. Newcastle laughed as she pushed open the door to her office, a small room with a desk and two chairs, one behind the desk, one in front of it. The walls were taupe with framed photos of vineyards providing splashes of color. A flat-screen monitor occupied most of the desk space, and wine magazines and books slumped in precarious stacks against all the walls.

“Please, sit,” Mrs. Newcastle said, lowering herself carefully into the chair behind the desk. Her gaze pinned me. “You find the rituals of wine pretentious?” She still had the blanket, and now she set it atop the polished walnut of the desk.

I thought about her question. I didn’t want to offend her, and not just because she could point me toward Melissa Lloyd’s daughter. I liked her. She reminded me of Grandy, not so much in looks as in spirit. “Maybe not pretentious. Foreign?”

“An honest answer.” She nodded her approval. “I think if you learned a little something about wine, you’d find it fascinating, just fascinating. We offer classes and tastings here, if you ever want to take one. I took my first class almost thirty years ago, and wine just grabbed hold of me. It was I who was excited about wine, you know, who wanted to open Purple Feet. Not Eugene. He had the business sense, the financial know-how. But I had the passion. When I go . . . Eugene and I don’t have any children. He’ll end up selling Purple Feet, I think, in the end.”

She worked her fingers in the blanket, almost like a baker kneading dough. Grief hung in the room, bowing her shoulders with its weight.

“The blanket?” I asked gently.

She straightened her shoulders and fixed a businesslike expression on her face. “Right. I gave it to Elizabeth Sprouse, my best friend’s daughter.”

That fit with the “Beth” signature on the note. My heartbeat picked up, and I leaned forward, surging toward the finish line of this investigation. “What can you tell me about Elizabeth and her family? Where does she live?”

Aurora Newcastle drifted into reminiscence mode, crepey eyelids half shuttering her eyes. “Her mother, Patricia, and I were friends from childhood. Inseparable. She married Eugene’s college roommate, and the four of us did everything together.
Strangely enough, neither Patricia nor I ever conceived, although we both wanted children. Eugene and I decided to accept our lack of children, and I channeled my energy into the wine business. In fact, Patricia’s the one who encouraged me to open Purple Feet when everyone else was pooh-poohing the idea. She’d never been interested in a career herself, and eventually she and Robert decided to adopt. They were in their early forties by then. I still remember how thrilled they were when they came home with Elizabeth. They loved that baby more than life itself. I’d heard people say that before, but never understood it until I saw the way Patricia was with Elizabeth. She was a delightful child, smart and kind and loving. But everything changed when Robert died.”