Sleeping Beauty (76 page)

“Hold on to them,” Anne said. “They don't prove anything except communication, but if they fit into a pattern, we still could use them.” She paced around Leo's office, standing at the window that looked up Tamarack Mountain. “There really is a pattern, but I don't know what we can do with it.”

“Maybe we can't do anything,” said Josh.

“Well, we have to do enough to get you out of it,” Anne said, still looking at the mountain. She turned to him. “And we won't get enough from Jim Matheny to help us with that. Even if it turns out that someone did jam the grip with that piece of wood, you could have been the one who did it. There's so much loose time that we can't account for. Josh, can we go over that morning again, when you were packing? Wasn't there anything you did that involved someone else? We've gone over this so many times, but let's do it again. It takes twenty minutes to drive to the gondola from Riverwood; you would have had to get to the second level and jam the wood in the grip; then get out without being seen, and drive twenty minutes back to . . . oh, wait a minute.” Her thoughts raced ahead. “This could change everything. Leo, if you wanted to disable a particular car, you'd have to wait until it moved directly below you, is that right? And jam that particular J-grip as it went by?”

Leo nodded. “That's it.”

“Why would I pick your car?” Josh demanded.

“I don't know, but that may not be important. Nothing else may be important but this. Josh, we've got to be sure of the times. You'd need at least an hour, and that would be pushing it, to drive to town, park, somehow get into the gondola building and upstairs without attracting attention, wait until one minute to nine when Leo and I got into the car, jam the mechanism, get out of there in the confusion of the crash, and drive twenty minutes to your house.”

“He could have done all that,” Leo said. “If no one saw him between eight and nine that morning . . .”

“No,” Josh said suddenly. “I couldn't have.”

He met Anne's eyes. She was smiling, her eyes bright. “You couldn't have done it because you left the house at a little after nine for the airport.”

“In a taxi,” he said.

“And the company will have a record of the trip from Riverwood to the airport. But even if we stretch it, if you'd left for the airport at nine-fifteen, or as late as nine-twenty, you couldn't have been on the second floor of the gondola building at one minute to nine and gotten back to Riverwood to call a taxi and then take it to the airport.”

“God damn!” Leo was grinning. “There's no goddam way you could have done it!”

“It doesn't even matter if our car was the target or not,” Anne said. “The grip would have had to be jammed sometime in the minute it takes to travel at slow speed until it clears the gondola building and gains speed.”

There was a silence. “Is that enough?” Josh asked Anne after a moment. “If they have the time nailed down, will Tyler drop the charges?”

“I don't know what else he can do. If Jim tells us that's what was used on our gondola car, there's absolutely no way you could have been in the building at the time it was done. We'll call Kevin this morning, and as soon as we get the taxi company's time sheet, we'll go to Tyler's office. It could be over that soon.”

“Except for knowing who tried to frame Josh,” Leo said. “Unless it's part of the pattern you were talking about.”

Anne nodded.
A monster. A monster.
She had no proof, but the pattern was there.
And he is a monster.

The three of them sat in silence, until Jim Matheny returned. He laid the piece of wood on Leo's desk. “How'd you know it wasn't an accident?” he demanded.

Leo looked at Anne. She was very pale. “It fits?” she asked.

“Like a charm. How'd you know? You know who did it?”

“No,” Leo said sharply. “And nobody else does, either.” He picked up the piece of wood and ran his fingers over the gouges.

“Nice clean gouges, easy to check,” Matheny said. “One thing, it sure lets you off the hook, Leo. Somebody got it in for you? I'd watch out for dark corners, if I was you. Well, I'll give it to Arvin; he'll be happy; he hates to close an investigation without any idea what happened. He'll give it to Tyler, I guess; let him run with it from now on.”

There was another silence when he left. “Dark corners,” Leo murmured. “Everybody's beginning to sound like a crime novel.”

“We have to call Kevin,” Anne said.

“Thank God,” Leo said. “At least, thank God for this part of it. Your part, Anne. From now on, you don't have to worry about what happens. You didn't even have to do as much as you've already done; you're Josh's lawyer, not ours. If someone is sabotaging us, it's our problem, not yours and not Josh's.”

“Someone was looking for me, or for you, when we were in that car,” Anne said quietly. “That doesn't tell me I have nothing to worry about. But that isn't the only thing. Even if it wasn't aimed at me, I'm part of this. As long as you're in trouble, it's my problem, too.” She picked up her coat. “I think, if it's all right with you, after we see Kevin and Tyler, we'd better have a talk with Keith.”

*   *   *

“You've gotta be kidding,” Keith said, shaking his head in slow amazement.
“Dynamite?
God, you sure coulda fooled me. Like, who woulda thought of dynamite? I mean, you know, I wasn't exactly looking for it. God, Leo, I'm sorry if I missed that; I mean I really, like, let you down. Jesus,” he said abruptly, “you mean like somebody really did it on purpose? Jesus, what a shitty thing to do. Why'd they do that? And how'd you find it? I mean, there's a lot of snow up there now; it's, you know, like amazing that you could even find it. You sure it's the right place? I mean, all this snow and it's hard to know exactly where we were, so how do you
know it's like the right rocks and all that? I mean, it's kinda dangerous, isn't it, to go blaming somebody for blowing up a, you know, mountain when you're not even sure you know what you've got.”

“We know what we've got,” Leo said evenly. His gaze was intent on Keith, who sat at his desk in the corner of his office. The room was so small that Josh and Anne had to stand in the doorway, and Leo at the edge of the desk beside the single chair and file cabinet that took up the rest of the space. Keith sat straight in his chair, his chin thrust forward, his eyes wide with interest. But his hands constantly fidgeted with a pencil and an eraser, and Anne heard a nervous tapping of his shoe.

“Well, I wish I could, you know, help you, Leo. If I really like fucked up on that, I feel lousy about it, but it was, you know, a long time ago. I mean I don't see what I can do about it now.”

Anne nodded. “We're trying to find people who saw anything unusual on the morning of the gondola crash. Could you think back and tell us if you saw anything?”

“Hey, what is this, an inquisition? I mean, you all barge in here and start in with all these questions, and I already told Halloran everything I know, so what's with this? How come you're not asking him?” He pointed his thumb at Josh. “I mean, he did the, you know, whole thing; so like who else do you need?”

Anne and Josh exchanged a quick glance with Leo. Less than an hour ago, Tyler had agreed to drop the charges against Josh. But there was no reason to tell Keith that.

“Anyway,” Keith went on, the heel of his shoe tapping even faster, “I wasn't there. I got in late, just after the car fell. I'm sorry, Leo, I let you down there, too. I'm really sorry, but, you know, Eve and I were, like we had this thing going in bed, and I lost track of the, you know, time. I mean, if I'd known . . . but how could I? I mean, I couldn't know, could I? And I'm there every morning early, you know, I mean I was even there Christmas morning, remember? I'm always there. You know. I mean I missed this one morning,
but I didn't think it would be such a, you know, big deal, but how was I to know—”

“You were in bed with your girlfriend?” Anne asked.

“Right, that's what I said.”

“And she was awake the whole time.”

“Oh, boy, was she,” said Keith, and winked at Leo.

Leo glanced at Anne. “Okay, Keith,” he said. “I didn't realize you weren't there the morning of the crash; we'll have to talk about that. I'll see you this afternoon.”

His face a mask, Keith watched them leave. His hand was already reaching for the telephone. But then he pulled it back. He didn't know what they knew, but he knew what they suspected, and the worst of it was he couldn't figure out how they'd gotten there. Until he knew what was going on, and where he'd slipped up, there was no way he was going to call Vince. Right now Vince thought Keith Jax was God's gift to the world, and you could bet your ass that Keith wasn't about to tell him those assholes were sniffing around, and it was maybe because of some mistake he'd made, somewhere along the way. He stood up and pulled on his ski jacket. Leo wanted to see him that afternoon. That was okay, he could handle Leo. But he didn't see why he had to sit around waiting for him. He'd go skiing for a couple hours, clear his head, do some serious thinking. His future might be speeding up, and he sure as hell planned on being ready for it.

*   *   *

“Vince killed the highway to Charles' development,” Leo said as the three of them walked toward the café on Main Street for lunch. “He sicked the EPA on us. He could have arranged with his nephew to foul our reservoir. He could have arranged with the same nephew to knock out the gondola; that perfect alibi doesn't mean a damn thing since his girl will back him up. So he could have done it, maybe aimed at Anne or me or both of us, and framed Josh, though I don't get that part at all. In fact, I don't get any of it. No sane person would do all that.”

“You could put it another way,” said Anne. She was
putting on her dark glasses against the bright sun. “He talked once or twice a week by phone to his nephew, who was always around when things happened in Tamarack that looked like accidents but in fact were carefully planned, and who had easy access day or night to the places where those things happened. The problem is, there's no trail. There's a pattern but no proof, and no arrows pointing anywhere for us to look next.”

They sat outside the café, looking over the low wall at businesspeople coming for lunch, mothers pushing babies in strollers toward the Town Market, and a group of tourists coming out of a rental shop carrying skis and poles. “Nice to see a few of those,” Leo said. “You know, Ethan and I used to sit here a lot, in happier times. It was his favorite place; he liked watching the town go by. We were here that day he said your name, Anne. I'm glad he's not here now; I'm glad he hasn't seen the things that have happened, and heard us trying to work it out and ending up every time with Vince. I'm glad he won't see Tamarack go to that swaggering son of a bitch who's buying it.”

“Beloit,” Anne said. “He's probably the biggest part of the pattern, if we could put it all together. What if Vince, for whatever reason, wants Beloit to have Tamarack? He could have done all these things to make the family sell to Beloit. Of course Vince may not even be involved, but let's assume that he is. He'd want the family to vote to sell at a low price. And they did. But it took a fairly long time, and maybe that was why the level of danger in what was happening kept going up. It started with a highway and the EPA, and got to the gondola and maybe”—she stopped a minute, choking on the word—“murder. But we can't prove any of that; we can't even find evidence that points to a deliberate attempt to lower the value of the company.” She paused, frowning. “Or maybe not.”

“Not what?” Leo asked.

“Maybe we don't need to have all the evidence after all. We might not be able to prove everything, but at least we might be able to stop the sale of The Tamarack Company.
Maybe it's enough to have a little evidence and a lot of logical suspicion.” She turned the glass salt shaker around in her fingers, watching the sun's rays glance off it. “How likely do you think it is that anyone in the family would want to sell the company if it seemed that the sale price, and probably the vote to sell, had been manipulated by behind-the-scenes maneuvering and sabotage and attempted murder?”

“Charles,” Josh said instantly. “If he knew about all this, what we're sure of and what we're guessing—”

“He'd call it off!” Leo exclaimed. “Especially if he knew we think it was Anne who was almost—oh, Christ, I have trouble every time I try to say this—murdered.”

“And you,” Anne said. “And his grandchildren.”

“All of it. The whole lousy mess. He'd be as sick as we are. Of course he wouldn't sell to Beloit. At least he'd wait while we try to find out the truth. Why wouldn't he?”

“He needs the money,” said Josh.

“Well, we'll have to find the money some other way,” Leo said impatiently. “We have to tell him. This afternoon. Tomorrow. Before they sign anything. I know they haven't because Marian told us, but it can't be far off. Tomorrow? We could all fly to Chicago.”

Josh and Anne exchanged a glance. “I don't belong there,” Josh said. “You two go.”

“I'm not sure,” Leo said slowly. “I think it may be for Anne to go.”

“It's your company,” Anne said.

“And your father. What do you think?”

She gazed across the valley. She had not talked to Charles in almost three weeks, since Christmas. Before that, they had talked a few times by telephone, without ever mentioning Vince. It could not be seen as personal vengeance now, she thought; she was doing what she had to do for Leo and Gail. And Charles should know what his brother had done, and might have done. He should know that it was possible that his brother had tried to have his daughter killed. Not proven, but possible.