The Mountains Bow Down (41 page)

“Nope. You're a geologist, find out for yourself. Can you get to a computer?”

“Not a secure one.” The ship had Internet access, but I had avoided it for security reasons.

“Doesn't need to be secure. Check the UCal records for benitoite. You won't regret it.”

I sighed. There was no arguing with the woman. “But you're checking the NCIC for stolen benitoite, right?”

“If you'd let me get off the phone,” she said, hanging up.

I was still holding my cell phone when the elevators opened to the medical clinic. I was trying to decide why DeMott would call three times in an hour. Maybe something happened. Maybe Madame, my mom's dog, was hurt.

The phone rang at Weyanoke. And rang. Then rang some more. As I listened, growing more concerned, I also got more annoyed with DeMott. He refused to carry a cell phone and his antiquated attitude was another reminder of how life played out on that plantation, the days and nights scarcely changed since Robert E. Lee danced the Virginia reel in the ballroom. By the twelfth ring, when I was feeling that old Weyanoke suffocation—
they didn't even want an answering machine
—his sister MacKenna picked up.

“Hi, Mac. I'm returning DeMott's calls. Is anything wrong?”

I wasn't exactly MacKenna's favorite person. Not that I blamed her. I'd already managed to delay her wedding, get her father investigated for tax evasion, and put her fiancé on the FBI's domestic terrorism watch list. And we weren't even related yet.

There was a loud
thunk
, followed by silence, leaving me to guess that she had either gone to get DeMott or was literally going to leave me hanging. Waiting to find out which, I leaned against the wall outside the medical clinic and listened to the background noise in the phone. Music was playing. Voices. A girl laughed.

When DeMott answered, he was out of breath.

“Raleigh, is that you? Hey. How's it going?”

“You sound winded.”

“Oh. Yeah. Well. Mac . . . Mac's throwing a party.” He cleared his throat, mumbled something.

“Pardon?”

“It's just for some old friends, back in town.”

It was something in his voice. Something tentative. False. I'd known DeMott Fielding since grade school and one of the things I most admired was that he was a terrible liar. “Who's back in town?” I asked casually.

“Oh, just old friends.”

“So you said. Anyone in particular?”

He rattled off some names, Flynn Wellington among them. She lived on a neighboring plantation. But Flynn, like the other names he offered, was local. DeMott saw them often. And it was only as he continued down the list that he tucked one name in among the regulars. “And John Coker and Tinsley Teeger and—”

Tinsley. Beautiful scheming Tinsley. My classmate at St. Catherine's school, she was a bright blond bombshell who blew out of Richmond right after graduation, headed for Manhattan. She sold high-market real estate and from eighth grade on, she'd carried a torch for DeMott.

“Tinsley,” I said, feeling something acidic at the back of my throat. “Didn't she get married?”

“How's vacation?”

I turned, staring into the glass doors of the medical clinic. Nurse Stephanie had found her broom and ridden back to work. “It's great,” I said. “Everything's great. I thought Tinsley married that guy from Dartmouth?”

“Mmm. They got divorced. And your mom's having a good time?”

“Oh, super. Just super.” Tinsley comes back in town, a free girl. Mac throws a party. Conveniently, I was gone. That knife named jealousy nicked my heart. I could hear the music playing in the background. The words were muddy but there was no missing the slow beat, the crooning in a love song. I stared through the clinic's glass doors. The elderly woman staying with her sick husband came out of their room and spoke with Nurse Stephanie, her tired face full of tender worries. “DeMott, is something wrong?”

“Wrong? No. Nothing's wrong. I just . . .”

“What?”

“I just wanted to hear your voice. I feel like . . .”

I waited. “Like what?”

“I feel like you're a million miles away and never coming back.”

The woman inside the clinic nodded, thanking the nurse and walking back to her husband's room. My heart ached. I didn't like his structured life, his stringent family of snobs, but were those good enough reasons to throw away love? Wasn't it when circumstances got difficult that love showed its true colors? Like the couple in the clinic. Like my parents. True love was never easy.

“I'm sorry.” The words struggled out, strangled in my throat. “I've been so busy—”

“Busy? Raleigh, you're on vacation.”

“DeMott, listen—”

“Or maybe you mean you're busy with that guy who answers your phone.”

“Please listen. I'm working. On a case.”

“You can't stop. All you do is work. You can't even take a vacation—without your fiancé.”

“Right now is not a good time, DeMott.”

“It's never a good time. When were you planning on telling me?”

“Telling you what?”

“About that guy. Is he why you didn't want me on that cruise?”

“DeMott, don't do this—”

“Oh, here we go again. Don't pry. Don't bother Raleigh. She needs her privacy. Everything's all bundled up inside.” He gave a dry sort of laugh. “You must take me for an idiot.”

Every bit of tenderness had evaporated. I felt a bitter resentment climbing up my back and crystallizing around my heart. The words left my mouth before I could stop them. “You want me to open up? Fine. Here it is, DeMott. I work. I work while y'all are lazing around Weyanoke dreaming about the past and throwing parties. I work because I have to make a living. So go on, have a good time, because I'm sure Tinsley is
very
happy to see you. And I'm sure the feeling's mutual.”

“I'm going to pretend you didn't say that.”

“Of course you are.”

“Excuse me?” he asked.

“Life at Weyanoke. One long game of Let's Pretend.”

Snapping the phone shut, I stormed into the medical clinic and prayed Nurse Stephanie would pick a fight so I could rip her head off. But as if to annoy me further, she politely dabbed at her mouth with a paper napkin. A bowl of chicken soup waited on the desk. She used the napkin to point at my mother's room. “The doctor's with her,” she said. “Don't go anywhere.”

Behind the door, his Irish brogue was lilting through a series of casual statements that disguised probing questions. The same tactic FBI agents used with reluctant witnesses.

“Hard to believe tomorrow we'll be back on land,” he ventured.

No reply.

“They say it's been raining in Seattle. I don't care much for the rain. It's why I left my family back in Ireland.”

He kept on. But there was only silence. When finally he stepped from the room and saw me, he gestured silently and I followed him to the room where I spent last night.

He closed the door. “What're your plans?” he asked.

“After tomorrow? We go back to Virginia.”

He wore a somber expression, that distillation of Irish melancholy, the face that says,
It will be
a
struggle until the end of days
.

“Why do you ask?” I asked.

“There's a doctor, he works with the Washington state facility.”

“Facility?”

“Lassie, I've given your mother enough tranquilizers to drop the draught horse in green sod.”

“Then take her off them.”

He opened his arms, looking almost helpless. “She needs help.”

“Yes, but not from some
facility
run by the state.”

He drew his hands over the cumulus of white hair. “She can't get on an airplane.”

“I've thought of that. We can stay in Seattle for a few days. My aunt lives there. Soon as she's better, we'll go home to Virginia.”

“And who'll watch over her night and day, you? Rising with both the roosters and the owls?” He shook his head. “They'll bring the vehicle right to the dock.”

“Thank you for your concern. I appreciate it. But we don't need the
facility
.”

His hands went into the pockets of his white officer's uniform. “That stubbornness of yours, 'tis done you some good in your life, I'm certain. But now it's not. Your mother's had a psychotic break. She's as sick as I've seen in twenty-four years practicing medicine.”

“It's the ship.” I could feel the headache from her reading glasses, pounding with new force. “As soon as we're off this ship, she's going to feel better.”

He shook his head. “I wish it were so. But we walk beside walls, all of us. You're getting a good look at yours. It's your mother. And that wall 'tis made of stone.”

The headache moved down to my neck, my shoulders. I was suddenly very tired and sat down on the bed. “How long?” I asked. “How long do you think she needs?”

“Walls are odd things,” he said. “Nobody knows how far they go. But you're not close to the end.”

“How long?” I repeated.

“It's not days. And not weeks.”

“Months?

”

He gave a noncommittal nod.

“Then I'll find her help in Virginia.”

“Can you?”

“Of course.”

“She's afraid of you. You want her breaking down on the plane?”

“I've already considered that and I'm looking for another way to get home. I can rent a nurse, buy her a plane ticket, whatever it takes.”

“Lassie, you might get your mother home,” he said, “but I've seen people not come back.”

His words hovered in the air between us, gathering their full meaning.

On the upper deck, Jack stood with his back to the rail. The steady wind that blew into Skagway ran its fingers through his hair, tousling it like a boy's. Above him the sun continued to burn through the clouds, illuminating a lush green valley between the mountains.

“You look like somebody died,” Jack said.

The movie crew had set up tarps for windbreaks across the deck. The plastic sheets rippled in the wind, sounding like distant thunder, and the extras were scattered as if directed by that same wind. Vinnie stood scowling at a lone passenger who was getting some exercise by walking laps around the deck; he forced her to turn around. I didn't see Aunt Charlotte anywhere. Or Claire. But to the port side Sandy Sparks conferred with his new director whose blond ponytail filled with the wind, looking like a dandelion blossom.

“Sparks is keeping some interesting stones in his safe,” I told Jack. “And in his shaving kit.”

“His what?”

“His safe, in his room.”

“No, the other thing.”

“Shaving kit.”

“Harmon, what did you—?”

“I didn't take anything. Geert sent me in, dressed as a maid. They've got blue stones in the safe. And some others are in his shaving kit.”

“Some other what?”

“Amethyst, I think. Moonstone. Maybe jet and cut glass.”

“Hey, scientist, bring it down to my level.”

“The amethyst might be worth some money. Not a lot but not chump change either. And definitely not something you keep with toiletries.”

Sandy Sparks was pointing toward his wife. In her butter-pat bikini, Larrah stood shivering, though the cold wind wasn't enough to keep her from another opportunity to display her figure. She was a striking sight, and only one person wasn't watching her: Milo. He leaned against the ship's smokestack wall, his skin as green as pool water. In his hand, he held a silver flask.

“What scene is this?” I asked. “She's supposed to be the bartender.”

“Beats me. I'm guessing it's something the new director dreamed up.”

“And how's Milo?”

Jack sighed. I couldn't remember ever hearing him sigh. “I quit trying to keep Milo sober. Like teaching an octopus to run.” His blue-green eyes stared at me, evaluating. “I expect the full answer to this question. How did you get into his safe?”