Too Near the Edge (32 page)

I took time to change into a pale green
cotton sundress with spaghetti straps. It’s one of my favorites
because the color matches my eyes. I hadn’t been out to Terrace
Maya all summer, but its kitschy cantina look hadn’t changed a bit.
Strings of plastic beer signs for Corona, Cerveza and Bud Light
decorated the fence surrounding the patio. The awning that covered
the patio was hung with strings of twinkly lights, luminous colored
balls and stars. Looking out to the south between the top of the
fence and the bottom of the awning, you get an excellent long view
of the city nestled into the foothills.

A few people sat on barstools at a tiki bar
with a wood-shingled roof on the southern edge of the patio, but
otherwise it was sparse. North Boulder doesn’t have the cache of
the Pearl Street Mall, where people tend to hang out on summer
evenings. This place gets its main crowds on weekends for the live
salsa music.

Pablo showed up just after I got there. He
wore a soft blue shirt that set off his blue-black hair, and he had
that adorable just-out-of-the-shower look. We took a round
glass-covered table near a fountain whose water bubbled cheerfully
between two kissing ceramic birds, and ordered a pitcher of
margaritas, and chile rellenos smothered with the restaurant’s
famous green chili. I took a couple of big swigs from my margarita
glass to fortify myself before I began.

“Pablo, this has been such a long week, I can
hardly remember back to the beginning of it. And it’s hard to
remember what I’ve told you, and what I haven’t at this point. So
tell me what you want to know.”

“There’s a lot I want to know, Cleo. The last
time we talked was on Thursday when you wanted me to arrest Erik
Vaughn for kidnapping Sharon and Nathan on a camping trip, and then
changed your mind and said they were okay. The next thing I knew I
heard that you, Sharon and Elisa almost got yourselves killed at
Donald Waycroft’s lab on Saturday. And now Waycroft is dead,
Elisa’s in the hospital, and as far as I can tell Erik Vaughn has
disappeared leaving his herb growers with no way to get their
money.”

“Right. It has been a tough week. Where do
you want me to start?”

“Let’s start with Erik. How much did his
brother tell you about his background?”

“He told me Erik has basically been ripping
people off his whole life, he’s been married at least three times,
and the people close to him have suffered a lot. Do you want the
gory details?”

Pablo wanted to hear it all, so I went
through the whole story Harry had told me, as much as I could
remember it. He refilled my margarita glass a couple of times, and
we ordered another pitcher when the waitress brought our food.

“I’m surprised he told you all of that, Cleo.
He didn’t want to say much when I talked to him. Maybe it’s because
I’m a cop.”

“Or maybe it’s because I went to Minneapolis
and talked to him in person.”

“Just one more part of your tough week? How
come you didn’t tell me before this?”

I chuckled at his surprise, and gave him the
details of my trip, taking a few pauses to savor the spicy green
chili. Pablo ate, listened, occasionally looked surprised, but
refrained from making any critical comments. After I finished
explaining, he asked, “So, did you ask Erik about any of this?”

“Some. I promised Harry I wouldn’t tell Erik
what he’d told me, so I couldn’t ask about most of it. But then
Erik told me the police had been investigating him, and he was
closing his businesses and leaving town. Was that your doing?”

“I set a few things in motion. We were hoping
to surprise him, get some proof he’d scammed people, and arrest him
before he got away. But he’s a pro—saw what was coming and left
without a trace. No more Vaughn Holistic Healing website. The phone
at Natural Herbal Remedies is disconnected. His brother Harry
doesn’t know where he is.”

“I’ll admit you were right about him all
along. It’s even worse than you know. Sharon’s husband Adam had
invested in Erik’s business. She’ll never see that money
again.”

“So I guess you think Erik pushed Adam off
that trail. Good luck trying to catch him and prove he did it. I’d
say Sharon should accept the ruling of accidental death and move
on. Especially now that she’s lost her father—although it may not
be such a loss from what I hear. Tell me about him.”

I went through the Donald story—leaving out
the part about Adam—and told him how Elisa had caused the car
crash. “I guess he didn’t know Elisa very well, or he wouldn’t have
picked her as his hostage,” I said. “She never lets anyone push her
around.”

“I doubt if he’d been any better off with
you, Cleo. You’ve been going after people pretty hard lately. Now
that you almost got yourself killed are you ready to hang up your
detective career?”

“I never said I was a detective. I just did
what I had to do in the situation. It wasn’t easy, but I’d do it
again if I needed to.”

“I wish you’d rethink that, Cleo. If you keep
taking chances like you have been, you may be spending all your
time with that Tyler character in the spirit world or
wherever.”

I let the Tyler slur go by. We’d had that
discussion before, and I didn’t see it going anywhere new. The
waitress came to clear our table, asked if we wanted coffee. I
looked at Pablo. He looked at me. “We’re good,” I said. “Just bring
the check.”

Back at my house, our conflicts melted
sweetly away, like ice cream in the sun. We didn’t talk any more
about Erik or Donald or Adam or Sharon. We made love slowly, then
dozed in each other’s arms.

Around ten o’clock, Pablo’s snoring woke me
up. He was out cold. I got up to get a glass of water. In the
shadows of the kitchen, I saw Tyler, perched on a countertop. He
was quiet, just watching me—which was actually a bit unnerving as I
had on almost nothing.

“Tyler! Why are you here? Can’t you see I’m
not dressed?”

“Cleo, stay cool. I don’t see your body, I
see your soul.”

“That’s strange. I see your body.”

“You see what you want to see, Cleo.”

“Are you saying I’m making you up?”

“Whatever works for you.”

“That doesn’t work for me. Are you real or
not?” I heard my voice rising. All I needed was for Pablo to wake
up and find me arguing with a ghost.

“Okay, whatever, Tyler. I’m going back to
bed.”

“You did it, Cleo. You rode the wave.”

Here's an excerpt from
Too Far Under
,
the sequel to
Too Near the Edge
and the second in the Cleo
& Tyler mystery series.

Mirabel’s last day on earth was a late August
scorcher, but the heat melted away when the sun slipped behind the
mountains. The evening air had a delicious mountain crispness and
piney smell. Mirabel was overdue for a soak. She dropped her
clothes in a pile on the bathroom floor and slipped into a terry
robe. On her way through the empty kitchen, she grabbed a chilled
bottle of Chenin Blanc, a wine glass, and her ipod. Then she headed
out to the secluded hot tub in the backyard of her house in the
outskirts of Boulder.

“My favorite part of the day,” she said to
herself as she turned on the jets, tossed her robe on a chair and
slid into the bubbling hot water. “Yes,” she sighed in relief as
the throbbing in her muscles and joints eased. Mirabel refused to
accept limitations to her active life, despite increasing arthritis
pain. Some days it was all she could do to get moving in the
morning, but she pushed through the fog and kept her commitments.
Mirabel was proud that people who knew her said that once she set
her mind on something she moved forward like a rocket and got
things accomplished.

Today she’d spent hours with the Prairie Dog
Action group she chaired, working on strategies to take action
against Hugh Symes, a vicious developer who plowed a colony of
prairie dogs under—killing them instead of relocating them. Then
she delivered meals-on-wheels, worked on promotional materials with
the Colorado Sierra Club, and had a short Scientology session with
India and Brian.

As usual, her husband Derrick wasn’t around
for dinner, so she and her daughter Angelica picked up some fruit
smoothies and black bean tempeh burgers at the Boulder Co-op café.
They ate downtown on the courthouse lawn while listening to a local
jazz group at the weekly Bands on the Bricks concert. It was after
9:00 when they got home and by the time she’d checked her phone
messages and had her usual bedtime heart-to-heart talk with
Angelica, it was about 10:30, which was slightly past her usual
soaking time.

Angelica, an unusually perceptive
ten-year-old, had offered to forgo the bedtime ritual so Mirabel
could get right to the hot water. But Mirabel treasured Angelica’s
nighttime confidences too much to miss one no matter how much her
body ached. She wished she had spent this quality time with her
three older children, but somehow life had gotten in the way and
that opportunity was long gone.

A familiar sadness overwhelmed her as she
thought about her older children, now all but lost to her. Her
ongoing arguments with her two oldest—Shane, twenty-four, and
Lacey, twenty-three, left her frustrated and disappointed. Somehow
neither of them had found a steady path in life. She had tried to
teach them the importance of contributing to the community, but
they insisted she had already contributed enough for all of them.
Had she neglected their emotional needs to serve her social causes?
She never meant to, but looking back she did have regrets.

Worst was Kari, dead at thirteen. It had been
two years now, but Mirabel still missed Kari every day and blamed
herself for not doing more to save her. Tears trickled down her
cheeks. Her precious babies. She may not have been the best mother,
but she loved them all so much. At least she was close to Angelica.
She vowed to do whatever she needed to do to keep that, and to
redouble her efforts to reach Lacey and Shane.

As Mirabel’s physical tension yielded to the
swirling water, she turned her thoughts away from her family. Other
worries nagged at her. Life was confusing lately and she didn’t
know who to trust or believe. She wasn’t naïve. She was quite aware
that money—or the desire for more of it—could motivate people to
evil. But until recently, she’d thought she was a good enough judge
of character that no one could take advantage of her or of people
she loved. Now she wasn’t so sure. Things were happening that she
knew she needed to stop. It was going to be an unpleasant
month.

As she soaked and sipped her wine, Mirabel
tried to quiet her reactive mind and move toward clear as she’d
learned to do as a student of Scientology. But it wasn’t
working—maybe because of a combination of alcohol and painkillers
in her system. She’d resisted taking any medications for at least a
year after her arthritis began to interfere with her daily life,
and even now hadn’t found the courage to tell her fellow
Scientologists that she was taking pills they believe to be poison.
Actually, she had other issues with them these days that had eroded
much of their mutual trust, so the pain killer thing was probably
minor.

She sat up to reach her wine bottle, poured
herself another glass, leaned back against the side of the tub, and
drank deeply. As the wine level dropped in her glass, Mirabel slid
down further into the water, focusing on relaxing her body and
again trying to clear her mind. Gradually her thoughts dimmed, her
body loosened, and she felt the floating calmness she sought.

She had almost lapsed into a stupor when she
felt a hand touch her head. She couldn’t see who it was, but in her
groggy state she didn’t really care. The hand squeezed her head
lightly, which felt soothing and she drowsily wiggled her head to
snuggle into it. But soon the touch felt too firm and aggressive.
She roused herself enough to push back and finally tried to turn
her head to see who was there. But the person behind her held her
head tightly in both hands, thrusting her face under the warm
water.

Mirabel kicked at the bottom and sides of the
tub, struggling to get a foothold to push herself up and raise her
head out of the water. But it was too late. The pills, the wine and
the hot water had left her body and her mind too slack to act
forcefully in her own defense. The hands pushed her head deeper
into the tub.

Fear and panic came over her in waves as
water gushed down her throat. Her chest burned and she gasped,
trying not to breathe in the water that surrounded her. But finally
the irresistible urge to breathe won out. Mirabel’s last thought
before the water filled her lungs and she lost consciousness was
that if she drowned she’d be letting down all the people who were
counting on her to show up tomorrow and the next day and all the
days after that.

Two months later

When I got the urgent early-morning call from
Shady Terrace Nursing Home, I thought it was my boyfriend Pablo
calling to say he missed me already. He had spent the night and was
on his way to work while I dozed lazily under my puffy down quilt
enjoying the afterglow and procrastinating getting up for a few
more minutes.

I flipped open my cell and saw the Shady
Terrace number instead of Pablo’s. My heart sank. “Cleo Sims,” I
answered, dreading what could only be bad news from the nursing
home calling so early. It was Tanya, one of the nurses on my
eighty-seven-year-old grandmother’s unit.

“Get ready for a shock, Cleo. Shady Terrace
is closing and all the residents have to move out! They just told
us, and the residents don’t even know yet. There’s a big family
meeting this morning at 9:00. Can you make it?”

Too stunned to ask for details, I said I’d be
there. I wanted to scream and throw my phone against the wall, but
instead I grabbed a robe and stepped out onto my front porch,
hoping my mountain view would have its usual calming effect.