White Fire (24 page)
She glanced at the outdoor thermometer: two degrees below zero. The temperature just kept dropping. She bundled up in a hat, gloves, and down coat, and made her way out to the driveway where her car was parked. As she dusted it off—a very light snow had fallen the night before—she once again regretted her outburst at Wynn Marple. It had been stupid to burn that bridge. But it was vintage Corrie, with her temper and her long-standing inability to suffer jerks. That behavior might have worked in Medicine Creek, when she was still a rebellious high-school student. But there was no excusing it anymore—not here, and not now. She simply
had
to stop lashing out at people—especially when she knew all too well that it was counterproductive to her own best interests.
She started the car and eased down the steep driveway to Ravens Ravine Road. The sky was gray, and the snow had started falling yet again. The weather report said a lot more was on the way—which in a ski resort like Roaring Fork was greeted as a farmer greets rain, with celebration and chatter. Corrie for her part was sick to death of it. Maybe it really was time to cash in her chips and get out of town.
She drove slowly, as there were often patches of ice on the hairpin road going down the canyon and her rental car, with its crappy tires, had lousy traction.
So what now? She had at most a day or two more of work on the skeletons—crossing the T’s forensically, so to speak. Then that would be that. Even though it seemed unlikely, she would see if Ted had any more ideas about where she might find clues to the identity of the killers—tactfully, since of course he didn’t know the truth about how the miners had really died. He’d asked her out again, for dinner tomorrow; she made a mental note to talk to him about it then.
Six days before Christmas. Her father had been begging her to come to Pennsylvania and spend it with him. He would even send her the money for airfare. Perhaps it was a sign. Perhaps…
A loud noise, a shuddering
BANG!
, caused her to jam on the brakes and scream involuntarily. The car screeched and slid, but didn’t quite go off the road, instead coming to a stop sideways.
“What the
hell
?” Corrie gripped the steering wheel. What had happened? Something had shattered her windshield, turning it into an opaque web of cracks.
And then she saw the small, perfectly round hole at their center.
With another scream she ducked down, scrunching herself below the door frame. All was silent as her mind raced a mile a minute. That was a bullet hole. Someone had tried to shoot her. Kill her.
Shit, shit, shit…
She had to get out of there. Taking a deep breath and tensing, she swung herself back up, punched at the sagging window with her gloved hand, ripped a hole big enough to see through, then grabbed the wheel again and jammed on the gas. The Focus skidded around and she managed to get it under control, expecting more shots at any moment. In her panic she accelerated too fast; the car hit a patch of ice and slid again, heading for the guardrail above the ravine. The car ricocheted off it, slid back onto the road with a screech of rubber, and turned around another hundred eighty degrees. Corrie was shaken but—after a brief, panicked moment—realized she was unhurt.
“
Shit!
” she screamed again. The shooter was still out there, might even be coming down the road after her. The car had stalled and the passenger side was all bashed up, but it didn’t seem to be a total wreck; she turned the key and the engine came to life. She eased the Focus back around, forcing herself to do a careful three-point turn, and drove down the road. The car still ran, but it made a nasty noise—a fender seemed to be scraping one of the tires.
Slowly, carefully, hands trembling on the steering wheel, she guided the vehicle down the mountain and into town, heading straight for the police department.
After Corrie had filled out an incident report, the sergeant behind the desk promptly showed her into the chief’s office. Apparently, she was now a person of importance. She found Chief Morris behind his desk, which was heaped with three-by-five cards, photographs, string, pins, and glue. On the wall behind him was an incomprehensible chart that was no doubt related to the arson killings.
The chief looked like death warmed over. His cheeks hung like slabs of suet on his face, his eyes were sunken coals, his hair was unkempt. At the same time, there was a severe cast to his eye that hadn’t been there before. That, at least, was an improvement.
He took the report and gestured for her to sit. A few minutes went by while he read it, then read it again. And then he laid it on the table. “Is there any reason you can think of that someone might be unhappy with you?” he asked.
At this Corrie, shaken as she was, had to laugh. “Yeah. Like just about everyone in The Heights. The mayor. Kermode. Montebello. Not to mention you.”
The chief managed a wan smile. “We’re going to open an investigation, of course. But…listen, I hope you won’t think I’m trying to brush this off if I tell you we’ve been looking for a poacher up in that area for several weeks now. He’s been killing and butchering deer, no doubt selling the meat. One of his wild shots went through the window of a house just last week. So what happened to you might—
might
—have been a stray shot from his poaching activity. This happened early in the morning, which is when the deer—and our poacher—are active. Again, I’m not saying that’s what happened. I’m just mentioning it as a possibility…to ease your mind more than anything.”
“Thanks,” said Corrie.
They rose, and the chief held out his hand. “I’m afraid I’ll have to impound your car as evidence—do a ballistics analysis and see if we can recover the round.”
“You’re welcome to it.”
“I’ll have one of my officers drive you where you need to go.”
“No, thanks, I’m just going around the corner for a Starbucks.”
As Corrie sat sipping her coffee, she wondered if it really had been a poacher. It was true she had annoyed a lot of people early on, but that had blown over, especially with the start of the arson killings. Shooting at her car—that would be attempted murder. What kind of threat was she to merit that? Problem was, the chief was so overwhelmed—as was everyone else in the police department—that she had little faith he would be able to conduct an effective investigation. If the shooting was meant to intimidate her, it wasn’t going to work. She might be frightened—but there was no way she’d be frightened out of town. If anything, it would make her want to stay longer.
Then again…it might be the poacher. Or it could be some other random crazy. It could even be the serial arsonist, switching M.O.’s. Her thoughts turned to Stacy up in the ravine, probably still asleep. She was eventually going to come into town, and she might also be in danger, get shot at, too.
She pulled out her cell phone and dialed Stacy. A sleepy voice answered. As soon as Corrie started telling her the story, she woke up fast.
“Somebody shot up your car? I’m going looking for the mother.”
“Wait. Don’t do that. That’s crazy. Let the police handle it.”
“His tracks will be out there, in the snow. I’ll follow the fucker back to whatever spider hole he crawled out of.”
“No,
please
.” It took Corrie ten minutes to persuade Stacy not to do it. As Corrie was about to hang up, Stacy said: “I hope he shoots at
my
car. I’ve got a couple of Black Talon rounds just itching to explore his inner psyche.”
Next, she called Rent-a-Junker. The agent went on and on about how the chief of police himself had just called, how awful being shot at must’ve been, was she all right, did she need a doctor…And would an upgrade—a Ford Explorer?—be acceptable, at no extra charge, of course?
Corrie smiled as she hung up. The chief seemed to be acquiring, at long last, a bit of backbone.
R
oger Kleefisch sprawled in one of the two velvet-lined armchairs in the sitting room of his London town house, feet on the bearskin rug, his entire frame drinking in the welcome warmth from the crackling fire on the grate. Agent Pendergast sat in the other chair, motionless, his eyes gazing into the flames. When Kleefisch had let him in, the FBI agent had glanced around at the room, raising his eyebrows but making no other comment. And yet, somehow, Kleefisch felt that he approved.
He rarely let anyone into his sitting room, and he couldn’t help but feel a little like Sherlock Holmes himself, here at home, partner in detection at his side. The thought managed to lift his spirits a little. Although, were he to be honest with himself, he should probably be assuming the role of Watson. After all, Pendergast was the professional detective here.
At last, Pendergast shifted, placed his whisky-and-soda on a side table. “So, Kleefisch. What have you uncovered so far?”
It was the question Kleefisch had been dreading. He swallowed, took a deep breath, and spoke. “Nothing, I’m afraid.”
The pale eyes gazed at him intently. “Indeed?”
“I’ve tried everything over these last twenty-four hours,” he replied. “I’ve looked back through old correspondence, read and re-read Conan Doyle’s diary. I’ve examined every book, every treatise on the man’s last years that I could find. I’ve even tried picking the brains—circumspectly—of several of our most brilliant Investitures. I’ve found nothing, not even a trace of evidence. And I must say, despite my initial enthusiasm, it doesn’t come as a surprise. All this ground had been covered so thoroughly by Irregulars in the past. I was a fool to think there might be something new.”
Pendergast did not speak. With the firelight flickering over his gaunt features, his head bowed, an expression of intense thought on his face, surrounded by Victorian trappings, he suddenly looked so much like Holmes himself that Kleefisch was taken aback.
“I’m truly sorry, Pendergast,” Kleefisch said, averting his gaze to the bearskin rug. “I was so hopeful.” He paused. “I fear you’re on a wild goose chase—one that I may have encouraged. I apologize for that.”
After a moment, Pendergast stirred. “On the contrary. You’ve already done a great deal. You confirmed my suspicions about the missing Holmes story. You showed me the evidence in
Queen’s Quorum
. You made the connection, in Conan Doyle’s letters, to Aspern Hall. Almost despite yourself, you’ve convinced me not only that ‘The Adventure of Aspern Hall’ existed—but that it still exists. I must locate it.”
“For an Irregular like me, a Holmes scholar, that would be the coup of a lifetime. But again I have to ask—why is it so important to you?”
Pendergast hesitated a moment. “I have certain ideas, conjectures, that this story might confirm—or not.”
“Conjectures about what?”
A small smile curled Pendergast’s lip. “You—a Holmes scholar—encouraging an investigator to indulge in vulgar speculation? My dear Kleefisch!”
As this Kleefisch colored.
“While I normally despise those who claim a sixth sense,” Pendergast said, “in this case I
feel
that the lost story is at the center of all mysteries here—past and present.”
“In that case,” Kleefisch finally said, “I’m sorry I’ve come up empty.”
“Fear not,” Pendergast replied. “I haven’t.”
Kleefisch raised his eyebrows.
Pendergast went on. “I proceeded on the assumption that the more I could learn about Conan Doyle’s final years, the closer I’d come to finding the lost story. I focused my efforts on the circle of spiritualists he belonged to in the years before he died. I learned that this group frequently met at a small cottage named Covington Grange, on the edge of Hampstead Heath. The cottage was owned by a spiritualist by the name of Mary Wilkes. Conan Doyle had a small room at Covington Grange where he would sometimes write essays on spirituality, which he would read to the group of an evening.”
“Fascinating,” Kleefisch said.
“Allow me to pose this question: is it not likely that, while writing his late texts on spiritualism at Covington Grange, he also wrote his final Sherlock Holmes story, ‘The Adventure of Aspern Hall’?”
Kleefisch felt a quickening of excitement. It made sense. And this was an avenue that had never, to his knowledge, been explored by a fellow Irregular.
“Given its incendiary nature, isn’t it also possible that the author might not have hidden it somewhere in that little room he used for writing, or somewhere else in the Grange?”
“Might he not indeed!” Kleefisch rose from his chair. “My God. No wonder the manuscript was never found at Windlesham! So what’s next, then?”
“What’s next? I should have thought that obvious. Covington Grange is next.”
T
eacup in hand, Dorothea Pembroke stepped back into her tidy alcove at the Blackpool headquarters of the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty. It was past ten forty-five, and Miss Pembroke was almost as serious about her elevenses as she was about her position, about which she was very serious indeed. A cloth napkin, placed daintily upon the desktop; a cup of Harrisons & Crosfield jasmine tea, one lump; and a wheatmeal biscuit dipped twice—not once, not three times—into the cup before being nibbled.
In many ways, Ms. Pembroke felt, she
was
the National Trust. There were more important jobs than hers in the nonprofit association, of course, but nobody could boast a finer pedigree. Her grandfather, Sir Erskine Pembroke, had been master of Chiddingham Place, one of the more impressive stately homes in Cornwall. But his company had failed, and when the family realized they couldn’t maintain either the taxes or the upkeep of the mansion, they entered into talks with the National Trust. The building’s foundations and general fabric were restored, its gardens expanded, and ultimately Chiddingham Place was opened to visitors, while the family stayed on in modest rooms on the top floor. A few years later, her father had taken a position with the National Trust, as a development manager. As soon as she was out of school, Miss Pembroke had joined the Trust herself, rising over the past thirty-two years to the position of deputy administrator.