Dark Paradise (2 page)

cassette into the tape deck and crank the volume. "You're in
Montana

now."

Sacramento was just a dot on the map behind her. The life she had led

there was in the past. She was officially on hiatus with no plans, no

prospects, no thoughts for the future beyond spending a week or three

with her old friend. A vacation to clear the mind and soothe a bruised

heart. A pause in the flow of life to take stock, reflect, and burn the

pile of business suits that covered the backseat of her Honda.

She buzzed down the car's windows and breathed deep of the sweet, cold

air that rushed in. A wondrous sense of liberation and anticipation

filled her as the wind whipped her hair and Mary-Chapin Carpenter

proclaimed to feel lucky in spite of the odds. Life began anew right

now, this instant. Glancing down, she fished the pack of Salems out from

among the mountain of travel guides on the seat beside her, but she

paused as she started to shake one out. Life began anew. Right now.

Grinning, she chucked the pack out the window, stepped on the gas, and

started singing along in a strong, warm alto voice.

The mountains to the west had turned purple as the sun slid down behind

their massive shoulders. The sky above them was still the color of

flame-vibrant, glowing. To the east, another range rose up in ragged

splendor, snow-capped, the slopes blanketed in the deep green pine

forests. And before her stretched a valley that was vast and verdant.

Off to her right, a small herd of elk grazed peacefully beside a stream.

The sight, the setting, shot another burst of adrenaline and enthusiasm

through her. The trip to euphoria from near depression left her feeling

giddy. She imagined she was shedding her unhappiness like an old skin

and coming to this new place naked and clean.

This was paradise.
Eden. A place for new beginnings.

Night had fallen by the time Marilee finally found her way to Lucy's

place with the aid of the map Lucy had sent in her first letter. Her

"hideout," she'd called it. The huge sky was as black as velvet, dotted

with the sequins of more stars than she had ever imagined. The world

suddenly seemed a vast, empty wilderness, and she pulled into the yard

of the small ranch, questioning for the first time the wisdom of a

surprise arrival. There were no lights glowing a welcome in the windows

of the handsome new log house. The garage doors were closed.

She climbed out of her Honda and stretched, feeling exhausted and

rumpled. The past two weeks had sapped her strength, the decisions she

had made taking chunks of it at a time. The drive up from
Sacramento had

been accomplished in a twenty-four-hour marathon with breaks for nothing

more than the bathroom and truckstop burritos, and now the physical

strain of that weighed her down like an anchor.

It had seemed essential that she get here as quickly as possible, as if

she had been afraid her nerve would give out and she would succumb to

the endless dissatisfaction of her life in
California
if she didn't

escape immediately.

The wild pendulum her emotions had been riding had left her feeling

drained and dizzy. She had counted on falling into Lucy's care the

instant she got out of her car, but Lucy didn't appear to be home, and

disappointment sent the pendulum swinging downward again.

Foolish, really, she told herself, blinking back the threat of tears as

she headed for the front porch. She couldn't have expected Lucy to know

she was coming.

She hadn't been able to bring herself to call ahead. A call would have

meant an explanation of everything that had gone on in the past two

weeks, and that was better made in person.

A calico cat watched her approach from the porch rail, but jumped down

and ran away as she climbed the steps, its claws scratching the wood

floor as it darted around the corner of the porch and disappeared. The

wind swept down off the mountain and howled around the weathered

outbuildings, bringing with it a sense of isolation and a vague feeling

of desertion that Marilee tried to shrug off as she raised a hand and

knocked on the door.

No lights brightened the windows. No voice called out for her to keep

her pants on.

She swallowed at the combination of disappointment and uneasiness that

crowded the back of her throat.

Against her will her eyes did a quick scan of the moonshadowed ranch

yard and the hills beyond. The place was in the middle of nowhere. She

had driven through the small town of New Eden and gone miles into the

wilderness, seeing no more than two other houses on the way - and those

from a great distance.

She knocked again, but didn't wait for an answer before trying the door.

Lucy had mentioned wildlife in her few letters. The four-legged,

flea-scratching kind.

"Bears. I remember something about bears," she muttered, the nerves at

the base of her neck wriggling at the possibility that there were a

dozen watching her from the cover of darkness, sizing her up with their

beady little eyes while their stomachs growled. "If it's all the same to

you, Luce, I'd rather not meet one up close and personal while you're

off doing the boot-scootin' boogie with some cowboy."

Stepping inside, she fumbled along the wall for a light switch, then

blinked against the glare of a dozen small bulbs artfully arranged in a

chandelier of antlers. Her first thought was that Lucy's abysmal

housekeeping talents had deteriorated to a shocking new low. The place

was a disaster area, strewn with books, newspapers, notepaper, clothing.

She drifted away from the door and into the large room that encompassed

most of the first floor of the house, her brain stumbling to make sense

of the contradictory information it was getting. The house was barely a

year old, a blend of western tradition and contemporary architectural

touches. Lucy had hired a decorator to capture those intertwined

feelings in the interior. But the western watercolor prints on the walls

hung at drunken angles. The cushions had been torn from the heavy,

overstuffed chairs. The seat of the red leather sofa had been slit from

end to end. Stuffing rose up from the wound in ragged tufts. Broken

lamps and shattered pottery littered the expensive Berber rug. An

overgrown pothos had been ripped from its planter and shredded, and was

strung across the carpet like strips of tattered green ribbon.

Not even Lucy was this big a slob.

Marilee's pulse picked up the rhythm of fear. "Lucy?" she called, the

tremor in her voice a vocal extension of the goose bumps that were

pebbling her arms. The only answer was an ominous silence that pressed

in on her eardrums until they were pounding.

She stepped over a gutted throw pillow, picked her way around a smashed

terra-cotta urn, and peered into the darkened kitchen area. The

refrigerator door was ajar, the light within glowing like the promise of

gold inside a treasure chest. The smell, however, promised something

less pleasant.

She wrinkled her nose and blinked against the sour fumes as she found

the light switch on the wall and flicked it upward Recessed lighting

beamed down on a repulsive mess of spoiling food and spilled beer. Milk

puddled on the Mexican tile in front of the refrigerator.

The carton lay abandoned on its side. Flies hovered over the garbage

like tiny vultures.

"Jesus, Lucy," she muttered, "what kind of party did you throw here?"

And where the hell are you?

The pine cupboard doors stood open, their contents spewed out of them.

Stoneware and china and flatware lay broken and scattered, appropriately

macabre place settings for the gruesome meal that had been laid out on

the floor.

Marilee backed away slowly, her hand trembling as she reached out to

steady herself with the one ladder-back chair that remained upright at

the long pine harvest table. She caught her full lower lip between her

teeth and stared through the sheen of tears. She had worked too many

criminal cases not to see this for what it was. The house had been

ransacked. The motive could have been robbery, or the destruction could

have been the aftermath of something else, something uglier.

"Lucy?" she called again, her heart sinking like a stone at the sure

knowledge that she wouldn't get an answer.

Her gaze drifted to the stairway that led up to the loft where the

bedrooms were tucked, then cut to the telephone that had been ripped

from the kitchen wall and now hung by slender tendons of wire.

Her heart beat faster. A fine mist of sweat slicked her palms.

"Lucy?

"She's dead."

The words were like a pair of shotgun blasts in the still of the room.

Marilee wheeled around, a scream wedged in her throat right behind her

heart. He stood at the other end of the table, six feet of hewn granite

in faded jeans and a chambray work shirt. How anything that big could

have sneaked up on her was beyond reasoning. Her perceptions distorted

by fear, she thought his shoulders rivaled the mountains for size. He

stood there, staring at her from beneath the low-riding brim of a dusty

black Stetson, his gaze narrow, measuring, his mouth set in a grim,

compressed line. His right hand - big with blunttipped fingers - hung at his

side just inches from a holstered revolver that looked big enough to

bring down a buffalo.

He spoke again, his voice low and rusty, his question jolting her like a

cattle prod. "Who are you?"

"Who am I?" she blurted out. "Who the fuck are you?"

His scowl seemed to tighten at her language, but Marilee couldn't find

it in her to care about decorum at the moment. From the corner of her

eye she caught sight of a foot-long heavy brass candlestick lying on its

side on the table. She inched her fingers down from the back of the

chair and slid them around the cold, hard brass, her gaze locked on the

stranger.

"What have you done with Lucy?"

He tucked his chin back. "Nothing."

"I think you ought to know that I'm not here alone," Marilee said with

all the bravado she could muster. "My husband . . . Bruno . . . is out

looking around the buildings."

"You came alone," he drawled, squinting at her. "Saw you from the

ridge."

He'd seen her. He'd been watching. A man with a gun had been watching

her. Marilee's fingers tightened on the candlestick. His first words

came back to her through the tangle in her brain. She's dead. Terror

gripped her throat like an unseen hand. Lucy. He'd killed Lucy.

With a strangled cry she hurled the candlestick at him and bolted for

the door, tripping over an uprooted ficus.

She heard him grunt and swear as the missile hit. The candlestick

sounded as loud as a cathedral bell as it met the pine floor. The

scramble of boots sounded like a herd of horses stampeding after her.

She kept her focus on the front door, willing it closer, but as in a

nightmare, her arms and legs weighed her down like lead. The air around

her seemed to take on a heaviness that defied speed. She scrambled,

stretched, stumbled, sobs catching in her throat as she gasped for

breath.

He caught her from behind, one hand grabbing hold of her vest and

T-shirt. He hauled her backward, banding his other arm around her waist

and pulling her into the rock wall that was his body.

"Hold still!"

Marilee clawed the beefy forearm that was pushing the air from her

lungs. Wild, animal sounds of distress mewed in her throat, and she

kicked his shins with vicious intent, connecting the heels of her

sneakers with bone two swings out of three.

"Dammit, hold still!" he ordered, tightening his arm against her. "I

didn't kill her. It was an accident."

"Tell it to a lawyer!" she managed to shout, pushing frantically at the

big hand that was pressed up against her diaphragm. She couldn't budge