Dark Paradise (9 page)

hitching. "I - I have to go now."

The sympathy in his eyes nearly undid her. "Sorry about your friend, Miz

Jennings."

The images from the Polaroids burned into the backs of her eyes. Bile

rose up in a tide. She managed to nod.

"I - I have to go."

"Stop by and see Miller Daggrepont," he called as she hurried toward the

door.

The name went in one ear and out the other. The only stop she had on her

mind at the moment was the ladies' room down the hall. Saliva pooled in

her mouth. Lucy.

Oh, Christ, Lucy. But she pulled up at the squad room door, the one

question she had forgotten to ask stopping her short. Bracing one hand

on the jamb to keep herself upright, she looked back at Quinn.

"Who found her body?"

"That'd be Del," he said with a nod. "Del Rafferty."

The Mystic Moose had been the finest saloon, hotel, and house of ill

repute for miles around during the days of the cattle barons. Of course,

it wasn't called the Mystic Moose in those days, but the Golden

Eagle - both for the majestic birds that hunted in the mountains around

New Eden and for the gilded replica sent to the first proprietor of the

hotel by Jay Gould in honor of the grand opening.

Madam Belle Beauchamp had built the place with the considerable fortune

she had accrued on her back beneath the richest of the robber barons and

cattlemen, and on her knees peering through keyholes while those same

gentlemen wheeled and dealed both above the tables and under them. Madam

Belle had known all the great men of the day and had made a killing in

the stock market.

Even though she had traveled extensively, she had called New Eden home

until her death because she loved the land, the mountains, and the

hearty, hardworking, Godfearing, mostly honest people who had taken root

there.

No expense had been spared in the building of the hotel. Every room had

been gaudy and grand. The chandeliers that hung in the main salon had

been shipped west from New York City by train. The twenty-foot

giltframed mirror behind the bar had reportedly come from a castle in

Europe, courtesy of an adoring duke. Montana had never seen anything

more extravagant than Madam Belle's Board and Brothel, as it had been

called by some.

Sadly, Madam Belle's Popularity faded with her beauty, and her fortune

trickled away into bad investments and worse lovers. As spectacular as

the Golden Eagle was, New Eden was too far off the beaten path for any

but the most curious to visit. The hotel fell into disrepair. Madam

Belle fell to her death from the second floor balcony, a victim of dry

rot in the balustrade. And so ended the flight of the Golden Eagle.

Marilee stood on the veranda of the renovated hotel, reading the story

that was beautifully hand-lettered on yellowed parchment and displayed

tastefully in a glass case on the wall beside the carved front doors.

The details didn't even make a dent on her brain. She wasn't even sure

how she had come to be standing at the doors to the Mystic Moose.

After leaving the sheriff's office, she had just started walking,

needing to clear those awful scenes from her memory - Lucy's body from a

distance, Lucy's body up close, entry wound, exit wound. Her head

pounded from the effort to eradicate those horrific images of blood,

death, decay. She had walked the west side of Main Street clear out to

the Paradise Motel, then crossed and walked back down the east side,

oblivious of the sights and sounds and people around her.

The contradictions of the town penetrated in only the most abstract of

ways - the pickups that looked as though they had been gone after with

tire irons and the luxury cars that cost more than most people's houses;

the boarded-up, bankrupt stores and the windows displaying extravagant

silver jewelry and custom-made sharkskin cowboy boots; the ruddy-faced

cowboys and ranchers in town on errands and the faces of people who had

graced the covers of People magazine. All of it seemed more dreamlike

than real. In keeping with the theme of the day.

She walked for hours, heedless of her surroundings, unaware of the

curious and pensive looks she got from the locals; preoccupied by

thoughts of death, fate, justice, injustice, coincidence, Raffertys.

Fragments of thought hurtled through her mind like shrapnel, sharp-edged

and painful. There were too many bits and pieces. She couldn't seem to

grasp any one of them long enough to make sense of it. Caffeine and

grief and exhaustion pulled at her sanity and shook her nerves like so

many ragged threads, until she wanted to grab her hair with both hands

and just hang on, screaming.

She needed to sit down somewhere quiet and dark, have a drink to dull

hypersensitive senses, smoke a cigarette to give herself something

ordinary to focus on.

The double doors of the Moose swung open, and a tall, handsome woman in

a long denim jumper and expensive-looking suede boots strode out, her

jaw set at a challenging angle, her eyes homing in on Marilee from

behind a pair of large glasses with blue and violet frames.

Her face was a long oval with strong features and a slim, unpainted

mouth. A dense, wild mane of red-gold hair bounced around her shoulders.

Marilee started to step out of her way, murmuring an apology, but the

woman took hold of her shoulders with both beringed hands and looked her

square in the face.

"Dear girl," she said dramatically, her expression dead serious. "You

have a very fractured aura."

Marilee's jaw fell open, but no words came out. A jumble of quartz

crystals on sterling chains hung around the woman's neck. Opals the size

and shape of sparrow eggs dangled from her elegant earlobes. "I - I'm

sorry . . . I guess," she mumbled, feeling more and more like Alice on

the other side of the looking-glass.

The woman stepped back, tipped her head, and laid a long hand against

her forehead. " 'Weep not for me, nor all the pieces of my shattered

heart,'" she said loudly, her voice suddenly dripping the honey of the Deep

South. "'I shall gather them to me and go on, valiant and undaunted.'"

he straightened and heaved a cleansing sigh, her features settling

back into the same fierce, businesslike expression she had worn a moment

before. "From Lila Rose by Baxter Brady. It closed after three weeks in

the St. James, though through no fault of mine. I assure you, I was

brilliant.."

Marilee just blinked.

The woman pulled a small highly polished black stone from the pocket of

her jumper and pressed it gently into Marilee's palm, curling her

fingers up to hold it in place.

"There. That will help."

Without another word she strode away, boots clumping on the wooden steps

as she left the veranda for the building. Marilee stared blinking on the

south side of the veranda after her, forcing a couple in Rodeo western

wear around her on their way into the hotel. As the two step doors swung

shut behind them, a puff of air brought out the aromas of fresh bread

and simmering herbs. Marilee's nose locked on like a bloodhound's. Food.

Food always made sense. Rousing herself, she went in search of it.

The Mystic Moose bar was magnificent. Instead of receating the fussy

opulence of Madam Belle's Golden Eagle, the new owners had opted for

rustic chic. Rough white stucco walls and heavy, carved mahogany woods

antler chandelier hung
 
work. Massive versions of Lucy on the high

ceiling. The trim, the thick exposed beams back wall was dominated by a

series of tall multipaned windows and French doors that led onto a

broad terrace
 
and gave a magnificent view of the mountains that rose to

the east. The centerpiece of the south wall was a huge fieldstone

fireplace, over which hung an enormous mounted moose head. The moose

looked straight across to a beautiful bar that gleamed in the soft

afternoon light with the rich patina of age and loving care. Behind it,

Madam Belle's gilt-framed mirror still hung; twenty feet of homage to an

illicit affair of a bygone era.

There was a fair number of customers for the middle of the afternoon. A

few cast curious looks in Marilee's direction as she made her way to a

table and settled into a large, comfortable captain's chair. She put her

rock on the table and stared at it vacantly.

"If you don't mind my saying, luv, you look positively all done in."

The cultured British tones brought her head up and added another layer

of confusion to the fog shrouded brain. "Excuse me?"

"I say, you look all done in," he said, a gentle smile curving his

mouth. He looked fortyish and attractive with wavy auburn hair, a bold

nose, and a kind shine in his eyes. An afternoon beard shadowed his lean

cheeks, but took nothing away from the overall impression of style and

quality he projected in a loose-fitting ivory silk shirt and

coffee-brown trousers. He leaned across the table and placed a cocktail

napkin beside her stone. "Is something the matter?"

"Well, for starters, I have a fractured aura."

"Ah, you've met M.E." At her blank look he expanded. "M.E. Fralick,

maven of the Broadway stage and patron of all things New Age." The

name rang a dim bell, but it didn't cut through the pounding in her

temples.

"How about a cappuccino?" he suggested.

"I was thinking more along the lines of a G and Twist a capital G - and a

large plate of anything edible."

"A woman after my own heart. By the way, my name is Andrew Van Dellen.

Aside from playing waiter on occasion, I'm one of the lucky owners of

the Mystic Moose."

"Marilee Jennings," she said, trying to offer a smile.

He straightened a bit and stared at her for a moment, brows knit.

Humming a note, he tapped a forefinger against his pursed lips.

"Marilee. Marilee Jennings?" The light bulb went on. "Oh, my God, you're

Lucy's friend!"

Across the room, at the bar, Samantha Rafferty scooped up her serving

tray, sloshing imported beer and Pellegrino. The bartender shot her a

look, and tears instantly burned at the backs of her eyes. Not that she

really gave a damn about the drinks. She had bigger things on her mind.

This was just a job she was screwing up. How important was that, when

her whole life was one big, balled-up mess?

If only she'd had the sense to go straight home last night. But no.

Glutton for punishment that she was, she just had to take a few turns

past the Hell and Gone, cruising the street in her ancient rusted-out

Camero until Will stumbled out the door of the saloon with his arm

around a buxom blonde.

The tears pressed harder, glazing across her vision. She clenched her

jaw and held her breath as she set the drinks on the long table,

heedless as to who had ordered what.

What did any of them have to complain about?
 
They were rich, they were

movie stars, they didn't have to drive around in a fifteen-year-old car

in the middle of the night, looking for a cheating husband.

Damn you, Will.

Damn me for loving you.

Her vision blurred to a jumble of watery colors. As she bent to set down

the last of the drinks, she misjudged the distance to the table and let

go of a tall mug of beer too soon. The glass hit the table with a thunk

and beer spewed out of it like water from a floodgate, drenching the

tabletop. Several women at the table gasped. The man whose drink it was

bolted backward, shooting up out of his chair as the beer ran off the

edge of the table.

Samantha gaped in horror at the mess that seemed so symbolic of her

whole life, and burst into tears.

"No, no, sweetheart, don't cry!" Evan Bryce laid a fatherly hand on

Samantha's shoulder. "It was an accident. No harm done."

Mortified, Samantha mumbled behind the hands she had pressed over her