The Zen Man (4 page)

A
t nine-thirty, Laura walked into the kitchen carrying her near-empty martini glass to check on Rick. After hearing about his run-in with Wicked, she’d dropped by, saw he and Sam sitting at the table laughing, so she’d returned to her hostess duties in the dining hall. They hadn’t appeared to be so fond of each other earlier, so it’d been a relief to see them getting along.

She noticed his Denver Nuggets jacket was missing from its peg next to the kitchen door. Maybe he’d taken a stroll to get away from the music and partying, although normally he’d take Mavis with him. Or maybe he’d stepped outside with one of the CrimDefs who smoked as it wasn’t allowed inside the lodge or guest rooms, and the two of them were discussing a potential case for Levine Investigations. She hoped the latter. Although she liked his help around the lodge, it wasn’t his thing. He needed to dig into cases, problem-solve them.

She drained the last of her martini, popped its olive into her mouth, savoring the chewy mix of salt and sour infused with vodka. Heaven. She looked over at the Rottie curled up in Rick’s favorite chair.

“Mavis, honey?”

The dog flickered opened her eyes.

“Can’t live in that chair. Dogs must go outside occasionally.”

The hammering piano rift of “Crocodile Rock” started up in the other room. Laura groaned. She’d never liked Elton John’s bubble-gummy music—all the more reason to take a break now.

“Mavis, girlfriend, I’m talking to you.” Laura set her martini glass on the table. “Get up.
Now
.”

She headed to the door, retrieved her fleece jacket from its peg. Behind her, doggie paws clickety-clacked across the linoleum.

Laura opened the door. “After you, Princess.”

Mavis stared at the darkness outside, tilted her head to one side as though seeing it better from that angle.

“It’s called nature, Mavis.” She gave the dog an encouraging pat on her ample behind. “You need more exercise, girlfriend. Plus I want you to do your doggy duty ‘cause when I hit the sack tonight, I want to sleep, not be waking up at all hours to play outdoor escort.”

Although Rick typically did the escorting, not Laura. Being a city girl at heart, Laura was still growing accustomed to living in the smack of nature. Not that she wasn’t game to taking hikes or digging in dirt or soaking in a hot spring pool, but given her druthers, she’d rather be at a computer or testing a new recipe any day. Logic and instructions were far more comforting than the unpredictability of stumbling into an old, abandoned mine or coming darn near face to face with a coyote, both of which she’d experienced in the six weeks since she and Rick had moved here.

With an indignant snuffle, Mavis finally left the warmth of the kitchen and ventured into the cool night. Zippering her jacket, Laura followed, the door closing with a sucking sound.

It was one of those still, cloudless winter nights. The moon so big and bright, it dimmed the light from the stars. Mavis trotted ahead a few feet, then stopped abruptly, her body tense. She raised her head and sniffed the air.

“What is it, girl?”

With a chuffing sound, Mavis charged into the night.

Laura stared into the darkness where the dog had bounded, trying to ignore the clenching in her stomach. Rick had told her repeatedly that mountain lions and bears rarely, if ever, showed up in this area, especially near the lights of the lodge, but she still got jumpy out here in the dark. Something moved in her peripheral vision and she jerked her gaze to her right. One of the resident bunnies flashed a white tail as it hopped into the sanctuary of a shrub.

Blowing out a puff of breath, she continued walking. The rocks under her feet crunched as she moved along the path, lighted by strands of tiny white lights that wound up the hill toward the guest cabins and hot spring pools. To the east, she could almost make out the red sandstone hogback mountains—spiky rocks like the bumpy spine of a razorback hog—that separated Morrison from its metropolitan neighbor Denver. A popular spot for cyclists and tourists, millions of years ago that ridge—now called Dinosaur Ridge—had been a beach on a vast inland sea where dinosaurs migrated and left their footprints in the sand.

She never thought she’d know the difference between an Iguanodon and a Stegosaurus, but now she enjoyed learning about the prehistoric history of the area. With the thousands of dinosaur enthusiasts, students, and nature aficionados who visited Dinosaur Ridge each year, it’d help her business to be able to dino-chat.

Crocodile Rock finally ended. “Good riddance,” she muttered, wishing Elton John’s music would go the way of the dinosaur. At the rate these people were partying, it’d be the wee hours before they staggered off to their rooms. Fortunately, staff would be here at six
A.M.
to help clean up the dining hall and transform it into a breakfast-buffet and workshop room. She and Rick had tomorrow night off as Rocky Mountain Mobile Caterers were handling all dinner preparations and cleanup.

Off to her left, something crashed through the bushes.

She halted, stared at the dark bulk of land and trees. Now that definitely hadn’t been caused by a bunny.

“Mavis?” Her voice came out like a scratchy whisper. She sucked in a breath, called louder. “Mavis! Get back here,
now
!”

A series of short, energetic barks was followed by the thumpity thumpity of paws hitting earth. In a rush of movement, Mavis, panting, her tongue hanging out the side of her mouth, emerged.

Laura grabbed her collar, fumbled, caught it again. She tugged the dog close, rubbed it behind its ears. In the dim light, she could see Mavis’s big doggy smile, which made her feel silly about her fears.

“Run into a pal out there?” The neighbors had two golden labs, Vice and Versa, who roamed the area at all hours. “C’mon, let’s go back inside.”

She straightened and turned. Stopped. The fuzzy yellow light from one of outdoor lanterns illuminated a form in a pool twenty or so feet away. Probably a partying lawyer who’d wandered outside for a soak. Laura’s jaw tightened. She’d told Rick that their posted signs warning guests to not soak alone after dark weren’t enough, and sure enough she was right. The last thing they needed was a lawsuit from somebody, especially a lawyer, slipping or worse. They needed to erect fences around the pools, keep them locked after nightfall.

She took a few steps, pausing to listen to the bubbling water in the pool. Otherwise, it was so quiet…too quiet…

Marvis whined.

“Shh, girl…”

The person’s head was resting on one of the flat rocks that lined the pool. So still, no movement. Laura was going to feel like a fool bothering the guest if they were simply trying to enjoy a quiet moment…

But they didn’t move.

So still.

Maybe they’d fallen asleep…or had passed out.

Needed to roust them, get them out of the water. Stepping off the rock path, she crossed a patch of ground. Closer, the yellow lantern light was brighter, revealing the pale mounds of a woman’s breasts breaking the water’s bubbling surface. The face was turned away from her, the hair spilling over a rock.

“Ma’am?” asked Laura, “are you all right?”

A breeze shuddered past, carrying the scent of sage, and something else. Wine. Too much to drink. Just as she’d thought. Passed out.

Mavis paced the edge of the pool as Laura kneeled next to the woman.

“Ma’am, wake up. I need to get you out of this pool.”

Damn. Wished she’d remembered her cell phone so she could call Rick, get him here to help. It wasn’t going to be easy lifting a drunk out of the water. She touched the woman’s face. Strands of wet hair clung to her fingers as she gently grasped the woman’s head and turned it.

Laura gasped.

Deborah’s dark, unblinking eyes stared at her.

“The murderer is right in this room. Sitting at this table. You may serve the fish.”
—Nick Charles

“D
eath brings out the voyeurs,” I muttered.

“As though none of them haven’t seen it before,” added Sam, his voice wooden, distant. He shivered, mindlessly buttoned his suit jacket.

It was ten-thirty at night, but the high-pressure sodium lamps made it look like high noon around the pool where Wicked’s body lay. The well-meaning Jefferson County coroner types had erected monstrous blue plastic sheets to afford her some dignity from scrutiny, but there were gaps between the sheets. Like chinks in the law, the CrimDefs had found them. They stood in clusters talking and smoking, their vantage points providing surreptitious peeks at her naked, waxy body, her eyes forever staring at the night sky.

“Assholes,” Sam mumbled, crinkling a plastic package. He held it toward me. “Gum?”

I helped myself.

“Christ, she’ll be half-boiled by the time they get her to the coroner’s.” Sam set the gum into his mouth as though it were a communion wafer.

Al Benning, the Jefferson County Sheriff, had arrived twenty minutes before William Lashley, the new coroner for Jefferson County, and none of us, especially Benning, had been happy with his tardiness. While waiting, Benning had ordered his deputies into action, stringing the yellow crime tape, taking video, scouring the area for footprints. They’d also found the possible murder weapon, a knife, in some bushes near the pool. Later, the medical examiner would determine if that type of weapon had caused the wound to her heart.

Now some deputy coroners, their hands in latex gloves, were lifting Wicked’s fat, limp body from the water. That brassy blond hair that she loved to curl and tease stuck in wet clumps around her face. She had a startled look, probably the one she’d had the moment she’d faced her murderer.

I felt bile rising in my throat. I spit out the gum.

Sam laid a hand on my arm. “Want to go inside?”

“No.” In the surreal lighting, Sam’s stricken face looked as though the blood had been drained from it. “You?”

“No.”

“I mean, she’s my ex. But the two of you…”

He waved off my comment, looked around. “Where’s Laura?”

“Damage control.” She’d been circulating among the CrimDefs, asking if they wanted coffee, making arrangements for refunds, avoiding questions about what she’d seen when she stumbled upon Wicked’s body. The latter I’d warned her about, although she had enough common sense to know better.

The deputy coroners finally hoisted Wicked’s body onto a gurney. After covering her with a blanket, they began transporting her over the uneven ground, the gurney rattling and clattering its way past the voyeurs. The blanket didn’t quite cover her feet, and I noticed her toes had been painted a bright crimson, like her nails. Struck me how both were the same color as the stab wound in her chest.

Sam crossed himself.

I murmured a few words of El Maleh.

Loud, staccato bursts suddenly split the air. One of the deputy sheriffs standing guard at the crime tape dove for cover, another reached for his gun. When a heavy bass rift kicked in, I recognized the opening for the old Knack tune “My Sharona.”

Nervous laughter rippled through the crowd as others recognized the vintage rock song, except for the deputy sheriffs who looked uniformly pissed. Didn’t blame them. For all they knew that opening drum solo could’ve been the crazed killer shooting at the group, although they probably wouldn’t have minded a few more lawyers passing into the ever-after.

“Christ.” Sam looked down the hill at the dining hall. “What asshole pulled that stunt?”

“Some drunk CrimDef who couldn’t handle this scene.”

Muttering something about nobody respecting the fucking dead, he took a step as though ready to head down there and bust some heads when Iris-Irene bustled past, her skinny arms pumping furiously like wind turbines feeding energy to her strident walk.

“I’ll take care of this,” she barked, and I believed her.

Ma-ma-ma-my Sharona.

“What’s her name?” I asked, watching the gray frizz on her head bouncing fiercely as she strode away.

“Iris DaCosta. Up for a judgeship.”

Despite those leather pumps, Her Almost-Honor made it in record time over the bumpy, rocky ground to the front door. Within moments after disappearing inside, The Knack’s driving bassline abruptly stopped.

I thought about the last time I’d seen Iris this evening, when she’d escorted the sobbing, much-maligned Wicked out of the kitchen. That had to be around eight-forty or so. Where had they gone after that?

Now that The Knack had been stilled, the night air began filling again with the buzz of voices, Benning’s snarled commands, and the distant hush of traffic along highway 285. I caught the scents of juniper and pine, a sad reminder of the natural simplicity this locale was supposed to be about.

Farther up the pebbled path, next to one of the other pools, I noticed a buffed Hispanic dude in a Jefferson County deputy uniform talking to Laura. She stood erect, her hands clutched together. Nervous, but professional.

“They’re interviewing Laura.”

Sam followed my line of vision. “She all right?”

“Yeah.” She was nodding affirmatively to something the deputy had said. I felt a stab of guilt about what this was doing to her, might do to the lodge. The inevitable press could attract the ghoulish variety of customers, but more likely it’d scare people away. She shouldn’t have sunk everything she had into this place, but the price had been slashed for a quick sale, she’d been losing her mind being jobless for the first time in years, and running a business that required both her people and management skills had seemed a perfect fit.

A couple of CrimDefs walked by, paused.

“Rick, how you doin’, man?”

“Fine.”

“Still a Nuggets fan, eh?”

I looked down at my jacket, back up. “Gotta love a team that’s working its way back from the gutter.”

In the following awkward pause, Sam bit back a smile.

“Well,” my questioner continued, “you’re lookin’ good.”

“Helps to not be drinking and doing drugs.”