Earth Colors Read online

  “I’ll say,” I said. “She sold the damned ranch. What are you doing?”

  “Just a little Chinese medicine. Your meridians were blocked. There’s more, but that’s what’s right at the surface. Are you ready now?”

  “Yes,” I said, surprised to hear myself saying so. A great charge of anger seemed to have dissipated.

  Jenny reached up and moved her palm toward my forehead until it rested there.

  I felt an odd shift inside my head as if an argument had just ended. “Thanks,” I said, not at all sure what I was thanking her for.

  “Where was the ranch?”

  “Chugwater, Wyoming. Beautiful little spread up along a creek with short-grass prairie leading up to the foot of the Laramie Range.”

  “Just what the developers love,” she said tiredly. “You might have some odd dreams tonight. That’s normal. Well, tomorrow is another day, not to mention another cause to be championed. Here’s my phone number.” She slipped me a business card. “Give me a call if …”

  “Right. Here’s mine.”

  She got up and left.

  I sat a while longer, not quite sure what to do with myself. The temptation to drink had passed, but I was not yet ready for all the turns on the dark roads between the inn and me.

  A shadowy shape slithered by the table and a hand with short, stubby fingers slid another card onto the table. It spun as it skidded to a stop next to Jenny’s, lining up exactly so that it could be read easily. It read, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATIONS, and below that, AGENT BRUCE WARDLAW.

  I looked up. He was halfway down the aisle toward the door already.

  He gave me one backward look and waved. “See you at the inn,” he said.

  25

  “Chrome yellow occurs in nature as the rare mineral crocoite, a red lead–bearing ore. Vauquelin (1797) reported his discovery of a new metallic substance in the mineral and suggested that the metal be named chrome (Greek for color) owing to its ability to impart color.”

  —Artists’ Pigments, Volume 1

  —from the notebooks of Fred Petridge

  FULL DAYLIGHT PLAYED UPON THE DUST MOTES IN THE KREHBEIL farm kitchen. Deirdre sat at the table, staring at the phone that was mounted on the wall to her right. The cord still swung slightly from the call she had just made to Hector.

  She drummed her insensate fingers on the frayed old tablecloth. Eight-thirty in the morning and Hector was still drunk from the night before, a state that typically made him especially unpleasant. At such times, he typically took his latest screwups and threw them in her face, managing to make a bludgeon out of his failings. The news he had coughed up certainly fit into that category: Two women had accosted him in the bar at Bube’s Brew Pub the evening before and had bought him enough liquor that he had told all sorts of tales about the family. He was sorry, or so he had said. Would she forgive him?

  Not precious likely.

  She stopped drumming. Her thick, numb fingers contracted, pulling the tablecloth with them, slowly toppling the saltcellar and pepper shaker and the plastic gadget that held the thin paper napkins.

  Like a viper striking its prey, she shot out a hand and snatched the receiver off the hook. She dialed. The phone rang once, twice.

  A woman answered. “Hello?” At first, Deirdre thought she must have misdialed. But no, the voice was saying, “Um, this is Tert Krehbeil’s residence.”

  “This is Tert’s sister. To whom am I speaking?” The words were polite, but she barked them out with as little kindness as a Marine Corps sergeant addressing a recruit who could not do push-ups. It was alarming to discover that a woman was visiting him.

  “This is Faye Carter. I’m a friend of Tert’s.”

  “Oh. How lovely,” said Deirdre, her tone indicating the opposite. She heard a baby fussing now. Her pulse quickened with alarm. Was Precious William not only picking up on a woman, but one who already had offspring?

  “I’ll get him for you,” Faye said. “He’s just come out of the … um, here he is.”

  “Hello?” said Tert.

  “Tert, dear brother,” Deirdre began, her voice dripping with rancor. “Darling Hector has gone and spilled some family stories in a bar again. Don’t you think it’s time we did something about this?”

  “You mean time I did something,” Tert observed. “You’re calling me to ask me to pay to dry him out again.”

  “It’s the least you can do!” Deirdre said viciously.

  Tert said nothing for several seconds, then, “Why? Because I am not as impoverished as you? Because you look after Mother? I’ve told you I can put her in a home, but you—”

  “It’s time you came to see her! Today, Tert. She’s not getting any stronger.”

  Tert let out an exasperated sigh. Several more seconds passed. Then he said, “Why not? Hey, I have guests here, and a business to run, but why not just drop everything and run up to Lancaster to see what disaster Deirdre is imagining this time? Sure, put on a can of beans for lunch, darling sister. Or better yet, let me bring a hamper and we’ll have a picnic. We’ll sit around the lawn in those lovely old wicker chairs and pretend we are still so grand.”

  “I’ll expect you by eleven.”

  “Heavens, Deirdre, I wouldn’t think of inconveniencing my guests by pressing them to get ready that quickly.”

  Deirdre bared her teeth at the phone. “You’ll come alone!”

  Tert let out a sardonic laugh. “No, no, no, Deirdre darling, I wouldn’t think of leaving them behind. Mother will be delighted to meet my friend Faye. And Faye has the most adorable little baby, just the right size to sneeze some virus into Mother’s face and give her pneumonia! But I must not hurry my guests. They are not dressed. We have not yet breakfasted,” he said, letting the implications of his statement sink all the way in: A woman has stayed the night at my house, Deirdre; I am a grown man having relations with women, and you know what that will mean to Mother! She’ll think I’m getting married at last, and with a ready-made family! And I’ll sire more children, and they’ll be charming and perfect, not ugly slugs like you made. You’ll no longer be unique, no longer the only one who made grandchildren. You’ll be usurped, you hopeless bitch!

  The hole in Deirdre’s soul where self-worth had never grown erupted with the hot rage of jealousy, that terror that whispers all the thousands of lies, like, You’re not happy because he’s got what you want; and, They don’t love you because they love him instead. It kept on spewing until it got down to her central, most visceral fears: You can be replaced, and, You are not loveable.

  Screaming inchoate hatreds to guard herself from these fears, Deirdre slammed the phone into its cradle.

  26

  I LAY IN THE BIG, COMFY BED AT THE CAMERON ESTATE INN TRYING to decide what in hell’s name to do. I had slept much later than I had intended. It in fact surprised me that I had been able to sleep this long: Generally, when I am this far into a case, sleep is something I am lucky to acquire in three- and four-hour chunks. In fact, I had to force myself awake to escape the scenery that sleep was conjuring.

  I had dreamed I was lost in a jumble of tall houses in a city somewhere, having crossed a bridge from a neighborhood of smaller houses. I was having a long talk with Tom. He was telling me that Faye was okay, and that I should go my own way and have a good life.

  But Tom was dead. Did that mean I was dreaming of my own death? Or had something inside me died?

  And why hadn’t Tom asked me about his tiny daughter? He didn’t seem worried about her. Why?

  I got up off the enormous bed with its opulent furnishings and lurched into the bathroom, where I took a freezing-cold shower to yank myself the rest of the way out of the dream. Agent Wardlaw would no doubt be waiting for me downstairs, and I did not want to face him half-asleep. I dressed and headed off in search of the breakfast that came with the bed.

  The innkeeper greeted me and showed me out onto a long sunporch lined with tables set for breakfast. They were all empty. “Am I the o
nly one staying here?” I asked, looking around for the FBI agent.

  “Our other guests rose early,” he said diplomatically. He pointed out the side table with its big flagons of steaming hot coffee. “I’ll have your breakfast up in a jiffy.”

  My cell phone tweedled at me. I said hello in a flat tone, expecting it to be Wardlaw, but it was Fritz Calder.

  “You okay for takeoff tomorrow morning?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said, not sure of a damned thing. “How’s it going?”

  “Um …”

  “Tough connections with the money guys?”

  “Well, that looks positive,” he said.

  “How about your military-hardware guys?”

  He said nothing.

  “What’s up, Fritz?”

  “Not much, Em. In fact, I was wondering if you guys might be ready to leave today instead of tomorrow.”

  “Uh … sure. Just let me get hold of Faye and we can meet you anytime. Why, are you done already?”

  “Yeah. I’m just sticking around to have lunch with an old buddy, and then I’m good to go.”

  “Something go wrong, Fritz?”

  He was silent for a moment, then said fiercely, “Since you ask, something went entirely right.” His voice was filled with something I hadn’t heard in it before: earnestness, and a tinge of rage.

  I imagined him sitting in a hotel room all by himself, his guts full of something that had wound him up tighter than a watch spring, with no one to tell it to until his buddy met him at noon. “Fritz?”

  “I told them I wouldn’t make the parts they wanted. I’m done with it, all of it!”

  “All what? The military stuff?”

  “The military, war, the whole shot. I’m just done. I’m going home to Utah and I’m going to build myself a life. No more ‘going along to get along’. If my ex-wife doesn’t like it, well then she can divorce me!”

  I fought to suppress laughter. His words were funny, but his meaning was not. Something had happened, some slender thread of reality had snapped, moving Fritz closer to his own center. “This sounds good, Fritz.”

  “Well, it is, and it’s high time. So, if you and Faye are ready early, give me a call, okay ?”

  “Will do. And, Fritz?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How do you know when you’ve got a target you don’t want to bomb?”

  He said, “You have to listen to your heart,” and rang off.

  I looked around the empty room feeling like I had just woken from that dream about Tom all over again. I had a heart, but it felt like a wound that had dried shut around something as hard as a steel bolt.

  I dialed Faye’s number. I got a recording saying that the party was not available at this time. That meant she had her phone switched off.

  I ended the call and settled in to shock my system with a good dose of caffeine while I stared down the lawn toward the little creek that led out of the spring. Ducks took off and landed, going into their lively skids. The water wasn’t steaming this morning, which suggested that the day was already warm. I searched out the sun and did a rough calculation of its angle. It was higher than I had expected, which meant I had slept later than I thought. I finally chanced a look at my watch: It was already a quarter past nine. Where was Wardlaw?

  The scene outside the window was idyllic, a harsh contrast to what was going on in my heart and in my head. Hector was in there stinking of drink, and his phantom sister Cricket was running into a thick fog. The image of his mother falling out of her chair played in slow motion, and her face turned into that of Leila Bradstreet Hansen, the woman who had borne me … .

  I pulled out my cell phone again and called Mr. Hauser, who answered on the fifth ring. “Mr. Hauser, good morning,” I told him. “This is Emily Hansen. I have another question or two for you.”

  “Certainly, my dear.”

  “Tell me, did the Krehbeil family fortune take a nosedive during the environmental cleanup campaign of the late 1970s and early 1980s?”

  “Oh, yes,” he replied. “They held a healthy block of Chromex until 1970, when the old girl died and the board of directors finally formally excused the second William Krehbeil from the corporate presidency. The old girl had run the company until she was well into her nineties, setting her boy up as titular president, but when she died, things rather began to fall apart. It was just a few years later that the environmental cleanup was mandated, and the stock plummeted, and slid even further when the company reorganized to avoid bankruptcy. It’s doing all right now, but I hear that the family sold its block long ago.”

  So, the board had bucked Secundus out of the saddle, and he had to live off of capital instead of income. And there the money started to dry up. The cleanup order certainly would have gotten him talking to his lawyers, and they would have forced him to get his affairs in order.

  I did more mental math. By the 1970s, Deirdre would have been through college, and soon after, so would have Tert, who had enjoyed sufficient cash flow to become part of the wealthy set that Faye had run with. Hector would have been vulnerable, but Grandmummy had left money earmarked for his education. At least she knew how to divide up a pie, I decided. The last successful personality in the clan.

  “That’s very helpful,” I said. “May I call you again if I have more questions?”

  “Certainly, my dear. And keep me posted about those heavy metals you’re studying. It’s a means of demise,” Mr. Hauser said cheerily. Then he signed off.

  I sat a while holding the phone, trying to decide what detail to pick at next.

  The innkeeper appeared just then and delivered my breakfast: “Ramekin of baked oatmeal with brown sugar and top milk,” he informed me. “And here are some seasonal fruits, and your muffin. Can I get you anything else? Some juice?”

  “O.J.,” I said uncouthly. I had never seen oatmeal served up as a gourmet treat before. “And can you answer a question?”

  “Surely,” he said.

  “Has a man with … a paunch … and maybe conservative business clothes … but cheap cut and fabric … been asking for me this morning?”

  “I haven’t seen a man of that description,” he said. “Can I get you anything else?”

  “No, that will be all.”

  I took a bite of the oatmeal. It was incredibly sweet, clearly from the same cuisine that had produced the incomparable Whoopie Pie. On an empty stomach, the sugar kicked like a mule, but it was delicious, all toasty and warm. I began to think I could get used to spending Tert’s money.

  Tert’s money. I pulled the cell phone back out of my pocket and punched in a number I had not dialed in a very long time, but which I remembered by heart.

  My cop ex-boyfriend answered on the second ring. “Raymond here,” he said drowsily.

  I remembered too late that it was two hours earlier in Salt Lake City. “Oh, I’m sorry, is it your day off?”

  “Em?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I was on night shift. Just drifting off.”

  “Sorry. I’ll let you go back to sleep.”

  “No, it’s okay. Is there something—”

  “I’m calling from … the East Coast. That’s why I forgot. But I’m working on a case, and … well, I was wondering if you could give me some advice.”

  Ray’s voice immediately sounded much clearer. “Sure. Fire away.” He sounded pleased, in fact. Had I just restarted something I did not know how to finish?

  “Well, the client is this guy who sells art. My task is really, in fact, quite limited, but I’m out here looking at the … well, the family because, um, Faye’s involved, and it looks like there’s a lot more to this.”

  “And …”

  “The federales are down my collar about him,” I said. I had not intended to tell him this, but now that I had, I felt a huge relief.

  “Federales? You mean the FBI?”

  “Yeah. Some guy named Wardlaw. One of the ones who gives the other ones a bad name.”

  “I
don’t know him.”

  “Of course you don’t. He’s out of Washington. Dang it, Ray, I didn’t sign up for this. I was just supposed to authenticate a piece of art. The idea was to use the geology of the pigments in a painting to figure out … Now I’m finding that the family has … Well, I wonder if someone’s been feeding them to Grandma.”

  “The what?”

  “The pigments. A lot of the older ones are highly toxic. Most of them have been replaced with synthetics during the last century, but the family made its money longer ago than that, manufacturing paint pigments, and then in the chemical industry that grew up around it, and my client is an artist so he knows these things, and now Granny looks like she has heavy-metal poisoning. So, I’m thinking my client might—”

  “Have you told this to the local sheriff? Or the police?” Ray asked.

  “No. I was really wanting your advice.”

  The innkeeper came and cleared my dishes. I thanked him and waited for him to get out of earshot. “Hi,” I told Ray. “I’m back. What I’m wondering is, is there a way to check out this guy’s financials without—”

  “No,” Ray said firmly. “That’s a job for people who can get warrants. Tell the feds.”

  I let out an exasperated sigh. “Wardlaw is a real asshole.”

  Ray paused. Then, matter-of-factly, he said, “Sounds like a standard Em job.”

  “Thanks for nothing,” I said.

  “I don’t mean that unkindly,” he said. “Em, you’re a very smart human being. You have a way of getting right to the nub of things. So all I was suggesting is that you’re probably right.”

  “Any other tips?” I asked resignedly.

  “Not a one. I’d suggest you quit, but I won’t waste my breath.”

  I said good-bye and broke the connection and went back to finishing my coffee, wondering why I even cared about the Krehbeil puzzle anymore. Faye was finding Tert a bore. If I could reach her on the phone, I’d have her and the baby out of his house in a matter of hours, and I could fly home to Utah and analyze the paint chips and send my final bill to Tert and wash my hands of the whole mess.