The Thunder Keeper (8 page)

T
he Equitable Building spread over a quarter block at the corner of Seventeenth and Stout streets, massive stone towers with marble-paved floors and 1890s Tiffany stained-glass windows. Vicky found Baider Industries on the directory and rode the bronze-trimmed elevator up several floors.

She'd called this morning to make an appointment with Nathan Baider. The founder of Baider Industries may have turned the company over to his son, but the old man was still calling the shots, Wes had said. If anyone knew why Vince Lewis had wanted to see her, she suspected it would be Nathan Baider.

“Mr. Baider's schedule is full today.” A woman's voice on the phone.

“Tell Mr. Baider I witnessed Vince Lewis's murder,” she'd said.

“Murder!” A gasp burst over the line. “Mr. Lewis was in an unfortunate—”

She'd cut in: “Tell Mr. Baider what I said.”

After a long pause the woman's voice had returned. “He'll see you right away.”

Vicky emerged into another marble-paved vestibule and let herself through the glass doors across from the
elevator. Instantly she was enveloped in the hushed silence of dark blue walls, clusters of chairs, and polished tables. Large photographs lined the walls on either side of a window that framed a view of the parking garage across the street.

“May I help you?” An attractive woman somewhere between thirty and fifty, with stylishly cut blond hair that brushed the collar of her red suit jacket, rose from behind the mahogany desk.

Vicky handed her a business card, which the woman studied for a couple of seconds, snapping the card between her red-tipped fingers. Finally she set the card down and said, “Wait here,” letting herself through the door on the right.

Vicky strolled over to an arrangement of photographs behind the desk, western landscapes with white-peaked mountains and sunshine streaking the endless plains. Above the landscapes, the clear blue sky.

On each photo, small white arrows pointed to barely perceptible disruptions in the earth. She leaned closer, studying the areas beneath the arrows: gouges, clumps of buildings, roads flung through the wilderness, trucks, and bulldozers. She realized the photos had been shot from a great distance—from airplanes, maybe even satellites.

Beneath each photo was an engraved gold plate:
CRIPPLE CREEK MINE
,
CANADA
;
JENNISON MINE
,
CANADA
; and three mines in Wyoming—
LEMLE
,
BRIDGER
,
KIMBERLY
.

She crossed to the opposite wall. Here the landscape photos were replaced by photos of various-sized diamonds shimmering in the camera's flash. On the bottom frames were the identifying gold plates:
THREE
-
CARAT YELLOW DIAMOND
,
KIMBERLY MINE
, 1992.
NINE
-
CARAT WHITE DIAMOND
,
BRIDGER MINE
, 1993.
SIX
-
CARAT BLUE DIAMOND
,
LEMLE MINE
, 1996.

She strolled over to the glass-topped display case beneath the window. Flung out like grains of sand on a black velvet bed were dozens of diamonds. White, yellow, blue. Some as tiny as pinpricks, others as large as pebbles, all reflecting back the light and the colors in the room.

“They're synthetic.”

Vicky swung around and faced the woman in the red suit.

“Synthetic?” She glanced again at the fiery stones. Was nothing what it seemed? Was everything a symbol of another reality?

The woman began explaining. The company could hardly keep millions of dollars in diamonds in the building. She gave a sharp laugh. What would the insurance company say? The stones were excellent cubic zirconia that could even fool a jeweler.

“The real diamonds are here.” She gestured toward the photos behind her. “Baider Industries has an international reputation for the quality of the diamonds we produce. Notice all the gems have the four
C
s required of excellent diamonds—color, cut, clarity, and estimable carat size. We've produced the largest finished diamond found in North America: fifteen-point-six carats.” Slowly she took her eyes away. “Mr. Baider will see you now.”

Vicky followed the woman down a corridor as wide as a small room. From beyond the closed doors came the muffled sounds of voices, a sharp burst of laughter.

“Mr. Baider has an important meeting in ten minutes.” The woman paused at the last door. “Please be brief.”

She ushered Vicky into a rectangular-shaped office that resembled the reception area with similar chairs and polished tables arranged around green plush carpeting, similar photos of landscapes and diamonds on the walls.

Nathan Baider sat behind a perfectly cleared desk,
hands folded on the shining surface. He looked more fit than she remembered, but she'd only spoken with him briefly at the emergency room. His cheeks and hands were sunburned and freckled, his gray hair tousled, as if he'd just come indoors. He wore a blue shirt and a dark tie somewhat askew, knotted in a hurry, she thought.

“Sit down,” he said in a gravelly voice accustomed to obedience. The pale blue eyes didn't leave her as she crossed the office. She took the chair nearest to the desk. A few feet away, leaning against the wall, was a red-and-gold golf bag with the putter jammed halfway down. A minute earlier, she guessed, Nathan Baider had been putting a golf ball over the green carpet.

“Thank you for seeing me,” she began.

He cut her off: “What's this about Vince being murdered?”

Vicky said, “I saw it happen. The black Camry deliberately ran him down.”

Baider drew in a long breath that expanded the fronts of the blue shirt. “About thirty other people saw it happen, Detective Clark says, and nobody else calls it murder.” He allowed the word to settle between them, his eyes steady on hers. “It was an accident, Ms. Holden. Some drunk weaving down the street, couldn't tell the curb from a white line. Hit-and-run, that's what it was.”

“I was on my way to meet Mr. Lewis when he was killed,” Vicky hurried on. There was little time. She half expected the secretary to appear and announce the meeting was over.

“Yes, yes.” The man waved one hand over the desk. “So you informed me after the accident. If Vince made an appointment with you, it must have been personal business.” He shrugged. “In any case, it no longer matters.”

“It was a matter of life and death,” Vicky said. “
Someone killed him to keep him from talking to me.”

Baider was quiet a long moment. He seemed to be staring at some image behind his eyes. “A very large assumption. What's your evidence, Ms. Holden?”

“Lewis's own words.” She was thinking how she would demolish a witness on the stand for offering such evidence.
How can you be certain of what Mr. Lewis meant?
She hurried on: “Lewis's job was to locate new diamond deposits, am I correct?” Slowly now, feeling her way, groping to express the idea that had been nagging at her since she'd learned that Vince Lewis was dead. “Is it possible he located a diamond deposit on the Wind River Reservation?” It sounded preposterous, even as she spoke.

Baider shook his head. “You're correct about Lewis's job. We're always looking for kimberlite pipes that may be diamondiferous. Maybe you know the world market can no longer depend upon diamonds mined in Africa. Deposits in places like Angola, Congo, and Sierra Leone have been taken over by rebels. They've been flooding the world market with so-called conflict diamonds to finance their bloody wars. Damn conflict diamonds amounted to seven hundred million dollars a year until the industry got a certification program. Now diamonds traded on the world market gotta have certificates proving they didn't come from rebel-held mines. Not as easy as it sounds.”

He shook his head and held up one hand, like a teacher about to make his point. “Much easier to certify diamonds mined in the United States. When we find a pipe, we file a claim. We have dozens of claims on the southern Wyoming border. The area is rich in diamond deposits. None in central Wyoming, I can assure you.”

Slowly the man levered himself out of his chair. “I'm sure Lewis's accident was a great shock to you, Ms.
Holden. I understand the urgency of your desire to find an explanation, but take some advice from a man who's knocked around a bit. Accidents happen. Sometimes nobody's to blame. Let it go, and put your mind to rest.”

The door swung open and the woman in the red suit leaned into the office. “Your meeting, Mr. Baider,” she said.

Vicky stood up, reached across the desk, and shook the man's hand. “Thank you for your time,” she said. A waste of her own time, she was thinking. If what Baider said was true, there were no claims filed on the res, no records of any deposits. She was chasing phantoms. And yet, Vince Lewis had died trying to tell her something that affected her people.

She walked back through the office, the secretary's footsteps knocking behind her, and rode the elevator down. As the bronze doors parted, she spotted a younger version of Nathan Baider crossing the lobby—same height and build, same ruddy cheeks, tousled black hair that would be gray in a few years. Roz Baider, she guessed. The man was in a deep conversation with the stocky man beside him.

Suddenly Baider turned toward her. There was a flash of recognition in the man's eyes, and she wondered if Nathan had told him about her. For half a second she thought he might approach her. Instead, he resumed the conversation with the other man. They swung past a planter and walked hurriedly to the entrance, wing tips tapping out a staccato rhythm on the marble.

It struck her that neither Nathan Baider nor his son wanted her to know why Vince Lewis had called, but she had her own theory, and that theory was beginning to take on a strength beyond its likelihood. For a brief moment she allowed herself to wish that John O'Malley were here.
They could sit down together; she could test her theory against his logic. She considered calling him, then dismissed the idea. Not talking to him had made it seem easier to be so far away.

She dug through her black bag for her cell phone, dialed Laola, and asked her to check with the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality for any authorizations given to Baider Industries to explore a diamond deposit in central Wyoming. Then she told the secretary to call Adam Elkman, the natural resources director on the reservation, and set up a phone interview as soon as possible. She would ask him if the company had requested permission to explore anywhere on the reservation. There was every possibility that Nathan Baider was lying. The company had
some
interest in the area. Otherwise, why had Vince Lewis tried to talk to her?

She stepped out onto Stout Street, dialing Steve Clark's number as she went. It surprised her when the detective picked up; she'd expected an answering service.

“I have to talk to you,” she said, weaving through the business suits walking along the sidewalk.

“How about lunch?” There was an eagerness in the detective's voice that gave her a stab of discomfort. “One o'clock?” He named a restaurant in the Pavilions.

“I'll be there,” she said.

D
iners jammed the restaurant on the Sixteenth Street Mall, an assemblage of business suits in earnest conversations. Vicky spotted Steve Clark in a booth against the far wall. She waved away the maître d' and started through the maze of tables, snatching pieces of conversations as she went: . . .
stock options?
 . . .
the new partner
 . . .
close the deal
.

Steve caught her eye and jumped to his feet with the quick agility of a cowboy dismounting a horse. He was dressed in what she used to call his uniform: blue blazer over light blue shirt, subdued detective tie, tan slacks. Smiling at her. The laugh lines deepened at the corners of his eyes. One hand crunched a red napkin.

“You look beautiful.” He waited until she'd settled across from him before resuming his own seat. The intense look in his eyes made her uncomfortable, aware of herself: the shoulder-length black hair, the dark, almond-shaped eyes, the tiny bump at the top of her nose—the Arapaho bump—the dark skin that had caused a few heads to follow her as she'd come through the restaurant.

A waiter in a white coat was sweeping about the table—welcome, welcome—pouring ice water, delivering menus. The sounds of tinkling ice cut through the buzz
of conversations from nearby tables. After they'd ordered—club sandwich, pasta salad—Steve said, “It's good to have you back.”

“Good to be here.” The words rang hollow and superficial to her ears. She'd agreed to lunch; she hadn't considered that he might misconstrue her intentions. It had been a dozen years since they were undergraduates, two outsiders bumping into each other on the CU-Denver campus. He, fresh from a stint with the navy SEALs, and she, fresh from the reservation, the ink still wet on a divorce decree and two children back home with her mother.

“Here's to us,” he said, lifting the water glass.

“Us?” There had never been “us.”

“We're having lunch again. Just like old times.”

“Here's to lunch,” she said, clinking his glass.

“What made you leave Lander?” he said after a moment. “The shooting?”

Vicky leaned against the back cushion and waited until the waiter had set the pasta in front of her, the sandwich in front of Steve, then grated Parmesan over her plate with a cheeriness that struck a discordant note in the muted atmosphere that had settled over the table.

“How did you know?” she said when the waiter moved away.

“Reports come into the department.” He shrugged and took a bite of his sandwich. After a moment he said, “Discharge of firearms resulting in death in the Rocky Mountain region. I snagged the report with your name in it.”

“The man was about to shoot a friend of mine,” she heard herself explaining. The same explanation she gave herself in the middle of the night when she couldn't sleep.

“Certainly justifiable, Vicky. Anyone would have done the same. Give yourself some time.” He held her eyes a
moment before taking another bite of the sandwich.

Vicky tried the pasta. It was lukewarm, with a congealed buttery taste. Finally she said, “What have you found out about the Lewis homicide?”

“What makes you so sure it's homicide?” He sounded mildly amused.

“I saw it happen, Steve.”

“We don't know yet what caused the accident.”

“I have a theory.”

He set his sandwich down and regarded her. “Now, why doesn't that surprise me?”

“Listen, Steve,” she began. “I believe it's possible that Baider Industries has located a diamond deposit on the reservation.”

“Diamonds?” The amusement had changed into surprise. “That would have made the headlines.”

“This is still the Old West,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Prospectors still jump claims the way they used to jump the old gold and silver claims. Nathan Baider knows how the game is played. If his people located a new deposit, he'd keep it secret until he was ready to file a claim.”

Steve pulled his mouth into a tight line of disapproval. A second passed. “You want me to buy a theory that Vince Lewis was killed because he was about to blow the whistle?”

“It makes sense.” She struggled to ignore the questions in his eyes and hurried on before the theory she'd been constructing collapsed. “Baider could be waiting for a ruling on a very important case that's in the federal courts,
Navajo Nation
v.
Lexcon
.” She explained the district court ruling. How the tribes didn't necessarily own the methane gas on their lands. How the ruling was a wedge other companies could use to claim that tribes might not have
total control of other natural resources on reservations. How Baider could claim the Arapahos and Shoshones on the Wind River Reservation didn't control any diamond deposits. She told him she was working on the appeal.
The Navajos had to appeal.
“Baider could be waiting to file a claim, hoping he won't have to pay royalties.”

“If what you say is true”—the detective was shaking his head—“Lewis would come in for a share of the profits. Why blow the whistle?”

Vicky sat back against the booth. She didn't have the answer. She could feel the theory starting to crumble, as if the ground were giving way beneath her feet.

“Look,” he said in a conciliatory tone, “you could be right. Maybe it was homicide. We won't know until we find the driver.”

“What about the license?”

“Lifted from a Chevy van at the airport,” he said. “Oldest trick in the book, Vicky. Some guy wants to cover his tracks, so he cruises the outlying lots. Security's not as close. Anybody knows his business can lift a pair of plates in about two minutes. Salesman got back from Florida and didn't know he was driving without plates until the state patrol pulled him over on I-70. You'd be surprised how many people drive out of lots without checking to see if they still have plates.”

Vicky felt a little surge of excitement. “So, whoever killed Lewis went to a lot of trouble to make the car untraceable,” she said. “Someone at Baider could have arranged for a killer to run Lewis down before our meeting. That explains why the Camry came out of nowhere. The killer was waiting somewhere down the block.”

“Whoa, hold on there.” Steve set his own cup down. Brown liquid sloshed into the saucer. “You're like an eighteen-wheeler runaway coming off the mountain. First
rule in an investigation, don't get married to one theory. The guy driving the Camry could've lifted the plates for some other reason. A burglary, or a drug deal. His mind's on the big deal coming down when he jumps the curb and hits a pedestrian who happens to be Vince Lewis.”

“You believe that?” Vicky made no effort to stifle the astonishment in her voice.

“Until we find the driver”—he held her gaze—“anything's possible. We're running a check on recent arrests and complaints. We'll see if a black Camry figures in any other reported crimes. And we're following some other leads.” He tapped his fingers on the table, as if he was trying to make up his mind how much to divulge. “Turns out Lewis's wife, Jana, served him with divorce papers three days before he was killed,” he said finally. “Alleged infidelity. Could be Lewis was looking for a good divorce lawyer when he called you.”

She didn't believe it. A man like Lewis could hire the best divorce lawyer on Seventeenth Street. When she didn't say anything, the detective went on: “The widow gave us the names of a couple of Lewis's girlfriends. We interviewed them. Seemed pretty broken up by the guy's death, but you never know. One could have wanted to settle an old score.”

He lifted his cup and took a long sip, regarding her over the rim for a long moment. Then he set the cup down. “Turns out the grieving widow is due to collect on a big insurance policy. Three mil. Could be she wanted to make sure Lewis didn't have time to change the beneficiary.”

Vicky glanced around the restaurant—waiters hovering over tables, diners getting to their feet. Her theory could still be right. Lewis had called
her,
an Arapaho attorney. She brought her gaze back. “I heard Roz Baider was
taking over the company. How did that affect Lewis?”

Steve let out a long sigh. “Don't you ever give up?”

The buzz of conversation, the sound of glass tinkling, drifted between them a moment. Finally he said in a lowered voice, “Lewis climbed the ladder to vice-president of development and Nathan Baider's right-hand man in only three years. He was hard-driving and ambitious. A profile that would probably fit a lot of guys in this dining room.” He nodded at the tables stretching toward the maître d's station. Some were empty now.

“Nobody knows what'll happen when another man takes the chief's seat, but Roz made it sound like Lewis would be part of the reorganization.”

“Reorganization?”

Steve shrugged. “Wouldn't be the first time a son decided he could do things better.”

Vicky sat quietly for a moment, only half-aware of the flashes of white jackets bobbing past. “Suppose,” she began, “that Lewis wasn't going to be part of the reorganized company. Maybe he'd want to blow the whistle about a secret diamond deposit.”

Steve was shaking his head. “Sweetheart, you've been watching too many detective shows.” He leaned over the table, so close she could smell the mustard and coffee on his breath. “Nobody at Baider Industries mentioned anything about Lewis being out. Just the opposite. He was the brains. Roz needed the man.”

Vicky felt a longing to be back in Lander, at the café on Main Street, John O'Malley across from her, examining her theory piece by piece, looking for the logical pattern. There was always a pattern.

The waiter appeared with a small black folder, and Vicky dug in her bag for a couple of bills, which Steve waved away. “It's been a long time since you had lunch
with me.” He slipped a credit card into the folder. “Look, Vicky,” he said, “I understand your worry. I'll have another talk with senior and junior Baider. Maybe they forgot to mention a diamond deposit on the res.”

“Will you let me know what you find out?”

He was signing the charge slip, collecting his card. He looked up. “I'll let you know.”

They slid out of the booth at the same moment, and he ushered her through the maze of tables and into the courtyard that connected the Pavilions' shops to the Sixteenth Street mall. She could feel the firm pressure of his hand on the small of her back as they walked down the concrete steps to the sidewalk.

“I'd like to see you, Vicky,” he said, guiding her to one side, away from the crowd. The shuttle swooshed along the mall.

“As soon as you find out—”

“Forget the Lewis case a minute. You're unattached, right?” He didn't wait for a response. “So am I. So what's wrong with two unattached people, a beautiful woman and a so-so guy, getting together?”

Vicky raised one hand, but before she could say anything, he said, “You know I've been attracted to you since you bumped into me on campus. That was deliberate, right?” He grinned.

“Deliberate?”

“You saw me coming through the door. Next thing I know, I'm picking up your papers and notes all over the stairs. You got my attention all right.”

Vicky threw her head back and laughed. “It could've been an orangutan coming through the door, Steve. I wasn't looking where I was going.”

A small shadow of pain crossed his face.

“I'm very glad it was you,” she said hurriedly. “You
did such a good job of getting all of my notes before they blew away, and—” She paused. “You've been a good friend.”

“How about having dinner with a good friend?”

Vicky looked away. A trio of men in dark suits glanced at them as they passed by. She'd been thinking about John O'Malley all during lunch, she realized. He had never said to her “have dinner with me.”

“You were right earlier,” she said, bringing her eyes back. “I'm still running from what happened on the res.” She saw in his expression that he thought she meant the shooting. “I need some time.”

“I've been waiting a long time. I can wait a little longer.” He made a halfhearted attempt at a shrug.

She was about to turn away when his hand reached out and touched her shoulder, holding her lightly in place. “Promise me you'll stay out of this investigation, Vicky. If it is homicide and the guy who killed Lewis thinks you're trying to find out why, he could come after you.”

“I promise not to do anything rash,” she said.

“Don't do anything at all.” A note of sternness in his voice.

She smiled, then slipped past him and joined the knots of people on the sidewalk. She waited for another shuttle to glide past, trailing pneumatic sounds, then started across the bricked pathway, only half-aware of his eyes following her. She was thinking that a woman who had filed for divorce might be willing to talk about her husband's activities at Baider Industries.