The Reckoning Stones: A Novel of Suspense (10 page)

Up close, he smelled earthy, warm, like he always had, and she caught her breath, fighting off the memories. Her skin tingled where his five o’clock shadow had grazed it. “Iris,” she said to his departing back. “It’s Iris now.”

He raised a hand in acknowledgement and kept going as the elevator door dinged open and Iris got in.

fifteen

iris

Iris returned to the
motel, her emotions whirling from the encounter with Cade, to find her room as overheated as a sauna. She fiddled with the thermostat, but the system kept blasting out hot air. Exasperated, beginning to perspire, she dialed the office. No answer. Putting her father’s file on the desk, she marched over to the office, enjoying the evening’s cool breath, only to find it deserted and locked. It was almost six, she realized, and she couldn’t much blame the Welshes for not staffing the office round-the-clock when she seemed to be the only guest. With a resigned sigh, she headed toward the blue house on the corner of the motel property.

She rapped on the newish storm door, inhaling the scent of fresh-
turned earth from Mr. Welsh’s garden. There was something about the smell of loam. It had lowered her blood pressure a couple points by the time the door swung inward and Mrs. Welsh stared out at her. She had a housecoat wrapped around her and wore slippers on her feet. She looked worn down and Iris wondered how much of the motel maintenance and cleaning the woman took on. Even in the off-season, with not too many customers, there was probably a lot to do to keep the old place standing.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Welsh, but the heater in my room is broken,” Iris said.

The woman sighed and pushed the door open. “Come in, Mer—Ms. Dashwood.”

“Iris.”

“Let me find my husband. It does this sometimes.”

Iris stepped into the small house, hearing a teakettle whistle. Mrs. Welsh disappeared down the hall and Iris drifted into the living room that opened off the small foyer. Nineteen-eighties-era wallpaper patterned the walls in mauve and teal, and a velvet-covered sofa and loveseat of the same vintage faced a brick fireplace. It was the photo portrait above the mantel that caught Iris’s attention, however. Sixteen by twenty, with a gold frame, it showed a doe-eyed, brown-haired teen with a shy smile. Penelope Welsh. Tendrils of sadness twined through Iris as she approached the fireplace, her eyes never leaving the fixed gaze of the girl in the photo. Lost in the rockslide.

A pair of half-burned candles sat at either end of the oak mantel, and various items cluttered the space between them: bronzed baby shoes, a Breyer model of an appaloosa mare, a round music box that Iris knew held a pop-up ballerina, and more. It was a shrine to Penelope, Iris realized. She stroked a finger down the horse’s slick resin back, remembering the hours she and Penelope, and later Jolene, had spent playing with the model horses. Penelope had been a couple of years older, but had stayed friends with Iris until her last year of middle school. Then she’d drifted away, pursuing new interests and friends. Her two years of distance made it kind of weird that she’d slipped a note into Iris’s locker, saying she needed to talk to her that last day, only hours before a minor earthquake triggered the rockslide.

Iris had kept that last reminder of Penelope for months until it went through the wash in her jeans pocket and dissolved. She could still see Penelope’s neat, rounded letters:
Meet me at 4. Usual place. I have to tell you something IMPORTANT.
The word was capitalized and underscored three times. The note was signed simply,
Penny
, with the tail of the Y curled up to form a heart. The usual place was in the ravine, beneath a huge spruce whose branches dipped almost to the ground and formed an enclosed room that smelled of pine and dust. Iris had had to take a make-up test after school, though, and by the time she was done, millions of tons of rock had sheared away and swept into the ravine, burying everything in it, including the magnificent spruce and Penelope. Iris told her mother she was supposed to have been with Penelope, and it was one of the few times she could remember when her mother had pulled her into a tight hug and held her close for long minutes.

Iris’s gaze fell on Penelope’s favorite bracelet, half-hidden under the music box. It was a chunky nugget of turquoise on a braided leather band with a lobster-claw hook. Smiling sadly, Iris slid it out from under the music box, meaning to prop it against the box’s satiny wood. When she touched the stone, though, a sense of panic, of mounting terror filled her. Her fingers tightened involuntarily around the bracelet and she began to shake, unable to control the sudden rush of fear. Iris looked around the room wildly, searching for a way out, and felt her vision blur until all she could see was blue and more blue through a murky film.
Can’t breathe
. What was happening to her?

“Get away from there.”

The harsh voice cut through Iris and she dropped the bracelet, which clinked against a brass stand holding fireplace tools before landing on the carpet. Iris felt her pulse returning to normal and took a deep breath, swinging around to see Mr. Welsh approaching, anger clouding his craggy features. He stooped in front of her and retrieved the bracelet, placing it carefully, gently, on the mantel, centered between the horse and the music box.

“You’ve got no business in here,” he told Iris, looking at her from under unruly brows. The grooves in his forehead and bracketing his mouth were deep, gouged by the sharp chisel of time and tragedy.

He topped her by at least six inches and Iris thought she caught a whiff of bourbon on his breath. “I’m Ir—”

“I know who you are.” He stepped forward, as if intent on herding her toward the door and out of the house.

His truculence pissed her off but she tried to sound reasonable. “The heater in my room isn’t working. Your wife told me to wait here.” When he didn’t respond, she added softly, “I didn’t mean to pry. I remember Penelope wearing that bracelet. She loved it.”

“We found it. On the rockslide. The rocks, the stones—they ripped it off her.” The words emerged with an effort. “That’s all we ever found of my little girl. Those uncountable tons of rock … there was no way. No way to shift them, find my little Penny.” He turned his back on her, his gaze uplifted to the photo of his dead daughter.

Unable to think of words that would begin to touch this man’s sorrow and anger, Iris stood awkwardly, wondering if she should just leave. Before she could decide, Mrs. Welsh reappeared, dressed, metal toolbox in her hand. She stopped abruptly on the threshold.

“Quentin. I didn’t hear you come in. The heater in Ms. Dashwood’s room is stuck again.”

“I’ll take care of it,” he said, holding out his hand for the toolbox. Mrs. Welsh handed it over with a look of relief and he headed for the back of the house.

“I’m just making some tea—?” Mrs. Welsh started, giving Iris an uncertain look.

Iris could tell the woman would prefer it if she left, so she said, “I think I’ll wait outside. I could use the fresh air after spending the day in prison.” She wasn’t sure why she’d added that last bit, but she felt faintly satisfied when Mrs. Welsh drew in an audible breath.

“Your father,” the woman said after a moment. “You visited your father.”

Iris nodded. Encouraged by the lack of animosity in Mrs. Welsh’s voice, she added, “I’m going to get him out of prison. He didn’t … he’s not the one who hurt Pastor Matt.”

Mrs. Welsh blinked several times fast, but her expression didn’t change. “How do you know?”

“He told me.”

Silence stretched between them and Iris became uncomfortable under the weight of Mrs. Welsh’s suddenly knowing gaze. “You’d think he would have mentioned his innocence before, unless he had a really good reason not to,” she observed. “I knew a woman once who carried her own grandbaby to term because her daughter’s womb was malformed, even though she had breast cancer and needed chemo treatments. Fact.” Before Iris had time to wonder about this seeming non sequitur, she added, “It’s wonderful what parents will sacrifice for their children.”

“I didn’t—!” It hadn’t occurred to Iris that the Community would think exactly what her father had. “I’m going to find out who really did it.” The words crystallized the thought that had been floating through her brain since her talk with Cade.

“I don’t suppose that’ll be easy after all this time. People won’t like it.” Mrs. Welsh’s voice held a note of warning.

By “people” she meant the Community, Iris knew. She didn’t try to hide her contempt. “‘People’ won’t like seeing an innocent man freed?”

Mrs. Welsh squinted, as if trying to peer through smoke or fog. “People never do, do they? Like having their truths shown up as falsehoods.”

The woman’s acuity took Iris aback and she stared at her. “I guess not,” she said slowly.

“It’ll be good if you remember that. My tea’s getting cold.” Without a word of farewell, she turned and followed the hallway her husband had taken, leaving Iris to show herself out.

After a final glance at Penelope, Iris left the house, taking a deep breath on the front walkway. The cold silk of night wrapped around her. The temperature had dropped a good five degrees in the half hour she’d been inside. Hugging her arms around herself, she took a single step and almost bumped into Quentin Welsh. He was a shadow in the darkness, looming over her.

“Oh!” She couldn’t prevent the startled gasp.

“Heater’s fixed.”

“Great. Well, thanks.” She edged around his bulk.

As she did, he caught her upper arm with a hand that circled it easily. She twisted free and stood poised for flight.

“It’d be best if you moved on soon. You’re not one of us anymore.” Before she could respond, he lumbered away, toolbox clanking, leaving her staring after him with indignation and a touch of uneasiness.

She strode toward her room, stumbling once or twice in the darkness.
Damn right I’m not one of them anymore. They couldn’t pay me to be part of the Community again.
But under no circumstances was she leaving until she was good and ready. Pushing open the door of her room, blessedly cooler, she laughed at herself. An hour ago she’d been counting the minutes until she could leave; now, she was determined to stay, just because someone told her to scram. Shaking her head at her own contrariness, she thought back to the brief moments with the turquoise bracelet. She had long ago accepted that she had an unusual connection with stones, that something embedded in them sometimes, but not predictably, spoke to her. She’d never felt anything as strongly as when she’d held Penelope’s turquoise, though. She shivered and wondered, as she did less often as the years passed, what Penelope had wanted to tell her that last day. She’d never know and the not knowing bothered her. Deliberately pushing the question away, she reached for her cell phone to call Jane, but then noticed her father’s file didn’t seem quite as she had left it. A couple pages peeked out and it sat nearer the edge of the desk. She was almost certain.

Looking around, suddenly wary, she crossed the room to peer into the bathroom. Nobody. Telling herself that she was being ridiculous, that Mr. Welsh must have brushed against the file when he came in to fix the heater—
but the desk was nowhere near the radiator
—she looped the chain across the door and drew the drapes. Even if Mr. Welsh had given into curiosity and looked at the file, so what? Most of it was probably a matter of public record. Despite her logic, she felt violated and carefully tucked the errant pages back into the folder. Suddenly unable to face an evening alone in the cramped room, she put the file under her arm, grabbed her purse and phone, and headed for her car. She’d find a cheery place to have dinner and go through the documents, maybe the sports bar down the road, and check out the local action.

sixteen

jolene

Jolene gazed at her
daughter, lithe and beautiful as she sat at the kitchen table with her feet propped on a chair, knees pushed toward her chest, the scent of the tangerine she was peeling brightening the air. Half-dressed for the college fair at the Colorado College campus, she wore a white blouse over a pair of panties, even though Zach was after her all the time to dress more modestly around the house. Her
hair was only a couple of shades darker than the maple tabletop and
it shone in the morning sun pouring through the butter-
colored sheers veiling the window. The indiscreet sunlight also illuminated the scratches on the laminate countertops, the dings in the refrigerator door, and the cracked floor tile where Zach had dropped her favorite mixing bowl last December. Sliding one bare foot into the sun path on the floor, Jolene expected to feel warmed, but it was too early. Her expression troubled, she opened and shut her mouth twice before saying, “Rachel.”

The girl looked up.

Jolene took a deep breath. “The woman who lost her wallet at the co-op came by to pick it up. She said there was fifty-five dollars missing. She was very distressed.”

Rachel dug her thumb under the tangerine’s skin with a spritz of juice and began to work it around so the peel spiraled over her hand. She bent her head as if engrossed in the task, and Jolene couldn’t read her expression. “She’s too old to remember how much she had in there, Mom. She probably bought a couple books, or new slippers, and forgot. Want some?” She separated a section from the tangerine and offered it to Jolene.

“Thanks.” Jolene popped the fruit into her mouth, grateful for an excuse not to respond right away. The tangerine was unusually tart, but she found it refreshing. “Could be.” She forced herself to continue. “But this isn’t the first incident. It was just ten days ago that that other woman said her wallet was stolen at our store.”

“Puh-leeze, Mom. They’d been to the mall before coming out here. She probably left it at Penney’s or in the food court. She’s got no way to prove that something happened to it in our store.”

The woman, though probably over ninety, had seemed sharp as a tack telling Jolene that she’d bought a bracelet at the mall, and that she distinctly remembered placing the boxed bracelet and the wallet back in her purse before boarding the bus to come to Lone Pine Traditional Crafts. She hadn’t seen anything she wanted at the Community’s store, but had missed her wallet on the return trip to the nursing home when she dug through her purse for her antihistamines. “The pine pollen always gets me,” she’d said.

“Or maybe you think I’m a klepto,” Rachel said. Affront widened her eyes.

“I don’t think you’re a kleptomaniac.”

Rachel stood and dumped the tangerine peel into the sink. “Thanks for the ringing vote of confidence. Not a klepto, just a garden variety thief.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to. The fact that we’re having this conversation says it all.” Rachel faced Jolene, head tilted back so her jaw jutted forward. “If that’s what you think, maybe I shouldn’t be allowed to work in the store anymore. I’ll stay away. When another wallet goes missing, you can apologize.” She stomped out of the kitchen in a way intended to advertise how aggrieved she was.

Stuffing the tangerine bits into the grinder, Jolene turned on the water and flipped the switch, letting the harsh gargle of the grinder drown out her thoughts. It was painful and almost impossible to think of Rachel as a thief, but the evidence was mounting. Rachel was the only common denominator. Chloe had been working with her when the first wallet went missing, and Aaron had been with her last night, at least part of the time, but Rachel was the only one who was in the store both times. Was it possible Rachel had stolen the money to get out of working at the store? Would she risk being branded a thief, putting her own and the Community’s reputation on the line, to avoid contributing her time and talent to the co-op? Surely she couldn’t be so selfish. Anger simmered at the thought.

There had to be another explanation, Jolene told herself. She shut off the grinder, realizing it had been chirring emptily, tangerine peel long washed away, for thirty seconds. Maybe those women really had misplaced their wallets, or miscounted their money. Unlikely. She was going to have to discuss it with Zach.

“Are you going like that?” Rachel had reappeared, purse hanging from one hand, wearing the rest of her school uniform: mid-calf navy skirt and black loafers. She cast a pointed look at Jolene’s bare feet. “Aren’t you the one who wanted to get to the fair early, so I could talk to the recruiters before it gets too crowded?”

Wanting to slap the self-righteous look off her daughter’s face, Jolene fisted her hands, and said a prayer. The thought of Rachel interviewing with college recruiters was stressful enough. It hardly seemed possible her baby would be gone in just over a year. Praying the day would get better, she stepped into a pair of low-heeled pumps, and hurried to the car where Rachel sat with a posture that said she’d been waiting for hours, pointedly staring out the passenger window.