Diane Davidson - The Main Corpse

Before they could answer, however, there was a sharp cracking sound. We jumped, thinking it was another gunshot. But this sound was thunder. Fat, chilly raindrops pelted out of the clouds. The general stuck out his chin. “I caught up with the dog and grabbed his collar. Then I saw the fuse. Smelled it first, actually. I saw Royce running, wearing a big backpack, holding a suitcase… or maybe it was a briefcase. Next thing, Marla was firing at him.” He ran his fingers across his close-cropped head of pale hair. “I kept hold of the dog, but I ran like crazy after that guy. Only problem was, he knew where he was going, and I didn’t. He escaped around there.”

He pointed to the mountainside. There was a small garagelike hut on the far right side of the mine opening. I took a few steps in the thickening rain. Heading away from the garage was one set of muddy car tracks.

General Bo continued, “There’s the four-wheel-drive road I told you about. Fifty feet down that hill – I checked the map. It goes to Central City, but first it crosses Highway Six heading back to Denver, so Royce could basically be anywhere.” His keen blue eyes caught mine. “I called the authorities, Goldy, when the two of you were trapped inside there.” He checked his watch. “At eleven hundred hours. That was thirty minutes ago.”

The cold rain was turning the grime on my arms to a thin sheen of mud. Half an hour, and not a single law enforcement or rescue vehicle had yet arrived? “Did you… call the Idaho Springs fire department?” I asked. “They should have been right up here.”

The general glanced down the wet road. “No, I called your sheriffs department. Furman County. I said we had a dead man and two people trapped in a mine. Maybe they figured it was a hoax. But they could be here soon, if only to check it out. So, if you still want to protect Marla and keep running, we should be going – “

“We can go,” I said, decisively. “But I want my son out of this mess. Now.”

“We can’t do both,” said Marla sourly. “Come on, Arch.” She put an arm around his thin shoulders. “I know where there’s a shower in the shed over here. We’ll get soap and water on those scrapes. We’ll have a little while until the sheriffs department comes to bust me again.”

Arch shot me a confused glance, but allowed himself and a damp, wriggling Jake to be led off by Marla without protest.

I asked Bo, “Did you tell the department who you were, and that you saw Tony Royce?”

“Yes, of course I did.” His voice was flinty with anger. “I even said he drove off in a green Explorer, although God help me, my eyes aren’t as good as they used to be, I couldn’t catch the plate number.”

So Tony had come up here in Albert’s car. He’d thought of every detail. How long had it taken him to plan all this out? From the thinking I’d done ascending those interminable ladders in the mine, I had an idea that this faked-death scheme had been percolating in Tony’s cranium for some time. He’d planned, he’d schemed, he’d set things up; he even had a backup strategy, in case anything went wrong. Marla’s very public squabble with Albert at the party probably changed Tony’s original time frame for his crimes, but that hadn’t meant he’d abandoned his escape hatch.

“Look, Goldy,” the general pleaded, “we could track him in less than a day – “

I held up a hand. “No.” I had had at least ten flights of metal rungs to think about what I was going to say to General Bo Farquhar, so I let him have it straight. “Here’s my idea: I think Tony’s trying to get out of the country, and for some reason he couldn’t do that until this afternoon, possibly even tonight. You and I and hopefully the police can stop him, but I want Arch and Marla and the dog out of it.”

He narrowed his eyes against the rain, gave a considered glance down the mountain road, then nodded. “Whatever you say. I just want this guy. I’m listening.”

I shook my head. “We need to get out of here, because the Furman County Sheriff’s Department probably still has it in for Marla. We need to take Marla, Arch, and the dog back to the Hardcastles’ cabin. And then I’ll tell you where I think Tony’s headed.”

The general gave me the full benefit of his commanding glare. “I hope for your sake, Goldy, that we’ll have time.”

“Either I’ve guessed his scheme or I haven’t. You’ll just have to trust me.”

The general scowled. “Marla is the only family I have left… .”

“She’s my oldest friend,” I said quietly. “And I love her, too.” In the distance, sirens sounded. “it’s time to go. We’ve got a criminal to catch.”

An hour later, I watched Arch wave from the cabin stoop. Marla held up one hand in halfhearted farewell. With the other she gripped Arch’s shoulder. Jake beamed with idiotic happiness as we climbed into the Jeep, probably delighted to see me go.

Then the general gunned the engine, and we catapulted back toward Bride’s Creek. “Okay, what do you have in mind?” he asked, as if we were going out for dinner. I glanced out the window at the thinning clouds. Then I asked, “Do you remember when I told you about Prospect’s chief investment officer being killed in a car crash? Victoria Lear discovered that the gold ore at the Eurydice had played out. My guess is that she confronted Tony Royce with what she knew, and got killed for her pains. Then the party – that was when Marla and Albert Lipscomb had their terrible argument. They argued about an assay report from a disreputable lab. Albert didn’t believe the ore was worthless, I’ll bet, and he didn’t know Tony was using an untrustworthy laboratory. Albert always trusted his grandfather’s claims about the Eurydice still having gold in it. Whenever Marla heard about the mine, it was, ‘Albert says.’ Never, ‘Tony says.’ Never. But Tony was the person running the fraud, and in this state, gold scams are the oldest ones in the book.

“My theory is that after Marla confronted Albert about the rigged assay, Albert and Tony argued. Tony knew the ore he sent to the lab wasn’t good. But he never thought anyone, least of all his girlfriend, would complain, after the splashy success the firm had had with Medigen.”

The general turned the windshield wipers from constant to intermittent, but kept his eyes focused straight ahead. “Continue.”

“So say they argue. Tony goes to Albert’s house, says he wants to talk. What do they talk about? These two men had tried to run a scam before, with their cashmere-yarn-and-goat-cheese enterprise. Maybe Albert thought they were going legit, once they’d scored with Medigen. But Tony, I now believe, wants with the mine to take their enterprises one level deeper, and he’s in too far with the Eurydice to go back. Maybe Albert doesn’t have time to disagree before Tony knocks him unconscious. I don’t know what he used. Tom’s told me even spraying someone with a can of engine starter fluid would do the trick. Anyway, once Albert is out cold, Tony works fast, packs up all Albert’s stuff so it looks as if he’s left town. Takes him up to the Eurydice, waits until he comes to, and then tortures him until he gets Albert’s half of the combination to the safe containing the gold ore. Then Tony kills him. But Tony can’t take the gold then. If he does, even Captain Shockley, who knows about the gold and the safe, could figure Tony’s responsible for Albert’s murder. But iŁ by some remote chance, Albert’s body is discovered in that first week, Tony, who’s still around, can say, Marla did it, she was mad at Albert, wasn’t she? Everybody knows that.”

The general muttered, “That guy is such a son of a bitch.”

I went on: “Shockley did go up to the Eurydice after Albert disappeared, but without jurisdiction he didn’t take the risk of going in. In any event, Tony always planned to have Marla take the fall for him. She knew too much about assays, and was too insistent on knowing the truth, to be easily shut up. But if she was busy defending herself she wouldn’t have time to try to reconstruct all that he had done. Especially if it looked as if she murdered him in a jealous rage, after she supposedly killed his partner. Royce figured on covering all his bases. It was a foolproof scheme.