The Thunder Keeper by Margaret Coel

Author:Margaret Coel
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US

19

Vicky pointed the Bronco through the traffic spilling out of downtown Denver and turned left onto Speer Boulevard. The sun blinked in the rearview mirror, but black rain clouds were gathering over the mountains. Traffic was heavy, four lanes across, winding southeast along the banks of Cherry Creek. Ten minutes later the grounds of the Denver Country Club came into view outside her passenger window, the sprawling, gray-frame building a mute symbol of another century, built by the people who had displaced her own.

Another left turn down a wide street. Rows of mansions passing outside. She parked in front of a redbrick Tudor separated from the street by a sweep of glistening wet lawn and bushes that dipped under cascades of yellow and pink buds. Fallen buds crunched under her heels as she walked up the sidewalk. She clapped the brass door knocker.

There was no sound coming from the house, yet she had the sense that someone was there. She rapped again, giving the knocker a hard kick this time. Still no answer. She glanced at her watch—five twenty-six—and debated whether to wait or drive over to the Indian Center, see if anyone there had ever heard of Eddie, then drive back. The thought of driving across the city all evening filled her with dread. She knocked again.

The door inched open. The auburn-haired woman from the emergency room peered through the crack. Slim, red-tipped fingers wrapped around the door’s edge. On the third finger was a wide gold band with a diamond the size of a marble floating in the center. “What is it?”

Vicky told the woman her name and said she’d like to talk to her a moment.

The crack widened, and the woman leaned unsteadily forward, still gripping the door. Her face was pale—no makeup, a puffiness around the eyes, which had the surreal color of green glass. She was in a blue terrycloth robe that bunched around her waist. Her dark, shoulder-length hair looked tangled and uncombed, as if she’d just lifted her head from a pillow. “I saw you at the hospital,” she said in a resigned monotone.

“Yes, I was there.”

“One of Vince’s whores.”

“What?”

“How dare you come here? You have no right—” The door started to close.

“I’m an attorney, Mrs. Lewis.” Vicky placed a hand against the door. “Your husband called me the morning of his death. I was on my way to meet him for the first time when he was killed. I’d like to talk to you.”

Jana Lewis blinked. A new wariness came into the green eyes. For the first time Vicky caught the syrupy odor of some kind of liqueur. The woman was slightly drunk. Finally the door swung open into a spacious entryway with shadows falling over the white and black floor tiles and running up the wide staircase. The woman tottered through an archway on the right, each step deliberate and focused. There was the sound of a clock chiming somewhere.

Vicky hesitated, then stepped inside and followed the woman into a large

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