Antler Dust (The Allison Coil Mystery Series Book 1) by Mark Stevens

Author:Mark Stevens [Stevens, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Third Line Press
Published: 2015-12-16T18:30:00+00:00

Nine

A firm midwinter breeze bore down as Allison walked to her lawyer’s office. The wind gained strength from the empty, cold caverns of a city on a weekend.

The office was near the top of Denver’s tallest building. She rode the elevator admiring the sheer trust involved in letting cables and pulleys and motors and switches boost you hundreds of feet in the sky. Were there any parts in this machinery that could freeze up? Would she freeze up? Could she pull the trigger and sue the bastards? Were they really bastards? Weren’t people doing their jobs? Doing their best? And now she would be given money in exchange. In exchange for what, exactly? In exchange for surviving? Really?

Ambivalence was the word of the day. Her guts and heart were filled with unadulterated ambivalence, garnished with a few drips of creeping dread. Mostly, she wanted out of the elevating steel cube and the skyscraper. Perhaps at the top of the tower she could hop on a zip line back to a place where her blue jeans would be on a horse, not in a lawyer’s leather office chair.

The reception area featured a staggering view of the mountains, from Mount Evans to the west and north to the Wyoming border. Pollution? The wind today made it someone else’s problem. A too-pleasant receptionist asked her if she needed coffee or water and Allison half expected to be asked to leave her beat-up cowgirl boots at the entryway and off the polished floor. No request surfaced.

“Allison.”

Even on a Saturday, Paul Reitano was all business in his button-down collar and silk tie.

“You guys have moved up in the world. Literally.”

They shook hands.

“Corporate merger. We picked up a few accounting firms, clean ones not tainted by the accounting scandal meltdowns. Well, charged.” He smiled. “But not tainted. It makes for pleasant surroundings, anyway. And right now we’re running six days a week, no casual Fridays, no casual Saturdays either.”

He was sixty-ish and soft-spoken. He came across like a kindly professor who could scorn a set of bad grades with a look of deep dismay, one that carried weight. He had piercing blue eyes, puffy bits of unkempt white hair and the weathered skin of a lifelong skier.

Reitano led her down halls lined with contemporary art to his small office.

“Thanks for making the trip down. They’ve had a test-run trial in New York. It was a real trial, but it’s used as a means for determining who pays what amount. It’s like dividing the check at a restaurant: determining who ate more, drank more and therefore who gets to pay more. The two major parties were the airline and the airplane manufacturer. The airline tried to find something mechanical that went wrong. And they failed.”

She listened as if it had just happened, as if she was still dripping and crouching awkwardly on a rock near the water in the harbor. The water continued to chop and churn. There were bits of stuff everywhere—jackets and magazines, suitcases and those under-sized airline pillows.

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