Tainted Gold (9 page)

On the wide, ivory-painted sill above the windowseat, Grandma Elliot’s china clock counted the seconds in faint, chimelike ticks. Frowning at the hand-painted face as she entered the studio, Quillen sat down heavily on her high navy leather stool. She bent and threaded her cold, leaden fingers together, leaned her elbows on the bottom edge of her board, and pressed her thumbs against her chin.

It was four-twenty-seven. Mrs. Desmond Cassil’s bridge luncheons began promptly at one o’clock on the first and third Monday of every month, and ended just as promptly at four.

“There are other methods of persuasion,” Cassil had said, though Quillen wouldn’t exactly call this persuasion. Coercion and intimidation seemed better words—but extortion was by far the most apt.

Untangling her fingers, Quillen clenched her hands into fists and tried to muster anger. She couldn’t. For the only time in her life that she could remember, the McCain Irish failed her and she sat, trembling and ashen, at her board.

With all her heart she wished Tucker were here to gently cuff her chin and tell her to pluck up. Oh, God, how she
wished
it. She was bone-aching tired of being alone and being strong. She wanted somebody to hug her and tell her it was going to be all right…and more than anything, she wanted that somebody to be Tucker.

Like a zombie, Quillen sat there until the panic atrophying her brain and her body ebbed away. On the sill, the china clock chimed five, and she winced, blinded by the glare of the Luxo illuminating the painting of the prince.

“Clever, Quillen,” she muttered as she switched off the lamp and blinked away the fuzzy green spots in the center of her vision. “You’re losing tenants left and right and burning up a five-dollar fluorescent ring to boot.”

Sliding off her stool, she went into the kitchen, plucked her keys off a peg in the pantry, and exited the house via the enclosed sunroom and the wooden back porch. The spots in front of her eyes cleared by the time she reached the garage and unlocked the door. From a shelf in the large storage cabinet built along one long wall, she lifted the vacancy sign and carried it to the front yard. There, standing in the middle of the walk, she hesitated, uncertain where to stake it.

Her usual spot in the center of three low, neatly trimmed yews waited, but the birdbath, ringed by white-painted stones and gold and lavender mums, called to her, “Over here, over here.” Gazing at the weed-free, manicured plantings, she felt her throat tighten and her fingers clenched around the sign.

Poor Mr. Phillips, she thought, poor timid little man. How he’d loved tending the flowers. He was too old to mow the grass—she did that—but every spring he’d set out the bulbs and the mums, and every fall he’d dig them up, store them in their flats with peat and sphagnum moss in the basement, and prune and cap the roses. Quillen knew exactly how Cassil had gotten to Martin Phillips: a carefully worded suggestion that he relocate accompanied by smoothly veiled hints about his approaching sixtieth birthday and the two-year lag between wages and social security if he didn’t—and, finally, blessedly, her temper boiled to the surface.

“You bastard,” she hissed under her breath as she marched across the lawn, knelt before the birdbath, and used the pointed end of the stake to dig a hole in front of the mum bed.

Once the sign was seated in the dark earth, Quillen used one of the white stones to drive it deeper, gritting her teeth and cursing Desmond Cassil with each whack on the flat top of the stake. Finished, she replaced the stone in the ring and wiped her muddied hands on the back of her jeans as she stood up.

“Bring me luck, Realgar,” she wished out loud as she walked back inside and washed in the kitchen.

As she tore a paper towel off the roll over the sink, the phone rang, and she hastily dried her hands as she hurried across the room to answer it. Please be Tucker, she prayed as she picked up the receiver and said hello.

“Good afternoon, Quillen,” Desmond Cassil said, his voice silken. “Have you changed your mind about selling?”

“No,” she replied frigidly, “and I never will.”

“Never is a very long time, Quillen. How long do you suppose your finances will hold out once you have no more tenants?”

“I’ll sell the house if I have to.”

“Oh, come now,” he said shortly, his tone derisive. “And do what? Live in your camper?”

“Listen very carefully, Mr. Mayor, because I’m only going to say this once.” Quillen tightened her fingers on the mouthpiece to keep the furious tremble out of her voice. “You can intimidate Martin Phillips, manipulate Deidre Smythe—who I’ll miss like I’ll miss mice in the attic—and you can make Paula Clarke and anyone else you like offers they can’t refuse, but the only way you’ll get your hands on my land is over my dead body!”

“If you continue to be unreasonable, Quillen,” he retorted harshly, “that could become a very distinct possibility.”

“Go to hell!” she shouted, and slammed the receiver back in its cradle.

It bounced off the switchhook, thudded to the carpet, and spun there crazily on the earpiece as the cord uncurled. Quillen left it there, returned to her board, and picked up her paintbrush. Her hand shook, and though she concentrated so hard she bit her tongue, she couldn’t stop the furious tremble in her fingers.

Setting the brush down, she slammed the back door behind her as she returned to the garage for the garden hose, a plastic green bucket, and the sponges she used to wash the truck. A half-hour later the Blazer was brand-new-clean, inside and out, and her hands were steady enough to paint. While the sun set, she drained the hose, put away the bucket and sponges, and went inside to shower and change.

Afterward, in an aqua terrycloth shift, she made herself a ham sandwich on rye and a cup of tea, and munched on Corn Chips. Then she rinsed her hands in the kitchen and turned on a lamp in the living room. The receiver still lay on the floor, but no longer beeped to be replaced. Thoughts of Tucker, hopes that he or someone interested in her two vacant apartments would call, made her pick it up and put it back in its cradle.

When the doorbell rang shortly after eight o’clock, Quillen nearly jumped off her stool. Fortunately she was tapping the end of her brush thoughtfully against her teeth while she considered darkening the wash behind the prince—otherwise she would have dragged a brushful of cerulean blue paint across the lone still-faceless figure. After setting her brush down and shaking her head at her jumpiness, she hurried across the living room and hoped, as she opened the door, that Tucker would be on the other side. It was a man, all right, but the wrong one.

Still dressed in a lightweight blue suit and white shirt, Jason Lyons, her second-oldest friend in the world and occupant of the spacious attic studio that had once been Quillen’s bedroom, stood in the hall. His muted striped tie was askew, however, and her heart thudded to the soles of her bare feet as she saw the envelope in his right hand and the six-pack of Coors in his left.

He’s breaking it to me gently, Quillen thought, and half-groaned, half-gasped, “Oh, Jas, not
you
, too!”

“No, Quill.” His dark eyes wrinkled with amusement. “This is only my rent check.” He handed it to her as he stepped inside and gave her a quick, brotherly hug. “I saw the sign as I came in, and since Paula kept me up half of Saturday night yammering at me about The Towers, and since I helped Marty Phillips carry his TV downstairs yesterday, I decided that if anybody could use a beer right now, it had to be you.”

“Thanks, but I think I’ll pass.” She made a face and pressed one hand to her midriff. “I feel a little queasy.”

“Nerves,” he pronounced solemnly, his heavy, dark eyebrows drawing together over his slightly beaked nose. “Relax, Quill, I’m not moving out.”

“I wouldn’t have been surprised,” she said truthfully as she followed him into the kitchen. “After all, Mr. Phillips is Cassil’s head teller at the bank, and you’re one of his head henchmen at Cassil Construction.”

“Draftsman, Quillen, not henchman,” he corrected her with a wry smile as he opened a cabinet door and helped himself to a glass. “Oh, he made noises—” He paused, tugging a can of Coors out of the six-pack, and his smile arched into a smirk as he pulled the ring. “No, truthfully, he made threats, but I ignored them.”

“Look, Jas, I appreciate the noble gesture, but your job—”

“Quillen.” He spoke her name firmly and his smile softened. “It wasn’t a gesture. Nobody threatens me. If Cassil fires me, I’ll find another job.” He shrugged indifferently. “You may have to let me live here rent-free for a while, but I’ll find one. I’m a damn good draftsman.”

“You’re a better artist,” she told him for the umpteenth time. “If you do lose your job, I think you should seriously consider changing fields—”

“There’s no money in fine art,” he cut her off abruptly as he plunked the heavy-bottomed blue tumbler on the oak table and filled it from the beer can.

“I’m talking commercial art, and you know it.” Quillen leaned toward him over the back of the chair on the opposite side of the table. “We talked about opening our own studio while we were in college. As I recall, that’s all we talked about during the long drive back and forth from Colorado Springs.”

“I like to eat regularly, Quill,” he retorted.

“
I
eat regularly.”

“If you didn’t have this house free and clear, the rents, and the lease fee the Renaissance Committee pays to use your land, you’d starve to death, and you know it. I make three times what you do.”

“Yes, and you could buy and sell me if you didn’t blow it all on drinking and carousing and—” Quillen clapped her hand over her mouth. “Sorry,” she mumbled as she spread her fingers. “You came to cheer me up, not have our same old argument.”

“I’m glad to see you’re not so upset you can’t pick a fight. I’d worry about you if you were.” He picked up his beer, came around the table, and looped his free arm around her neck as he drew her with him toward the living room. “But I
am
worried, Quill. Old D.C.’s getting ugly—he means business.”

“If you won’t let him intimidate
you
, what makes you think I’ll let him intimidate
me
?” Slipping free of his loose embrace, Quillen sat down in one of two raspberry wing chairs on one side of the fireplace.

Rumpling one slim hand through his headful of nearly black, gray-threaded curls, Jason flung himself down on the tapestry love seat that faced the chairs and carefully propped his tasseled black loafers on the corner of the oval fruitwood coffee table. “Don’t play brave in the face of overwhelming odds for me, Quill. I’m not impressed. I work for the man. I’ve seen the grease spots—all that’s left of people who get in his way. I don’t want that for you.”

“Does anybody care what
I
want?” Quillen’s right hand smacked against the arm of her chair. “I want my land, I want my house, and I want Desmond Cassil to leave me alone!”

“Have you ever heard the expression,” Jason asked tiredly, “you can’t fight city hall?”

“You sound just like Cal,” she accused angrily. “Do you two have the same speechwriter?”

“We care about you, Quill,” he replied patiently, his voice gentle.

“Then help me, don’t lecture me!”

“How?”

“I don’t know, but think of something, can’t you?” The shrill in her voice edged close to tears, and she paused to take a deep breath. “Listen, Jas, I’m terrified, but I am
not
going to knuckle under to Desmond Cassil.”

“I frankly don’t think you have a choice, but—” He held up a quick, qualifying finger as Quillen opened her mouth to retort. “I’ll think about it, I really— Hey, wait a minute.” He swung his legs to the floor and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “I saw Cal for a few minutes in the office this morning and he told me about this geologist he and D.C. ran into last Friday. He didn’t have time to finish the story, but he said this guy made noises about an environmental impact study in relation to the Gold Rush Days theme park. Now maybe that—”

“Of
course
!” Quillen crowed, pitching forward eagerly in her chair. “Why didn’t
I
think of that? I’ll ask Tucker about it.”

“Who?”

“The geologist,” she explained. “I met him at the festival. He’s our new wizard this year. He’s also the new tenant in Mr. Phillips’s apartment. His name’s Tucker Ferris.”

“Oh, well then—” In midsentence, Jason’s thin lips parted suddenly and he looked sharply at Quillen. “What did you say his name is?”

“Ferris,” Quillen repeated. “Tucker Ferris.”

“I wonder—” He shrugged and shook his head. “Nah, he couldn’t be.”

“Couldn’t be what?”

“Oh, nothing. I just think it’s kind of odd, that’s all. I mean, you know this guy, right? He knows what’s going on between you and D.C. over your land?” Quillen nodded and he cocked his head to one side. “Well, then, I think it’s real strange that he didn’t suggest it himself. An environmental impact study could really put the brakes on D.C. and his schemes.”

Hmm, Quillen thought, her lips pursing pensively. Now that Jason mentioned it, it
was
odd that Tucker hadn’t suggested it. She wondered why—and she wondered why the assay reports and Tucker’s interest in her grandfather’s mine came instantly to mind.

“I’ve got an idea.” Jason drained his glass and rose. “Meet me for lunch tomorrow at Reuben’s.”