She plowed on.
"Do you know Ray Welle hasn't done a single interview-broadcast or print-about his wife being murdered since he was elected to Congress? I find that kind of strange, don't you? He wouldn't shut up about it when he was on the radio every day. And do you know her parents-I'm talking about Welle s dead wife, now-you remember about her being taken hostage and executed, right?
Her parents live a few blocks away from where we were this morning. Okay, they don't actually live there-people that rich don't actually live in just one place-but they have a house there. She grew up there. Gloria did. Right around the corner from where the Coors kidnapping took place. Bad neighborhood for having your rich kids kidnapped. Oh Christ! There's another one. Hold on."
"Another what?"
"My hotel room has been invaded by these kamikaze moths that buzz around like they're drunk. They dive-bomb right at you, flap all over the place. And they're covered with dirt."
I laughed.
"They're miller moths. They're pretty harmless. They're migratory; they'll all be gone in a few weeks."
"Ahhh. Shit. It almost flew in my mouth. Gross. This one will be gone before that, I promise you." I could hear her whacking at it.
"Got it!
Yes!"
I hadn't known that Gloria's parents-Lauren's ex-in-laws-lived so close to the Phipps Mansion. I also couldn't see how it meant anything significant.
"Who are you going to see in Steamboat?"
Her tone switched from conversational to suspicious. She said, "You connected up there?"
"Not at all, no."
"Then why do you want to know who I'm going to talk to? And why do I keep getting the feeling that you're more withholding than my two-year-old niece when she's constipated?"
"I was just asking."
"No you weren't. You weren't just asking. We're going back to class for a minute so pull out your syllabus. Here's lesson number two in Journalism 101.
Let me show you how this is done. Okay? I'm actually going to answer your question.
This is what it sounds like when somebody actually answers a question. Is your pencil ready? Pay attention. The reason I'm going to Steamboat Springs is to talk with some people who were involved with the ski area a few years ago. I need to talk with them about the campaign-finance irregularities I've been investigating. At the time, a big Japanese company controlled the resort. Does any of that information ring any bells for you?" She gave me two seconds to respond, then said, "Hello? I'm still listening for the peal of those bells."
I swallowed and hoped she didn't hear me.
She said, "Near the end there? A moment ago? That was a question. Now it's your turn to answer." Pause.
"You know, you're not very good at this" I knew I was about to lie to her. I didn't want to tell her I'd been in Steamboat only a week ago and that I'd already interviewed someone who had been one of the local managers of the ski area back in the late eighties. I said, "No. No bells. What? Are you looking for foreign money being shoveled into Welle's campaign? Japanese money?"
"Should I be?"
I didn't answer. She said, "Were you always this bad in school? How the hell did you ever get a Ph. D.? Let me try an easier one for you. If I do go to Steamboat for the weekend, where should I stay? Keep in mind, there's a possibility this will be my dime."
"Do you want charming or do you want efficiency?"
"I want plumbing. I want to be able to smoke. And I want room service. Not necessarily in that order."
The smoking part would limit her choices considerably. I suggested she call the Sheraton.
My first wife, Merideth, had been a producer with Channel 9 in Denver. I still had some contacts at the station. I called one of them at home, a young man who had been an assistant producer. He had lusted after Merideth for the entire three years that he worked with her. I hoped that fact would make him guilty enough to agree to do me a favor.
It did.
I came home late Saturday morning after a long bike ride to Lyons and back and found that a messenger from Channel 9 had left the package beside the front door, as promised.
Inside were two videotapes. One was a compilation of clips of the disappearance and murder of the two girls in the Elk River Valley. The other was a compilation of clips of the kidnapping and murder of Gloria Welle.
I stripped out of my Lycra and took a shower. Lauren called while I was in the bathroom. She left a message letting me know that since I was seeing patients that afternoon, she and a girlfriend had decided to go shopping in Denver.
Maternity things. She thought she'd be home for dinner.
I made a sandwich and carried it into the living room. The first tape I stuck into the VCR was the Gloria Welle footage.
Nineteen ninety-two. Channel 9's talent was a lot younger then. Still, except for some curious hair styles and some dubious wardrobe choices, Ed and Mike and Paula looked pretty good back in 1992.
On tape, the entrance to the Silky Road Ranch was totally different from the one I'd seen recently in person during my visit with Lauren. The day that Brian Sample went to visit Gloria Welle with retribution and murder in his heart, no gate at all blocked the entrance to the ranch. No imposing stone pillars marked the spot where the dirt lane broke off the county road. No video cameras checked on the arrival of visitors. No speakers announced curt warnings; no microphones eavesdropped on conversations. In those days before the murder, the sign that hung above the rough-cut pine logs that marked the entrance to the spread was carved of wood and read
"Silky Road Ranch." It wasn't engraved on a stainless-steel plate that read
"Gloria's Silky Road Ranch-No Visitors."
The Silky Road wasn't a memorial to Gloria back then. It was just Gloria and Raymond Welle's horse ranch.
It didn't surprise me that few of the actual details of the murder had stuck in my memory. The television stories about the crime referred to the victim of the murder as a "Denver debutante," "a wealthy socialite," or "the daughter of railroad billionaire Horace Tambor."
None of the reports identified Gloria as a successful horse breeder, or even as Mrs. Raymond Welle. Ray's radio fame was barely starting to percolate; and his first term in Congress wouldn't start until 1994.
I was curious about having my memory tweaked. What had transpired on the ranch that day?
According to the television news reports, the whole affair had lasted only ninety minutes. During that brief window of time, Brian Sample had somehow entered the ranch house, joined Gloria for tea, forced her to make a telephone call in an effort to lure Raymond Welle home from his office, locked Gloria in a guest-room closet, and then shot her to death right through the wooden door.
Shortly thereafter, Brian had fired a few rounds at the arriving law enforcement authorities. The police had gunned him down as he made a dash to the woods to try to escape.
A follow-up story the day after Gloria's murder reported that authorities had learned that the suspect in the killing, Brian Sample, had been a patient of Gloria Welle's husband, psychologist Dr. Raymond Welle. Sample was, it was assumed, bent on revenge when he invaded the Welle home. Although the exact motive for seeking revenge upon his psychotherapist wasn't revealed in the report, the reason that Sample had sought mental-health treatment was already apparently the stuff of local lore. No one in town had any questions at all about what the precipitant was for the almost yearlong decline in Sample's emotional state.
Brian Sample had owned a local saloon called The Livery. On a Tuesday night eleven months before he killed Gloria Welle, Brian had been behind the bar of that saloon, pouring drinks. One of his customers that evening was a regular, a not-certified public accountant named Grant Wortham who played catcher on Brian's softball team. Wortham had come into the bar after work for a cheeseburger and a beer, and had left the establishment three hours later after consuming eight beers and two shots of Cuervo Gold. When he left to go home, Wortham climbed behind the wheel of his big old Dodge Ram pickup truck.