I turned in a piece of graph paper with the town divided into four directional segments.
I still think of Cedar Valley that way, broken up into rough quadrants, each with its own subculture.
The south end of town is the working man’s land, a busy hub of gas stations and fast-food restaurants, pubs with neon beer signs (half of them missing important vowels), and mechanic garages, and trailer homes spread out on lots teeming with rusted bicycles and washing machine parts and plastic toys. Head to the east, and you’ll eventually hit Denver; head to the west, and you’ll find yourself in a maze of ski lifts and mountain bike trails and fishing holes and campgrounds.
And to the north, well, to the north is where the beauty and the brains of Cedar Valley reside. It’s where the main street becomes Main Street: a quaint row of shops, and Victorian houses, and modern municipal buildings all built to look vintage.
Head north and you hit money.
It was to the northwest part of town that we were headed, Sam Birdshead and the chief and myself. It was just before eight in the morning and we had an appointment with the Bellingtons.
After my lonely and melancholy night, I had been glad to see the chief and Sam. Then I remembered where we were headed, and a cold feeling crept into my belly and remained there, heavy as a rock. Even the Peanut had slowed her kicking and I wondered if she could pick up on my mood, if we shared some kind of sentient connection like that.
I wasn’t looking forward to our meeting with the mayor and his wife.
Chavez was driving. He took a left at an unmarked turnoff and we climbed a narrow dirt road. I caught glimpses, through the wall of pine trees that lined the road, of big sprawling estate homes with log sidings and brick chimneys and private driveways. In the mountains, money has always bought seclusion. At the angle we were climbing, I was going to expect nothing less than jaw-dropping views of the valley.
We drove with the windows down. The air was cool, with a hint of early morning moisture and a sweet, pure scent. Temperatures would reach the nineties by early afternoon and the air would be dry then, dry and hot and not so sweet smelling.
We rounded a tight curve and Chavez said, “This is it.”
I gasped as the house came into view. Cedar Valley’s wealthy tended to favor what I called the Swiss Miss style, big timber chalets built to look as though they sprung from the forest, homes that made use of natural resources and aimed to blend in, not stand out.
But this… this was an entirely different sort of animal. The Bellingtons had taste; I just wasn’t sure you’d call it good taste.
Solid sheets of glass hung suspended between concrete pillars, meeting one another at sharp right angles and varying heights, so that the house was one big, cold, alien geometrical sculpture. It was, in the words of Brody’s twelve-year-old nephew, butt ugly. I couldn’t imagine seeing it in the design stage and saying, with all seriousness, yes, let’s spend a few million dollars to build this.
I glanced at the chief, but he was preoccupied with wedging the Expedition into a narrow spot between a hill of gravel and a shed. Although the house itself seemed completed, it was obvious there was still work being done on the grounds; what looked like the beginnings of a greenhouse sat a few hundred yards beyond the main building.
From the backseat, Sam Birdshead tapped me on the shoulder and pointed up at the house.
“Look,” he said.
In the eastern sky, the sun had cleared the tree line and bathed the structure in an amber glow. A dozen rays of early morning light winked back at me, reflected from the enormous mirrorlike windows and glass walls. It was as though we were inside a prism.
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered, and blinked as a flash of white from within the wonderland caught my eye. From a second-story window, a pale face stared down at us. But the same sunlight that softened the harsh angles of the house blurred the edges of the face and I couldn’t make out any features.
After a few seconds, the person withdrew and a curtain fell down against the windowpane.
Satisfied with his parking job, Chavez turned off the engine and we climbed out. My heart rate increased with the exertion at the higher altitude and I took a moment to catch my breath, one palm on the edge of the warm hood of the SUV.
At the front of the house, Sam searched for the doorbell. Smooth walls flanked twin steel doors. There didn’t seem to be any button or bell so I shrugged, reached around him, and knocked sharply on the doors.
The chief let out a short cough and when I glanced at him, I was surprised to see he looked nervous. I gave him what I hoped was a reassuring smile.
I was nervous, too.
The door swung open and a tall, middle-aged woman in a simple, dark blue dress beckoned us in. She introduced herself as Hannah Watkins, the Bellingtons’ longtime nanny. She looked shell-shocked and I saw firsthand the pain of reliving Nicky’s death. Chavez placed a hand on her shoulder and murmured condolences. I was reminded again of the deep friendship the Chavez family shared with the Bellington family, and I told myself to tread carefully.
We followed Mrs. Watkins down a long hallway.
The interior of the house was as cold and sterile as the exterior. The walls and tile floors were shades of gray, the monotony broken only by large pieces of black and white leather furniture and dramatic canvases of modern art. The paintings were abstract images that followed no rhyme or reason, all swirls and waves and crisscross curves that left me with a vague sensation of nausea, as though I’d been on a boat and gotten seasick.
Mrs. Watkins left us in the living room, a plush, sunken space with a view of the valley below. I walked to the floor-to-ceiling window and peered out. The living room must have hung right over the mountainside, because when I looked down, I was standing at the edge of a cliff, looking at the tops of the same trees that minutes before, I had been driving below.
A fresh wave of nausea washed over me and I closed my eyes and rested my forehead against the cool glass.
“Angel, wonderful of you to come out.”
I opened my eyes and watched, in the window’s reflection, as Terence Bellington strode into the living room and embraced the chief in that half-hugging, half-handshaking way that men of power use with one another.
When I turned around, I saw clearly the deep shadows that darkened the skin under the mayor’s eyes. He was comfortable in his body, on the tall side, trim from years of competitive tennis. If you didn’t know he was sick, he would seem the picture of health. But the signs were there, if you looked closely. The cancer treatments had left him completely bald. His scalp was free of age marks and freckles and it shone as smooth as an egg, and his eyes were a dark olive green that made me think of wet army fatigues. Up close, he wasn’t trim; he was too thin, and his skin hung in places it shouldn’t.
The rumor in town was that Bellington saw Cedar Valley as a stepping-stone to the big leagues. He’d won the mayoral election with an unheard of 75 percent majority; with that kind of popularity, he might just be able to skip a term in the governor’s seat and go straight to Washington. And after that, the sky was the limit. He certainly didn’t have to stop at the Senate; there’s always a cabinet post, or an ambassadorship, or the golden egg itself: the White House.
If he lived.
His was a dodgy cancer; many people survived it. Many more did not. The last article I’d read on him, in People a month or so back, had quoted his doctors as saying he had a solid 30 to 40 percent chance of kicking this cancer in the teeth. Still, the word “dying” never entered his speeches, never appeared on his Web site.