Cyanide Wells Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2003 by Pronzini-Muller Family Trust

  All rights reserved.

  Mysterious Press books are published by Warner Books, Inc., Hachette Book Group, 237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017.

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  An AOL Time Warner Company

  The Mysterious Press name and logo are registered trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  First eBook Edition: July 2003

  ISBN: 978-0-446-55053-6

  Contents

  Matthew Lindstrom

  Carly McGuire

  Matthew Lindstrom

  Carly McGuire

  Matthew Lindstrom

  Carly McGuire

  Matthew Lindstrom

  Carly McGuire

  Matthew Lindstrom

  Carly McGuire

  Matthew Lindstrom

  Carly McGuire

  SHARON MCCONE MYSTERIES BY MARCIA MULLER

  DEAD MIDNIGHT

  LISTEN TO THE SILENCE

  A WALK THROUGH THE FIRE

  WHILE OTHER PEOPLE SLEEP

  BOTH ENDS OF THE NIGHT

  THE BROKEN PROMISE LAND

  A WILD AND LONELY PLACE

  TILL THE BUTCHERS CUT HIM DOWN

  WOLF IN THE SHADOWS

  PENNIES ON A DEAD WOMAN’S EYES

  WHERE ECHOES LIVE

  TROPHIES AND DEAD THINGS

  THE SHAPE OF DREAD

  THERE’S SOMETHING IN A SUNDAY

  EYE OF THE STORM

  THERE’S NOTHING TO BE AFRAID OF DOUBLE (with Bill Pronzini)

  LEAVE A MESSAGE FOR WILLIE

  GAMES TO KEEP THE DARK AWAY

  THE CHESHIRE CAT’S EYE

  ASK THE CARDS A QUESTION

  EDWIN OF THE IRON SHOES

  NONSERIES

  POINT DECEPTION

  For Robin and John Reese—members in good standing of the Top-of-the-Hill Gang

  Thanks to:

  Barbara Bibel, for aid in researching;

  Victoria Brouillette, my Minnesota connection;

  Joe Chernicoff, for information on antique firearms;

  Charlie Lucke and John Pearson, for their photographic expertise;

  And Bill Pronzini, who makes me work much too hard!

  Saugatuck, Minnesota

  Thursday, July 28, 1988

  Matthew Lindstrom?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Sheriff Cliff Brandt of Sweetwater County, Wyoming. Are you married to a Gwen Lindstrom?”

  “… Yes, I am.”

  “And she drives a white Toyota Tercel, this year’s model, Minnesota license number four-four-three-B-C-Y?”

  “That’s correct. What’s this about, Sheriff?”

  “Her car was found in my jurisdiction, parked by the side of County Road Eleven, eight miles from Reliance. That’s a farming community north of Interstate Eighty. Nothing wrong with the vehicle, but there were bloodstains on the dash and other signs consistent with a struggle. A purse containing her identification and credit cards was on the passenger’s seat.”

  “And Gwen? What about Gwen?”

  “No sign of her. Tell me, Mr. Lindstrom, does she know anyone in Reliance? Or Sweetwater County?”

  “As far as I know, she’s never been to Wyoming.”

  “When did you last see Mrs. Lindstrom?”

  “Two weeks ago, on the fourteenth.”

  “Two weeks ago? And you’ve got no idea where she’s been since then?”

  “We’re separated. Have filed for divorce. We met on the fourteenth to go over the property settlement.”

  “I see. Messy divorce?”

  “Amicable. We have no children and very little in the way of assets.”

  “There was a student ID from Saugatuck College in your wife’s purse.”

  “Yes, she’s a senior in the journalism department.”

  “And what do you do, Mr. Lindstrom?”

  “I teach photography there, operate a small studio on the side. Mostly wedding portraits, that sort of—Why are you asking me these questions? And what are you doing to find Gwen?”

  “Just familiarizing myself with the situation. I take it you can account for your whereabouts during the past two weeks?”

  “Of course I can! I was here in Saugatuck, teaching summer courses. Now, what are you doing to find—”

  “Don’t get all exercised, Mr. Lindstrom. My last question was strictly routine. As for finding your wife, we plan to circularize her photograph, but we’re hoping you can provide a better likeness than the one on her driver’s license.”

  “I’ll overnight several to you. If you find her, will you please ask her to call me? Or if…”

  “If Mr. Lindstrom?”

  “Well, if something’s happened to her…”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll be in touch.”

  Thousand Springs, Nevada

  Thursday, July 28, 1988

  That’s a bad place to hitchhike. Somebody could pick you off coming around the curve. Where’re you headed?”

  “West. Where’re you going?”

  “All the way to Soledad County, California.”

  “Good a place as any, I guess. If you’d like some company…”

  “Hop in.”

  “Thanks, I really appreciate it. I was starting to get spooked, all alone here.”

  “Why were you alone, anyway?”

  “My last ride dropped me off. I kind of…had trouble with him.”

  “That’ll happen. Hitching’s not the safest way for a woman to travel.”

  “I know, but it’s the only way I’ve got.”

  “How long have you been on the road?”

  “A couple of days.”

  “Coming from where?”

  “East. What’s this place—Soledad County—like?”

  “Pretty. Coast, forest, foothills, small towns.”

  “Lots of people live there?”

  “No. We’re one of the most sparsely populated in the upper half of the state. Isolated, too; it’s a four-hour drive to San Francisco, even longer to Sacramento because of bad roads.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  “Well, you’ve got to like the quiet life, and I do. I live in the country, near a little town called Cyanide Wells.”

  “So you think Soledad County is really a good place to live?”

  “If you want, I’ll sing its praises all the way there. By the way, my name’s Carly McGuire.”

  “Mine’s Ardis Coleman.”

  Port Regis, British Columbia

  Sunday, April 21, 2002

  Matthew Lindstrom?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m calling about your wife.”

  “I have no wife.”

  “Oh, yes, you do. Gwen Lindstrom—”

  “My wife disappeared fourteen years ago. Our divorce went through shortly after that.”

  “I know, Mr. Lindstrom. And I know about your legal and professional difficulties surrounding the situation. They must have been very painful. Put an end to your life as you’d known it, didn’t they?”

  “Who is this?”

  “A friend. My identity’s not important. What’s important is that your wife is very much alive. And very cognizant of what she put you through when she disappeared.”

  “Listen, whoever you are—”

  “Aren’t you curious? I’m sure I would be if I were you.”

  “All right, I’ll go along with your game. Where is Gwen?”

  “Soledad County, California. Has liv
ed there for the past fourteen years near a place called Cyanide Wells, under the name of Ardis Coleman.”

  “Ardis Coleman? My God, that was Gwen’s mother’s maiden name.”

  “Well, there you go. Let me ask you this, Mr. Lindstrom: Will revenge taste good served up cold, after the passage of all those years?”

  “Revenge?”

  “Surely you must feel some impulse in that direction, considering…”

  “What the hell are you trying to do to me? Who are you?”

  “As I said, a friend.”

  “I don’t believe a word of this!”

  “Then I suggest you check it out, Mr. Lindstrom. Check it out.”

  Cyanide Wells, California

  Sunday, April 21, 2002

  Hey, Ard, you’re awfully quiet. Something wrong?”

  “Nothing that I can pin down, but I feel…I didn’t sleep well last night. Bad dreams, the kind you can’t remember afterwards, but their aura lingers like a hangover.”

  “Maybe it’s your book. It can’t be easy reliving that time. And from what I’ve read, it’s a much more personal account than what you wrote for the paper.”

  “It is, but that’s how I want it, Carly. Besides, I don’t think this is about the book—at least not completely.”

  “What, then?”

  “Matt, maybe.”

  “After all these years?”

  “I’ve been thinking of him a lot lately. Wondering…”

  “And feeling guilty, I suppose.”

  “In a way. When I found out they suspected him of murdering me, I should’ve come forward.”

  “You found out way after the fact. And when you did try to contact him, he was gone, no forwarding.”

  “I know, but instead of trying to find out where he’d gone, I just felt relieved. I didn’t want to hurt him any more than I already had.”

  “So he’s better off.”

  “No, he’d’ve been better off if I’d been honest from the first. I could’ve—”

  “As my aunt Nan used to say, ‘Coulda’s, woulda’s, and shoulda’s don’t amount to a hill of beans.’”

  “I guess. But I’m concerned for Natalie. My anxiety’s obvious, and it upsets her.”

  “She hasn’t said anything about it to me.”

  “You know her; she’s a child who holds everything inside. Carly, d’you think I’m being irrational?”

  “…You’re stressed. You’ll get over it once the book is done.”

  “Will I? Sometimes I think that given all the terrible things I’ve done, I don’t deserve another good night’s sleep in this lifetime.”

  Matthew Lindstrom

  Port Regis, British Columbia

  Wednesday, April 24, 2002

  Matt Lindstrom watched the tourists struggle along the pier, laden with extra jackets, blankets, tote bags, and coolers. City people, up from California on holiday and unaccustomed to the chill temperatures and pervasive damp that characterized the northern tip of Vancouver Island at this time of year. Americans were also unaccustomed to going anywhere without a considerable collection of unnecessary possessions.

  Smiling ruefully, he turned around, his gaze rising to the pine-covered slopes across the small harbor. When had he stopped identifying with the few U.S. citizens who ventured this far up-island? At first he hadn’t been conscious of his waning allegiance; it had simply crept up on him until one day he was no longer one of them, yet not a Canadian either. Stuck somewhere in between, perhaps permanently, and in an odd way his otherness pleased him. No, not pleased so much as contented him, and he’d remained contented until the past Sunday evening. Since then he’d felt only discontent, and a sense of unfinished business.

  “Matt?” His deckhand, Johnny Crowe, stood by the transom of the Queen Charlotte, Matt’s thirty-six-foot excursion trawler. A full-blooded Kootenay, Johnny was a recent transplant from the Columbia River Valley. He asked, “You want me to button her up?”

  “Yeah, thanks.” Matt gave him a half-salute and started along the dock, past fishing boats in their slips. The tourists he’d taken out for the morning’s charter were bunched around their giant Ford Expedition, trying to fit their gear among the suitcases piled in its rear compartment. They’d spent the night at Port Regis Hotel at the foot of the pier—an establishment whose accommodations one guidebook had described as “spartan but clean,” and from the grumblings he’d overheard, he gathered that spartan was not their first, or even second, preference.

  When he reached the end of the pier, he gave the tourists a wide berth and a curt nod and headed for the hotel. It was of weathered clapboard, once white but now gone to gray, and not at all imposing, with three entrances off its covered front porch: restaurant, lobby, and bar. Matt pushed through the latter into an amber-lighted room with beer signs and animal heads on the walls and rickety, unmatched tables and chairs arranged haphazardly across the warped wooden floor. The room was empty now, but a few hours before, it would have been filled with fishermen returning at what was the end of their working day.

  “Hey, Millie,” Matt called to the woman behind the bar.

  “Hey, yourself.” Millie Bertram was a frizzy-haired blonde on the far side of fifty, dressed in denim coveralls over a tie-dyed shirt. The shirt and her long beaded earrings revealed her as one who had never quite made a clean break with the sixties. When Matt moved to Port Regis ten years ago, Millie and her husband, Jed, had co-owned and operated the hotel. Two years later Jed, who fancied himself a bass player of immense if unrecognized talent, ran off with a singer from Vancouver, never to be seen again. Millie became sole proprietor of the hotel, and if the prices had gone up, so had the quality of food and service.

  Now she placed a mug of coffee in front of Matt. “Early charter?”

  “Only charter. Those guests of yours from San Jose.”

  “Ah, yes, they mentioned something about a ‘boat ride.’ ” The set of Millie’s mouth indicated she was glad to have seen the last of them. “Fishing?”

  “Not their thing. Bloody Marys, except for one woman who drank mimosas. Point-and-shoot cameras and a desire to see whales.”

  “On a day when there’s not a whale in sight.”

  “I pointed out two.” Matt sipped coffee, burned his tongue, and grimaced.

  “Let me guess,” Millie said. “Bull and Bear Rocks.”

  “You got it.”

  “You’re a con man, Lindstrom.”

  “So they’re leaving happy and will tell all their friends to look me up.”

  Millie went to the coffee urn, poured herself some, and leaned against the backbar, looking pensive. Probably contemplating the summer months that would bring more tourists with a desire for whales, who would become drunk in her bar, look askance at her chef’s plain cooking, and leave her spartan guestrooms in a shambles.

  Matt toyed with the ceramic container that held packets of sugar and artificial sweetener. “Mil, you’re from California, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know where Soledad County is?”

  She closed her eyes, apparently conjuring a map. “Between Mendocino and Humboldt Counties, on the coast. Extends east beyond the edge of the Eel River National Forest.”

  “You ever hear of a place called Cyanide Wells?”

  “Sure. Back when Jed-the-asshole and I were into our environmental phase, we protested at Talbot’s Mills. Lumber town. Company town. Identical little houses, except for the mansions the thieving barons built on the labor of the loggers and mill-workers they exploited.”

  Matt made motions as if he were playing a violin.

  “Okay,” Millie said, “so I’m still talking the talk even though I’m not walking the walk. Anyway, Cyanide Wells is maybe thirty miles southeast of there. Former gold-mining camp. Wide spot in the road back in the seventies, but I guess it’s grown some by now. I do know it’s got one hell of a newspaper, the Soledad Spectrum. Owned and edited by a woman, Carly McGuire. About three years ago they wo
n the Pulitzer Prize for a series on the murders of a gay couple near there. How come you asked?”

  “I just found out that somebody I used to know is living near Cyanide Wells.”

  “Somebody?” Now Millie’s tone turned sly. She was, Matt knew, frustrated and puzzled by his lack of interest in a long-term relationship with any of the women she repeatedly shoved into his path.

  “Somebody,” he said in a tone that precluded further discussion.

  Somebody who, fourteen years ago, had put an end to his life as he’d known it.

  Matt sat on the deck of his cabin, looking out at the humped mass of Bear Rock, which was backlit by the setting sun. It did look like a whale, and he was glad he’d given the tourists their photo op this morning. Clouds were now gathering on the horizon, bleaching the sun’s brilliant colors, and a cold breeze swayed the three tall pines that over the past ten years he’d watched grow from saplings. Feeling the chill, he got up and took his bottle of beer inside.

  The cabin was snug: one room with a sleeping alcove on the far wall, and a stone fireplace and galley kitchen facing each other on the side walls. A picture window and glass door overlooked the sea. The small shingled building had been in bad shape when he’d first seen it, so he’d gotten it cheap, leaving enough of the money from the sale of the Saugatuck house for the down payment on the Queen Charlotte. During two years of drifting about, his life in ruins, he’d taken what odd jobs he found and scarcely touched the money.

  He lighted the fire he’d earlier laid on the hearth, sat down, and watched the flames build. Dusk fell, then darkness, and he nursed his warmish beer without turning on a lamp.

  Fourteen years. A way of life lost. A home gone. A career destroyed.

  Then, finally, he’d found Port Regis and this cabin and the Queen Charlotte, and he’d created a new way of life, built another home and career. True, he was not the man he’d intended to be at thirty-nine, and this was not the life he’d expected to lead. But it was a life he’d handcrafted out of ruin and chaos. If it was as spartan as one of Millie’s guestrooms, at least it was also clean. If his friends were little more than good acquaintances, so much the better; he’d learned the small worth of friendship those last two years in Minnesota. He was content here—or had been, until a late-night anonymous phone call destroyed all possibility of contentment…