Crucifixion River Page 12

  “Wait a minute…you’re saying they ran a DNA test on a pinecone?”

  “They did, and it came up a match for those on the tree.”

  I paused for a moment, letting that sink in. “So what do you expect me to do with this? DNA is a conclusive test.”

  “Oh, there’s no doubt the cone in Tom Worthington’s truck came from the place where Darya Adams was found. No doubt it was his key ring near the body. But he insists he’s innocent, that she was alive when he left for home the morning of July thirty-first. Says he’d misplaced the key ring at the cabin during a previous visit. Says he doesn’t know how the cone came to be in the truck.”

  “I can see someone planting the keys, but it seems far-fetched that someone would be knowledgeable and clever enough to plant that pinecone.”

  “Not really. D’you watch any of those true-crime shows on TV?”

  “No. They resemble my real life too closely.”

  “Well, I watch them, and so do millions of others. On July fifteenth, just two weeks before Darya Adams’s murder, Case Closed did a segment in which a murder conviction hinged on DNA testing of seed pods.”

  “So someone could’ve gotten the idea of planting the pinecone from the show?”

  “Right.”

  “And you believe Tom Worthington’s being truthful with you?”

  “I do. My instincts don’t lie.”

  “That’s good enough for me.”

  “Then what I expect you to do, my friend, should be clear. Find out who left that key ring near the body, and the cone in Worthington’s truck. When you do, we’ll have our line of defense…Darya Adams’s real murderer.”

  As full dark settled in, I returned to my motel room and again looked over the files Mick had sent me. Background on Tom Worthington and Darya Adams. Background on friends and associates, scattered throughout Inyo and Fresno counties. Tomorrow I’d begin interviewing them, starting with those in the Big Pine area, and then visit Worthington at the county jail in Independence.

  Finding a lead to Darya Adams’s killer wasn’t going to be easy. Inyo is California’s third largest county-over 10,000 square miles, encompassing mountains, volcanic wasteland, timber, and desert. Its relatively small communities are scattered far and wide. In addition to its size, the county has a reputation for harboring a strange and often violent population. People vanish into the desert; bodies turn up in old mine shafts; bars are shot up by disgruntled customers. It’s not uncommon for planes carrying drugs from south of the border to land at isolated airstrips; desert rats and prospectors and cults with bizarre beliefs hole up in nearly inaccessible cañons. I’d have no shortage of potential suspects here.

  Too bad my visit to the bristlecone pine under which Darya Adams died hadn’t offered a blinding flash of inspiration.

  The red sun over the mountains told me the day was going to be hot. I dressed accordingly, in shorts and a tank top, with a loose-weave shirt for protection against the sun. After a big breakfast at a nearby café-best to fortify myself since I didn’t know when the next opportunity to eat would present itself-I set off for the offices of Ace Realty, a block off the main street.

  According to my background checks, Jeb Barkley, the agent who had handled the sale of the cabin near Chelsea last year, was an old friend of Tom Worthington’s, had played football with him at Fresno State. A big man with a round, balding head that looked too small for his body, he was at his desk when I arrived. The other desks were unoccupied and dust-covered; business must not be good.

  Barkley greeted me, brought coffee, then sat in his chair, leaning forward, hands clasped on the desktop, a frown furrowing his otherwise baby-smooth brow. “I sure hope you can do something to help Tom, Miz McCone,” he said.

  “I’m going to try. Did you see him on his last visit?”

  “Oh, no. He and Darya…they liked their privacy.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “Couple of months ago. He came alone, to go fishing, and, when he got to the cabin, he discovered he didn’t have his keys. So he called me and I drove out to let him in with the spare we keep on file here.”

  That would support Worthington’s claim that he’d misplaced the keys that had been found near Adams’s body. “How did he seem?”

  “Seem? Oh…” Barkley considered, the furrows in his brow deepening. “I’d say he was just Tom. Cheerful. Glad to be there. He asked if I’d like to go fishing with him, but I couldn’t get away.”

  “Mister Barkley, when Tom Worthington bought the cabin, was it clear to you that he was buying it for Darya Adams?”

  “From the beginning. I mean, they looked at a number of properties together. And the offer and final papers were drawn up in her name, as a single woman.”

  “As an old friend of Tom’s, how did you feel about the transaction?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Tom Worthington was cheating on his wife. Buying property for another woman. How did that make you feel?”

  He hesitated, looking down at his clasped hands. “Miz McCone,” he said after a moment, “Tom has had a lot of trouble with his wife. A lot of trouble with those kids of his, too. Darya was a nice woman, and I figured he deserved a little happiness in his life. It wasn’t as if he was just fooling around, either. They were serious about each other.”

  “Serious enough that he would leave his family for her?”

  “He said he was thinking of it.”

  “But so far he hadn’t taken any steps toward a divorce?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Let me ask you this, Mister Barkley. Are you convinced of Tom Worthington’s innocence?”

  “I am.”

  “Any ideas about who might have killed Darya Adams?”

  “I’ve given that some thought. There’re a lot of weird characters hanging out in the hills around Chelsea. Screamin’ Mike, for one.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Head case, kind of a hermit. Has a shack not too far from Tom and Darya’s cabin. Comes to town once a month when his disability check arrives at general delivery. Cashes it at Gilley’s Saloon, gets drunk, and then he starts screaming nonsense at the top of his voice. How he got his name.”

  “Is he dangerous to others?”

  “Not so far. Ed Gilley runs him off. He goes back to his shack and sobers up. But you never know.”

  I made a note about Screamin’ Mike. “Anyone else you can think of?”

  “There’s a cult up one of the cañons…Children of the Perpetual Life. Some of their members’ve had run-ins with the sheriff, and a couple of years ago one of their women disappeared, was never found. Maybe Ed Gilley could help you. Running a saloon, he’s hooked in with the local gossip.”

  I noted the cult’s and Gilley’s names. “Well, thank you, Mister Barkley,” I said. “When I spoke with your local sheriff’s deputy yesterday, he told me they have no objection to my examining the cabin, and I have Mister Worthington’s permission as well. Has he contacted you about giving me the keys?”

  “Yes. But why do you want to go there? If the sheriff’s department didn’t find anything…”

  “Even so, there may be something that will give me a lead.”

  He rose, then hesitated. “The cabin…it’s kind of hard to find. How about I drive you there, let you in myself?”

  At first I balked at the idea, but I sensed a reserve in Jeb Barkley; he might volunteer something useful in a less structured situation. “OK,” I said. “I’d appreciate it.”

  We went outside to a parking area behind the real-estate office, and Barkley unlocked the doors of a blue Subaru Outback whose left side was badly scratched. He saw me looking at it and said: “Damn’ kids. Keyed it while the wife and I were at the movies last week.”

  “I guess kids in small towns aren’t any different from those in big cities.” I slid into the passenger seat, wincing as the hot vinyl burned the back of my thighs.

  “Makes me glad I never
had any.” Barkley eased his big body behind the wheel.

  “You mentioned that Tom Worthington had trouble with his children.”

  “Yeah. Jeannie, the older one, got into drugs in high school. Tom had her in and out of schools for troubled teens, but it didn’t do any good. She’s out on her own now, only shows up when she wants money. The boy, Kent, has…I guess they call them anger-management problems. Did jail time for beating up his girlfriend. He’s in college now and doing well, but Tom says he’s still an angry young man.”

  I made a mental note to find out more about Worthington’s troubled offspring. “And his wife…what kind of trouble did he have with her?”

  “…I’m not sure I should be talking about that.”

  “You’ll save me from having to ask him.”

  “Well, OK, then. Betsy, that’s the wife’s name, she drinks. It’s gotten so that she doesn’t go out of the house, just drinks from morning till night. Wine after breakfast, the hard stuff in the afternoon, more wine during and after dinner. And then she passes out. They don’t have much of a life together.”

  “Do you think she knew about Darya Adams?”

  “Doubt the woman knows much about anything. I mean, when you’re in the bag all the time…”

  “I hear you.”

  Barkley drove north on the highway for about three miles, then looped off onto a secondary road that twisted and branched, twisted again, and began climbing into the hills between rocky outcroppings to which pines and sage and manzanita stubbornly clung. The road flattened briefly, and a scattering of buildings appeared-grocery store, propane firm, diner, and several small private homes.

  “Chelsea,” Barkley said, and turned into a side road.

  “Not much to it.”

  “Nope. Of course, it suited Tom and Darya. As I said, they liked their privacy.”

  “Why here, though? Why didn’t they buy a place nearer to Mammoth Lakes, where she had her shop?”

  “Darya wasn’t comfortable with that. She’s…she was a prominent businesswoman, active in civic organizations and charities. Until Tom could see his way clear to divorcing Betsy, Darya preferred to keep their relationship secret.”

  “Exactly why couldn’t he see his way clear?”

  Barkley glanced at me, lips twisting wryly. “Money…what else? Community-property state, lots of assets at stake. He was trying to figure out a way to minimize the divorce’s impact on his holdings. I’ve been advising him how to do that.”

  “You mean you’ve been advising him on a way to hide his assets.”

  Barkley shrugged, turned his eyes back on the road.

  After about a mile, he braked and made a sharp right turn into a graveled driveway. Clumps of dry grass stubbled the ground to either side, and ahead, tucked under tall pines and backing up to a rocky hill, stood the cabin. It was small, of stone and logs, with a wide porch running along the front and a dormer window peeking out from under its eaves. Barkley pulled the car up near the steps.

  I got out and climbed to the porch. It was refreshingly cool there. Barkley followed, taking out a set of keys, and opened the front door. The interior of the cabin was even cooler.

  The main floor was one big room: kitchen with a breakfast bar separating it from an informal dining area, sitting area centering around a stone fireplace. Rustic furnishings, the kind you expect in a vacation place. Stuffed animal heads on the walls; I could feel their glassy eyes watching me.

  “Worthington’s a hunter?” I asked.

  “What? No, the place came furnished.”

  A spiral staircase led up to a loft. I climbed it, found two bedrooms with a connecting bath. In the larger of the two, the bed was unmade, the blanket and sheets tangled. In the bathroom, towels were draped crookedly over their bars; a silk robe in a red-and-black floral pattern lay on the edge of the tub.

  I thought about the vacation place Hy and I owned on the Mendocino coast. At the end of every visit, we took time to tidy it, so we’d be greeted by a clean home when we returned. Tom Worthington claimed he had left the cabin on the morning of July thirty-first-apparently delegating the clean-up to Darya. Darya was due back at her shop in Mammoth Lakes on August first, and she probably would have wanted to go home and get settled in the night before, but there was no sign she’d been preparing to depart. I went down to the kitchen. Dirty dishes were piled in the sink, and a trash receptacle was overflowing. Barkley stood at the counter, his back to me, looking out a greenhouse window.

  “Poor hummingbirds,” he said. “Their feeder’s empty. I think I’ll fill it.” He reached into a cabinet next to the sink as I went back to the living area.

  There were two grass-cloth place mats and pewter salt and pepper shakers on the table, and the chairs had been neatly pushed in. The cushions on the sofa in front of the fireplace were rumpled, but I saw no books, magazines, or anything else of a personal nature. There were no knickknacks, photographs, or pictures on the wall.

  Who are you people? I thought, standing by the fireplace. Or, in Darya’s case, who were you? With the exception of the disarray upstairs and in the kitchen, the cabin might have been a set for a TV movie. I couldn’t begin to fathom how the woman had died unless I knew how she had lived. And-with due apologies to Glenn’s instincts-I couldn’t fully assess Tom Worthington’s guilt or innocence until I knew what kind of man he was.

  I decided to take a run up Highway 395 to Mammoth Lakes, in Mono County, right away. I’d speak to Adams’s employee there. Then, in the afternoon, I’d drive down to the Inyo County jail in Independence.

  When Jeb Barkley dropped me off at my rental car, I called the office and asked Mick to start background searches on Tom Worthington’s son and daughter. Then I phoned Darya Adams’s employee, Kathy Bledsoe, and made an appointment to meet her at Adams’s shop, High Desert Mementoes. As I drove northwest on 395, I reviewed what I knew of the woman.

  Kathy, according to Mick’s files, was an artist, in her midthirties, around Darya’s age. She’d enjoyed some success selling her landscapes through a gallery in Mammoth Lakes. For a number of years she’d been employed as a ski instructor at one of the area’s resorts, but had quit in order to devote more time to her painting; it must have been the right move, for a review of a showing of her works at the gallery last year predicted that her career was due to take off.

  Mammoth Lakes struck me as an upscale community for Mono County. Hy owned a ranch to the north, near Tufa Lake, that he’d inherited from his stepfather, and I was accustomed to the small towns and open countryside of that area. But here you had good motels (presumably equipped with all the amenities my operatives would find desirable), a variety of restaurants, and shopping centers. A lot of shopping centers. I located Darya Adams’s establishment in one of them, not far from 395. Its windows displayed a better class of merchandise than usually found in tourist shops: obsidian sculptures, lava rock, dried desert plants, coffee-table books. The sign on the door said the shop was closed, but when I tapped on the glass, a slender, dark-haired woman admitted me and identified herself as Bledsoe.

  When we were seated in a small office behind the selling floor, she said: “Truthfully, I don’t know what I can tell you that might help Tom. I mean, I was just here minding the store when Darya…Well, I just don’t know.”

  “Basically I’m after background. I take it you knew about Miz Adams’s relationship with Mister Worthington?”

  “Knew about it? I introduced them.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  “Tom was a friend of my former husband’s. They’d known each other forever, fished together. About two years ago, I had an opening at the Lakes Gallery…I’m a paint er, landscapes, mainly. Tom was up skiing and came to the show. Darya was there, too. They hit it off, and the rest, as they say, is history.” Her dark eyes clouded. “A good history, until last week.”

  “The relationship was harmonious, then?”

  “Very. Darya never mentioned so much as a harsh word.”
>
  “So she was open about it with you?”

  “Of course. Why d’you ask?”

  “I’ve heard she tried to keep it a secret.”

  “From people who had no business knowing, yes. But not from me.”

  “Was Tom planning to divorce his wife?”

  “Eventually.”

  “And Darya had no problem with the delay?”

  Kathy Bledsoe smiled faintly. “If anything, she was in favor of waiting. Darya was very independent… she’d had to be, since her husband…a marine…was killed on a military training exercise when she was twenty-three. Darya loved Tom, but I sensed she was having trouble getting used to the idea of giving up some of that independence. The cabin was a sort of compromise for them, a place where they could give living together a trial run.”

  “Have you ever been to the cabin?”

  “Only once. The boutique was closed because some repairs were being done, and Darya wanted to go down to the cabin because she had an appointment with a plumber who was going to install a new hot-water heater. But she didn’t want to be there alone, so she asked me along. I had a good time.” Bledsoe’s eyes filled with tears. “God, it’s so damn’ unfair!”

  I waited till she’d gotten herself under control, then asked: “Why didn’t she want to go alone? Because of the isolation?”

  “No. Her house here is fairly isolated, and she’d never had a problem with that.” Bledsoe frowned. “Now that you mention it, I remember thinking it strange at the time. She seemed on edge the whole time we were there.”

  Interesting. “Think about that weekend. Did anything unusual happen? Anyone drop by, or call, besides the plumber?”

  She thought, shook her head.

  “Did Miz Adams ever mention a man called Screamin’ Mike?”

  “I’m sure I’d remember if she had.”

  “Anyone else in the area?”

  “No.”

  “But you’re sure she was on edge that weekend.”

  “Yes, I’m sure. Darya was afraid of something or someone down there.”

  Tom Worthington was a handsome man. Even in the jail jumpsuit, his eyes shadowed and puffy from lack of sleep, his gray-frosted dark hair tousled, he would have turned female heads. We sat in a little visiting room, guard outside, and went over everything he’d told the sheriff’s people and Glenn Solomon. Then we went over it again. I found no inconsistencies.