CHAPTER TEN
“Crystal”
Monday afternoon.
Stella flew United to Denver, arriving at one-fifteen in the afternoon. Upon deplaning, she paused in the reception lounge to phone her stepmother, Crystal. Sam and Martha, Stella’s mother, had divorced twenty-four years ago. Martha had remarried an automobile salesman. Martha and her husband died in a fiery car wreck while driving through Tennessee fifteen years ago. The bitter irony preyed upon Stella’s mood.
“Hello, dear,” Crystal said. “I am so looking forward to your visit. I’m only sorry it took a tragedy for us to get together.”
Yeah. Right.
“I should be there in two hours, Crystal.”
“Wonderful. We’ll have dinner.”
Stella blanched at the prospect. Crystal could barely follow the directions on a package of frozen food. She was probably already hitting the Chard. Hitting it hard.
Stella called her boyfriend Gabe Winner. She got his voice mail.
“Hey Detonator. I just hit Denver and I’m about to beard the beast in her den. Give me a call when you get a chance.”
After retrieving her luggage from the carousel Stella took the shuttle to Avis, passing the dreadful blue demon horse whose upraised hooves and blazing red eyes greeted visitors to the airport. Did no one consider the message it sent? It was like an upside-down cross or something. It was called “Mustang.”
Stella rented a Mustang.. She took the E-470 tollway to Interstate 25 and headed north past familiar landmarks: Furniture Row, RV World, the motocross field, Johnson’s Corners. She turned west on Harmony, amazed at how the once barren landscape between the Interstate and College had filled with strip malls. They all subscribed to the same architectural school, semi-industrial support members, gently curving roofs, earth tones.
Harmony turned into 38E climbing the Front Range. Stella passed numerous cyclists, most clad in bespoke cycling clothes with streamlined helmets and camel backs, churning up the heart-breaking slope. As the road rose Stella could see all of Fort Collins stretching to the eastern plains.
She turned west at the top and then north on 23, a spectacular drive along the eastern edge of the seven mile long Horsetooth Reservoir. The res was filled to bursting for the first time in twelve years at this late date. The winter had deposited an epic snow pack and snow still clung to the mountains and canyons. It was eighty degrees outside and Stella kept the AC on. She turned left onto an impossibly steep concrete drive with a closed metal gate. A sign said, “PRIVATE DRIVE.”
Stella lowered the window and punched a code into the keypad. The metal gate rolled smoothly out of the way. Holding the Mustang in first gear Stella drove up the steep drive, took a hairpin right at the top and pulled into the sloping concrete driveway of her ancestral home, a freaky-deaky new age design that looked like a lumberyard trying to take flight with spectacular views of the reservoir and the city below. As a child, Stella would huddle in her bed in winter fearing that the wind would tear their house off the ridge and fling it at Kansas.
The garage lay in shadow as the sun lowered in the west. Stella retrieved her Gladstone and the rolling suitcase from the trunk and dragged them up the winding flagstone stair to the front door that lay beneath an arched cutout. The house was sheathed in weather-resistant recycled barn siding and was on four levels, stepping up to the ridge, then down again toward the lake. It had a metal roof.
Stella tried the door. It was unlocked. She pulled her suitcase into the large foyer with its Spanish tile floor and softly burbling fountain, a water nymph in a lily pad. Cooking smells permeated the house.
“Crystal! I’m here!” she sang out.
A moment later the staccato sound of high heels approached from the hallway. Crystal appeared looking slightly flushed and glassy-eyed. She came up to Stella, hugged her and kissed her on both cheeks. Stella smelled Chard.
“I’m so glad you’re here, dear. The radio and TV people have been hounding me non-stop.”
Stella doubted that was the case.
“How are you, Crystal?”
Crystal waved a hand. “Oh you know me. I’ll get through. Come down to the living room. Would you like a glass of wine?”
“Have you got anything stronger?”
“You know where the bar is, dear. Just leave your suitcase there. Your old room is waiting.”
Stella planned to do her duty by her stepmother before heading to Otto’s place in the morning. He had taken her there once, before he started building. Told her his plans, where he planned to get the raw materials, how he would put them together. A home craftsman’s dream. She hoped she could find it again.
There was no way to contact Otto. He had no telephone, no internet. Certainly no television or even a radio. Although he was conversant with all those tools he chose to live like a nineteenth century mountain man.
Stella hit the half bath off the kitchen, washed her hands and went through the kitchen to the dining area. There were three place settings on the oak dining table. She went down two steps to the sunken living room looking west at the sun, a blazing orange ball sinking toward the jagged rocks of Horsetooth Mountain laying down a flickering stripe on the surface of the deep lake.
Stella went to the wet bar hidden behind an Oriental screen. She poured herself several fingers of Macallan, dropped in three ice cubes from the stainless steel Maytag and joined Crystal on the Italian leather sofa facing the sunset.
Crystal held up her glass of wine. “Well here’s to the senator, kiddo, he was quite a guy.”
They clinked and drank. They suffered an awkward silence. Both spoke at once.
“Crystal,”
“Dear--”
Crystal giggled with nervousness. “You go ahead.”
“Did you speak to Sam recently? Did he seem troubled about anything? Did he give any hint that something was about to happen?”
“No. As you know, we spoke once a week. If anything, he seemed more exuberant, more, you should excuse the expression, full of himself than ever. I feel sorry for that doxie he was banging.”
“You don’t know that.”
Crystal sighed dramatically. “Oh dear. You’re his daughter. Of course you believe him.”
Stella sought a sharp retort then realized, what’s the use? Crystal could no more help being Crystal than she could stop being Stella.
“Are you really going with that movie star?” Crystal said.
“Gabe is a very dear friend.”
“When I go to King’s Super, the women bring me the tabloids. There was even a photo of you two in Us! I’d love to meet him, wouldn’t that be fun?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“I’ve been seeing somebody too and I took the liberty of asking him to join us for dinner.”
“You’re kidding,” Stella said.
“Why no, dear.”
The doorbell rang.
***