A Change in Altitude (21 page)

“I can't believe someone so lovely is hidden away here in the mountains,” he said.

“You do know Danielle is already involved with someone else,” Lucille said.

“You mean Janelle?” He waved his hand as if brushing aside this bit of information. “I'm a very open-minded kind of guy. I don't mind sharing.”

Just when she thought he couldn't get any more loathsome. She cleared her throat. “I didn't mean to interrupt your lunch,” she said. “You look absorbed in your work.”

He nibbled a crust and rested an open palm on the stack of notebooks. “I'm just trying to work out on paper how best to present this story.”

“Which story is that?” Was he still stuck on his reality TV idea, or was he focused on the rescue drama?

“I'm thinking of tweaking the reality show idea to make it more of a modern-day gold-mining story,” he said. “I mean, we still have the hipsters, and we still put them together in rustic accommodations, only this time, they're hunting gold. There's enough old mines around here I figure we could probably even stage somebody being trapped in one. That would really pull in the viewers.”

“But if you stage something, then it's not really reality TV, is it?” Not to mention the liability involved in a stunt like that.

“Oh, they'd be really trapped. What I can't figure out is how to make the rescue really dramatic.”

“I'm not following.”

“I've been spending a lot of time up at the Lucky Lady, thinking it would be good to capture the rescue proceedings on film. But there's so little going on—a little digging, a lot of standing around.”

“What did you think would happen?” she asked.

“I don't know . . . dynamite. Grieving wives and wailing children. Fighting mistresses. You know—drama.”

She tried to hold back laughter, but in the end it was impossible.

“What's so funny?” he asked.

“I'm sorry,” she said between gasps of laughter. “It's just that I know the two men who are in the mine and neither of them is the type to induce that kind of reaction from the people in their lives.”

“So I gather. And hey, that must be hell, being trapped under there. I hope everything turns out all right. But some young dude with three chicks fighting over him would make for much better TV.”

She thought about reassuring him they'd try to do better next time, but suspected the sarcasm would be lost on him. And she had a more pressing matter to broach with him. “Otherwise, are you enjoying your stay in Eureka?” she asked, as Danielle delivered her lunch.

“Pretty much. The food is great and the bartenders at the Dirty Sally pour a mean drink. But my hostess at the B and B has let me know I've worn out my welcome. She needs my room for a pair of honeymooners or something.” He snorted. “As if anybody comes here for a honeymoon.”

“I believe the couple live here in town and plan to spend their wedding night at the inn,” Lucille said.

“Well, I told her not to get her panties in a knot. I plan on checking out in a couple of days. I thought I'd stick around and see if anything interesting happened when they pull those two old guys out of the mine.”

“So, will you head back to Hollywood?” Perhaps permanently?

“I'm going to have to meet with my producers. No offense, but I'm not sure Eureka is really what I'm looking for with this show. It's a little too, well, comfortable.”

A mouthful of BLT saved her from having to reply to that, though she was silently thanking God for this change of heart. Sad as she was to see the town lose the money a television show might have brought in, she couldn't help thinking they'd be better off without a Hollywood invasion.

Janelle came to take Amesbury's empty dishes and leave his check. “Any news from the mine?” she asked Lucille.

“The last I heard they'd pinpointed the location where they think Bob and Gerald are trapped,” she said. “But the rock is still too thick to communicate.”

“We're praying they're all right,” Janelle said.

“Me too.”

“I'm headed up there this afternoon.” Amesbury slid out of the booth and gathered his notebooks. “Who knows? Maybe we'll all get lucky.”

“He was hoping for a little more drama,” Lucille explained when he was gone.

“He might get plenty,” Janelle said. “After being trapped together for three days, I figure Bob and Gerald are either going to be best buddies, or they're going to come out brawling.”

“If they haven't already done each other in.” A customer entered and Janelle went to greet him while Lucille finished her meal. As long as she was praying for Bob and, yes, Gerald's safety, was it too much to ask for a break from any more town crises? She'd really love a truly relaxing summer for a change.

 

Olivia spent the morning painting a new series of T-shirts, since the shops in town were almost sold out of the others. Only yesterday, she'd finished a mural in the upstairs parlor of Barb's B and B, and the historical society wanted to talk to her about doing some restoration work at a building they were converting to a museum. If this kept up, she'd have to quit her job at the Dirty Sally. And D. J.'s job was going well. He'd transitioned from driving a snowplow this winter to running heavy equipment for the county this summer, hauling gravel and road base and, for the past few days anyway, helping with the rescue operation at the Lucky Lady. It was a good time to cut back a little.

She checked the clock and was surprised to find it was almost noon. Lucas and Alina were supposed to be out at the house, painting the shed. Not that she didn't trust her son, but it wouldn't hurt to check on those two.

Two bikes leaned against the railing of the front porch, and a check of the backyard revealed one freshly painted shed and two teenagers squirting each other with the water hose as they cleaned up their painting supplies. “The shed looks great,” she called, and Lucas shut off the water.

“Hi, Mom,” he said.

“Hi, Mrs. Theriot.”

“Hi, Alina.” The girl looked a little pale, but not bad, considering she'd just found out her brother was missing. Olivia had no idea if Alina and her brother were close, but still, that had to hurt.

“We know what's been taking your earrings and spoons and stuff,” Lucas said.

“Please don't tell me it's a ghost.” She followed the two kids up the back steps and into the kitchen.

“No, not a ghost. A raccoon.”

“A raccoon?” She stared at her son and realized she had to look up. He was growing up too fast. “Are you sure?”

“We put flour all over the floor and it left tracks. Then we followed the tracks to the shed, where it's been hiding everything. We have it all, see?” He took an empty paint can from the counter and showed her the collection of missing items.

She plucked out the aspen leaf key fob and stared at it. No harm done. “But how is a raccoon getting into the house?” she asked.

“The sash on the kitchen window is really loose.” He ran to the window and demonstrated how easy it was to raise it. “I think the raccoon just pushes it up and climbs in.”

“I'll ask D. J. to nail it shut.” Nothing against raccoons, but they didn't belong in her kitchen. She pocketed the key fob. “I think you two detectives deserve lunch out. My treat.”

“That's not the only mystery we solved today,” Lucas said.

“Well,
maybe
solved,” Alina said. “We don't know for sure.” She glanced at Olivia. “We found a bunch of letters stuffed into an evening purse in the shed. I sneaked a peak at the address and the writing's awfully hard to read, but I think they might be written to Adelaide McCutcheon.”

“You peeked?” Lucas said. “That's cheating.”

“I'm not certain the letters are hers,” Alina said. “I just looked for a second while you were in the bathroom earlier.”

“If they're her letters, maybe they'll help us figure out what happened to her,” Lucas said.

“Can I see?” Olivia asked.

“We'll show you at lunch, Mom.” Lucas slung one arm around her shoulder. “I'm starved.”

A
s usual these days, the Last Dollar was crammed with tourists, media sent to cover the mine rescue and hungry locals. Olivia froze in the doorway, stomach heaving.

“Are you okay?” Danielle asked when she came to greet them. “You look a little pale.”

“I'm sorry.” Olivia covered her nose with her hand. The last thing she wanted was to insult Danielle or Janelle, but she couldn't help her reaction. “What is that smell?”

Danielle made a face. “Liver and onions. We sell out every time we make it, even though I know it smells strong.” She touched Olivia's hand. “I can seat you by the front window—there's a nice breeze coming in and you'll hardly smell it there.”

She nodded. “Okay. And bring me a Sprite.”

“Are you coming down with something?” Lucas looked worried. “Maybe you've been working too hard.”

“I'm fine.” She forced a smile and took the chair closest to the open window. More than fine, really. “Let's take a look at these letters you found.”

Alina opened the tarnished evening purse and drew out a half-inch-thick bundle of letters. “Look, they have five-cent stamps.” Lucas pointed to the canceled postage.

“You would notice the stamps.” Alina slid a letter from one of the envelopes. “The writing is so loopy and small, I don't know if we can read it.”

Danielle arrived with Olivia's soft drink. “What do you have there?” she asked.

“Some old letters we found,” Alina said. “But we need a magnifying glass to read them.”

“I think we have one of those up by the register. I'll check. What can I get y'all to drink?”

They ordered sodas and burgers—veggie for Alina—then leaned forward to study the spidery handwriting. “I think it's a love letter,” Alina said. “See.” She pointed to the words above the signature at the bottom of the missive. “I'm pretty sure that says ‘all my love.' ”

“Maybe she was writing her mother. Or her sister,” Olivia said.

“But why save letters to your mother?” Alina asked. “I mean, I guess you could. But people usually save love letters, don't they?”

“I suppose some people do.” Olivia had once burned all the letters D. J. had sent her from Iraq. The memory pained her, but she couldn't undo the past. Maybe the two of them were stronger because of that time apart; she hoped so. She sipped the soda, the bubbles settling her stomach, and watched out the window as a news van rolled slowly down the street.

“Have you heard anything from D. J.?” Lucas asked. “How's the rescue work coming?”

“Nothing new to report,” she said. “I guess it's pretty slow going.” She still couldn't believe Bob was trapped in the mine. The stubborn old coot had better not die on her. Who would she find to argue with at the Dirty Sally?

“I hope Bob's okay,” Lucas said. “He was grouchy sometimes, but I kind of like him.”

“You have a thing for grouchy old people, don't you?” she teased. He was one of the few people who got along with Cassie Wynock, though she'd never understand what he saw in the old bat.

“They usually have interesting stories.” He pushed his glasses up on his nose.

“I'll bet these letters have an interesting story,” Alina said. She frowned at the small pile of papers. “I just wish they weren't so hard to read. Why would anybody write that small?”

“Maybe she was trying to save paper,” Lucas said.

“Maybe she was keeping a secret and didn't want anyone to know what she was writing,” Alina said.

“Here are your drinks.” Danielle delivered the sodas. “And a magnifying glass.” She slipped the glass from her pocket and handed it to Lucas. “Your food will be out soon.”

Lucas studied the magnifying glass while Alina spread the letter open on the table between them. The two put their heads together.
“My darling Andrew,”
Lucas read.

“Definitely a love letter,” Alina said. “What did I tell you?”

“The hours apart from you stretch like years,”
Lucas continued.
“I don't know how I can bear it much longer.”
He wrinkled his nose. “This is going to get mushy, isn't it?”

“Is Andrew her husband?” Olivia asked.

“No, his name was Cecil,” Lucas said.

“Uh-huh.” Alina leaned closer to the letter. “So who is Andrew?”

“Mr. McCutcheon's business takes him to Denver next week,”
Lucas read.
“I plan to take the train to Grand Junction to do some shopping.”

“She's letting Andrew know he can meet her there,” Alina said.

“How do you know that?” Lucas asked. “She said she was going shopping.”

“She couldn't come right out and say they should meet up—in case someone else found the letter and read it,” Alina said. “But I'm sure that's what she means.”

Lucas looked at his mother. “What do you think?”

“I think Alina could be right. What else does the letter say?”

He scanned the rest of the page. “Nothing interesting. She asks him when he thinks he will be transferred to Montrose, and if he's found a house there yet.”

Both young people looked to Olivia. “What do you think it means?” Alina asked the question this time.

“I don't know. Maybe they were planning to run away together.”

“We can't find any mention of her in Eureka after 1966, so maybe they did run away,” Alina said.

“Or maybe her husband found out and murdered her,” Lucas said.

“Maybe you'll never know,” Olivia said.

“I'll bet Miss Wynock can help us,” Lucas said. “She knows how to research census records and stuff, for genealogy research. We could look for Adelaide and see if she and this Andrew guy ended up together.”

“But we don't know Andrew's last name,” Alina pointed out. “There's no return address on these letters.”

“But we know her name and we can start with that,” Lucas said. “I don't know why I didn't think of it before. Don't you think it's worth a shot?”

“I guess so.” She shrugged. “It's better than sitting around all summer anyway.”

Olivia wanted to reach over and brush the girl's hair out of her eyes, to pat her on the shoulder and offer sympathy. The poor kid had lost so much—her home and her brother and father. Olivia wanted to reassure her that life would get better—it almost always did. But when you were only thirteen it was hard to look very far down the road. When Olivia had been Alina's age she'd pretty much hated everyone—including herself. When she looked back at how awful she'd felt and behaved then, she was amazed she'd come so far.

She settled for tapping the back of Alina's hand. “If you start feeling too bad, remember you've got friends and people who love you,” she said. “That helps.”

Alina's eyes sparkled, but she held back the tears and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, it does.” She looked at the packet of letters. “Maybe that's all Adelaide wanted—to go somewhere she was loved.”

“I think that's pretty much what we all want,” Olivia said. What she'd been lucky enough to find. She hoped Alina had, too, even if she didn't quite believe it yet.

 

Worry over Adan ate at Sharon's gut and robbed her of sleep, but work was a welcome distraction. Cassie did not hover or try to make things better; her self-centeredness became a virtue as she trained Sharon to make reports and shelve volumes and in any other job Cassie herself found boring.

Alina found solace in her friends, especially Lucas. She'd shown her mother the packet of letters from the mysterious Andrew to Adelaide McCutcheon, and this morning the two friends had shown up at the library to pester Cassie into helping them learn more about the ghost woman. This left Sharon to man the front desk, though in the afternoon stillness she could clearly hear the conversation in Cassie's office.

“We need you to show us how to look up information in the census records,” Lucas said. “So we can find out if Adelaide was living in another city in 1966, since we know she wasn't in Eureka.”

“We should have thought of that before.” Cassie sat at the computer and rubbed her hands together, as if she were preparing to drive nails or saw wood or some other manual labor. “Let me take you to the database; then it's a simple matter to search for people with that last name.”

“What if there is more than one person with that name?” Alina asked.

“We know how old she is. We can cross-reference that.” The keyboard clicked as she typed, the only sound in the building, where only a handful of patrons browsed the shelves, read, or worked on laptops. Sharon loved that people respected the silence of this place; that the library could still be a sanctuary from chaos.

“I'm not finding anything,” Cassie said. “What about the man? What was his name?”

“All we have is Andrew,” Lucas said. “No last name.”

“Do the letters give us any clue what he did for a living or how they met?” Cassie asked. “That might help us.”

Alina, who had taken the letters home and read them over and over, like an engrossing novel, said, “He was a pharmacist. They might have met in Eureka, but I'm not sure.”

“Let's try the 1960 census for Eureka. We know Adelaide McCutcheon was here then. That was the year the Women's Society planted lilac bushes all over town, including those in front of this very library.” She typed for several seconds.

“Wow,” Alina said after a moment. “I never realized so many people lived in Eureka.”

“More people lived here then than do now,” Cassie said. “At one time Eureka was one of the key communities in the Rockies—rich with gold and bustling with people.”

“Look! There he is,” Lucas said. “Andrew Reason. Occupation: pharmacist.”

“Look for his name in Grand Junction,” Alina said. “She mentions that town.”

A few minutes of more furious typing passed. “Here he is,” Cassie said. “Andrew Reason. Pharmacist. His marital status is listed as single.”

“Try 1970,” Alina said.

More typing. “He isn't here then.”

“What about Montrose?” Lucas asked. “She mentions him moving there in one of the letters.”

“Of course,” Alina said. “I forgot.”

“Here he is,” Cassie said. “Andrew Reason. And his wife, Adelaide.”

“Wow,” Alina said. “I can't believe we found them.”

“So she did leave her husband and run away with Andrew?” Lucas asked.

“It looks that way,” Cassie said.

“Then why the rumors that he killed her?” Alina asked.

“Divorce was a huge scandal,” Cassie said. “He probably preferred for people to think she'd died.”

No one had reacted negatively at all when Sharon had divorced Joe. Was it a good or bad thing to accept that two people who'd started out loving each other weren't compatible anymore? She was grateful she hadn't had to stay trapped in her marriage, but the idea that maybe “ 'til death do us part” didn't exist anymore saddened her.

Boot heels on the polished hardwood floor signaled a new arrival. Sharon stood up straighter, ready to assist this new patron. But this wasn't a customer needing her help, but Josh. And a second uniformed man followed him. “Hello, Sharon.” Josh removed his Stetson and nodded to his companion. “This is Parker Roberts, from the Vermont State Police.”

Sharon's heart pounded, and she gripped the edge of the counter for support.

“What do you two want?” Cassie spoke from over her shoulder, in the stern, schoolteacher's voice she used with disruptive teens and trouble-making tourists.

“We need to speak to Sharon for a few minutes,” Josh said. “Maybe we could use one of the meeting rooms.”

“She's working. You should come back later,” Cassie said.

“I'm only here for a short time,” Officer Roberts said. “It would be a great help if I could talk to her now. I won't take too much of her time.”

Whether it was his courtly manner or his badge that won Cassie over, Sharon couldn't tell, but she pointed him toward one of the meeting rooms at the back. “You can talk in there.”

“Mom?” Alina was half out of her chair, both the tone of her voice and her expression telegraphing her worry.

“It's okay, hon. You stay out here with Lucas.” Determined to remain composed, she followed Officer Roberts and Josh to the meeting room.

Josh switched on the light and motioned for Sharon to sit at the conference table. “Have you found my son?” Sharon asked, before Roberts could say anything.

“No, we have not,” Roberts said. “But we don't have any indication that he's come to any harm. We're hoping he's hiding or staying with friends and that we'll locate him soon.”

Not the answer she'd wanted to hear, but the news could have been so much worse. “What can I do for you?” she asked.

Roberts took a small notebook from his pocket. “What was your relationship with Wilson Anderson?” he asked.

“He and my ex-husband, Joe, were friends. He lived on the same property, right next door to us, for the past twelve years.”

“Then you didn't know that he had a criminal record?”

“No.” The news didn't surprise her either. “My husband wanted to get away from the mainstream world and live on his own because he was paranoid and worried about the future. But I wasn't naïve enough to believe everyone wanted to live without connections to society for the same reasons. Wilson never talked about his past, and I wouldn't have asked. But he probably wasn't the first person we'd associated with who had a record. What did he do?”

“I don't think that's really pertinent,” Roberts said.

“He was a teacher. A girls' soccer coach. He was convicted of molesting several of his players.” Josh returned Roberts' scowl. “She has a young daughter. She has a right to know.”