Sundown on Top of the World: A Hunter Rayne Highway Mystery (28 page)

“Everybody gets old. Why should she expect to be different?”

Goldie looked out her window. They were on the Top of the World Highway, heading for Dawson City for the second time in just three days. The expansive view in every direction was no longer new, but seeing the sun drop behind the hills just after midnight and watching its progress just under the horizon – its fire flowing like molten gold along the hilltops under the twilight sky – was. It truly felt like they were travelling along the top of the planet.

“You get old and then you die,” Mark said with a shrug, as if it were something trivial.

Somehow Mark’s comment seemed unkind, and she wanted to argue against it. “That’s not very nice,” was all she said.

He shrugged again. “It’s not my fault that life’s a bitch.”

She let it go. They were both tired, and she was feeling stressed. About Gran. About maybe finding her mother. Even about her relationship – or lack of one, she didn’t really know where she stood – with Mark. A twilight gloom settled into the cab of the truck. Goldie told herself things weren’t that bad. Gran would be okay. She was closer to finding her mother than she’d ever been. Mark cared enough for her to drive her to Dawson. It was no good. Her inborn optimism still eluded her.

But as the sun stopped its teasing and yellow light burst over the hills and into the truck, Mark reached over and squeezed her hand. She turned to him, and couldn’t help but smile at his broad, ingenuous grin.

“Golden,” he said, squeezing her hand again. “Just like you.”

They arrived in Dawson just after three in the morning. In spite of the hour, there were several people wandering up and down Front Street, probably tourists enjoying the novelty of twenty-four hours of natural light. Mark eased the big pickup to a stop beside a group of teenagers to ask for directions to the clinic. A Kurt Cobain look-alike said he’d been there so he knew where it was. He told them to turn left down Church Street and look for a yellowish building on the right. A minute later they pulled up in front of a building with a Yukon government sign that read ‘Dawson City Health Centre’.

Goldie climbed the stairs with butterflies in her stomach. It seemed all wrong. Gran didn’t belong here. Sally had told her the nurse was sure Gran would be okay, but what was ‘okay’? Was the nurse’s ‘okay’ going to be okay enough for Gran. At the top of the stairs, she took a deep breath, then opened the heavy doors.

She was aware of a couple of people seated in the waiting room, but went directly to the nurse at a reception desk.

“I’m here to see Betty Salmon,” she whispered. “I’m her granddaughter.”

The nurse nodded and smiled, whispering back. “Have a seat. I’ll go see if she’s awake.”

Goldie turned around. She realized that one of the people in the waiting area was Hunter Rayne. He remained seated but raised a hand to say hello. The blond woman beside him was on her feet, looking uncertainly at Goldie.

“Golden?” the woman said hesitantly. “Are you Golden?” The woman’s naked angst loaded the simple question with an overwhelming significance.

Goldie froze. Her first crazy impulse was to run. In all her dreams about meeting her mother, she had never imagined an ordinary-looking woman – this slightly plump woman clutching a big leather handbag could be a tourist from anywhere Outside – approaching her unannounced. She wasn’t prepared for this meeting. She wasn’t prepared for that woman.

Goldie opened her mouth but nothing came out.

“Golden?” the woman repeated. She was an inch or two shorter than Goldie, something else that was completely unexpected. Hunter had said how much Goldie looked like her mother. She couldn’t see herself in this stranger at all. The woman let her handbag fall to the floor and reached out with both hands toward Goldie, her eyes searching Goldie’s face. A look of pain flooded the woman’s features.

Could this stranger be her mother? In turn, Goldie studied the face in front of her and caught something familiar, something of herself reflected in the nose, in the chin. Almost involuntarily, almost convulsively, she wrapped her arms around the woman in a fierce hug, and felt the woman’s fingers stroking her hair, her breath warm against her neck. Was it real? Was she really, finally hugging and being hugged by her mother? Goldie felt almost dizzy with the thought.

As they stepped back from each other, the woman seemed to Goldie once again a stranger. Everything she’d rehearsed to say evaded her, and Goldie found herself saying, “Have you seen Betty? How is she?” and watching the woman’s lips tremble as she shook her head. A single tear ran down the woman’s cheek as she once again reached out, taking hold of Goldie’s hand. “I’m sorry,” Goldie said. “I wasn’t expecting –.” She swallowed. “I mean, I don’t know what to say. All the way here I’ve been so worried about Gran.”

“Orville is with her. And Hootie as well.” It was Hunter Rayne speaking. “She was completely exhausted when we found her, and she may well be asleep.”

“Miss?”

Goldie spun around, relieved at the interruption. She gave her mother’s hand a little squeeze before letting go.

“She’s awake.”

The nurse led her down a short hallway to a door. A uniformed Mountie was standing by the door, looking grumpy and a little disheveled. He nodded to her as the nurse ushered her inside, then entered the room right behind her.

Orville Barstow sat in a chair beside the bed, one hand grasping the rail of the hospital bed. As he lifted his hand, Goldie realized he was handcuffed to the rail. The Mountie slipped past her and undid the handcuff.

“Come on, Orville,” he said. “Let’s give these ladies a little privacy.”

Goldie approached the bed, surprised that her grandmother hadn’t said a word in greeting. Her eyes had opened and closed, but her head hadn’t moved. Hootie came out from underneath the bed and licked Goldie’s hand. She let her hand rest on his head as she stared down at her grandmother’s face. She looked frail, and somehow smaller than Goldie had ever seen her look before.

“Gran?” she whispered.

“Take me home,” said Gran. Her voice belied the frailty of her appearance. Still, she didn’t try to sit up.

“The nurse says you need more rest.” Gran had never been very demonstrative, but Goldie felt a need to touch her. She bent in to kiss her cheek.

“The nurse doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” Gran waved a dismissive hand in front of Goldie’s face. “I’ll sleep better at home anyway.”

Goldie’s concern for the old woman evaporated and was replaced by an unexpected anger. “What were you thinking?” she said. “Do you know how worried I’ve been? You could have died. How could you possibly think you could travel that far alone?”

Gran propped herself up on one elbow and glared at her. “Ever think that I wasn’t meant to come back? Maybe I can’t choose the way I live anymore, but I can damn well die the way I want to!”

“What are you saying? How can you be so selfish?”

“Selfish? What’s so selfish about it? You made me feel selfish for keeping you from knowing who your mother was so you wouldn’t leave me and go looking for her. You called me selfish for making you feel guilty so you’d stay and keep me company in my old age.” She spoke with surprising force, and a small clump of saliva bubbled at the corner of her mouth. “I thought selfish was never letting you make a life for yourself Outside. Did it occur to you that this time I was trying to do you a favor?” She fell back on her pillow and turned her face away.

Goldie’s jaw dropped, her anger evaporated like snowflakes on a hot stove. She grabbed her grandmother’s shoulders and shook her gently. “No, Gran. No. You’re wrong. I wouldn’t have traded my life, my growing up with you for anything.”

When Gran finally spoke again, her voice had softened. “You are being kind to an old woman. I know how bad you always wanted me to tell you about your mother.”

“Oh, Gran.” Goldie eyes stung, and she felt a hot tear leave a cool track down one cheek. “Mark and I will take you home as soon as they say it’s okay for you to leave.”

“Mark brought you?”

Goldie nodded. She sensed the old woman’s worry. Perhaps she thought Mark, too, would take her place in Goldie’s affections. Gran seemed to be resigned to Goldie leaving, going Outside, going away with her mother. “Have you seen her?”

The old woman stiffened visibly. “Have I seen who?” she asked.

Goldie felt her stomach drop. So Gran didn’t know that her mother was here. Goldie wasn’t going to tell her. Not now. “The nurse,” Goldie lied. “Have you asked her when it will be okay for you to leave?”

Her grandmother’s eyes narrowed, but before she could speak there was a knock at the door.

“Is everything okay in there?” It was the nurse.

“Yes, fine. We were just wondering when I could take her home.”

The nurse asked for a few minutes to check Gran’s vital signs so she could complete her paperwork.

Gran asked where Orville was and Goldie left to go look for him while the nurse was wrapping Gran’s arm in a blood pressure cuff. There was no one in the reception room except the woman who was her mother. The woman sat with her eyes closed and her shoulders slumped, the big handbag in her lap. Goldie crossed the room and sat down beside her.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. Her mother smiled uncertainly. “Too much is happening all at once. I –” Goldie shook her head. “You caught me totally by surprise and I’ve just been so worried about Gran.”

“It’s okay.” Her mother sighed and said, “Four a.m. in a clinic in Dawson City wasn’t exactly the best time for us to meet, was it?” followed by a wan smile.

Goldie looked away, down at the floor. “Gran wants me to find Orville – the elderly man with a beard. Did you see where he went?”

Her mother nodded toward the front door. Goldie opened it just in time to see an RCMP Suburban pulling away from a parking spot in front of the building. “They can’t be leaving,” she said. “Hunter, too? They’re just leaving us here like this?”

“The older fellow with the beard wanted to stay and say goodbye to Betty, but the Mountie said he had been told to leave Dawson as soon as you arrived. The other Mountie – Hunter, I guess – tried to make him change his mind, but he wouldn’t budge.”

It was all Goldie could do not to cry. She sat down and buried her face in her hands. She couldn’t just leave her mother and take Gran back to Eagle. She also couldn’t just leave Gran here at the clinic while she spent time getting to know her mother. She was caught in the middle, with Mark waiting outside in the truck. It was ironic, she thought, that here she was with a mother she didn’t know and the woman who had been like a mother to her ever since she could remember, and yet she felt that she – the child – would have to be the one looking out for both of them. Now. This morning. No time outs. How could she keep one or both of them from being badly hurt?

She sensed her mother’s presence beside her, and felt her mother’s hand rub her back and her mother’s arm come to rest across her shoulders.

“It’ll be okay, sweetheart. It’ll be okay.”

Once again, Hunter sat in the back seat with Orville. The old man was visibly upset about their abrupt departure from the clinic, and he assumed that Betty Salmon would be even more so. Hunter had been on the verge of telling Constable Boudreau to go ahead without him, just so he could be there long enough to explain to Betty why Orville had to leave without saying goodbye.
Not my job to fix all the injustice in the world
, he told himself.
I’m not some Roy Rogers or Lone Ranger.

At least he’d found out from April that she lived in Salem, Oregon and that her married name was Tranter, and he’d extracted a promise from her to contact Bart Sam at the Whitehorse RCMP detachment before she left the Yukon. He wished he’d had more time to talk to her himself, and found himself hoping that El wouldn’t find a load for him until he’d had more time here. Her admonition came back to him again.

“You might be right.”

Surprised by the sudden comment, Hunter turned to look at Orville. The old man was sitting with his arms crossed over his chest, chin down and eyes closed. At first Hunter wondered if he was talking in his sleep.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said.” Orville’s turned his head slightly, his right eye just a slit.

Hunter raised his eyebrows but didn’t speak.

“It’s a very hard decision for me, you know. The fact is, I don’t know who killed Charles Collins. I didn’t see it happen. I wasn’t there. All I could be witness to is that I was at his bar with a companion, and that companion was angry at Collins, as was I. You people have no evidence against me, either, other than that I was there and had reason to be angry with Collins.”

You people.
Once again, Hunter didn’t bother correcting him. Sometimes it was easier to let people think he was still in law enforcement.

“But you did know about the murder, correct?”

“Tinkerbell – my truck – still has a working radio, so yes, I heard about the murder, along with everyone else in Whitehorse who listened to the radio that morning.”

“And you didn’t feel you should come forward as a witness?”

“A witness to what? I told you, I wasn’t there when the man was killed. Why would I want to throw my companion under the bus to save my own skin, when I don’t know if he’s any guiltier than I am? Besides, chances are I won’t be found guilty of anything anyway.”