Aunt Dimity Goes West (21 page)

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Nancy Atherton

had personalized his somewhat spartan living quarters

by lining the windowsills with chunks of quartz crystal

he’d collected during our hikes, but apart from that,

the rooms were as immaculate and impersonal as a

hotel suite.

I was a bit taken aback by the apartment’s clean-

liness—Toby was, after all, a college student—until I

remembered that Toby had spent nearly all of his wak-

ing hours at the Aerie with us. If the rooms looked

unlived-in, I reasoned, it was because he hadn’t really

lived in them yet.

Toby must have noticed my inquisitive glances be-

cause he grinned and said, “It’s humble, but it’s home.

Come through to the bedroom.”

The bedroom seemed to be the only room Toby

used on a regular basis. The bedclothes on the single

bed were rumpled, his hat hung from a bedpost, and

his hiking boots sat next to the dresser in a circle of dirt and dust from the trail. Pine cones, rocks, and feathers littered the top of the dresser, and the nightstand was

piled with books.When Toby opened the closet door, I

caught a glimpse of flannel shirts on hangers and blue

jeans on built-in shelves. His red jacket hung from a

hook inside the door.

“Have a seat,” he said.

Since there was nowhere else to sit, I sat on the

bed. I was beginning to wonder why he’d brought

me to the bedroom when, grunting with the effort,

he dragged a large, open wooden crate out of the closet

Aunt Dimity Goes West

175

and pushed it to the side of the bed. Small though the

apartment was, it would have taken a lot more effort

to drag the crate all the way to the living room.

“Well?” he said, standing over the crate. “What do

you think?”

The crate was filled with dirty, scratched, and

dented tools: several pointy-ended hammers, a crow-

bar, a shovel, a sledgehammer, and a pickax along with

a coil of nylon climbing rope, a battery-operated

lantern, and a hard hat with a built-in headlamp.

“It looks like the kind of stuff a miner would use,” I

said.

Toby nodded. “When I found it, my first thought was

that James had taken up prospecting as a hobby. A lot

of people spend their free time smashing rocks for fun.”

“And your second thought?” I inquired.

Instead of answering right away, Toby took several

slips of paper from the drawer in the nightstand. He

handed them to me, and I saw that they were credit

card receipts from a hardware store in Denver, where

James M. Blackwell had purchased everything he’d

left in the wooden crate.

“See the dates?” Toby said. “He bought the crowbar

and the lantern in mid-April and the rest of the stuff a couple of weeks later.”

I shuffled through the receipts, then handed them

back to Toby, saying, “Okay, I’m with you so far.”

Toby put the receipts on the pile of books on the

nightstand and sat beside me on the bed.

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Nancy Atherton

“I may be way off base,” he began, “but the way I

see it is, James went to the historical society in late

February to ask for information about the Lord Stuart

Mine. He went back in March to find out more about

the mining disaster. In mid-April he bought a crow-

bar and a lantern. A couple of weeks later he bought a

sledgehammer, a pickax, a shovel—tools he could use

to . . .” Toby’s voice trailed off, as if he couldn’t bring himself to speak his thoughts aloud.

I pulled the crowbar onto my lap for a closer in-

spection. It was nicked and abraded, as if it had been

used for some heavy-duty prying. As I ran my hand

over the deep, gritty scratches, I recalled what Toby

had told me while we sat before the fire on my first

night at the Aerie:
Mr. Auerbach had a team of engineers
seal the entrance to the Lord Stuart Mine. It’s tight as a
drum. . . .

I put the crowbar back into the crate and turned

to Toby. “Do you think James was trying to break into

the Lord Stuart Mine?”

“He’d be crazy to try,” said Toby. “It’s dangerous

down there.”

“
Could
he break into the mine?” I asked.

“Not by the main entrance,” Toby answered. “But

he could have tried to reach it by a secondary tunnel.

I told you before, the mountains around here are rid-

dled with mine shafts.”

“You’re right,” I said, brushing the grit from my

hand. “He’d have to be crazy to try a stunt like that.”

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177

“Crazy or . . . greedy.” Toby chewed his lower lip

worriedly, then went on. “You heard Mrs. Blanding.

Men came from as far away as northern India to look

for gold in the Vulgamore Valley. James had a gold

mine on his doorstep. All he had to do to find his for-

tune was to break into it.”

“But the Lord Stuart Mine was played out,” I re-

minded him.

“What if it wasn’t?” Toby swung around to face me.

“What if the Lord Stuart Mine closed
before
it was played out, to cover up the truth about the cave-in?

James had done a lot of research. He could have de-

cided that it was worth risking his neck to find out if

there was still some gold left down there.”

“And if there was?” My eyes widened as I realized

where Toby’s argument was headed. “Are you saying

that James quit his job because he’d filled his pockets

with gold?”

“If he had, he wouldn’t mention it to Mr. Auer-

bach,” said Toby, “because the gold would rightfully

belong to the Auerbach family.” He leaned forward,

his elbows on his knees, his hands tightly clasped to-

gether. “I hate to accuse a man I’ve never met of theft, but it would explain an awful lot: why he was so interested in the mine, why he bought the tools, why he

left so suddenly without giving notice and without

leaving a forwarding address . . .”

“But he was a nice guy,” I protested. “Carrie Vyne,

Brett Whitcombe, Rose Blanding—they all thought

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Nancy Atherton

James was a good guy, and good guys don’t steal from

their employers.”

“Gold fever does strange things to people,” Toby

observed sagely.

“He was an amateur historian, not a miner,” I in-

sisted.

Toby thrust a hand toward the crate. “What was an

amateur historian doing with these tools?”

I pondered the question for a moment, then

replied, “He was investigating history. Do you remem-

ber what Rose Blanding told us? James wanted to

know if the Lord Stuart curse had some basis in fact.”

“Not the curse again,” said Toby, groaning.

“The curse is a part of the Aerie’s history, whether

you want it to be or not,” I said sternly. “If James went into the mine, I think it was because he wanted to know

what really happened down there. He wanted to estab-

lish the facts about the disaster in order to . . .” I glanced hesitantly at Toby, then took a deep breath and plunged

ahead. “In order to
exorcise
the Aerie. He wanted to free it from the curse. He wanted to prove that the mine had

collapsed for perfectly reasonable reasons, not because

someone had cast an evil spell on it.”

“You’re not telling me that
James
believed in the curse, are you?” Toby said scornfully.

“It doesn’t matter whether he believed in it or

not,” I said. “Enough people
did
believe in it to make him want to prove them wrong.”

“Then why did he leave so suddenly?” Toby asked.

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179

“Because
we
were coming,” I said, struck by a blaz-ing flash of insight. “He hadn’t found the proof he

needed, but he was afraid that Annelise or I or maybe

even the twins would find out what he was doing. He

knew that Danny Auerbach would be furious with him

for reopening the mine—Danny doesn’t want his kids

falling down an abandoned shaft, right?—so he took

off before Danny could fire him.”

“I don’t buy it,” Toby said flatly. “Your scenario

doesn’t ring true to me. James would have to be a

structural engineer
and
an archaeologist to figure out what caused the cave-in. He couldn’t just stroll in

there and say, ‘Aha! Weak braces!’”

“He’s an intelligent man,” I argued. “Maybe he

found some books in the library that—”

“Books?” Toby interrupted. “If books taught James

anything, it would be that he’d need years and years

of special training to excavate the site and determine

what went wrong. Sorry, Lori, but your explanation

doesn’t make sense.”

“I like it better than yours,” I said, eyeing him

grumpily.

“I like it better than mine, too,” said Toby. “But I

think my explanation is closer to the truth. James found gold in the Lord Stuart Mine, stole it, and took off

before anyone could catch him.”

We lapsed into a somewhat prickly silence that

lasted until my cell phone rang. I answered it, but the

signal was so broken up that Annelise had to repeat

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Nancy Atherton

her message several times before I could make out

what she was saying.

“. . . bad storm. . . . hail . . . high winds in the

pass . . . stay the night?”

“Yes!” I shouted back. “Stay there! Don’t even
try

to come back! I’ll see you tomorrow!”

“. . . tomorrow!” Annelise hollered and hung up.

“Wow,” I said, looking down at the cell phone.

“It sounds as if they’re getting hit hard at the Brock-

man. Brett Whitcombe wants Annelise and the boys

to spend the night there because of high winds in the

pass. It’s hard to believe they’re only one valley away

from us.”

“The front’s moving in from the west,” Toby ex-

plained. “If the storm’s hit the Brockman, it’ll be here within the hour.”

“You told me it would be a rainy night,” I said, eye-

ing him reproachfully. “You didn’t say anything about a

thunderstorm.”

“A rainy night in the Rockies usually involves a

thunderstorm,” he said. “You’ll love it, Lori. The lightning’s fantastic and the thunder makes the floors shake.”

Toby’s peppy words made me feel sick to my stom-

ach because I knew how I’d react to a thunderstorm

that shook the floors. I could already feel my hands

growing clammy. Experience had taught me that the

only way to keep myself from curling into a pathetic,

shivering ball during a really bad storm was to distract myself, to bury myself in a project so absorbing that

the lightning would fade into the background.

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181

“Thanks for showing James’s stuff to me,” I said.

“Try to remember that we don’t really know why he

bought it. For all we know, he may have been hunting

for geodes.”

“Sure,” said Toby, sounding thoroughly uncon-

vinced.

I got up from the bed. “Get some rest, Toby. It’s

been a long day.”

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“To the library,” I replied, “to look for the stuff

James borrowed from Rose Blanding.”

“I’ll come, too,” he said, jumping to his feet.

“You will not,” I said, pushing him down again. I

hated to pull rank on him, but I didn’t want him to see

me lose it if the lightning
didn’t
fade into the background. “You’ve got the night off. Listen to music,

watch a movie, read a book, enjoy yourself. I
order
you to relax.”

Toby looked down at his hands and asked in a sub-

dued voice, “You’re not angry with me, are you?”

“Why would I be angry with you?” I asked, non-

plussed.

“Because I disagree with you about James,” he said.

“Oh, for pity’s sake, Toby,” I said, laughing. “If I got angry with everyone who disagreed with me, I’d never

stop
being angry. I just want you to have some time to yourself for a change. You must be sick to death of

looking after us.”

“That’s my job,” he said.

“Not tonight it isn’t,” I declared.

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Nancy Atherton

“All right, I’ll read a book or something,” he said

dully. He leaned forward to lift the lantern from the

wooden crate. “You’d better take this with you. I’ve

checked the batteries. It works.The emergency gener-

ator will kick in if the storm knocks the power out, but it takes a few minutes to get going. If you need me—”

“I now know
exactly
where to find you,” I said, taking the lantern from him. “Good night.”

I let myself out of Toby’s apartment and made my

way back to the great room. Roiling black clouds had

filled the sky beyond the window wall, and cracks of

thunder reverberated from the mountainsides, as if

warning me to get away from the enormous plate-glass

window before the lightning arrived. I darted into the

library, turned on the lights, closed the draperies, and put the lantern on the banker’s desk. I hit the lantern’s on switch just to be on the safe side. I didn’t want to be plunged into darkness if the power went out, even for

a few minutes.

I’d visited the library several times since we’d

arrived at the Aerie, so the room was familiar to me.