Haunting Danielle 27 The Ghost and the Mountain Man

by Bobbi Holmes

  “Teddy married her for money?” Walt asked.

  “Yes. And Maddie married out of grief and fear.”

  “And then she got sick?” Walt said.

  “Yes. You remember that?” Bud asked.

  “I remember my mother always going over there to take care of her, and how my grandmother resented the time my mother spent over there. Once I heard my grandmother saying Teddy should hire more people to help with Maddie and not rely so much on my mother.”

  “He couldn’t. He could barely afford to pay their bills,” Bud said.

  Walt frowned. “I don’t understand. You said Maddie inherited a fortune from her parents’ estate?”

  “Yes. Which Teddy went through, one get-rich scheme after another. Or should I say, get richer. Because they were wealthy with Maddie’s inheritance until Teddy went through it. He liked to say I was always chasing foolish dreams, but at least I didn’t do it with my sick wife’s money. And then he got a girlfriend. I imagine she was taking any extra money he had.”

  “Girlfriend? Are you talking about Josephine?” Walt asked.

  Bud cocked his brow. “So you know about her? When I found out, I went to your father. I assumed he agreed with me about what we should do. But I guess I was wrong.”

  “Agreed with you about what?” Walt asked.

  Bud stood up. “I’ll tell you the rest after. Do you remember where you saw me in the mountains?”

  “Yes.” Walt stood.

  “Can you find it again?”

  “I believe I can.”

  “When you’re ready to hear the rest of the story—and learn how your father is responsible for my death, I’ll be there. But come prepared to bring me down off the mountain.” He disappeared.

  Twenty-Nine

  “What was I thinking?” Walt said on Friday morning. He sat at the kitchen table with Danielle, each with a cup of coffee and a section of the morning newspaper.

  Danielle looked up from the article she was reading to Walt. His attention was not on the newspaper in his hand. “What is it?” she asked.

  “I realized I might not be able to find the spot where we saw him. We got lost a few times. Wandered around in loops. And what if I can’t find it?”

  “What if you get lost again?” Danielle asked. She folded her newspaper and set it on the table.

  “If I don’t find him, he might tire of waiting for me and move on. I’ll never learn the truth.”

  “And if you get lost, I may never find you again,” Danielle said.

  Walt frowned at Danielle. “Are you listening to me?”

  “Yes. But you keep talking about going up there alone, and that is foolish. You don’t need to wander around in the mountains. At least now you admit you could get lost up there. If you go, don’t go alone. Get Heather and Brian to come with us.”

  “Us?”

  “Yes. I’m going with you. And Brian and Heather have been up there. I’m sure the three of you can figure out where this place is.”

  “If they remember,” Walt said.

  “Call Heather. Ask her.”

  Walt glanced at the clock. “I imagine she’s at work already.”

  “Chris won’t care if you call her at work.”

  A few minutes later Walt had Heather on the phone. He told her about his visitor last night and what he wanted to do.

  “Well, what did she say?” Danielle asked when Walt got off the phone.

  “She’s pretty sure she can find it again. But she agrees Brian should go too.”

  “That’s what I said,” Danielle reminded him.

  “She’s going to call Brian,” Walt said.

  “He won fair and square, Carla,” Earl Sweeney told the waitress as he flipped the ham steak on the flattop at Pier Café. He chewed on a toothpick, wishing it were a cigarette. Carla stood on the other side of the pass-through window with the busboy.

  “Aw, come on, Earl; we probably shouldn’t be placing bets at work anyway,” Carla whined.

  “I paid up to Earl when I lost yesterday’s bet,” the busboy reminded her.

  “Then Earl can clean off the gum,” Carla grumbled.

  “I didn’t make the bet,” Earl reminded her. He glanced at his watch and said, “Your shift ends in ten minutes, Carla. Make sure you do it before you leave.”

  “Fine,” Carla huffed. “But that is the last time I make one of those stupid bets.” She turned abruptly and stomped from the window.

  “Is she serious?” the busboy asked Earl.

  “Nah. She’s just a poor loser. But Carla’s not a quitter.”

  Carla cashed out her last customer for the day and begrudgingly returned to the kitchen to grab some food handler’s gloves. If she was going to spend the next hour peeling gum off the bottom of table six, she was going to do it wearing gloves.

  Why did she make that stupid bet? Silly kitchen bets were common at Pier Café; it was one way to break up the mundane and routine. Last week, when one of the other servers had bet she could get Pearl Huckabee to change her normal pie order, Carla took the challenge. Carla won the bet, which meant she didn’t have to refill the salt and pepper shakers that week.

  Unfortunately, the stupid bet she made with the busboy over who was going to walk in the door next she lost, which meant she had to clean the gum off the bottom of table six. Every teenager in Frederickport wanted to deposit their used gum under table six. Only table six. They found it funny. She had too, when it was the busboy’s job to clean it off.

  Wearing food handler’s gloves, Carla placed a clean plastic trash bag under table six to sit on. Grumbling, she disappeared under the table, putty knife and cup in hands. The putty knife to scrape off the gum, the paper cup to hold the gum.

  Brian Henderson walked into Pier Café and glanced around, looking for somewhere to sit. The breakfast rush was over, and the lunch rush wouldn’t be starting for another hour. Most of the tables were empty but needed cleaning, something the busboy and one server were currently doing.

  The server looked up from an empty table, her hands filled with dirty dishes. She greeted Brian and told him to sit wherever he wanted. Since he didn’t want to sit at a table with dirty dishes, he headed to the first clean table he saw, table five.

  He glanced at his watch as he sat down. Walt was to meet him here in about five minutes. Brian picked up the menu and glanced over it, yet he didn’t know why he bothered. He knew the menu by heart. The server brought him a cup of coffee without him asking and offered to take his order. After explaining he was waiting for someone, she filled two glasses with water, left his table, and returned to cleaning other tables in the diner.

  Brian was halfway through the cup of coffee when Walt arrived.

  “So Danielle didn’t want to come with you?” Brian asked.

  “No. She’s baking this morning. Double fudge chocolate cake. I didn’t want to disturb her.” Walt sat down and picked up a menu.

  Brian chuckled. “You and your chocolate cake.”

  “You go a hundred years without cake, and see how you do,” Walt said.

  Brian chuckled again and asked, “I understand you want to go back up to the mountains.”

  “Yes, about Uncle Bud,” Walt said.

  “Heather told me all about it. I still can’t believe Heather’s mountain man is this Uncle Bud.”

  “I assumed I could find the place again, but this morning I tried retracing in my mind how to get there, and now I’m not sure I can find it. Do you remember where it was?”

  “I’m pretty sure I do,” Brian said.

  “Heather said she could probably find it again. I was hoping if you and Heather go with us, we could find it together. There will be some digging, but I can do that,” Walt said.

  “At least you won’t break a sweat or get your hands dirty,” Brian teased.

  “So you’ll go with me?” Walt asked.

  “When do you want to go?” Brian asked.

  “Are you working tomorrow?” Walt asked.

/>   “Yes. But I have Sunday off.”

  “Can we do it on Sunday? Heather has the weekend off. We can all drive up together. Find my treasure and put this behind us.”

  “Treasure? So there is one?” Brian remembered Heather mentioning Caitlin’s talk of a treasure.

  Walt shrugged. “I’m more interested in learning what happened. And like William Penn once said, ‘Knowledge is the treasure of a wise man.’”

  Carla sat under the table, a paper cup in one hand and a putty knife in the other. She stopped prying gum from off the bottom of the table. Instead, she listened to Brian and Walt’s odd conversation. She had recognized their voices immediately. Not wanting the men to find her eavesdropping, she remained still and didn’t resume her cleaning detail until the pair left the restaurant. After that, she hurriedly scraped off the gum. When she crawled out from under the table, she moaned and stretched, telling herself she would never make a bet like that one again.

  After showing Earl the filled cup to prove she’d honored her side of the bet, she tossed the gloves and cup in the trash and returned the trash bag to where she had found it. She went to the bathroom to wash her hands.

  When she stepped out of the women’s restroom, she spied Bill Jones sitting at a nearby table with his nephew, Cory. Bill waved her over to his table.

  “We’re ready to order, Carla,” Bill told her when she walked up to the table.

  Carla sat down at one of the empty chairs at his table. “Sorry, Bill, you’ll have to find another server. I’m off for the rest of the day. I had the early shift.”

  The next moment another server came to the table to take Bill’s order.

  “Bring me a burger,” Carla told the server. “I’m hungry, might as well grab something to eat before I go home.”

  “Should I put it on Bill’s check?” the server joked, eliciting a frown from Bill as he handed her the menu he had been holding.

  Carla laughed. “No. Tell Earl it’s for me.”

  The server laughed and gave Bill a playful jab with the menu in her hand as Carla said, “Scared you for a moment, didn’t we?”

  “You always scare me, Carla.” Bill snorted.

  Bill and his nephew gave the server their order, and she left the table.

  “I heard the most interesting conversation between Brian Henderson and Walt Marlow,” Carla whispered.

  “When did you see them?” Bill asked.

  “They were in here a little while ago for lunch,” she said.

  “They seem like an unlikely pair,” Bill said.

  “You forget what they went through last week. They spent a few days with Heather Donovan lost in the forest,” Carla reminded him.

  “Yeah, I read about that. Crazy,” Bill said.

  “What did you hear?” Cory asked.

  Carla flashed Cory a smile and told Bill, “See, someone is interested in what I heard.”

  “Go on, tell us,” Bill said.

  “I’d say more happened to them than what was in the paper,” Carla said in a whisper.

  “What do you mean?” Bill frowned.

  “I think they found a treasure up there,” Carla said. “And they’re going back to dig it up on Sunday.”

  “Treasure?” Cory asked.

  “I’d believe that if it was Boatman going back up there. She’s the one who always finds treasures,” Bill grumbled. “It’s like she’s some treasure savant.”

  “What’s a treasure savant?” Cory asked.

  “A phrase your uncle just made up,” Carla said.

  “Maybe I did, but it fits. Or perhaps treasure magnet?” Bill asked.

  “She’s probably going with them. And it hasn’t been Boatman for ages. She’s Danielle Marlow. And it’s her husband who found this treasure. From what they said, it belonged to someone they called Uncle Bud,” Carla said.

  The glass of water Cory held slipped from his hand. It landed on the table and rolled off, hitting the floor and shattering into pieces after splashing water around the table.

  “Cory, watch what you’re doing,” Bill grumbled, picking up a napkin and wiping off the table.

  Carla stood up, careful not to step in any glass, and said, “I’ll go get the broom and dustpan.”

  Cory remained frozen; he hadn’t moved since dropping the glass.

  “Are you okay?” Bill asked his nephew.

  “Ahh… yeah… I think so,” Cory muttered.

  Thirty

  “What are you doing this afternoon?” Joe asked Kelly as she pulled into the parking lot of the Frederickport police station to drop him off for work. His shift started in fifteen minutes.

  Kelly brought her car to a stop but did not turn off the engine. Hands still firmly on the steering wheel, she glanced to Joe. “I was thinking about stopping over at my brother’s. I need to talk to him about Heather.”

  Joe groaned. “What are you going to do?”

  Looking back out the windshield, her hands still clutching the steering wheel, Kelly said, “I don’t like the idea of Heather watching Connor. That woman’s crazy and has no business being around small children. Even if she wasn’t nuts, they don’t need her. They have me.”

  “Kelly, it’s not like you’re always free to watch Connor. And after we get married, we’ll be starting our own family.”

  Kelly frowned and turned back to Joe. “We will?”

  “Won’t we? I thought you wanted kids,” Joe asked.

  “Yes, I want kids. But the way you said that, starting our family, it sounded like we’d be having kids right away.”

  “We aren’t getting any younger,” Joe reminded her.

  Kelly arched her brows. “Are you calling me old?”

  “I’m just saying I want kids and thought you did too, and when we get married, there is no reason to wait. So we should start right away. I’d like to have a big family.”

  Kelly narrowed her eyes and studied Joe. “How big?”

  Joe shrugged. “I don’t know. I figured once we got married, you would go off birth control, and we’d let nature take its course.”

  Kelly continued to stare at Joe. Finally, she said, “I don’t want to talk about this now. You should go to work.”

  Joe let out a sigh, unfastened his seatbelt, leaned over, and kissed Kelly. After the kiss, he got out of the vehicle and slammed the door shut.

  Kelly watched as Joe walked away. Abruptly she rolled down her window and shouted at him, “Give me a number!”

  Joe stopped walking and turned to Kelly. “Number?”

  “How many kids do you want? Give me a number.”

  Joe stared at Kelly a moment and then said, “Six?”

  Kelly didn’t respond; instead she rolled up her window and sped out of the parking lot.

  As she pulled out into the street, Brian drove up, returning from his early lunch with Walt. Instead of going into the station, Joe waited for Brian on the sidewalk.

  “Kelly’s getting a little lead-footed there,” Brian said when he reached Joe. “What’s the hurry?”

  Joe let out a sigh. “I’m a bad person, Brian.” Joe turned to the entrance of the police station and started walking in that direction, Brian trailing after him.

  “What are you talking about?” Brian asked.

  “I just told Kelly I want six kids.”

  Brian came to a stop and stared at Joe. “You want six kids?”

  Joe stopped walking and turned to Brian. With a frown, he said, “Oh hell no. Two at most.”

  “Then why did you tell Kelly you wanted six? No wonder she stormed out of here. Are you trying to get her to break off your engagement?”

  “No. I don’t want to break off the engagement. Do you think she’s going to think that?” Joe glanced briefly to where Kelly had just driven off. A moment later he turned and started for the front door of the police station.

  “Why would you tell her you wanted six kids?” Brian asked as he followed Joe.

  Joe shrugged. “I love Kelly, but sometimes
she gets too involved with people. And I just figured she needs to focus on her own life and stop trying to meddle in other people’s lives.”

  “Is this about her trying to play matchmaker for me?” Brian asked.

  “That and other things,” Joe said, now at the front door. He reached out and grabbed hold of the door’s handle and pulled it open.

  “Well, you give her six babies, and she sure as hell isn’t going to have time to worry about anyone else,” Brian said with a snicker.

  Lily was cleaning the kitchen after lunch, while Ian was in the nursery changing Connor’s diaper, when Kelly rang the doorbell. Sadie reached the door before Lily, her tail wagging.

  “Hi, Kelly,” Lily greeted her a few moments later. “Just putting stuff away from lunch. You hungry? I have some tuna left.”

  “Thanks,” Kelly said as she closed the front door behind her and followed Lily into the kitchen while giving Sadie some hello pats. “I already ate. Where’s Ian?”

  “Changing Connor’s diaper,” Lily said as she returned to the kitchen counter to put the bread back in the breadbox.

  “I need to talk to you,” Kelly announced, taking a seat at the breakfast bar. She sat up primly, folding her hands before her on the counter while she watched her sister-in-law.

  “Sure, what’s up?” Lily asked as she closed the bread box and turned to face Kelly.

  “You can’t let Heather watch Connor anymore,” Kelly blurted.

  Lily frowned. “I can’t?”

  “It’s not safe.”

  “Is this about what happened at the museum?” Lily asked.

  “You know about that?”

  “Ian told me what you told him. So I suppose I know. At least, what you told him.”

  “Then you understand why you can’t let her watch him anymore,” Kelly said.

  Lily let out a sigh. “I wasn’t at the museum, and neither were you. Heather can be a little—quirky. Truth is, she and I had some issues when she first moved to Frederickport. But I’ve gotten to know her better. I consider her a friend. And she loves Connor, and he adores her. He’s perfectly safe with Heather.”