by Cindy Myers
“I second the motion, then,” Paul said.
Junior raised his hand to indicate his agreement, and Lucille pounded the gavel before anyone could object. Maggie stuck up her hand. “Could I get a copy of Ms. Mott’s application?”
“Talk to me after the meeting.” Lucille checked the agenda. “Next item.”
“I have the next item of business.” Cassie rose, an open notebook clutched to her chest.
“It says Founders’ Days,” Junior said. “What’s that?”
“I’m proposing we change the name of the Hard Rock Days celebration to Founders’ Days,” Cassie said.
“No way,” Junior said. “It’s been Hard Rock Days for the past sixty-four years.”
“Sixty-five years,” Bob said.
“People hear the name ‘Hard Rock’ and they think it’s a music festival.” Cassie wrinkled her nose. “Every year I get at least half a dozen people in the library who want to know where they can find a list of bands playing. Founders’ Days would avoid that kind of confusion.”
“Hard Rock Days is all about our mining heritage,” Paul said. “People come from all over to see the single-jack and double-jack competitions, the sledge races and all that.”
“We could still have that, though I don’t think it should be the centerpiece of the festivities,” Cassie said. “I think the focus should be on honoring the original settlers in the area, and on the Founders’ Pageant.”
Junior groaned. “Give it a rest, Cassie,” he said. “You’re the only one who cares about that boring play.”
“I beg your pardon.” She drew herself up to her full five feet, two inches. “I heard many people rave about last year’s production. They told me they were glad to see some attention finally being paid to the real history of the area, and that the weekend had become about more than a bunch of big, sweaty men hitting things with hammers.”
Lucille suspected most of these admirers were in Cassie’s clearly fertile imagination. The Founders’ Pageant had been an afterthought last year, tacked onto the end of the celebration. The only thing most people probably remembered about Cassie’s play was the explosion at the end, precipitated when Bob had attempted to set off fireworks backstage.
“Cassie, we cannot make Hard Rock Days into Founders’ Days,” she said.
“Why not?”
Many answers filled Lucille’s head: because you’re the only one who cares about that play. Because a bunch of sweaty men hitting things with hammers draws in more tourists than a play with amateur actors standing around in period costumes ever would. But the last thing she wanted was to set Cassie off on another rant, or truly, to hurt her feelings. Most people might dismiss her play, but Cassie really cared about her family history, and she’d put a great deal of effort into producing the play, which was, after all, a harmless addition to a weekend already packed with activities.
Instead, Lucille said, “The posters for this year are already printed, and the publicity campaign is already under way.”
“I think you need to reprint the posters,” Cassie said. From the notebook she’d been holding to her chest, she produced a poster and unfolded it. A bold graphic in the middle proclaimed HARD ROCK DAYS! EUREKA, COLORADO, HOW THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN WEST WAS WON, with the dates at the end of August. All around this were pictures of the various activities, including the single-jacking and double-jacking competitions, where men (and women) competed to see which individual or, in the case of double-jacking, which team, could drive a steel drill into solid rock with a sledge hammer. The thrilling, tension-filled, and fast-paced competition was the centerpiece of the celebration, and the person who won the most events—which also included races hauling sledges filled with rocks, and a competition to see who could shovel the most rock in five minutes, won the title of Hard Rock Miner, and a trophy. One of the photos on the poster featured Maggie’s late father, Jake Murphy, holding one of his trophies aloft. A three-time champion before he’d retired from competition, Jake was still a local legend for his strength and prowess. He was also someone the town librarian particularly hated, and Lucille had no doubt that seeing his picture so prominent on the poster had set Cassie off.
“There isn’t even any mention of the Founders’ Pageant on this poster,” Cassie said.
“Yes, there is,” Maggie said. She turned in her chair to face the librarian. “Look in the bottom right-hand corner.”
Cassie scowled at the small font in that section of the poster. “Food booths, craft fair, street dance, and pageant,” she read.
“We don’t have room to list every event on the poster,” Lucille said, hoping she didn’t sound too defensive. “But everything is in the official program, I promise.”
“The Founders’ Pageant deserves more attention,” Cassie said.
“Does anyone else want to address this issue?” Lucille looked to the council members. They stared back at her, mouths firmly closed. They were, as usual, leaving her to deal with Cassie by herself. “I don’t know what to tell you,” she said to the librarian. “We operate with limited resources, and we do the best we can.”
“I thought the town was rich now,” Cassie said. “After all, the gold mine is producing all those millions.”
“We don’t have the money yet,” Lucille said. “And we won’t for a while. It’s a long process.”
“If you won’t help me, I’ll do the work myself,” Cassie said. “I’ll make sure everyone knows about the pageant, and that it becomes the highlight of the celebration—the kind of thing that will bring people in from all over the country.”
Lucille blinked. Something in Cassie’s voice made her bombastic words sound like a real threat. “What are you planning?” she asked.
“Why should I tell you? You might steal my ideas.” She folded the poster, and then the notebook. “You don’t want to give me help, so I’ll help myself. It’s what I should have done in the first place.”
Having said her piece, Cassie stalked out of the room. Lucille watched her go and felt a little sick to her stomach. Whatever Cassie was up to, it probably wasn’t going to be good. But she couldn’t do anything to stop her, at least not yet. She checked the agenda once more and breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s all we have tonight,” she said.
Reggie’s hand shot up. “One more item, Madam Mayor.”
So much for relaxing. As town attorney, Reggie usually didn’t say much at these meetings, unless they specifically directed a question to him. If he was bringing up something now, it probably wasn’t good. “What is it, Reggie?” she asked.
“It’s about this private detective, Duke Breman.”
Lucille went cold. She had told no one about her meeting with Duke and, although word had no doubt gotten around that she’d had dinner with him, no one had acted particularly interested in that. She had felt safe that they’d raised no suspicions, and that no one had overheard the content of their conversation. “What about him?” she choked out.
“He’s been asking a lot of questions about Gerald Pershing,” Reggie said. “I want to remind everyone that you are under no legal obligation to talk to him.”
“Why do you think we shouldn’t talk to him?” Maggie asked the question Lucille had been about to pose.
“I’m not saying you shouldn’t talk to him, but be careful.” Reggie adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses. With his silver ponytail and leather vest, he looked more like a member of a motorcycle club than an attorney. “Some of the things he said to me made me think he, or whoever hired him, believes Gerald may have been the victim of foul play. You don’t want him twisting your words to make you seem guilty of something you didn’t do.”
Lucille sucked in her breath, remembering Duke’s warning that she would be the prime suspect if Gerald was dead, both because she’d made it clear she despised him, and because he’d left her half his money.
“If anyone thinks Gerald did anything but leave town under normal circumstances, why aren’t the police asking questions?” Maggie asked.
“Maybe suspicions are all they have at this point, and the family or some other interested party hired Duke to come up with evidence,” Reggie said. “I don’t know. But it never hurts to be careful. And that includes not putting anything I’ve said tonight in the paper.”
“Despite what some people think, the Miner doesn’t print rumors,” Maggie said crisply.
“Good riddance to bad rubbish if he is dead,” Bob said.
“I wouldn’t go around saying that if I were you,” Reggie said.
“I don’t give a tinker’s dam if he hears me say that or worse,” Bob said. “It’s not a secret there wasn’t any love lost between any of us in town and Pershing.”
“You were the last person to talk to him,” Junior said. “Maybe this Duke character thinks you offed him.”
“If I’d wanted to kill Pershing, I had plenty of opportunity in the mine before you all hauled us out of there,” Bob said. “I could have bashed his head in with a rock and told everybody he was killed in the explosion. I could have even hid his body in an old tunnel and told everyone he wasn’t in there.”
“I don’t like that you’ve given this so much thought,” Lucille said.
“My guess is the old crook skipped the country and changed his name,” Bob said. “We weren’t the first bunch he’d swindled and he probably had a lot of that money tucked away in some offshore account. While Duke and whoever are wasting their time and money looking for him, he’s living large on some island somewhere.”
“Do you really think he had a lot of money?” Lucille tried to keep her expression casual and disinterested, even though her heart hammered. Duke had refused to say how much she might inherit, but she’d be a liar if she pretended she wasn’t interested.
“He always had plenty of cash to wave around when he wanted to,” Bob said.
“It doesn’t matter to any of us, anyway,” Paul said. “I think the best thing is for all of us to refuse to talk to this Duke character and pretty soon he’ll give up and go away.”
The others nodded in unison. Lucille looked down, focused on straightening the papers in front of her. They might not care what happened to Gerald Pershing and his money, but if Duke was telling the truth, she suddenly had a very personal interest in the matter. She still hadn’t quite wrapped her head around the news the detective had given her. A man she despised, whose confessions of love for her she’d always believed were manipulative lies, had remembered her in his will. Was the gesture made out of guilt, or a determination to prove her wrong?
Or, had Gerald Pershing really had true, tender feelings for her? Had she been so wrong about him all along?
Chapter 8
“Where are you going?” Thursday evening, Shelly was filling a tote bag with her notebook, pens, and copies of meeting minutes when Mindy strolled into the living room. Dressed in a baby doll minidress and pink cowboy boots, her blond hair in a Pre-Raphaelite tumble around her face, she looked as if she’d stepped out of an Anthropologie ad, a city beauty weekending in the country.
Shelly turned her attention back to stuffing the tote bag. “I have a meeting of the historical society at the library.”
“I’ll come with you.”
Shelly checked to see if Mindy was joking, but she looked serious. “I didn’t know you were interested in history,” she said.
“I’m not, but there’s nothing else to do around here in the evening.”
“You could always go back home.” After six days of flitting in and out of the house at all hours, not offering to lift a finger to help with the boys or even clean up after herself, Mindy had worn out her welcome.
“You’re still mad about me going to the bank, aren’t you?” Mindy picked up the notebook from the table and began flipping through it. “But it was no big deal. I mean, I don’t see any bank investigators over here grilling you or anything.”
“I told my bosses it was a misunderstanding and they believed me,” Shelly said. “But it was still embarrassing.” And Tamarin was still giving her the cold shoulder, after telling Shelly she was hurt her friend had kept so much from her.
“I should have remembered how much you cared about what other people think of you.” Mindy set aside the notebook. “I’m sorry if I made trouble for you. I was just having a little fun. So can I come with you tonight?”
“I don’t know why you’d be interested.”
“Maybe I just want to hang out with my sister.”
“You mean spy on me.”
“Oh, please!” Mindy rolled her eyes.
“Don’t think I haven’t seen you playing with that recorder.” Shelly stuffed the notebook into the tote. “Everything I say, you run to relay it to that reporter.”
Mindy scowled at her. “You have a real problem, you know that?” she said.
“I don’t think I’m the one with the problem here.” Shelly turned away, so her sister wouldn’t see the tears that threatened. For a few brief minutes when Mindy had shown up on her doorstep out of the blue, a bright hope had blossomed that the two of them could be close once more. They’d be a team, looking out for each other and keeping each other’s secrets, the way they’d been when Mindy was very small. But Mindy’s revelation about her book deal and her real purpose for visiting had snuffed out all thoughts of reforging a familial bond. Mindy didn’t care about Shelly; she only cared about the money and fame that Shelly could bring her.
“You know, you aren’t as smart as you think you are,” Mindy said. “You think you have me all figured out, but you haven’t.”
Shelly shouldered the tote bag. “Come to the meeting if you want, but you’ll probably just be bored.”
“I’m already bored, so it can’t get worse.” She turned and flounced ahead of Shelly to the car.
“Maybe your meeting won’t be as boring as you think,” Charlie said as the front door slammed. He looked up from the newspaper he’d been reading, in his chair in the corner. “It might be fun to see Cassie and Mindy together.”
“You might have a point.” She smiled and kissed him. “Tell the kids I’ll come say good night when I get home.”
Mindy was waiting in the car, fluffing her bangs in the passenger-side visor mirror. “So, who all is in this historical society?” she asked as Shelly slid into the driver’s seat. “Any cute guys?”
“I guess Doug Raybourn is pretty good-looking,” Shelly said. “But he’s happily married and has four kids. The only other man who’s a member is Bob Prescott.”
Mindy wrinkled her nose. “The old miner, right? Definitely not cute.”
“Looks aren’t everything.”
“Maybe not to you, but to me, they count for a lot.” She returned her attention to the visor mirror.
“I guess I should warn you about someone else who will definitely be at the meeting tonight,” Shelly said as she fit the key in the ignition. “The president of the historical society, Cassie Wynock. She’s also the librarian and she can be a bit of a dragon.”
“Grouchy old ladies don’t scare me.” Mindy flipped up the visor and turned toward Shelly. “But if she’s so awful, why do you even bother going?”
“I like history, and we do interesting stuff. Right now, we’re putting together a play about the town’s founding, for the Hard Rock Days Festival at the end of the month.”
“I saw a poster about that,” Mindy said. “At first I thought it was talking about a rock concert. Though I couldn’t imagine what band would want to perform all the way out here in the sticks.”
“It’s all about remembering the mining that’s the reason most of this area was settled in the first place. They have demonstrations and contests to determine the winner of the Hard Rock Miner trophy.”
“Is that what all those pictures of hunky guys swinging big hammers and stuff is about?”
“Yes. It’s really pretty interesting.”
“To you, maybe. But you always did like that boring history stuff better than I did. I remember how you’d get all swoony ov
er lords and ladies and castles and knights. I didn’t know you cared anything about American history.”
“All history is interesting,” Shelly said. “I like learning how people lived in the past.”
Mindy twirled her finger in a long golden curl. “Don’t you think it’s ironic that someone who’s so interested in other people’s pasts won’t talk about her own?”
Shelly gripped the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles ached. So much for thinking she could have an easy-going, normal conversation with her sister. “I lived my past. I don’t have to talk about it.”
“No, you just pretend it never happened. That your family never happened.”
Shelly winced. Maybe she deserved that. Mindy had acted as if she was really hurt to learn that none of Shelly’s friends knew about her. But Mindy always had been a good actress, and considering all the other ways she’d made Shelly’s life miserable, maybe her hurt feelings were an act, too. “Instead of worrying so much about my life, why don’t you get on with your own?” she asked.
“Because your story is the one everyone is interested in. I’m just the little sister, the sidekick. I figured out pretty quick that if I was going to get anywhere, it was going to be by riding your coattails.”
Shelly swallowed a knot of angry tears. “Then you admit you’re only using me to get what you want.”
“You haven’t really left me any choice.”
“Don’t make this my fault. There are always choices.”
“You chose to run away, and I don’t see that it’s made you any happier.”
“I was very happy before you came here and brought back all the things I’d successfully put behind me.”
“Right.” Mindy laughed. “If you were so successful at that, you wouldn’t be upset now.”
When Shelly didn’t answer right away, Mindy leaned toward her. “You know I’m right, don’t you? I think if you talk about stuff, get it out in the open, you’ll feel better, and people will quit bothering you about it, too.”
“I used to believe that,” Shelly said. “Every year, on the anniversary of my rescue, Mama would tell me that this was the last year I had to do the interviews and pose for pictures—that as I got older, people wouldn’t be interested anymore. But the next year, she’d be back again, fanning the flames and basking in the reflected glory. The reporters never stopped calling, and I felt like I was always on display. I guess the only blessing was that they didn’t have reality TV shows back then, or she would have made sure we were in one. How would that make you feel?”