Above It All (Eureka, Colorado Book 4) (Contemporary Romance)

by Cindy Myers

  Duke ignored the jibe. “Or is your animosity more personal?” he asked. “Did you dislike him because he made your mayor look like a fool? Because he seduced her and then ran out on her?”

  So he knew about that, did he? “Lucille’s a big girl,” Bob said. “She can look after herself.”

  “Still, they say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Maybe she was waiting to confront Gerald when he got to his apartment and they had words. She killed him, then tossed the body down a mine shaft somewhere.”

  “So Lucille’s your top suspect?” Bob laughed. “Boy, you watch too much television. I’d like to know how the person almost everybody in town knows—the mayor—could do all that and no one would notice? And are you forgetting a sheriff’s deputy lives right across the hall from Pershing’s apartment?”

  “I was only laying out one possible scenario.” Duke stretched his legs out in front of him and settled back in the chair, hands folded on his flat stomach. “Actually, the mayor isn’t my number one suspect—you are.”

  Well, that was no surprise, was it? The man hadn’t been exactly subtle when he talked to other people in town. Sit at the bar in the Dirty Sally long enough and you’d know everything everybody said to everyone else in town, and Bob spent more time propping up that bar than almost anyone, so he’d heard pretty much every word Duke had to say about him, from one source or another. He shook his head. “If I didn’t kill Pershing after five days underground, listening to his whining, then I clearly don’t have it in me. Besides, while he was packing up and quitting town, I was celebrating over at the Dirty Sally.”

  “So you really have no idea where he went or what happened to him?”

  “I’ve already answered that question every way I know how.”

  “And you can’t think of anyone else Gerald might have confided in?”

  “I told you that, too. He didn’t have any friends around here.”

  “Someone’s got to know something,” Duke said. “People don’t just disappear.”

  “They do it all the time,” Bob said. “Don’t tell me you find everybody you’re paid to hunt down.”

  “I find most of them. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t stay in business.”

  “I guess Gerald Pershing’s going to ruin your record, then.” Bob picked up the lantern. “Time to go,” he said.

  Duke checked his watch. “You quit at four?”

  “Right now, the mine runs three shifts, around the clock. We have to get as much done as we can before snow closes the roads.”

  “Why not just plow the road and keeping working in the winter?”

  “We could do that, but the cost of keeping the road clear and the water running and the electricity pumping would take a big chunk of the profit. For all man’s technology and might, he can’t beat Mother Nature. Better to shut down for a few months and start up again in the spring. It’s not like the gold is going anywhere in the meantime.” He moved past the younger man, holding the lantern high.

  “If the mine operates around the clock, why are you leaving at four?” Duke asked.

  Bob turned to look at him. “I own half the mine. I don’t have to work myself into a lather running it. And four o’clock is when the Dirty Sally opens. Now are you coming with me or not? Because I’d be happy to leave you here sitting in the dark to come up with more wild theories about whatever happened to Gerald Pershing.”

  Duke popped out of his chair. “I’m coming.” He moved up behind Bob, almost stepping on his heels. “But I still think you know something you’re not telling me.”

  “I’m almost seventy years old. I know lots of things. But no law says I have to share them with you.”

  “You know more about Gerald Pershing than you’re saying.”

  “Or maybe I just like pulling your chain, did you think of that?” Bob laughed at the nonplussed expression that distorted Duke’s face. Then he hurried down the tunnel, forcing Duke to trot after him to keep up.

  Shelly hesitated outside the guest bedroom door, listening to Mindy, who was singing a credible rendition of “Born This Way.” She had a sudden memory of her sister at twelve years old, a hairbrush held to her face like a microphone, singing along with Michael Jackson and dancing around her bedroom in pink fuzzy house shoes and baby-doll pajamas, while Shelly laughed and applauded.

  Somehow, they’d lost that closeness over the years. They were such different people now, Shelly wasn’t sure they could ever get it back.

  She knocked and the singing stopped. “Who is it?”

  “It’s me.”

  “The door’s open.”

  She pushed open the door and found her sister seated cross-legged on the bed, a manicure set open beside her. “What do you think of this color?” Mindy asked. “It’s called Tahitian Blue.” She held out one hand for inspection.

  “It’s pretty.” Shelly moved farther into the room and shut the door behind her. “It matches your eyes.”

  “You think so?” She fanned her fingers alongside her face. “Maybe that’s why blue is my favorite color.”

  “I thought purple was your favorite color.” She felt foolish as soon as the words were out of her mouth. After all this time apart, how would she know what her sister liked and didn’t like?

  But Mindy didn’t take offense. “Sometimes purple is my favorite, too.”

  Shelly sat on the edge of the bed. “Uh-oh,” Mindy said.

  “What do you mean, uh-oh?”

  “You’re wearing that look people get when they’re about to say something they don’t really want to say.” She brushed a final coat of the bright blue enamel onto her pinkie, then capped the bottle and looked at Shelly. She’d outlined her eyes in heavy black liner, so that they looked like doll’s eyes, huge in her pale face. “Are you going to kick me out?”

  “No!”

  Mindy leaned toward her, fingers spread wide. “Look, if this is about what happened at the Dirty Sally last night, I swear I did not know that guy was married and anyway, that woman threatened me first. I told her if she didn’t get off my case I’d let her have it and I guess she didn’t believe I meant it. So the whole thing was her fault, really.”

  Shelly shook her head slowly, trying to keep up with the flow of words. “Are you saying you got into a fight at the Dirty Sally last night?” she asked.

  Mindy grinned. “It wasn’t much of a fight. After I slapped her down to the ground that cute bartender, Jameso, pulled me off of her, and her husband got her out of there in a hurry. She didn’t lay a finger on me.”

  Shelly opened her mouth to lecture Mindy on the dangers of public brawls. She could have ended up hurt, or in jail, or sued . . . but she pressed her lips together and decided not to waste her breath. Lecturing Mindy had never worked before. And her sister was a grown woman now. It wasn’t Shelly’s place to tell her what to do. “I’m glad you weren’t hurt,” she said. But she couldn’t resist adding, “But maybe you should be more careful about the men you hang out with.”

  “Hey, I figure if a man is married, it’s up to him to keep his vows. Besides, Jameso is still the best-looking dude in the place, so I spend most of my time talking to him.”

  “Jameso is married.”

  “I know. To that redhead, Maggie.” She laughed. “You should see how green she turns whenever I’m around and I mention her husband. I would tell her she doesn’t have anything to worry about—Jameso and I are just friends. But it’s more fun to see her squirm.”

  “Mindy, that’s cruel.”

  “Hey, it’s not my problem if she doesn’t trust her husband. And the man works at a bar. It’s not like women aren’t ever going to hit on him. She needs to get over it.”

  “You might feel differently one day, when you’re married.”

  She laughed. “When I get married, my man is going to be so crazy about me that he won’t even look at another woman. I’ll make sure of that.” She selected a bottle of clear polish from the collection on her bedside table and twisted off the
lid.

  “Do you have a boyfriend back in Dallas?” Shelly asked. “Anyone you’re serious about?” Why hadn’t she asked this question before? She was ashamed she hadn’t even bothered to find out about her sister’s life. She’d been too focused on not revealing anything about her own.

  “No way! I’m too young to settle down like that.” She began brushing polish on her left hand. “Of course, I’m not saying if the right rich, hot guy came along I couldn’t be persuaded, but I’ve got lots of time before I have to limit myself to just one guy. It’s more fun to play the field, you know?”

  “I guess I don’t know,” Shelly said. “I didn’t date a whole lot before I met Charlie.”

  “It’s because you’re so quiet. I mean, you’re pretty enough. You could stand to wear more makeup and fix your hair and stuff, but some guys go for that natural look. But believe it or not, most guys have trouble approaching a woman they don’t know. You make it easier for them if you’re friendly and you chat them up. If you’re too quiet, they think you’re stuck-up and assume you’re going to shoot them down, so why bother?”

  “How did you learn so much about men?” Shelly asked.

  “Reading Cosmo and going out to bars.” She started to work on her right hand. “How did you and Charlie meet?”

  “He came into the bank where I was working to deposit a check.” She smiled, remembering. “I thought he was really nice and after a couple of months he asked me out. He said he liked my smile.”

  “A couple of months? Well, you can’t say he’s a fast worker.”

  “Fast enough. We’d been dating six months when we decided to get married.”

  “Six months? So it was practically love at first sight. I thought that only happened in books.”

  “It just felt . . . right.” She’d been on her own for a while by then and she’d been pretty lonely. Being with Charlie felt comfortable and safe. Maybe not the most exciting reason to fall in love with someone, but it had worked for them.

  “And you lived happily ever after in boring little Eureka, Colorado. How sweet.”

  “I hope you meet a great guy and fall in love someday,” Shelly said. “You deserve that kind of happiness.”

  “I never thought of love as something you deserve or don’t deserve,” Mindy said, not looking at her.

  “That’s not what I meant. I just want you to be happy.”

  Mindy laughed. “I was just pulling your chain. You’re so easy to get a rise out of.” She replaced the cap on the polish and began fanning her fingers. “So, what is it you want to tell me? The bad news?”

  “No bad news.” She spread her hands flat on her thighs, studying her own short, unpolished nails. “I wanted to know if you’d help me practice for the Founders’ Pageant. I know you’ve taken acting classes and I thought . . .”

  “So you decided to do it—to play the schoolteacher, or whatever it is crazy Cassie wants you to do in her little pageant?”

  “Charlie thinks I should, and I know if I don’t I’ll never hear the end of it from Cassie. And . . . and maybe it won’t be so bad.”

  “The play, or finally admitting to everyone that you really are Baby Shelly?”

  “I was Baby Shelly. A long time ago. I can’t imagine that many people care about it now.” She sighed, though it came out more like a groan. “But the only way I’ll find out is to just do it. Instead of always being afraid of what will happen, I’ll finally know.”

  “I hope you’re wrong about people not being interested, or no one’s going to buy our book,” Mindy said.

  “This doesn’t mean I’m going to help you and Travis with your book.” She put up a hand to stop Mindy’s protests. “You’re free to write whatever you want about your life, and I can’t stop you from talking about our childhood together,” she said. “But what I do now—and what my husband and children do—is my business and mine only. I won’t share that with strangers.”

  Mindy’s pout now wasn’t that different from her pout when she was thirteen and didn’t get her way. Shelly braced herself for a full-blown tantrum. Such histrionics hadn’t persuaded her back when they were teenagers, but she still hadn’t liked the messy fallout from such scenes.

  But maybe Mindy had matured. She relaxed and moved the manicure set and polish to the bedside table. “Okay, I’ll help you with the play. But you do know that a week isn’t that much time to prepare.”

  “I know. But I’m good at memorizing things, and I figure if you give me some acting tips . . .”

  “Yeah, memorizing the lines is the easy part. And I can coach you well enough for an amateur performance like this, I guess. Do you have a script?”

  “I do. It’s downstairs.”

  Mindy stood and straightened her denim capris and sleeveless blue shirt, knotted at her waist to show off her belly-button bling. “Then let’s go,” she said. “Let’s see how embarrassing Cassie is going to make this for you.”

  Shelly followed Mindy downstairs. “Where are the boys?” Mindy asked.

  “They’re at that free Art in the Park thing that Olivia Gruber is teaching on Wednesday afternoons,” she said. “They had a great time last week.”

  “I thought you had to work Wednesdays at the bank.”

  “Only every other Wednesday afternoon. The weeks I work Saturday, I get Wednesday off early.”

  “I guess that’s not so bad, though I’d be bored to tears if I had to stand behind that teller’s cage all day.”

  “What kind of work do you want to do?” Shelly asked.

  “Oh you know, acting, singing. And writing, of course. I’m really into the writing now. I’m thinking after I finish this book with Travis, I’ll write one on my own. Maybe a romance novel. Something really sexy.”

  “What were you doing in Dallas, before you came here?”

  “Oh, different stuff. I had a job dancing for a while. Made really good money, but the guy who ran the place was kind of a sleaze, and I really wanted to get into more acting—really making use of my talents. Then this book deal came along, so I figured I needed to give that all of my attention. I mean, I’ve got plenty of time for all that other stuff, right?”

  Do not ask what kind of dancing, the voice in Shelly’s head that possibly belonged to her sense of self-preservation sounded loud and clear. If Mindy had been stripping for a living, Shelly did not need to know.

  “Here’s the script.” She handed Mindy the blue three-prong folder with her copy of the Founders’ Pageant—the new and improved version.

  “‘Eureka Dawning,’” Mindy read. She made a face. “I guess she chose that because Birth of a Nation was already taken.”

  Shelly laughed. She’d forgotten how funny her sister could be.

  Mindy grinned. “Okay, the first thing we need to do is go through and highlight all your lines. That makes it easier to make sure you don’t miss any. Then we’ll do a simple read-through and talk about staging and the emotions you want to convey. How does that sound?”

  “It sounds great.” Mindy made what had seemed to Shelly to be a huge, unmanageable task sound doable. “I’m really impressed.”

  “Okay, so find a highlighter and let’s get started. And something to drink would help. Do you have any Cokes? Reading all this stuff makes your mouth dry.”

  An hour later, when Charlie and the boys came home, they found the sisters collapsed on the sofa in a fit of giggles, empty Diet Coke cans and a half-empty bowl of popcorn on the coffee table in front of them.

  “You two look like you’ve been having a good time,” Charlie said, surveying the scene.

  “What’s so funny, Mom?” Cameron asked.

  “It’s this play,” Mindy said. “Some of these lines Cassie has written are so cheesy. Listen to this: The future of education in the Rocky Mountains begins here, today, in Eureka.”

  “No, this one is better,” Shelly said. She struck a dramatic pose. “In future years, when people speak of the great centers of learning, they will add the name
Eureka, Colorado, to that of Athens, Rome, and London.”

  Cameron made a face as if he’d eaten something sour. “Are you really going to say that onstage, Mom?”

  “Not exactly like that, honey. Your aunt Mindy’s helping me rewrite some of the lines to sound better.”

  “She is?” Shelly supposed she couldn’t blame Charlie for sounding so surprised. She hadn’t said too many nice things about her sister since Mindy had arrived here.

  “She really has a knack for this,” she said. “She’s being a big help.”

  “Nice to know I’m good for something, huh?” Mindy winked at Charlie, who actually blushed. Shelly had to cover her mouth with both hands to hide her laughter.

  “The trick will be to convince Cassie that our changes are for the better,” Mindy continued. “But I’ve got some ideas for handling her. I’ve dealt with my share of prima donna directors.”

  “Are you an actress, Aunt Mindy?” Theo stared at her, clearly awed.

  “I’ve done some regional theater and some commercial work,” Mindy said.

  “Wow! Wait ’til I tell the guys at school I have an aunt who’s a real actress.”

  “Come on, boys, let’s wash up and let the girls finish their rehearsing.” Charlie shooed the children toward the stairs.

  “Cute kids,” Mindy said when she and Shelly were alone again.

  “Yeah, they are. I wasn’t sure I was cut out to be a mom, but they’re turning out really well, in spite of the things I might have done wrong.”

  “Mom wasn’t exactly big on, what do you call them, ‘teachable moments,’ was she?” Mindy said. “Most of the time we just figured stuff out on our own. Though I guess I had a little bit of an advantage—I had you.”

  “You did your share of helping me out, too,” Shelly said. “I’m sure Mom and Dad felt like it was us against them sometimes.” The girls had done their share of plotting against their parents, a united force to circumvent rules and punishments.

  Mindy’s face lit up. “Do you remember the time Mom had scheduled an interview with that reporter from the Ladies’ Home Journal or something, and you didn’t want to do it?” she asked. “So I did it for you?”