A Change in Altitude

by Cindy Myers

  Which also meant she couldn’t do ordinary things like check a book out of the library without being accosted with more problems to solve. “Gloria quit,” librarian Cassie Wynock said by way of greeting when Lucille slid the latest best-seller across the counter to her.

  “Gloria Sofelli?” Lucille looked around for Cassie’s wraithlike assistant. The woman hadn’t said three words to Lucille the entire time she’d known her. Then again, working for Cassie would cow almost anyone. “I was always amazed she stayed in the job as long as she did,” Lucille said. “What happened?”

  “She eloped with that cameraman who was filming that cooking show.”

  “Ah.” What’s Cookin’? USA, a popular cable show that featured offbeat places to eat around the country, had picked the local café, the Last Dollar, for a segment; though in the end the filming never took place. When the show left, Gloria had probably seen her chance to get out of town—and out from under Cassie’s thumb.

  “She didn’t even give notice. She just packed up and left.” Cassie sniffed. “I told her she’d never get a good reference from me and she actually laughed. Young people these days.”

  Cassie and Lucille were near the same age—mid-fifties—but Cassie liked to assume the role of crotchety old woman, dressing like a matron and railing against “young people these days.” Maybe she thought she commanded more respect that way. “I guess you’ll have to hire someone else for the position,” Lucille said. Though who in their right mind would want to work for Cassie? The woman took bossiness to new levels.

  “As if I have time to train someone right now,” Cassie said. “I’m much too busy.”

  Busy doing what? It was exactly the question Cassie wanted her to ask, so Lucille kept quiet.

  Cassie answered the unspoken query anyway. “I’m working on a new, improved version of the Founders’ Day Pageant for this summer. And the state is requiring us to update all our digital records—such a nuisance.”

  Yes, such a nuisance that her real job was getting in the way of something no one had asked Cassie to do in the first place. “I thought the pageant was fine as it was,” Lucille said. “After all, you’ve only performed it once.” And many people had thought once was enough, but Cassie would hear none of that. Unfortunately, since the county commissioners were afraid of her, she got her way a lot. Lucille had learned to live with it. Sometimes watching her take one of her grand ideas and run with it was even entertaining.

  Case in point, the pageant, which told the story of Eureka’s founding by Cassie’s great-grandfather—leaving out the part where he ended up having to sell off most of what he’d owned to pay gambling debts. Cassie had hammed it up with a supporting cast of most of the Eureka Drama Society, only to be upstaged by Bob Prescott’s big finale, in which he’d almost burned down the recently restored opera house.

  “I’m not letting Bob near the stage this year,” Cassie said, as if reading Lucille’s mind. “This year, I’m going to focus more on the role women played in settling this area. We don’t get nearly enough credit.”

  “I won’t argue with that, but you’ll have to tell me about it later.” Lucille nudged her book closer. “I’m kind of in a hurry.”

  Cassie ignored the novel. “I’m never going to find someone to take Gloria’s place unless I offer more money,” she said. “I don’t think anyone else is dumb enough to work that cheap.”

  “You’ll have to take that up with the library board.” Cassie was right: She’d have to pay a lot to get anyone to put up with her for forty hours a week.

  “The board will just tell me they’re broke. They’re worse than you for putting on the poor mouth.”

  “I’m not putting on.” Lucille didn’t try to hide her exasperation. “The city’s pretty much broke.”

  “Well, we all know whose fault that is.”

  Lucille’s cheeks felt hot, and she gripped the edge of the counter to keep from reaching over and slapping Cassie silly. Yes, everyone knew that Lucille had fallen for a smooth-talking swindler who’d cleaned out the city coffers last fall. Worse, Gerald Pershing was still a fixture in her life, thanks to a swindle they’d cooked up to sell him half of a nonproducing gold mine the city had acquired in payment of back taxes.

  “Maybe you should ask Gerald for a donation to the library fund,” Lucille said. “Since he seems so sweet on you.” Over Christmas, Cassie had had the long-in-the-tooth Lothario running to do her bidding.

  “That was only when he thought I was an heiress.” She grabbed Lucille’s book and ran it across the scanner. She squinted at the computer screen. “Lucas owes a twenty-five-cent fine. He turned in that book about electricity a day late.”

  Lucille opened her wallet and took out a quarter. Lucas was her grandson, a bookworm. Surprisingly, he got along better with Cassie than most people.

  Cassie refused the quarter. “Tell him he can work it off by shelving for an hour for me on Saturday.”

  Lucille dropped the change back in her wallet. Lucas, now thirteen, might not want to spend his Saturday morning at the library with a grouchy old woman, but the boy continually surprised her. He might look forward to the arrangement, since he enjoyed browsing the shelves of dusty volumes, some of which hadn’t been moved in at least a decade. “I’ll give him the message,” she said. “And I’ll put the word out that you’re looking for help.”

  Cassie made a grunting noise that might have been “thanks.” Though Lucille doubted it.

  She was on her way out when the door burst open and Bob Prescott sauntered in. As usual, the odor of beer wafted around him like a hoppy aftershave. Dressed in canvas pants and a checked shirt, he looked like a movie extra hired to play a miner. Except Bob was the real thing. He still worked several claims in the mountains above town—when he wasn’t propping up the bar at the Dirty Sally. And he’d volunteered as manager of the Lucky Lady, the town’s bogus gold mine in which Lucille’s former lover Gerald Pershing now held a half interest.

  “Good afternoon, Bob,” Lucille said.

  “Nothing good about it,” he said.

  “Sorry to hear that.” She tried to slip past him, but he took her arm in a surprisingly strong grip. “We’ve got problems, Madam Mayor. You and I need to talk.”

  She checked her watch. She needed to get back to the shop, to meet an antique buyer from Denver who was coming by to look at a folk art piece Lucille had advertised on her Web site. “I can give you ten minutes.” She glanced over her shoulder at Cassie, who was leaning over the counter, clearly listening to every word. “Walk with me back to the store.”

  “Bob, you owe a dollar fine on that book you checked out on how to cheat at blackjack,” Cassie called as they headed toward the door.

  “It was how to win at blackjack,” he said.

  Cassie shrugged. “Same difference. My grandmother always said gambling was the work of the devil.”

  “She would know.” He held the door open and motioned Lucille through.

  On the sidewalk, a chill wind buffeted them. Lucille drew her coat more closely around her. Though April was almost over, snow still lingered in dirty piles at the edge of the street, and the buds on the trees in the park refused to blossom, closed up like misers’ fists. Spring always took so long to come to the mountains and lingered so short a time.

  Bob shoved both hands into his pockets and fell into step beside her. “I’ve been studying up, thinking about taking a trip down to Cripple Creek,” he said. “My sister wants me to come see her, and they’ve got those casinos there—thought I’d give ’em a try.”

  Bob had a sister? She tried to imagine a female version of the shriveled old man but had to stop. “That’s nice, Bob. It’s always good to stay in touch with family.”

  He grunted.

  “What’s this big problem you wanted to talk about?” she prompted. She prayed it was something small. Something easily—and cheaply—handled. But the problems people brought to her never were small or cheap or easy.

  �
��Oh, yeah. Well, we got the report back this morning from that engineering firm in Denver—the one Gerald hired to do an assessment of the Lucky Lady.”

  As always when Gerald’s name was mentioned, she stiffened. She really needed to get over that. Yes, she’d slept with the guy and let him cheat her and the town, but that was months ago. “I didn’t know Gerald had hired anyone to do an assessment.”

  “I told him he was wasting his money—that I knew more about mining than all those engineers had forgot—but he wouldn’t hear anything against it.” Bob spat into the brown grass along the edge of the sidewalk.

  “And what did they find?” The Lucky Lady Mine was supposed to be a dud—that was the whole reason the city had offered shares for sale—to recoup their lost money by playing on Gerald’s greed. What they’d done wasn’t exactly legal, but since Gerald had been dancing on the wrong side of the law with his bogus investments, they’d figured they were about even.

  Bob looked glum. “The engineers’ report says there’s gold in there. A good amount of it, too, buried deep and mixed in with a lot of other minerals, but it’s there.”

  She stopped and whirled to face him, heart doing a flamenco stomp in her chest. “How is this bad news?” After all, the city still owned the other half of the mine. “Are you saying we could make money off this after all?”

  “It’s the ‘after all’ part that’s the kicker,” Bob said. “Getting to the gold is going to take a big investment of cash to pay for fancy machinery and processing.” He shook his head.

  Lucille’s mind raced. “Can’t we get Gerald to pay for it? He’s always talking about how much money he has.”

  “I tried that already, but he’s insisting that each partner in the venture pay an equal share.”

  “Can we afford it?” She had to ask, though she already knew the answer.

  “If we empty the coffers again, maybe.”

  After paying for plowing during a winter that had seen record amounts of snow, not to mention repairing city streets and paying some other bills they owed, the city budget was already nearly depleted. “What if we refuse?”

  “He says he’ll sue us for not holding up our part of the partnership agreement. He could end up with the whole mine.” Bob rubbed the back of his neck. “Hell, he could end up with the whole town, for all I know.”

  “I’ll have Reggie look into this.” The town’s lawyer, Reggie Paxton, might be able to find an angle for them to pursue. “Bob, do you think there’s enough gold in the mine to make all this worthwhile? I mean, will the investment eventually pay for itself?”

  He scraped a hand over his bristly cheek and worked his jaw back and forth, as if literally chewing on the question. “I don’t know. On one hand, why would Pershing waste his money on something that wouldn’t pay off? On the other, if he thinks he’s been swindled . . .”

  She nodded. “He might do it just to get back at the town.” To get back at her. Even though Gerald had been the one to run off after their one night together, he’d had the audacity to expect her to pick up where they’d left off when he finally did return to town. She’d told him where he could stick that idea, and he’d acted all hurt and offended. Maybe this was his revenge—to bankrupt the town she loved a second time. She’d always heard that a woman scorned was a terrible thing to behold, but she wasn’t so sure that men couldn’t be just as bad. Or worse.

  Chapter 3

  Sharon followed the blonde in the Escalade, Barbara, to a neat street of identical wooden houses a couple of miles from the center of Eureka. She parked in the drive of the lavender house, and she and Alina climbed out and waved to Barbara as she turned her car around and drove off.

  “The house is cute,” Alina said.

  “It is.” She didn’t normally associate men, especially her brother, with “cute,” but the cottage where he lived had lavender-painted wood siding with white gingerbread trim. The sharply pitched roof and tiny front porch made it resemble a doll’s house. She glanced at the matching cottage next door—this one painted green and white. Where the fiancée lived. Had being neighbors thrown the two together, or had that come later?

  She and Alina carried their suitcases up the front steps, and Sharon used the key Jay—she couldn’t get used to thinking of him as Jameso—had given her to open the door. They stepped into a living room dominated by a black wood stove. Light shone through bare windows onto equally unadorned hardwood floors.

  “Why doesn’t he have any furniture?” Alina asked.

  Sharon laughed. The living room was almost empty, save for a leather couch strategically patched with silver duct tape and a television balanced on a stack of crates. Through an open doorway she glimpsed a wooden table and two folding chairs. “Your uncle is just a typical bachelor,” she said. “The refrigerator is probably full of beer, and I’ll bet there’s nothing in the cupboards but cans of soup and chili.”

  She wondered what other bachelor accoutrements Jay might have stashed about. Note to self: Check under the mattress and in the closet for girlie magazines. She didn’t really want her daughter coming across them accidentally.

  “But isn’t he over thirty?” Alina stood in the middle of the room, clutching her suitcase, as if she was afraid to touch anything.

  “It takes longer for some men to grow up than others,” Sharon said. Sometimes a lot longer.

  “He has a lot of skis,” Alina said. They were lined up along one wall of the living room—four pairs of varying widths, from skinny cross-country skis to fat powder boards. A snowboard completed the lineup, along with two pairs of snowshoes, a jumble of poles, two backpacks, and what might have been parts for a snowmobile.

  “Men do love their toys,” Sharon said.

  “At least he doesn’t have guns everywhere.” Alina set down her suitcase and studied a picture on the wall, a sepia print of a miner with a mule.

  Sharon felt a pain in her chest. Right. Her soon-to-be ex-husband had amassed an impressive collection of weaponry in the last few years. She couldn’t even go to the bathroom without finding some nasty-looking handgun balanced on the toilet lid. Jameso probably did have a weapon or two somewhere around here, but at least the walls weren’t bristling with them.

  “Let’s check out the bedroom,” she said.

  The room wasn’t as awful as she’d feared. Sheets and blankets trailed from the unmade bed, and a tangle of dirty clothes filled one corner. But she found clean sheets in the closet. And no magazines under the mattress. Alina helped her mother change the bed linens, and Sharon bundled up the old ones and the dirty clothes and stashed them under the bed until she could get to the coin laundry to wash them. She swept the floor and dusted the windowsills, and the room looked habitable.

  “Where am I going to sleep?” Alina asked.

  “You’ll sleep with me.” They’d shared a bed in the hotel room on the way down.

  Alina made a face. “Mom, I’m thirteen.”

  And I’m thirty-one, Sharon thought. Thirty-one and I don’t even have my own bed anymore—or a job or house or retirement fund or even a savings account. How had that happened? “It’s just until I find a job and we get a place of our own,” she said.

  Alina pushed her lip out in a pout and collapsed onto the bed. “When was the last time you had a job?” she asked.

  “It’s been a few years.” She had to force lightness into her voice. She had never actually worked for pay. Joe had never wanted her to work, and Adan had come along exactly ten months after the wedding, so Sharon had been occupied looking after him. Eventually, they’d moved too far from town to make commuting practical and besides, paying for day care was too expensive. She’d stayed home and looked after children and the house. She’d made her own bread and yogurt, planted a garden, sewed her own clothes, and been a regular pioneer woman.

  “I did volunteer work,” she said. “At your school, remember?”

  Alina wrinkled her nose. “I was, like, in third grade.”

  Five years ago. A
lifetime ago. “I’m sure I’ll find something,” she said with false bravado. She’d have to. Jay—Jameso’s—work as a bartender clearly couldn’t support them all.

  “Why did Uncle Jay change his name?” Alina asked.

  “You’ll have to ask him that.” Though the fact that he’d grown to hate their father and wanted to distance himself from the past probably had a lot to do with it. She didn’t blame him for wanting to start with a completely clean slate. If she didn’t have children, she might think of adopting a new name of her own. It would be sort of like going into the witness protection program, with fewer rules and less security.

  “I like the name Jameso, though,” Alina continued. “It’s different. Kind of cool.”

  That was Jay—always the coolest guy in the room. Untouchable.

  “Did you know he was engaged?” Alina asked.

  “No, that was a surprise.” And the fact that his fiancée was pregnant. Had the child forced Jay’s hand, or had the couple been planning to wed all along? Whatever their situation, Sharon’s meeting with Maggie just now had been awkward. She’d have to try harder to be friendly. After all, Maggie was going to be family now—maybe the only family, along with Jameso, that she and Alina had left.

  She was in the kitchen taking an inventory of the shelves—as she’d expected, there wasn’t much to work with—when someone knocked on the front door. “I’ll get it!” Alina called.

  By the time Sharon made it into the living room, Alina was ushering in Maggie and Barbara. “We stopped by to see if you needed anything,” Barbara said. She looked around the room and made a face. “Just as I remembered it—early bachelor pad.”

  “We planned to buy new furniture for our place together,” Maggie said.