Death Deals a Hand

by Janet Dawson

  “I volunteered myself, right after Pearl Harbor,” the doctor said, “I worked at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital out in Aurora. Before that, I’m sure I must have met your father at some point. His name sounds familiar.”

  Rachel Ranleigh snapped her camera case shut and set it on the floor. “Aunt Ella knows everyone. Even Doc Susie.”

  “Really?” Now Jill was impressed. For several years now, she had been interested in Doctor Susan Anderson, better known to Coloradans as Doc Susie. She had first read about the doctor during the war, in an article in Pic magazine. And just a couple of years ago, the Rocky Mountain News had printed a story about Doc Susie. Jill’s grandmother had sent her the clipping. A graduate of the University of Michigan at a time when women doctors were unusual, Doc Susie had been practicing medicine as the only physician in the small town of Fraser, Colorado since 1907.

  “Doctor Anderson is in her eighties now,” Dr. Ranleigh said. “She’s still working, even at that age. I see her from time to time when she gets to Denver. She was, and is, such an inspiration to me. When I was in medical school, there weren’t many women in my class. And even now, the profession is still dominated by men. Some of my male colleagues aren’t what I’d call welcoming, even though I’ve been practicing medicine for years.”

  “I can imagine,” Jill said. “We go through Fraser, but it’s not one of the California Zephyr’s regular stops.”

  “I know,” the doctor said. “When I go to Fraser I usually drive. Rachel and I are going to San Francisco. I’m attending a conference and Rachel wants to see the sights.”

  “I’m sure there will be lots of wonderful things for me to photograph,” Rachel added.

  “There certainly are. San Francisco will keep you occupied, but if you have the time, go to Oakland and Berkeley, or up to Marin County,” Jill said. “I can give you some suggestions later. For now, welcome aboard, and enjoy your trip. And please let me know if you need anything. I’ll be coming through the train this afternoon to take dinner reservations.”

  Jill walked to bedroom C and knocked. The man who opened the door was tall, with bulky shoulders and a broad chest, dressed casually in slacks and a shirt. He was in his late sixties, with a ruddy face and a head of gray hair.

  She stared at him, open-mouthed. Then she found her voice.

  “Uncle Sean!”

  Chapter Four

  Sean Cleary chuckled. “Well, if it isn’t little Jill. I knew you were working on the railroad. Sure didn’t expect to see you this trip.”

  “Where are you headed?” Jill asked.

  “Nevada. I’m going to see Teresa, Fred and the grandkids. They moved to Winnemucca a few months back. Fred got a job in some dolomite mining outfit near there, in Humboldt County.”

  “I know. I had a letter from Teresa,” Jill said. “She sent me their new address. She and Fred have lived in a lot of places since they got married.”

  Jill usually got the family news from Grandma Cleary in Denver, and from her mother, who was Sean Cleary’s younger sister. Her cousin Teresa, who was four years older than Jill, had married Fred, her high school sweetheart, in 1946, as soon as he’d returned from his wartime service in the army. Fred worked in the mining industry and in the time they’d been married, the family had moved several times, from Colorado to Wyoming, then to Utah and now Nevada.

  “I know Teresa had a little girl last year. So how many grandkids do you have now?”

  “Four. Two boys and two girls. The youngest is about ten months now. I got some pictures right here.”

  Her uncle reached for his wallet and opened it, proudly showing off several photos of his daughter, son-in-law and the grandchildren.

  “What a pretty baby. She looks a lot like Aunt Hazel.”

  Her uncle grinned, looking fondly at the picture of his youngest grandchild. “She sure does. Just look at that smile. She’s a little sweetheart, just like Hazel.”

  Aunt Hazel had been Uncle Sean’s sweetheart, ever since they’d met in high school such a long time ago. They married in 1917, a month before Sean sailed for France with the American Expeditionary Force led by General “Black Jack” Pershing. Jill knew from family stories that her uncle had fought at the Battle of the Marne and been wounded in October 1918 during the Meuse–­Argonne offensive. Like many men she knew who’d fought in wars, he never talked about it.

  Her aunt was gone, though. Sean and Hazel had been married forty years when Hazel died of cancer, in October of 1947.

  “Mom says you’re retired now,” Jill said.

  He nodded. “I turned in my badge last November. It’s time for younger men than me to go after the bad guys.”

  Sean Cleary had been a Denver police officer for nearly thirty years, first a uniformed patrolman, then a plainclothes detective. He was married to the job, Aunt Hazel used to say, only half ­joking.

  “It’s certainly good to see you, Uncle Sean. Let’s have dinner and catch up. I’ll be going through the cars later this afternoon to make dinner reservations.”

  “Sure thing. Right now I’m going to find a cup of coffee.” He headed forward, toward the dining car and the buffet-lounge car.

  Jill walked back to the next car, the Silver Falls. Frank Nathan was walking toward her, with a batch of fresh towels over his left arm. “The Olivers are all settled into bedroom E, and so is Mrs. Warrick in bedroom D. There’s a man who got on in Denver, traveling in bedroom A. He went back to the observation car. He asked me if there was a card game onboard. I suspect he means poker, not bridge.” The porter maintained a poker face as he spoke. “I told him to check with Lonnie Clark, the porter back in the Silver Crescent. I heard from him that a few of the passengers were playing in the drawing room yesterday afternoon. Maybe he can get into that game if they play again today.”

  Jill nodded. It was common for passengers to get together to play cards during the journey, in the train’s lounges or the coffee shop as well as their own bedrooms. Whether the game was bridge or poker, any money that changed hands was their business, not that of the railroads or the onboard train crew. The railroads would be more concerned, she thought, by the rumors that Jill had heard that there were sometimes clandestine poker games among the crew late at night, up in the baggage car.

  As to the passengers, Jill knew who had been playing poker. The game was in the drawing room occupied by Mr. Fontana. As she went through the train the previous afternoon, making dinner reservations, she’d gone into the drawing room, where Mr. Fontana, Mr. Geddes and two other male passengers were grouped around a table, cards and money in front of them.

  Now Mr. Nathan tapped on the door of bedroom C, called, “Porter,” and waited for a response from the occupant. When he’d entered the bedroom, Jill went to bedroom E and knocked. Mrs. Oliver opened the door.

  “Welcome aboard the California Zephyr,” Jill said.

  The woman smiled. “Hello. How nice of you to stop by. ­Henry, it’s Miss McLeod.”

  Mr. Oliver was in the seat near the window, his long legs stretched out in front of him. He finally spoke, in a deep rumbling voice. “Morning.”

  “Where are you headed?” Jill asked.

  “We’re going to Oroville, California,” Mrs. Oliver said, “to see our new grandbaby. A little girl, born just a month ago.”

  “Congratulations,” Jill told her. “A new baby in the family is always cause for celebration.”

  “It certainly is.” Mrs. Oliver sat down in the chair near the door and reached into the patchwork cloth bag she’d brought, now at her feet. She pulled out a ball of fine pink wool and a crochet hook. On closer examination, Jill saw, attached to the crochet hook, the beginnings of a tiny sweater. Mrs. Oliver set to work, her crochet hook flying as she worked with the soft yarn. “This is our third grandchild. I’m glad we were able to get away. Before things get busy at home.”

  “Always something to do on a farm,” her husband said.

  “Where is your farm?” Jill asked.

  “Near
the Front Range, out west of Arvada,” Mrs. Oliver said. “The tracks are south of us, but of course we had to go to Union Station to board the train.”

  “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to make your journey more pleasant,” Jill told them. She left bedroom E, shutting the door behind her. Then she stepped over to bedroom D and knocked. Mrs. Warrick called, “Come in.” When she opened the door, Geneva Warrick was seated near the window, a book on her lap, and more books visible in the open carpetbag she’d brought with her.

  “So you’re traveling to Sacramento,” Jill said.

  “Yes. One of my nieces is getting married this coming weekend. I’m looking forward to seeing all the family.”

  “We’ll be in Sacramento around twelve-thirty tomorrow afternoon. So relax and enjoy the ride. It looks to me like you have plenty to read.”

  Mrs. Warrick laughed. “I have an absolute horror of running out of something to read while I’m traveling. So I always bring plenty of books.”

  Jill looked at the title of the book Mrs. Warrick held. It was a biography of William Jackson Palmer, the founder of the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad. “That’s appropriate reading, since this stretch of the California Zephyr is operated by the Denver and Rio Grande. You must be interested in history.”

  The older woman nodded. “Yes, it is germane for this trip, and I am very much interested in history. I was a professor of history for many years at Colorado Women’s College. I retired a year ago.”

  “I majored in history at the University of California in Berkeley,” Jill told her. “When I graduated a few years ago, I planned to teach.”

  Mrs. Warrick tilted her head to one side and studied Jill. “Yet you’re riding the rails instead. An interesting choice.”

  “One that suits me for the time being,” Jill said.

  “I suspect there’s a story behind that,” Mrs. Warrick said.

  “There is, but I won’t go into that now. I’ve been riding the rails for two years now, so I’ve become interested in railroad ­history.”

  “There’s a lot of it in this state. My focus is Colorado history,” Mrs. Warrick added. “I have a Colorado notable in my family tree—John Long Routt, who was the first governor of Colorado.”

  “Also the seventh.” Jill remembered her Colorado history lessons from school. “I grew up in Colorado, so I’m interested in the state’s history as well. What I like about Governor Routt is that he supported women’s suffrage.”

  “Indeed he did. He was a very strong supporter. He escorted Susan B. Anthony when she toured the state, and when women were first able to vote in Colorado, back in 1893, his wife Eliza was the first woman in the state to register to vote.”

  “There are a lot of interesting women in Colorado history,” Jill said. “Margaret Brown, for example.”

  Mrs. Margaret Tobin Brown, wife of Leadville silver millionaire John Brown, had survived the Titanic disaster, earning the title “Unsinkable.”

  “I’m fortunate to have met Mrs. Brown back in the twenties,” Mrs. Warrick said. “She was a remarkable woman.”

  “I’ve read a lot about her. Some of it’s a bit fantastic, though. It’s hard to know what to believe.”

  Mrs. Warrick shook her head. “Much of what’s written about her is made up out of whole cloth, bearing no relation to the truth. She never called herself ‘Molly.’ It was always Margaret. Separating fact from fiction is always difficult. It’s the same situation with the Tabors.”

  “Also an interesting story,” Jill said. Elizabeth McCourt, widely known as Baby Doe, had been the second wife of silver miner Horace Tabor, who also made his fortune in Leadville. Tabor had divorced his first wife, Augusta, to marry the much younger Baby Doe. He had served a brief term as a United States senator, but he’d lost his fortune during the silver panic of 1893. Eventually Baby Doe returned to Leadville, where she died in 1935, frozen to death in a cabin at Tabor’s old Matchless Mine.

  “Strong women,” Mrs. Warrick said. “Mrs. Brown and ­Augusta Tabor, certainly. I don’t know how strong Baby Doe was. Though she must have been, to stay up at that mine until she died. I’m also privileged to have met another strong woman, Doc Susie. She comes to Denver from time to time. Still practicing medicine at her age.”

  “I was just talking about Doc Susie with another passenger,” Jill said. “She knows the doctor. Well, they’re both doctors. This passenger’s name is Doctor Ranleigh.”

  Mrs. Warrick’s face lit up with a wide smile. “Do you mean to tell me Ella Ranleigh is on this train?”

  “Why, yes, do you know her?”

  “I certainly do. What a pleasant surprise.”

  “Her niece Rachel is traveling with her. They’re going to San Francisco. You’ll find them in the next car, the Silver Quail, in compartment I.”

  “It’s been a while since I’ve seen her. We’ll have a good long visit.”

  “It’s been nice talking with you. I’ll leave you to your book, then.”

  Jill left Mrs. Warrick’s bedroom and continued walking back through the train. The CZ went through a tunnel, then another as Jill made her way back to the Silver Crescent. There were seven tunnels on this stretch. After the seventh, the CZ entered El Dorado Canyon and Jill climbed up to the Vista-Dome on the dome-observation car. Every seat was taken by passengers craning their necks as they looked at the scenery. The high plains where Denver and the other Front Range cities were located were no longer visible and the train was now traveling high into the canyon. Another tunnel came up, number eight, and then Jill saw a path leading down a hillside. According to Jill’s grandmother on her father’s side of the family, years ago there had been a hotel here, called the Crags, and Grandmother McLeod had stayed there. But the hotel was no more. It had burned down years ago.

  Another tunnel was coming up. Jill started down the stairs leading from the Vista-Dome to the lounge of the dome-observation car. She turned and went down two more steps to the lounge below the Vista-Dome, where the porter, Lonnie Clark, was pouring coffee for a passenger.

  The man at the counter was tall and blond, a good-looking man in his thirties wearing slacks and a long-sleeved shirt. He paid the porter and reached for the cup. Then he glanced to his right and did a double-take.

  “Jill? Well, I’ll be damned.”

  Chapter Five

  The consensus in the family was that Douglas Cleary was a black sheep who had broken his parents’ hearts. No one had seen him since that chilly October day back in 1947, the day of Aunt Hazel’s funeral.

  Jill didn’t know what went on in Uncle Sean’s head, or heart—or in Doug’s, for that matter. But she knew that many of the stories making the rounds of the extended Cleary family were embellished, or simply false. Doug wasn’t entirely incommunicado. He kept in touch with his younger sister Teresa, through the occa­sional letter or phone call. But his sister was the only person in the family who heard from him.

  Uncle Sean and his only son had a terrible argument that day. Jill saw the confrontation from a distance, not able to hear what had been said. But the body language had been clear. Sean and Doug faced off in the backyard, away from the relatives and friends who’d come back to the Clearys’ house in Denver after her aunt’s funeral and interment at Fort Logan National Cemetery. Both men leaned toward each other, exchanging heated words, and at one point Doug raised his hand, clenched into a fist.

  Before anything could happen, Jill’s father had come between the two men. Whatever Amos McLeod said had defused the situation, but not by much. Sean turned and went back into the house. Doug stalked off, out of the backyard to the street, where he climbed into the Ford he’d been driving. Once he drove off, no one saw him again.

  “So you’re a Zephyrette.” Doug smiled, lines crinkling the skin in his tanned face, around his deep blue eyes. “Nice uniform. You’re all grown up, kid.” He waved to a vacant table. “Join me for some coffee?”

  “Of course.” Jill nodded at Mr. Clark and he poured
another cup of coffee. She doctored it with cream, then joined Doug at the table. They sat down facing each other as the train entered yet another tunnel.

  “I’d forgotten how many tunnels there are on this route,” Doug said.

  The train came out of the tunnel, into daylight again, the sun glistening on patches of snow. Jill glanced at the scene outside the windows with a practiced eye. “We’re in South Boulder Canyon now. Still more tunnels to come. It’s good to see you after all this time. Where have you been? And where are you headed?”

  “I’ve been skiing at Winter Park,” he said. “This train doesn’t stop in Fraser, so I had to go back down to Denver to catch it. As for where I’m going, the answer is Portola, California.”

  “That’s not a very big town,” Jill said. “And there are no ski areas nearby, not that I’m aware of.”

  “I’ll be visiting a friend.” He sipped his coffee and didn’t elaborate.

  “What have you been doing all these years? Skiing?” She hoped her cousin would open up a bit. She and Doug had never been that close, no doubt because of the difference in their ages. He was born in the autumn of 1919, after his father’s return from the first war, and Jill was born in the spring of 1927. So Doug was thirty-three and would be thirty-four in September. Jill had just turned twenty-six. Seven and a half years separated them. Doug had graduated from the University of Colorado in 1941, while she was a freshman at Denver’s East High School. The age difference didn’t matter now that they were both adults, but when she was a child, Doug was already in his teens, seeming so much older.

  “Skiing, yes.” The train plunged into another tunnel, a short one this time. “I spent some time in Europe. They have great skiing in the Alps. I worked as a ski instructor, too. When I got back from Switzerland, I stayed in New England for a while, working at a couple of ski resorts in Vermont.”