by Leona Karr
Taking her purchases to the front, she waited until the cash register was clear of customers and then presented everything for checkout.
“I forgot a few things last time,” she said, returning his smile. “Luckily, Josh had to drive into town for some supplies. Did you say you make deliveries?”
He hesitated. “Now and again. Depends upon the circumstances.”
“Didn’t you say you delivered some things to the hotel once in a while?”
“That was a little special. Willard was kind of a lost soul, you know,” he said with a kindly smile.
“Yes, and I appreciate your helping him out. My uncle must have felt comfortable in sharing his projects with you.”
“Sometimes, but, frankly, they didn’t make much sense when he told me about them. I just listened and sold him the hardware he wanted. One time, when I made a delivery, I helped him move some junk into one of those buildings in the back.”
“So he never gave you a tour of the building? Or showed you what he was doing with all the stuff he bought and collected?” she prodded.
“Nope. I haven’t been inside that place for nigh on ten years, since the Haverlys sold out.” He shook his head regretfully. “Nice couple. Damn shame they couldn’t make a go of it. As far as I’m concerned, the property went to hell in a handbasket when Renquist had it. He never paid a penny of taxes on it. No wonder your uncle got it for a song.”
Was there an edge of resentment in his tone? Stacy couldn’t be sure. He might have had his eye on the property, and her uncle bought it before he could. Maybe Abe thought driving her out would put the property on the market again?
“One thing’s for sure, you’re the prettiest owner to come along. You tell Josh he better be treating you right.” He grinned as he handed her the sack of groceries.
Stacy’s face grew warm. She mumbled goodbye and left the store, certain about one thing—playing Sherlock Holmes was not her strong suit. Trying to keep an open mind, she still had trouble believing that Abe Jenkins would be capable of any insidious torment.
A weathered bench had been placed at one side of the store, probably for retired older men passing away the time, but it was empty at the moment, so she sat down to wait for Josh. A few pedestrians gawked at her as they passed by, and a couple of cars even slowed down so that the drivers could get a better look.
When Josh drove up in the Jeep, all washed and waxed, she couldn’t believe it was the same vehicle. The engine sounded smooth and totally reliable.
“You’re a miracle worker,” she told him as he loaded her purchases.
“Would you like to drive it? It’s all greased, oiled and handles pretty well for a used car.”
“Maybe later.” The memory of her horrendous drive the night of the storm was enough to dim her enthusiasm for getting behind the wheel. As long as Josh was willing to be the chauffeur, she’d play lady. On the drive back, she told Josh about her less than successful sleuthing.
As Josh listened to her reasoning, he found himself agreeing that Abe might be their midnight culprit. Only a few people could have had access to the attic, and the storekeeper was certainly one of them. Abe could have known more about Willard’s projects than anyone in town.
“I think he might have wanted to buy the hotel,” Stacy said. “And, perhaps, still does.”
“Could be. Abe took over the General Store when no one else wanted it. The former owner was a woman who’d had the store for years.”
“What happened to her?”
“She was found dead at the back of the store one morning,” Josh answered grimly. “Shot to death.”
Stacy’s stomach turned over. “Do you think that Abe—?”
“I don’t know. If Abe killed once to get what he wanted, he might try it again. They say that past behavior is the best indicator of future behavior.”
Stacy swallowed back a sudden taste of bile. Why not let the storekeeper or anyone else have the blasted property? Why spend another minute in the place?
“All we have to do is keep a lid on things for a few weeks,” Josh said as if he were following the direction of her thoughts.
“A few weeks,” she echoed.
Seeing her haunted expression, Josh cursed her uncle’s stipulation that Stacy had to maintain residence in the hotel during the renovations. If he’d had a choice he would have sent her away as quickly as possible.
They finished the rest of the ride in silence, and when they stopped in front of the hotel, Chester and Rob were sitting on the steps, smoking.
Josh glared at them both.
Rob only took another puff on his cigarette, but Chester got to his feet and came down the steps. “We’re taking a little break, boss.”
“So I see.”
“You still hauling all that marble around?” he asked as he glanced in the back of the Jeep. “Willy never did tell us what he was going to do with it.”
“Well, you can take it out right now and set it over there by the railing,” Josh ordered. “I dumped the rest of the stuff this morning at the garage.”
As Stacy got out of the car, Chester reached in the back for one of the marble chunks. “Wow, these babies are heavy,” he complained. “No wonder Willy’s heart blew a gasket trying to haul one of these around.”
“Is that what happened?” Stacy asked. She had just been told that her uncle had died from a heart attack, but she hadn’t been given any of the details. “He was lifting a piece of marble?”
“Not just lifting it. Hell’s bells, he was trying to carry it up the side of the mountain.”
“Why?”
“Nobody knows,” Chester said with a shrug. “When he came up missing, someone remembered seeing him heading up the hillside. We went up there looking for him. And there he was. The coroner said he’d just collapsed and died.” Chester added thoughtfully, “The stone’s still there, kinda like a tombstone, if you know what I mean.”
The way he said it brought a shiver of ice trailing up Stacy’s back.
Chapter Nine
Josh helped Stacy take the groceries up to the apartment, and then he went downstairs to put Chester and Rob back to work. She waited until he had gone and then exchanged her shorts and summer top for the new pair of jeans and tailored shirt. She put on a pair of loafers instead of her summer sandals.
Now that she knew the circumstances of her uncle’s death, she felt a need to visit the site where he had drawn his last breath. Since Willard had stipulated that he wanted to be cremated, his ashes were resting in a Denver crypt. Everything had been taken care of through the lawyer’s office, and Stacy had not really felt the impact of his passing the way she did now. The least she could do was spend a little time on the mountainside in his memory.
Chester had told her that through the years, hotel guests had worn a wandering hiking path up the northern side of the mountain, and he assured her she’d see the marble about halfway up to the first outcropping of granite boulders high on the slope.
She left the hotel by the back door and began her climb up the hillside. As she wound her way through a thick stand of pine trees and riotous mountain vegetation, dead needles and dry pine cones crunched under her feet. Wild bushes crowded the faint path and clutched at her pant legs, and loose rocks slipped under her feet.
As she labored upward, she kept glancing back, hoping to see the hotel stretched out below, but only an infinity of trees met her eyes. A penetrating dank coolness brought a chill to her body, and she was grateful when the heavy evergreens gave way to a grove of slender aspen trees.
These white-trunk trees were scattered enough for spears of warm sun to touch her face, and she paused to catch her breath. At sea level she would have been good for a five-mile hike, but the high altitude and thin air was taking its toll. What folly could have caused her uncle to carry a heavy marble stone up this steep hillside?
The climb became steeper with each step upward. Her breathing was shallow and her unconditioned muscles were protesting when s
he saw it! A square of chalky whiteness up ahead, just off the path.
When she reached the spot, she let herself sink to the ground beside the marble stone. Although she hadn’t had a personal relationship with her uncle, an unexpected surge of tears spilled down her cheeks. She regretted that she’d never given him a thought until she learned of her inheritance. He had lived in a world of his own, and she was grieved that he’d lost his life trying to carry out one of his twisted ideas.
As she sat there, drawing in the tangy pine-scented air, her spirits began to lift. She looked around at the panorama of mountain, forest and white-flecked blue sky and found a sense of peace as she murmured, “You chose well, Uncle.”
No wonder Josh loved this place. There was something of “God’s country” about high peaks jutting into the heavens and green-gold carpets of trees that softened craggy mountain slopes. Far below, she could glimpse the hotel’s roof, and her thoughts instantly centered on Josh.
In her mind, she went over the plan he had presented to her. He seemed confident that the renovations could meet her obligations in a short time.
A short time. That was good, wasn’t it? Once she came into her inheritance, she’d get on with her life.
What life? A mocking voice seemed to taunt and put her on the defensive. “I’ll make one. I’ll go back to Los Angeles, and…and…I’ll forget Josh Spencer ever existed.”
The lie seemed to energize her. Impulsively, she decided to continue her hike up the mountain.
JOSH LEFT CHESTER and Rob working in the party room and headed for Renquist’s office. All the stuff that he’d lugged up to his room were mostly business records. Nothing of a personal nature had surfaced to give him any idea as to where Renquist might have fled.
He gave closer scrutiny to the room than he’d done before. When he saw the deep imprints of something that had been sitting in a corner of the room, he speculated that it could have been a small safe. That puzzled him. Was the safe empty when someone carted it off? Surely Renquist would have emptied it of any money.
He tackled the files but failed to come up with any communications to a friend or business associate who might have harbored Renquist when he fled the hotel. Frustrated that any trail Renquist might have left had grown stone cold, Josh slammed the file drawers shut. He sat down at the desk and went through all the drawers again.
Too much time had gone by. He should have broken into the hotel before the looters got to it, but Sheriff Mosley had warned Josh that he’d be arrested if he went snooping around the property. Now Josh knew that Mosley must have been turning a blind eye to what was going on, or making his hands as dirty as anyone’s.
When Stacy had presented Josh with the opportunity to search the premises legally, he believed he’d uncover some evidence that he could take to responsible authorities. Now he rested his head in his hands as a heavy sense of defeat descended upon him. The shadow over his sister’s death would never be lifted. He’d finish the job for Stacy and that would be that. His life would seem even emptier than ever.
Leaving the dark office, he went out in the bright sunlight and started hiking up the mountain slope. When he’d heard Stacy asking Chester questions about how to find the place where her uncle had died, Josh had tried to persuade her to wait until he finished work so he could go with her, but he could tell from the set of her mouth that she was going to go by herself.
His long, muscular legs took the climb with ease, without even a change in his breathing. When he reached the marble stone, he guessed from the indentations in the soft ground she might have been sitting there.
He glanced upward toward the ridge of granite boulders, and his eyes narrowed. Was that someone up there? Perched on the edge of that rocky shelf?
Josh’s mouth went dry. After the heavy rains they’d been having, those rocks could be loose enough to drop away with the slightest weight. He strode up the hillside at a fast pace, and his fears were confirmed when he got close enough to see her wave at him. Stacy was sitting on a high rocky ledge.
“Don’t move. Don’t move,” he shouted. Any slight movement could dislodge the weakest rock, and the rest could quickly follow in domino fashion.
How in the hell did she get up there without breaking her neck?
His eyes traveled the length of the ridge, and he saw a narrow fissure a few feet beyond where she sat. She must have climbed up that way, he thought impatiently, and then walked out on the rocks to sit on the edge.
He swore as he headed in that direction, but the closer he came, the broader she smiled. He groaned, knowing that sitting as close to the edge as she was only invited disaster. Mud and rock slides were a common occurrence in the high country during the rainy season. Once a slide began there was no stopping it, and even deep-rooted trees could be leveled in a swath of destruction.
Stacy watched him disappear into the trough that rose to the top of the rocky shelf. She could still hear him shouting, “Don’t get up! Don’t move.”
Why was he so agitated? Did he think she’d climbed up here to jump off? The view was spectacular, and she had been enjoying herself until he started shouting at her.
In a fraction of the time it had taken her to climb to the top of the ridge, he came into view. Instead of walking out on the ledge to the farthest boulders, the way she had done, he stopped a short distance away.
“Come join me,” she invited sociably. When he audibly swore, she returned his frown. “What’s the matter?”
In a very controlled, rigid voice, he said, “That rock shelf is very unstable. You need to get to your feet very slowly. I’ll reach out for you as far as I can, but any extra weight on a loose stone is very dangerous and the whole shelf could go.”
Stacy swallowed hard. “I’ve been sitting here for a half hour and nothing has happened.”
“Thank God,” Josh breathed. “All right, get to your feet slowly, without pushing down on the boulder with your hands. Then turn, take long steps from rock to rock, and reach out to me.”
She nodded as if she’d heard him, but didn’t move. Until then, Stacy hadn’t paid any attention to the sharp drop-off, since she’d never been bothered by heights. But his anxiety communicated itself to her, and in her mind’s eye she saw her body crushed and battered as she tumbled downward.
“Now,” he ordered, and his tone tolerated no argument.
Swallowing hard, she forced herself to get to her feet in the fashion Josh had ordered. As she did so, the boulder on which she stood shifted slightly in warning.
Josh fought the urge to step out on the shelf and carry her to safety. His voice was laced with frustration as he forced himself to say, “Easy now. One slow step at a time.”
He knew that at any second, layers of sodden rocks and earth could fall from under her feet. Even as he watched her step from one boulder to another, he heard a warning crack.
She froze at the sound, and he felt the shifting of boulders as the edge of the ledge fell away behind her.
Josh lurched forward, grabbed her hand and jerked her across the remaining stretch of boulders to the safety of solid ground. As a roar of falling rocks filled their ears, they watched as a large section of the rocky precipice fell away, leaving a gaping hole where Stacy had been sitting.
He led her to a patch of wild grass and eased her down on the ground. Sitting beside her, he put his arm around her shoulders and drew her close. It had been a miracle that the weakened ridge hadn’t given way earlier while she was sitting there. He’d never forget the sound of those boulders shifting, then giving way and dropping out of sight. If he hadn’t decided to find her… He suppressed a shiver at the unfinished thought.
She raised her head and looked at him. “I didn’t mean to scare the daylights out of you.” She could tell he was shaken by what had happened.
“Well, you did,” he answered as he smoothed back her dark wavy hair with a tender touch. As a shaft of golden sunlight touched her delicate features and the beauty of the sky radiated in h
er deep blue eyes, his heart tightened with the thought of something happening to her. “Please, don’t ever scare me like that again.”
“I’m sorry. It was stupid of me.”
“No, just unknowing. The Rocky Mountains can be a harsh teacher, but their beauty is well worth the lessons.”
“I was really proud of myself for having climbed up to those rocks. If I hadn’t needed to sit down and catch my breath, I might have decided to take a walk along the edge of the ridge.” She faltered. “And if you hadn’t come along to warn me—”
“But I did come along,” he countered quickly. “And there’s no harm done. One of the cardinal rules of living in the mountains is always tell someone where you’re going.”
As the warmth of her supple body radiated against his, he was shocked by the depths of his feelings for her. “I should have been taking better care of you.”
She started to retort, “I can take care of myself,” but thought better of it. She’d nearly lost her life and endangered his. This wasn’t the time for foolish pride. She was blessed to have someone like Josh looking after her. “I promise not to take off on my own again.”
“Never?” he challenged as he fingered a wayward curl lying softly on her forehead.
“Well, almost never,” she parried. Afraid she was reacting to a need of her own, she tried to ignore the sudden desire that his expression stirred within her.
“I’ll hold you to it,” he said solemnly.
As she searched his eyes, the glint of loneliness she was used to seeing there held a glimmer of a deep yearning. She wanted to respond to that longing, but the lingering, painful lesson that Richard had taught her still resonated within her whenever her emotions were involved.
“I think I’m ready to start back,” she said, avoiding looking at his face as she moved out of his arms. “Going down should be a great deal easier than climbing up.”
“Not always. Sometimes soft ground is like a waxed sled.” He stood up and held out a hand to her. “You may have to hold onto me to keep from falling.”