“Dick Major,” he said, extending a large, thick-fingered hand to me. “You the little lady staying up at the Auerbach place?”
“Yes.” I took his meaty hand with some trepidation, but his grip turned out to be pleasantly firm rather than crushing. “Danny Auerbach is an old friend of my husband’s.”
“But your husband ain’t there,” Dick observed, still grinning. “Just you and those little tykes of yours and that…What do you call her? A nanny? Must be nice to be able to afford a nanny.”
I didn’t know how to respond, but Toby saved me the trouble.
“They’re not alone at the Aerie,” he said staunchly. “I’m staying there, too.”
“So I hear.” Dick’s upper lip curled disdainfully as he looked Toby up and down, but his manic grin flicked back into place when he returned his attention to me. “Having a fine time, are you? Enjoying yourself? Seeing the sights? Planning to stay long?”
“We’re having a wonderful time, thanks to Toby,” I replied, carefully emphasizing Toby’s name. “I don’t know how long we’ll stay. Maybe a couple of weeks, maybe a month, maybe the rest of the summer. We’ll just have to see how it goes.”
Dick leaned forward and planted his ham-sized fists on the table. “I wouldn’t let my wife and kid stay up there with nothing but a little pip-squeak of a college boy to protect them. But maybe you’re braver than I am.”
Toby stirred, but I signaled for him to keep his seat. I didn’t want him to tangle with Dick Major. It would be like a choirboy going head to head with a professional wrestler.
“I’m quite sure that Toby could protect us if the need arose,” I said haughtily, “but why should it?”
“Ain’t you heard?” Dick leaned closer, until his large, pink, grinning face was mere inches from mine. “The Auerbach place is cursed.”
I stared at him openmouthed for a moment, then broke into a peal of laughter. Dick Major couldn’t possibly know that I had a foolproof curse-alert system sitting on my bedside table at the Aerie. If Aunt Dimity had detected the slightest trace of evil in our holiday home, she would have sounded the alarm. Her silence turned Dick’s dire pronouncement into a harmless joke.
My reaction seemed to unnerve him. He pulled back, his grin faltering, and looked down at me uncertainly.
“I guess I am braver than you,” I said, when I could speak. “I don’t believe the Aerie’s cursed.”
“Your order’s ready, Dick,” called Carrie Vyne.
“Be there in a minute,” Dick called back to her. His grin returned full force as he chucked me gently under the chin, saying softly, “Beliefs change, little lady. You’ll see.”
He left the table, paid for his coffee and pastries at the counter, and gave me a jovial, finger-waggling wave as he left the cafe.
“Wow,” said Toby, gazing at me in respectful disbelief. “You could give Maggie Flaxton a run for her money, Lori. I’ve never heard of anyone laughing in Dick Major’s face.”
“I wanted to break his wrist,” I said heatedly, rubbing my chin.
“So did I,” Toby assured me.
“What did he think I’d do?” I said indignantly. “Tremble in my boots? Did he expect me to pack up and head for the airport because he believes in some stupid superstition?”
“I think that’s exactly what he expected you to do,” said Toby. “He was trying to frighten you.”
“Well, he failed.” I gazed reflectively at the sunburned tourists strolling past the plate-glass window at the front of the cafe. “So the Aerie’s cursed, is it? How ridiculous. I’ve never stayed in a place that’s less cursed, except for my cottage back in England. The atmosphere up there is good and wholesome. I feel safe up there. I’ve been sleeping through the night for the first time since I was—” I broke off, caught Toby’s curious glance, and went on. “I’ve been sleeping through the night for the first time since I hurt my shoulder.”
“How did you hurt your shoulder?” he asked.
“I fell off a horse,” I lied, avoiding his eyes.
“Oh,” Toby said, as if he’d had a sudden revelation. “So that’s why you’re afraid of horses. It must have been a bad fall.”
“It was pretty bad, yes, but my point is that the Aerie has good vibes,” I said.
“I agree,” said Toby.
“Mind you,” I continued, after a brief, thoughtful silence, “Dick Major’s not the only one in town who thinks the Aerie’s cursed. It seems to be a popular belief. It would explain why Maggie Flaxton wouldn’t spend five minutes up there, and why Greg Wilstead gave me such a frightened-rabbit look when Carrie told him I was staying there.”
“Greg always looks like a frightened rabbit,” Toby put in.
“I’ll bet Nick Altman believes in it, too,” I went on, ignoring Toby’s remark. “He thinks the curse will drive me to drink.” I finished my first cookie and reached for a second one. “Why didn’t you tell me about the curse, Toby? The kids in town must have clued you in during your summer vacations. Did you ask your grandfather about it?”
“Of course I did.” Toby laid aside his fourth Calico Cookie and regarded me intently. “Granddad told me that no rational person would waste so much as a single brain cell thinking about it. He was a doctor, a man of science. He had no use for superstitions.”
“What about you?” I pressed.
“I’d like to think I’m a rational person,” Toby replied, “not someone who perpetuates idiotic beliefs by passing them on.”
“So that’s why you didn’t mention it to me,” I said, nodding.
“That’s right,” said Toby. “Ghost stories around the campfire are one thing, but curses can get inside people’s heads. Granddad would be ashamed of me if I even pretended to believe in such tripe, and I’d be ashamed of myself for…for worrying you.”
“I promise you, I’m not worried,” I said. “I’d just like to know more about it. Even rational people take an interest in local legends.” I smiled coaxingly. “Come on, Toby, tell me about the curse. I’m not going to swoon. I’m the woman who laughed in Dick Major’s face, remember?”
Toby heaved an exasperated sigh, but gave in, grudgingly. “According to Granddad, a fair number of accidents happened at the old Lord Stuart Mine over the years, a few of them fatal. So many kids and idiot adults got hurt messing around up there that some people—a handful of gullible, superstitious people—started to believe that the place was jinxed.”
“How did the accidents happen?” I asked.
“How do you think?” Toby retorted. “When people climb on old mining equipment and goof around inside unstable old buildings, someone’s bound to get hurt. It was dangerous. That’s why Granddad wouldn’t let me go up there when I was little. He didn’t want me to spend the rest of the summer with a cast on my leg—or worse.”
As Toby spoke, I recalled something Aunt Dimity had told me only a few weeks earlier, though it seemed a lifetime ago: If you want to keep people from visiting a place, you scare them off. You tell them the place is haunted or cursed or unlucky. It seemed to me that the curse had served a good purpose in the past—to scare children away from an extremely perilous playground—but it was also clear to me that although the curse had outlived its purpose, belief in it lingered on.
“It’s not dangerous up there anymore,” Toby went on, “not since Mr. Auerbach cleared the site and sealed the mine. And whatever anyone tells you—Maggie, Nick, Greg, Amanda, Dick—”
“Who’s Amanda?” I interrupted.
“The local loony-tune,” Toby answered shortly. “She has a lot of crack-brained beliefs. But I don’t care what anyone says, the Aerie isn’t cursed.”
“I never thought it was.” I stretched out a placatory hand to him. “Thanks for filling me in.”
Carrie Vyne appeared suddenly at our table and seated herself in the chair Arlene Altman had vacated. Although business was picking up, she seemed content to let her two matronly assistants handle the influx of new customers.
&
nbsp; “I hope Dick Major didn’t say anything to upset you,” she said, her kindly face filled with concern. “He doesn’t usually show up until dinnertime. I would have chased him off, but—”
“But you’ve got a business to run,” I interrupted, with an understanding nod. “You can’t afford to chase off regular customers, even when they’re as…unusual…as Dick.”
“He’s not from here,” said Carrie, as though Dick’s nonnative roots explained his uncouth behavior. “He moved to Bluebird two years ago with his wife and teenaged daughter. The daughter got away from him just as soon as she got her driver’s license, and his wife took off a couple of weeks later. I reckon she just couldn’t take it anymore.”
“Take what?” I prompted.
“Living in that dump.” Carrie jutted her chin in the general direction of Dick’s house. “The whole town’s embarrassed by it, but Dick won’t lift a finger to clean it up. And he was always quarreling with his neighbors. I reckon his poor wife just got fed up with the whole thing and took off.”
“Any self-respecting woman would,” I said. “Do you know where he came from?”
“Some place back east,” said Carrie. “Claims he moved to the mountains for his health. I wish he’d picked some other mountains.” She smiled mischievously. “There’s been talk on the town council about officially designating his part of town the Grumpy Old Man Zone.”
I chuckled appreciatively, then asked, “What’s wrong with his health?”
“He claims that he had some sort of work-related accident back east,” Carrie told me. “He must have gotten a good settlement out of his employer because he’s been living off of it ever since.”
“Is he on medication?” I asked, recalling Dick’s strange, unblinking gaze.
“If he is, he doesn’t get it from Dandy Don’s,” said Carrie. “And I haven’t heard of him getting any packets in the mail.”
I was beginning to love this woman. She was better informed than an FBI agent.
“I wonder what happened to him?” I said. “He looked pretty fit to me, apart from the beer belly.”
“Could be his back,” Carrie reasoned, cocking her head to one side. “Back troubles are hard to see, but they can lay you out in no time flat. They can make you pretty grouchy, too. I had sciatica once, and I was a perfect misery to everyone in sight until it cleared up.”
We discussed the agony of sciatica for a while, moved from there to arthritis and rheumatism, and wound our way through the perils of asthma, allergies, and migraines before I managed to steer the conversation back in the direction I wanted it to go.
“I’ve heard that Dick was pretty hard on James Blackwell, the guy who used to have Toby’s job at the Aerie,” I said.
“Oh, he was just terrible to James,” Carrie acknowledged, nodding sadly.
“Did he get physical?” I asked.
“Do you mean, did he beat James up?” Carrie shook her head rapidly. “Oh no, Dick’s not like that, not like that at all. He’s never raised a hand to anyone. He just enjoys getting under people’s skin.” Carrie crossed her forearms on the table and leaned forward, the classic pose of the experienced rumormonger. “He used to pass remarks to James when James was in here. Arlene Altman said he used to do the same thing to him at the saloon. After a while, James just stopped coming to town. The next thing I knew, he was gone. It’s a pity. He was a nice man.”
I folded my own forearms on the table to signal that I, too, was ready to get down to some serious gossip-swapping. “Dick told me that the Aerie was cursed.”
“Not that old thing again!” Carrie snorted impatiently. “No one hardly talked about it until the Auerbachs built their place, and then it all started up again, same as before. I tell you, some people will believe anything. I hope Dick didn’t rattle you.”
“He didn’t,” I said, “but maybe he rattled James. I heard that James was trying to find out if some stories he’d heard were true. Maybe the stories were the ones Dick told him about the curse. Maybe Dick got under his skin deeply enough to make him believe in the curse.”
“I doubt it,” said Carrie. “Only dimwits and children take things like that seriously, and James Blackwell wasn’t a dimwit or a child. He had a good head on his shoulders. He was a well-educated, well-read man. Always had a book with him when he came to my cafe, and he was polite, well spoken. I miss him.”
Her words tweaked a memory that had been lurking in the back of my mind, a memory I’d failed to mention to Aunt Dimity. It was something Brett Whitcombe had said while we watched the twins ride at the Brockman Ranch. James used to drop in on us now and again. He took an interest in local history. Asked all sorts of questions. Wanted to know what Bluebird was like in the olden days.
“An amateur historian,” I murmured, half to myself.
“Pardon?” said Carrie.
I put even more weight on my forearms and peered intently at her. “I heard that James Blackwell was interested in local history. Maybe he learned something about Bluebird’s past that made him believe in Dick’s story about the curse.”
“I can’t imagine what it could be,” said Carrie, “but if you want to know about local history, you should talk to Rose Blanding. She’s Pastor Blanding’s wife. She runs the Bluebird Historical Society in the old school building, where the tourist information office is, but only from nine to one, when Claudia Lechat takes over.”
“The artist,” I said, recalling the sign in the art gallery’s window.
“Claudia does a little bit of everything.” Carrie chuckled softly. “She even designed a road sign for the Grumpy Old Man Zone. But if you want to know about local history, talk to Rose Blanding. She’s the expert. She and Pastor Blanding live right next door to Good Shepherd Lutheran, out along the lake. Toby can show you the way. She’ll be home by one-fifteen.”
“I wouldn’t want to bother her at home,” I protested.
“It’s no bother,” Carrie assured me, waving off my objection. “Rose is a pastor’s wife. Her door’s always open to everyone. You don’t even have to be a Lutheran.” She looked around at the rapidly filling tables and smiled apologetically. “Well, I could sit here and talk with you all day, Lori, but I guess I’d better get back to work. The lunch crowd’s arriving.”
“You can take our order before you go,” Toby suggested. He looked at me and shrugged. “We may as well stay for lunch. We have an hour to kill before we visit Mrs. Blanding.”
“I’ll have whatever Toby’s having,” I said without hesitation. “I’d also like to bring a box of Calico Cookies back to the Aerie. My sons have noticed that the cookie jar up there is depressingly empty.”
Carrie lowered her eyes modestly. “Do you think your little boys will like my cookies?”
“I know they will,” I said with absolute conviction.
Mindful of my promise to Aunt Dimity, I didn’t explain that Will and Rob had already fallen in love with Carrie Vyne’s cookies, half a world away.
Eleven
Carrie Vyne presented Toby and me with the perfect meal to carry us through until dinnertime: a bowl of tasty cream of broccoli soup, a hunk of sourdough bread, a generous wedge of quiche lorraine, and a small bunch of sweet red grapes, all of it homemade, except for the grapes, but even they came from a Colorado vineyard. At one o’clock we gathered up our belongings, paid our bill, thanked Carrie for her hospitality, and departed.
Toby pointed out various landmarks and reminisced about his childhood as we strolled down Stafford Avenue toward the lake, but I was too preoccupied to give him my full attention. He carried the box of Calico Cookies, I had my bag of goodies from Dandy Don’s, and we both wore wide-brimmed hats and dusty hiking boots. We would have looked like a pair of carefree tourists if I hadn’t been so pensive and so silent.
The more I thought about it, the more certain I became that I’d been wrong to blame James Blackwell’s abrupt abandonment of the Aerie on Dick Major’s bullying. I was now convinced that James had fled the A
erie because of the celebrated curse. Danny Auerbach’s former employee might have been the most sensible person in the world, but I knew better than most that the right set of circumstances could spook anyone.
If a man had ever been in the right place at the right time to be well and truly spooked, I told myself, it had been James. He’d lived alone at the Aerie for nearly six months. He’d been just far enough away from Bluebird to feel isolated, and since neither the Auerbachs nor any of their friends had come to stay at the Aerie during that time, he’d had nothing to keep him occupied but a few routine chores. He would have had plenty of free time to wonder if the rumors he’d heard were true. And he’d heard those rumors, as I had, not just from Dick Major, but from responsible adults all over town.
It seemed to me that if James Blackwell was as well educated as Carrie Vyne thought he was, his natural inclination would be to find out more about the rumors. He’d ask Brett Whitcombe questions, look through the books in the Aerie’s library, perhaps bring one with him to read while he sipped coffee at the cafe. He might also pay a visit to the local historical society.
He’d be told by some that the curse was blatant nonsense, by others that it was God’s own truth, but with a hungry mind and plenty of time on his hands, he’d go on searching until, somewhere, he’d find a clue that tipped the balance away from reason and toward superstition. It wasn’t hard to imagine what could have happened next.
James would lie awake in the dead of night, turning the clue over in his mind, and odd noises that had never bothered him before would make him flinch. A simple stumble would remind him of the host of injuries—some of them fatal—that had inspired the local legend. He’d begin to sleep less, to stumble more, until fear finally overcame common sense.
As an educated, intelligent man, he’d be too embarrassed to explain his misgivings to his employer. In the end, he’d pack his bags and leave, without giving notice, without leaving a forwarding address—he’d leave as suddenly and inexplicably as the Auerbachs had left.
Aunt Dimity Goes West Page 10