4 Buried Secrets (11 page)

“Good because I’m starving.” Cal came out the door with Jolene, Morgan and Luke following behind him.

Celeste started down the stairs. At the bottom, she could see the sun streaming through the double oak doors that led outside. A man opened the left door and Celeste’s memory tingled. He looked familiar but she couldn’t see clearly—the glare of the sun put him in shadow. His thick, dark wavy hair reminded her of the mysterious man, Mateo, who had helped them get the final clue they needed on their last treasure hunt. But, it couldn’t be … what would
he
be doing here? And if it was him,
why
would he avoid them?

“Hey, hold on!” Luke pushed his way past her practically knocking her down the stairs. He sprinted across the lobby and out the door. Celeste looked back at Morgan who shrugged.
 

The four of them continued down the stairs and were turning toward the dining room when Luke came back in.

“What was that about?” Morgan asked.

“I thought that might be the other guest. We still haven’t been able to question him.” Luke pressed his lips together. “But I missed him. He was in his car and pulling out onto the road before I even got out the door.”

Morgan narrowed her eyes at the door. She opened her mouth to say something but was interrupted by Dixie behind her.

“I hope you folks weren’t coming down for breakfast.”

Celeste turned to Dixie who looked like she was about to cry. “Why, what’s wrong?”

“Sheriff Kane shut down the kitchen.” Dixie’s lower lip trembled.

Morgan’s brows knit together. “What? Why?”

A tear slipped out of the corner of Dixie's eye and she covered her face. Morgan rushed to her side, putting her arm around the woman’s shoulders, and leading her into the empty dining room.

Dixie collapsed into a chair, her shoulders shaking. “A big chunk of our income comes from the dining.” She sobbed. “I’ll be out of business in no time. Who’s going to stay at a hotel with no meals?”

Celeste’s heart ached for Dixie as she sat on her left side, rubbing Dixie’s arm through the crisp, white long sleeved blouse and making soothing noises. Morgan sat on Dixie’s right, echoing Celeste. Luke, Cal and Jolene pulled out chairs on the other side of the table.

After a minute, Dixie stopped crying.
 

“Sorry, I’m not usually emotional like this,” she sniffed, “but my grandmother said the hotel was so important to her parents—the ones that built it—and I wanted so badly to restore it and keep it running just like they did to honor their memory.”

“Why did he close down the kitchen? Did he find some violation or something?” Jolene asked.

Dixie shook her head. “He said he it didn’t pass the cleanliness inspection but I’m sure he made that up.”

Celeste remembered how spotless the kitchen was when they’d gone in there the day before. “I’m sure he must have. But why? Maybe it was just a mistake?”

Dixie shook her head. “It’s no mistake. He means to put me under. For some reason he’s been doing everything he can to make me go out of business.”

“Does he have a grudge against you or something?” Cal asked.

“No, I don’t even know him.” Dixie blew her nose on a napkin. “But ever since he became sheriff, it seems he’s been trying to shut me down.”

The five of them exchanged a glance and Celeste knew what the others were thinking.
Did this have something to do with what was going on out at the mine?

“But I shouldn’t be burdening you folks with my problems.” Dixie waved them away. “I’ll make do, somehow.”

“But the hotel … can you do something to get the kitchen opened again?” Celeste asked.

“I don’t know. I’ll talk to my attorney but it seems that Sheriff Kane’s influence reaches far.” Dixie straightened and her face turned cold. “But I won’t give up … I plan to fight for what’s rightfully mine. Our family’s had enough stolen from it—I won’t let that happen to the hotel too.”

Dixie shook her head and put her hand on Morgan and Celeste’s arms. “Thanks for listening to me—I just hope the kitchen shutdown doesn’t inconvenience you, I know you like to take your meals here.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Morgan said. “We’ll miss Dave’s cooking, but we can fend for ourselves.”

Dixie stood up and then leaned over the table, lowering her voice to a whisper. “We still have the kitchen
and
the food so if you get really hungry just let me know and I can have Dave whip something up for you.” She winked at them. “It will be our little secret.”

Celeste felt her heart sinking as she watched Dixie walk away. “We can’t just sit by and let the hotel go out of business or get closed down.”
 

Cal’s deep blue eyes scanned the room taking in the carved wood molding, stained glass windows and period architecture. “It sure would be a shame. This place is really nice down here. Much nicer than our rooms. I’d love to see it get restored.”

“I can’t imagine why the Sheriff would want to put her out of business,” Jolene said.

“If it’s not a personal grudge then maybe he wants the land,” Morgan replied. “Maybe he wants to build a strip mall or something.”

Celeste cringed, thinking of a strip mall standing here instead of the beautiful hotel. “Maybe we can invest in the hotel or something to help her out?”

“I doubt she’d take our money. She seems too proud.” Morgan glanced at the door Dixie had disappeared through. “What did she mean when she said her family had had enough stolen from it already?”

Celeste shrugged. “I have no idea … probably old family history. There might be something about that in the book on Dead Water she lent us.”

“Maybe I can have my attorney look into this rezoning and the kitchen shut down,” Cal said. “She’s pretty good. If something isn’t on the up and up she might be able to get them to back off.”

“In the meantime, we need to start reading through those letters and find out what Lily wanted vindication for so we can get her to show us the key,” Celeste said.

“Yeah, and I’d like to get out to the mine and see Dead Water … I still have a lot of questions about the treasure,” Cal added.

“And I have the most important question of all.” Jolene pushed her chair back from the table and stood.

“What’s that?” Morgan asked.
 

“What are we going to eat for breakfast?”

After rousing Fiona and Jake from their room and telling them about the kitchen shutdown, they voted to go to a diner in Couver City for breakfast. Celeste nibbled on a waffle while she sat patiently watching the rest of them devour bacon, eggs and coffee, wondering if she was the only one anxious to get to the letters.

Once finished, they prolonged her agony by insisting on showing Cal the ghost town of Dead Water and then taking him to see the markings in the mine. Thankfully, they didn’t go far into the mine—apparently, Cal saw what he needed after only venturing as far in as Celeste had.

“None of the other mine shafts have markings?” Cal asked as they emerged into the sunlight.

“Nope,” Celeste answered. “We checked all the ones around here. But there might be other entrances we don’t know about.”
 

She glanced around the area trying to make out any unusual outcroppings or indents that might be other entrances. As she made her survey, she noticed a cloud of dust off in the distance. Another car.
 

Was it following them?

“Who’s that?” She pointed to the cloud and the rest of them turned their heads in that direction.

Fiona shaded her eyes from the sun. “I can’t tell. Are they coming or going?”

“Crap, I hope it’s not that deputy again.” Jolene squinted toward the cloud. “I don’t want to get thrown in jail.”

“Don’t worry. I think it’s moving away from us.” Luke’s eyes turned hard as he stared at the cloud. “But that reminds me—I should check in with Buzz and Gordy and see how their surveillance of the Sheriff is going.”

“And I need to check my messages and see if my attorney found out anything about the rezoning,” Cal said.

“And I need to get back to the hotel and dig into those letters so we can find out what Lily wanted vindication for, get the key to those symbols and recover the treasure.” A note of exasperation crept into Celeste’s voice. “You know—the whole reason why we are here in the first place.”

Everyone stared at her. They were used to her being on an even keel. Cal laughed and slid his arms around her shoulders.

“Of course, we should get on that right away,” he said leading the way toward the cars.

Luke and Jake knew their skills were better put to use trying to figure out what Sheriff Kane was up to and trying to hunt down the mysterious hotel guest, so they dropped Celeste, Cal, Fiona, Morgan and Jolene off at the hotel.
 

“This will be easier if we spread the letters out on the table in the kitchenette,” Morgan suggested. “I’ll clean it off.”

Celeste carefully pulled the packet of letters out of the bureau drawer in her room and brought them out to the kitchen. Sitting on one of the chairs at the table, she gingerly slipped the ribbon off the packet.
 

A swirl spiraled up in front of her as the ribbon came off and Celeste felt a stab of excitement. Was Lily’s ghost going to materialize and help them? Her excitement deflated as fast as it came when the swirl fell to the table in a pile of decades old dust.

 
“There are a lot of letters here,” Celeste said spreading them out on the table and counting. “Twenty-one, to be exact.”

Fiona flicked at the corner of one with a red tipped fingernail. “They’re very brittle. We need to be careful handling these.”

“Where should we start?” Morgan asked.

Celeste’s teeth worried her bottom lip. “I’m not sure. I think we need to read them chronologically.”

“I hope they’re dated,” Jolene said, bending over Morgan’s shoulder to look at the table.

Celeste picked through the yellowed papers. They were covered with the faded blue writing of an early fountain pen—so faded that they could barely be seen in some spots. She managed to pick out a few with dates and set them aside in order.

“I guess we’ll start with this one.” She picked a letter out of the pile, her heart beat quickening at the prospect of looking into a bit of history and solving the mystery of whatever Lily wanted vindicated.

The letter was folded in thirds and she opened it slowly, holding her breath as she spread it flat on the table, praying that it wouldn’t rip at the folds.
 

Belladonna jumped up into her lap with a quiet “mew” as she bent over the table, trying to decipher the old handwriting.

Fiona, Morgan, Jolene and Cal were doing the same. Celeste could barely make out the words. Her eyes scanned the letter—it was signed by Lily, of course. Her eyes drifted back up to the top to find out who Lily had written the letter
to
.

Fiona’s sharp intake of breath told Celeste that she’d seen the same thing and their eyes met over the table. Celeste looked up at the others.

“This letter is from Lily to Shorty.”

“What?” Morgan narrowed her eyes and bent closer to the letter. “Well I’ll be … and she calls him ‘My dearest Shorty’. What’s up with that?”

Celeste shrugged. “I guess we need to read them to find out.”

Celeste focused on the first two letters. They were formal, much more than a letter today would be, but there was no mistaking the emotion in them.

“These sound like love letters,” Morgan said.

“If they are, they’re kind of lame,” Jolene answered.

“That’s how they wrote back then. Everything was more formal, they didn’t use explicit words like you young kids do today.” Cal teased Jolene.

“I think they’re beautiful.” Fiona pointed to a passage in one of the letters.

The kiss you stole under the tree

You didn’t have to steal from me.

Jolene made a face. “Blech, that's too lovey-dovey.” She yawned and her back cracked as she stretched. “This is boring. When do we get to find out about the key?”

“It could take a while … we need to look these over carefully.” Celeste flipped one of the letters over gingerly taking care not to bend it for fear it would rip. “Whatever Lily wanted vindication for might not be obvious so it could take time for us to figure it out.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Jolene let out a sigh and paced around the room.

Morgan looked at her watch. “It’s almost three thirty. Maybe you could go do some grocery shopping.”

“Yeah, the kitchen’s closed here so I guess we might as well cook.” Fiona cast an uncertain glance at the stove. “Does that thing even work?”

Jolene went over to the stove and turned one of the knobs. The pilot clicked a few times and then a whooshing sound and blue flame made Jolene jump back. “Looks like it works.” She turned the burner off. “Okay, I’ll go to that supermarket over in Couver City. Probably take a couple of hours.” Jolene grabbed the keys to the Escalade from the counter. “I don’t want to miss the treasure hunt though.”

Celeste tore herself away from the letters “Don’t worry, It will take us that long to figure this out and find Lily’s ghost,” she said. “If you’re not back, we’ll call you and wait for you at the mine.”

“Okay, that works.” Jolene smiled as she slipped out the door and the rest of them returned to pouring over the letters.

***

Jolene finished loading the groceries in the back of the Escalade and took the cart to the cart corral. Since no one had given her a list, she’d decided on pasta and had loaded her grocery bags with vermicelli, canned sauce, parmesan cheese, garlic bread and cheesecake for desert. She’d also bought some donuts for breakfast the next day.

She didn’t buy anything for lunch—maybe she was being overly optimistic about their ability to locate and recover the treasure tonight, but she hoped they’d be packed and on their way back to Maine before noon.

She’d also bought a bag of nacho cheese Doritos, but those were for the ride back to the hotel. Ripping open the bag, she placed it on the console next to her, started the Escalade and pulled out of the grocery store parking lot.