A Change in Altitude (3 page)

“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.

S
haron 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.

“None of us thinks this is a reflection on you,” Barb said. “You'll have to visit Maggie's place next door,” she told them. “It's very nice.”

“I'm sure it is.” Sharon studied her future sister-in-law. Maggie looked uncomfortable, as if she didn't want to be here. “I don't guess my brother told you much about me,” she said.

“No, Jameso doesn't like to talk about his past. Although I gather his childhood was . . . difficult.”

“That's a good word for it. I don't blame him for wanting to start over. Why Jameson?”

“I don't know.” Maggie looked tense. “I didn't even know he had changed his name.”

“How did you and Uncle Jay—Uncle Jameso, meet?” Alina asked.

“He was a friend of my late father's.”

“He came up to check on her father's cabin and Maggie tried to hit him over the head with a stick of firewood,” Barb said.

Maggie glared at her.

“Did that really happen?” Sharon asked.

“It was my first night here and I thought he was a burglar or something. He didn't know I was in the cabin and thought I was up to no good. And I only threatened to hit him—I never actually struck a blow.”

“But you patched things up and fell in love,” Alina said.

“Eventually.”

“At Christmas, your uncle skied over a mountain pass in a blizzard to get home for the holiday and bring Maggie an engagement ring he'd had made just for her,” Barb said. “The man is a romantic, whether he'll admit it or not.”

“Can I see the ring?” Alina asked, eyes alight with eagerness.

Maggie held out her hand and the other three crowded around it. The gold band was studded with old mine-cut diamonds and turquoise. “The turquoise is from the French Mistress,” Barb said. “The mine Maggie's father left her.”

“It's beautiful,” Alina said. “I like that it's not like everyone else's rings.”

Maggie tucked her hands back in her coat pocket. “Do you have everything you need here?” she asked.

“I'll go out later and buy some groceries,” Sharon said. “I take it my brother doesn't eat many of his meals here.”

“No, he generally eats with me, or at the Dirty Sally or the Last Dollar.”

Alina giggled. “Everything has such funny names.”

“They're named after mines in the area,” Maggie said. “I guess the miners liked to give their claims colorful names.”

“In Vermont, where we're from, most of the places are named after the people who founded them, or after cities in England,” Alina said. “Eureka is more interesting.”

“And you came all the way from Vermont to here?” Barb said. “Because Jameso is here?”

“I know we haven't been close, but I'm hoping to change that,” Sharon said, trying hard not to sound defensive.

“So you're thinking of staying in town?” Maggie asked.

“Yes.” She tried to read the tone of the words. Was Maggie welcoming—or warning her off? “I'll need to find a job. Do you know of anyone who's hiring?”

The two women exchanged looks. “There aren't many jobs in a town this small,” Maggie said. “What kind of experience do you have?”

“None, really. I've stayed home and raised kids for the last sixteen years.”

“Any volunteer work?” Barb asked.

“I was a room mother at the kids' school. And I volunteered at the local library occasionally.”

“We'll keep our ears open, let you know if we hear of anything,” Barb said. “Something might turn up. It did for Maggie when she came here.”

“Where do you work?” Sharon asked.

“The
Eureka Miner
—the local paper.” She shrugged. “The pay is lousy, but none of the jobs around here pay much.”

“Any job would be good to start. I'm used to scrimping and cutting corners.” Sharon waited for one of them to ask why she was here—why show up after years of no contact on her brother's doorstep, with only one of her children and no money or plans?

But they were too polite. And she couldn't find the words to spill her guts in front of Alina. And not to strangers, even if one of them was going to be her sister-in-law. “I'm sure I'll see you again soon,” she said.

“Yes, we'd better go,” Barb said.

“Let me know if you need anything,” Maggie said.

“Thanks.” Sharon followed them to the door and shut it behind them. She wanted to lean her head against the cool wood and close her eyes, but she was aware of Alina watching her, so she straightened her shoulders and forced a smile. “Well, they were nice.”

“Yeah.” The girl flopped onto the sofa, which squeaked in protest. “Are we really going to stay here?”

“I don't know. We'll stay a while, at least.”

“Will I have to go to school?”

In Vermont, Sharon had homeschooled the children. “I think you should. If I'm working, I won't have time to teach you. And it would be a good way for you to meet other kids.”

“I guess.” She picked up the remote control for the television and turned it over and over in her hand. “I miss Dad. And I really miss Adan. I know he's been a jerk lately, but I still miss him.”

Sharon sat beside her daughter. “I know, honey. I do too.” She missed her son anyway. But at fifteen, he'd declared himself old enough to make his own choices, and he'd chosen to stay with his father. Joe had insisted she leave the boy, too, and in the end she felt she had no choice. Sharon hated to think of the way Joe had turned the boy against her—against everyone really. Joe and Adan and Wilson and the others were sitting up there in that compound with their guns and their dried food, waiting for the apocalypse they were sure was coming.

She took her daughter's hand. “You understand why we had to leave, don't you, honey?”

Alina nodded. “I know. I just . . . I wish things were different.”

She smoothed her palm over her daughter's unblemished, baby-soft skin. Alina was growing into a woman, but she was still so young. Bringing her here had been hard, but it had been the right thing to do. “So do I, baby. So do I.”

 

The next morning, Sharon tried to ignore the feeling that everyone was staring at her as she walked down the sidewalk on Eureka's Main Street. Having lived in one small town or another all her life, she was pretty sure everyone who wasn't otherwise occupied was looking out the window at the newcomer, wondering what she was up to. That's what people did in small towns. Some of them probably knew already that she was Jameso Clark's sister, and that would only increase their interest.

She exited the bank—which had no job openings, sorry—and passed under the awning for a florist's, which was closed. At the school where she'd enrolled Alina this morning she'd asked about work, much to her daughter's mortification, but the school secretary had told her they were under a hiring freeze. The grocery store, hardware store, and liquor store didn't need anyone either. She'd really hoped her brother would be more help with this. When Jameso had stopped by last night to pack up some clothes and toiletries he'd told her the saloon where he worked and the café where she'd eaten lunch didn't need help either. “I'll ask around,” he said, after she'd pressed him. “If you're sure you want to stay.”

She'd gotten the impression that Jameso hoped she'd change her mind about living in the same town. Maybe it made him uncomfortable having someone here who knew his secrets. Well, he'd have to get used to it. She was sticking it out here. It wasn't as if she had anywhere else to go, and he was the only living relative she could have anything to do with. When she'd been younger, he'd always looked after her, so she wasn't being unreasonable to expect him to help her again, was she?