Aunt Dimity Goes West (14 page)

husband, Lori. He’s full of hot air.”

Aunt Dimity Goes West

111

“No, I’m not.” Nick patted his ample stomach.

“I’m full of your big, juicy burgers.”

He chuckled merrily as he and Arlene paid for

their order and left.

Once they’d gone,Toby leaned in close to me.

“Do not
ever
try Nick Altman’s beer,” he said. “I had to drink a whole bottle of it on my eighteenth birthday, just to be polite. My head nearly fell off the next day.The stuff is
deadly.
”

I steadfastly refused to dwell on the startling simi-

larities between the rotund Nick Altman and the

equally plump Dick Peacock, who ran Peacock’s Pub

in Finch and made wine that could be used to strip

paint, and focused instead on Nick’s somewhat alarm-

ing comment concerning the Aerie.

“Why did Nick tell me to be careful up at the

Aerie?” I asked.

“He’s probably afraid you’ll overexert yourself,”

said Toby. “He and Arlene don’t believe in exercise.”

“Really?” I said, in mock astonishment.

Toby began to laugh, but when the bells jingled

again, he stopped abruptly.

“Oh no,” he said under his breath. “My luck’s

run out.”

“You’re in early today, Dick,” Carrie called. “What

can I get for you?”

I took a surreptitious look over my shoulder and

caught my first glimpse of the infamous Dick Major.

Ten

D ick Major didn’t look like a murderous lu-

natic
or
a garbage collector. He looked like a

jolly grandfather, and to my intense relief, he

didn’t remind me of anyone in Finch.

His face was round and pink, silver-rimmed glasses

framed his pale blue eyes, and he wore his grizzled gray hair in a precisely clipped crew cut. He was neatly

dressed in a short-sleeved yellow shirt, lightweight tan trousers, and a well-worn pair of brown suede shoes.

He wasn’t a tall man, but he was imposing, thanks to

broad shoulders and a barrel chest that strained the

buttons of his shirt. His voice, when he replied to Car-

rie Vyne’s question, was higher pitched than I would

have expected from a man with his burly build, and it

held an unexpected undertone of general bonhomie.

“The usual?” said Carrie.

“You bet,” he said. “Black coffee and a couple of

jelly doughnuts to go.You got elephant ears today?”

“I sure do,” Carrie said.

“Throw in a couple of elephant ears, too,” said

Dick. “And make it a
large
black coffee.”

“Coffee’ll take a few minutes,” Carrie warned.

“I’m making a fresh pot.”

Aunt Dimity Goes West

113

“That’s okay. I’ll wait.” Dick Major turned away from

the bakery counter to cast a seemingly benevolent gaze

on the cafe’s customers. His pale blue eyes lit up when

he spotted Toby and me, and a wide grin spread across

his face. As he approached our table, I felt a flutter of unease. There was something strange about his eyes.

He opened them too widely, and he seemed to wait

too long between blinks. I wondered if he was on some

sort of medication.

“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 trepida-

tion, 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

114

Nancy Atherton

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.

Aunt Dimity Goes West

115

“Be there in a minute,” Dick called back to her. His

grin returned full force as he chucked me gently un-

der 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 dis-

belief. “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 sun-

burned 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 cu-

rious glance, and went on. “I’ve been sleeping through

the night for the first time since I hurt my shoulder.”

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Nancy Atherton

“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 be-

lief. 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 sin-

gle brain cell thinking about it. He was a doctor, a man of science. He had no use for superstitions.”

Aunt Dimity Goes West

117

“What about you?” I pressed.

“I’d like to think I’m a rational person,” Toby replied,

“not someone who perpetuates idiotic beliefs by pass-

ing 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 peo-

ple’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, re-

member?”

Toby heaved an exasperated sigh, but gave in, grudg-

ingly. “According to Granddad, a fair number of acci-

dents 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 in-

side unstable old buildings, someone’s bound to get

hurt. It
was
dangerous. That’s why Granddad wouldn’t

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Nancy Atherton

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 lin-

gered 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 con-

tent to let her two matronly assistants handle the

influx of new customers.

“I hope Dick Major didn’t say anything to upset

you,” she said, her kindly face filled with concern. “He

Aunt Dimity Goes West

119

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 . . . un-

usual . . . 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 mischie-

vously. “There’s been talk on the town council about

officially designating his part of town the Grumpy Old