Aunt Dimity Goes West (27 page)

nant, and he spoke with a western twang. “My name is

James Blackwell.”

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227

The man’s lips kept moving, but a faint buzzing in

my ears obscured his words.

“James Blackwell?”
I squeaked, grasping the door jamb for support.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “As I was just saying, I used

to work for Mr. Auerbach. I have a paycheck and a let-

ter from him, and my driver’s license, too, if you want

proof of who I am.”

“James Blackwell?” I repeated, dazed with disbe-

lief. “The caretaker?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said James. “I’ve come to pick up a

few things I left here. I’ll be out of your hair in a

minute.”

“Oh no, you won’t,” I said, snapping out of my

daze. I seized his wrist determinedly and pulled him

into the foyer. “I have about a thousand questions to

ask you, James Blackwell, and you’re not going any-

where until you’ve answered them.”

“But ma’am—” he began.

“Resistance is futile,” I declared, tugging him

toward the great room. “I’m the mother of twin boys.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and came along docilely.

As soon as the great room door was closed behind

us, I introduced myself and offered James a cup of tea,

which he declined.

“I wouldn’t say no to a cup of coffee, though,” he

added.

“You’d say no to my coffee,” I said flatly. “I don’t

make it very often and when I do, it looks like mud.

God alone knows what it tastes like.”

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Nancy Atherton

“No problem,” he said. “I’ll make it.”

I could tell by the way James moved around the

kitchen that he’d been there many times before. He

knew where to find the coffee and the coffeemaker,

and he selected a large blue mug from the cabinet as if

it was the one he always used. He certainly didn’t

seem nervous or fearful. From what I could see, he

was completely at ease in the Aerie.

I sat at the breakfast bar and watched him mutely,

glad to have a chance to recover from the shock of

meeting a man I’d never expected to meet. By the

time we’d settled on the sofa before the hearth, I’d

calmed down enough to feel a twinge of guilt for

lunging at him and dragging him into the Aerie against

his will.

“I suppose you’re wondering why I greeted you

so . . . unceremoniously,” I ventured.

“Not really.” James took a sip of coffee and cradled

the blue mug in his large hands. “A man can’t just van-

ish like I did without leaving a trail of questions behind him. I expect you want to know why I quit my job.”

“I have no right to interrogate you,” I admitted,

“ but yes, I would
really
like to know why you quit your job, and so would everyone else within a fifty-mile radius of the Aerie.”

“I expect word’ll get out quick enough once I tell

you, so I may as well get it over with.” James smiled

briefly, then pursed his lips and sighed. “The first thing you have to understand, Lori, is that I’m a married

Aunt Dimity Goes West

229

man. The second thing is that I was laid off from my

job last September. I was still out of work at the end of November, when my wife told me she was pregnant

with our first child.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, adding swiftly, “not about the

baby, of course, but about your losing your job.”

“Thanks.” James took another sip of coffee. “The

caretaker’s job sounded like it was custom made for me.

I work construction, so I can fix almost anything, and

I’m right at home in the high country. The only catch

was, Mr. Auerbach didn’t want to hire a married man.”

I recalled the single bed in the caretaker’s apart-

ment and nodded.

“I’d heard from a friend that Mr. Auerbach paid top

dollar, and with a baby on the way, I needed the

money,” said James. “So I lied. I told him I was single.

And I got the job.”

“Didn’t your wife mind being separated from

you?” I asked.

“Sure, but when I told Janice—that’s my wife—

how much I’d be making, she went along with it,” said

James. “Besides, we live in Denver, so I wasn’t too far

away. I went to see her whenever I could think of an ex-

cuse to drive into the city. It wasn’t an ideal situation, but we both thought it would pay off in the long run.”

“Did Mr. Auerbach find out about Janice?” I asked.

“Is that why you left?”

“No, that’s not why I left.” James put the blue mug

on the coffee table and swung around on the sofa to

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Nancy Atherton

face me. “I got a call from Janice last week—three

days before you were due to arrive at the Aerie. She’d

gone into labor.The baby’s not due until August, Lori.

Since you’re a mother, you can imagine the state my

wife was in.”

“She must have been scared,” I said.

“She was,” James acknowledged. “As for me, I

panicked. I threw my stuff in a bag, left a short message on Mr. Auerbach’s answering machine, and hightailed it

out of here. I met up with Janice at the hospital in

Denver.”

“Is she all right?” I asked solicitously.

“They managed to stop the contractions,” he said,

“but she’ll have to stay in bed until the baby comes. So I can’t work here anymore. I can’t work at all. I have

to stay at home with my wife.”

“How are you paying your bills?” I asked worriedly,

then held a hand up to forestall his answer. “Forgive

me, James. It’s none of my business.”

“No offense taken,” he said easily. “Janice and me’ll

be fine. As I said, Mr. Auerbach pays top dollar. I

earned enough here in seven months to get us through

till I can go back to work. And next time I’ll find a job closer to home.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” I said, smiling. “I’m glad about

Janice and the baby, too.”

“Thanks,” said James, reaching for his coffee.

“You’ll probably laugh at me,” I said, “ but I was

convinced that you’d left the Aerie because you thought

it was cursed.”

Aunt Dimity Goes West

231

Instead of laughing, James compressed his lips into

a thin line and looked faintly disgusted.

“I wouldn’t let a curse run
me
out of the Aerie,” he said. “Mrs. Auerbach did, though. Stupid woman. She

shouldn’t have listened to Tammy.”

“Tammy?” I said inquiringly.

“Tammy Auerbach,” James explained.

“The teenaged daughter?” I guessed, glancing in

the direction of Annelise’s room.

“That’s right,” said James. “Tammy didn’t like being

cooped up with her little brothers—what fifteen-

year-old girl does?—so she started hanging out with a

crowd of crazies in Bluebird.”

“Amanda Barrow’s crowd of crazies?” I said, in-

trigued.

James nodded. “Tammy Auerbach thought every

word that came out of that fool woman’s mouth was

the gospel truth, so when Amanda told her about the

curse, she took it to heart.”

“So
Tammy
Auerbach believed in the curse,” I said, half to myself.

“Tammy Auerbach would’ve believed that cows

laid eggs if Amanda Barrow said it was so.” James’s face darkened. “When I got wind of what was going on, I

went into town to tell Amanda to lay off the kid, but

the damage had already been done.Tammy was having

trouble sleeping, and Mrs. Auerbach started acting all

weird. She had me check the plumbing and the floor-

boards in the family suite.”

“Why?” I asked.

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Nancy Atherton

“No idea,” answered James. “Everything was fine in

the family suite, and I told her so, but next thing I

knew, she upped stakes and took off out of here.”

“She left some clothes and other things behind,” I

said. “Why didn’t you ship it to her?”

“She didn’t tell me to,” said James, “so I thought

she’d be coming back. She didn’t, though. I haven’t

seen or heard from the Auerbachs since Christmas.

Rumor has it that they’re thinking of selling the Aerie.”

I suppressed the urge to confirm or deny the ru-

mor and said instead, “You must have wondered about

the curse.”

“I did,” said James. “I don’t believe in it any more

than I believe pigs can fly, but once I’d seen with my

own eyes how it could affect people, I got interested

in finding out more about it.With the Auerbachs gone

and nobody else coming, there wasn’t much else to

do. I spent a fair amount of time in Bluebird, asking

folk about the curse. One guy in town took a sort of

ghoulish interest in the subject, so I spent a lot of time listening to him.”

“Was it Dick Major?” I ventured. “I heard that he

was harassing you.”

“Dick
thought
he was harassing me,” said James,

“but I was pumping him for information. When I fin-

ished with the folk in Bluebird, I drove out to the

ranch to find out if Brett Whitcombe knew anything.

Brett’s a good guy, but he didn’t want to talk about the curse, so I went to the historical society to find out

Aunt Dimity Goes West

233

more. I struck pay dirt there. Have you met Mrs.

Blanding, the pastor’s wife?”

“I have,” I said.

“She can talk the hind leg off a bull elk once she

gets going,” said James, shaking his head, “ but she

knows her stuff. She loaned me all kinds of old photo-

graphs and newspaper clippings. They’re in a box in

the library. I’m planning to return it to the parsonage

on my way back to Denver.”

“There’s no need,” I said. “Mrs. Blanding is coming

here for lunch today. She’ll take the box with her

when she leaves. I’ll explain why you didn’t return it.

I’m sure she’ll understand.”

“Thanks. Give her my thanks, too, will you?” James

finished his coffee and took the mug to the dish-

washer.

I followed him into the kitchen. His mention of the

gray archival box had reminded me of another box—

the wooden crate Toby had discovered in the care-

taker’s apartment—and another question. I wanted

to know what James had done with the tools he’d

left in the crate. Had he used them to steal gold from

his employer? Or had he used them to find out what

had caused the Lord Stuart Mine to collapse? After

a brief inner debate, I decided to tackle the issue

head on.

“James,” I said, leaning on the breakfast bar, “while

you were investigating the curse, did you try to break

into the Lord Stuart Mine?”

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Nancy Atherton

James turned toward me, grinning sheepishly. “I

guess you found my tools, huh? Well, yes, I did open

the big steel door Mr. Auerbach put on the mine en-

trance. As I said, with no family and no guests to cater to, there wasn’t much else to do. I’d learned an awful

lot about the Lord Stuart and here I was, living right

on top of it, so I figured, why not take a look-see?”

“Did you find gold?” I asked, leaning forward.

James gave me a quizzical look, then cocked his

head toward the forest beyond the breakfast deck.

“Come with me and I’ll show you what I found.”

One part of me watched in startled dismay while

the rest of me responded like a cat to curiosity’s call.

“Lead on,” I said.

Twenty

W e didn’t have far to go, which was fortu-

nate since I was wearing sneakers instead

of my trusty hiking boots. The entrance

to the Lord Stuart Mine was no more than fifty feet

from the back wall of the third guest suite, but it was

so well hidden by trees, shrubs, and boulders that I

would never have spotted it if James hadn’t pushed

branches aside and led me to it.

A square arch some ten feet tall and eight feet

wide had been carved into the side of the mountain.

Within the arch, Danny Auerbach’s team of engineers

had installed a steel door painted in a swirly camou-

flage pattern. The door’s left edge had been bent out-

ward in uneven scallops, and it had no handle, only a

heavy-duty hasp from which hung the broken remains

of a once imposing padlock.

“I smashed the lock with the sledgehammer,” said

James. “I would have replaced it with a new one if I

hadn’t left in such a hurry.”

I nearly swooned at the thought of what might have

happened if the twins had discovered the metal door

with the broken lock.

“Don’t worry,” I said unevenly. “I’ll replace it.”

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Nancy Atherton

“You don’t have to,” James told me. “I managed to

pry the door open with the crow bar, but after that . . .”

He stepped forward, slipped his hands into two of

the larger scallops, and heaved with all his might, but

he could only pull the steel door open a foot or two

before it came up against a boulder. He then stood

back and gestured for me to take a look inside.

I stepped over a low shrub, ducked under a branch,

and crept up to peer timorously into the Lord Stuart

Mine. I expected to see a yawning, bat-and-rat-infested

hellhole. I saw instead a slightly chipped concrete wall that completely blocked the entrance.

“But . . . but . . .” I sputtered. “Where’s the
mine
?”