Dear Daughter (15 page)

“That’s where you met Eli?” I asked. “In Panama City?”

Eli waved his fork; Cora nodded. “Eli was stationed there,” she said. “One night he walked into a bar I was at—and, well, you know what they say about men in uniform.”

“Panama City’s a long way away. Do you get to go home to see your family very often?”

“Not as much as I’d like. There’s just so much to do here, what with the inn and the restoration and the festival—I don’t have much free time.”

Eli finished the last of his cornbread. I pounced.

“And what about you, Eli?”

“I don’t have much free time either,” he said.

“I mean, do you get to see your family often? Or do they all live in town?”

He set down his mug and looked me in the eye. “Everyone in my family is in this room.”

I started—did that mean that he knew his sister was dead or just that she was dead to him? Or was he pretending he never even had a sister to begin with?

He pushed up from the table before I could ask anything further. “Excuse me,” he said.

We watched him go—Peter included, I noticed.

“That was abrupt,” Peter said lightly.

Cora managed a laugh. “Like I said, there’s just so much to do!”

I straightened my glasses to get a better look at the worry lines on Cora’s face. If I was reading things right, she was mortified, and whatever bad impression Eli might have given, she would try to correct. She was showing me her tender underbelly; I decided to take a swipe.

I moved closer to her, careful to lean in and prop my chin up, because that’s what people who give a shit do. “I can tell that you love it here,” I said, “but Eli—why did he decide to come back?”

She sighed. “To tell you the truth, I don’t really know. Eli doesn’t even seem to like it here sometimes. I can’t understand why not.”

“It’s only natural,” I said.

“How do you mean?”

“It doesn’t sound like you liked Panama City, either.”

“Well, that place is the pits.”

“So’s every place when you’re a kid. You could grow up in a Swiss chalet and you’d just learn to hate hot cocoa.”

Peter was only half listening, intent as he was on smashing his eggs with the back of his fork. Every so often his eyes would dart to another corner of the room before returning to his plate, disappointed, having found nothing of interest.
He could be dangerous
, I thought—but he could also be useful. If he had a story he cared about, he could ask all the tough questions. I just had to make sure he found the right story—and that I was in earshot.

I smiled, getting into the idea. He could be my very own Renfield. If he did a good job, maybe I’d even give him a spider or two.

I threw out my first lure: “Didn’t I hear that Ardelle had its fair share of trouble back in the day?”

“Where did you hear that?” asked Cora.

“What kind of trouble?” asked Peter. His eyes fully focused on the two of us for the first time all morning.
Bingo
.

Cora’s spine snapped straight. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“What kind of trouble?” Peter repeated. When Cora didn’t immediately respond, he put his hand on hers and smiled. “It could be great background for the piece.”

“Well, I suppose—”

“Great,” Peter said, pulling out his notebook and pen.

“You have to understand,” she said, twisting her napkin, “that when Eli was a kid it wasn’t a happy time. Economically, I mean. The tin was running out, and people were losing their jobs, their houses. The Percys, obviously, made it through just fine, but for the rest of us—the rest of
them
, I mean—it was really rough. Particularly for Eli. His mom passed away when he was just a kid, and then his dad died of a heart attack when Eli was just a couple years out of high school. And he didn’t leave Eli much more than a mortgage and some worthless land up on the mountain. Eli tried to get work in town, but it wasn’t enough. Eventually he had to sell the house in Adeline.”

I rocked back in my seat. My mother had grown up
poor
? And yet she still thought it was okay to spend so much on shoes?

“Who’d he sell to?” Peter asked.

Cora hesitated. “Stanton. Stanton owns most of Adeline now, actually.” She firmed up her expression. “And it’s a good thing, too—there’s a man who appreciates history.”

“But that must have been hard for Eli, losing the house,” I said.

“It really was. Especially right after his sister—”

“His sister?” I said, very carefully.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” she said. “She just left town, that’s all.”

Peter was watching her, a speculative gleam in his eye. “But before—he said all his family was here today. Why didn’t he mention a sister from out of town?”

“It’s not something we really like to talk about.”

“Where is she now?” Peter asked.

Cora piled her cutlery on her plate and set down her napkin. “You’d know as well as I,” she said.

Ardelle Visitors Guide

Attractions

Mining Museum, 238 Percy Ave.

Visitor Center, 205 Main St.

Oglala Sioux Interpretive Exhibit, 238 Percy Ave.

Events

Gold Dust Days. First week of November. Schedules available at the Ardelle Visitor Center (located in the Prospect Inn).

Lodging

The Prospect Inn, 205 Main St. This impeccably restored historical building treats visitors to modern-day service in a nineteenth-century setting. Twelve beautifully furnished private rooms with double beds and
en suite
bath. Internet. Showtime. Breakfast and afternoon tea.

Dining

The Coyote Hole, 300 First St. Full bar, satellite TV. Half-price drinks on Game Day.

VFW Post #919, 124 Tesmond Ave.

MacLean’s General Store, 398 Main St. Buffalo sticks/jerky, homemade jams and jellies, kuchen.

Shopping

Odakota Gallery and Gifts, 142 Main St.

La Plante’s Booksellers, 238 Percy Ave.

Hill Creek Outfitters, 140 Main St.

Rita’s Consignment Shop, 155 Commercial St.

Campgrounds

A campground/RV park can be found three miles west of Ardelle, on the other side of the pass. Pull-thrus, full hook-ups, 20/30/50 amp, dump station. Picnic table, horseshoes.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Peter was doing such a good job so far that I decided to dangle another spider in front of him.

“Seems a little suspicious, doesn’t it,” I said.

“What does?”

“That whole thing about Eli’s sister.”

Peter nodded hesitantly, not quite convinced.

“I wonder . . .” I said, trailing off deliberately.

“What?”

“If that bookstore owner knows so much about the town, maybe she’d know something about Eli’s sister, too.”

“That’s a good idea, actually.” He stood up. “I guess I know where I’m heading next.”

I threw out my hand. “Wait,” I said.

How was I going to convince him to let me tag along? I ran through my options. Men like Peter exist to have their egos flattered, so one strategy was to play the hopeless girl with a crush. But what does a hopeless crush look like? Was I supposed to flirt ineffectually? Should I flush and look away? I wasn’t sure. I’ve had just a handful of crushes in my life—if something’s attainable you can’t exactly long for it, and the men of my acquaintance weren’t exactly known for their reticence.

Then there were my clothes to consider.

No, if I was going to convince Peter to keep me in the loop, it obviously wasn’t going to be for my sexual allure.

Okay, then, hero worship it is!

“Why don’t I come with you?” I said. “I don’t know if Cora mentioned, but I’m a historian—maybe I could help out? This sounds like a story with potential, and I’d love to watch you work. I always had dreams of being a reporter, you know. Just like Lois Lane!”

He sighed. “Oh, hell, why not? All anyone else in this town wants to talk about are the hors d’oeuvres they’re serving at Saturday’s ball. Come on—let’s go.”

•   •   •

Even though the bookstore was a short walk away—just four blocks—it was wet and cold enough that by the time Peter and I found the place I felt like a soggy bathroom sponge. A bell rang when we entered.

The front room was crowded with merchandise—souvenirs, mostly—and smelled of rawhide. I drifted from display to display, examining pottery and textiles and unattractively self-published local histories. Cora, I noticed, had authored one of the books:
Gold Rush Gothic Revival: Decorative Art and Architecture in the Boomtowns of the Black Hills.
My eyelids drooped just looking at it.

The next volume, though, was more promising.
The Founding Families of Odakota’s Twin Cities
—written by one Kelley La Plante. I slid it out. It was separated into five sections:

The Percys

The Kantys

The Freemans

The Fullers

The La Plantes

I pulled the photo out of my bag and counted. Yup, five families.

“What’s that?” Peter asked over my shoulder. I shoved the photo into the back of the book.

“Nineteenth-century history,” I said. “It’s
fascinating
—I’m reading about the representational politics of ethnic minorities as it relates to the construction of the transcontinental railway. Would you like to see it?”

He paled. “Maybe later.”

I let out a breath and opened the book again. I flipped past the foreword—and found a Kanty family tree.

No mention of Tessa.

But the family tree wasn’t totally useless: Now I knew I was related to Renee too. Second cousins.
God
,
bitch really must be in my blood
.

I turned to the first page of the Kanty history.

Albert Kanty, the area’s first European settler, arrived in 1881 from the Prussian province of Posen (now part of the Greater Poland Voivodeship) in the company of his young wife, Casimera, and her sister, Agnieszka. Kanty’s was the largest claim in the area, more extensive even than the claim that would be staked eight months later by Tesmond Percy. It was Percy’s claim that proved to be the more lucrative of the two, however, and once Kanty had exhausted his own reserves, he took a job with Percy’s fledgling mining company. Even so, until his death in 1897, Kanty continued to search his own land in the hopes of finding another lode.

“I should have known it wouldn’t take you long to uncover my secret.”

My heart stuttered. Kelley had snuck up on me. Her hair was in pigtails today, and she was wearing a black shirt printed with a motto I didn’t recognize.

I steadied my breathing. “Your secret?”

She nodded at the book. “That I’m a geek
and
a nerd,” she said.

It took me a split second to regain my mental footing, and there was something in Kelley’s steady gaze that made me think she’d noticed.

“It’s very well written,” I said.

“You should take it—on the house. It’s not often I meet someone who actually wants to read the thing.”

“Thanks,” I said, meaning it. “It’s a great place you’ve got here.” (I didn’t mean that.)

“I guess.” She combed through a display of feather necklaces. “I’m not crazy about the merchandise, but I can’t really afford to get rid of it.”

“They’re not that—” I started, but Kelley shot me a look. “Okay, they’re pretty bad.”

“This used to be just a bookstore—a real one—and even then people would come in and see me and be all ‘
How
, little squaw. I’ll take a pair of your best moccasins and a bag of buffalo jerky.’ So when I took over from my dad—well, I started stocking moccasins and buffalo jerky.”

“Why don’t you just move somewhere where people actually buy books?”

She smiled. “I tell myself that conning them into buying overpriced crap is the best revenge.”

“But where’s the museum?”

“The
museum
?”

“Cora said this was also a museum.”

Kelley rolled her eyes. “Classic Cora. Calling what we have a museum is a gross exaggeration. We barely even have an exhibit. But you’re more than welcome to take a look if you want—it’s just over here.” She led me through a door to our left, to a display that was little more than a series of cases containing vintage mining tools of deeply questionable historical consequence. There was a row of pictures along one wall, each identified by an unevenly typewritten label. Several showed Cora’s inn, and I had to hand it to her—her restorations were spot-on. The only difference I could see was in the signage. The modern-day Prospect Inn was marked with a routed cedar sign, but back in the 1890s things were much simpler, just a crudely lettered board that read “Rooms.” In one picture you could see a blowsy, petticoated woman slipping in through a side door.