“You don’t smoke any more?”
“No,” she said. “I’ve decided to limit myself to just one vice.”
They were following the left fork of Aspen Creek upstream now, walking through a fairly broad and gently contoured canyon, the sides of which were dotted with sagebrush and stray clumps of pines. The creek was five feet wide and less than a foot deep in most places this late in the summer, and it was hard to imagine anyone falling while crossing it or getting particularly wet if they did. A long, rumbling peal of thunder could be heard faintly in the distance. Gordon tried to revive the conversation.
“Where are they now, your three friends?”
“They’ve all moved on. Terry Lee looked like she might stay. She married her high school sweetheart, whose father owns the feed store, the year after we graduated and had two kids by her fourth wedding anniversary. By the fifth anniversary, she was filing for divorce. He drank and hit her. Three years ago she married the financial officer at the hospital. He doesn’t hit her and he doesn’t drink; in fact he’s so pious he doesn’t have any vices at all. I can’t stand him. They moved to Reno last year when he got a job at a hospital there.
“Margie went to college at Fresno State, dropped out for a while, and got a nursing degree. She married a doctor she met at a hospital in Marin County, and they’re living with their two perfect children in a huge house in Tiburon with matching Beemers in the garage. Every year at Christmas I get a ‘Dear Friends’ letter telling me about their latest trip to Europe and how they’re wondering about whether or not they should send Taylor and Jessica to private school. She won’t come to Summit County at all, and her parents have to go to their place if they want to see the grandkids, who, by the way, are holy terrors because they have too many toys and their parents never draw the line for anything.
“Pam’s the only one I really stay in touch with. She’s living in the LA area and has a pretty good job as a personnel manager for a department store. No luck with men, though. After several disastrous affairs, she finally got involved with a naval officer who was stationed in Long Beach. They went together for three years and finally got engaged just as he got transferred to the Philippines. A month before the wedding, right after the invitations had been mailed out, he stopped calling her, which he used to do several times a week. Ten days passed without a phone call, and then, two weeks before the wedding, she got a letter from Luzon. It seems he’d gotten a local girl pregnant and wound up being the groom at a shotgun wedding. That was a year and a half ago, and she’s just now starting to recover. Here’s the mine.”
They stopped walking. At first Gordon didn’t see it. The ground rose gently from the creek to a point about 15 feet above it, then abruptly changed to a steep and rocky slope. The mine shaft entrance was carved into the mountainside at that juncture and offset at an angle where a small gully drained to the creek during snowmelt and after a storm. From where they stood, a solitary pine tree, tilting at a slight angle, partially blocked the view of the opening.
“Let’s go,” said Gordon.
“What are we looking for, again?”
“I don’t know, really. I think just a sign that somebody’s been here lately.”
A peal of thunder sounded fairly close by as they walked up the grade to the entrance. When they reached it, they brandished the flashlights they had brought, and Ellen moved quickly in front of Gordon.
“Let me go first. I know the way.”
They entered a narrow passageway that was dark, cool and musty. It was propped up by timbers that looked old and none too steady. The beams from their flashlights caught the glint of a trickle of water dripping down the left-hand wall.
“That seepage wasn’t here the last time,” she said. “Over time, that’ll soften the earth and lead to a collapse.”
“Are you sure this is safe?” Gordon asked. The claustrophobic passage was making him anxious.
“No such thing as a completely safe mine,” she replied. “But we’re probably OK for now.”
“Good.”
“Unless there’s an earthquake, of course.”
“Of course.”
“If we go down about 60 feet this’ll widen out a bit and there’s sort of a natural room that was carved out where they needed some room to maneuver. I wonder if those cigarettes we smoked are still there.”
They moved ahead down the shaft. Its ceiling was less than six feet above the ground, so Gordon had to stoop uncomfortably as he walked. It seemed like an eternity before the passageway widened and the ceiling rose about a foot, enabling him to stand up straight. The additional space was a relief, but it also soaked up light. Their flashlights could do no more than open a narrow seam in the darkness, but as they played the beams around the space, they could see that it was filled with boxes of various sorts and was clearly being used as a storage area.
“Good night,” said Gordon.
“This wasn’t here the last time,” Ellen said.
“What is all this stuff?” Gordon moved closer and began playing his light over them at close range. He looked at several without seeing anything, then noticed a label on the side of one.
“Dynamite,” he said.
Ellen was checking boxes at the other end of the space and at about the same time said, “Here’s a box of ammunition, but what’s in these wooden boxes with no markings?”
“Good question. They seem to be nailed shut.” He walked slowly among the boxes, playing the light carefully over each. “Hold it! Looks like this one’s been opened.” The top to that box wasn’t nailed down tightly and there was a small space where he could gain purchase with his fingers. Ellen had moved over and was pointing her flashlight at it, so Gordon put his flashlight in a jeans pocket and pulled up on the box lid with both hands. The small nails in soft wood gave way, and he lifted the top open. What he saw inside froze his blood.
“Those,” said Ellen McHenry after a long silence, “are no deer rifles.”
“I’ve never seen anything like this outside a movie, but they’re obviously some kind of assault weapons.” He brought down the lid and pushed the nails back into place.
“This explains so much,” Ellen said. “The times Dan wanted to go fishing at the ranch. He must have been keeping watch while they brought this stuff up. What should we do?”
Gordon pushed down the top of the box. “Tell Baca. He mentioned a few days ago that the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms people were interested in Radio. I think they’ll be even more interested now.” He slowly moved the flashlight beam over the chamber. “There must be a hundred boxes of weapons and explosives here. Let’s go. This place is giving me the creeps.”
They crossed the room to the passageway that led back to daylight. But just as they reached it, they heard a loud crash at the other end, accompanied by cursing. Gordon instinctively reached forward, put his arm around Ellen, and pulled her back to him, but after that he could only stand motionless with fear. The voices picked up again, and she broke from his grip and whispered, “This way.”
She led them across the chamber to the passageway on the other side that led farther down into the earth. It was narrower and lower than the one they had come through from outside, and when they had got several feet down it, she grabbed his hand and stopped.
“Kill your light,” she said. Then, as they stood in darkness damp and total, she whispered, “I don’t know what’s down here, so we’d better stop. If we flatten ourselves against the wall, they probably won’t see us.”
Gordon did as she said. Because of the low ceiling he had to squat slightly and stick his knees out in a wretchedly uncomfortable position. No more than a few seconds later, they could hear the sound of bumping and swearing, gradually drawing nearer. Then a blaze of light, almost blinding, illuminated the underground room full of weapons. Moving with surprising grace, Hart Lee Bowen came in, carrying a lantern ahead of him in his right hand and holding a box like the one full of assault weapons behind him in his left hand. George H
orton came in behind him, carrying the other side of the box with both hands. They dropped it on the hard earth from a height of a foot, and the crash it made echoed through the chamber and into the passageway where Gordon and Ellen waited breathlessly, just out of range of the lantern light.
“How many more times are we going to have to do this?” asked George, in an annoyed tone.
“George, do you ever do anything but complain?”
“We need a mule or something to carry this stuff.”
“When the boss gets the ranch for keeps, we can run pack horses up here, but until then, we’re going to have to do the work ourselves. There’s too much chance of being seen as it is.”
“Why do we need so many guns? We must have a hundred for everybody in our camp.”
“Honest to God, George. Don’t you get it yet. It’s not just us we have to take care of. We’re building a people’s posse. When this corrupt society breaks down, other people are going to want to join us, and we have to be ready to be the militia for this county, or whatever part of it is still standing. We’ll have to fill this room from floor to ceiling to do that.”
There was a pause while the two men breathed heavily from their exertions, then George spoke.
“Hart Lee, do you really think we’re going to get the ranch? It somehow doesn’t seem right that we should get it without Danny?”
“Of course we will. And don’t think twice about it. You know Dan would have wanted it this way. I mean, that’s how he made out his will.”
“Ah, yes, the will.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, it was a bit of a surprise. I never knew he’d made one out, but if he had, I would have thought after our five years together … Well, never mind.”
“You weren’t the only one, you know. There were others.”
“Thank you for calling it to my attention,” George said acidly. “I know about you and at least some of the others. But still, he always came back to me.”
“Anyway, it’s better that we get it than his sister. Not that she has a chance. Word is she’s going to be arrested for murder any day now.”
“That would be too bad. She didn’t do it, you know.”
“Oh, yeah?” Bowen’s voice was taking on an edge of exasperation. “How do you know?”
“I just do. There are some things you know in your bones.”
“All I know in my bones is it’ll be a lot easier for us if she gets sent up for the killing.”
“Wouldn’t it be enough for us to get the ranch without that? Why should she suffer any more?”
“George, where were you when Dan was shot?”
“Me?” George seemed flustered. “Why I was driving into town for supplies.”
“Do you have any witnesses to that?”
“How could I? I was driving in alone. I usually went with Dan on Sundays, but he was fishing this time, so I went myself.”
“Then I wouldn’t go around telling people about Ellen McHenry’s innocence if I were you. Because if she didn’t do it, somebody else did, and you’d be a prime suspect.”
“Me?”
“Sure. You don’t have an alibi, and you have two motives. You might have been jealous of Dan’s fooling around, and you might have thought you’d benefit financially from his death.”
“Don’t be absurd!” The words exploded from George’s mouth in a plaintive shriek.
“You’re probably right. I can imagine you thinking about it, but I don’t believe you’d actually have the guts to shoot someone in cold blood.”
“You’re horrible.”
“No worse than most, George.”
“That’s not true. Most people don’t collect rattlesnakes, then drop them in the kitchen of a woman’s house. Don’t you feel bad about that at all, Hart Lee?”
“As a matter of fact, I do.” He paused. “It was wrong to let that snake die such a horrible death.” He laughed, and the vibration of the sound took on a Mephistophelian quality as it rattled off the walls of the mine. The sound echoed for two seconds after he stopped.
“Let’s go,” said George. “I need some fresh air.”
“Not just yet. I’d like to go down and take a quick look at that vein of gold before we head back.”
Bowen picked up the lantern and took a step toward the passageway where Gordon and Ellen were hiding. In a split second, several thoughts flashed across Gordon’s mind. He realized that there was no going backward; it occurred to him that though he was about the same size as Bowen, the latter was a few years younger and his football experience in hitting people was probably more germane to the approaching conflict than Gordon’s ability to sink a feathery jump shot; and he decided that a surprise lunge at Bowen was probably his best chance for prevailing.
“Hart Lee! No!” George’s petulant voice stopped Bowen after two steps. Gordon and Ellen remained just beyond the light thrown by the lantern. “It’s going to start raining any minute, and that’ll take half an hour. We don’t have time.”
“What’s the matter, George? Afraid of the dark?”
“Stop it. I mean what I just said. I’m sore and tired, and I don’t want to get rained on if I don’t have to.”
“I guess you’re right, but I do love to look at that gold. It just makes me feel warm and fuzzy all over to know that the McHenry bitch is sitting on several million dollars worth of it and doesn’t have a clue it’s there.”
“You are not a nice person, Hart Lee.”
“And you’re too nice for your own good, George. All right. We’ll have it your way.” He turned around, and the light quickly began to recede from Gordon and Ellen. The chamber went dark abruptly as the two men left it. Gordon let his breath out and realized he had no idea how long he’d been holding it.
“Are you all right?” she whispered.
“I think the question is are you all right?”
“Fine. How long do you think we should wait?”
He broke the darkness by shining the light on his watch. It read three fifteen. “Let’s give them fifteen minutes,” Gordon said. He was beginning to be acutely conscious of the various aches and pains his awkward position had led to. “I’m glad they didn’t come in here. I wasn’t looking forward to that fight.”
“I don’t blame you,” she said, “I think I could have handled Bowen all right, but you would have had your hands full with George.”
In the dark and stillness it took a few seconds for that remark to sink in, but when he got it, Gordon quickly turned his flashlight on Ellen. Her left hand was over her mouth, and her body was shaking as she tried to suppress her laughter. A surge of nervous release went through his body like an electrical current and he, too, began to laugh uncontrollably, subduing the noise by biting the sleeve of his shirt. His sides ached when he finally stopped several minutes later.
“Point to you,” he panted, “but don’t do that again. We’d have been dead if they’d come back.”
They waited a few minutes more, then he checked his watch again. “Three twenty eight. Close enough. Let’s go.”
With their flashlights barely penetrating the darkness, Gordon and Ellen crossed the chamber and reached the passageway leading out. He grabbed her as they started out. “Just a minute,” he hissed. “There’s a chance they might be waiting by the entrance if it’s raining. Maybe I’d better go look.”
“Stay here,” she whispered. “I’m smaller and I know the passage better. I’ll do it.”
Before he could protest, she was off. He checked his watch and decided to give her ten minutes, then go to her rescue if she wasn’t back by then. She was back in nine.
“All clear,” she said, “but it’s raining cats and dogs. Poor George is getting wet after all.” Lights on, they made their way up the passage. As they turned a corner and saw the opening, a flash of lightning illuminated the gray sky visible on the other side of it. A loud thunderclap followed three seconds later, causing a slight reverberation in the tunnel. Gordon shi
vered as he remembered what she had said about earthquakes when they had first come into the mine. At the entrance, they could see the rain pelting down outside.
“We’re probably going to get soaked no matter what,” but let’s at least wait here until the lightning passes,” she said. For the first time in an hour, Gordon got a good look at her. The exposure to danger had left her eyes lively and dancing and her face vital and radiant. He very much wanted to kiss her, but didn’t yet feel he had the standing to try. And so, for three quarters of an hour, they watched the rain and talked about the meaning of what they had seen and heard, and how they would explain it to Sheriff Mike Baca.
• • •
Ginger, the receptionist, was on the way out when Gordon reached Baca’s office, at half past five..
“Sheriff in?” he asked.
She shook her head. “He just left fifteen minutes ago, but you can find him at the Stage Stop. He has dinner there every Tuesday.”
Gordon gave thanks for Baca’s regular habits and ran back to his car. The rain had stopped, but the ground was wet and dotted everywhere with large puddles. The sky was still dark, and he turned on the lights as his Cherokee left town.
The Stage Stop is a Summit County institution. Located several miles north of Harperville, it sits at the foot of a pass that connects Summit County with the next county north and is the only connection with California in the winter. Stagecoaches had stopped there in days gone by, but now it provides the setting for a bar and restaurant serving steak and seafood. None but the uninitiated tourist eats the seafood, since the steaks are the best in the county and the fish is frozen.
As he pulled into the gravel parking lot, Gordon spotted a sheriff’s car parked near the front door. The lot was half full, so he pulled into the first space he saw and went in. The building was designed to look like a western-movie version of a saloon from the outside, and the interior maintained the general theme, with wormwood walls, cattle-branding equipment, and paintings of cowboy scenes, done in a faux Norman Rockwell style, providing the decor. After entering the front door, he found the bar to his left (through swinging doors, of course). Baca was standing at one end of it, nursing a double Jack Daniels and talking with a local Gordon didn’t recognize. Gordon waved to him, then got himself a double scotch and moved down to the sheriff. Beset by impatience, he gripped the glass tightly as Baca introduced him to the other man and engaged in a few minutes of small talk.
The McHenry Inheritance (Quill Gordon Mystery Book 1) Page 12
