“I don’t know. I’ll talk to my attorney but it seems that Sheriff Kane’s influence reaches far.” Dixie straightened and her face turned cold. “But I won’t give up … I plan to fight for what’s rightfully mine. Our family’s had enough stolen from it—I won’t let that happen to the hotel too.”
Dixie shook her head and put her hand on Morgan and Celeste’s arms. “Thanks for listening to me—I just hope the kitchen shutdown doesn’t inconvenience you, I know you like to take your meals here.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Morgan said. “We’ll miss Dave’s cooking, but we can fend for ourselves.”
Dixie stood up and then leaned over the table, lowering her voice to a whisper. “We still have the kitchen and the food so if you get really hungry just let me know and I can have Dave whip something up for you.” She winked at them. “It will be our little secret.”
Celeste felt her heart sinking as she watched Dixie walk away. “We can’t just sit by and let the hotel go out of business or get closed down.”
Cal’s deep blue eyes scanned the room taking in the carved wood molding, stained glass windows and period architecture. “It sure would be a shame. This place is really nice down here. Much nicer than our rooms. I’d love to see it get restored.”
“I can’t imagine why the Sheriff would want to put her out of business,” Jolene said.
“If it’s not a personal grudge then maybe he wants the land,” Morgan replied. “Maybe he wants to build a strip mall or something.”
Celeste cringed, thinking of a strip mall standing here instead of the beautiful hotel. “Maybe we can invest in the hotel or something to help her out?”
“I doubt she’d take our money. She seems too proud.” Morgan glanced at the door Dixie had disappeared through. “What did she mean when she said her family had had enough stolen from it already?”
Celeste shrugged. “I have no idea … probably old family history. There might be something about that in the book on Dead Water she lent us.”
“Maybe I can have my attorney look into this rezoning and the kitchen shut down,” Cal said. “She’s pretty good. If something isn’t on the up and up she might be able to get them to back off.”
“In the meantime, we need to start reading through those letters and find out what Lily wanted vindication for so we can get her to show us the key,” Celeste said.
“Yeah, and I’d like to get out to the mine and see Dead Water … I still have a lot of questions about the treasure,” Cal added.
“And I have the most important question of all.” Jolene pushed her chair back from the table and stood.
“What’s that?” Morgan asked.
“What are we going to eat for breakfast?”
Chapter Thirteen
After rousing Fiona and Jake from their room and telling them about the kitchen shutdown, they voted to go to a diner in Couver City for breakfast. Celeste nibbled on a waffle while she sat patiently watching the rest of them devour bacon, eggs and coffee, wondering if she was the only one anxious to get to the letters.
Once finished, they prolonged her agony by insisting on showing Cal the ghost town of Dead Water and then taking him to see the markings in the mine. Thankfully, they didn’t go far into the mine—apparently, Cal saw what he needed after only venturing as far in as Celeste had.
“None of the other mine shafts have markings?” Cal asked as they emerged into the sunlight.
“Nope,” Celeste answered. “We checked all the ones around here. But there might be other entrances we don’t know about.”
She glanced around the area trying to make out any unusual outcroppings or indents that might be other entrances. As she made her survey, she noticed a cloud of dust off in the distance. Another car.
Was it following them?
“Who’s that?” She pointed to the cloud and the rest of them turned their heads in that direction.
Fiona shaded her eyes from the sun. “I can’t tell. Are they coming or going?”
“Crap, I hope it’s not that deputy again.” Jolene squinted toward the cloud. “I don’t want to get thrown in jail.”
“Don’t worry. I think it’s moving away from us.” Luke’s eyes turned hard as he stared at the cloud. “But that reminds me—I should check in with Buzz and Gordy and see how their surveillance of the Sheriff is going.”
“And I need to check my messages and see if my attorney found out anything about the rezoning,” Cal said.
“And I need to get back to the hotel and dig into those letters so we can find out what Lily wanted vindication for, get the key to those symbols and recover the treasure.” A note of exasperation crept into Celeste’s voice. “You know—the whole reason why we are here in the first place.”
Everyone stared at her. They were used to her being on an even keel. Cal laughed and slid his arms around her shoulders.
“Of course, we should get on that right away,” he said leading the way toward the cars.
Luke and Jake knew their skills were better put to use trying to figure out what Sheriff Kane was up to and trying to hunt down the mysterious hotel guest, so they dropped Celeste, Cal, Fiona, Morgan and Jolene off at the hotel.
“This will be easier if we spread the letters out on the table in the kitchenette,” Morgan suggested. “I’ll clean it off.”
Celeste carefully pulled the packet of letters out of the bureau drawer in her room and brought them out to the kitchen. Sitting on one of the chairs at the table, she gingerly slipped the ribbon off the packet.
A swirl spiraled up in front of her as the ribbon came off and Celeste felt a stab of excitement. Was Lily’s ghost going to materialize and help them? Her excitement deflated as fast as it came when the swirl fell to the table in a pile of decades old dust.
“There are a lot of letters here,” Celeste said spreading them out on the table and counting. “Twenty-one, to be exact.”
Fiona flicked at the corner of one with a red tipped fingernail. “They’re very brittle. We need to be careful handling these.”
“Where should we start?” Morgan asked.
Celeste’s teeth worried her bottom lip. “I’m not sure. I think we need to read them chronologically.”
“I hope they’re dated,” Jolene said, bending over Morgan’s shoulder to look at the table.
Celeste picked through the yellowed papers. They were covered with the faded blue writing of an early fountain pen—so faded that they could barely be seen in some spots. She managed to pick out a few with dates and set them aside in order.
“I guess we’ll start with this one.” She picked a letter out of the pile, her heart beat quickening at the prospect of looking into a bit of history and solving the mystery of whatever Lily wanted vindicated.
The letter was folded in thirds and she opened it slowly, holding her breath as she spread it flat on the table, praying that it wouldn’t rip at the folds.
Belladonna jumped up into her lap with a quiet “mew” as she bent over the table, trying to decipher the old handwriting.
Fiona, Morgan, Jolene and Cal were doing the same. Celeste could barely make out the words. Her eyes scanned the letter—it was signed by Lily, of course. Her eyes drifted back up to the top to find out who Lily had written the letter to.
Fiona’s sharp intake of breath told Celeste that she’d seen the same thing and their eyes met over the table. Celeste looked up at the others.
“This letter is from Lily to Shorty.”
“What?” Morgan narrowed her eyes and bent closer to the letter. “Well I’ll be … and she calls him ‘My dearest Shorty’. What’s up with that?”
Celeste shrugged. “I guess we need to read them to find out.”
Celeste focused on the first two letters. They were formal, much more than a letter today would be, but there was no mistaking the emotion in them.
“These sound like love letters,” Morgan said.
“If they are, they’re kind of lame,” Jolene answere
d.
“That’s how they wrote back then. Everything was more formal, they didn’t use explicit words like you young kids do today.” Cal teased Jolene.
“I think they’re beautiful.” Fiona pointed to a passage in one of the letters.
The kiss you stole under the tree
You didn’t have to steal from me.
Jolene made a face. “Blech, that's too lovey-dovey.” She yawned and her back cracked as she stretched. “This is boring. When do we get to find out about the key?”
“It could take a while … we need to look these over carefully.” Celeste flipped one of the letters over gingerly taking care not to bend it for fear it would rip. “Whatever Lily wanted vindication for might not be obvious so it could take time for us to figure it out.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Jolene let out a sigh and paced around the room.
Morgan looked at her watch. “It’s almost three thirty. Maybe you could go do some grocery shopping.”
“Yeah, the kitchen’s closed here so I guess we might as well cook.” Fiona cast an uncertain glance at the stove. “Does that thing even work?”
Jolene went over to the stove and turned one of the knobs. The pilot clicked a few times and then a whooshing sound and blue flame made Jolene jump back. “Looks like it works.” She turned the burner off. “Okay, I’ll go to that supermarket over in Couver City. Probably take a couple of hours.” Jolene grabbed the keys to the Escalade from the counter. “I don’t want to miss the treasure hunt though.”
Celeste tore herself away from the letters “Don’t worry, It will take us that long to figure this out and find Lily’s ghost,” she said. “If you’re not back, we’ll call you and wait for you at the mine.”
“Okay, that works.” Jolene smiled as she slipped out the door and the rest of them returned to pouring over the letters.
***
Jolene finished loading the groceries in the back of the Escalade and took the cart to the cart corral. Since no one had given her a list, she’d decided on pasta and had loaded her grocery bags with vermicelli, canned sauce, parmesan cheese, garlic bread and cheesecake for desert. She’d also bought some donuts for breakfast the next day.
She didn’t buy anything for lunch—maybe she was being overly optimistic about their ability to locate and recover the treasure tonight, but she hoped they’d be packed and on their way back to Maine before noon.
She’d also bought a bag of nacho cheese Doritos, but those were for the ride back to the hotel. Ripping open the bag, she placed it on the console next to her, started the Escalade and pulled out of the grocery store parking lot.
She munched on the tangy chips as she drove down Route 51. The traffic was light and her attention drifted from the road to the desert landscape. The dry, sandy land was a huge contrast to the lush green hills, woods and ocean of her hometown, Noquitt, Maine.
Still, the desert did have some appeal. She liked how the flat contours of the land allowed you to see far into the distance. Like right now, she could see the hill where the mines were even though it was probably more than a mile away.
Jolene crunched off the corner of a Dorito as she looked over at the mines. Was there a centuries old multi-million dollar treasure there waiting for them?
A blur of brown caught her eye. She slowed the car, her eyes searching in the direction of the blur. Was that a dog? Scanning the area, she saw it was a dog, and it wasn’t alone. The two dogs looked just like Emma’s dogs, Clive and Lucy. But what would they be doing up at the mine? And where was Emma?
Jolene pulled over to the side of the road and tipped the bag of chips up to her lips, emptying the crumbs into her mouth as she stared over at the hill. It looked like the dogs were running in a frenzied circle around an opening in the hillside opposite the mine entrances she’d explored with her sisters.
After several minutes of staring, she realized Emma was nowhere in sight. Her heart froze as she remembered how Emma said the dogs never went anywhere without her.
Was Emma up there and in trouble?
She shoved the car into drive and peeled out from her spot on the side of the road, the tires squealing as she u-turned to reverse direction and head back toward the road to the mine.
Chapter Fourteen
“Looks like these letters span the six months before Shorty was killed.” Celeste pointed to the letters that were now laid out in neat rows on the table.
“It’s a true love story.” Fiona sighed.
“With a twist,” Morgan added. “It looks like the Sheriff was also vying for Lily’s attention.”
“And making things hard on Shorty.” Celeste pointed to a passage in one of the letters. “Here he writes, ‘I fear Deke is doing whatever he can to prevent my mining efforts and causing me to be unable to provide for us’.”
“Sounds similar to what our favorite Sheriff, Sheriff Kane, is doing right now,” Morgan said.
“In this letter, Shorty alludes to Deke trying to run him out of town.” Cal pointed to the corner of one of the old letters.
“Wait!” Celeste’s heartbeat sped up as she scanned one of the letters they hadn’t read yet. “This might be the clue. It talks about the stagecoach robberies.”
“What’s it say?” Morgan’s brow creased as she turned her head sideways to try and read the letter.
“It’s written by Lily … she mentions that she’s afraid the robber might come to town.” Celeste looked up at the rest of them. “I guess she didn’t know the robber was Shorty.”
“Was it?” Fiona bent over another of the letters, her read curls cascading over the table. “This letter written by Shorty says he got a tip on when the stage is coming through and he might take a ride out and see if he can confront the robber.”
“Maybe he was just saying that so Lily wouldn’t be suspicious of him,” Cal said.
“Or maybe what Emma said was true and he really wasn’t the robber.” Morgan frowned down at one of the letters. “Lily says here that, as far as she knows, the sheriff is the only one that knows the stagecoach times in advance.”
“This last letter from Lily is kind of ominous,” Celeste said. “Lily writes ‘we must hasten our plans. Deke said he will stop at nothing to make me his … and our package won’t wait’.”
Celeste looked at the date of the letter, a heavy rock forming in her chest. “It’s dated the day before Deke shot Shorty.”
***
Jolene found the road to the other side of the hill easily enough and sped toward where she thought she’d seen the dogs, the Escalade kicking up a cloud of dust in her wake.
She came upon Clive and Lucy running circles outside a dark opening in the hill—a mineshaft they hadn’t known about. She jumped out of the car and the dogs ran over to her.
Jolene squatted down to the level of the hounds. “Hey guys, where’s Emma?”
Clive licked her hand as she stroked the silky fur on his chest. Lucy whined and looked back over her shoulder at the mine entrance. Jolene could tell the dogs were filled with worry and apprehension.
“Is she in the mine?” Jolene asked the dogs as she squinted into the dark opening. Of course she was in the mine, where else would she be?
Jolene stood and walked over to the entrance, the dogs following at her heels.
“Emma?” She yelled into the mine.
The only answer was her own voice echoing hollowly through the tunnels.
She stepped inside. The shaft was wide at the opening, but narrowed pretty quickly. She shuffled in a few feet, noticing the dogs stayed just outside the opening.
“Cowards,” she said over her shoulder at them. The dogs whimpered and hung their heads as if they understood.
She forged ahead, calling Emma’s name but not getting any response. Where was Emma and why had she come into the mine alone? A shiver danced up her spine as she remembered Emma’s insistence that something fishy was going on up here and her vow to investigate.
Maybe she’d fallen and
needed help … or met with foul play. Either way, Jolene had to do her best to help her.
Ten feet in and Jolene couldn’t see a thing. She patted her pockets, her heart sinking when she realized she didn’t have the little flashlight Luke had given her the other day. She did have one thing though, her Smartphone.
Pulling the phone out of her pocket, she switched it on. The lack of bars told her there was no reception inside the mine, but she didn’t want to make a call, she wanted to light the way.
When she’d gotten the phone, Morgan had insisted she install an application that lit up a light on the end of the phone so it could be used like a flashlight. Jolene had thought it was silly, but now she could see how it would come in handy.
“Where is that?” She scrolled through the apps until she found one that looked like a flashlight. She pressed on the icon and a pang of relief shot through her when a bright light came out of the end of the phone. Shining it into the darkness in front of her, she continued on.
It felt like the tunnel walls were closing in on her. It was less than three feet wide and she could reach out and touch both sides. Her heart thudded in her chest as she breathed in the stale, lifeless air. Sweeping the light across the floor and walls, she made slow progress.
“Emma?”
No answer.
Jolene ventured in deeper. She was wondering how far she should go on her own before she backtracked and called for help when the tunnel widened out into some sort of room. Directing the beam of light around in a circle, she could see there were three tunnels off the room.
Which one did Emma take?
She crossed over to the first tunnel and shined the light in. Then repeated it for the next.
Her heart leapt into her throat as she turned to shine her light toward the third tunnel and came face to face with Deputy Styles.
“What are you doing here?” He spoke in a low growly whisper.
Jolene shrank back from him, her stomach sinking.
4 Buried Secrets Page 9
