“How old was this man?” he asked. “Did he have family?”
“I don’t know anything about him.” Anna poured herself coffee and blew over the rim of the mug to cool it before taking a sip. “Though he was the one who suggested I be invited to give the talk, so I suppose in a way he knew me.”
“Could he have been a client?”
“No, I think the name would ring a bell.”
“Maybe a friend of a client.”
“Could be.”
“You’ll find out soon enough.” He lowered himself in front of the pipe and looked up at her, smiling. “Liz is probably already working on the case.”
“I’m surprised I haven’t heard from her yet.” Anna watched him for a moment—though she knew he hated that. Anna, don’t stare, he’d say. But she watched him—his dark brown hair, the dark stubble on his chin, his hands. His blue jeans and ever-present plaid flannel shirt. A lumberjack shirt, she called it. A sweater was as dressy as it got with him, and she liked that. He had turned thirty-nine last month, achieving his goal of leaving his job as a lineman in Loveland before age forty, though his leaving hadn’t been planned. Roger, his father and the owner of Buckhorn’s Trading Post in downtown Elk Park, had suffered a heart attack just before Christmas last year, and though he had survived and was doing well, he’d retired and Gene had taken over the shop—at first of necessity and later because he loved it, even during the tourist season, which thankfully had ended in September.
Gene worked the pipe with the wrench, freeing the trap and setting it in the casserole dish. A bit of water dribbled from the open pipe to the dish. He wiped the trap with a paper towel then held it to his eye and examined it. “Is the leak in that part of the pipe?” she asked.
“Not the trap part of the pipe itself. I think you have a bad washer.” He looked up again, his brows knit, his light brown eyes twinkling. “Go sit on the couch and let me work.”
Jackson, Anna’s German shepherd mix dog, padded into the kitchen and planted himself alongside Riley, his eyes on Gene, his tail thumping expectantly on the floor. Anna laughed, called the dogs to her, and the three left the open kitchen for the living room, the dogs’ nails clicking on the wooden floor.
“You both need your nails cut,” she said as they curled into their daybeds near the wood stove and Anna settled into the couch.
She drank her coffee and silently reviewed the events of the past hour. Something odd was going on with the members of the Elk Valley Historical Society. Undercurrents was the word that came to mind. The words they’d spoken to one another had double meanings. She had felt like a traveler among them, only half understanding their patois, but she sensed that they shared secrets they dared not share with anyone outside the group.
She had the sudden urge to call Liz Halvorsen and find out what she knew about Russell Thurman. Her friend, who ran the ElkNews.com website, had contacts at the town office, the Municipal Building, the police department, and even the coroner’s office. If something was afoot in Elk Park, Liz knew about it.
Before Anna could convince herself to leave her comfortable couch and grab her phone, the doorbell rang.
“Can you get that?” Gene called out. “I’m slaving away under this woman’s sink.”
“Getting it.” Anna headed for the front door, certain she would see Liz on the other side of it, bubbling with news she could no longer bear to keep to herself. She swung it wide, ready to greet her friend, but instead found Clovis Fleming, an apologetic smile on her face and a large envelope clutched to her chest.
“Sorry to bother you so soon,” Clovis said. “Can we talk?” She stood motionless until Anna ushered her inside and then hesitated again at the kitchen island, where Gene was wiping his hands with a dish towel.
“This is Gene Westfall,” Anna said. She suddenly wondered what to call him. My boyfriend? That sounded like something a teenager would say. My guy? My man? They all sounded faintly ridiculous. “A friend of mine,” she said at last. “Gene, this is Clovis Fleming, who heads the Elk Valley Historical Society.”
Clovis stepped to the island and extended her hand. “Used to head it. Nice to meet you, Gene.”
If Gene had noticed Anna’s halting introduction, he hid it well. “Nice to meet you, Clovis,” he said, taking her hand. “Can I get you something to drink? Coffee or tea? Cider?”
Clovis looked longingly toward the refrigerator. “Do you have a pop?” she asked.
“I’m afraid not,” Anna said. “Anything else?”
“Never mind, then.” She waved a hand. “Anyway, I don’t want to keep you longer than necessary.”
Anna invited Clovis to follow her and headed back to the living room. “Have a seat,” she said, gesturing at an armchair opposite the couch.
“Lovely dogs,” Clovis said, regarding Jackson and Riley with unambiguous approval. Her thin frame settled lightly into the chair. She crossed her legs and laid the envelope on her lap, her fingers nervously tapping it. A tattered spot on the sleeve of her cardigan, where she had mended the weave but not well enough to disguise the threadwork, caught Anna’s eye.
“I wasn’t sure I’d see you today,” Anna said. “I know you said you’d come, but after . . .”
“Yes, Russell.” She looked away, momentarily transported by the tragedy of her friend’s death, then fixed her eyes on Anna’s. There was business to attend to. “But Russell is why I wanted to speak to you in the first place.”
“I thought you had a genealogical brick wall.”
“No, it has nothing to do with my family tree. That was a ruse.” Clovis said the word playfully, as though mischief were about to ensue and Anna should strap on a seat belt. “It’s about this envelope.” She offered it to Anna.
“Oh?” Anna rose and took the envelope. As she sat again, she flipped it and noticed its back was securely fastened by both the brad and several inches of clear tape.
“I know some of what’s in that,” Clovis said. “But only because Russell and I talked. What he put in there recently I don’t know, and I didn’t feel I should open it. I picked it up at his house after the meeting.”
Anna looked up.
“I have his house key,” she explained. “And he had mine. The police were busy at the Sadler house, apparently, and I had no problem getting in. It makes you wonder.”
Anna peeled off the tape, pried back the brad, and removed the envelope’s meager contents: photocopies of three old newspaper articles, a check made out to her, and what appeared to be two terribly stunted family trees: Gilmartin and Eberhardt. She looked at Clovis.
“May I?” Clovis said. She left her armchair and sat next to Anna on the couch.
“Then this wasn’t what you thought Russell might have had with him when he died?” Anna asked, handing her the papers.
Clovis shook her head as she examined them. “He’d been studying the Sadler house, and I thought he might have had other research papers with him.” She brandished the articles. “These I knew about, though he never said why they’re important.”
“Did he talk to anyone else in the group about them?”
“Just Esther. And he swore us to secrecy. Not that we know anything to tell. I don’t understand these family trees at all.”
“If that’s what they are,” Anna said. “They’re awfully short. Why did he write me a check?”
“To hire you.”
Feeling she had stated the obvious and that the obvious needed no further explanation, Clovis continued to study the Gilmartin and Eberhardt family trees, such as they were. Anna leaned closer for a better look. The Gilmartin tree was the largest of the two, but only Maddy Gilmartin’s side of the family had been researched. Madeleine Cooper, forty-two, born in Elko, Nevada, had married Paul Gilmartin eighteen years ago, and together they had a daughter named Diana, now age fifteen. To the right of Maddy’s name were the names of two siblings, and above it were the names of her parents and grandparents. Scribbled next to Maddy’s name were two words.
“‘Teaches demonology’?” Anna said.
“Yes.” Clovis handed Anna the Gilmartin tree. “I did know that. Russell told me. She teaches in Boulder, in some rented office space where she and other so-called teachers can legally take foolish people’s money. Ridiculous.” She sniffed and gave Anna the Eberhardt family tree, which was no more than Zoey Eberhardt’s name, her estimated age—thirty—and the words “Where are they?”
The purpose of the check was becoming clear. “Did Russell want to hire me to research the Gilmartin and Eberhardt families?”
“That’s what he told me. It’s why he wanted you to speak to our group, if you’ll forgive us for planning your visit for that purpose. He was sure he was being watched, so he didn’t want to make an appointment with you. He thought the meeting was the perfect place to pass along this information—making it seem like he was giving you his family details, of course. I didn’t know he was making headway on his own, but it’s not much, is it?”
“He thought he was being watched?” Clovis, it seemed, had the habit of introducing startling tidbits of information into the conversation as though she were sharing the recipe for strawberry shortcake.
“I can’t vouch for that since I never saw anything myself, but I trusted Russell’s instincts. If he said he was being watched, he was being watched.”
“Who would watch him?”
“All the new group members, I think. Paul and his wife, Alex, Zoey. The Gang of Four, I call them.”
In her peripheral vision, Anna saw Gene stand in the kitchen and turn his face to the living room. He’d caught what Clovis had said, and he didn’t like it.
Clovis, too, sensed she was in danger of frightening Anna from the task before she had even finished her pitch. “Anyway, you don’t need to know about all that. Russell only wanted to hire you as a genealogist.”
“But now that Russell has died . . .”
Clovis seized the check and tore it in half. “Now I’m hiring you. For him.”
“Did he have family in Colorado?”
“He was divorced, and his ex-wife moved out of state years ago. Two grown children in Idaho. I’ve never met any of them.”
“I’m not sure about this.” Anna looked again at the Gilmartin tree. She was uneasy about researching the ancestors of living people without their permission.
“I can cover your charges.”
“I’m sure you can. It’s not that.”
“You don’t want to research their backgrounds on the sly.”
Anna looked up. “It makes me a little uncomfortable.”
“But haven’t you ever researched the family trees of famous living people?”
“This wouldn’t be like that. I’ve met Zoey and the Gilmartins.”
Clovis smiled. “And you’re not intrigued by impenetrable brick walls in their trees?”
“I’m always intrigued by brick walls,” Anna said with a laugh, realizing she was leaning toward taking on the job for that very reason. And if she discovered anything Paul or Zoey might find embarrassing, she thought, she didn’t have to pass that information to Clovis. “But this?” She held up Zoey’s tree. “This isn’t a brick wall, this is a completely missing family history.”
Clovis’s smile broadened. “Almost as if Zoey doesn’t exist.”
“What do you mean?” Anna waited for an explanation. Clovis knew—or suspected—more than she was letting on, and experience over the past year had taught Anna to arm herself with information before leaping into a genealogical quagmire.
“Russell tried to locate Paul and Zoey’s families,” Clovis said. She sat back, relaxing in her seat, ready to disclose all she knew. “He wasn’t a genealogist, but before he retired he was a history professor at Colorado State—and no slouch on the computer, either. Paul was born and raised in Colorado, but Russell couldn’t find his parents or any siblings—though he did find out that Paul and Maddy leased their land to some wind-farm company and made a fortune. And Zoey says she’s lived in Colorado for more than ten years—where are her records?”
“Not everyone tells the truth about who they are and where they’re from.”
“Two people in one small group?”
“What about Alex? Did Russell research him?”
“He did.” Clovis crossed her legs with a sigh. “Alex is exactly who he says he is, and his grandfather really was head of the honey-making facility at Morgan-Sadler House. Hired by Emerson Sadler himself.”
“Why didn’t Russell just ask the members about their history? History is what your group is all about.”
“It’s not my group anymore,” Clovis said. Her face hardened as she picked at the sleeve of her cardigan. “I was thrown out as president at our meeting last Saturday.”
“But you founded the society.”
Clovis let out a strangled laugh. “Eight years ago. Russell joined me a week later.”
“If you don’t mind me asking . . .”
“Alex won. By a vote of four to three. And now two of those three members are gone. Russell has been murdered, and Esther Vance, my dearest friend in the world, quit. She had no choice when she found out that the very group I created and she was a part of intends to steal her house.”
“Is that what Zoey was talking about? The involuntary—”
“The IHD. Involuntary historical designation.” Clovis’s mouth tightened, causing her upper lip to all but disappear. “A new law passed by the town council this summer that allows Elk Park to designate a building as historical whether or not its owner agrees. And unfortunately, the society has the power to recommend such a designation—something we never planned to do until new members flooded the group and changed everything. After Alex was made president, Maddy proposed that Esther Vance’s Craftsman-style house be given an IHD.”
“Practically speaking, what does that mean for Esther?”
“There are not only things she must not do to her house and yard, but there are things she must do. Expensive, historically accurate upkeep, for one.” Outraged for her friend, Clovis became agitated as she spoke, her words tumbling, racing to describe the unfairness of it all. “She’s lived in that house for twenty-four years. She’s a seventy-one-year-old widow. She hasn’t the resources for this. She has trouble paying the bills under normal circumstances, and the miniscule grant the town offered her won’t begin to cover her costs. I talked to her yesterday—she was in tears.”
“What happens if she ignores this designation?”
“Eventually she loses her house. Elk Park can take it. And then presumably what used to be my historical society can renovate it and charge entrance fees.”
Anna couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Why on earth had the town council passed such a law? It was monstrous. Did the council members not see its real-life consequences?
“Excuse me, ladies,” Gene said, a glass of cider in each hand as he made his way to the couch. “It’s not pop, Clovis, but I think you’ll like it.” He handed her a glass then held out the other for Anna. “Leak fixed,” he added, tipping his head in the direction of the kitchen.
“Thanks.” Anna saw no caution in his expression—the knit brow that reminded her to think twice before she rushed headlong into a situation she didn’t fully understand—even though Clovis had sidestepped her question about Russell being watched. It was possible he too found the genealogical riddle appealing, but it was more probable that he didn’t like the idea of a widow losing her house over an ill-conceived law.
“I am thirsty,” Clovis said. “I’m afraid I’ve been talking a lot.”
“Only because I’ve been asking you questions.”
“Riley, Jackson,” Gene said, giving his leg a pat. “Let’s go outside.”
In an instant the dogs hopped up and eagerly trailed after Gene, trotting across the living room, out the sliding glass door, and into her house’s back yard. How quickly and fiercely Jackson had transferred his loyalty from Sean to Gene, Anna thought. Only a dog cou
ld move through life with such grace and ease, forgetting the past, pressing ahead. Jackson had adored her husband during the several months he had with him, but when Sean died three autumns ago, after a time of grieving, of wandering the house in search of him, Jackson accepted his new life. And now he loved Gene.
“This is delicious,” Clovis said, holding her glass aloft as if in a toast.
“I’m glad you like it. The apples are from an orchard west of Loveland.”
“Nothing finer than cider in the fall.” Clovis took another gulp before putting the glass on the end table behind her. “It’s one thing to take over the Morgan-Sadler House,” she went on, determined to drive home her point. “No one lived there, it was in a terrible state of disrepair, and the Corporation for Historical Preservation negotiated with the absentee owner and paid a pretty penny for it. But this”—she jabbed at the air with her forefinger—“this is legalized theft. Not with my group they don’t.”
“Wait a minute.” Anna wasn’t sure she’d understood Clovis. “Esther was a member of the historical society. So Alex and the others voted to place an IHD on a member’s house?”
“Yes, all four of them did. The vote was four to three, again. You see what I meant when I said the group is rapidly changing?”
“And not for the better.”
“Why would four people, in the space of seven weeks, join our small group and turn it upside down? And why do two of them appear not to exist?”
Anna had to admit the questions were tantalizing. And if she, in some roundabout way, could help Esther Vance hold onto her house by simply doing her job as a genealogist, why not? And Liz loved political intrigue. She’d jump at the chance to help.
“We do have a trump card,” Clovis said, lacing her fingers together and resting her hands on her lap. “Councilwoman Ruby Padilla. Esther and I are meeting with her in a couple of hours. She was the deciding vote in favor of the law, but I think she’ll have a change of heart when she learns that Esther is a victim of it.”
Anna Denning Mystery Series Box Set: Books 1–3 Page 53
