Montana Dreaming

by Judy Duarte

  “First I’d like to acknowledge and thank Brad Vaughn and Emily Stanton. These two were instrumental in the discovery of the mine’s ownership. Without their investigation, we’d all still be wondering.”

  “Or not.”

  At her voice, Joey looked up and smiled.

  She raised her glass of milk in a toast.

  “After much researching of the Queen of Hearts claim,” the mayor said, “it has been documented and proven that ownership over the years went from the original filer to Bart Divine to Lily Divine, who later became Lily Divine Harding.”

  The name of her infamous ancestor caught Lisa’s attention. The bite she’d taken stuck in her throat and she laid down her fork. Lily Divine, Lisa’s great-great-grandmother, was reputed to have been the owner of a brothel in Thunder Canyon; rumors abounded to this day.

  Lisa’s attention focused on what the man was saying.

  The mayor held up a framed document and continued. “Lily mortgaged the deed to Amos Douglas in 1890. Proof has been uncovered that after Amos’s death, his wife Catherine intended to return the deed to Lily, but the paperwork was never filed. Here’s what this all boils down to, ladies and gentleman. Lily Divine was the legal owner of the claim at the time of her death.”

  “Wow, boys. My great-great-grandma owned a gold mine. I hope this doesn’t mean people are going to ask me about it. Or about her.” Unease slid into the pit of her belly at the thought of being singled out. She’d spent her whole life avoiding the rumors and the stigma surrounding the legend.

  The camera zoomed in for a close-up of the mayor, and a hush fell over the crowd. “Today we know that the rightful owner of the Queen of Hearts gold mine is…Lisa Jane Martin, a lifetime resident of Thunder Canyon and the only living descendent of Lily Divine Harding.”

  The last bite Lisa’d taken swelled to the size of a grapefruit behind her breastbone and wouldn’t come up or go down. She choked and tried to breathe, to swallow, to do anything but strangle. She stumbled to the chipped porcelain sink and ran a glass of water. She must have heard wrong!

  After two glasses of water, the bite went down. She grabbed a paper towel and wiped her chin. When her eyes stopped watering, she turned back to the TV.

  Reporters were vying to ask questions and her name kept being mentioned! It was definitely her name. She stared and turned up the volume just in case her hearing had been affected by her near choking death.

  “So far Miss Martin hasn’t responded to our attempts to reach her.”

  Her gaze shot to the registered letters. Oh, crap.

  “But we’ve learned her address and she will be contacted immediately.”

  “Oh, no.” She was going to throw up. There was nothing worse than attention. Nothing. Lisa went out of herway to go unnoticed. She’d always been an introvert. Always.

  She’d have to escape before they found her. She yanked her denim jacket from the back of the kitchen chair and shrugged into it, fighting with the collar that stubbornly turned under.

  Grabbing one of her four key rings, she stared at the keys to dozens of homes. Homes with pets counting on her for their daily walk or for their food and care while their owners were away. She couldn’t run out on her animals. They’d be unattended and no one would know.

  There were three dogs in her fenced-in backyard right now, pets in her care during their owners’ trips. She couldn’t just leave, and she had no one to take over for her. She wandered blindly toward the front of the house wondering how she could avoid this. She’d had to live down Lily Divine’s reputation her whole life. Gran and Aunt Gert had been sympathetic and accepting, but they were her father’s family, not her mother’s. They hadn’t shared the black mark of a hussy forebear.

  Reeling with confusion, Lisa paused in the hall and leaned back against the papered wall.

  Piper came to comfort her first, and she bent forward to receive his devoted concern. Joey followed, finding her ear and giving it a swipe with his tongue.

  She had just dried her ear on her sleeve when the doorbell rang.

  Her gaze jerked upward.

  The dogs barked.

  Without thinking, she headed for the entrance. Both dogs ran ahead of her, and she tripped over Piper, catching the doorknob to steady herself. Instinctively she opened the door.

  People. A lot of them. Flashes went off, blinding her. A dozen cameras whirred, and boom mikes swung over the heads of the reporters who crowded her front porch. She realized her mistake too late. Barking frantically at all the strangers, her dogs darted out into the throng.

  “Have you been following the story of the Queen of Hearts?”

  “What are you going to do with the money?”

  “Miss Martin, look this way. Are you planning to mine right away?”

  “Over here, Miss Martin! What’s your favorite charity?”

  “What about environmental protection?”

  Frazzled, Lisa tried to see over and around the inquiring reporters in hopes of spotting her dogs. Even if she had an answer, she wouldn’t have spoken in public—and definitely not before a television camera.

  “Piper! Come!” She pushed her way through the crush and down the porch stairs. “Joey! Heel!”

  “Miss Martin, just a few questions, please.”

  She spotted traitorous Joey making friends with a blond woman in a black pantsuit with pink trim. His tail wagged and he was smiling at her. Lisa made a lunge and grabbed his collar. “Heel.”

  Piper, obviously the smarter of the two, had a photographer backed up against the trunk of her oak tree and was growling menacingly. She’d never seen him bite anyone, but this fellow would have made a good start, judging from the camera on his shoulder.

  After seizing Piper, she dragged both dogs back to the house, across the porch, then slammed and locked the door in the wake of the television and newspaper personnel.

  “I hope you boys did your business out there just now, ‘cause we’re not opening that door again.”

  The doorbell rang and she covered her ears at the shrill barks that followed. “Get off my property! I’m calling the police!” she shouted through the door.

  The doorbell didn’t ring again, but the porch floor creaked, and an occasional peek through the lace curtains revealed that several curious information seekers still waited out front to catch her. Eventually she would have to let the dogs out the back. Eventually she would have to feed her clients’ dogs. Sooner or later she’d have to go for groceries or starve. The stomach ache that had come on wasn’t from hunger, though. It was a sick vulnerability that ached all the way through to her innards.

  The phone rang.

  For a minute she just listened to the persistent jangle. She’d had so much trouble retrieving messages, she’d gotten fed up with the hassle and had turned off the machine. The phone continued to ring.

  If she had caller ID, she’d know whether it was a pet owner or a reporter, she thought belatedly. Until this moment she’d always thought paying to know who was calling—when you could just pick up the phone and see—was a ridiculous expense.

  Lisa walked to the kitchen and picked up the receiver on a bright yellow dial wall phone. “Hello?”

  “Miss Martin,” the male voice said. “This is Mayor Brookhurst’s assistant. Congratulations! The mayor would like to invite you to Town Hall so we can present you with the deed to the Queen of Hearts and get a couple of signatures. Just official red-tape stuff but necessary. We thought this would be a good time because the local newspeople are still on the scene.”

  “I’m not walking out my door.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I don’t know how there could be any reporters left there, because they’ve overrun my yard and my porch and are trampling my petunias.”

  “It’s a lot of excitement, isn’t it? Thunder Canyon’s never had so many tourists. I’m told we’ll be on the national news this evening.”

  “I don’t want to be a news story—national, local or late
breaking. Nothing. And I want these guys out of my yard.”

  “But, Miss Martin, this is a huge story. You’ve just inherited a gold mine.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “But—But—” He sputtered for a moment. “I’m sorry, but it’s yours.”

  She hung up.

  Another peek revealed cars and news-station vans parked along the tree-lined street and people milling in her front yard, the shadows of the boldest haunting her front porch.

  The backyard entered her thoughts, and she bolted through the house to look out the window in the rear door. A few casually dressed men walked the perimeter of the six-foot chain-link fence, from inside of which the collie and the sheltie barked. The dachshund wagged his tail and ran in circles.

  Lisa ordered her dogs to stay while she opened the door and called to the others. “Brigette! Monty! Aggie! Come in!” She made kissing noises, and the three dogs darted inside. She promptly shut the door and locked it. She wasn’t about to open a door again without a good reason.

  The visiting pets found the food she’d put out for Joey and Piper, and a growling match ensued until she got out more bowls. The crunching intensified. Oh, dear. Poop. Poop was a good reason to open the door, but she wouldn’t think about that until the time came.

  Her phone rang again. She considered taking it off the hook, but something drove her to pick it up and listen.

  “Lisa? Lisa, this is Emily Stanton. I’ve been involved in the case of finding the owner of the mine.”

  Lisa remembered seeing the woman introduced on the news.

  “I’m right outside your front door. I promise to respect your privacy. I’d like to do whatever I can to help you. We need to talk, and there are some legal matters that need your attention. Can we talk? Please?”

  “I’m not talking to any reporters.”

  “I’m not asking you to. I’m asking for a few minutes of your time to go over this situation. Just the two of us.”

  Lisa didn’t say anything.

  “Tell you what—I’ll call the mayor right now. He’ll contact the sheriff and have the newspeople removed. Does that show my good faith?”

  “You could do that?”

  “I’ll do it right now.”

  Ten minutes later Lisa saw half a dozen sheriff’s vehicles pull up alongside the other cars on the street. Officers spoke to reporters and ushered them away from Lisa’s yard.

  Lisa craned to see the woman standing near the front door. She moved to the foyer and called, “Emily?”

  “I’m still here.”

  Lisa opened the door six inches to peer out. A young woman with straight, shoulder-length brown hair and green eyes gazed back at her. Lisa opened the door and Emily slipped in as a camera whirred.

  Lisa closed the door and locked it.

  Five dogs surrounded Emily, and her eyebrows rose in surprise. “Oh, my. You’re a dog lover.”

  “Yes. But they’re not all mine. I pet sit.”

  “I think I heard that somewhere. Your business is called Puppy Love?”

  She nodded. “It seemed like I was always taking care of someone’s pet when I was in high school. It just sort of turned into my livelihood.”

  “So, you bring pets home with you?”

  “Only by special arrangement. Normally I go to their homes. I walk dogs during the day when their owners are at work, or I go a couple times a day when people are on vacation.”

  They glanced at each other in the awkward way people who don’t know each other do.

  “I work for Vaughn Associates,” Emily said. “At least, I did until just a little while ago when my boss proposed to me on television.”

  “I must have been choking during that part. Congratulations.”

  “Thank you. Anyway, we’re a private investigation firm hired to track the gold-mine heir.” She gestured toward Lisa as she corrected, “Or heiress.”

  Lisa gave her a weak smile. “I don’t want a gold mine.”

  Lisa noticed Emily’s glance at the hallway slide to the living room. So what if her house looked as though it had been furnished and decorated fifty years ago? It had. She liked it this way.

  “No, really, I like my house and everything just the way it is.”

  “We’re talking a lot of money here,” Emily said. “I don’t want to tell you what to do, but…lives could change. We’re talking about the economy of Thunder Canyon. About not only how your life can be enriched but what you could do with the profits. Think about it, Lisa. Haven’t you thought of things you would do if you had money? I have. I’d be able to pay for my younger sister to finish college. And I’ve always thought I’d start a scholarship for young women. Isn’t there something you’ve always dreamed you could do if you had the resources?”

  Lisa shrugged. “The humane societies are underfunded and understaffed. I’d build an animal shelter. A no-kill facility where pets could live if no one adopted them.”

  Emily smiled. “You can do that now.”

  “Are you sure this is all…legal? This is for real?”

  “It’s for real. You own the Queen of Hearts. Caleb Douglas’s experts have assessed a substantial vein. Because of all the gold diggers swarming the area, the Douglases arranged security some time ago. You’ll be responsible for taking that over and making arrangements for how you want to proceed with the mining.”

  Just the thought made Lisa feel panicked. “I don’t know anything about mining.”

  “There are people to help you. I suggest you hire a lawyer first thing. Someone with your best interests at heart, someone you trust. Then a financial manager.”

  Lisa passed a shaking hand over her eyes. “It’s too much to think about.”

  Emily leaned over the back of the sofa to peer out between the lace curtains on the window. “The only car left out front on this side is my rental. The mayor has ordered the press to stay off your property and on the other side of the street. I’ll take you to Town Hall, and you can file a restraining order against the press. Then I’ll stay with you while you sign the deed papers. Okay?”

  Lisa didn’t know that she had much choice. People were not going to leave her alone until this was taken care of and the news blew over. “I’ll put the dogs in their kennels.”

  Emily nodded.

  The afternoon passed in a blur of meetings and legal talk. Lisa was placed in touch with the Montana Mining Association, several environmental agencies, The Office of Historical Preservation and the Bureau of Land Management. The operational and engineering issues would have to be decided, and she hadn’t a clue what to do. Head spinning, Lisa just wished she could evade all the publicity and trouble.

  She took Emily’s advice and hired a lawyer. A woman Emily recommended. Bernadine Albright was more than willing to clear her afternoon schedule to meet with Lisa. Holding the press at bay, Emily drove Lisa to the lawyer’s office.

  Complete strangers were excited and animated, congratulating her and bringing her soft drinks and cups of coffee. The inheritance and the experience seemed unreal. Complicated. Overwhelming. She didn’t want her life to change.

  Lisa had too much to absorb and think about, and this was all happening too fast. More than anything else she feared was the fact that her life was never going to be the same.

  Riley Douglas handed a stack of papers to the secretary who’d just arrived at their downtown building for the day and strode down the hall to his father’s office.

  At sixty-six, Caleb still had a thick head of silver hair and a physique toned from keeping a hand in the working operation of his ranch. He’d kept his recent bouts with heart disease a secret from their colleagues and the community, and Riley was one of the few to recognize fatigue and stress taking a toll on the man. Right now Caleb’s face was red with anger. Riley picked up the phone and punched in a number. “I’m calling Dr. Simms. You’re not supposed to be getting riled up like this.”

  Focused on this latest ghastly situation, Caleb waved Riley’s comment
away. The enormous black-lacquer armoire was open, the television tuned to the local news yet again. On Caleb’s desk was last evening’s paper as well as today’s special morning edition, both displaying the pages which relayed the gold-mine story.

  “We’ve got to do something,” Caleb insisted. “That’s been Douglas land for four generations. No bohemian dogsitter is going to take it away from us.”

  Waiting to speak with the doctor, Riley watched footage of the young woman for the hundredth time. First they showed her chasing two dogs out her front door. Dressed in a long skirt, tennis shoes and a denim jacket, she was a fashion casualty if he’d ever seen one. Her dark hair could use an extreme makeover, as well, parted on one side and sprouting wild ringlets that fell to her shoulders.

  She stared at the camera as though she’d been caught committing a crime, then jerked into motion, calling her dogs. She tripped over the huge beasts, tripped over the hem of her wallpaper-print skirt, then retreated back into her house and slammed the door.

  “Doc, can you spare a call to my father’s downtown office? I’ll never get him to yours. He’s taking his blood-pressure medicine, but I don’t like the way he looks. Thanks.” Riley hung up and kept watching.

  The next video clip was taken as Lisa Martin and Emily Stanton approached Town Hall. With swinging dark hair, Emily was cool and professional, guiding the dowdy heiress through the crowd of reporters on the street and into the building, with the assistance of half a dozen police officers. This little town had never seen so many law-enforcement officials. The state patrol and the sheriff’s department had been on call since early reports of the gold strike had been leaked months ago.

  The following shot was of Lisa Jane Martin riding in the passenger side of a silver Chrysler Intrepid as Emily pulled away followed by a camera crew. They’d shown these same clips over and over since the night before. Reporters had used every rags-to-riches phrase they could come up with and had dubbed the Martin girl Cinderella.

  And then came the picture someone had culled from a past Thunder Canyon High yearbook, a photograph of a dark-haired girl who looked vaguely familiar. According to the caption under the likeness, she’d graduated two years behind him, so it was possible he’d seen her in the halls. Nothing remarkable about her. Nothing that would have garnered more than a passing glance.