Aunt Dimity Goes West

by Nancy Atherton

“I like it better than mine, too,” said Toby. “But I think my explanation is closer to the truth. James found gold in the Lord Stuart Mine, stole it, and took off before anyone could catch him.”

  We lapsed into a somewhat prickly silence that lasted until my cell phone rang. I answered it, but the signal was so broken up that Annelise had to repeat her message several times before I could make out what she was saying.

  “…bad storm…. hail…high winds in the pass…stay the night?”

  “Yes!” I shouted back. “Stay there! Don’t even try to come back! I’ll see you tomorrow!”

  “…tomorrow!” Annelise hollered and hung up.

  “Wow,” I said, looking down at the cell phone. “It sounds as if they’re getting hit hard at the Brockman. Brett Whitcombe wants Annelise and the boys to spend the night there because of high winds in the pass. It’s hard to believe they’re only one valley away from us.”

  “The front’s moving in from the west,” Toby explained. “If the storm’s hit the Brockman, it’ll be here within the hour.”

  “You told me it would be a rainy night,” I said, eyeing him reproachfully. “You didn’t say anything about a thunderstorm.”

  “A rainy night in the Rockies usually involves a thunderstorm,” he said. “You’ll love it, Lori. The lightning’s fantastic and the thunder makes the floors shake.”

  Toby’s peppy words made me feel sick to my stomach because I knew how I’d react to a thunderstorm that shook the floors. I could already feel my hands growing clammy. Experience had taught me that the only way to keep myself from curling into a pathetic, shivering ball during a really bad storm was to distract myself, to bury myself in a project so absorbing that the lightning would fade into the background.

  “Thanks for showing James’s stuff to me,” I said. “Try to remember that we don’t really know why he bought it. For all we know, he may have been hunting for geodes.”

  “Sure,” said Toby, sounding thoroughly unconvinced.

  I got up from the bed. “Get some rest, Toby. It’s been a long day.”

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “To the library,” I replied, “to look for the stuff James borrowed from Rose Blanding.”

  “I’ll come, too,” he said, jumping to his feet.

  “You will not,” I said, pushing him down again. I hated to pull rank on him, but I didn’t want him to see me lose it if the lightning didn’t fade into the background. “You’ve got the night off. Listen to music, watch a movie, read a book, enjoy yourself. I order you to relax.”

  Toby looked down at his hands and asked in a subdued voice, “You’re not angry with me, are you?”

  “Why would I be angry with you?” I asked, nonplussed.

  “Because I disagree with you about James,” he said.

  “Oh, for pity’s sake, Toby,” I said, laughing. “If I got angry with everyone who disagreed with me, I’d never stop being angry. I just want you to have some time to yourself for a change. You must be sick to death of looking after us.”

  “That’s my job,” he said.

  “Not tonight it isn’t,” I declared.

  “All right, I’ll read a book or something,” he said dully. He leaned forward to lift the lantern from the wooden crate. “You’d better take this with you. I’ve checked the batteries. It works. The emergency generator will kick in if the storm knocks the power out, but it takes a few minutes to get going. If you need me—”

  “I now know exactly where to find you,” I said, taking the lantern from him. “Good night.”

  I let myself out of Toby’s apartment and made my way back to the great room. Roiling black clouds had filled the sky beyond the window wall, and cracks of thunder reverberated from the mountainsides, as if warning me to get away from the enormous plate-glass window before the lightning arrived. I darted into the library, turned on the lights, closed the draperies, and put the lantern on the banker’s desk. I hit the lantern’s on switch just to be on the safe side. I didn’t want to be plunged into darkness if the power went out, even for a few minutes.

  I’d visited the library several times since we’d arrived at the Aerie, so the room was familiar to me. Custom-made bookshelves lined three of its walls. The banker’s desk rested before the fourth, beneath the window I’d so hastily covered. A mahogany map case stood beside the desk, and four oversized armchairs, each with its own reading lamp and cozy afghan, provided comfortable places to curl up with a book.

  I sank into the nearest armchair and allowed my gaze to travel back and forth across Florence Auerbach’s collection of books. When a sudden onslaught of rain peppered the window, I ordered myself to ignore the sound and concentrate instead on Danny Auerbach’s perplexing wife.

  I hadn’t been able to tell Toby about Florence Auerbach’s curious behavior because I’d promised Bill I’d keep it to myself. I hadn’t told Toby that Florence had for some unknown reason interrupted her family’s Christmas holiday at the Aerie, that she refused to set foot in it again, or that she’d ordered her husband to sell the Aerie without explaining why she wanted it sold, but I knew that even if I’d told Toby all of those things, I wouldn’t have been able to convince him that she’d turned against the Aerie because of the curse. Toby didn’t want to hear about the curse.

  James Blackwell, I argued silently, might have been more open-minded than Toby. James had been living and working at the Aerie at Christmastime. He’d witnessed the family’s precipitate departure. As the days ticked by with no sign of their return, he must have asked himself why they’d abandoned a place they’d once used so often. He could have concluded that their flight had something to do with the curse he’d heard about in town. It was clear to me, if not to Toby, that James had decided to mount an investigation of his own.

  Since James liked to read, it was logical to assume that he’d combed through the books in Mrs. Auerbach’s library for information on the curse, but he hadn’t confined himself to books. He’d gone to the ranch, to speak with Brett Whitcombe, and to the historical society, to look for newspaper clippings, photographs, anything that might tell him more about the curse. He’d also purchased the tools he’d needed to take a firsthand look inside the mine—the place where it had all begun.

  The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that James had gone into the mine for a very specific reason: to prove to the Auerbachs that their fears were groundless. Granted, he wasn’t a structural engineer or an archaeologist, but he could have come across something in the library that told him what kind of proof to look for and where to look for it.

  I had no intention of following James’s footsteps into the mine, but I could try to reconstruct the thought process that had led him there. I wanted to prove to Toby that he was wrong about James Blackwell. I wanted to convince Toby that James had gone into the mine to investigate the true cause of the mining disaster, not to steal from his employers.

  Hail was hammering the window when my eyes finally came to rest on the lowest shelf of the bookshelves to my left, where a gray archival box marked BLUEBIRD HISTORICAL SOCIETY had until now sat unnoticed in the shadows.

  “Right,” I said, getting to my feet. “We start there.”

  I pulled the box from the shelf and placed it on the desk, beside the lantern. As I removed the box’s lid, several things happened at once. An earsplitting crack of thunder rattled the window, the power went out, and I saw by the lantern’s stark white glare Abaddon’s evil eyes staring up at me.

  Sixteen

  “Lori? Lori, wake up! Talk to me, Lori.”

  I opened my eyes. I was lying flat on my back on the rug in the library. Swirling sheets of rain were still battering the window, but the lights had come back on. Toby was kneeling beside me, clasping my right hand in both of his, looking very young and very terrified.

  “Hi, there,” he said, with a heroic attempt at a smile.

  I peered up at him woozily. “W-what happened?”

  “I don’
t know,” he said. “I heard you scream and came running.”

  “I screamed?” I said, frowning.

  “Oh, yeah.” Toby nodded earnestly. “I heard it all the way upstairs, with my door closed.”

  “But why would I—” A muted flash of lightning lit the draperies, and the memory slammed into me like a tidal wave. I clutched Toby’s hand convulsively and whispered, “It’s him, him!”

  Toby’s eyes widened in alarm and he glanced over his shoulder. “Is someone here? Did someone attack you?”

  “Yes…no…not here…in Scotland…his face, I saw his face.” I closed my eyes again and shuddered.

  “Scotland?” Toby put the back of his hand to my forehead, as if he thought I might have a fever. “Are you feeling dizzy, Lori? You may be dehydrated. I’ve told you a thousand times to drink plenty of—”

  “I’m not dehydrated,” I said crossly. I brushed his hand aside and pushed myself into a sitting position. “I saw his face.”

  “Whose face?” Toby asked.

  I groaned, slumped forward, and covered my own face with my hands.

  “You’re shivering, Lori. Let’s get you up off the floor.” Toby lifted me bodily and set me down in an armchair. He pulled the afghan from the back of the chair and draped it around my shoulders, then stood peering down at me anxiously. “Should I call your husband?”

  “No!” I barked. “Absolutely not. I don’t want you to call anyone. Not Bill, not Annelise, not anyone.”

  “Okay, okay, I won’t.” Toby scratched his head and looked around the room helplessly. “How about a cup of tea?”

  I pulled the afghan closer and smiled wanly. “You sound just like my husband.”

  “Do you faint a lot at home?” he inquired.

  “No, but I wake up screaming every morning.” Tears began to blur my vision. “And Bill always makes me a cup of tea. He’s so kind. Like you.” I bowed my head. “I’m sorry, Toby. I ruined your night off.”

  “I didn’t want a night off. What do you want me to do?” Toby’s voice held a hint of desperation.

  I dashed the tears from my eyes and pointed a trembling finger at the banker’s desk, saying, “Bring the box to me.”

  Toby hesitated, then lifted the gray archival box from the desk and placed it carefully on my lap. I gripped the arms of the chair, took a shuddering breath, and lowered my gaze slowly to the old, sepia-toned photograph I’d last seen by the light of James Blackwell’s lantern.

  The man in the photograph stood ramrod straight against a backdrop of busy Victorian wallpaper, with one hand clutching the lapel of his ill-fitting suit coat, the other resting on the back of a dainty, velvet-covered chair. He had a thin, pale face; a halo of curly, black hair; and dark, piercing eyes—crazy eyes, eyes as black and fathomless as the pits of hell.

  “Abaddon,” I breathed.

  “Aba who?” said Toby.

  I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the man’s pale face. “Do you know who he is?”

  Toby leaned over my shoulder to peer at the photograph, then picked it up and turned it over. “I have no idea, and there’s nothing written on the back. Since the picture came from the historical society, my guess is that he came to Bluebird to strike it rich. A lot of men had portrait photographs taken in those days, to show the folks back home how successful they were, even if they weren’t.” He dragged an armchair close to mine, slid the box from my lap onto his, and began pulling out photo after photo. “See? There are lots more just like it.”

  He seemed relieved to have something to do, even if he didn’t understand why he was doing it. He showed me one sepia-toned photograph after another, formal portraits of nameless men wearing suits that were too tight or too baggy or too short or too long for them. As their frowning, intent faces passed before me in rapid succession, I wondered if any of them had struck it rich, or if they’d all died the mean deaths Rose Blanding had described in the cemetery.

  A guttural rumble of thunder rolled from one end of the valley to the other and I shrank back in the chair. Toby must have noticed my reaction because he waved a photograph under my nose like smelling salts.

  “Look,” he said, with determined cheerfulness. “I’ve found a picture with a label. It’s Emerson Auerbach. He must be Mr. Auerbach’s great-great-great-grandfather or something. Pretty interesting, huh?”

  Emerson Auerbach had clearly struck it rich. He was vastly proportioned and meticulously attired. He wore a top hat, a pinkie ring, and a monocle, and a multitude of fobs hung from the watch chain that spanned his elegant, outsized waistcoat. He held his many chins high and regarded the camera with a look that seemed to say, “I am a man to be reckoned with.”

  “And here’s a group shot taken at the Lord Stuart Mine,” said Toby, pushing a larger photograph into my hands.

  I peered down at the picture and for a moment forgot the storm. Twenty-one men in shirtsleeves sat on a parched and rock-strewn hillside, facing the camera. They were thinner, scruffier, and much dirtier than Emerson Auerbach. The hats they wore were shapeless, their shirts had no collars, and their fingernails were caked with grime, but they exuded an almost palpable air of cockiness. They, too, I thought, were men to be reckoned with. I bent low over the photograph to examine each individual face, then caught my breath and sat back with a start.

  “It’s him,” I said, trying not to panic. “The man in the first picture.”

  “Where?” said Toby.

  I pointed to the back row. “He has a beard and he’s wearing a hat, but the eyes…the eyes are the same.”

  Toby took the photograph from me, studied the figure at the back of the group, and nodded. “It’s the same guy, all right. He must have showered, shaved, and dressed in his Sunday best when he had the portrait taken. I wouldn’t have recognized him if you hadn’t.” He shifted the archival box from his lap to the floor and held the photo out to me. “Does he remind you of someone, Lori? Someone in England? Like Brett Whitcombe did when you first saw him at the ranch?”

  “The man Brett reminds me of is as close to a saint as I’ll ever meet,” I told him. “The man in the photograph reminds me of…death.”

  “I knew it,” Toby said, under his breath. He stood abruptly and began pacing the room, muttering angrily, “I knew Amanda had messed with your head. I could see it in your face when she talked about death coming to claim you. I swear, I’m going to strangle that woman the next time I—”

  “But Amanda was right,” I interrupted. “Death came to get me, and I got away from him.”

  “What?” Toby stopped pacing and swung around to face me. “When? Where? Tonight?”

  “Not tonight. It happened seven weeks ago.” I sighed heavily. I didn’t want to tell Toby about the shooting, but I didn’t want Amanda Barrow to shoulder the blame—or to take credit—for my strange behavior, either. Apart from that, I was heartily ashamed of myself for lying to someone as open and honest as Toby. If anyone had earned the right to hear the truth, he had. I motioned him to his chair and said, “Please. Sit down.”

  Toby resumed his seat, and I looked fixedly at the floor. I didn’t want to see the mingled horror and pity that would soon fill his eyes. I’d seen it too many times before.

  “I didn’t hurt my shoulder falling off a horse,” I began. “I was shot. By a lunatic. In Scotland. During a thunderstorm.”

  “Ah,” Toby said softly.

  “The bullet nicked an artery. I almost bled to death.” I heard a sharp intake of breath and pressed on. “The man who shot me called himself Abaddon. He wanted to kill Will and Rob, too, but I stopped him. His face…” I glanced down at the gray archival box, then quickly averted my gaze. “His face was as pale as milk. He had wild black hair, and his eyes didn’t seem to have any whites. They were as black as pitch, without any spark of emotion, like tunnels to hell.”

  “Jesus,” Toby said in a hushed voice. “What happened to him?”

  “He was struck by lightning,” I said, “and he fell hundreds of feet
into the sea. He couldn’t have survived, but his body was never recovered. I know it’s absurd, but there’s a part of me that thinks he’s still out there somewhere.” I swallowed hard and forced myself to go on. “I have trouble with storms. I have trouble with nightmares—or I did until I came here. I haven’t dreamed about Abaddon once since I got here. I thought I’d made some progress on the road to recovery, but then I saw the man in the photograph and…back to square one.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Toby asked.

  “I’m sorry I lied to you, but I don’t like to talk about it,” I said gruffly. “I don’t want people who don’t know me to think I’m weak.”

  “Weak?” Toby gave a short, incredulous laugh. “You took a bullet to save your children. You nearly bled to death for them. You’re one of the bravest people I’ve ever met.”

  “Brave people aren’t afraid of thunderstorms,” I said.

  “Wounded people are afraid of all kinds of things,” he countered swiftly. “But wounds heal. You won’t always be afraid of thunderstorms. But you’ll always be brave.”

  I wiped away a tear that had trickled down my cheek and glanced at him. “I don’t feel very brave at the moment. I feel like a quivering puddle of pudding.”

  “This, from the woman who laughed in Dick Major’s face?” Toby tossed his head disdainfully and shoved the group photograph under my nose. “Look at the man who scared you, Lori. Look at him.”

  I stared down at the man in the back row.

  “He’s not the man who shot you,” said Toby.

  “No, he isn’t,” I said, and with a faint sense of shock I realized that the man didn’t even look as much like Abaddon as I’d first thought. “His eyes still give me the creeps, but his face is rounder than Abaddon’s, he’s shorter, and he’s not as thin.”

  “He’s also been dead for over a hundred years,” Toby pointed out, with his usual, unassailable, common sense. “The man who shot you is dead, too. He was struck by lightning. He fell off a cliff. He’s not out there anywhere.”

  I tapped my temple. “Too bad he’s still in here.”