When I Meet You

by Olivia Newport

  “A new barista,” he said to Clark. “She seems nervous.”

  “My niece, Joanna Maddon. From Chicago. I promised her a job if she ever came to Colorado.”

  “Now she has.”

  Clark nodded. “Called my bluff. First time I’m hovering from afar rather than looking over her shoulder all day.”

  “You won’t let her get into too much trouble.”

  “Nope.” Clark pointed his pen at Nolan’s papers. “What’s all this?”

  “Perhaps you’ve heard the rumor that I’m preparing a fancy feast for the Legacy Jubilee.” Nolan unwrapped his breakfast burrito and inspected it.

  “Same burritos we always serve,” Clark said. “Made it myself this morning.”

  “Unquestionably delicious.” Nolan slid it off the wrapper and onto the plate. “I’m trying to settle on a plan for what I’m going to serve.”

  “It looks like you’ve been scratching a lot of things off the list.”

  “The powers that be have vetoed some remarkable ideas.” Nolan bit into his food.

  “What hasn’t been vetoed? Let’s see.” Clark picked up several half sheets of paper. “You’ve got some fancy stuff here, Nolan.”

  “It’s at the Inn at Hidden Run. On china. With tablecloths and candles. I’m leaning toward the beef Wellington.”

  “I see your dilemma, but I still think you’ve overlooked an obvious choice.”

  Nolan sipped coffee and raised his eyebrows.

  “Do your Irish spiced brisket,” Clark said. “It’s spectacular. Most people who’ve had your cooking like the Irish dishes best. The spiced brisket would be easy to make, it presents well, and you could slice it to serve a crowd rather than the individual meats some of these ideas involve.”

  “Are you sure you haven’t been talking to Jillian?”

  Clark held up three fingers, close together. “Scout’s honor. I haven’t seen her. I take it she would approve.”

  “It would meet a number of the specifications she has hammered on about.” And the name would look nice printed on a menu at the place settings, which would please Marilyn.

  “Do what you want with the side dishes. But I think that’s your meat.”

  Nolan chewed and thought. “Have you got your ticket?”

  “Me? At a fancy dinner? Should I wear the jeans with no knees or the ones with appliquéd flowers?”

  “You could always help me cook. Eat in the kitchen for free.”

  Clark laughed. “I have no doubt you’re going to need help, but I’m hoping to be very busy myself that weekend around here.”

  “I suppose so.” Nolan swallowed the last bite of his breakfast and washed it down with coffee. “I haven’t made one of those briskets in a while. I’ll have to do one and figure out how many it takes for two hundred mouths.”

  “Two hundred! What have you gotten yourself into?”

  “I’ll have to go home for my truck so I can go to the butcher and buy a brisket.” Nolan gathered his papers. “It takes five days to spice one of those properly, you know.”

  “I know now.”

  Outside the Cage, Nolan nearly collided with Marilyn.

  “Oh good, I caught you,” she said. “Someone told me they spotted you.”

  “Morning, Marilyn,” Nolan said. “What can I help you with?”

  “Menus, Nolan.”

  He waved the papers in his hands. “I just about have it narrowed down.”

  “Soon?”

  “Soon.”

  “Friday at the absolute latest.”

  “I promise.”

  “Good. I’m so looking forward to your culinary creation.” She looked around. “Isn’t Jillian with you?”

  “I’m afraid not. Do you need something from her?”

  “Yes. Please ask her to call me today. I’d like to discuss the final title of her talk. We’ll want to include that after the menu, don’t you think? Make a small program card of the entire evening?”

  Nolan nodded. “That does sound like a nice idea. I’ll let her know.”

  At the corner of Main Street and Double Jack Street on the way home, Nolan paused for a vehicle turning toward the Inn at Hidden Run. Nia tapped the horn in the minivan she favored because she could easily remove seats to haul small furniture for restoration and use in the Inn. She slowed to a stop, and Nolan leaned in at the window she lowered.

  “Where’s Jillian?” Nia said.

  “I thought she might be with you,” Nolan said.

  “I just came from the library, the grocery store, and Kris’s ice cream shop. She wasn’t in any of those places.”

  “You didn’t spot her car?” Nolan asked. “Maybe you drove past it.”

  Nia shook her head and chuckled. “She dares to have a life neither of us knows about? When you see her, ask her to call me. I’m still trying to figure out how to have her seen and heard through several rooms—and whether she needs some sort of podium.”

  “Will do.” Nolan stepped back, and Nia proceeded toward the Inn.

  When Nolan left the house, he’d assumed Jillian had simply gotten a head start on him. She wouldn’t be running—not on her injured foot—but she could still be doing errands around town. But if her small SUV was parked anywhere along the path Nia had taken, which covered a good portion of the Canyon Mines shopping loop, Nia would have spotted it. Nia was one of Jillian’s best friends, and she didn’t know where she was.

  Marilyn had been in the shops and on the lookout.

  Even when he sits at a table doing paperwork, Clark has a good idea of who passes by outside the shop.

  Nolan let himself in the house, checked her office, and went upstairs. Her bedroom door was open. Jillian wasn’t in the room. He opened the door to the attic, but the light was off.

  The house was empty.

  Nolan scrolled the contacts in his cell phone and found Luke’s number.

  “Hey, what’s up?” Luke sounded cheerful.

  “I seem to have misplaced my daughter,” Nolan said. “Thought maybe she was there with Veronica talking about old trunks or something.”

  “Can’t help you there. Veronica went to a huge estate sale. You know how she is. Looking for the right stuff to sell to our more discerning collectors.”

  “Okay. She’ll turn up.”

  Nolan ended the call and retraced his steps to Jillian’s office. He had all day to try cooking some more dishes, but before he forgot, a note was in order. On a bright pink self-stick note, he wrote Call Marilyn. Call Nia and stuck it to the bottom of Jillian’s computer monitor. Turning, he saw the address scrawled at the base of the whiteboard, near the name she had circled several times.

  Southwest of Pueblo. Near the San Isabel Mountains.

  Nolan hustled outside and checked the garage. The slot beside his truck was occupied. Wherever she’d gone, she’d gone on foot.

  Or in someone else’s vehicle.

  Nolan punched Luke’s number again.

  “Where is this estate sale Veronica went to?”

  “Near Pueblo. She’ll be gone all day.”

  “Find somebody to mind the store, Luke. I’ll be right there.”

  “Nolan, I can’t—”

  But Nolan ended the call. Jillian’s absence and Veronica’s excursion to Pueblo were no coincidence.

  Nolan burst into the Emporium, crowded on a fair-weather spring Saturday as all the Main Street shops would be, and threaded his way toward Luke.

  “Did you find somebody who can be here all day?”

  “You called exactly six minutes ago,” Luke parried. “And you gave me no explanation. I’m a little busy.”

  While Luke waited on a customer, Nolan tried Jillian’s number for the third time. The call went to voice mail for the third time. He sent a text but received no response.

  Luke finished his sale and turned to Nolan with an impatient huff.

  “Your wife has a good reason to go to Pueblo,” Nolan said, “but my daughter has attached a wild-goose ch
ase to the trip.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Jillian isn’t answering her phone,” Nolan said. “Try Veronica. If we get a good explanation, I’ll call off the chase.”

  Glancing between Nolan and his phone, Luke made the call.

  Behind the counter, Veronica’s cell phone rang. Luke swung around to grab it and then looked up at Nolan.

  “It could all be innocent,” he said.

  “Veronica forgetting her phone is innocent. Jillian finding a way to get to Pueblo when her foot is too sore to drive that far? Not so innocent.”

  “Maybe she’s just keeping Veronica company.”

  “Does Veronica like company when she goes to estate sales?”

  Luke pinched his eyes closed. “No. She likes to put in an audiobook while she drives and focus on the negotiating while she buys.”

  “It’s a three-hour drive,” Nolan said, “and they have a big head start.”

  “Why do we have to go chasing after them?” Luke raked a couple of fingers through his hair. “Veronica must have agreed to the plan. At least you know Jillian’s not on her own. She’s all right.”

  “She’s not all right, Luke.” Nolan craned his neck forward to capture Luke’s attention. “Veronica might have agreed, but Jillian’s not all right.”

  Luke blew out his breath. “It’s Saturday. It’s busy enough with Veronica gone. I don’t think I can get away—and I don’t think you should go either.”

  Halfway up an aisle, a box tipped off a low shelf, clattering replica Victorian ladies’ fans to the floor. The responsible party, an unattended child, scampered away. Luke paced up the aisle to inspect the damage and clear the mess. Nolan followed to help.

  “This isn’t like Jillian,” Nolan said.

  “She must be persuaded she’s onto something.” Luke straightened the box and began arranging the fans in it again.

  Nolan shook his head. “It’s deeper than that.”

  Jillian had never been a temper-tantrum child, but she could be persistent. As a preschooler, she’d decide she must clean her toy box, and only in the process of helping her would Bella discover that something upsetting had happened during her half day at preschool, and the little girl needed someone to guide her through her own emotions. As an older child, the projects got more complex, but the pattern was the same. Jillian would choose to stay home and work on something nonurgent rather than go to the movies with her friends, or she’d make a detailed list of supplies she needed for reorganizing her closet. Nolan and Bella would look at each other, knowing one of them was going to have to come alongside their daughter and gently uncover what was going on inside her. When Bella was gone, and Nolan was left with a fourteen-year-old grieving puzzle, he realized how often he had left the task to Bella.

  Jillian was twice as old now. She wasn’t a child. She was a successful adult who made Nolan’s chest crack open every day with a glistening surge of pride. But she was still his daughter, and he knew when the project that consumed her was not the whole story. He was starting to be sorry he’d ever gotten involved with that steamer trunk. If he’d gone somewhere else for his coffee one morning months ago, or popped into that same shop twenty minutes earlier or later, then he might never have met Rich, and this drive—this chase—wouldn’t be happening.

  “She’ll come home,” Luke said, “and she’ll tell you what she found. She always does.”

  Nolan nodded. Luke’s point was valid, though the same compulsion that sent Jillian jaunting to Pueblo had made her so exhausted she picked up a baking casserole dish without sufficient hot pads and stepped in the broken glass that resulted.

  “I suppose she has to get this out of her system,” Nolan said, “even if nothing any of us finds will change anything.”

  “It’s true we don’t have records from the bank itself,” Luke said. “But if this Lynnelle Bendeure was carrying a document authorizing her to act as an agent of her father’s company, the bank would have had to be satisfied they were acting on a signature the officers deemed lawful at the time. Otherwise they would not have allowed a transfer of assets.”

  “That makes a lot of sense to me,” Nolan said. “But Jillian is a genealogist. Signatures and assets are not where she starts.”

  “People.”

  “Right.”

  “Family lines.”

  “Correct again.”

  “You never know,” Luke said. “Something may turn up in the company records. I haven’t heard from my forensics people.”

  “But under any circumstances, who would contest the outcome of whatever happened? None of us has any standing with the court to undo the foul play.”

  “Come on, Nolan. You’re an attorney.” Luke straightened several boxes along the shelf before standing up.

  “Your point is?”

  “I don’t blame you for thinking like a parent at the moment, even if your kid is all grown up,” Luke said as he walked back toward the cash register, “but give her some credit. She wants to know the truth. The true story. And make it right if she can. Most of the time, I’d say that sounds a lot like you.”

  Nolan looked at Luke out of the side of his eyes. “She’s using your wife, you know.”

  “Nobody uses Veronica. She makes up her own mind.”

  Nolan couldn’t argue that point. Veronica O’Reilly. Nia Dunston. Kris Bryant. Jillian was the fourth in a quartet of strong women with businesses in Canyon Mines and intertwining friendships.

  “Look, I’ve got a line forming, so I can’t play detective today,” Luke said. “But why didn’t somebody claim that trunk? That’s the persisting question Jillian can’t let go of. What if Jillian’s right and somebody stole Lynnelle’s identity to get the assets, and everything after that was illegal, including a substantial property purchase?”

  Nolan didn’t answer. Everything Luke said was reasonable. Explaining that he knew his own child—even if she no longer was a child—was difficult, much less that she hitched a ride down I-25 with Veronica as much because of what she didn’t understand about the trunk she owned as the one she had on loan. Nolan didn’t want to regret bringing Lynnelle’s trunk into his home if its presence was going to undo his daughter.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  This should be the last major turn.” Jillian pointed to the right. “The photos from Google Earth show a black iron gate. Not too far. A couple of miles. But first we have to find the private road.”

  “Google Earth.” Veronica glanced at her. “Only a little stalky.”

  “Had to be sure we wouldn’t get lost.” At home, she’d been elevating her sore foot more than she realized. Even though she’d slipped it out of her shoe, it ached. She could never have driven down here comfortably on her own.

  “Wow, it’s flat out here,” Veronica said. “Have we even seen a hill since we left Colorado Springs?”

  “This here is ranch land!” Acres of grazing land sprawled on either side of the arrow-straight two-lane road that shot off the highway out of Pueblo, pockmarked by vegetative tufts foreign to the landscape around Canyon Mines. The same boundless sky, blue and bright and definitively Colorado, beckoned their eyes toward the horizon.

  “I think my ears finally popped,” Veronica said.

  “We’re down close to five thousand feet from home.”

  “I haven’t been to Pueblo in years, much less south of there.”

  “Me neither. It’s a whole different view of Colorado.”

  Veronica gestured forward through the windshield. “They do have mountains. Over there. We’re just used to living in the mountains. We made good time though.”

  “Because you have a lead foot.”

  “Better than your sliced foot.”

  “I won’t argue with you.” Jillian leaned forward slightly. “Slow down. I think we might be getting close.”

  Veronica let her foot off the gas, and the vehicle’s speed diminished enough for them to discern a series of small signs fifty yards apart lead
ing to the one they sought. They made one final right turn. The fencing did indeed suggest they had entered private acreage.

  “This is a gorgeous piece of God’s earth,” Veronica said. “You’ve made me very curious to see it. You’re sure it’s the same ranch as a hundred years ago?”

  “I’ve checked and double-checked the property records,” Jillian said. Pieces of it had been sold off—perhaps as much as half—but not the heart of it. It was family land, still more than five hundred acres. But if she was right, an undeserving family had been living on it all these decades and had profited from selling off the other five hundred acres.

  Veronica braked.

  “Why are you stopping?” Jillian said.

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “The gate is right there, and it’s wide open.”

  “It’s still private property.” Veronica pointed at a sign. “And you didn’t make any advance arrangements.”

  “How will we find anyone to talk to if we don’t go through the gate?” Jillian grimaced as she tied her shoe back on her foot.

  “That’s all you want to do, right?” Veronica said. “Talk. Not interrogate.”

  “I’m not the CIA. Yes. Talk. I might ask some friendly questions. I’m a curious person.”

  Veronica accelerated cautiously, keeping her speed under ten miles an hour on the dirt road.

  “Look!” Jillian pointed out her side of the car. “Mule deer.”

  A buck and two doe foraged, raising their heads slightly at the sound of the vehicle and turning to run.

  “More up ahead,” Veronica said. “We must be on a migration path. They go up to higher elevations for the summer, right?”

  “I think so.” Canyon Mines already was at a higher elevation. Jillian wasn’t sure how much higher the muleys climbed. “Until the snow forces them back down for food. Something like that.”