Chapter 10 #2
“Good,” she said, opening the car door and getting ready to hop out. “Bring the report with you and a flashlight. Don’t be late.”
At 6:20 p.m., Goldie came downstairs from her room in the Sparkledove Arms to find something new.
A nine-foot-high Christmas tree had replaced the crimson circular sofa that usually sat in the middle of the lobby.
Standing on a step ladder and decorating the tree was the young woman named Josie, who’d been dressed up as a Native American on Thanksgiving.
Now, she was dressed up as one of Santa’s elves, complete with green pointed shoes, green leotards, a long red top with a wide black belt, and a red pointed hat with a white snowball-like pom-pom.
With her Indian wig off, Goldie could see she had light-brown hair in a pageboy cut that accentuated her dimples.
“Ay, looks nice,” Goldie said, approaching the tree. “Josie, right?”
“Yes,” she said, tucking some lights into the branches. “And you’re Miss Maraschino? Room 9?”
“Call me Goldie.”
The young lady came down the ladder. “Can I help you with something, Goldie?”
“Naw. I just think it’s nice how you dress up for the holidays.”
“Maddie and Dean pay me extra if I dress up as an elf.” She looked at the guest, then suddenly remembered. “Or, should I say, ‘Native Northpoler.’”
Goldie smiled. “If that’s the title Santa’s helpers prefer. I’ll have to check with Will Ferrell about that.”
“Who?”
“Never mind.”
“I prefer the title of broke, overworked high school student,” the younger one noted. “But I don’t think that would fit on a nametag.”
Goldie smiled again as she headed for the restaurant. “I like your ambition, Josie. It’s cool. See ya later.”
A little after 8:00 p.m., after she’d had a delicious pork chop dinner with green beans, Goldie approached the covered bridge.
A young couple was just leaving the bridge arm in arm, and this was the first evidence she’d seen that the place was a romantic stop, as Eli Johnson had once suggested.
It was another cold night in Colorado; the temperature hovered in the mid-thirties, but with her outerwear from Miller’s, she was fortified for it.
She slowly walked the entire length of the bridge.
At the other end, near the dirt road that went up and into the woods, she heard footsteps behind her.
Turning around, she saw Eli Johnson walking toward her.
He was wearing his brown suede jacket but not his police uniform.
Instead, he was wearing slacks, casual shoes, and a crewneck sweater.
As she’d requested, he carried a flashlight, and as he came toward her, she couldn’t help but think he’d cut a nice figure were it not for his limp.
“Howdy,” he greeted in his usual way.
“Oh, my God,” she moaned under her breath, weary of his country song manners. “How ya doin’, Sheriff?” she called. She looked him over. “You’re out of uniform.”
“Got off duty at 6:00,” he replied, coming closer. “Supposed to be at my parents’ tonight. My mother’s making pot roast.”
“You blew off your parents for me?” she asked. “I’m honored.”
“Wellll,” he drawled, “you’ve never had my mom’s pot roast. If we could mass-produce it and bomb Germany, the war would be over within days.”
“Pretty bad, huh?”
“Yeah, but she keeps makin’ it. She is determined,” he grinned. “Like you.” He was now standing next to her at the far end of the bridge. “So, what’s goin’ on? You wanted me here at 8:10, and here I am.”
“You said the coroner said Claude Bolton jumped off the bridge between 8:00 p.m. and 8:30.”
“Right. But that was in September. This is November. You gonna ask me to re-enact the event?”
She gestured to the overhead lights. “Was the bridge lit five years ago?”
He turned and glanced at the lights, thinking. “Y’know, I don’t rightly know. But what difference would it make?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Maybe none.”
He turned back to her. “Why’d you want me to meet you here, Goldie?”
“Did you bring the incident report with you?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said, patting the inside pocket of his jacket. “Why are we out here?”
“Did the report say anything about how Bolton was dressed?”
“Dressed?”
“Yeah. What was he wearin’?”
Just then, at the other end of the bridge, Claude Bolton came walking out of the shadows and silently stepped onto the bridge with his footsteps making no sound.
His hands were in the pockets of his lightweight plaid jacket, his face was emotionless, and his eyes were fixed on the glassless window to his left in the middle of the bridge.
Goldie saw him but didn’t react and waited for Eli, facing her, to answer her question.
Eli dipped a hand into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out the incident report. Even though the bridge had overhead lighting, he clicked on his flashlight and used it for additional illumination.
“A plaid jacket and blue slacks,” he replied, reading.
“How old was he?” she asked.
He checked the report again as Claude Bolton arrived at the viewing window and looked out at the river.
“Thirty-six,” he replied.
“And which side did he jump off?”
Eli clicked off his flashlight, then turned and used it as a pointer while Bolton was stepping up onto the windowsill. There was no possible way the lawman could miss seeing him. Unless he couldn’t see him.
“The downriver side,” he answered.
It was at this precise moment that Goldie realized something she suspected but didn’t know for sure until now.
Claude Bolton was committing suicide every night at the exact same time that he’d originally committed suicide five years earlier.
Furthermore, no one in Sparkledove could see his routine of misery.
No one except her. That’s why she needed Eli Johnson on the bridge at this precise moment: to verify she was the only one who saw him.
Having lived with Markie for years and also having found herself in dozens of situations where she had to conceal her emotions and be as cool as a cucumber, Goldie’s green eyes shifted from Bolton silently falling through the window back to Eli.
“As you know, I write for a travel magazine,” she said.
“I like my job. I’m grateful to have it, and I’ll write a wonderful story about Sparkledove that’ll be everythin’ your mayor is payin’ for.
But there’s always been this other part of me that wants to do investigative journalism.
Crime stories, or maybe a war correspondent.
The thing is, there aren’t opportunities like that for women.
So, when I saw the bridge with its open windows, I played a hunch.
And since my hunch was right, I wanted to be here at the time of his death to sort of—I guess—feel Claude Bolton’s desperation.
Try to understand it. Especially since none of his friends or family know what happened to him. Does that make sense?”
Goldie could lie with the best of them. But, in all fairness to her, what else could she say? She didn’t know why she could see something nobody else could see, but she felt like she was on some kind of mystical mission. A mission she had to figure out.
Eli’s blue eyes gazed into hers, and he nodded a little.
“Sure. I get that, I guess.” He hesitated for a moment, then asked: “You, uh, you maybe want to go get a drink?”
“Is this in your official capacity as sheriff?” she asked.
“No, ma’am. Uniform’s off,” he replied.
She, likewise, hesitated before answering, but then smiled slightly.
“Okay, copper. Let’s go.”