Chapter 26 #2
“Yeah. There’s a chain that locks the two gates going up the hillside to the Maynard site that I could slip through. But I think it’s recently been tightened up by the sheriff.”
“He knows about this?”
“No. He doesn’t know I went into the mine. He just mentioned the gate to me one day and said he was going to tighten the chain. I asked him if I could go to the Maynard site, but he said no.”
“I want to see this tunnel 22 for myself,” Peter decided.
“We can’t,” she reiterated. “I think the chain’s been fixed.”
“Let’s go talk to Eli and tell him the whole story. Then we can all go up there and investigate together.”
She grit her teeth with hesitation. “That might not be the best idea.”
“Why?”
“Because he was hired by your father. I’ve seen him with Tully and Crosby. He might also be one of your dad’s minions.”
Peter looked at her disbelievingly. But then, started to give her the benefit of the doubt.
“Okay… I know a place on the other side of the river, past a house owned by a family named Nelson, where we can cut the wire fencing and slip through. It’s pretty wooded. Nobody will notice if we go early tomorrow morning.”
“That’s breakin’ and enterin’.”
“My father’s reputation is at stake. Not to mention the biggest scandal in the history of the town. Besides, you’ve already broken the law by going up there.”
“I don’t like this, Peter.”
“I’ve got to see it for myself, Goldie. If you don’t want to involve the sheriff, you’re not giving me a hell of a lot of choices.”
“Why not just wait and see what the autopsy on Jason Shirk reveals?”
“Because this is my father we’re talking about, and I want to see for myself!”
She paused, then nodded slightly.
“Yeah, I get it… I’m sorry to ask, but do you think your mom knows anything about this?”
He shook his head. “No. Whether your suspicions about him are true or not, she’s the home maker and social director of their lives. She doesn’t get involved in his business. I doubt she’s even aware he owns all those houses on Falcon Drive.”
“Good. ‘Cause, I like her.”
“I do, too,” Peter understated, struggling with his emotions. “A-and I don’t hate my dad. I-I just can’t believe he’d do something like this. Yet, I-I sort of can.”
“I know,” she interrupted, empathetically. “I know. Okay… how do you want to work this for tomorrow?”
“Well, can we please keep this under wraps? Don’t tell Father Fitz, or Maddie, or Clara, or anyone until there’s absolutely no doubt whatsoever—”
“Of course,” she assured. “Peter, of course! I took a leap of faith here. It’s because I slept with you that we’re having this discussion now. Of course I realize we’re holding people’s lives and reputations in our hands. Not to mention our own. Of course I’ll be discreet.”
Two minutes later, Peter and Goldie came out of the church.
He mentioned that he had to interview someone near Denver for a story, but offered to buy her a quick cup of coffee.
She declined, saying she was actually going to wander around and look at the stores with the intention of doing some Christmas shopping.
So, Peter gave her a quick kiss goodbye, drove off, and she started walking toward River Street.
As Peter and Goldie came out of the church, Eli Johnson spotted them from a distance in his cruiser.
Like Peter, he had gone to the hotel looking for Goldie, and Maddie had told him that she was at St. Mark’s.
He watched them with a wrinkled brow, disturbed by the kiss, and wondered why she and Peter would be in the church since he knew Peter wasn’t a parishioner.
Something Goldie had said to him on Monday festered in his head, and he wanted to ask her about it.
But now he thought maybe he should shadow her to see if it revealed anything.
He watched her for a couple of hours, but nothing out of the ordinary happened.
She briefly returned to her hotel, then came back out with a folder and went to Clara’s Gifts, where she returned the notebook of gingerbread patterns.
After that, she went to Miller’s General Store and spent nearly an hour browsing and visiting with Zeke and Chad in front of the potbelly stove.
Next, she stopped at a bookstore for nearly thirty minutes, and after that, she went to the post office and sat on a bench where she was admiring the community Christmas tree.
Although she wasn’t doing anything unusual, Eli found it hard to take his eyes off her.
As he sat in his cruiser, a local woman approached him, asking for his help to locate a family dog that had escaped from her backyard.
So that took him away for over half an hour.
After that, a load of hay bales fell off a truck near the Sparkledove Arms, and that required his attention for over two hours.
By the time the hay bales had been restacked and the snowy street filled with pieces of wet straw had been cleaned up, his sister, Dinah, showed up for a dinner date they had planned the previous Friday at the community dance.
After a nice dinner and long talk, Dinah hopped in her car to return to nearby Brownsville.
Once she was gone, Eli took a slow evening cruise down Falcon Drive to look at the houses with the red Sparkledove Realty signs.
In the intervening hours, Goldie had spoken to Maddie at the front desk, made a lengthy phone call in the phone booth, had dinner alone in the hotel’s restaurant, then took a bath.
A little before 10:00 p.m., she was debating whether or not she wanted to go for an evening walk or go to bed, when her thoughts were interrupted by a knock on her door.
When she opened it, she saw Eli standing in the hallway with the large pathos leaf wallpaper.
“Why did you ask, ‘Why are you working for a man like Charles Banyan?’” he began, getting straight to the point.
“What?” she said, surprised to see him, especially at her hotel room door and at this late hour.
“Yesterday at my office, when you brought the flowers, your question suggested a problem with his character. Why?”
“Look, Sheriff,” she said wearily, “it’s late.”
“May I come in?”
“No.”
“Why did you say what you said about Harriette Noise?” he pressed. “She does happen to be ill.”
“Then keep your boss away from her,” she urged.
“What?”
“Why didn’t you answer my question?” she fired back. “Why do you work for that man?”
“Because he gave me a job that no one else was ever likely to offer. Look at my leg, Goldie. I thought my life was over after Pearl Harbor and after…” his voice trailed off, not wanting to mention Lila Hemmings.
“Did you ever search around town for that black vehicle with a scratch of light tan paint on the driver’s side?”
“Huh?”
“The one that ran Bucky Eggleston off the road?”
“I said it was a ‘possibility’ Bucky was run off the road. Not a certainty. I also said finding a vehicle with a matching scratch of paint on it wasn’t very likely.”
“Okay,” she said, unsatisfied with his answer. “Well, like I say, it’s late and I gotta go to bed. Why don’t you go hang out with your buddy, Tully?”
“He’s not my buddy,” Eli replied. “He doesn’t live in town, and I don’t even know his first name.”
“Uh-huh… but he and Crosby are sure here a lot, aren’t they? Goodnight, Sheriff,” she said, closing her door.
Eli looked at the closed door for a moment, raised his fist to knock again, but then decided not to. Frustrated, he walked away.
A few minutes later, Eli was cruising the quiet streets of Sparkledove, trying to figure out what Goldie was up to.
He wondered about Harriette. He wondered if Goldie was keeping things from him because she was working on a story above and beyond the article she was supposed to be writing.
Then he considered maybe there was nothing unusual about an elderly woman like Harriette feeling poorly, and he just had hurt feelings because he saw Peter Banyan kiss Goldie.
Yes, he admitted to himself, he did like her and thought she was very attractive.
But he also saw no possibility of a relationship.
He also thought she was full of conspiracy theories, quick-tempered, and frankly, a little nutty.
While he was considering such things, he found himself driving past Clancy’s Bar & Grill and noticed there were four or five cars in the parking lot, including Tully’s black pickup truck. So, he decided to pull in.
He saw there were two other black vehicles in the lot besides Tully’s.
So, he parked, grabbed a flashlight from his cruiser, got out, clicked on the flashlight, then examined the exterior passenger side of one car, then another, then Tully’s pickup.
There were no scratches on any of the vehicles, although he did notice there was a three to four-inch section of black paint on the front quarter panel of Tully’s truck that didn’t quite match the original paint job. It was close, but not a match.
Eleven minutes later, Father Fitzsimmons answered the front door of the rectory to see the sheriff standing on his doorstep.
“Eli?” Father Fitz said, surprised. “Everything alright?”
“Can I come in, Father?” he asked. “We need to talk.”