Goldie purchased her one-dollar ticket, then climbed the two iron steps onto one of the passenger cars. Since it was a weekday, the car didn’t fill up with tourists, but there were still enough visitors to make her feel like she was on vacation. Each car had a conductor dressed in a three-piece dark suit, complete with a gold watch-chain hanging from his vest pocket and a stiff-brimmed conductor’s hat. His purpose was to act as a tour guide during the one-hour ride. When everyone was on board, and with two deep, “ROO-ROOS” from the throaty whistle, the train slowly chugged its way out of the station. Goldie sat back in her leather seat and couldn’t help but feel like she was on an American version of the Hogwarts Express.
During the ride, Goldie didn’t think about time travel, the war, Charles Banyan and his schemes, where things might be going with Peter, or anything else connected with her strange circumstances. Instead, she listened to the conductor talk about the locomotive that was pulling them and the laborers who built the railroad. She listened to stories of card games, shoot-outs, and grimy-faced prospectors who struck it rich while others died in tragic cave-ins. The scenery was breathtaking and dusted with snow.
The highlight of the trip was when the train went over a forty-foot gorge on a wooden bridge built in 1869. The engineer slowed down so the passengers could get the full impact of just how narrow the iron rails were, how open the bridge was since it had no guardrails, and how, if you looked straight down, you could find yourself suddenly dizzy and disoriented. Even though it was all tourist fodder, a city girl like Goldie found it fascinating.
She got off the train and returned to Peter’s station wagon with the same satisfied smile most of her fellow passengers had. After referring to her written directions, she started up the car and pulled out of the parking lot.
Two men were watching from a vehicle in the distance. They were Tully and Crosby. Tully, with his short-cropped black hair and days’ worth of stubble, sat behind the wheel, and his red-haired companion with the bushy mustache watched from the passenger seat. The beefy pair stared like ravens from the cab of a black pickup truck. A truck with a three to four-inch scratch of light tan paint on its driver’s side front quarter panel.
Nineteen
MAYBE A LOT
After she returned Peter’s car and accepted a dinner invitation from him to go to Clancy’s Bar & Grill, Goldie returned to her room and attempted a first draft of an article forAdventure Escape Magazine.She wondered if she should go back to the Denver Library, obtain a library card, then check out a few issues to use as a template. But that was a question for tomorrow. Today, she wanted to attempt a draft partly because she was used to writing a little every day from keeping diaries for years and missed it, and partly because she’d now been in town for eight days and, frankly, had a lot to write about: the town’s history, the preservation of the downtown area and its houses, and going into the mountains to select the town’s Christmas tree. Then, there was the tree lighting ceremony, the sincere friendliness of Sparkledove’s people, and the awesome and humbling beauty of the Rocky Mountains. It was, admittedly, a 180-degree turn from the other story she was pursuing about Charles Banyan’s land grab and his possible involvement with murdering people. But one story was something she was supposed to do, while the other story was something she felt compelled to do. She wrote about eight hundred words. What she wrote wasn’t exactly AP Style, but at least she made an honest attempt, and the exercise helped to organize her thoughts.
After changing from a dress to slacks, she rendezvoused with Peter at Clancy’s Bar & Grill at 6:30 p.m., which was across the street from the town’s volunteer fire department. Whereas the restaurant in the Sparkledove Arms was airy and inviting with its light-yellow walls and fieldstone fireplace, and the bar at the Pine River Inn was woodsy chic with its pine log walls and taxidermy wildlife, Clancy’s was just a hole in the wall. It was small, dark, and had no décor to speak of other than some framed black-and-white photos of hunting and fishing trips the owner had taken over the years. There was a photo of an ice fishing trip with a dozen or so strung-up bass, another with a dead black bear, yet another with a dead elk. Despite the documented death, they shared an intimate booth, and Clancy’s made an outstanding hunter’s soup. They also had crispy French fries that were delicious.
Goldie told Peter about her train ride, an attraction he was very familiar with, as well as starting a first draft of her article. But she didn’t tell him about Evie Hines and Midland School. She didn’t believe he was mixed up in anything his father was, but Charles was Peter’s dad, and she felt like she had to tread very carefully. As their meal was wrapping up, Peter slipped off his frameless glasses and asked if Goldie would like to see his house and perhaps have a nightcap.
She smiled with her red lipstick glistening from one of the few lights in the place, and tossed her brown hair playfully. Then she picked up and took a final swallow of her second whiskey on the rocks.
“So,nowwe’re down to it at last, huh?” she asked. “Are we gonna have a fling or not?”
“It’s just a nightcap, Goldie,” he replied innocently.
“Yeah, and Harvey Weinstein wanted just a back rub,” she noted.
“Who’s Harvey Weinstein?”
“Doesn’t matter. You know what I’m talkin’ about.”
“Okay,” he admitted, “I’m not going to lie to you. Ilikeyou. Maybe a lot.”
“I like you too,” she shared. “Maybe a lot. But there is no possible way we can have a relationship. I’m not gonna fall into bed with you just because you’re cute and it’s the holidays.”
“I’m cute?” he asked, pleased.
“You know you are, so let’s not bullshit each other.”
“Okay,” he agreed. “I’m cute and you’re timeless. I don’t want to make you feel cheap by suggesting anything temporary and tawdry, but I don’t want a maybe once-in-a-lifetime chance to slip away, either. I wasn’t kidding Goldie when I said I’ve never met anyone like you. I really wasn’t.”
“Look, Peter—” she started to say.
“I hear about soldiers falling in love with girls overseas all the time,” he cut in. “Men are fighting and dying, yet some still find a way to fall in love with women on the other side of the world and plan a life. If they can be brave and say: ‘Screw the odds’—if you’ll pardon my language—why can’t we? I mean, unless you don’t see the same potential.”
She smiled appreciatively at his sincerity, reached across the table, and took his hand. “Peter, it’s not just that you live in Colorado and I live in Ohio. There are other factors that complicate things.”
“Like what?” he asked.
“I-I don’t wanna get into it.”
“Please, Goldie.”
“Well… frankly… your father. Yes, he’s the one who brought me here, but now that I am, I see his controlling nature and snake-oil-salesman personality. Honestly, I don’t like it. I need to separate that from the article—and Iwill—but you and me gettin’ involved only muddies things.”
“Welcome to the club,” he replied, unfazed. “I don’t like him much either. I suppose in the end, he and I both want the same thing: for Sparkledove to be a sought-after tourist location and a great place to live. But we’ve got very different ideas on how to accomplish that. You’re right. He’s got more than just a controlling nature. He can sometimes be an out-and-out bully. He grasps things so tightly that he chokes the life out of ‘em, like he and I having a good relationship. So, don’t think your perceptions about him create an obstacle withme.If anything, they only reinforce to me how smart you are.”
“Thank you,” she said sincerely.
