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. “Shedoeshappen to be ill.”
“Then keep your boss away from her,” she urged.
“What?”
“Why didn’t you answermyquestion?” 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.”
Twenty-Seven
THE MOUNTAIN CODE
It was 6:20 a.m. the next morning when Goldie stepped outside the Sparkledove Arms to find Peter sitting in his idling station wagon with a cup of coffee for her. The temperature was thirty degrees, and the town wasn’t quite awake. They hoped to avoid being seen in the early morning hours, since they intended to cut through the wire fence erected by the city. Both were dressed in warm clothes, hats, and gloves. Peter also had a backpack filled with items they might need. Besides wire cutters, he brought a flashlight, a thermos of water, rope, a first aid kit, a small hand pick, and a few other things. He admitted he hadn’t slept much the night before, and Goldie admitted the same. He also said he had given Father Fitz his photo negatives for the article, and if her suspicions about his dad were true, he’d be the first to report it inThe Sparkledove Wingand would back her 100 percent.
On the far eastern side of town, and going slightly around a mountain base, they crossed the river on an old wooden bridge with no guardrails, which led to a dirt road with three houses on it. The last of these was the Nelson property, where the mountain lion had been pilfering chickens. Just beyond the Nelsons’, before the road came to a turnaround dead end, was a wooded area where Peter pulled over. They got out and walked about thirty yards inland to the fence, then Peter, wearing his backpack, began snipping away. Once they were through, they trudged their way uphill through some woods with a lot of exposed rock where the powdery snow had been blown away by the wind, so there was practically no evidence of their tracks. They eventually came up to the bend in the dirt road of the Maynard site, between the director of operations’ house and the sealed-up mine entrance. As they quietly neared the mine, Goldie heard the generator and saw that the three short ore cart railroad ties, which had once been stacked up to look like part of the sealed entrance, had been moved aside.
