AHMM, December 2009 (14 page)

Thank God for that, Anne thought, or I'd be waiting tables somewhere. She'd come to Wyoming to work as a guide on the Snake River, but the short summer season wouldn't feed her all year. The caretaker's job was ideal, giving her a place to live as well as a steady income. Mrs. Zollman might not have cared for Jackson Hole, but to Anne it was close to heaven, even if it did snow in late May.

It was flurrying now. Sedam was holding the lapels of his beautiful coat tightly together with one hand, his attention still absorbed by the large house across the meadow. It was cedar sided with chimneys and front porch pillars of stacked stone.

"What's that place called?” Anne asked.

"Millikan House, after the owners, a husband and wife team of New York cardiologists. They should have called the place Heart Disease House, after what they paid for it. The Millikans come out for two weeks in the winter and five weeks in the summer. Those years we have a summer. Let's go inside."

Sedam showed her from room to room, starting in a large television and game room with fireplace and cathedral ceiling. The gourmet kitchen was open to a farmhouse style dining room, the long table of which could seat twelve. Anne pictured the Zollmans sitting at opposite ends of that table, glowering at each other. The master suite, its bathroom larger than any apartment Anne had ever rented, and a mechanical room completed the ground floor. The latter held duplicate hot water tanks and furnaces.

Sedam explained the redundancy. “Because of the log construction, there are no ducts in the house. Heating is by hot water. One system supplies the radiators, the other the sinks and showers. All running continuously, per the owner's last orders. You should see the bills. By the way, you will see the cleaning people. They come once a week, also according to orders. I don't know what they find to clean."

Upstairs there were four more bedrooms, each with its own bath. Throughout the house, the gray daylight was warmed by the honey color of the walls. The logs were so perfectly smooth that Anne ran her fingers along them to convince herself that they were really wood. Nowhere in the house did she see a personal touch, a family photograph or a book.

Her own quarters were in a small ranch house behind the four-car garage. Compared with Osprey House, it was spartan, but Anne fell in love with it at first sight. She had to fight the temptation to seize its keys from Sedam when, at the end of their tour, he displayed his first reservations.

"I feel a little guilty about leaving you out here by yourself,” he said, as he twirled the key ring maddeningly on one finger. “You're only a few miles from town, I know, but this is a lonely spot. Feel free to call my cell if you're ever uncomfortable."

Anne asked herself if this manicured man might be interested in her. But before she'd more than worded the thought, Sedam added, “Or you could call Gitry."

"Gitry?"

"He's the Millikans’ caretaker.” Sedam waved the keys in the direction of the cedar house. “It's not one of my properties—it's managed out of Cheyenne, a stupid arrangement—so I don't really know the man, except by his reputation. He's become a little bit of a recluse, from what I hear. And a man of mystery. Still, if some emergency comes up, I'm sure he'll help out. You caretakers have to stand by one another.

"It's part of your code,” he added, laughing.

He handed Anne the keys, pressing them into her hand. “Good luck."

II

One week later, Anne paused on her morning run to admire the beauty of her valley. To the north, beyond Jackson, the snow-covered and jagged Grand Tetons stood out against a deep blue, cloudless sky. To the east and nearer to hand were the foothills of the Wyoming Range, already clear of snow and very green. They'd be covered in wildflowers in a week or two if the weather would only hold. Anne resumed her run, climbing high enough into those hills to gain a panoramic view of the spur valley in which Osprey House stood.

That morning there was a low fog in the valley, so low that the taller trees and rooftops pierced it. Anne heard the cattle calling to one another on a nearby ranch and felt a delicious guilt. Those cows were someone else's responsibility, not hers. Then a pair of trumpeter swans flew past her just above the fog bank, honking to each other as they went, as though arguing about directions.

"The Zollmans,” she thought, “reincarnated."

The swans’ noisy flight took them directly over Millikan House.

"That'll wake you up, Mr. Gitry."

She'd yet to glimpse her fellow caretaker, though she'd spent most of her first week in the valley watching for him. There'd been little else for her to do. No snow had fallen, so she couldn't plow, and the grass wasn't growing yet, so she couldn't mow. She'd started the tractor and the ATV and changed the oil in each. She'd set out family photos and well-worn novels around the little ranch house, giving it something the log mansion lacked. And she'd watched for Gitry.

His failure to appear was intriguing to her, more intriguing even than Wayne Sedam's description of Gitry: a man of mystery. Her practical side told her to be patient, as it often did. Gitry was simply holed up like she was, waiting for the seasons to sort themselves out.

She lost what little warmth the recently risen sun was providing when she descended again into the valley proper. The fog that was holding off that sun reflected and amplified the very regular sound of her footfalls and the complaints of the magpies she disturbed as she followed an overgrown fence row.

It also shrouded Millikan House. Its doctor builders had flaunted their wealth with an overabundance of gables and dormers and chimneys. Seeing it now, almost in silhouette, Anne was reminded of an English manor from one of her favorite books. At least, she was reminded of her mental picture of such a place.

She was about to turn for the last sprint to breakfast when she saw a figure come around one corner of Millikan House. The form was no more distinct than the building, but Anne could tell it was a man of medium height and slight build who was walking with a limp. The elusive Mr. Gitry.

Without breaking stride, Anne raised an arm in greeting. The other turned abruptly and hobbled away.

III

The next morning, Anne sat in a small, storefront coffee shop, the Elk Horn Cafe, a block from Jackson's town square. Across from her was the woman Anne considered her real boss, Mattie Koval, owner and head river guide of Snake River Explorers.

"We're starting to get some serious snow melt,” Koval said. “From now until the Fourth of July, the Snake will be running so fast we'll be doing our four-hour float trip in two and a half. If you were on the river right now, you'd hear the rocks on the bottom clacking together like billiard balls. It's the worst time to train you or the best time, depending on how game you are."

"Bring it on,” Anne said.

She'd been trying to guess Koval's age, without success. The weathered skin of the guide's face and neck suggested that she was in her forties. But the long blonde hair, secured in a loose ponytail, and toned body belonged to a much younger woman. Working the long sweeps of a raft loaded down with tourists kept you in shape, Anne decided.

Koval noticed Anne examining her arm. She held it up and flexed the biceps.

"Not much now, after a winter of flipping through catalogs, but nobody wants to arm wrestle me come Labor Day. You won't have any trouble handling a raft, either, not a big girl like you."

Anne unconsciously stooped in her chair, and Koval laughed. “Never be ashamed of being tall,” she said. “You can't be too tall or too rich."

"You can so be too rich,” the waitress busing the table behind Koval said.

"How's that Rachel?” Koval asked. As she did, she winked at Anne, as though to say, “Watch this."

The woman threw her rag down on the table she'd been cleaning and crossed to them. She was olive skinned and as solid as Koval was spare. Anne was sure she wouldn't want to arm wrestle the waitress before or after Labor Day.

"I said you can so be too rich,” Rachel repeated. “It isn't the rich who are ruining this valley. It's the too-damned rich. The people so rich they don't need to rent their houses out when they're not in them. It's bad enough to lose the ranch land, but if we don't pick up tourists in exchange, we're sunk. We need rental properties turning over every week or two, new people buying groceries and T-shirts, eating out, booking raft trips. We don't need big places sitting empty, giving work to one layabout caretaker apiece. Present company excepted,” she added to Anne.

Before Anne could ask how Rachel knew about her other job, Koval said, “I mentioned that you were looking after a house."

"Osprey House,” Anne volunteered.

"Oh,” Rachel said. “So you're out there in the boonies with Chaz Gitry."

She and Koval exchanged significant looks.

"Chaz is our local lothario,” Koval explained. “Snowboard instructor in the winter, mountain guide in the summer, hound dog all year long."

"I've heard he's mysterious,” Anne said.

"Heard that from a man, I'll bet,” Koval said. “There isn't a man around here who can understand Chaz's success with the ladies. Shaggy and homely he may be, but the boy's got something."

"She's talking about the ex-wife,” Rachel said to Koval. “She's what's so mysterious.” Her attitude had softened somewhat at the mention of Gitry. Now it hardened all over again. “She sneaks in to see him about once a month. Chaz got plenty cagey after that started happening."

"It's a good story, though,” Koval said. “Kind of romantic."

Again, Anne leaned unconsciously, this time forward in her seat.

"Nobody even knew Chaz had been married until she started showing up six months back,” Koval said, “wearing dark glasses and a scarf over her hair. She lives in Idaho somewhere. Idaho Falls, maybe, right across the state line. Drives in through the pass at Victor. Wimp Dragoo saw her up there once buying gas."

"Can't get away with anything around here,” Rachel said, her look so pointed that Anne felt she was being warned.

To cover an incipient blush, Anne said, “There's an airport in Idaho Falls. Maybe she flies in from somewhere."

Rachel waved a dismissive hand. “There's a better airport right here in Jackson."

Koval said, “After she'd snuck in three months in a row, Chaz admitted the truth. Seems years back he married his childhood sweetheart, Laura. They were happy for a few years skiing and bumming around. Then Laura decided she wanted more. Chaz wouldn't change, so they parted ways. Laura must have found the success she was after. The one time I saw her, she was all in fur."

"But she couldn't get Chaz out of her system,” Rachel cut in. “So she keeps coming back."

"He must not have gotten over her, either,” Koval countered. “He hasn't been the same old Chaz since she started visiting. No more chasing around after every loose ski bunny. Comes into town less and less."

"Hasn't come at all in the last two weeks,” Rachel said, as though it was a personal affront.

"He's become a recluse,” Anne said, quoting Wayne Sedam again.

The waitress nodded. “I heard that last week he quit his mountain guide job. Left Bill Granger flat just when the season's about to start. Sent him an e-mail about hurting his leg."

"He was limping when I saw him this morning,” Anne said.

"He'd better heal fast, then,” Koval said. “Laura is overdue for a visit. There's been snow up in the passes until this week."

"Here's hoping for an avalanche,” Rachel said and stomped away.

IV

That night, Anne settled in with a book in the living room of the little ranch. The book was a dog-eared romance novel,
Love's Forbidden Memory.
She'd selected it from her cache of similar titles because its plot—lovers separated by fortune and class but unable to forget one another—was similar to the tale she'd been told about Chaz Gitry and his Laura.

All the books Anne had brought with her were a legacy from her mother, who had died when Anne was very young. When Anne had turned sixteen, her father, the honest, practical man who'd raised her, had given her a box of her mother's things. In the bottom of the box, Anne had found a dozen yellowed paperbacks, all romance novels. She'd come to think of the books as a message in a bottle from her dead mother, a glimpse into an alien world of excitement and feeling totally unlike the workaday ranch where she'd grown up.

Anne dozed over the novel's familiar pages and awoke to the sound of an alarm coming from one corner of the small front room. The source was the computer that monitored the security cameras and systems in Osprey House. Anne had used it to spy on the cleaning crew as they'd watched a soap opera in the log home's great room. Now the computer's screen was alternately flashing red and yellow.

Anne clicked on the single message being displayed: heating alert. A second message came up, informing her that the temperature in the main house had dropped to fifty-seven degrees. It should have been seventy-two. Anne knew that because Wayne Sedam had mentioned the setting as yet another example of the Zollmans’ disregard for money.

As Anne struggled to shake off the last of her sleep, the displayed temperature dropped to fifty-six. She checked the outside temperature. Thirty-one.

Without bothering to get her coat off its peg, she grabbed the keys to Osprey House and followed the asphalt path to the back door. She'd entered the house and begun to switch on lights before it occurred to her that the temperature drop might have been caused by a burglar who'd defeated the security system and left a window or door open. She'd also forgotten to put down the book she'd been reading. She placed it on the ornate hallway table, whose carved legs were rearing dragons.

The inside of the furnace room was the warmest place in the house. One of the two duplicate systems was humming away, the one that provided hot water to the showers and the taps. The other made only the odd ticking noise, like a cooling car engine. Anne could see no leaking water and smell no escaping gas. She turned to the system's control panel, feeling like a character in a movie who has to select the right button from dozens to prevent a meltdown or an explosion. A single instruction blinked at her from the panel's LCD screen: stand by. Anne weighed the advice, decided it was worth following, and retreated to the kitchen.