Aspen Gold (23 page)

"Very," she murmured and bit her lips together, waiting for her tongue to stop burning. "I think I'll let it cool awhile." She set the mug on his desk and noticed the manual typewriter, a black relic that had to be forty or fifty years old. "Haven't you joined the computer age yet, Bannon?" She punched one of the keys, but not hard enough to make it strike the platen.

"I joined it, but I think better on this old Royal."

"No wonder Aggie has to clean up your paperwork." She continued around his desk, then paused when she caught sight of the large framed photograph on the wall directly above the fireplace. "That's a picture of your grandfather Elias Bannon." She walked over to stand in front of the ebonized Eastlake mantel and tilted her head back to study the grainy black-and-white photo. "I've seen this before.

You had it at the ranch."

"I thought it belonged here."

"It does." She looked at the head-and-shoulders shot of a man in his late twenties. His brown hair was cut short and parted off center, and a mustache shadowed all but the curve of his lower lip. He had the look of a rugged New Englander, bones protruding under bronze skin, cheeks gaunt, and eyes set deep in the sockets. "I remember looking at his picture and thinking how fearsome he looked. I can readily imagine him standing up to the likes of Jerome Wheeler. Yet, other times, his eyes seemed warm and kind, full of understanding, and I knew why people turned to him when they were in trouble."

She smiled in remembrance and glanced idly at Bannon. "Remember how we used to sit around and listen to Old Tom tell us stories about your grandfather, the old days in Aspen, the silver mines?"

Nodding, Bannon leaned a hip on the corner of his desk. "Once he got started, there was no stopping him."

"True. But the picture he painted of Aspen back in the late 1880's and early 1890's," Kit recalled with a wondering shake of her head, "a modern mining town with electricity, telephones, streetcars, a magnificent opera house, a grand hotel, Victorian houses with gingerbread trim, fancy barouches pulled by matched teams of high-stepping horses, men in top hats, elegant morning coats, and striped trousers, ladies in high-necked silk gowns with wagging bustles, shaded by lace parasols, and--"

"--the constant din of machinery running twenty-four hours a day," Bannon inserted,

"smoke from the concentrators and smelting works hanging over the town like a pall, streams polluted with wastes from the mines and the sawmills, the surrounding mountains stripped bare of their forests to supply the mines with needed timber, dirt streets that were either clogged with dust, a quagmire of mud, drifted with snow, or jammed with freight wagons and pack trains, miners blackened and sweaty after an eight-hour shift, the gamblers and card sharks, the saloons and bawdy houses with their painted ladies--"

"Wait." Kit raised a hand in protest.

"Old Tom never told us anything about

"ladies of the evening" or bawdy houses."

"Probably not." He dipped his head, conceding the point. "But most of my grandfather's clients came from Aspen's--so-called--lower class.

Miners, small merchants, prospectors with undeveloped claims, and labor unions--and few of them had the money to pay for legal services. Most prospectors gave him an interest in their claims in return for representing them. Occasionally that paid off. The rest he traded out when he could, and wrote off when he couldn't."

"Didn't he own shares in the Smuggler or Mollie Gibson at one time?" Kit frowned, trying to recall.

"The Mollie Gibson," Bannon confirmed between sips of his coffee.

"Yes, the Mollie." Nodding, Kit wandered back to the desk and retrieved her coffee mug.

She wrapped both hands around the mug and carried it to her lips. The coffee had cooled to a drinkable temperature. "I used to have nightmares about all those gruesome stories Old Tom told us about miners killed in accidents--especially the ones where a miner pushed a loaded ore cart to a shaft to be raised to the surface, not knowing the platform had been moved to another level. He'd push the cart into the empty shaft and get pulled in after it, falling hundreds of feet to his death. Old Tom used to scare me to death with those stories,"

she recalled with a shudder.

"He did it on purpose."

Her head came up. "Why?"

"To keep us from exploring that old mine on the ranch," Bannon replied with a faint smile.

"The Keyhole Mine," Kit remembered.

"I'd forgotten all about it." She shook her head and laughed. "If that was your father's motive, it worked. You never could get me to go more than ten feet inside that mine."

"And I had to drag you to get you that far."

Bannon grinned.

"You're darn right," she retorted, then sighed in bemusement. "I'm surprised I had the nerve to set even one foot inside that mine."

The entrance had been boarded up, but that hadn't stopped them, not with visions of finding a giant vein of silver ore to lead them on. Bannon had pried a couple boards loose, creating a hole wide enough for them to crawl through. She remembered the dank, musty odors of a fecund earth, the scurrying sounds in the darkness, the spider-webs that caught at her arms, face, and hair, and the distant drip-drip of water. "That flashlight you had was almost worthless. I just knew the batteries were going to go out on it and we'd be trapped in that blackness. The walls were so rough and slimy, and the timbers--pieces of them crumbled in my hands.

Do you realize how dangerous it was, Bannon?"

He answered with a slow nod, then soberly met her glance.

"Especially now that I have a daughter who thinks that old mine is a great place to play."

Kit stiffened at the mention of his daughter. It was that old wound getting bumped again. She managed to smile, quite convincingly. "And do you fill her head with all those scary stories to keep her away from the mine?"

"I leave those to Dad." He grinned easily. "But Laura's not like you. You have such a vivid imagination you were always easy to scare." A devilish twinkle appeared in his eyes, one that Kit recognized too well. "Like the time during that snowstorm when we spent the night here with Mrs.

Hatch, and I convinced you the howling and banging outside wasn't caused by the wind but by a wolf.

Then I snuck up and grabbed you from behind, snarling and growling--you were so scared you wet your pants."

"Rat." She punched him hard in the shoulder.

"Why do you always have to bring that up? I was a mere eight years old."

"That hurt." He rubbed his arm muscle, but a smile lingered around the edges of his mouth.

"It was supposed to. In case you don't know it, it's embarrassing to be reminded of that."

"Embarrassing, eh?" One eyebrow arched slightly. "Try explaining to the guys how a mere slip of a girl gave me a black eye.

Or have you forgotten that you hauled off and hit me that night, too?"

"I did, didn't I?" Kit remembered, her smile turning gleeful.

"You did. Even?" Bannon lifted his mug toward her, offering to toast a truce.

"Even," Kit agreed and clunked mugs.

She drank down a swallow of lukewarm coffee, then drifted over to the chair with her purse. "We spent many stormy winter nights here with Mrs. Hatch when we were growing up."

"Our parents thought it was safer than risking the roads."

"It probably was," she remarked absently, then lifted her glance to the ceiling.

"The bedrooms upstairs, do you use them for storage now?"

"No. I converted the upstairs into a small apartment. One of the teachers at school rents it."

She glanced back at her mug and smiled, suddenly recalling, "Remember the hot chocolate Mrs. Hatch used to make for us? And always from scratch. I can still taste it." She turned to Bannon. "And she always had a bag of marshmallows in the cupboard--"

"--anda fire in the fireplace so we could roast marshmallows over the flames," Bannon recalled. "You liked yours charred black on the outside."

"Of course. That way they were both crunchy and gooey." She grinned. "You had to have yours lightly golden."

"Mine weren't so messy either."

"Maybe, but they didn't taste nearly as good as mine." She paused and sighed. "I haven't roasted marshmallows in years. I wish I'd asked Paula to pick up a bag at the store.

She volunteered to do the grocery shopping and John volunteered to take her while I met with you." She glanced at her watch, conscious of the time she'd spent reminiscing about the past.

"I guess we'd better get down to business then, hadn't we?" His remark hung between them. Bannon regretted saying it; he regretted the vague tension now in the air. He pushed off the corner of the desk and walked behind it.

"Yes, you said you wanted to go over some papers with me." Kit picked up her purse and sat down in the chair facing the desk.

"Mainly the estate tax return we have to file with the IRS and the state of Colorado next week." The springs in the ancient office chair squeaked in a noisy protest when Bannon sat down. He opened a folder and handed Kit a copy from it.

She glanced at the multipaged form and murmured, "I hope you don't expect me to understand this. I have trouble filling out a W-4."

He smiled briefly. "This won't be that bad." He ignored her look of skepticism and focused on his copy of the return. "As I mentioned when we talked on the phone, you are entitled to receive six hundred thousand dollars, tax-free, so to speak. All amounts above that figure are assessed at the applicable estate tax rates. Naturally the first problem was coming up with the value of your father's estate."

"Which is?" Kit stared at the columns of figures, trying to figure out which line meant what.

"Let's start with the ranch itself," Bannon suggested. "The appraiser I hired valued the improvements on it--the house, barn, sheds, corrals, et cetera--at seventy thousand. In the past five years, ranch land has sold for as high as twelve hundred dollars an acre. Which brings the value of the land and the buildings to five hundred and fifty thousand. To that, we have to add the life insurance your father had, the livestock, the furnishings, and other personal belongings. Then we subtract the mortgage and any debts he had outstanding at the time of his death."

Kit had stopped listening when Bannon placed the value of the ranch at five hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Was that all it was worth? She fought back the waves of disappointment. True, a half million dollars was a lot of money, but she'd hoped it would be more. Her mother's hospital and doctor bills already totaled close to one hundred thousand. Barring complications, her mother could live another thirty years. Until now, she'd thought selling the ranch would provide the funds for those future medical costs, but at this rate, the money wouldn't last long. It would probably be wiser to keep the ranch and use the income from it to offset some of her mother's expenses.

In a way, she was relieved. She hadn't wanted to sell her home.

Unfortunately she still faced the problem of finding the money to pay for her mother's care. Kit unconsciously squared her shoulders.

"... request an early audit. That way if the IRS questions the valuation of the estate, we'll know about it immediately and be able to handle it," Bannon concluded. "Any questions?"

Conscious of his eyes on her, Kit hurriedly skimmed the tax form, reluctant to admit she hadn't paid attention. "How much tax is owed?"

"Roughly ten thousand. Ten thousand one hundred and fifty dollars, to be exact. The figure's on the last line."

"And that has to be paid next week?" With eyebrows raised, she stared at the number.

"I'll need to get a loan from the bank."

"No, you won't." Bannon met her questioning glance with a smile. "I sold your steers two weeks ago and managed to catch the market when the prices were up. After taxes and all bills are paid, you'll have about seven thousand dollars in cash.

Enough to carry the ranch into spring."

"Good." Letting out a sigh, Kit tossed the copy of the tax form on his desk.

"The rest of this"--rising, Bannon picked up another folder and came around the desk to her chair

--"is fairly self-explanatory. Copies of correspondence, the sales receipt on the cattle, that kind of thing." Bending down, he opened the folder and went through the papers one by one.

This time Kit paid attention and glanced through each one, conscious all the while of his head close to hers and the subtle, spicy scent of his after-shave mingling with the smell of soap. "You can keep these for your records." He gave her the folder with the copies inside.

"Thanks ... I think." Her glance followed him as he again retreated behind his desk.

"That's it"--from the center desk drawer, he took a ring of keys--"except for the keys."

They jangled as he tossed them to her.

She caught them in the air, then closed her fingers around them. "Dad's Jeep--" she began.

"I had it serviced last week.

It's in the shed. And Sadie cleaned the house, so you shouldn't have to do anything but unpack once you get there."

She tipped her head to one side, a little amazed at his thoroughness and thoughtfulness. "Is there anything you haven't taken care of?"

He dismissed her question with a shrugging lift of one shoulder. "Just being a good neighbor."

"I'd almost forgotten what that's like," she admitted ruefully. "In L.a., I barely knew my neighbors." She held the keys an instant longer, then slipped them into her purse, aware the blame was as much hers as it was her neighbors' and the impersonal life of a big city.

Bannon nodded with a kind of grim understanding.

"There are times when it seems that bad in Aspen.

Mostly because your neighbor spends only a few weeks here a year. The house sits empty the rest of the time."

"Like Silverwood has," she added and stood up.

"I'll walk you out."

She crossed to the door and waited for him to open it, then took a step into the outer office before turning back and holding out a hand to him.

"Thanks, Bannon. For everything."