Stranded (10 page)

“A real live book fairy!” Lucinda clapped her hands. “Could you go down to the Historical Society building and talk to Victoria Halburton tomorrow morning?”

“You’re a member?” I asked.

She touched her chest, looked down at me from her superior height of an inch or so over my five-foot-one, and in an exaggerated voice of hauteur said, “My dear, everyone who is
anyone
in Hello belongs to the Historical Society.”

“Which means I don’t,” Kelli muttered.

“They invited you when you first came.”

“And then made it plain that I was uninvited after my remarks about the Lucky Queen at their big meeting.”

“Um, well, yes, that’s true,” Lucinda agreed. “And just for your information, we do know that you call us the Ladies Hysterical Society.” Her tone was severe, but her hazel eyes twinkled with good humor. Ah-ha! So I wasn’t mistaken when I thought I’d heard Kelli use that term earlier.

“Oh dear.” Kelli put on a mournful face. “If they know that, I’ll never win the Miss Popularity contest. And I was so counting on it.”

They looked at each other and grinned. Then Lucinda turned back to me. “Yes, I’m a member, but I don’t care for the CT & G sessions, which are the mainstay of the group—”

“CT & G?” I interrupted.

“Coffee, Tea, and Gossip, which is really what the Ladies Hysterical Society is all about. But I’ve helped get a couple of historical booklets together, and I’ve more or less managed the Roaring ’20s Revue for years. Although this may be our last year. We’ve always had it on the stage in the old Hello Hotel, but the place is about to collapse. Hiram was going to buy the old place and fix it up for us, but that isn’t going to happen now, of course.”

“Sounds as if Hiram was indeed a generous man,” I commented.

“Can you spell b-r-i-b-e?” Kelli said.

“Bribe?” I repeated with interest.

“Now, Kelli,” Lucinda said, her tone reproachful. “Hiram had a strong sense of civic responsibility and was always concerned about the welfare of the town.”

“Okay, okay,” Kelli muttered. “The saint with a cigar.”

No one seemed inclined to enlighten me, but now Lucinda looked me over appraisingly. “Would you like to be in the Revue? We have a full lineup of sixteen for the chorus line at the moment, but someone always has to drop out. We’re into rehearsals now, but Sophia Ledger is already saying her arthritis is never going to last through those high kicks.”

There was that chorus line again. “Thanks, but I don’t think so.”

“The costumes are very modest, if that concerns you.”

I couldn’t see myself kicking up my heels in a costume of any sort, but . . . “Maybe there’s something else I could do, something behind the scenes?”

“Could be. It’s always tough finding people for the behind-the-scenes work, so I’ll keep you in mind. Anyway, be at the Historical Society building tomorrow morning. It opens at ten o’clock. Oh, by the way, Kelli, I took daisies to Hiram’s grave this morning, and we should see about getting the hinge on that gate fixed.”

“He’d appreciate the daisies. They were his favorite flower, weren’t they? I’ll see about the hinge.”

“Is he buried in High Cemetery?” I asked.

“No, he’s in Low.” Lucinda looked a bit surprised that I knew about the cemetery division. “The old family plot is there, with all the old rascals tucked inside a wrought-iron fence.”

Impulsively I sneaked in another question. “Was Hiram planning to move those carousel horses over to your place after you married?”

“I have no idea where those carousel horses came from, or what Hiram planned to do with them.” Lucinda shook her head. “There’s no place in my house where they’d fit. They’re a mystery to me.”

Odd.

“What do you think of Lucinda?” Kelli asked after Lucinda was gone. “Isn’t she a doll? It’s too bad things didn’t work out for her and Hiram years ago. Both Hiram and this old house would probably be in better shape if he’d had Lucinda all that time.”

A little warily, because I didn’t want it to sound like criticism, and I surely didn’t mean it as such, I said, “She seems to be holding up well, under the circumstances.”

“You mean because she laughs, and she’s out shooting up Hiram’s tequila bottles instead of making some sentimental monument out of them?”

“Something like that, I guess.”

“Lucinda’s a survivor,” Kelli said almost fiercely. “One of the strongest people I know. She lost her husband five or six years ago, and then a couple years later, one of her two sons was killed in an avalanche on a ski slope up north. She lost a baby daughter to polio years ago, just before the vaccine became available. She managed to keep going through all those terrible times, and she’s done the same after losing Hiram. She grieves him, very much so. But she isn’t going to do it by taking to her bed and covering her head and crying all day.”

Hearing all that, I felt an instant bond with Lucinda. I too had lost both a husband and son. I wondered if it was faith that had carried her through, as it had me.

Kelli smiled, a reminiscent look in her eyes. “You probably wouldn’t know it to look at her, but Lucinda can have quite a temper. Uncle Hiram was rather casual about time, and when he was late for dinner at her place for about the umpteenth time, she went down to the tavern and rounded up a couple of ratty old guys she knew from when she interviewed old miners for a Historical Society booklet. So when Hiram finally arrived, he found these whiskered old guys eating up the last of his favorite tamale pie, and all that was left for him was a cup of cold coffee, an empty plate, and an icy stare from Lucinda. I don’t believe he was ever late again.” Kelli nodded with satisfaction. “She’d have kept Hiram in line.”

“She isn’t a smoker.” Koop’s reaction to her told me that, although her health-conscious exercise regime also suggested it. “What about Hiram’s smoking? Was he going to give it up?”

“No, but they’d already settled that he could smoke only on the back porch at her place. Though she did say she was going to have it glassed in for him.”

Kelli told me how to find the Historical Society building in the morning, and then we agreed that she’d pick me up at the house at 1:00 for the trip out to the mine. She left a few minutes later, and Abilene, eager to start work at Dr. Sugarman’s in the morning, showered and was in bed by 10:00. The master bedroom had a private bath, quite an elaborate one, modernized with lots of gold fixtures and white tile veined with gold. There were too many mirrors for my taste. I’m not fond of seeing my sags and bags from all angles. But I enjoyed a leisurely bath with passionflower-scented bubbles, courtesy of my grandniece Sandy.

Sandy is always giving me little things I’d never buy for myself, things that usually startle me. She sends them first class to the mail-forwarding outfit in Arkansas, and they send them on to me when I call and give them an address. A toe ring. Fake fingernails. Skimpy Victoria’s Secret nightwear. A perfume called “Catch Your Man.” Sandy thinks I should catch Mac before someone else does.

I hadn’t really intended to call Mac, but, thinking about Lucinda and her latest loss, I felt an unexpected surge of gratitude that Mac was alive and I could call him.

Mac MacPherson and I don’t share the kind of relationship Lucinda and Hiram had; we certainly aren’t into marriage plans. There’s something between us, although it’s about as substantial as a puff of hair spray. But it’s there. The thing is, we never seem to be in the same place at the same time in our lives, and I mean that in more than physical location. Yes, our physical locations are often far apart. Mac has been traveling all over the country in his motor home doing articles about places and events for various travel magazines for several years now, and I never know where my efforts to dodge Braxtons may take me.

But the real difference in “place” has more to do with where we are in our outlook on life at any given moment. If I’m thinking commitment might be the way to go, Mac is in a don’t-fence-me-in stage. If he’s in a settling-down mood, I’m backing off, thinking it’s too late in life for this.

And, of course, the Braxtons and Boone Morrison are a constant factor. A few months ago, Abilene and I had intended to spend some time in the town where Mac was recuperating from a yak attack (and don’t you have to love a man who could get attacked by a yak?), but that was when we had to take off and run from Boone, and I haven’t seen Mac since.

So our relationship is definitely indefinite. But there’s enough to it that I felt a real longing to connect with him tonight. I got the cell phone out of my purse, looked up his cell phone number on the menu, and punched the call button. I was pleased that I wasn’t getting the “no signal” message here in town.

But I was also getting no answer to the ring, and for the first time the dismaying thought occurred to me, What if a woman answered? He could have up and married someone, just like Sandy, and my good friend Magnolia Margollin, warned he might do.

Then his voice, muffled and grumpy. “Hello? Hello. Is someone there? I thought I’d turned this blasted thing off for the night—”

“Mac? It’s Ivy. Did I wake you?” I hadn’t considered that my 10:45 p.m. call might reach him well after midnight if he happened to be on the East Coast. He wasn’t usually an early-to-bed person, but you could never tell where Mac might be. “Where are you?”

A brief hesitation, as if it took him a moment in his sleep-interrupted state to figure out not only where he was but who someone named Ivy was. Not too flattering.

“Alabama . . . No, that was yesterday. Today it’s Florida. I’m on my way to do an article about Spongeorama.”

“About
what
?”

“Spongeorama. In Tarpon Springs, where the sponge is king.”

“Mac MacPherson, are you sure you’re awake?”

“You woke me up, so you should know.” He sounded more normal now, less as if he were talking through a pillow, though still a bit grumpy. “I tried to call you a couple times, but you never answered.”

“We keep the cell phone just for emergencies and don’t have it turned on most of the time.”

“Is this an emergency?”

“Well, no, not really.” But sort of. Isn’t feeling a real need to reach out and touch a special someone an emergency?

“Where are you?” he asked.

At least he did know who I was now. But I hesitated a moment about revealing location information. Not that I want to hide from Mac, but I’ve always been a little concerned that the Braxtons might know about him and try to use him to get to me. Yet wanting him to know won out, and I said, “Colorado.”

That made both of us pause for a moment to consider the distance between us.

“Come see me,” he wheedled unexpectedly. “The skies are blue, the sand is warm, the palms are swaying. I will gift you with sponges for all occasions, and we will eat stuffed grape leaves and spanakopita and baklava.”

“Why would we do that?”

“Because it’s a Greek place. I guess the Greeks are great sponge catchers or diggers or chasers or however it is you capture a sponge. You’ll love it.”

I think, if the motor home hadn’t been marooned in the yard at Nick’s Garage, I might well have picked up and headed for Florida. With only a few words, even if they’re about sponges, Mac can be quite persuasive.

“I’d like to, Mac, I really would. But we’re kind of . . . stuck here for a while. Waiting on some repairs on the motor home.” That was the truth, without getting specific. I didn’t want to burden Mac with our problems. “I don’t suppose you’ll be coming through Colorado anytime soon?”

“It isn’t in my plans.” He paused as if considering the matter. “But sometimes plans change. Where in Colorado?”

“A little mining town called Hello.”

“Hey, I’ve been in Hello! I did a magazine piece about that funky little newspaper they have there. The editor told me later that it brought in subscriptions from all over.”

Kelli had said an article in a touristy magazine had brought lots of subscriptions for the newspaper. And Mac had written that article! Small world.

“I can’t say for sure . . .” Mac’s wary beginning didn’t surprise me. I was feeling an unexpected nesting instinct coming on, weary of coping with the complications of a home on wheels, which meant Mac was undoubtedly in a cagey stage, not committing to anything. “But I might get out that way before long.”

“That would be great! Family okay?” I asked.

“Everyone’s fine. Grandchildren growing like tadpoles.”

“Wrist and back okay?” Those were the areas the yak had injured.

“Aging like the rest of me but doing fine.”

“Have you heard anything of Magnolia and Geoff?” These were longtime friends from back in Missouri. Magnolia was enamored with genealogy, but she scorned Internet research, and they spent considerable time in their motor home chasing down distant relatives. She had, in fact, introduced me to Mac, whom they’d met on the road.

“They were in Southern California the last time I talked to them, but that’s been a while. Magnolia believes she’s found a connection to some Middle Eastern ancestor. So don’t be surprised if she’s into belly dancing the next time you see her.”

I laughed. Magnolia did tend to take on some aspect of whatever ancestor she’d most recently uncovered. Magnolia’s majestic shape in a belly dance would surely be a sight to see.