Sundown on Top of the World: A Hunter Rayne Highway Mystery (12 page)

Goldie didn’t usually bother taking a break at work, but as she walked between the lodge and one of the cabins, she saw Mark sitting beside the woodpile with a can of Coke in his hand and wandered over to join him.

“How’s it going?” he asked. “Your grandmother kicked the old guy out yet?” He was sitting on a big upended log, but got up and stood another big log upright beside him. He brushed the dust and woodchips off it and invited her to sit. She did, and her knee was just inches away from his.

She laughed. “Shocking, but no. When I left today she was still being uncharacteristically friendly.”

“Sip?” He offered her his Coke, but she shook her head. “I still can’t believe you grew up out in the woods with crusty old Betty, and look at you now.” He gestured toward her. “How did you turn out so – so – I don’t know, smart looking and articulate? I would’ve expected a bush baby to speak in monosyllables and wear gunnysacks.”

Goldie could feel her cheeks begin to burn. She vacillated between being flattered and offended, so stalled for time by asking, “What on earth is a gunnysack?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, but it sounded like something a bush baby would wear.” He slapped at a mosquito on his neck. “Thank god there’s a breeze this afternoon. I thought they would eat me alive this morning.”

“Bush baby?” She decided it was more humorous than offensive. “It’s not like we were living in the Amazon jungle. We moved to Eagle so I could go to school, and we’ve had public satellite TV here in Alaska since forever, although Gran didn’t get a TV until we moved here. The cabin came with a generator. Bush baby.” She said it with a smile and gave his shoulder a little push. “Give me a break. You Outsiders can be so ignorant.”

He pushed her back, gently, and she could smell the Deep Woods Off on his arm.

“Were your mom and dad both from up here?”

Her smile faded. “I guess so. I was too young to remember them, and Gran’s a little secretive.”

“Yeah? About what?”

Goldie shrugged. “Her past. My past. The past in general.”

“What happened to your parents?” he asked, frowning as if what she had told him was worrisome.

She shrugged again. “I don’t really know,” she said. She didn’t tell him that the same question had been burning inside her ever since she started school and realized most other kids had a mother and father, not just a grandmother.

“Okay, tell me something you do know. Like, where did you live before you moved to Eagle?”

Goldie took a deep breath and blew it out between her lips. “Until I was about six, we lived in a cabin near a river. We call it the moose cabin, because there was a big moose rack over the front door. I once heard Gran refer to it as the Stewart cabin, so I assume it was the Stewart River.” She half smiled, remembering. “She said something like, ‘I wish I hadn’t left that big kettle behind at Stewart.’ I asked her to tell me about the cabin at Stewart and she pretended she hadn’t said any such thing.

“Before that,” she said, “we lived in the snowshoe cabin. It had a pair of big, broken down snowshoes hanging on the wall. I was only two or three, so I don’t actually remember it, only what Gran has told me.” She picked up a piece of bark and began breaking it into little pieces and throwing them into a clump of weeds. “Gran’s old dog team came from Hootalinqua – that’s why she called her dog Hootie – so I always figured she lived there when she got the team. It makes me wonder if that’s where the first cabin was.”

Mark crumpled the Coke can in one hand, grunting like a caveman, then tossed it up over his shoulder. “You’re weird, kid.”

“Why?”

“You’re the only person I’ve ever met who doesn’t know where she lived or what happened to her parents. At least adopted kids have their adopted parents. Orphans usually know that their parents are dead. You’re an enigma to yourself, Goldie, not just to me. By the way,” he raised his eyebrows as he peered into her face, “what’s your real name? You can’t tell me your name is just Goldie.”

She compressed her lips together, sighed and answered him in a quiet voice. “Don’t laugh, okay?”

“Uh-oh. You don’t know your real name either?”

She frowned and made a ‘tsk’ sound with her tongue.

“Okay. I’m sorry. What?”

“Golden Dawn Salmon.”

He smiled but he didn’t laugh. “Golden Dawn sounds like a hippie name.”

“I suppose.”

“It’s pretty though.” His voice was gentle and his eyes searching. “It suits you.”

She looked down, away from him, and brushed some sawdust off the calf of her jeans. The way he’d looked at her gave her a fluttery feeling under her breastbone.

“Your grandma’s name is Betty Salmon, right?”

She nodded.

“So she must be your dad’s mother, right?”

She smiled weakly. She wished she could say it was true. The truth was, she didn’t even know that.

When she didn’t answer, he shook his head. “Okay. Here’s something I know you can answer. Have you ever had a boyfriend?” He was looking sideways at her, a crooked little smile on his face.

It was her turn to shake her head. “I
could
answer that, but I won’t. I better get back to work,” she said. She wanted to get away before he noticed her cheeks get red. “See you later.”

Goldie was just coming down the stairs of the front porch when a beat-up old SUV with Yukon plates pulled up in front of the big log lodge at Yukon Sally’s. Two men got out. One was a big man with longish blond hair and a moustache; he made her think of Hulk Hogan. The other was more compact, probably a little older, and looked tidy, although he wore jeans and obviously hadn’t shaved for a couple of days. He gave the impression of being very self-contained, almost wary, much like the State Troopers she’d occasionally seen in town.

The big blond guy wasted no time in spotting her. “Hey, sweetheart,” he called out, his voice louder than it needed to be. “Do you work here? Where’s the office? Can we get a room for the night? I hope they got a restaurant here,” he said over his shoulder to the other man, who seemed mildly irritated.

“We just ate a few hours ago.”

“Yeah, but road trips always make me hungry. Don’t ask me why.” He took a deep drag on a freshly lit cigarette. “What do you say, sweetheart? You think we can get a room here for the night?” The smoke trailed out of his mouth as he spoke.

Goldie had cleaned and changed the bedding in a couple of rooms that afternoon, so she said, “Right now we do have a couple of empty rooms, but they might be booked. I don’t do the reservations, so I don’t know.”

“You do work here, though?” asked the older man. He had a pleasant voice, unexpectedly deep. He’d been staring at her since she first began to speak. His eyes were so intense, it was a little uncomfortable. She nodded, her smile uncertain.

As if he could read her thoughts, he said, “Sorry to stare, but I thought at first you were someone I knew.” He looked a little sheepish as he added, “Except the last time I saw her was more than twenty years ago. She’d be old enough to be your mother, if she were still alive.”

Goldie’s heart began to thump so hard, she thought she would pass out. She found the man a little intimidating, but she had to know more. “A woman who looked like me? Here in Alaska?”

His eyes never left her face as he said, “In Whitehorse, actually, but she told me she was on her way to Alaska.” Again, as if he’d read her mind, he added, “Her name was April.”

Goldie backed up a few steps and sank to a sitting position on the bottom stair.

“Are you alright?” the man asked. He sat down beside her, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

She nodded, unable to speak right away. Her thoughts were racing. Who was this man? Had this man known her mother? Could he tell her something about her mother? Why did he say ‘if she were still alive’? Was she dead? Did he know when and how she died? Was it possible that he also knew her father? Could he even
be
her father? A dizzying parade of possibilities ran through her mind.

“I never knew my mother,” she finally managed to say, then swallowed hard. “But I think her name was April.” She tried to remember what the picture had looked like, the one with a note on the back. It had been a small square photograph with a white border, the image washed out and a bit blurry, of a black bear crossing a road, a cub right behind her. On the back was a note, written with a ballpoint pen:

Betty - See you next spring!

Thanks for everything! April

It had fallen out of a book that she found under her grandmother’s bed when helping Gran with spring cleaning. When she went to look for it again, the book was gone. Seeking for any connection to the mother she couldn’t remember, Goldie had always imagined that the book – a paperback book of poetry with a painting of a bearded man on the front – and the note had come from her mother. Was April her mother? Had she never returned in the spring? She asked Gran who April was, and Gran got so angry with her for snooping that she’d never dared to mention it again.

The big man with the blond moustache clomped up the stairs, saying, “Hey, Hunter, I’ll go see if they’ve got a room” as he passed by.

“I’m sorry if I’ve upset you,” the man called Hunter said quietly. “The April I knew had no children, at least not when I knew her. It could be just a coincidence that you look like her.”

Goldie took a deep breath. “Yes, of course. It’s just that it took me by surprise.”

He asked her what her name was, and she told him. “Do you have a family, Goldie?” he asked then.

“I have my grandmother. She’s been both mother and father to me, I guess. Her name is Betty Salmon. Do you know her?” She looked at him hopefully. If he knew her grandmother, then the April he knew must have been her mother.

He shook his head, sadly it seemed. “You grew up here in Eagle?”

“We lived a couple of other places first, but Gran moved us here when I was old enough to go to school. She never had much education herself – she can just barely read and write – but she thought it was important for me to finish school.” Goldie had picked up a stick and now she started tracing circles in the dry earth at the bottom of the stairs. “She’s lived in the bush all her life.”

“So your grandmother is on your father’s side?”

Goldie thought it was spooky how she’d been asked that question twice on the same day. The first time, she’d just ignored it. She thought now it didn’t make sense that she would refuse to answer Mark, but discuss it with this stranger. She gave a weak laugh. “Really, truly,” she began. “This is going to sound pretty strange, but I honestly don’t know for sure how I’m related to my grandmother. She’s the only family I’ve ever known, and I use her last name. She has never once mentioned my father.” She pressed her lips together and stole a glance at the man, then turned her attention back to the circles in the dirt. “I always assumed my mother was her daughter, but now that I’m older, I’m not sure, because for some reason she won’t tell me anything about her.”

He was quiet for a long time. She didn’t look directly at him but she could still feel his eyes on her face. “I wish I knew more about her,” she said, hoping with all her heart that this man would be the answer to that wish.

The man took a deep breath and got to his feet. “I’d like to meet your grandmother. Will you take me to her?”

Hunter couldn’t stop thinking about the girl. She looked so much like the April he’d known, and she had been told her mother’s name was April. Was it possible that April had survived whatever bloody thing had taken place at the trapper’s cabin near the Teslin River almost twenty-five years ago?
I should have asked the girl how old she was
, he thought. He wondered why the girl didn’t know the name of her mother. Had her grandmother hidden her birth certificate, or did she even have one? He wondered if perhaps it wasn’t unusual for a child born in bush Alaska – in a remote cabin with no access to a hospital or even to a doctor or midwife – to have an undocumented birth.

And Betty Salmon, the woman who was – or perhaps wasn’t – the girl’s grandmother. Where was she from? Had she known that same free-spirited young woman Hunter had known briefly during his first summer in Whitehorse?

He was on his back, hands behind his head, eyes fixed on the ceiling, lying on one of two twin beds in a small but comfortable log cabin at Yukon Sally’s Lodge. In spite of the window curtains designed to keep out the midnight sun, it was almost bright enough to read a book. Sorry was snoring softly in the other bed. Hunter envied him the ability to put the cares of the day out of his mind and sleep soundly whenever he was tired.

The girl, Goldie, had seemed uncomfortable when he’d asked to meet her grandmother. After a few false starts, obviously unsure of how to answer, she had told him that her grandmother was a bit of a recluse and it wouldn’t be wise to spring a surprise visit on her. “I’ll talk to her tonight,” she’d said, then quickly ended the conversation by excusing herself and walking away.

Hunter had watched her fire up an old blue Mercury pickup and rattle off down the rutted driveway. He briefly considered tailing her so he could catch the grandmother unprepared, but knew it would be impossible. How could anyone not be aware of being followed when there were no other cars on the only road through town? Besides, he wasn’t about to use police interrogation techniques just to satisfy his curiosity.