Sundown on Top of the World: A Hunter Rayne Highway Mystery (22 page)

Orville shook his head. Otherwise, he didn’t respond.

“Does he know that you’re taking a fall for him, this other guy?”

“I’m sure he doesn’t even know I’m here.”

“Other than that, he wasn’t very forthcoming about the crime,” said Hunter. He was back in his own clothes, sitting in Bart’s office, wishing he could wash the smell of motor oil and wet dog out of his nostrils. As previously arranged, one of the constables had come back to get him after an hour and a half with Orville, saying that the complainant had decided not to press charges. Before leaving, he shook Orville’s hand and wished him well.

“I don’t think he suspected I was a plant, necessarily. He just wasn’t taking any chances.”

Bart nodded slowly, obviously considering what Hunter had just told him. “I’ll have our team do some more checking,” he said. “If it’s his son, like you suspect, I don’t think there’s any record of a marriage, but it’s entirely possible that he fathered a child outside of wedlock. Or could it be a nephew? Did he say anything else of significance?”

Hunter leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes and dropped his chin to his chest. He was trying to concentrate on recalling details of his conversation with Orville, but he found himself fighting off the magnetic pull of sleep.

Bart frowned. “Are you okay?”

“I could sure use a coffee,” said Hunter, running both hands down his face.

While Bart left his office to get coffee for them both, Hunter leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, eyes to the floor, and thought about his conversation with Orville Barstow. With the possible exception of that one comment about being old and protecting someone dear to him, Orville had kept his conversation upbeat and positive. He had told Hunter that he had done his time as a prospector, had a few small successes that lured him forward, “like some fool donkey following a carrot on a stick.” He had seen the money come and go, and had eventually recognized that the excitement of the journey toward El Dorado was a reward in itself.

“I’ve loved the excitement and anticipation of searching for gold. I loved the sparkle of flakes at the bottom of the pan, being on the creeks and rivers with their dancing ripples and water music, the sight and sound of water running down the sluice box, the long active days under the summer sun and the challenge of wresting my living from this glorious land.” Orville’s eyes sparkled, much like the gold or the rippling water he spoke of, Hunter thought.

“I also found joy in the winter evenings by the stove, dreaming about how I’d spend next year’s riches, and winter days snowshoeing through silent forests in the bracing cold. Now that I’m getting too old for the physical labor involved with prospecting or working a trapping concession, I can still make myself useful, one way or another.” He seemed to look inward.

Useful to whom?
Hunter wondered if he was thinking of Betty Salmon, or of his companion from the bar.

“I’ve managed to put away a little, perhaps enough to live frugally for a few more years, I’m fine with that,” Orville had continued. “A simple life – in or out of jail – just enjoying the people I meet, appreciating the roof over my head, whether it’s a tarp or some cold, concrete edifice. Either way, I’ll make the best of whatever each day offers me.” Hunter had tried to turn the conversation back to Orville’s alleged crime, but the old man had said, “I don’t like to dwell on it. I’m confident that things will work out for the best.”

Bart returned with two mugs of coffee, handing one to Hunter.

Hunter took a cautious sip, then said, “You were asking about my conversation with Orville. We talked about the north, about gold, about our respective philosophies. I found him so engaging and downright agreeable, it was hard for me to stay in character as a disgruntled prisoner and unsuccessful fellow miner.”

“You sure he didn’t recognize you?”

Hunter sipped his coffee. It tasted like it had been sitting in the pot too long, but it was hot and strong and better than none at all. He shook his head. “Not a hundred percent. He’s got a sort of mischievous look in his eyes that makes you wonder if he’s stringing you along.”

“I noticed.”

“Why isn’t he more concerned about the prospect of going to jail for the rest of his life? Could it be that’s exactly what he wants? Maybe life in a jail cell with three square meals a day is his idea of a retirement plan. No more scrounging wood against forty below zero winter days, no more fighting off man-eating mosquitoes, no more skinning small rodents for stew and paying through the nose for wilted vegetables and canned milk.”

“You think he actually might have killed Collins with that in mind?”

“No. I still don’t think he did it. But why would he be protecting a murderer? The answer has got to be somewhere in Orville’s past, so that’s where you’ll have to look.” They both fell silent, as if there was no more to be said about Orville Barstow.

“Any news on my cold case from your end?” Hunter asked, setting his empty coffee mug on Bart’s desk.

Bart pulled a file folder to the middle of his desk and opened it. “Let’s see,” he said, skimming pages of notes. “I told you about the note with the name of Grant Sanford. The fingerprints found in the cabin matched those of Sanford, and without a body or witness, we can only assume that was the real identity of the missing man.”

“Can I see the photo?”

Bart handed him a faxed black and white photograph of a military ID card. If Hunter was expecting a flash of recognition, it didn’t come. He had never met Martin Blake aka Grant Sanford, so that wasn’t surprising. He was a little surprised that the man in the 1964 photo – military hair cut, serious demeanor – looked older than he imagined April’s lover would be. He studied the photo for another moment, noting the darker skin across his cheeks indicating a ruddy complexion or a recent sunburn.

“How old was he in this photo?” he asked as he handed the photo back.

“Thirty-two.”

“That would have made him over forty at the time of his death.” April had been barely twenty. The man was at least twice April’s age. That surprised him, and he had to remind himself that he’d never had the chance to get to know her well. “Did you find anything on the relatives of Sanford’s murdered wife? Any suggestion that they might have tracked him down, looking for revenge?”

“We sent a request to the Louisiana State Police but it’s not high on their priority list. Seems records from that time were transferred, along with jurisdiction, from one city to another about ten years ago and they’ve got more pressing things to worry about than searching for thirty year old files to help us investigate what may or may not have been a murder.”

Hunter nodded. Even the RCMP weren’t sure this was an actual homicide, given the evidence indicating there’d been a grizzly in the cabin. It would be hard to find a champion to devote time and effort to it, especially once they heard that April had survived. The RCMP might not be motivated to follow up the new leads, but Hunter was. He had to know for sure what had happened to April’s lover in the cabin. He couldn’t explain it. That’s just how he was wired.

“There’s a good chance that the woman is still alive,” he said.

“What?”

“The missing woman, the one that trapper –Fred Klimmer – thought lived in the cabin with Blake, or Sanford, whatever his name is.” He told Bart about meeting the young woman in Eagle who looked like April, about how her mother had been nursed back to health by a bush woman. “April left Betty Salmon a note indicating she was coming back for her baby. I’d like to compare her handwriting with the note about Sanford.”

Bart sifted though the file and handed over a photo copy of the note that had been left at the detachment reception desk in 1973. Out of his back pocket, Hunter pulled the copy Goldie had taken of her mother’s note on the back of the polaroid, unfolded it, and placed the copies side by side on Bart’s desk.

“Not the same handwriting,” said Bart.

Hunter frowned. It would take an expert to find similarities. The note on the back of the photo was in cursive script; the note with Sanford’s name was in block letters, scrawled with no regard for the lines on the paper.

“Were you able to track down someone in Michigan who knows April?” he asked Bart.

Bart winced. “Not high on the detachment priority list. There’s even less justification for me to put manpower on that now that you’ve told me she survived.”

Hunter nodded; that was exactly what he had expected to hear. The RCMP wasn’t going to follow up, but El had volunteered to make some calls, trying to track April down. She didn’t have the skills, nor the clout of an RCMP investigator, but he had no doubt she would make the time. What were the chances of her coming up with something?

“One thing you might be interested to know, though,” said Bart.

Hunter looked up from the two notes he’d been comparing. “What’s that?”

“We did find Fred Klimmer. He suffered a stroke a few years back so now he doesn’t get around well. He rents a couple of rooms in a private home here in town. I guess he’s on social welfare or some kind of disability pension.”

“Have you interviewed him?”

Bart shook his head and gave Hunter a lopsided smile. “I’ve got great respect for you, Hunter, but may I remind you, you’re not my boss.”

“Right. I guess I’m the one who’s really interested in figuring out what happened back in 1972.”

“Guilt? Unfinished business?”

“Pardon me?”

“You think you should have solved it yourself years ago, so now you want to finish what you started back in 1972?”

Hunter stood up and stretched. “I haven’t tried to psycho-analyze myself, but you could be right. When does your brother-in-law get back?”

“Tomorrow. You ready to give his truck back?”

Hunter nodded. And fervently hoped that own his truck would be ready by then.

– – – – – TWELVE

Betty Salmon stared after the taillights of the Merc as it headed away from the cabin; she stared without moving until the truck had disappeared behind the trees. Goldie had been restless since yesterday morning, unable to focus on her chores. Today she had decided to drive in to Eagle to check for mail, then to Yukon Sally’s well before she was due at work, in case there was a call from Hunter or – Goldie hadn’t admitted it, but Betty knew it was on the child’s mind – even from her mother.

Betty was working in the garden. She planted vegetables in June every year, so that’s exactly what she was doing, but this year was not like every year. Something in her disciplined, routine life had shifted, like a log at the base of the woodpile, and her well-ordered world was wobbling, on the verge of collapse. Never mind that she’d known it would come some day. She’d known the child would grow up and want a life of her own, but she’d hoped against hope that it would happen when Goldie’s departure would no longer affect her so strongly.

Hootie had lapped up his fill from the water bucket by the outdoor kitchen, and now came to flop down at the edge of the garden. Betty threw down her trowel and went to sit beside him, ruffling the fur on top of his head, then stroking the soft skin of his ear between two fingers. He sighed with contentment, his head resting between his front paws, and Betty sighed, too. Not with contentment, but with a mixture of worry and confusion.

“What do you think, Hootie? What’s an old woman to do?” She hadn’t realized it until sometime during her sleepless night, but in the short time she had known Orville, she had already come to expect him to be there for her when Goldie left. That funny old man had become a soft place for her to land, a protector and a friend. “Should I tell Goldie where to look for her mother?”

Maybe Goldie’s mother wasn’t where the letter from April had been postmarked twenty-three years ago. Maybe she had moved on. Maybe she had died. But possibly, the letter’s return address would provide a clue to where she could be found. Betty wished now that she had read the letter before tucking it into that Blue Ribbon baking powder tin and hiding it beneath the floorboards of the old cabin in Hootalinqua. The letter might still be there. If she showed Goldie the letter, would the child forgive her for keeping it a secret?
At least now, even if Goldie moves away from Eagle, she will still love me
.
She will come to visit, she will send pictures and letters, she will sometimes bring her children to come play at my knee.
Could revealing the letter take that all away?

And what of Orville? Was the old man worth fighting for? If she decided he was, what could she do to make sure he came back to her? She didn’t even know why he had been taken by the Mounties, whether they would release him and, if they did, whether he would come back to Eagle to stay with her. She had some decisions to make, and depending on what she decided, she would need ideas about how to make things happen.

“I’ve eaten next to nothing since they took Orville,” she told Hootie. She’d had no appetite, and she became convinced that she’d been led to fast, led to seek help the way her mother had taught her, to seek advice from the spirits that had guided her in the past. Deliberate or not, fasting was easy for an old woman to do, and she’d begun to feel lightheaded already. It had been many, many years since she’d asked the spirits to guide her, but now would be the time.

Hootie looked up at her without moving his head from between his paws. “Will you come with me on this journey, old friend?” she asked.

His tail thumped on the dry earth, and she smiled. She got to her feet, steadied herself through a few seconds of dizziness, and walked toward the path that led to the river, confident that the spirits who had led her to fast would now guide her steps to where they awaited her.

Yukon Sally took pity on Goldie and let her start work early.

“You’re driving me crazy, pacing around the kitchen,” she said. “Two sets of guests have already checked out this morning, so you can get a head start and clean out those two cabins. Don’t worry. I’ll come and get you if anyone calls.”

Goldie stripped the sheets in the first cabin, replaced them with the clean ones she had taken from the laundry room in the lodge. Dirty towels and a bath mat went into the hamper. She picked up the spray bottle and sponge to start cleaning the bathroom, but found herself seated on the side of the bathtub, imagining a telephone call.

First Yukon Sally would holler from the lodge, ‘Goldie! Phone call!’ and she would run to the lodge and pick up the receiver. ‘Hello?’ she would say, and a woman’s voice on the other end would say, ‘Goldie? Is that Golden Dawn?’ and she would say, ‘Yes. Who is this?’ and the woman on the phone would start to cry, and say ‘Oh, Goldie! I’ve been trying to find you for so many years. Goldie, this is your mother.’ Then Goldie would start to cry, and tell her mother how much she wanted to see her.

At that point, she stopped imagining the phone call and began to imagine being sent a plane ticket to where her mother lived. Was she back in Michigan? Maybe she had moved to California. What if she lived in Santa Barbara, where Mark was from? What if Goldie could get a ride with Mark back to his home in California and he could take her right to her mother’s house?

She heard someone approaching the cabin, so she hurriedly stood up and turned around to spray cleaning solution on the tub. She was on her knees beside the tub, industriously wiping at the enamel surface when footsteps stopped behind her, but no one spoke. She turned her head to see who it was.

“Don’t stop. I’m enjoying the view.” It was Mark.

Goldie tossed the sponge at him and got to her feet. “You brat,” she said. “It’s not nice to sneak up on people.”

“Nothing sneaky about me, Goldie.” He stomped his feet, his boots thudding on the plank floor. “Aunt Sally told me you were here, so I thought I’d see if you were ready for a break. I brought you a soda.”

Goldie was flattered; she smiled at him, but not broadly enough to let on just how thrilled she was. “I’ve barely started, but I could use something cold. How about we go outside, though? I’ve never been keen on spending my breaks in a bathroom.”

They wandered down to the bench beside the creek. He was so close that as they walked over the uneven ground, his arm bumped her shoulder now and then. She didn’t move away. On the bench, he motioned her to sit down first, then sat so close to her that their thighs touched. She moved her leg away a little, as casually as she could.

“Did Sally tell you that I’m waiting for a phone call?”

“She did. About your mother, right? So you’re not an orphan after all.” He grinned and gave her a gentle poke in the ribs with his elbow.

She nudged him back, aware that they were both initiating physical contact, as if compelled to touch each other by some magnetic force. It both frightened and fascinated her. Frightened because she didn’t want to be one of those pathetic girls who were used by an Outsider over the summer and who then never heard from their so-called boyfriends again; fascinated because she’d never liked a boy this much before, and the sensations he stirred in her were new and so exhilarating, she began to feel lightheaded, almost giddy. He moved a lock of hair off her face, his fingertips ever-so-softly tracing a line across her cheek, from the tip of her nose to the top of her ear. She could understand why those girls had given in. Could she ever.

His hand moved from her ear to her neck, gently but firmly pulling her face toward his. She couldn’t make herself pull away. Then his lips were on hers and he kissed her tentatively, like an exploration, as if his lips were asking hers,
does this feel right to you?
She kissed him back softly, and in seconds they had their arms around each other, locking them face to face and lips to lips, and she felt his tongue part her lips and enter her mouth. She kissed him back, each taste of his mouth increasing her hunger for more.

“Goldie! Goldie, where are you?”

It was Sally’s voice, shouting. Goldie pulled herself away, wriggled out of Mark’s arms.

“Goldie! Your phone call! Can you hear me?”

She stood up and looked at Mark, offering him an uncertain smile, then turned away. “I hear you, Sally,” she shouted back. “I’m on my way.”

When she reached the lodge kitchen, she was almost breathless, and grateful that her red face could be attributed to running. Sally held out the receiver toward her and she grabbed it with both hands. “Hello?”

It was Hunter’s voice, not her mother’s, that answered back.

“We may have found your mother,” he said.

Hunter had installed himself at a payphone in the lobby of the Klondike Inn where he could use his credit card to make some calls cheaper than on his cell phone. His first call was to Watson Transportation. He hoped El wasn’t too busy to carry on a complete conversation without putting him on hold, but that was not to be. She put him on hold without even giving him time to identify himself.

“You back on the road?” was the first thing she said when she came back on the line.

He told her not yet.

“I thought you said the parts were due in today. You’ve been gone a whole frickin’ week already. What’s the hold up? What am I gonna tell the mine?”

“The mechanic says the parts arrived too late for the plane out of Edmonton; they might be here this afternoon, or maybe not until tomorrow.”

She swore, but Hunter knew how to divert her attention. “Any luck tracking down April Corbett?”

“Oh, yeah!” she almost growled. “Watson Investigations, at your service.” He heard her laugh, just a quick ‘heh, heh’.

“Well?”

El paused long enough for Hunter to realize she wasn’t going to be telling the whole truth. He sighed. “You called her, didn’t you? Do you realize that by doing so, you may be interfering with the RCMP’s investigation?”

“Whoa! You’re the one who asked me to look for her.”

“I asked you to look for a phone number.”

“Give your head a shake, Hunter. If I hadn’t made a bunch of calls – at my expense, I might add – right now you’d be writing down a list of thirty or forty phone numbers, and then having to call every one of them to see if they knew her. I saved you a lot of trouble. I tracked her down through her brother, and found her somewhere that you’d never have thought of looking for her. Her brother wouldn’t give me her number, but he gave her mine and she was curious enough to call.”

El was right. She had saved him a lot of trouble. He had no choice but to apologize.

“That’s better. And before you ask, no, I didn’t tell her who I was or who you were, or why you wanted to find her. I made up a story, and I came out looking like a total idiot, so her husband hung up on me. Lucky for you I have caller ID on my phone. Now you can bloody well call her yourself, and good luck to you.”

He apologized again. “You did good, El. Thank you.”

“It was a lot of work,” she said, her voice petulant.

“And I appreciate it.”

She finally gave him the number, and told him that it was an Oregon area code. Then she gave him another earful about the delay in delivering the load for the mine near Fairbanks. “Get on it, Hunter. I better not find out you’ve been holding up that shipment just to play detective with your friends up there.”

“You know me better than that,” he started to say, but she’d already hung up.

His next call was to the mechanic, who promised to call him on his cell phone as soon as there was an update on the repairs. Then it was time to make the call to Oregon. He leaned back in the chair, hands behind his head, eyes on the ceiling. He believed in planning ahead in situations like this, and it seemed especially important this time, with the possibility that his own emotions as well as April’s could come into play.

What he didn’t plan for was no answer, not even an answering machine. He tried a second time, just in case he’d hit the wrong numbers. Again, no answer.

When he called Goldie, as promised, he could only tell her that he had a good lead, but hadn’t yet managed to reach the woman that could be her mother. He knew she depended on receiving his calls while she was at Yukon Sally’s lodge. “Can they get a message to you if you go back home?”

“Yes,” she said. “If you call after I’ve gone home, I’m sure Mark will come get me.”

Hunter remembered the young man with the Jeep who’d been sharing a beer with Goldie, then pictured a young RCMP constable chatting up a dark haired waitress who looked just like her, some twenty odd years ago.

He smiled to himself as he hung up the phone.

Lost Mine was closed. The owner – whether he was Colin Thompson or Charles Collins – had obviously been the heart and soul of the place, and now there was no one to unlock the doors in the morning or close up for the night, no one to order the beer and liquor from the wholesaler, order the food and stock the freezer, no one to supervise the employees, hire and fire them or even pay them. There was a dark stain in the parking lot where the owner’s blood had spread through the gravel. Hunter drove past it and parked close to the entrance.

He recognized the place. It was the same bar where he’d met April Corbett in the spring of 1972 soon after he arrived in Whitehorse at his first posting with the RCMP. He’d been there many a time with his friend Ken Marsh, but in those days it went by the name of the Sluice Box Pub. They used to serve good pub food like burgers and fries and beef dip sandwiches, the kind of food that Sorry was looking for right now.