Part 13 (1/2)
”The Trading Post is at the other end of town. Let's take the jeep.”
At the grocery, Ali found Lori Reese manning the cash register and started to introduce the young woman to her husband, but Mac surprised her by saying, ”Lori and I met last night. I was wandering around town looking for you and she clued me in on the fact that you had tickets to the play.” To Lori, he said, ”Thanks again for your help.”
”Glad I knew the scoop,” Lori replied.
”And I'm glad I finally had the pleasure of meeting you. I recall that Chase told me you want to be a veterinarian?”
”Yes, sir.”
Mac and Lori discussed her freshman year at Texas A&M for a moment, then Ali asked, ”Does your mom stock picnic baskets of any kind?”
”Yes, they're in the side room on the shelf beside the T-s.h.i.+rts.”
”Excellent. We're driving the high country trail today, and we wanted to take something for lunch.”
”The grapes are really good,” Lori said. ”We also got in a selection of cheeses you might look at.”
”Thanks, sweetie.” While Mac selected a bottle of wine, Ali filled her basket with fruit, cheese, crackers, and her husband's favorite guilty-pleasure junk food-Cheetos. Twenty minutes later they turned onto the narrow dirt road that took them up into the hills.
They didn't talk much while they drove, but they communicated plenty. Mac kept hold of Ali's hand, even when he s.h.i.+fted gears, and she thought back to college days, when he drove a secondhand Ford Crown Victoria that he'd been given by an older gentleman for whom he'd done yard work. Mac had been embarra.s.sed by the car, but Ali had loved it. The bench seat meant she could sit beside him on their dates. After the summer when he'd interned at the Chicago firm and finally made enough money to buy what he called a real car, the Mustang he'd chosen came with bucket seats. She'd lamented the loss of the Crown Vic and explained why. That's when he first held her hand while he s.h.i.+fted gears.
She'd never really noticed when he'd abandoned the practice. After they married? When they had children? She guessed it didn't really matter because it was, after all, a very teenage thing to do.
Yet she felt like a teenager again this morning. She felt renewed and rejuvenated and young.
She felt happy.
”I asked the guy at the outfitters to recommend a good fis.h.i.+ng spot along this drive,” Mac said, pulling a folded piece of paper out of his s.h.i.+rt pocket. ”He gave me this-a place called Heartache Falls. Said it's the map they reserve for locals and that it's off the beaten path, but it's a beautiful spot beside a little lake just downstream from a little waterfall. If we don't mind hiking a little ways, we should have the place to ourselves. You up for a walk?”
”Absolutely.” She studied the map, glad she'd worn her boots to the theater last night. ”Heartache Falls. I've heard people talk about it, but it's not on any of the tourist maps. It'll be nice to get away from the crowd.”
”You call this a crowd?”
”For Eternity Springs it is. I know how important it is for us to attract tourist dollars, and since it's the height of the season, I'm glad to see the town bustling. The majority of the businesses in town make the bulk of their profit for the entire year between June and August. I admit I enjoyed the sleepy days in town before the summer people arrived.”
”The town was bustling last night. So, tell me about this Lost Angel mystery. I caught the last half of the play. How much of it is fact and how much is fiction?”
”More fiction than fact, definitely. We know that the human remains found in the cellar at Cavanaugh House along with a nineteenth-century wedding dress and thirty bars of silver was Daniel Murphy's lost Angel, his bride-to-be, Winifred Smith. Pretty much everything else was conjecture.”
”I expected your killer to be the lantern-jawed gardener.”
”That's our banker. He says playing the villain comes naturally to him. So were you shocked that the sweet Gertie Gallagher did the dirty deed?”
He grinned. ”Yes, you definitely caught me by surprise on that one. I suspected her, then dismissed her as a red herring. It's an entertaining show. Poor old Daniel Murphy.”
”He believed he lost his good luck when she disappeared.”
Mac reached over and took her hand once again. ”I can relate. So he drowned his sorrow in suds, lost his fortune, and had to sell his mountain, hmm? Which one is it, by the way?”
”Murphy Mountain?” Ali looked around, only just then realizing how high they had climbed above the valley that nestled Eternity Springs. ”Oh, wow. Look at this view. Isn't it gorgeous?”
Rather than take in the scenery, he looked straight at her. ”Absolutely.”
Ali felt herself blush. She was thrilled at his attention-truly she was-and yet a part of her wondered where this attention had been for the past six months. Six years. In that moment, she experienced a stirring of unease.
Had anything changed? Anything at all?
Maybe yes, probably no. How could she know unless they talked at a level deeper than the surface? Except she didn't want to talk deeper. She was enjoying the surface. The sailing was smoother here. And smooth sailing was what she and her husband needed right now.
So stay on the surface. Let him flirt with you. Let him seduce you. Seduce him right back.
Ali believed that if they managed to fix the physical part of the marriage, that would go a long way toward fixing the other troublesome spots, too.
She studied Mac, who had finally turned to look at the vista beyond. Maybe that was what he thought, too. Maybe that was what had brought him to Eternity Springs yesterday and lay behind his request that they hold off talking about anything more serious than the Lost Angel mystery.
Considering how she'd spent last night, Ali had to give a thumbs-up to that plan.
She pointed toward the snowcapped mountain that rose to the east of them. ”That's Murphy. It's owned by descendants of Lucien Davenport, the third member of the trio who made the Silver Miracle strike and founded Eternity Springs.”
”Have you met any of them? Davenports or Murphys?”
Ali hesitated. Sarah and Lori had shared the truth about Lori's paternity with her in confidence. In the past, situations like this had been the subject of debate in her marriage. Ali's opinion had been that she didn't keep secrets from her husband, any secret, that though they were a couple, they were a unit. They were one. Sharing something with one of them meant sharing with both of them.
Mac, on the other hand, could teach the CIA about keeping secrets. To Mac, a confidence shared with him was simply that, period. He would no more share it with her than a priest would break the seal of the confessional. Ali had long nursed a resentment about his stance. Unfair, perhaps, but real.
This time, however, rather than share Lori's secret, she said, ”No.”
Then Ali said to herself, Surface. Surface.
She grabbed the map to the fis.h.i.+ng spot. ”We should be getting close to the turnoff.”
”All right. Help me watch for it.”
Ten minutes later, she pointed toward a gate marked B&P. ”There it is.”
”B & P. Is that another area ranch?”
”I don't know. I haven't heard of it if it is.”
Mac used the access code provided by the outfitters to open the gate, then Ali closed it behind them after Mac drove the jeep through. The road became little more than a rutted path winding its way downhill through a forest of fir, pine, and aspen. She watched for wildlife in the trees as they drove, hoping to spot elk or bighorn sheep. She'd just as soon not see any bears or mountain lions.
”The outfitters said to look for a pull-off shortly after we pa.s.s off private land into the national forest,” Mac said. ”We park there, then Heartache Falls is about a twenty-minute hike. You still up for it?”
”Absolutely. I have my heart set on trout for supper.”
They located the turnoff, parked, and gathered their supplies. ”There's the trailhead,” Mac said. ”You ready?”
”Lead on, Magellan.”
Before they'd taken a dozen steps, a familiar voice called out, ”h.e.l.lo, Ali!”