A Change in Altitude (14 page)

“We'd like to see the property tax records for 116 Pinion Lane . . . as far back as you have them, please.” Lucas looked the woman in the eye and spoke firmly and politely, his voice, which was still changing and had a tendency to break and rise alarmingly at times, modulated to its lowest bass.

“And why do you want that information?” the woman asked.

“My parents just bought the property and as a housewarming surprise, I'm researching its history. The librarian told me this was the place to start.”

“Oh, she did, did she?” The lines around the woman's mouth deepened. She turned to Alina. “Who are you?”

“I'm his friend. I'm here to help.” She had to force herself not to fidget. She hated adults who looked at kids as if they were all about to steal or break something.

“The older records are not computerized,” the woman said. “They're filed in ledgers, which are quite old and fragile.”

“We'll be very careful.” To Alina's surprise, Lucas pulled a pair of thin white gloves from his pocket. “I'm used to looking through rare books in the library's collections, so I know how to handle them,” he said. He handed a second pair of gloves to Alina. “You don't want the oil from your hands getting on the paper.”

The woman clearly didn't know what to say to this, but she soon recovered. “I'm not allowed to show that information to minors.”

“The property tax records are public records,” Lucas said. “They're not X-rated or in any way unsuitable for children, though most children wouldn't be interested. I am and if you won't show them to me, I'll ask Mr. Paxton to file a request with the court. You could be charged with obstruction, or at the least your boss probably wouldn't appreciate the judge's attention on this office.”

The woman looked ready to spit nails. Alina had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. Lucas, with his round glasses and serious expression, plus his formal manner of speaking, looked like a kid lawyer. He also sounded like he knew what he was talking about. Mr. Paxton was the lawyer who had offices over the Last Dollar Cafe. He looked more like a biker than an attorney, but Alina guessed he really was one, because as soon as Lucas said his name, the woman behind the counter turned white, then red.

She opened a half door at one end of the counter and motioned them through. “I'll show you where the records are kept, but you'll have to find what you need yourself,” she said. “I have other work to do.”

“Thank you.”

They followed her into a windowless, musty room that was scarcely bigger than a closet. The clerk switched on the light and pointed to shelves of thick, leather-bound books. “The records are arranged by year, beginning in 1887, when the county was established. Properties are listed according to their legal description, not by address. Be sure to put everything back the way you found it.”

With a stiff nod, she left them, leaving the door open behind her. Alina moved closer to Lucas. “Do you know the legal description of your folks' place?” she whispered.

“No, we'll just have to read through everything until we find it.” He leaned forward and squinted at the top row of books. “Let's start with 1966. That's the first year Adelaide shows up missing in the Women's Society scrapbooks.”

Alina slipped on the gloves and helped him lift down the massive book. It was probably two feet high and almost as wide. When they opened it, she let out a groan. “How are we going to read this?” she asked, staring at line after line of spidery handwriting.

“It's not too hard after you get used to it.” He pointed to the top of the page. “This must be the legal description—section and lot numbers from when the town was platted. If we can figure out how it's organized, we can turn to the part of town where the house is located and find it that way.”

“Or we could look for the name, McCutcheon.” She pointed to a column on the left side of the page. “This looks like it might be listings of the property owners.”

He nodded. “I think you're right. Come on. Help me look.”

Lucas was right; after a while the handwriting wasn't so difficult to make out. Whoever had written this was neat, and wrote with a lot of extra curlicues, but it was like cracking a code. She skimmed over numbers and looked for names, nodding when Lucas should turn the page. Ten pages in, she spotted it. “There!” She pointed to a line halfway down the page. “Cecil McCutcheon. That's him.”

“And there's the lot description.” Lucas wrote down the section and lot number while Alina hurried to pull down the book for 1967. He helped her wrestle it down, and they opened it to the page for the McCutcheon home. Lucas took notes, and they moved on to the next book. Within half an hour, they'd examined the records all the way up to 1969, when the Gilroys became the owners of the house.

They replaced the last book on the shelf and returned to sit side by side at the little table. “The house didn't sell until three years after Mrs. McCutcheon disappears from the Women's Society yearbooks,” Lucas said.

“So did Mr. McCutcheon kill her and bury her body in the garden and live there three more years?” Alina said. “In a small town, people would have noticed.”

“Maybe he told them she'd gone to stay with a sick relative.”

“Not for three years.”

“Maybe they divorced.”

“Maybe . . . but that would have been a scandal, too, I bet. People didn't divorce as much back then.”

“Maybe that's why she wasn't in the Women's Society,” Lucas said. “She was a scandalous divorcée and all the proper ladies didn't want to associate with her.”

“There must be some other way we can find out this stuff,” Alina said.

“We should look at old newspapers on microfiche to see if there's any mention of Adelaide McCutcheon's death or disappearance or a divorce,” Lucas said. “They have copies at the library.”

She covered her face with her hands and moaned. “Not the library, please. I've had enough of that place.” She lowered her hands and pushed back from the table. “And enough of being indoors. Let's ride out to your house and see how the remodeling is coming.”

“That's a great idea. We finished painting in my room over the weekend. It looks awesome.”

The sour-faced clerk was just as glum when they told her they were leaving as she had been when they arrived. She insisted on inspecting the records room and seemed surprised to find everything in order. “Well, everything looks as it should,” she said. “Did you find the information you needed?”

“We did,” Lucas said. “Thank you.”

Alina mumbled thank you, then followed him sedately out the door. But as soon as they hit the parking lot, they raced to their bikes and flew down the hill, toward the other end of town, and the former Gilroy house, soon to be home to the Gruber-Theriots.

They crossed Main, past a crew who was painting the old-fashioned light posts with a fresh coat of dark green enamel. Word at school was that the town was sprucing up for the arrival of some big-shot movie director who was thinking of making a movie in Eureka.

“Do you think they'll really make a movie here?” Alina asked, when they stopped to let a delivery truck rumble past.

“Why not?” Lucas said. “It would make a cool setting, don't you think?”

“I don't know. I don't know much about movies.”

“What's your favorite movie? Mine's
Lord of the Rings.
” Not waiting for her answer, he set off pedaling again, but slower, so that she could keep up and they could talk.

“I don't really have one,” she said. “I haven't seen many.” As in, hardly any. “My dad didn't believe in TV or movies.”

“So you didn't have a television—even for educational stuff like the History channel or public television?”

He didn't look at her like she was a freak, the way some people did. He was just being Lucas—interested in everything. “Nope,” she said. “And we lived too far from a movie theater to ever go.”

“Then I guess you've got a lot of catching up to do,” he said. “That could be fun. You can skip the dumb stuff that's a waste of time and concentrate on the classics worth seeing.”

“I guess so. Though right now, with school and everything, I don't have a lot of time for watching stuff. And I'm reading
The Hunger Games
trilogy. I think I'd rather read than watch TV.”

“Those are awesome books,” Lucas said.

“My dad definitely would have approved of them. He would have loved it if I'd decided to hunt with a bow. He thought I was a freak for wanting to be a vegetarian.”

“You're not a freak,” Lucas said. “I think being a vegetarian is cool—I just like hamburgers too much.”

He made a face and she laughed. They pulled up in front of his house. Though the yard was still overgrown and neglected, the house itself had received a fresh coat of olive green paint, with cream-colored trim. “D. J. put in new, energy-efficient windows and more insulation,” Lucas said. “Mom refinished the floors and painted stencils and stuff in some of the rooms. She said that was something the Victorians did—that was the time period when the house was first built. She said she's going to paint a mural in the dining room when she has the time.” He led the way up the front walk.

“I saw the mural she did in the Last Dollar,” Alina said. “It's gorgeous.”

“That was the first artwork she ever got paid for,” he said. “Now she does a lot of stuff like that. She did a ton of painting over at Mrs. Stanowski's new B and B.”

He opened the front door, which was unlocked, and led the way into the open front room. When he and Alina had been here the other night, it had been dark, and they hadn't been able to see much. “It's beautiful,” she said, admiring the golden oak floors and high ceilings. It was four times the size of her uncle's cottage where she was staying with her mom, and way bigger than the house where they'd lived in Vermont.

“My room is upstairs.”

Lucas's bedroom was at the back corner of the house, with big windows overlooking a side alley and an empty pasture, with mountains beyond. “There's a bathroom next door, and three other bedrooms. My mom and D. J. will have the biggest room, at the other end of the house, with their own bathroom.”

“What about the other two bedrooms?” she asked.

He leaned against the windowsill, hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans. “They haven't said, but I'm pretty sure they plan to fix up the one closest to their room as a nursery, then when the kid gets bigger, he or she can move down to the room next to mine.”

“So your mom is going to have another kid?”

“I know she's always wanted more kids, and I think D. J. would like to have some. And she's still young.”

“How do you feel about that?” she asked.

“I always wanted brothers or sisters,” he said. “Being the only kid can be good, but it sucks sometimes, too. The only thing is, I'll be a lot older than these kids. I mean, even if my mom gets pregnant now, I'll be fifteen by the time the baby's born. Still, it'll be cool being the big brother.”

A pain lanced through Alina as she thought of her own big brother. When they'd first left Vermont, she'd tried hard to put him out of her mind. He was where he wanted to be, with their dad, and he was fine. She didn't have to waste a lot of her time missing him.

But now she didn't know where he was, or if he was all right, and she couldn't stop thinking about him. “I have an older brother,” she said. “His name is Adan. He stayed in Vermont, to live with my dad.”

“You must miss him,” Lucas said.

She nodded. “The thing is, we don't know where he is right now. Or my dad either. My mom tried to call the other day and Adan wouldn't answer his phone. She finally talked to a neighbor, who said my dad moved and didn't tell anyone where he was going. The police are trying to find them, to make sure Adan is all right.”

“Oh, Alina.”

She nodded. “I know. It sucks.”

“What's your brother like?”

“He's different from me. Quieter, not as friendly. Kind of like my dad. Sometimes he's really sweet to me, teaching me things or talking to me. But he can be really mean, too. He'll say stupid stuff.” Stuff their dad would say—that girls were useless and it would have been better if she was a boy, for instance. “I think sometimes he's just trying really hard to impress my dad. That's important to him.”

“I never knew my dad, so I didn't have anyone to impress,” Lucas said. “But I guess, when you look up to someone, the way I look up to D. J., you want them to be proud of you.”

“They should be proud just because you're their kid,” she said. “You shouldn't have to earn a parent's love.”

He moved away from the window and put his arm around her shoulders. “No, you shouldn't have to earn love. It should just be there. The way my mom loves me. The way your mom loves you.”

She nodded and swallowed back tears. It was nice standing here, with his arms around her. It made her feel less like she was going to fall apart. Safe.

“If I tell you a secret, will you promise not to tell anyone?”

“I promise.” She studied his face, looking for clues as to what this big secret might be.

“After Mom and D. J. are married, he's going to adopt me. They have to file some legal paperwork and stuff, but when it's done, I won't be Lucas Theriot anymore. I'll be Lucas Gruber.”

She thought Theriot was a prettier name than Gruber, but clearly Lucas didn't see it that way. He loved D. J., and having him for a father was probably a dream come true. She squeezed his arm. “That's so great,” she said. “I'm really happy for you. But why is it a secret?”

He made a face. “I just don't want to jinx it. I'd rather wait until it happens, then let everybody know.”