Aunt Dimity Goes West (22 page)

Custom-made bookshelves lined three of its walls.

The banker’s desk rested before the fourth, beneath

the window I’d so hastily covered. A mahogany map

case stood beside the desk, and four oversized arm-

chairs, each with its own reading lamp and cozy afghan,

provided comfortable places to curl up with a book.

I sank into the nearest armchair and allowed my

gaze to travel back and forth across Florence Auer-

bach’s collection of books. When a sudden onslaught

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183

of rain peppered the window, I ordered myself to

ignore the sound and concentrate instead on Danny

Auerbach’s perplexing wife.

I hadn’t been able to tell Toby about Florence

Auerbach’s curious behavior because I’d promised Bill

I’d keep it to myself. I hadn’t told Toby that Florence

had for some unknown reason interrupted her family’s

Christmas holiday at the Aerie, that she refused to set

foot in it again, or that she’d ordered her husband to

sell the Aerie without explaining
why
she wanted it sold, but I knew that even if I’d told Toby all of those things, I wouldn’t have been able to convince him that

she’d turned against the Aerie because of the curse.

Toby didn’t want to hear about the curse.

James Blackwell, I argued silently, might have been

more open-minded than Toby. James had been living

and working at the Aerie at Christmastime. He’d wit-

nessed the family’s precipitate departure. As the days

ticked by with no sign of their return, he must have

asked himself why they’d abandoned a place they’d

once used so often. He could have concluded that

their flight had something to do with the curse he’d

heard about in town. It was clear to me, if not to Toby, that James had decided to mount an investigation of

his own.

Since James liked to read, it was logical to assume

that he’d combed through the books in Mrs. Auerbach’s

library for information on the curse, but he hadn’t con-

fined himself to books. He’d gone to the ranch, to speak with Brett Whitcombe, and to the historical society, to

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look for newspaper clippings, photographs, anything

that might tell him more about the curse. He’d also

purchased the tools he’d needed to take a firsthand look inside the mine—the place where it had all begun.

The more I thought about it, the more convinced I

became that James had gone into the mine for a very

specific reason: to prove to the Auerbachs that their

fears were groundless. Granted, he wasn’t a structural

engineer or an archaeologist, but he could have come

across something in the library that told him what

kind of proof to look for and where to look for it.

I had no intention of following James’s footsteps

into the mine, but I could try to reconstruct the

thought process that had led him there. I wanted to

prove to Toby that he was wrong about James Black-

well. I wanted to convince Toby that James had gone

into the mine to investigate the true cause of the min-

ing disaster, not to steal from his employers.

Hail was hammering the window when my eyes

finally came to rest on the lowest shelf of the book-

shelves to my left, where a gray archival box marked

bluebird historical society had until now sat un-

noticed in the shadows.

“Right,” I said, getting to my feet. “We start there.”

I pulled the box from the shelf and placed it on the

desk, beside the lantern. As I removed the box’s lid,

several things happened at once. An earsplitting crack

of thunder rattled the window, the power went out,

and I saw by the lantern’s stark white glare Abaddon’s

evil eyes staring up at me.

Sixteen

“

ori? Lori, wake up! Talk to me, Lori.”

I opened my eyes. I was lying flat on my

L back on the rug in the library. Swirling

sheets of rain were still battering the window, but the

lights had come back on. Toby was kneeling beside

me, clasping my right hand in both of his, looking very

young and very terrified.

“Hi, there,” he said, with a heroic attempt at a smile.

I peered up at him woozily. “W-what happened?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I heard you scream and

came running.”

“I screamed?” I said, frowning.

“Oh, yeah.” Toby nodded earnestly. “I heard it all

the way upstairs, with my door closed.”

“But why would I—” A muted flash of lightning lit

the draperies, and the memory slammed into me like

a tidal wave. I clutched Toby’s hand convulsively and

whispered, “It’s him,
him
!”

Toby’s eyes widened in alarm and he glanced over his

shoulder. “Is someone here? Did someone
attack
you?”

“Yes . . . no . . . not here . . . in Scotland . . . his face, I saw his
face.
” I closed my eyes again and shuddered.

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Nancy Atherton

“Scotland?” Toby put the back of his hand to my

forehead, as if he thought I might have a fever. “Are

you feeling dizzy, Lori? You may be dehydrated. I’ve

told you a thousand times to drink plenty of—”

“I’m not
dehydrated,
” I said crossly. I brushed his hand aside and pushed myself into a sitting position.
“I
saw his face.”

“
Whose
face?” Toby asked.

I groaned, slumped forward, and covered my own

face with my hands.

“You’re shivering, Lori. Let’s get you up off the

floor.” Toby lifted me bodily and set me down in an

armchair. He pulled the afghan from the back of the

chair and draped it around my shoulders, then stood

peering down at me anxiously. “Should I call your hus-

band?”

“No!” I barked. “Absolutely not. I don’t want you

to call anyone. Not Bill, not Annelise, not
anyone.
”

“Okay, okay, I won’t.” Toby scratched his head and

looked around the room helplessly. “How about a cup

of tea?”

I pulled the afghan closer and smiled wanly. “You

sound just like my husband.”

“Do you faint a lot at home?” he inquired.

“No, but I wake up screaming every morning.”

Tears began to blur my vision. “And Bill always makes

me a cup of tea. He’s so
kind.
Like you.” I bowed my head. “I’m sorry,Toby. I ruined your night off.”

“I didn’t
want
a night off.What do you want me to
do
?” Toby’s voice held a hint of desperation.

Aunt Dimity Goes West

187

I dashed the tears from my eyes and pointed a trem-

bling finger at the banker’s desk, saying, “Bring the box to me.”

Toby hesitated, then lifted the gray archival box

from the desk and placed it carefully on my lap. I

gripped the arms of the chair, took a shuddering

breath, and lowered my gaze slowly to the old, sepia-

toned photograph I’d last seen by the light of James

Blackwell’s lantern.

The man in the photograph stood ramrod straight

against a backdrop of busy Victorian wallpaper, with

one hand clutching the lapel of his ill-fitting suit coat, the other resting on the back of a dainty, velvet-covered chair. He had a thin, pale face; a halo of curly, black hair; and dark, piercing eyes—
crazy
eyes, eyes as black and fathomless as the pits of hell.

“Abaddon,” I breathed.

“Aba who?” said Toby.

I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the man’s pale

face. “Do you know who he is?”

Toby leaned over my shoulder to peer at the photo-

graph, then picked it up and turned it over. “I have no

idea, and there’s nothing written on the back. Since the picture came from the historical society, my guess is

that he came to Bluebird to strike it rich. A lot of men had portrait photographs taken in those days, to show

the folks back home how successful they were, even if

they weren’t.” He dragged an armchair close to mine,

slid the box from my lap onto his, and began pulling out photo after photo. “See? There are lots more just like it.”

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Nancy Atherton

He seemed relieved to have something to do, even if

he didn’t understand why he was doing it. He showed

me one sepia-toned photograph after another, formal

portraits of nameless men wearing suits that were too

tight or too baggy or too short or too long for them.

As their frowning, intent faces passed before me in

rapid succession, I wondered if any of them had struck

it rich, or if they’d all died the mean deaths Rose Blanding had described in the cemetery.

A guttural rumble of thunder rolled from one end

of the valley to the other and I shrank back in the

chair. Toby must have noticed my reaction because he

waved a photograph under my nose like smelling salts.

“Look,” he said, with determined cheerfulness. “I’ve

found a picture with a label. It’s Emerson Auerbach. He

must be Mr. Auerbach’s great-great-great-grandfather

or something. Pretty interesting, huh?”

Emerson Auerbach had clearly struck it rich. He

was vastly proportioned and meticulously attired. He

wore a top hat, a pinkie ring, and a monocle, and a

multitude of fobs hung from the watch chain that

spanned his elegant, outsized waistcoat. He held his

many chins high and regarded the camera with a look

that seemed to say, “I am a man to be reckoned with.”

“And here’s a group shot taken at the Lord Stuart

Mine,” said Toby, pushing a larger photograph into my

hands.

I peered down at the picture and for a moment for-

got the storm. Twenty-one men in shirtsleeves sat on a

parched and rock-strewn hillside, facing the camera.

Aunt Dimity Goes West

189

They were thinner, scruffier, and much dirtier than

Emerson Auerbach.The hats they wore were shapeless,

their shirts had no collars, and their fingernails were

caked with grime, but they exuded an almost palpable

air of cockiness. They, too, I thought, were men to be

reckoned with. I bent low over the photograph to ex-

amine each individual face, then caught my breath and

sat back with a start.

“It’s him,” I said, trying not to panic. “The man in

the first picture.”

“Where?” said Toby.

I pointed to the back row. “He has a beard and he’s

wearing a hat, but the eyes . . . the eyes are the same.”

Toby took the photograph from me, studied the

figure at the back of the group, and nodded. “It’s the

same guy, all right. He must have showered, shaved,

and dressed in his Sunday best when he had the por-

trait taken. I wouldn’t have recognized him if you

hadn’t.” He shifted the archival box from his lap to the floor and held the photo out to me. “Does he remind

you of someone, Lori? Someone in England? Like

Brett Whitcombe did when you first saw him at the

ranch?”

“The man Brett reminds me of is as close to a saint

as I’ll ever meet,” I told him. “The man in the photo-

graph reminds me of . . . death.”

“I
knew
it,” Toby said, under his breath. He stood abruptly and began pacing the room, muttering angrily, “I
knew
Amanda had messed with your head. I could see it in your face when she talked about death

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Nancy Atherton

coming to claim you. I swear, I’m going to strangle

that woman the next time I—”

“But Amanda was right,” I interrupted. “Death came

to get me, and I got away from him.”

“What?” Toby stopped pacing and swung around to

face me. “When? Where?
Tonight?
”

“Not tonight. It happened seven weeks ago.” I

sighed heavily. I didn’t want to tell Toby about the

shooting, but I didn’t want Amanda Barrow to shoul-

der the blame—or to take credit—for my strange be-

havior, either. Apart from that, I was heartily ashamed

of myself for lying to someone as open and honest as

Toby. If anyone had earned the right to hear the truth,

he had. I motioned him to his chair and said, “Please.

Sit down.”

Toby resumed his seat, and I looked fixedly at the

floor. I didn’t want to see the mingled horror and pity

that would soon fill his eyes. I’d seen it too many times before.

“I didn’t hurt my shoulder falling off a horse,” I

began. “I was shot. By a lunatic. In Scotland. During a

thunderstorm.”

“Ah,” Toby said softly.

“The bullet nicked an artery. I almost bled to death.”

I heard a sharp intake of breath and pressed on. “The

man who shot me called himself Abaddon. He wanted

to kill Will and Rob, too, but I stopped him. His

face . . .” I glanced down at the gray archival box, then quickly averted my gaze. “His face was as pale as milk.

Aunt Dimity Goes West

191

He had wild black hair, and his eyes didn’t seem to have any whites. They were as black as pitch, without any

spark of emotion, like tunnels to hell.”

“Jesus,”
Toby said in a hushed voice. “What happened to him?”

“He was struck by lightning,” I said, “and he fell

hundreds of feet into the sea. He couldn’t have sur-

vived, but his body was never recovered. I know it’s

absurd, but there’s a part of me that thinks he’s still