4 Buried Secrets (6 page)

Celeste smiled at her. “Belladonna? Oh no, she’s fine. In fact, I feel sorry for the intruders because if they tangled with her, I’m sure they didn’t come out of it unscathed.”

***

“Thanks for those turkey giblets,” Morgan said as she closed the door to the suite after showing Dixie the damage.

“You’re welcome. I hope Belladonna likes them, just don’t feed her too much at one time. It could upset her digestion.” Dixie bent down to inspect the lock, which had been jimmied open. “I’ll get someone to fix this right away and someone at the front desk today to make sure no one goes in your rooms.”

The sisters thanked her and they all went downstairs. Celeste headed toward the front door.

“Oh, before you leave, I have something I wanted to show you.” Dixie had her hand on the knob of a beautiful oak door with a recessed stained glass panel that led to a room on the left of the staircase.
 

The girls turned toward her and she opened the door revealing a small library. Celeste followed her in. It was like going back in time. The room was lined with bookshelves filled with old books. The scent of decades old pipe smoke lingered in the folds of the thick mahogany-colored velvet curtains that flanked long sun streaked windows. The rich jewel tones of the oriental carpet provided a perfect balance to the brown leather chairs set in front of a carved marble fireplace.

“Wow.” Morgan stood in the doorway, her eyes wide as she drank in the room.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Dixie smiled proudly. “It’s one of the few rooms that didn’t get renovated over the years. It’s exactly as it was in 1880.”

“I was hoping to restore the rest of the hotel to its original glory eventually.” Dixie’s face tightened as she looked around the room. “But that takes a lot of money and I’ve sunk most of what I have into it already.”

Dixie crossed over to a bookshelf and pulled out a dark blue canvas bound book. “This here is a book about Dead Water back when the mines were working.” She held the book out to Celeste. “It was written in 1889. I figured you might be interested in some of the information seeing as you were so interested in the town.”

Celeste looked down at the heavy book—
The Story of Dead Water
. “This is great. I’m sure it will help us a lot.”

“Okay, good.” Dixie ushered them out to the foyer and closed the library door. “Feel free to read it while you’re here. I just need it back as it's part of the library that my great-grandmother curated here when they built the hotel. I don’t know if it’s has monetary value, but it’s got a lot of sentimental value to me.”

“Of course.” Celeste opened the book and thumbed through the crisp thick pages she couldn’t wait to start reading. “I’ll take good care of it.”

She followed her sisters outside, her face still buried in the book, the slight smell of mildew tickled her nose. The sun was hot, as usual, and she could hear a car pulling out of the parking lot.

Beside her, she heard Morgan’s sharp intake of breath.

“What?” Celeste looked up from the book to see her sister staring at the taillights of a Dodge that had just pulled onto the road.
 

“Did you see him?” Morgan asked.

“See who?” Fiona asked. “The guy in the car?”

“Yes … did he look familiar to either of you?”

Celeste stared down the road but the car was too far away. “Sorry, I didn’t see him. Who did you think it was?”

Morgan shook her head. “No one. It was just my imagination. This break-in thing has me a little spooked.” Morgan slid into the passenger seat, leaving the back for Celeste.
 

“So anyway, where do you guys want to go shopping?” Morgan turned to her sisters and pretended like she’d forgotten about the guy in the car.

Celeste shrugged. “Where-ever.”
 

Fiona started the SUV and pulled onto the road, heading in the opposite direction of the other car.
 

“So you don’t want to tell us who you thought was in the car?” Celeste pressed.

“Car? What car?” Morgan joked. “Really it was just my overactive imagination. Let's focus on more interesting and fun things like shopping.”

“If you say so,” Celeste answered. But she wasn’t fooled. Because if it really was nothing like Morgan insisted, then why did she keep glancing out the rear view mirror every ten seconds?

The girls got back from their shopping trip at the same time the delivery truck from Ace Furniture—the local furniture store the sisters had bought a replacement couch and chairs from—was pulling into the parking lot.

Fiona sprinted over to talk to the deliverymen—giving them instructions as to where to bring the furniture, Celeste presumed, as she watched Morgan glance around the parking lot uneasily.

“Looking for someone?” Celeste asked.

“No. Just looking around.” Morgan flipped her long black hair over her shoulder as she grabbed the shopping bags from the back seat and headed toward the hotel door.

Celeste walked after her, the old book she’d been browsing through the whole trip clutched to her chest. She followed their new beige microfiber couch up the stairs and watched while the deliverymen exchanged the old set for the new. Fiona had made some sort of deal with them to take the ruined furniture away and Celeste breathed a sigh of relief when they finally disappeared with the last of it.

“This furniture looks great.” Fiona plopped down into one of the chairs. “And it’s a lot more comfortable too.”

“Buzz fixed the lock and I’ve just about finished setting up this surveillance stuff.” Luke said
 
from atop a ladder where he was running a wire to a small camera. “Jolene’s setting up the new computer we bought.”

“So, did Dixie see or hear anything last night?” Jake’s eyes went from Fiona, to Morgan to Celeste.

“No. Apparently, only the chef was here due to some big town meeting and he was busy in the kitchen. Didn’t hear a thing.” Morgan pressed her lips together. “But we did find out there is a mysterious guest that came in yesterday.”

“Mysterious?” Jake’s eyebrows lifted.

“Well, not really mysterious,” Celeste said, “although Morgan seems to think so. It’s just another guest. Some guy.”

“And you think he is involved with this?” Jake asked Morgan.

“No. Not really,” Morgan said. “I just have a funny feeling about him.”

Celeste, Fiona and Jake exchanged a glance. Jolene looked up from the new laptop she was setting up on the table. “After everything I’ve seen, I wouldn’t take
your
feelings lightly, Morgan.”

“I’ll look into this new guest,” Jake said. “Now, someone help me move this couch out so I can paint the wall.”
 

“Is he the only guest staying here besides us?” Jolene asked.

“Apparently,” Fiona answered as she struggled to pick up the end of the couch opposite Jake. “I haven’t seen anyone else.”

“You know, I think it’s sad that this place isn’t doing well. It’s a nice place, even though this suite could use some updating.” Celeste settled into a chair and opened the book Dixie had given her. “I’d like to do something to get that Sheriff to back off. I feel sorry for Dixie.”

Morgan came to Fiona’s aid and the two of them moved their end of the couch away from the wall. “Did you find anything good in that book?”

“Book?” Jolene asked.

“Yeah, Dixie lent us a book on Dead Water.” Celeste held the book up. “I was thinking it might have some clues to the treasure and it’s actually very interesting. There are even some pictures.”

Celeste opened the book to the last page she’d read—a section that talked about the various mines and different claims for each section of the mine. She read with interest; she knew little about mining and didn’t realize that different people could purchase or stake claim to different areas of land to mine in.
 

That section of the book contained several glossy pages with pictures from the 1870s, which contained images of the people of Dead Water as well as the old mining tools and household items they used. She wondered what the tools and household items were, her heart clenching as she realized her boyfriend, Cal, would know exactly what each item was used for.
 

Cal Reed had been a friend of the family, and her best friend, since she was a kid. For most of their lives, that’s all they’d been—friends. But the events of the past year had brought them together and somehow they’d turned into more than friends … much more.
 

Cal, who owned a thriving antique and pawn store, had business back home, otherwise he’d be here right beside her. Celeste missed him.
 

She sighed and turned back to the book. Until Cal could join them, she might as well bury herself in her work.

“So, what’s next on the agenda?” Jake spread a canvas tarp over the floor and back of the couch, then took out some sandpaper and started on the wall.

“We still have some asking around to do, I think,” Morgan said. “Did you ever talk to your contacts, Jolene?”

Jolene made a few exaggerated taps on her keyboard, then closed the laptop and stood. “I haven’t had a chance, but now that I’m done setting this up, I think it’s the perfect time to head on over and talk to them.”

Luke hopped off the ladder and folded it up. “Our main objective is to find that treasure. I don’t want to get sidetracked with looking for whoever broke in. We don’t know
why
they did or if it even has anything to do with the treasure, but if it does, we’ll probably find out soon enough without having to go looking for answers.”

“Okay, so then where do we look?” Fiona asked. “Seems to me we’re no closer to knowing where it is now than we were yesterday.”

“Maybe we are.” Celeste held up the book, the page open to a picture of a grizzled old miner with a long beard and long hair. “According to this book, this guy here is Shorty Hanson and he had rights to a mine … mine number seven.”

Fiona shrugged. “Yeah, so, there were a lot of miners back then.”

“Sure, but I was thinking … what better place to bury a cache of stolen treasure, than right in your own mine?”

Luke came over to look at the picture. “You know, that's not a bad idea. Gold and silver that the miners had cashed in to the bank was stolen from the stagecoaches. If he stashed the stolen nuggets in the mine and then brought them out little by little later on, no one would question it.”

“It would be the perfect setup,” Morgan said. “Just bury the cache and then come out with it a little bit at a time over the years.”

“Absolutely. I think you’re on to something, Celeste,” Luke said. “Now if we can just figure out which mine is number seven, we might be in business.”

***

Jolene changed into the new light blue tank top she’d bought to round out her wardrobe since most of it had been splattered with paint during the break-in. She glanced in the mirror, thankful she’d been wearing her favorite jeans and cowboy boots when the thieves had their paint party. She wasn’t much of a clotheshorse but the jeans had taken a long time to break in perfectly, as had the boots, and she would have hated to lose them.

She rummaged in her bag for her makeup kit and before she knew what she was doing, she’d put a thick coating of black on her eyelashes, making her blue eyes stand out even more than usual. Feeling embarrassed with herself, she shoved the mascara back in her bag.
 

She didn’t usually bother with makeup—why was she doing it now? Because she was heading to the bar? She hoped it wasn’t because of the cute bartender, Kyle—surely, she couldn’t have been
that
taken with him. She knew he wasn’t boyfriend material and she wasn’t the one-night-stand type. Tearing herself away from the mirror, she skidded out into the common room of the suite.

“I’m going to head over to the bar and see if my contacts know anything about the break-in while you guys are finishing up,” she said as she hurried to the door.

“Umm ... okay. Do you want me to go with you?” Morgan asked.
 

Jolene rolled her eyes at her older sister who tended to be overprotective with good reason—their mother had jumped to her death from the cliffs outside their home when Jolene was only fourteen and Morgan, who had been twenty-eight at the time, had had to put herself in the role of mother. And since their father was already dead, her sisters had all chipped in to finish the parenting job. Jolene appreciated all they had done for her … but she was twenty-one now and didn’t need parenting anymore.

“I think I’ll be fine … I’ll only be a few minutes while I’m waiting for you guys to get it together so we can go to the mine.”

Morgan narrowed her eyes, but gave in. “Okay, see you in a bit, then.”

Jolene slipped out of the door, ran down the stairs and out into the hot desert sun. It was late afternoon and the sun was shining directly into her face. She squinted and then put her hand up to shade her eyes, noticing a movement over by the bar.

Was that someone ducking behind the building?

“Hey! You!” She sprinted over to the building, skidding around the corner where she’d thought she’d seen the person go, but no one was there.

“What the heck?” Jolene scrunched up her face. She was sure she’d seen someone.
 

Walking back to the front of the building, she shrugged.
Probably just my imagination going wild due to the break-in
, she thought as she tugged open the door to the bar.

Inside, it was just as dim as the day before. She headed straight to the bar, letting her eyes adjust as she walked. As she slid onto a bar stool, she noticed the tables and other stools were empty. One lone glass sat at the end of the bar, empty except for a few ice cubes melting on the bottom.

“Hey there.” Kyle had turned at the sound of the door opening and now leaned against the back bar smiling at her.

“Hey,” she said.

“Coors?”

“That would be great.”

He poured the beer and slid it across the bar to her along with a square white napkin. “Hey, some guy was just in here asking about you and your sisters.”