Finders Keepers (27 page)

To a roomful of laughter, the druggist sat down. So did Boompah. Elizabeth knew the two elderly men were longtime friends, each regularly patronizing the other’s place of business.

“All right, I’ll get to the point,” Phil said. He held up two sheets of paper. “I’ve got copies here of a couple of important documents, each one plainly stating that the mansion needs to stand. One of them is a letter from Grace Chalmers, and the other is the town charter of Ambleside, Missouri. I’d like to submit them as exhibits one and two.”

“Phil, this isn’t a court of law,” the mayor said. “And nobody’s on trial here.”

“All the same, I’ve met with a Jeff City lawyer.” Heads turned to stare at John Sawyer as Phil went on speaking. “You folks ought to know that these two documents hold a lot of water. The both of them together make a compelling argument against Zachary Chalmers’s tearing down our landmark. In fact, we want to go on record here asking Mr. Chalmers to refrain from demolishing Chalmers House so that we don’t have to bring legal action against him.”

“Who’s
we,
Phil?” Sawyer-the-lawyer stood up. “You got a dead rat in your pocket?”

Amid the chuckles, Boompah rose again. “He’s right! The rats are taking over the Rathaus!”

“Now calm down, everybody,” Cleo Mueller said. “Let Phil finish, and then we’ll open the floor. You’ll all get to have your say.” The mayor started to sit; then he straightened and focused on Phil. “Get to your point, Mr. Fox, would you? My ice-cream maker’s just about finished churning, and my wife put fresh peaches in this batch.”

Phil gave his fellow councilman a look of scorn. “The point is, folks, that we don’t want Zachary Chalmers to tear down the mansion. But we doubt that he has the wherewithal or the desire to refurbish it. So we’ve come up with a plan to solve the whole problem.”

Carrying an easel, he walked around to the front of the council’s table. “My fellow citizens of Ambleside,” he intoned, “what we have here with us tonight is a bona fide treasure. And I’m not just talking about Chalmers House. I’m talking about Zachary Chalmers himself.”

With a flourish, he set a portfolio of enlarged photographs on the easel. “Mr. Chalmers is responsible for some of the finest new buildings in mid-Missouri. And I’m going to show you what I’m talking about. Look here at this well-known state agency headquarters in Jefferson City. That’s Zachary Chalmers’s design. How about these doctors’ offices—recognize them? Sure you do. Here’s a restaurant and a beauty salon. And here’s his award-winning church!”

He propped a picture of the ugly church onto the easel. Elizabeth squinted at it, hoping it might look better than she remembered. It didn’t. Zachary shifted in his chair and turned to scan the room. His eye fell on her, but his face registered nothing.

“Now here’s my proposal,” Phil said.

“’Bout time!” someone hollered.

Phil gave the man a scowl. “If ya’ll can’t act right while we do city business, why don’t you stay home?”

“We got a right to be here, same as you.”

Phil started to reply, but then he took off his glasses, folded them, and slipped them back into his shirt pocket. “Since we’ve got proof that the house ought to remain standing and we’re confident Mr. Chalmers isn’t planning to restore it, I’d like to make a proposal. I hereby propose that we offer Mr. Chalmers Lots 54 and 55 in the new McCann Estates subdivision, which the city would purchase at a cost of forty thousand dollars. Then he can build his offices there exactly the way he wants. In exchange, Zachary would agree to sign over Chalmers House and the lot it sits on to the city of Ambleside. The city would then restore and preserve a small portion of the mansion as a historical marker in accordance with the desires of its previous owners. The city would use the remainder of the land to address a critical need—parking.”

At his final word, the room erupted in a buzz of conversation. Elizabeth clutched her hands together, trying to keep from speaking out. It wasn’t her business. The mansion had been Grace’s house, was now Zachary’s, and had nothing to do with her. She needed to pick up Nick. Needed to put a load of laundry in the washer. Needed to defrost some ground beef.

“How small a portion?” she heard herself say as she leapt to her feet. “What part of Chalmers House does Mr. Fox intend to leave in place? Are we talking about the front of the mansion, the first floor, the porch, or just a brick?”

“And that subdivision you’re talking about, Phil, is zoned for residential use only,” John Sawyer declared, rising from his chair. “You can’t put an office complex out there without changing the zoning to commercial or mixed use.”

“I agree with Phil,” someone else called. “We do need parking on the square. It’s a mess out there.”

“Folks keep on parking at my gas station!” Al Huff added, coming to his feet. “Some days I can barely tend to my own customers.”

“Let Mr. Fox tear down his barbershop!” Boompah roared. “Most of us have lost our hair anyway, and who rides the bus these days?”

“You leave my business alone, old man,” Phil shouted. “Your days at the Corner Market are numbered anyhow!”

“Hey, everybody!” Mayor Mueller stood and banged his gavel on the old steel folding table. “Hold on, now. You folks are all out of order. I can see we’ve got a lot to consider here. But right now, my ice cream’s melting, and I think this meeting’s gone on long enough. I move we table any discussion on the future of Chalmers House until the August meeting of the Ambleside City Council.”

“Second,” another councilman put in quickly.

“All in favor, say aye. All opposed, none. Any other new business? Well, then, that’s all for tonight, folks. Anybody who wants to try Ethel’s peach ice cream can come over to our place. But talk of the mansion’s off-limits.” He gave the table a final whack with his gavel, and headed for the door.

Elizabeth glanced at her watch and realized that Luke Easton would be wondering where she was. She would have to hurry if she hoped to beat the crowd out the door. Sidling through the throng, she edged out into the gloomy hallway of the basement and started for the staircase. As she reached the ground floor, a hand caught her arm.

“Elizabeth?”

She swung around to find Zachary Chalmers at her elbow. His green eyes were intense. “Can we have a few minutes alone?”

F
IFTEEN

“Alone?”

The look in Elizabeth’s eyes spoke volumes. Zachary knew their last conversation had changed things between them. Acting on his desires and his past experiences rather than behaving like a man surrendered, he had driven her away. For a few days he had felt justified, until the solitude and emptiness took over. Maybe he could patch things up. Or at least take a step in the right direction.

“I have to go get Nick,” Elizabeth said, glancing out the door as the crowd began to push around them toward the exit. “He’s over at Luke’s house.”

“Luke Easton?” Zachary felt a twinge of queasiness. He knew Elizabeth and Nick had been spending time with the Eastons since Ellie’s death. Now he wondered if the relationship between Elizabeth and Luke had gone beyond friendship. Luke was grieving, after all, and Elizabeth was a desirable woman. Through the years, their children had become best friends. All in all, it wasn’t that unlikely.

“Excuse me,” she said and started for the door.

“Wait.” He caught her arm again. “Will you be over at Luke’s house a long time?”

“No, I need to get Nick to bed, and I have to do some laundry …”

“Then I’ll wait for you.”

“Zachary, I respect your architectural skills, and I know you want to build your offices across the street. But I’m not going to sit still and watch Phil pull off this con.”

He stared at her. “You’re talking about the mansion.”

“Aren’t you?”

“No.”

She looked down. “Oh. Well, I’m not sure … not sure we have anything else to discuss. I’m sorry I was so blunt with you the other night, but I—”

“I’m not sorry. I needed to hear it.”

“I could have been a little more subtle.”

“I’m the kind of man who sometimes needs to be hit over the head with a two-by-four.”

She struggled to hold back a grin. “I don’t think I’d go that far.”

“Would you go as far as your porch swing with me?”

Drinking down a deep breath, she met his eyes. “Zachary, I’ve really got to get Nick and put him to bed.”

“And then there’s that laundry.”

She took a step toward the door. “OK, you can wait for me on the porch.”

Before he could respond, she fled. As the last of the crowd filtered out of the building, Zachary spotted Phil Fox heading up the stairs toward him. That was enough motivation to propel him out the door and onto the sidewalk.

“Hey, we don’t need any new offices in Ambleside, Zachary Chalmers,” someone called out to him. “We want to keep our mansion!”

“I go see my doctor in that professional building you designed in Jeff City, Mr. Chalmers,” an elderly lady said, touching his elbow. “I like it real good. The elevators are nice and smooth.”

“We need a parking lot!” Al Huff said. “You and Phil have got the right idea. Keep it up.”

“I thought that church in Jefferson City was just plain ugly,” someone else called. “You better not put up nothin’ that ugly here in Ambleside; I don’t care how many awards you win.”

Zachary jogged across the street and down the side of the Finders Keepers building to the back portion where Elizabeth made her home. As he cut across the grass, he studied the unlit silhouette of the mansion next door. All this hullabaloo over an old house. And yet, it was his heritage, his possession, his future.

On the porch he dropped down onto the swing to wait for Elizabeth. So, he had managed to alienate not only the owner of the local antiques shop but half the town of Ambleside as well. The fate of the old mansion had divided the populace and made him look like either a villain or a hero.

And for what? Did he really even want to live here any longer? Why should he concern himself with the feelings of a group of small-town folks? He didn’t owe Elizabeth anything. He hadn’t put down any roots here. Didn’t own a house. Had no clientele. So what kept him here? He could pack up tomorrow and go back to Jefferson City. No doubt, his former landlord would take him back. His friends would be glad to see him again … those few who had even noticed that he’d gone.

Friends? Did he really have friends in Jefferson City?

Women? He couldn’t think of anyone he would care to date.

Family? He’d severed ties and then lost track of his parents and siblings years ago. No one else had stepped into his soul the way Boompah, Nick, and Montgomery had. Certainly no one had touched him like Elizabeth Hayes did.

He lifted his feet from the porch floor and tried to swing back and forth the way he’d watched Nick do. Funny little kid. Odd, the way the child had managed to wrap himself around Zachary’s heart. Glancing across the porch, he noted the roller skates, the cluster of plastic toy soldiers, the sketch pad and broken crayons.

How could Zachary drive away from all this? Yet how could he stay?

He spotted the old Bible that had belonged to his aunt. It was lying on the small table near the swing; evidently Elizabeth had been reading it. She had left the book open to a passage in the Psalms. He remembered that Nick had insisted that the Bible was the place to turn when you were searching for something.

Seek and you shall find.

Reaching out, Zachary lifted the worn leather book and set it in his lap. He didn’t even know what he was searching for. Answers, perhaps. Directions. Connections.

He opened the cover and scanned the tiny notes his aunt had written all over the Bible’s title pages. Certainly she had searched throughout this book for answers to the questions in her own life. Flipping through the pages, he watched the faded gold edges flicker and glow in the porch light. In a passage of the first epistle to the Corinthians, he discovered an old pressed flower—a rose, he guessed—though it was brown and crumbly. Then he turned to the central section where the family tree had been printed in a flourish of black script.

Starting at the top, he began to read the names of his ancestors. There was Zachary Chalmers, the founder of Ambleside. Other names followed. Wives and children. Dates of birth and dates of death. Marriages. He located his father’s name, and his mother’s, and he noted the listing of children beneath, written almost too small to read. Then his eye fell on the name of his aunt, Grace Mariana Chalmers. She had never married, but—oddly—beneath her name in tiny letters was printed another name: Zachary Daniel.

Zachary lifted his head and focused on the yellow porch light. Moths flitted around it, drawn to the pale glow. Zachary Daniel was
his
name. Why had his aunt written his name beneath her own? Looking down at the chart again, he peered at the list of children beneath his father’s name. There was no Zachary Daniel among them.

“I ate three hot dogs,” Nick said, bounding onto the porch. His mother was right behind him. “Magunnery’s daddy said it was OK. I didn’t beg for the hot dogs, I promise, Mommy. They were right there on the plate, and Magunnery’s daddy asked me if I wanted another one and then another one and then …”

“Nick, three is too many,” Elizabeth said. “You should know that.”

“Hey, it’s Zachary!” The boy’s face lit up. “Did you come to see us? I ate three hot dogs at Magunnery’s house, but I didn’t beg. We played in her tepee. She has a tepee in her bedroom, and you can get inside it. It’s dark, but we weren’t scared because we lit a fire.”

“A fire!” Elizabeth gasped and dropped to one knee. “Nick, you’re never supposed to—”

“A
pretend
fire, Mommy. We made it out of Magunnery’s red sweater.”

Zachary stood, feeling as though every ounce of energy had been sapped from his body. “I need to go home,” he said.

“I didn’t mean to!” Nick cried. “I didn’t want to scare you and my mommy about the fire. I won’t ever do it again. Please stay here with us!”

“It’s not the fire, Nick.” Zachary walked toward the steps. “It’s, uh, it’s the old Bible. I need to … need to …” He focused on Elizabeth. “You knew, didn’t you? You’d read it. How long have you known?”