Hostage Midwife (16 page)

Chapter Eighteen

Friday, 2:15 p.m.

The chopper ride into the mountains did a lot to improve Nick’s mood. His attitude toward flight was jaded; he used the helicopter charter service often to get to job sites and check out new properties. But he enjoyed this trip because Kelly was having so much fun, pressing her nose against the window, pointing, grinning and sighting a family
of elk from the air.

When they landed at an unmanned airfield near Hearthstone, a fully gassed SUV stood ready and waiting. He tossed their bags in the back, got behind the steering wheel and set their course on the navigational system. The Valiant gold mine didn’t have an address, so he had to use county routes that would bring them close.

“I could get used to this,” she said. “Flying
from place to place, having everything ready and waiting when you arrive. I can’t believe you arranged all this with one phone call.”

“I’m a frequent traveler,” he said. “Working in the mountains means I cover a lot of territory. It’s efficient to take a chopper.”

“If I need to get back to Valiant in a hurry, how long will it take the pilot to respond?”

“I’ve got him on speed dial.
I guarantee you won’t be late for a birth.” He drove away from the airfield onto a main road. “We’re going to the mine first. There’s not a lot of daylight left and I don’t want to be climbing around in the dark.”

“How long has it been since the mine was operational?”

“The last time a Spencer took gold out of this hole in the ground was around World War II. That was in my grandpa’s day.
He was the last of the real gold miners in the family, and he never believed that the mine was played out. He thought the next big strike was just a few feet deeper or in a different direction.”

“He sounds like a gambler.”

“I guess he was. He liked to dream.”

“That’s the Spencer heritage,” she said. “You’re a dreamer, and so was your uncle.”

But the dreamers weren’t calling
the shots. Spencer Enterprises had taken a different direction when they diversified into property sales and construction—a safer way to earn a buck than prospecting for gold. His father had marched them down that path and Jared continued his tradition.

Even though he’d cooled off, Nick couldn’t understand his brother’s endless focus on profit. Jared had devoted less than five minutes to
mourning Samuel before he started talking about the bottom line and irresponsible spending.

“This is beautiful,” she said. “I love the mountains.”

“Enough to stay in Colorado?”

“Oh, I’m staying. My scumbag ex-husband isn’t going to chase me away again. But I’m not sure whether I want to stay in Valiant and work with Serena. I could join an established clinic in Denver. Or I could
even start my own midwife practice in the mountains.”

“Maybe in Breckenridge,” he said as he turned off the main road into a rocky canyon.

“That’s your backyard,” she said. “Do you know if there are other midwives in your area?”

“I couldn’t say.”

It seemed odd to think of birthing babies as a business venture, but that was exactly what it was. Midwives weren’t entrepreneurs,
but they were self-employed businesswomen and had to take the competition into consideration.

The unspoken question about Breckenridge was whether she wanted to be near him on a regular basis. After last night, he knew that he wanted to be with her...for a while. He couldn’t say how long. When they first met, Nick had been looking for a distraction, not a mate. He wasn’t sure if he was ready
for a commitment.

The squiggly line on the navigational system pointed toward a road that wasn’t there. “I’m not sure if we’re going in the right direction. I haven’t been up here in years.”

Kelly leaned toward the windshield and squinted into the distance. “It looks like there’s a turn about twenty yards farther.”

He took her suggestion. After they’d gone about a mile on the one-lane
gravel road, he began to recognize the surroundings. On his right was a towering granite wall. On the left, the terrain was less rugged. A narrow creek rippled at the side of the road.

Though it was chilly, he put down his window and inhaled the mountain air. Even if they didn’t find a clue, he was glad they’d come here. The mountains fulfilled a primal need in his soul. Having Kelly with
him made it even better.

After another few miles, he turned off the GPS navigation. His memory was a better guide. After a few more turns, he parked at the base of a hill. “We have to walk from here.”

“No problem. I wore my hiking boots.” She bounded out of the SUV and came toward him, hopping from one foot to the other. “I forgot how comfortable these are. I hardly ever wore them when
I was in Texas. Different place, different shoes.”

He crossed the creek and found the well-worn path that led to the mine. “This used to have a narrow track for ore carts. You can still see some of the weathered planks they used for ties.”

She hiked beside him, and they gradually ascended the rugged hillside. “How did they get the ore carts back to the top? Going downhill was easy. But
back up?”

“The ore was emptied out at the bottom, so the carts weren’t as heavy. I think they used mules.”

The closer they got to the mine, the more of the wooden ties were in place. All the metal tracks were gone.

“Great view,” she said.

He had to agree. A thick forest of conifers, pines and evergreens were spread across rolling hills and jagged rock formations. In the far
distance, he could see snow-capped peaks.

They circled a huge boulder and were at the boarded-up entrance to the mine shaft. There was nothing to indicate that this was the famous Valiant mine, one of the richest strikes in the Rocky Mountains. The posted signs said: Danger. No Trespassing. Keep Out.

“I’ve only been inside once,” he said. “My dad pulled open some of the boards and we
climbed through the hole. I couldn’t have been more than seven or eight, and I thought the mine was really cool. My dad turned off the flashlight, and we were in total darkness. You couldn’t see your hand when it was right in front of your face.”

“Bringing a flashlight would have been smart,” she said.

“Why? We’re not going inside.”

“Somebody else has.”

Behind one of the heavy
weathered boards that blocked the entrance was a piece of plywood that looked new. The nails that held it in place were still shiny. When he pulled on the old board, the whole piece came away, creating an opening that was wide enough to slip through.

The discovery gave him hope. They might actually find a useful clue. “My uncle must have been here.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, but if
we retrace his path we’ve got to find something.”

She took out her cell phone and turned on the light function. “This isn’t real bright, but it’s better than nothing.”

He loved that she was adventurous enough to follow him into a deserted mine shaft. “Not afraid of the dark?”

“The dark doesn’t bother me, but I have to warn you that I hate bats. If we run into any of those ugly little
beasts, prepare to hear me scream.”

Using his own cell phone for light, he wedged his body through the narrow opening into a space that was about twelve feet wide. The walls were rough-hewn rock, and the ceiling was just high enough for him to stand upright without stooping.

The glow from their cell phones barely penetrated the thick, heavy darkness. He had the same eager, excited feeling
he’d had when he was a kid. This was incredibly cool.

“What are we looking for?” she asked. Her voice was calm, but he noticed that she’d latched on to his jacket and attached herself like Velcro to his side.

“I’m trying to think like my uncle.” He stooped and ran the light from his cell across the stone floor, looking for footprints. “Why would he come here? He had to be looking for
something.”

“Buried treasure,” she said.

“Not likely.”

“Why not? Buried treasure fits with your family history.”

“The Spencers were prospectors,” he said, “not pirates.”

“Think about it. The gold that was mined out of here is like treasure.”

“Are you making a point?” he asked.

“I actually think I am,” she said. “There’s only one reason to come to a gold mine,
and that’s gold.”

He followed her logic. “Samuel came here because he was considering opening the mining operations again, and he needed information.”

“What kind of information?”

“I know that you take ore samples for testing to assayers. I don’t know much about it.”

“There are plenty of experts,” she said. “The School of Mines is right outside Denver.”

They went deeper
into the mine, finding where it narrowed into a corridor. Nick stopped. Beyond this point, the footing got dangerous. Long ago, his father had warned him about mine shafts, holes in the floor that went straight down. “Without the right equipment, we shouldn’t go any deeper.”

“Good.” She pressed up against him. “I don’t want you to think I’m scared, but I’m kind of creeped out. It’s so dark.
I feel like I’m inside a shadow.”

He pulled her into his arms and held her close. Without her support and encouragement, he might have given up on following the trail that had led to this point. He might never have known what his uncle was doing. “Thanks for sticking with me.”

She held up her cell so he could see her smile. “Like glue.”

“Let’s get out of here.”

Coming into
the fresh mountain air after being in the mine felt like a rebirth. After replacing the boards that blocked the entrance, they headed back to the SUV. Daylight was scarce in the canyon, and shadows had already darkened the western wall.

Driving back toward the tiny town nearest the mine, he tried to think like his uncle. For the past six quarters, Spencer Enterprises had been in financial
trouble. Marian had been vetoing Samuel’s ideas for new construction projects. “He was trying to help, thinking outside the box.”

“The price of gold keeps going up and up,” she said. “Opening the mine might be profitable.”

“And he borrowed the money from Radcliff to test out his theory before presenting it. A million sounds excessive. It wouldn’t take that much to run some tests and
talk to the experts.”

His theory had a lot of holes, but it was the best he could come up with. He continued, “Even if Samuel was making plans for opening the mine, it doesn’t explain why he was so secretive about it. He’s always relied on Julia for research and information. Why wouldn’t he tell her?”

“That seems like a troubled relationship,” she said.

“It’s just their way.” Samuel
and Julia had been together for so long, he couldn’t imagine them being separated. “The two of them like to bicker.”

“I don’t know them the way you do, but I know what it’s like when a woman falls out of love. The light goes out in her eyes. Her voice turns cold when she says his name.”

“Is that what you see in Julia?”

Kelly nodded. “Whenever she talks about Samuel, she sounds angry.
It’s almost like he betrayed her.”

“Maybe he did. Arthur didn’t get what he wanted in the will. Julia might have been expecting more.” She’d been with Samuel for more than thirty years. If he pulled the rug out from under her and cut her inheritance, she’d be mad. “She deserved more.”

“A better question,” Kelly said, “is why didn’t your uncle tell you?”

She was right. Nick was the
logical person for Samuel to confide in. Why hadn’t his uncle come to him? He could tell himself that they were both too busy, but it was a lousy excuse. If Samuel had wanted to talk, a drive to Breckenridge wasn’t too far to deter him. All it would have taken was an invitation from him to have Nick meet him in Valiant or at the gold mine.

His high hopes for a solution slipped down a few
notches. He didn’t want to think they were on the wrong path, but it was possible. If only there was something tangible...a sign.

He drove to the edge of the town that consisted of a tavern, a tiny grocery store with an attached gas pump, a motel and a couple of houses. If you blinked, you might drive by without noticing the town existed.

“I’m surprised there’s a motel,” she said. “This
doesn’t look like a place that gets many visitors.”

He guided the SUV into the motel parking lot where there were no other vehicles. The log building was shaped like a long shoebox with six numbered doors in a row. The sidewalk in front had been recently swept, but the more important upkeep—like painting the eaves and repairing a section of roof that looked damaged—hadn’t been done. “This
place has been here for a long time. Maybe even before World War II when there were miners who needed rooms.”

Outside the office, there was a wooden carved sign with the name of the motel. Nick repeated the word to himself. “Hearthstone, hearthstone.”

“Heart of stone,” she said.

Samuel’s last words had significance after all.
Heart of stone.
He’d been telling them to come here.

Chapter Nineteen

Friday, 4:52 p.m.

As soon as Kelly walked through the door, the plump woman in the motel office greeted her with a huge, friendly smile and introduced herself as Dora. She turned down the volume on the television that was across from her easy chair and went behind a small desk. “Do you have reservations?”

It seemed unlikely that anyone had reserved a
room at the Hearthstone Motel in the past few decades, but Kelly was polite. “We’re here on the spur of the minute. Do you have a room?”

“I’ll put you at the very end so you can have some privacy. You picked a good weekend to visit. The weather is supposed to be grand.”

Nick slid a hundred-dollar bill across her desk. “In addition to the room, we’re looking for some information. Can
you help us?”

The hundred quickly disappeared into Dora’s ample cleavage. “I’d be happy to help you out.”

“My uncle stayed with you a couple of times in the last few months. He’s an older man, tall and skinny. His name is Samuel Spencer.”

“Oh, my, yes, I remember. There’s all kinds of stuff about him on the television. The police don’t know if he killed himself or was murdered.
A terrible thing.”

“Isn’t it?” Kelly figured that Dora’s life revolved around the television set. Though she’d turned down the volume, she’d left the picture on. “It’s just like those crime shows. We’re looking for a murderer, and we need to know everything you can tell us about Samuel Spencer.”

“This is about the woman, isn’t it? He met her at the tavern. When I saw them together, I
thought he was old enough to be her father, but she came closer, and she had plenty of lines on her pretty face. I think they were lovers.”

Kelly was tempted to turn around and give Nick a big, fat “I told you so.” She’d seen the signs of trouble in Samuel and Julia’s relationship, and she was becoming a bit of an expert on infidelity. Keeping her focus on Dora, she asked, “Did you happen
to get her name?”

“Not the first time she met him,” Dora said. “On another time, she was the first to arrive and made the room reservation. If it’ll help, I can go through my records and dig up her credit card information.”

“We’d appreciate it,” Nick said.

Dora took a metal file box from her lower desk drawer, opened it and started thumbing through receipts. In less than a minute,
she found what she was looking for. She read the name. “Virginia L. Hancock.”

Kelly thanked her warmly. Chatty little Dora had given them a real lead to follow. “Is there anything else you can tell us?”

“You aren’t the first people who came looking for information about Mr. Spencer. A couple of weeks ago, there was a private investigator. He had pure white hair.”

“Trask.”

* * *

A
FTER
PROMISING
D
ORA
that they would come back for the room and paying her another hundred, they went back to the SUV. Kelly was beside herself with excitement. “Do you think Dora is right? Did Samuel have a lover?”

“He was close to seventy,” Nick said. “That doesn’t mean he wasn’t still interested in the ladies. I still can’t see him doing this to Julia.”

Kelly decided that
saying “I told you so” would be mean. Nick wanted to keep a good opinion of his uncle. “Do you think we can find Ms. Hancock?”

He took his laptop from his overnight bag. After about five minutes of searching, he had an address and phone number for Virginia L. Hancock. She lived near Silverton, about twenty miles away from Hearthstone.

“She doesn’t have a website,” he said, “but there’s
a brief bio. She’s a professor, retired. And she used to work at the Colorado School of Mines.”

While they drove, she realized that she was doing most of the talking. Nick seemed withdrawn, as though he was rethinking his opinion of the uncle he’d loved and trusted. Finally, he said, “I can’t believe Samuel cheated.”

“Technically,” she said, “he and Julia were never married.”

“But
he made a commitment to her. He built her that incredible house.”

She liked that he had strong feelings about standing by his commitments. One of the first things he’d said to her was that she needed to be honest with him. She had to tell him the truth to earn his trust. “You’re a puzzling man, Nick Spencer. People keep saying that you’re irresponsible, but it’s the opposite. You never break
your word.”

“Yeah, I’m a real Boy Scout.”

“You’d look cute in one of those uniforms with the short pants.”

“Cute?” He scoffed. “No man likes being described as cute.”

“If I said what I really thought about you, we’d have to pull over and make love right now.”

“You know I’d like that, but not right now. We’re so close to finding out why my uncle was murdered. Let’s hope
Virginia L. Hancock has the answers we need.”

The GPS navigational system proved invaluable in locating Ms. Hancock’s secluded cabin in the forest. Her name on the mailbox told them they’d come to the right place, but not at the right time. All the lights were off. It didn’t look as if anybody was home.

The fact that she wasn’t here didn’t stop Nick. As soon as he parked by her front
door, he was out of the SUV and climbing the four stairs to a covered porch that wrapped around the front and one of the sides of the cedar structure. He rapped on the door. “Ms. Hancock? Are you here?”

Kelly crept up the stairs behind him. This felt like an intrusion, even more so when Nick turned the handle and walked into the house. She stopped short at the door. “You can’t do this. It’s
breaking and entering.”

“It’s entering,” he clarified. “The door was unlocked so I didn’t have to break anything.”

“We’re going to be in so much trouble.”

Still, she followed him inside, turning on lights as she went. The front room of the house was half sitting area and half office, with a huge, cluttered desk and files spilling in every direction. Whatever Ms. Hancock’s talents
were, housekeeping wasn’t one of them. In the kitchen, her dishes were washed and stacked in a dish rack but not put away in the cabinets. In the large bedroom, clothes were tossed across chairs and several pairs of shoes looked as though they’d been left where she walked out of them. The clutter extended to more than dirty laundry. “Nick, come in here.”

He appeared in the doorway. “What
did you find?”

She pointed to a table by the dresser where it appeared that Ms. Hancock had been cleaning her rifle, make that two rifles. There were three other handguns. “I don’t think we want to make this woman angry.”

“But we might want to be prepared to meet her.” He picked up a .45 caliber automatic and checked the clip. “Fully loaded.”

“Put that down.”

But he carried
the gun with him into the front room where he scooped a couple of magazines off the sofa before sprawling across it. “We don’t have a listing for her cell phone. It seems like the only thing we can do is wait for her to come home.”

Kelly hated this plan. If the woman who lived here came home and found intruders, she’d be justified in blasting them into next week. Colorado had the “Make My
Day” law that gave homeowners the right to shoot trespassers without fear of prosecution. “We should wait in the car.”

“Why not be comfortable?”

She went back through the house, turning off lights. When she got to the living room, she flipped the switch and darkness fell around them. “Come on, Nick. I’m serious about this. A woman living alone with lots of guns isn’t somebody to mess
around with.”

He grumbled as he got to his feet. “The SUV isn’t comfortable enough to sleep in. What if she doesn’t come back until morning?”

“For a Boy Scout, you have a real bad attitude.”

When she opened the front door, she thought she saw someone near the SUV. “Ms. Hancock? Is that you?”

Nick grabbed her arm and pulled her back inside. Half a second later, she heard a blast
of gunfire. Her worst fear had been realized.

Crouched on the floor beside him, she asked, “What do we do now?”

He moved to the window, stood and peeked around the edge. In a low voice, he said, “Bring me the rifles and the other handgun.”

“You can’t shoot at her. She thinks she’s defending her property.”

He ducked in time to avoid being hit by several bullets that shattered
the window. Rising, he poked the automatic through the broken pane and returned fire.

Staying away from the window, Kelly shouted, “Hold your fire, Ms. Hancock. We don’t mean you any harm.”

“Save your breath,” Nick said. “I can see the shooter, and it’s not a woman. Kelly, get the guns.”

She darted through the house to the bedroom and armed herself. She hadn’t fired a rifle in a
long time, so she figured she’d be better off using one of the handguns.

There was more gunfire at the front of the house. She went toward Nick, who was standing beside the window, trying to look out. “He’s behind the SUV. I don’t want to disable our vehicle.”

She passed him the rifle. “Are you any good with one of these?”

“I’m better with a bow, but I might make this shot.”

“What should I do?”

“Go to the other window and lay down some fire to attract his attention.”

She scooted across the room and got into position. On the other side of the room, she saw Nick take a knee and sight through the lower part of the window. “Now,” he said.

Shooting blindly, she blasted through the window and pulled her hand back. Nick got off two shots.

“Did you hit
him?” she asked.

“I can’t tell.”

There was more gunfire outside, an exchange of gunfire. Kelly heard the distinct sound of two different guns. But no shots were being fired at the house. And then, there was silence.

A woman’s voice called out, “People in my house, identify yourself.”

“I’m Nick Spencer. You knew my uncle.”

“Stay where you are. I’m coming in.”

The door
opened and a woman stepped through. She had a gun in each hand. “Sorry about your uncle, Nick.”