The Locked Room Page 3

  “Come on, we only called you that because it made you so mad. We liked seeing you all riled up.”

  “Well, I don’t plan to stay long enough to get all riled up again. I plan to get out of Despair as soon as I possibly can.”

  When they neared the top of the mountain, he said, “Stop at the store and I’ll buy you a pop.”

  “Deal,” she turned into the gas station/grocery store combination and parked. Colette glanced at her gas gage, decided it was not dangerously low, and turned off the engine. “I’ll have...”

  “I remember,” he said hopping out of the truck and quickly closing the door.

  “Not root beer,” she muttered as she watched him go inside. The air was much cooler and resting for a few minutes seemed like a very good idea. She leaned her head against the back of her seat and closed her eyes. Ben was one of the few people she truly liked. He may have been in love with Emma Rose, but he was always a friend when Colette needed one. Ben was forever trying to convince her that her father meant well, and that if he didn’t love her, he wouldn’t care what she did. Colette was not convinced.

  A few minutes later, Ben came out with two bottles of root beer and handed one through the open window on the driver’s side to her. She smiled anyway, nodded her appreciation, and then opened hers while he went around and climbed back in the truck. The cold liquid quenched a thirst she didn’t realize she had. Maybe she liked root beer again after all. “Mind if we just sit here a minute?” she asked.

  “Not at all.” The view of the distant mountains from there was spectacular, and he couldn’t take his eye off it.

  “I can’t believe you were going to walk all the way home.”

  “I didn’t intend to. I wanted to surprise Mom but if no one picked me up, I would have called her to come get me. You might say you kept me from ruining her surprise.”

  She raised her soda can in salute and said, “You’re welcome.”

  Ben took a drink of his before he asked, “So, while I’ve been sailing the salty seas, what have you been doing?”

  She smiled. “Working, although I had a little trouble finding work. I had to lie my way into my first job.”

  “I bet. You were only sixteen – shoot, you’re only eighteen now.”

  “Nineteen. I was seventeen when I took off.”

  “You’re not jailbait anymore?”

  “Don’t tell Artie that, okay. If he asks me to marry him again, I might just have to shoot him.”

  Suspicious, Ben looked at her. “Are you armed?”

  She giggled, “No. Dad has a gun, but he keeps it locked in a gun cabinet. When I got older, he told me where the key was, and showed me how to shoot.”

  “You won’t have to shoot Artie. The last I heard, he tried to get Emma Rose to marry him. That was before she married Ronnie Hopper.”

  “Really? She married Ronnie Hopper? What a shock. She was in love with you and swore she would love you forever. Come to think of it, you’re the reason she stopped speaking to me.”

  He chuckled and finally took his eyes off the beauty of the mountains in the distance. “I know, it was a dumb thing I did, taking you to the high school play just to make her jealous.”

  “It worked too. She threatened to scratch my eyes out if I ever went out with you again.”

  “Yeah, well forever only lasted until I joined the Navy. She wouldn’t even write to me and then she up and married Ronnie.”

  “You still love her?”

  “Nope, I have seen the world and...”

  “It has seen you,” she finished for him.

  He was quiet for a time before he said, “I tried to hold your hand in the play, but you wouldn’t let me. Why was that?”

  “You know why,” she scoffed.

  “But you wanted to, didn’t you?”

  “Dreamer.”

  “Mom tried to get your address in Denver, but no one had it. I wanted to write to you.”

  “To tell me what a foolish child I was?”

  “No, to tell you what a foolish child I was. Emma Rose was all wrong for me, and it took me a year to realize that what I loved about her was that she hung around with you.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Don’t tell me that, I’ve already got a too much on my mind.” Colette started the engine, took the next turnoff and then stopped. The black, wrought iron sign hanging over the road said: “Welcome to Lost Bell.”

  “Why did you stop?”

  She didn’t answer.

  Colette Bouchard took a deep breath, let it out, and started down the steep incline that led to the wide valley below. The narrow two-lane paved road was carved out of the side of the mountain and had very dangerous hairpin curves. Now that she was older, she could see why her father was so worried about it. On her side of the road, rocks from above were always falling and that was something else to watch for. The other side had guardrails and beyond those, a cliff with a fifty foot drop straight down. More than one teenager had lost his life going off that cliff and just as she rounded the next bend, she spotted a place where the guardrail was missing. A red flag had been tied to what remained of the rail, indicating the authorities already knew.

  Ben sadly shook his head. “Wonder when that happened?”

  “Wonder who it happened to?” she whispered.

  “Not a pretty way to die, is it.”

  She was quiet after that, trying to avoid thinking the unthinkable. At last, she made it around the final curve and headed into downtown. The town, named, “Lost Bell” by a group of settlers looking for gold, was no different than a dozen other quaint old towns in Colorado. Word was, the gold miners found a lot of fool’s gold and very little real gold. At any rate, a man sold the town a shiny bronze bell they could ring in case of fire or flood. They built a fine new bell tower on Main Street to hang it from, but before they could, it was stolen by the man who sold it to them in the first place. The tower remained, the town was named Lost Bell, and the story became another legend of the old west.

  These days Lost Bell was more of a tourist trap, offering camping, mountain hiking, horseback riding, and bicycle accessible trails that led to a pleasant waterfall near the bottom of Mt. Lankton. There were two bed and breakfasts, and a lodge farther out of town amid acre after acre of grapevines and corn fields. A much grander downtown hotel boasted of magnificent mountain views, and had high price tags to match.

  Across from the hotel, a high-rise building housed the offices of all the important people in town such as the dentist, two doctors, a midwife, an eye doctor, a realtor, three insurance salesmen, and the law offices of Phillips, Phillips and Phillips. Currently, there was only one Phillips left, but he hadn’t bothered to change the name on the overly large sign on the side of the building.

  “I’m driving straight through town,” Colette said breaking the silence,” so if you want out sooner, let me know.”

  “I’m with you all the way.”

  Colette ignored the people staring at her as she slowly let her pickup creep down Main Street. “Yes, I’m back,” she muttered. “That should give them something to talk about over dinner.”

  “They probably need something new by now anyway.”

  “Probably.”

  He gawked at the closed sign in the window of her father’s restaurant. “Dave’s Place is closed?” he asked.

  “That’s news to me.”

  “That’s too bad, I was looking forward to one of his mega hotdogs.”

  She continued past the barbershop, the museum, the art gallery, the only clothing store and one of two fairly decent size grocery stores with ample parking. Two adjoining vacant lots had heavy equipment sitting on them as if building something new was about to begin. There were other stores too, but those were not on Main street. The residential section covered several blocks east of town, upon one of which she grew up.

  About the only thing Colette liked about the town was a gazebo that sat in the middle of a small park on the corner lot near her house. Because
he could see her, Dave often let her play in the park and when she was older, the gazebo was a peaceful place to sit and contemplate the world.

  The moment she turned the corner and spotted the house she grew up in, her mouth dropped. “Red? He painted the house red?” Colette was so awestruck she didn’t know what more to say. Even the trim around the windows and the door frame was red. It looked like...she couldn’t find anything in the world to compare it to. “He lost his mind. I hope he didn’t paint it red inside too.”

  Ben wasn’t paying attention. As soon as she pulled into her driveway, he hopped out of the truck, grabbed his duffle bag, and headed across the street. “Hey Mom, what’s for dinner?” he shouted.

  As she opened the door and got out, Colette could hear his mom screech for joy and watched as she flew out the door and into the arms of her son. Inside the Walker’s screen door, Sylvester, Ben’s hound dog, started to whimper at the sight of his master. She couldn’t hear what they said to each other, but a few moments later, Mrs. Walker waved and then took her son inside. Not long after that, she heard Ben yell, “Sylvester get off me!”

  “At least someone in this town is happy,” she mumbled.

  One thing hadn’t changed. The red house was still surrounded by a row of white rose bushes that had grown into a thick hedge. The prickly hedge served as a boarder that went all the way around the house and the bushes exposed to the most sunshine were already beginning to bloom.

  She reached for her bag, went to the front of the house, opened the gate and started up the walkway. From the front, the house looked small, but that was deceiving. The spacious two-story home had steps leading up to a wide porch, and a large window on each side to the front door let plenty of light into the living room/dining room combination. Beyond the dining room was a large kitchen, a laundry room, a bathroom, and a first floor bedroom her father used as an office. The second floor housed four more bedrooms and a second bath. The house was far more space than the two of them ever needed.

  Colette dug in her purse, pulled it out and then searched her keychain for the key to the house. It was then she noticed the notes taped to the door. The first was from the mortuary and the second was from the sheriff. Yet, it was the third note that gave her pause. It was from the town’s towing service and it made her heart sink. If his car needed to be towed, then it was an accident that killed him, and possibly it was his car that broke through the guardrail and went off the cliff. She may have loved her father only a little, but she never once wished him harm, let alone that kind of terrifying death.

  She opened the screen door, collected the notes, and then unlocked the front door. Half afraid of what she would see inside, Colette prepared herself and slowly opened the door. Thankfully, he had not painted the inside red too.

  Colette released her held breath.

  On the table next to their sofa, he left the lamp turned on the way he always did at night. Everything was in its rightful place, just as it always was, but then she learned her fastidiousness from him. ‘There is a place for everything and everything must be kept in its place,’ she could still hear him say.

  Well, he wasn’t there anymore, so she left the door open, closed the screen door, rebelliously dropped her bag in the middle of the room, and left it there. She marched into the kitchen, turned on the light and opened the first cupboard door. To her surprise, the cupboard was completely empty. He used to keep grocery money in a jar for her there, but...in a bit of a panic, she began to search all the cupboards. The dishes, silverware, and pans remained but even the spices were gone. The side-by-side refrigerator/freezer was empty too, but at least it hadn’t been turned off. Colette examined the inside of the refrigerator a little closer. When she was thirteen, he complained that it wasn’t clean enough, so she rebelliously left a spot of jam way in the back. If he noticed it, he never said a word, but now even that was gone.

  “Okay, Jawbone, what have you done?” She closed the refrigerator, leaned her back against the counter, and folded her arms. “Did you throw it all out because you knew you weren’t coming back?” It was an idea she truly did not want to entertain. If he committed suicide, sooner or later she would feel guilty for leaving him, and that was something she vowed never to do.

  One thing was for sure, if she didn’t find some money somewhere, she was going to get real hungry. The next logical place to look for money was in his office. As home offices went, his was ordinary with an old gray filing cabinet, a desk with a computer on it, and a chair on rollers that sat on a plastic mat. On a gold stand behind his desk was an American flag, and the walls were decorated with pictures of Mt. Lankton, the same old mountain she could see any time she wanted just by looking out the window.

  She went in, sat behind the desk and pulled out the middle drawer where all his ink pins and writing papers were neatly arranged as always. She rifled through that drawer only to find two dimes and a nickel. She stuffed those in the pocket of her shorts, and opened the top left drawer. Inside were stacks of cancelled check boxes and bank statements, all of which were useless. The bottom drawer and the two on the other side of the desk were filled with the same boxes.

  She opened one box and looked at the top check. It was made out to the light company and was written on, January 31, 2010. “Happy New Year,” she muttered. He was a stickler about paying the bills before the first of the month and, she suspected, never paid a late charge in his life. Colette put the box back and closed the drawer.

  Next, she went to the file cabinet and tried to pull a drawer out, but the cabinet was locked. Frustrated, she pulled the desk drawers out, stacked the check boxes on top and turned each empty drawer over looking for a key. On her knees, she looked and then felt under the desk for something that might be taped there - still nothing.

  “You hid that key too?” she moaned. “Of course you did.” She was about to go upstairs and check the pockets of his clothes when a knock on the front door distracted her.

  OLIVER LAWSON WAS ALREADY tired when his flight from New York to Denver landed. His body said it was evening, but it was only afternoon in Colorado. In another few hours, he would be in the Lost Bell hotel getting ready for bed - if he could sleep at all, that is. In the airport, he checked his cell messages. The travel agent sent a reservation for the Hotel, and at least he could stay in town instead of several miles away. He located his suitcase, made his way to the car rental desk, picked up the keys, and then found the assigned car in the parking lot. Before he started the engine, his phone rang.

  “Oliver?” Steven asked. “Where are you?”

  “I just landed in Denver. Where are you?”

  Steven put his phone on speaker and then laid it on top of the middle console in his rental car. “I’m on the west side of the Eisenhower Tunnel.”

  “What happened?”

  “I talked to Margo. Someone ran him off a cliff.”

  “You’re kidding?” Oliver started the engine and began to make his way out of the airport parking lot. “Where is Margo?”

  “She hired a driver and just got to Lost Bell. They drove by the house and saw Colette through the screen door.”

  “Any sign of Paige?” Oliver asked.

  “Margo doesn’t think she’s there yet.”

  “That’s good news, I’ll let you know when I hit town.”

  “I look forward to seeing you,” said Steven.

  “Same here.” Oliver heard Steven disconnect the call and slid his phone in his shirt pocket. He was still four hours away, providing he didn’t get lost, and maybe, just maybe, he could beat Paige there after all.

  “NICE TO HAVE YOU BACK,” Sheriff Ron Steele said when Colette answered the front door.

  “Word still spreads pretty fast around here, I see,” Colette opened the door wider so he could come in. “Was it Ralph or Karen who told you I was back?”

  “Emma Rose.” He took off his hat, waited for her to sit in an easy chair, and then found a place opposite her on the sofa. The sheriff bowed hi
s head for a moment. “We think it was a couple of drunk kids that ran him off the road.”

  Colette hung her head too. “Dad went off the cliff?” She tried not to, but she looked up in time to see him nod. She shifted her eyes back and forth a couple of times, but no questions about the accident came to mind. Instead, she asked, “Did you happen to find his keys? Everything seems to be locked around here.”

  “They’re probably still in his ignition.”

  The sheriff looked a little disturbed by her lack of emotion, as well as her question, but she needed the keys. “He had two sets, one with only two keys to the car on it and another set for the house and restaurant.”

  “If the second set was in his pocket, Walt over at the mortuary probably has it.”

  She puffed her cheeks. “Walt over at the mortuary probably wants me to pay for his funeral.”

  “Want me to call him and see if he found some keys?”

  “Could you?”

  Sheriff Steele pulled out his cellphone, punched the pad and put the phone to his ear. “Walt, how much you planning to charge Miss Bouchard for her father’s funeral...un huh, I see...You find any keys on his body...Good, I’ll come by and pick ‘em up.” He hung up and put the phone back in his pocket. “Dave paid for the whole thing in advance.”

  Colette was speechless. “Really?”

  “That’s what Walt said. He’d like you to come over first thing in the morning so you can make all the arrangements. I recommend a closed casket.”

  Colette dropped her gaze again. “I see.” She took a moment to clear her mind before she said. “I might as well get the keys in the morning then.”

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Fine.”

  “I’ve known you all your life and you don’t look fine to me. You father didn’t suffer, if that’s what you’re bothered about.”

  She supposed it might bother her later, so she was glad to hear it and sweetly smiled. “Thank you.”

  “Well, I better let you get settled in.” The sheriff got up, put his hat back on and headed for the door. Before he got it open, he turned back. “The tow truck might cost a buck or two. Dave’s car was totaled.”