J. Jance - Skeleton Canyon

Opening the door with one hand, he guided her up a wooden stair. “Stay right here until I turn on the light.”

The light turned out to be a butane-fueled light fixture that hung over a tiny kitchen table. “Sit,” he told her. “As you can see, this place is too small for two people to stand at once, so if you’ll sit and supervise, I’ll cook.”

Angie eased herself into the little breakfast nook and peered around. The place was indeed tiny, but it was also neat as a pin. As she sat down, she caught a glimpse of a well-made bed in a loft tucked up over a built-in desk. The paneled walls glowed warm and golden in the softly hissing light.

“How do bacon and eggs sound?” he was asking. “And do you prefer coffee or tea? I’ve become Americanized enough that I drink coffee most of the time, but I still like to have a nice cup of tea first thing in the morning.”

“Tea will be fine,” Angie managed.

Watching as he bustled around the trailer-getting out pots and pans, setting a pot of water to boil-Angie noticed that Dennis was so tall he had to stand with his neck bent to keep from bumping his head on the ceiling. “Doesn’t that bother you? ”she asked. “Having to hold your head that way?”

He shrugged. “I’m used to it. In order to get a higher ceiling, I would have had to go for a bigger caravan-”

“Caravan,” Angie interrupted with a frown. “What’s that?”

Hacker stopped peeling potatoes long enough to grin at her. “Sorry. I mean trailer. That’s what you Yanks call them. This one happens to suit me. The short wheelbase makes it possible for me to take it almost anywhere I want to go.”

Within minutes, Angie was enjoying the delicious aroma of frying bacon and sipping strong, hot tea from a beautifully delicate bone china cup and saucer. The pattern on the cup showed a long-legged blue bird standing, regal and serene, among exquisitely painted pink and orange flowers. When her bacon, eggs, and hash browns (homemade, from scratch) showed up a little later, the food was arranged on matching and equally beautiful crane-decorated plates. The silverware was a mismatched jumble, but the dishes themselves were elegant and beautiful.

“Where did you get this wonderful china?” Angie asked.

Dennis Hacker smiled. “It’s called Kutani Crane,” he told her. “It’s Wedgwood. The set was a gift from my grandmother. Sort of a congratulatory gift for getting this job. It meant I didn’t have to go back home and sign up to work in my father’s shipping business.”

“Your grandmother must have chosen that pattern because she knew you liked birds,” Angie said. “That was thoughtful of her.”

Dennis laughed out loud. “No,” he said. “Grandmum chose it because she likes birds. Remember who got me interested in birds in the first place. Come on now. Eat up. It’s getting late. We’ll need to hit the trail pretty soon. I’ll just leave the dishes in the sink and do them when we get back.”

They were almost ready to leave when a phone rang. “A phone?” Angie asked in surprise when she heard it ringing.

Dennis nodded apologetically. “Sorry,” he said. “Speak of the devil. That’s probably Grandmother right now. She’s never quite gotten the hang of the time change. She usually rings up early Sunday mornings before I go out to take care of the birds. She likes to keep tabs on me.”

Angie tried not to listen as Dennis chatted with his grandmother. The idea of someone calling all the way from England to visit on the phone with someone sitting in a camper parked in the middle of nowhere in the Arizona desert seemed strange to her. But then, the things Angie Kellogg did would probably seem strange to most other people, too.

While Dennis was busy talking, Angie contented herself with examining an old framed but faded photo hanging on the wall between the table and the desk. In brown and sepia-tinged tones, it showed an endless line of hundreds of men dressed in heavy winter gear and loaded with huge packs climbing what appeared to be an almost vertical snow-covered mountain.

“My great-grandfather took that,” Dennis explained when he got off the phone. “It’s called Climbing Chilcoot Pass.” He took the picture off the wall and handed it over to Angie so she could examine it more closely.

“Where’s Chilcoot Pass?” she asked.

“Alaska. These guys were all part of the Klondike Gold Rush. The shortest way to get from the States to the gold in Yukon Territory was over this mountain pass from Skagway, then down Lake Bennett and the Yukon River both.”

“They look like ants,” Angie said. “How come they’re all carrying so much stuff?”

“The Canadian authorities were worried that the miners were totally unprepared for the hardships of a Yukon winter. They didn’t want half of them dying of hunger, so they sent Mounties out to patrol the border and make sure no one crossed into Canada without at least a year’s worth of supplies-literally, a ton of supplies per man. That’s what these guys are doing-hauling their supplies up and over the mountains in hopes of striking it rich.”

“Did he?” Angie asked, handing the picture back. “Your great-grandfather, I mean. Did he strike it rich?”

“In a manner of speaking, he did,” Dennis said. “He’d always been something of a black sheep-an adventurer. Over the years, this particular picture has actually made him famous in some quarters. But the Yukon got to him in the process, made him a believer. He lost all of his grubstake and most of his toes before he finally wrote home and asked for help. His father paid for his return passage to England. In exchange, he had to shape up and go into the family business the way everyone thought he should have done in the first place.”

Dennis stopped and glanced at his watch. “Come on now,” he said. “It is getting late.”

Outside, the sky was just beginning to lighten into a pale gray. Once again, Dennis handed Angie up into the vehicle, closing the door behind her the way a gentleman might treat a lady or like someone handling one of those delicate bone china cups back inside the trailer.

For Angie, who had never before experienced that kind of treatment, it was a strange sensation. It made her feel all funny-both good and bad at the same time-as though she didn’t quite deserve it. Still, she was gratified to realize that, despite all her worries beforehand, nothing at all had happened. She and Dennis Hacker had eaten breakfast together and enjoyed it. The food had been delicious and the conversation fun. He hadn’t made a pass at her. Hadn’t tried to get her into bed. In fact, there hadn’t been a single off-color remark. In her whole life, Angie Kellogg never remembered having quite such a wonderful time.

“With all this cloud cover, it should be a glorious sunrise,” Dennis told her. “And just wait till you see all those hummingbirds. They’re unbelievable.”

The red Miata convertible came screaming down Highway 80, ignoring the speed signs, almost missing the curve. Joanna, merging into traffic from the downtown area of Old Bisbee, switched on her lights and siren and fell in behind the other car.

In actual fact, that part of Highway 80 was inside the Bisbee city limits and, as such, outside the jurisdiction of the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department. Since this was a dream, however, jurisdictional boundaries didn’t apply. In real life, Sheriff Joanna Brady had never once made a traffic stop, but in the dream landscape, that didn’t matter, either.

“Pull over,” she announced in a voice that reverberated as though being broadcast through a huge megaphone. “Pull over and step out of your vehicle.”

Ignoring the order, the driver of the Miata shot forward, racing down the grade onto the long flat stretch of highway that runs along the edge of Lavender Pit. Generations of speeding drivers have given that part of Highway 80 the unofficial name of Citation Avenue. The driver of the speeding convertible seemed determined to do her part to help maintain the legend, but Joanna wasn’t about to be outdone. This was hot pursuit, and she was determined to pull over the speeding motorist.