Heather Graham: The Hidden

The animal heads actually made Scarlet a little sad, but Trisha had told her that they were part of the tradition of the West and the guests expected them. Even so, Scarlet had never quite gotten used to them, and she had actually declined several meals at the main house because she felt so uncomfortable eating with the dead moose looking down at her.

Her place, however, was, in her opinion, just as nice as the main house, not to mention it was her own.

And neither her apartment nor the museum had trophy heads anywhere on the walls.

The apartment had been recently remodeled and refurbished. The master bedroom held two antique dressers, a washstand with a pitcher and bowl and an antique bed frame that held a very modern and comfortable queen-size mattress.

Scarlet loved her job here and was enjoying the emphasis on the Civil War, Reconstruction and westward expansion. It was so different from her work in Florida, which had focused on the Seminole Wars.

She walked into the kitchen and decided to brew tea while debating whether to go into town for dinner. She hadn’t actually left the property in a few days, so getting out and about was probably a good thing to do. She could become reclusive all too easily, she knew.

She was mulling over the strange pictures on the camera and pouring hot water over a tea bag when she heard a thump.

It was a loud thump. Loud enough to make her nearly spill scalding water over her hand.

She quickly set down the kettle and frowned. The sound had come from downstairs, where there shouldn’t have been anyone. She was certain she’d locked the door behind her.

Unease filled her. There wasn’t even a door between her and the downstairs, something she’d never thought about before.

She dug in her pocket quickly for her cell phone. After the camera incident, she didn’t want to sound like a paranoid idiot, but she didn’t want to take any chances, either.

She dialed the main house. “Hey,” she said when Ben picked up, “I’m just checking. Is anyone supposed to be downstairs in the museum? I just heard...something down there.”

“Not to worry, I’ll be right there,” he told her.

“I hate to bother you.”

“It’s a bother of about thirty steps. I’ll see you in two minutes.”

As soon as Scarlet heard Ben’s key in the door she ran down the steps to meet him.

He hit the switch that turned on all the overhead lights. “Let’s see what’s up, okay?” he asked.

“Thanks. I didn’t know—I thought maybe someone was supposed to be in here.”

He shook his head. “You, Trisha and I have keys. No one else. So what did you hear?”

“A thump.”

“A thump. Hmm. Well, let’s look around.”

The museum consisted of a single large room, with the platform holding Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir right in the middle.

They began to walk from one end to the other and found one of the frontiersmen on the floor.

“I’ll be darned. My great-great-whatever fell down,” Ben said.

“Poor Nathan Kendall,” Scarlet murmured. The mannequin was a handsome one; Nathan’s father-in-law had commissioned it—along with one of his daughter, which had disappeared at some time over the years—because he’d wanted them for his grandchild. Scarlet had never been sure whether she’d thought that was nice or creepy.

He grinned and hunkered down by the fallen figure. “I guess he wants to be sure we remember him. Well, we should. We’re both his descendants, after all. Give me a hand, will you?”

Scarlet helped him lift the mannequin. It was heavy, which made sense, since it had been carved from solid wood, then painted with care and dressed in period clothing. She assessed the handsome features for damage, thinking the nose might have been broken in the fall, but it was unharmed.

“Why would a statue just fall over?” she ventured.

“Who knows? So much mining went on around here, the earth is always adjusting. You okay?”

“Of course. The noise just startled me, that’s all.”

“I should probably install a security system out here. I never really thought that much about it. Locks on the doors. I didn’t even buy a gun and learn how to shoot until a few months ago. They frown on stockbrokers packing heat on the streets of New York.”

“I know how to shoot,” Scarlet said quietly. “But I don’t own a gun.”

“That’s right, I forgot. Your ex-husband was a cop.”

“Agent,” Scarlet said. “Federal agent.”

“I remember meeting him in New York one time, before you took that job in Florida. He seemed like a nice guy. But...none of my business. His loss is our gain, I say.”

“He is a nice guy,” Scarlet said. “Sometimes things just don’t work. Anyway, yes, he taught me how to use a gun.”

“Well, there you go—you’ve got a room full of guns right here,” Ben said. “Of course, half of these are older than the war between the States.”

“But most of them are in good working order,” she said. “Anyway, I’m fine. I think I’m going to head into town, but I’ll make sure I lock up when I go and when I get back.”

“’Night, then,” he said and left, locking the door carefully behind him.

Scarlet looked at the handsome face of Nathan Kendall. He and his wife had both been killed soon after he’d built the place, though their infant son had been spared. No one had ever been brought to justice for the murders. Some believed that the marauders he’d once ridden with had murdered them for revenge. Others said that Nathan’s father-in-law—a United States marshal who had taken over the ranch and raised the child, and who had opposed the marriage—had been responsible. Scarlet hated to think that a father might have killed his own daughter, but she knew that such things still happened to this day.

Back then, there had been no way to find the killer or killers. Forensic science had barely existed, and this little plateau had been truly isolated. Estes Park had been a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, and The Stanley had yet to rise on the mountaintop across the way.

“You behave,” she told the statue, wagging a finger at it. “I’ve been here two months and you’ve been good so far. Keep it up. I’m going out, and I don’t want to find that you’ve messed up the place when I get back, okay?”

She ran upstairs and grabbed a sweatshirt and her shoulder bag, then went back down.

She looked around the museum before leaving. Everything was quiet, just as it should have been.

But she was still spooked by the fallen mannequin.

Maybe it bugged her so much because it had come right after she’d seen those horrible pictures on her camera. Could a camera be hacked? She simply didn’t know.

She did know that she hadn’t taken those pictures.

If only Diego was here, maybe she wouldn’t feel so uneasy.

But Diego wasn’t with her. She had made that choice, and now...

She regretted it every day.

But this was her life now. And she loved Estes Park and the museum and the Conway Ranch. Okay, a mannequin had fallen over. No biggie. Maybe someone had bumped into it the other day and it had been unsteady ever since, so her walking around upstairs was all it had taken to tip it over.

And the pictures...

Ben had undoubtedly been right. She’d been hacked or tricked or played for a fool, somehow. She had just bought it on impulse at the electronics shop at the Miami airport, so some jerk there had probably fooled with it.

But how would anyone at the airport have known that she would be staying in the mountains, much less right here at this very ranch? She was certain she hadn’t said anything.

She let out a groan of self-disgust.