With that, he started the powerful motor, letting the bike take him out of sight. Beth stood as long as she felt she could in the cool air, in her bare feet, then finally went back into the house. She picked up her tote and opened it to begin to pull out clothes, dressing right there in the living room.
Beth spent the next few days in her house learning her new identity. She became
Diane McClure
. She put the pictures of her aunt in a couple of places, putting the rest into drawers along with papers that she would normally keep if she had lived here after her aunt died two years ago. She kept a nice fire going to keep the house warm, slowly burning the papers that she felt she had committed to memory, but no longer needed. She sat next to the fireplace so she could stir the ashes. She also burnt paper plates and food wrappers along with junk mail.
Diane
found she had a mail drop in town with a forwarding address. She decided one of the first things she would do was to have the mail delivered to the box out at the road. She was over her loss of her family. She was ready to face people now. She quit traveling. She found a small set-up for an office under the second floor. She opened a simple locked cabinet that to her, looked fireproof, and found papers that belonged to her aunt. She added them to the papers she had memorized, and needed to keep. They included the title on the house, the payments on the insurance, bank account information, and the Title to the jeep.
Beth—no, she remembered she was now
Diane
—burnt anything that had Sally Denison on it. She was getting very adept at changing identities. She decided she would need new clothes. Her first choice would be to drive a couple of hours away. She wanted to buy clothes where no one would know her. Later, she could buy some items locally. Finally, she took the cash she had in the jeep, and drove to Billings. She had looked up on the Internet and found a couple of good second hand stores, so she bought expensive clothes at cheap prices. After she was satisfied with her purchases at these stores, she went to the
Salvation Army
store to get a tote, hiking shoes, jeans and shirts.
On her way out of town, Diane stopped at a standard gas station. She filled up and bought some food along with charcoal lighter fluid. She found a back road and changed clothes. She then put everything that looked flammable in a pile so she could soak it with the lighter fluid. After lighting the clothes, Diane sat for a while to watch it burn until she was satisfied that there was enough gone to make it unrecognizable.
She dumped her shoes one at a time in different garbage containers behind stores.
By the time she got back home, she was satisfied she was Diane McClure She waved at the mailman who was already down the road at the next mailbox. She looked at what he’d left in her box, which included advertisements. There was one letter from a law firm.
Diane dumped the junk mail in the trash. She was in her kitchen to get a glass of juice, so she used a knife from the counter to open the letter. Part way down, she found the important paragraph:
When reviewing our files to close out old items, we find that Ms. Bernice Walters had hired us to research a contract she had entered into in 1992 with a company interested in the mineral rights to her property. It has been brought to our attention that you now reside on the property concerned in this contract.
We would like to have information if the property is still in the name of Ms. Walters and if she still needs us to continue this file or close it out. Any particulars you can give us on this matter will be appreciated and will save us time and cost on a search of records and location of Ms. Walters or her heirs as we have escrow in her name.
Diane read the rest of the two-page letter that mostly told her how to get in touch with the law firm. She took the letter out on the back porch to reread it carefully. She also took time to examine the envelope. She couldn’t see anything unusual about the two pages or the envelope. If it was a trick, she was sure the tricksters would be smart enough that she wouldn’t see a problem on first glance.
Diane went in to get her laptop, decided on a cup of coffee, and took both back out to enjoy the cool day. First, she spent an hour checking the web site of the law firm, reviewing its history. She did background checks on the two main partners, along with the fifteen associate lawyers. They also had nine office staff, and according to what she could find out on the Internet, they were all squeaky clean.
That was the first thing that bothered her. Diane would have felt better if there had been problems in some of their histories. The firm seemed to have been around for forty years and did civil matters only. They never had handled anything that made waves or caught the news.
She went into town with the letter and took her time to speak to a few people. At the little restaurant where she ate a piece of pie, a couple of people said it was good to see her back. People were strange. She had gone through her papers, but found no reference to a local lawyer. She decided it would be safe to assume she hadn’t met one. She didn’t want to make inquiries, so after leaving the restaurant, she wandered the small town, buying magazines from an outside stand at the drugstore.
There was the sign she was looking for, the simple announcement of a law office. She crossed the street and entered the building, liking the tinkle of the overhead doorbell. The front office was empty, but immediately, a man came from the back. He appeared to be in his fifties and looked like he’d enjoyed every year. He was dressed in comfortable slacks, loafers, and a shirt open at the neck with the sleeves rolled up. He had his hands full of papers.
“Well, hello. Thought you were someone else. Can I help you?”
She smiled. “Yes, I am Diane—”
He interrupted her at this point in her introduction. “It is a small town, Ms. McClure. I also heard about your aunt. I am sorry for your loss. I didn’t know her very well, with all her traveling. Wait, I regress. Can I help you?”
“Well.” Diane held up her papers, laughing. “I am in need of some legal advice or help.”
So, Diane hired William Bruce, Attorney. She liked him because he was smart. He wrote off a letter to the
squeaky clean
law firm that he represented one of the heirs of the estate of the late Ms. Bernice Walters. They had no interest in following up in any search for minerals and would retain all rights of any type to be held intact to the said property. Since they were strongly attached to the Shoshone Tribe, they wanted any remaining funds in escrow donated to those schools, intact. Said heirs and estate required peace and quiet so any future communication must go through this law office, etc, etc.
* * * *
Diane soon got bored, so it didn’t take her long to begin looking for something to occupy her time. She tried the local branch of the University. She signed up for a couple of courses, and finally stumbled on what she needed. The American Native Historical Archeology Department needed help for some digs. It took a lot of persuasion accompanied with a little of her money in the right direction to find herself out in the heat, dust and dirt, digging with small tools along with the special brushes.
She found she fit in with this group. It surprised her, but she liked them all. The younger students were serious, dedicated with aspirations of finding the
great
secret, no matter how small. The older students, working for their Doctorates, were quiet, looking at a hoped for future, yet totally engrossed in each artifact, each stone or piece of wood. This was doubly important to them. Then, there were the teachers—whoops, Professors, Advisers or some Aides. All of this group had attached themselves to the dig because of the prestige, the chance to publish, the funding to get out of the small offices or the lecture halls.
From late teens to almost retirement age, they all fit together due to their interest in what the earth told them about history. They were a somber, hard working group. No one shirked carrying heavy loads or cleaning tools.
In the evenings, at the campsites or in the local bars, no one got loud, no one made uncalled for passes. She knew that some people paired up, but this wasn’t a
Match.com
dig site. These interesting, educated people had something to discuss. The best part was the lack of interest in the other guy’s life. They care for the solicitous treatment of the history of the first people who lived on these lands. They didn’t have interest in the current background of the people around them.
Diane worked in the dig through the hot summer into the winds of autumn. Their professors told them that with winter, they would move down into the desert for those who wanted to work in blistering heat in the day, and cold nights on the hard packed soil. Because they often stayed out in camp for days, she only went home on weekends to do laundry or to sleep in a soft bed. She bought food at the local large grocery store, out on the edge of town, food for the camp with a steak to cook at home to have a nice change.
Diane went through all her mail, again, mostly junk. This allowed her time to go on line so that she could pay bills to keep the house in safe mode. She needed to get rid of the week’s worth of dust. She had invested a little of her money, so she would track it on line just to see how it was doing in these rough times. She was glad not to hear from the
squeaky clean
law firm, so maybe it was nothing to worry about. Noble just had her jumpy.
Diane spent an afternoon on her laptop, paying what bills she could on-line. She decided to transfer more funds to her Internet bank account. She also made up her mind to take out a substantial amount of cash. She hadn’t promised Noble that she would live here for any long amount of time, even though he had seemed to hope she would stay here.
She sat with hot tea on the front porch steps, feeling the cool winds that were pushing the brown leaves, announcing winter was on its way. She had already signed up for the dig in the desert, but sitting here, she began to put her life together, thinking of her time at the digs among the intelligent workers. Now she realized she was just filling time so she wouldn’t think.
It was time to think. She was marked by a
shifter,
and she wasn’t sure what that really meant—except intelligent people didn’t believe in such beings. On top of that, Noble told her that a rich maniac who wanted to live forever and would try anything to reach his goal was chasing them. He thought he could get it through their blood. No, none of this was real. It might be her world, but she didn’t want it. She wanted the real world where the only place all of this happened was on the B grade movies on TV.
It didn’t take her long to dig out her special belt. Diane, then headed to town to the bank. It was short work to draw out five thousand, spinning an excuse about needing the funds for the dig. This brought a warning from the manager along with the cash. She decided a nice piece of pie would be worth the trip so she went down to the little restaurant.
She was half way through her great-tasting blueberry pie when she became conscious of the fact that the little restaurant was unusually quiet. This small hub of meet-and-greet, where all the local gossip was passed faster than the speed of light—well as fast as human mouths—was quiet. There were a lot of tables with men as well as a few women with them. The little gossip being said was in hushed tones. Something tragic had touched this small town.
Diane lost her appetite, left a tip, then went up to the checkout counter by the front window. She was counting out ones when her eyes wandered out the window, looking towards the law office that was her next stop. Except for the clean window that had the simple words on it, the firm was no longer there.
What she was seeing was new plywood covering most of the front of the building, tucked between other, taller brick structures. The area not covered was scorched, with long black streaks radiating from beneath the clean plywood.
Diane heard the waitress clear her throat as she waited for payment. She looked back over the ones and told the girl to keep the small change. The girl put the change in the cup on the counter.
She nodded her head at the mess across the street. “What happened over there?”
“Oh, I forgot, you’ve been out at the college. Poor Mr. Bruce. Must have been a gas leak. No one knows why he was working so late. Fell asleep. Everything inside was destroyed, even the stuff in the so-called fireproof cabinet. It just blew up and when it fell back, it split. Fireman told me that.” The girl was talking slowly in a low voice so that the others wouldn’t hear.
“The mortician says they have only pieces of him for burial. The town is in a mess. Lots of important papers for everyone are now lost. We all loved Mr. Bruce. We have these damn outsider investigators asking too many questions.” She looked around. “Does them no good. No one talks to outsiders.” Then she was gone to refill coffee cups.
Diane was glad the waitress was busy. It gave her a moment to lean against the counter, to catch her breath and to find strength in her legs so that she could start walking. She got back in her jeep. She started to drive east with no thought of where she was going.
Then, it dawned on her what she was doing. She was running again. This time she was running from two, the Black Ghost and an Egomaniac who wanted to live forever. Okay, she had a vehicle she could sell for less than it was worth in some back alley. She had the money she had drawn from the bank. She had run with less. She had the Internet Bank, yet even that was risky. It would be left alone until some emergency, then used only once.
Brandy was a new identity for Beth but it fit the woman with the multiple, tiny, long blond braids scrubbing the old bar as if she could erase the years of spilt liquor, sweat and unmentionable other moisture that had drained into the wood. It was past closing time. The front door was locked. The staff, what little that amounted to, was either cleaning up the room or cleaning up themselves, depending on their jobs.