CHAPTER 5

The train came to a halt with an ear-buffeting metallic screech and the piercing hiss of steaming brakes. Alex Gunnison stood on the platform so excited he was hardly able to restrain himself from dancing.

She descended, wearing her beauty like a robe, and he went to her nearly on a run, throwing his arms around her and kissing her right there in the midst of the crowd.

“Welcome back, Roxanne!” he said. “You don’t know how I’ve missed you!”

She squeezed him until he couldn’t breathe. “Of course I know. You think I didn’t miss you just as badly?”

“Then you should have come home sooner.”

“I couldn’t cut the visit short. It had been too long since the last one for me to do that.”

“I know. But I can’t help but be selfish. I want you all to myself.”

She gave him the kind of smile that could still melt him despite their several years together. “I’m glad. Now tell me: how are the cats?”

“Fine. I’ll bet you thought about them more than about me.”

“Nonsense! Did you water the plants every day?”

“Of course.”

“Oh, Alex, can we go to Barrigan’s tonight? I’d love to sit back and relax and enjoy a good meal and just have the chance to look at you for a while.”

“A marvelous idea. I’d already thought of doing that even before you mentioned it. I ate there while you were gone.… The place isn’t the same without you.”

He carried her bags in one hand and held her arm in the other, happy to be with her again. He put aside thoughts of Brady Kenton and decided, almost unconsciously, not to mention tonight his upcoming trip to England. There would be time for that later.

Brady Kenton had intruded into the life of the Gunnisons for years. Tonight he would not.

*   *   *

But as Gunnison and his wife were finishing their meal, lingering over dessert and coffee, Brady Kenton did intrude.

“Oh, I just remembered…” Roxanne said suddenly. “The strangest thing … Wait a moment.…” She began digging in her bag.

“What are you up to?” Gunnison asked.

“Wait.… Ah, yes, here it is.” She pulled a ragged envelope from her bag and laid it on the table in front of her husband’s plate.

Gunnison picked it up. “It appears to be an envelope addressed to the Buckeye Cafe in Culvertown, Colorado.”

“Look on the back.”

Gunnison flipped it over and stared in silence.

“Whose work would you say that was, Alex?”

Gunnison was gazing at a casual pencil study of a man in a vest and sleeve garters, carrying a food-laden tray.

“This looks like Kenton’s work.”

“Yes.”

“Where did you get it?”

“I found it in that cafe, the Buckeye.”

“What were you doing in Culvertown?”

“It was a side trip. I went with one of Aunt Karen’s friends to visit her brother there. We ate at this cafe, and I found the envelope on the table.”

“It’s astonishing! I’ve never seen such a good imitation of his work. Or maybe it isn’t an imitation at all. Maybe this is some old sketch done by Kenton years ago.”

“The man in the sketch is a waiter in the cafe … the same waiter who waited on our table.”

“Well, so he’s worked there several years.”

“He was wearing the same clothes as you see in the drawing.”

“So the cafe has a uniform code of dress for its employees.”

“Look at the postmark date, Alex.”

Gunnison flipped it over. The postmark was only days old.

To his mind came the words of the man who had approached him in Barrigan’s: My brother Cordell swears, absolutely swears, that he saw Brady Kenton himself not a week ago, in Colorado … says he knows for a fact this was none other than the man.

Gunnison was now almost sure that Brady Kenton really was back in the United States, in Colorado … yet he had made no contact.

Roxanne looked closely at her husband. “Alex … should I not have showed you that sketch? You look upset.”

“It’s just that … it’s a bit of a shock, seeing what appears to be an authentic Kenton drawing, but which couldn’t be.”

“I know,” she replied. “It’s impossible. I inquired of the proprietor about the sketch, wondering if he knew who had left it. He didn’t, but a waiter gave a description of a man who sounded remarkably like Kenton himself. He said the man had dined alone and seemed melancholy.”

Kenton … dining alone. Perhaps he had failed in his quest to bring back Victoria and had been so depressed he had gone into hiding in a remote Colorado mining town. It wouldn’t be the first time Kenton had gone off to hide and lick his wounds.

Gunnison wondered if Kenton was drinking again. And where was Rachel Frye, his daughter? She’d gone with him to England. Had she not returned?

Questions abounded, demanding answers, and Gunnison sat staring off into the dark corner of the restaurant, feeling frustration and restlessness rise because just now those answers could not be found.

“Alex, did you hear what I said?”

“Of course I did. You were talking about this sketch.”

“No … I was telling you how eager I am to get you home and alone.”

He smiled. “Intriguing, I must say. How could I have missed that?”

Gunnison folded the envelope and put it in his pocket, determined to forget about Kenton for the rest of the evening.

He doubted he would succeed. The questions were just too big to be forgotten.

*   *   *

When Alex Gunnison left the house to go to work the next morning, Roxanne stood in the doorway and waved him away with a bright smile on her face.

As soon as he was out of sight, though, the smile vanished, and she closed the door with her heart heavy and her brow creased by a frown.

Something was wrong with Alex. Something was so on his mind that it was pushing her out of his attention.

She wondered desperately what it could be and why he would not tell her about it.

That sketch on the envelope, maybe. Perhaps that had disturbed him in some way. She wished she hadn’t shown it to him.

Returning to the bedroom, she looked on the bureau where Alex had placed the envelope last night. The envelope was gone. He’d taken it with him to the office.