A Treasure to Die For Read online

  Somehow Henry couldn’t see the man luxuriating in a hot bath. He looked too intent, too focused. So it must be the Fordyce. But the whole Elderhostel group was scheduled for a guided tour there this afternoon. Why did Everett want to go there now?

  Why? Well, if Everett did, Henry did too.

  He started down the trail toward the sidewalk.

  Chapter V

  Henry

  Henry climbed the wide stairs of the Fordyce Bathhouse, nodding a greeting to an older couple seated in chairs on the elegant veranda. They had been watching the activities along Central Avenue but looked up at him in unison and returned his smile. Wouldn’t it be great to sit here with Carrie, enjoying this place, smiling and holding hands as these people were?

  He opened one of the double entry doors and stepped through onto mosaic tile floors covered in soft light from the lobby’s stained glass panels and transom windows. Wicker rocking chairs waiting along one wall were empty. Other than an attendant at the reception desk, he was the only person in sight.

  Ve-ry nice. Marble walls, fountains at each end of the lobby, intricately patterned floors. This must have been quite a posh place in its heyday.

  His former wife, Irena, would love it. The style of the building reminded him of their honeymoon, something he hadn’t thought of in years. They had toured Italy, a place Irena’s family visited almost every summer, a place where she felt at home after the trips there with her parents. The honeymoon tour, arranged and paid for by his father-in-law, took them to elegant places and the buildings that were perfect settings for his new wife. She’d been happy, devoted to him, hanging on his arm whenever they left their room, laughing, the glowing, warm light on her face, enjoying the role of a bride.

  Coming home to the United States had brought the curtain down on that act, and Irena the distant had taken over. Oh, she still played the devoted role in front of her parents, had kept up the pretense of a single bedroom, a real marriage, as long as they were alive. But it had been an act, and Henry, absorbed in his career with the Kansas City Police Department by then, had learned not to care. Ah, well...

  “Welcome to the Fordyce Bathhouse,” the uniformed attendant said as Henry walked toward the reception counter. “You’re in the Hot Springs National Park Visitor Center, and also in a museum.” She handed him a brochure and a floor plan of the building, explaining that he could walk around the four floors by himself or join a tour group leaving in about twenty minutes.

  After saying he’d look on his own and thanking her, Henry asked, “Did my friend Everett, a tall man dressed in black, make it here before me?”

  “Yes, he did,” she said, recognizing the description immediately, “and I think you’ll find him downstairs. He asked about restrooms. There’s an elevator around the corner,” she pointed to her right, “and the stairs are there too.”

  Henry headed for the carpeted stairs. The antique and undoubtedly noisy elevator would announce his arrival. He’d just as soon see Everett Bogardus before the man saw him.

  He stopped on the stairs to analyze the reason for his caution. Why did he feel that way? He had as much right to be here as Bogardus did. It would be like seeing another kid when you were skipping school: they’d be sharing a silent, bonding knowledge of truancy.

  He jogged down the rest of the stairs.

  Once on the lower level, Henry crossed a wide hall and went into the men’s room. Empty. As he was coming out, the object of his search hurried past the restroom alcove. Henry was still in the recessed area, and Bogardus didn’t seem to see him, so he stayed close to the edge of the alcove and looked around the corner.

  The man was pushing his way through a door marked with a sign warning: “Emergency Exit. Alarm sounds when door opens!”

  Henry tensed, waiting for a reverberating siren or screech-honk, but he heard only a barely audible click from the closing door. Silent alarm?

  He waited. Nothing happened. So, there was no door alarm, but an alarm was definitely going off inside his head. What ordinary, reasonable explanation could a tourist give for going through that door? And how had Bogardus known an alarm wouldn’t sound?

  Obvious. Either he’d been here before or someone had told him about the non-functioning alarm.

  It was also possible he’d made a mistake. While waiting to see if a shamefaced man would return with some sort of “oops” explanation, Henry debated about going through the emergency exit himself. When the door had remained closed for several moments, he decided against following. If he was seen, he’d have no explanation, and anyway, Bogardus had probably left the building from whatever exit was behind the marked door. Maybe he’d suddenly felt ill or decided he wanted to hurry back to the Elderhostel group.

  Why back to the group?

  Whoa. Maybe he’d seen Henry here, had been watching him from a side hall, and decided he wanted to do more schmoozing with Carrie while Henry was out of the way. What if he was going back to see her?

  Henry pictured that rude shove in the lobby. He had been tempted then to shove the man back, step between him and Carrie and take her arm, possessing her, showing she was his woman.

  Hadn’t done it though. If he had, and Carrie figured out what he was up to, she’d have pitched a fit—given him her speech about independence.

  This morning dear Everett had been very friendly toward both Carrie and Eleanor, but Eleanor was married, her husband close by. Carrie, on the other hand...

  Oh, cut it out, King, he told himself. This was stupid. Carrie wasn’t a young woman with a roving eye and racing hormones. Everett Bogardus might act like he was some hot male, but Carrie was too sensible to respond to anything like that. Too sensible...

  Wasn’t she? He thought back to a time he’d held Carrie in his arms, kissed her, and how she’d responded, and...

  Stop, stop it!

  Henry’s forehead creases deepened as he pictured Everett Bogardus in his tight jeans and the silk shirt showing off biceps to be admired. Had Carrie admired them? Did she notice things like that?

  And that gaudy gold jewelry, all the fancy stuff...oh, hey now, that was something odd. Here at the Fordyce the man wore no jewelry at all, and there had been a ton of it looped around him earlier this morning.

  Henry leaned against the wall, thinking. Could it all be real gold and Bogardus smart enough to know that showing it off in public made him a mark for thieves? Maybe he took the stuff off for that reason.

  Maybe.

  It still seemed suspicious that a posh college professor from the east would come here to learn the simple things being taught at this Elderhostel, but, so what, it was none of Henry’s business. As for his actions toward Carrie, Everett Bogardus could be a harmless, if repulsive, flirt. Carrie, being a woman, probably understood that sort of thing.

  What about the door? The man had walked confidently through it as if knowing the promised alarm would not ring. It was possible he’d wanted to leave the building by the quickest way he saw...but why?

  The lawman’s brain wouldn’t shut up. There were too many why’s floating around. Henry shook his head. The minute he’d seen Everett Bogardus, he’d suspected he might be up to something. Too slick, too sophisticated, didn’t fit with the group. True, Henry’s suspicions were nothing more than an itch in a mind long seasoned on suspicion.

  Forget it, King, it isn’t any of your business.

  Okay. But since he was here, he might as well enjoy a look around. First he’d see what else was on this level, see where Bogardus had been before he rushed through that door.

  Henry headed to the other end of the hallway and found himself in a small carpeted room with a glass display window labeled “Fordyce Spring.” The glass protected a square, tile-framed hole in the floor. Henry looked into the hole and saw steaming water moving silently by, not even a ripple bothering its surface.

  So, the Fordyce had its own hot spring.

  Another glass viewing wall on the same side of the room allowed visitors to see int
o what must have been the original mechanical area of the building.

  Henry peered through the glass. Except for several huge black water tanks, it looked pretty much like any old basement in any old building. It was probably supposed to show what the basement here had been like back in 1915, right after the Fordyce opened. He could see rough concrete floors and walls, an area floored in dirt, the black tanks, lots of pipes. There was an open set of wooden shelves not far from the window, backing up on the dirt-floored area. The shelves, once painted dark green but now peeling and splotched, were separated into box-like rectangles. Each rectangle was full of what must be pieces of the building’s original plumbing fixtures.

  Suddenly Henry sensed motion at the far left of the basement’s visible area, and his head jerked that way as if something had pulled it, his hand automatically rushing to the place where his gun would have been, once upon a time.

  Nothing.

  Horrified by his quick and unthinking move toward deadly force, Henry shoved his hands into his pockets. But he still kept his eyes focused on the place where he’d sensed motion.

  There! There it was again. He had seen something, a person, someone dressed in black, stooping over. Darkness swallowed details, but the movement had come from an area behind two big tanks lying close together on their sides. There was enough space back there for several people to hide.

  The trained detective’s suspicions were fast becoming facts, his thoughts lining up in orderly rows, all leading to one conclusion. Everett Bogardus was back there, up to no good, and there was more than one reason he went around dressed in black. Black, without the gold jewelry, would make anyone almost invisible in the dark areas of this basement.

  It couldn’t have been a workman, not in that get-up. Park employees wore grey and green uniforms.

  So why was an ordinary tourist messing around back there among the tanks, pipes, broken concrete, odd cubby holes? Because he must be, as Henry had thought all along, much more than an ordinary tourist.

  Was he hiding something? It would be a terrific place to hide an item of moderate size—like the contents of that tote bag.

  Henry’s mind froze on his next thought, tried to erase it, couldn’t. Surely the man’s intent wasn’t...wasn’t to plant a bomb or perhaps some incendiary device? People had cause to be antsy about things like that, but no, no, not here.

  Stay out of this. Let it alone.

  He was too suspicious, and he was no longer a police officer. He had no investigation or enforcement standing here. Or anywhere. He was on vacation, and even thinking about stuff like this could ruin his vacation—and Carrie’s.

  Bomb?

  Everyone knew how many bad things were possible today and what kind of damage a bomb hidden or carried by one person could do.

  It was too much. He had to take some action. If Bogardus was back there, he shouldn’t be, no matter what.

  Henry headed for the stairs.

  A guided tour group was leaving the lobby when he got to the front desk, and Henry had an almost uncontrollable urge to tell them to leave the building immediately. But, once more, he realized he was overreacting to the police officer’s instincts. As the chattering crowd moved away, Henry walked up to the reception desk, deciding as he did so to leave out any description of what the person he’d seen was wearing. He’d asked the attendant about a friend dressed in black only a few minutes ago.

  “Did you find your friend?”

  “Didn’t make contact with him,” Henry said, “but I did see something that seemed odd to me. I was in the basement, looking through that glass wall into where the black tanks are, and I thought I saw a man back there. He was acting like he wanted to stay hidden.”

  She was instantly alert. “Someone in the utility basement?”

  “Yes. About ten minutes earlier I had seen a man, probably the same one, going through the door marked ‘Emergency Exit.’”

  “Was he wearing a uniform like mine?”

  “No. He had on...dark street clothing, dark jeans, dark shirt.”

  The woman studied Henry for a moment, then said, “I’ll call someone. Would you wait here please?” She picked up the phone.

  The ranger who responded was in the lobby almost immediately and introduced himself as Rusty Hobbs. He asked Henry to describe what he’d seen; if he was surprised by the organized and thorough accounting, he said nothing.

  “Call the Ranger Station,” he told the attendant. “I’ll go check now, but get law enforcement here. I think Jake is on duty, and maybe Norman. I’ll be in the basement.” He headed off at a trot, with Henry right behind.

  They went through the no-alarm door into a narrow hallway where Rusty swiveled to the left, going into what was obviously an employee break room. He opened a supply cabinet, took a flashlight, and returned to the hall with Henry still on his tail. When they reached the open door into the rough part of the basement, he stopped.

  “Stay here while I check. I don’t want your safety on my hands. Please go back to the break room. When a law enforcement ranger comes, send him along after me. He can holler, since I’ll probably be out of sight. The old part of the basement is pretty big, and it’s cut up into odd spaces as well as full of stuff like these tanks.”

  He thunked his hand against an enormous tank by the door. It was larger than any Henry had seen through the glass wall and had “Hot Springs Plumbing & Machine Company” painted on its shiny black side.

  Henry stopped, reminded himself that, to this guy, he was just a civilian. He said to Rusty’s back, “I’ll keep an eye on the doors.”

  He had noticed a closed metal door at the end of the hall where he stood, probably the actual exit door named on the sign in the basement foyer. Anyone back in the mechanical area would have had plenty of time to leave that way while Henry went to get help; if the other door was an indication, no alarm would sound.

  But, if Bogardus was still here, they now had him boxed in.

  A dark man built like a football tackle came through the exit door, introduced himself as Law Enforcement Ranger Jake Kandler and, without any direction from Henry, hurried after Rusty.

  While he waited, Henry fought a police officer’s inner war between wanting to be in on the action and doing necessary sideline work. He was guarding doors, but he hated sitting still, he hated waiting.

  After what seemed like ages, both men came back.

  “Gone,” said Jake, “but it looks like someone may have wanted to make a hole somewhere back there. Left this.” He held up the small geologist’s pick in his gloved hand. “At least I think this was left recently. Neither of us remembers seeing it before, and it has no ordinary purpose here in the Fordyce, though people sometimes take them on crystal digs. It’s been used somewhere. Look here.” He pointed to the head of the pick, but didn’t touch its surface. “Scratches.”

  He thought for a moment, then said, “If someone was poking around back there, they must have seen you and left by this outside exit while you came to get us.”

  “Could be,” Henry said, “but what about the alarm? Doesn’t either door alarm sound?”

  “Not during the day. Having to turn them off to come to the break room is inconvenient for the rangers and volunteers. But,” he glared at Rusty, “they’ll be on now.”

  After writing down Henry’s name and his room number at the Downtowner, Jake dismissed him, saying, “Thanks for your help, but you’ll be wanting to get some lunch.”

  Henry looked at his watch. Uh-oh! Lunch for the Elderhostelers had begun ten minutes ago, and he’d promised Carrie to be back in plenty of time for that.

  Saying he’d be available all week if help was needed, Henry left the two rangers talking in the lunch room, pushed through the no-alarm door, and hurried toward the stairs.

  He had more on his mind than being late for lunch. He was eager to get back and talk with Carrie about the happenings here. Of course he’d have to wait until after lunch and they were back in their room to discuss it
with her. As he recalled, their schedule showed a couple of free hours between lunch and the Fordyce tour. They could come here early, he’d show her where everything had happened. She had a natural talent for detective work, and, with his help, was learning to be very good at it.

  Or...should he tell her? Maybe it would be better not to mention seeing Bogardus come here, go through the door, skulk about back in the basement.

  Why not? Usually they’d talk openly about something like this. Why the hesitation now? Was it because he suspected she’d defend the man or make light of his own suspicions?

  Of course it was.

  As he hurried out of the entry door, Henry noticed the same older couple was still sitting on the veranda, watching the crowds visiting the restaurants, gift shops, and galleries across the street.

  Awareness hit him. These folks didn’t look much different in age from him and Carrie, or Jason and Eleanor, and he’d automatically thought of them as “older.”

  Squaring his shoulders, Henry stood as tall as he could, clipped briskly down the stairs, began a parade march toward the Downtowner. Then he stopped.

  A sign in the window of a rock shop across the street had shouted at him in neon words: “Crystal Dig Supplies.”

  Henry crossed the street.

  Chapter VI

  Carrie

  Well, botheration! Where was Henry?

  She glanced at the clock, sighed, then returned to the stack of Hot Springs tourist brochures she’d been trying to absorb. The words and photos zipped by in fast forward, a blur of color that didn’t register anywhere in her brain.

  She dropped the brochures on the bed beside her, stood up, went to the balcony, leaned over the railing. There was no sign of the familiar flat-brimmed khaki hat on the section of Central Avenue sidewalk that she could see.

  Back inside. Now the clock said sixteen minutes past lunch time. She went to the bed and sat, fidgeted, wondered what to do next. Deciding, she stood, hurried to the desk, rummaged for a piece of paper, wrote, “Waiting for you downstairs, C.,” and left the room.