“Jarvis? Jarvis? You mean, the butler at Shangri-La? Sure. What about him?”
“Do you remember him? Do you remember what happened?”
He frowned at her. “I should have had his job, you know. They only made me chauffeur because the lady wanted to swan around in front of her friends. They didn’t need me. All I did was wash cars all day.” He shook his head. “No. I don’t remember nothin’.”
“How about the Don Carlos Treasure disappearing? You must remember that.”
He was frowning and it wasn’t apparent whether he had actually heard her question. “He told me not to go, but I went anyway,” he said sadly. “I went and he was right. I shouldn’t have gone.”
“Who? My father?”
He looked around as though he felt trapped and Marc reached out to pull her away.
“It’s not much use,” he said quietly. “He’s in no shape to talk. From what I hear, he never is. If he ever knew anything at all, it’s probably lost to history by now.”
She nodded reluctantly. She was bitterly frustrated. Somehow she’d been counting on finding employees from those days and now that she’d found one, he was useless.
“You know, its sort of crazy,” she said to Marc as they were leaving. “Almost everyone from that generation is either dead or ruined in some way. It doesn’t seem right.”
“Anecdotal,” he muttered as he led her out. “Don’t let life depress you. There are plenty of good things to think about.”
She looked up into his face and shook her head, still disappointed, but vaguely amused. “You’re giving happy-talk advice? Now I’ve seen everything.”
“I have my happy moments,” he protested. “I even get optimistic sometimes.”
“But not for long, I’ll bet,” she said dryly.
They were outside by now and they both noticed the blond man from inside the tavern had come out and was leaning against a huge black Harley. He waved as they approached, then straightened and came toward them.
“You don’t remember me?” he said, smiling in a friendly fashion.
Torie gasped. “Is it Billy Darnell?” she cried.
He nodded. “You got it.”
Torie reached out and grasped his hand in hers. “You remember Billy,” she said over her shoulder to Marc. “Alice was his mother. The cook at the estate back in our younger days.”
“That’s me,” Billy said, looking pleased.
“It’s so good to see you! How’s your mother?”
“She’s fine. She lives down in LA now. She likes being close to my sister and her family.”
“Of course.” Torie thought quickly, going over the past. Billy was a year younger than she was. Being children of the Shangri-La staff, they’d spent some time together, though they’d never been particularly close. But when you were eleven and twelve and there was no one else around to hang with, you made do.
“Billy and I used to go on day-long mineral-collecting trips with your father,” she told Marc. “We would trek out along the cliff at dawn, backpacks full of drinks, snacks and lunches, and your father would lead us to the most interesting places, nooks and crannies that you would never think existed if you just drove by them. And he’d find some quartz or some rocks with hornblende or muscovite and he’d use his rock hammer to break specimen-sized pieces out of the rock. Then Billy and I would wrap them in paper and pack them away in canvas bags and then tote the bags home for him.” She grinned at Billy. “We had a glorious time.”
“That we did,” Billy said, grinning right back.
Marc nodded at the reminder and listened to them reminisce, but the whole thing created a bit of an empty feeling in his soul. He’d known his father was interested in rock collecting, but he’d never really paid much attention. He’d only listened with impatience whenever his father tried to talk to him about it. Which might have been why he never got invited along on any of these expeditions. Probably because he was too old when the hobby began to appeal to his dad. He’d been seventeen when Torie was twelve.
Still, he wished he’d known, wished he’d participated. It seemed more and more that there was a whole side to his father that he had known nothing about. He would have been a good man to get to know.
Too late now. He grimaced. He wasn’t used to feeling this sort of regret. It made him uncomfortable. He looked at Torie, and for some reason, he felt a little better. She was like a light into the past that he’d been ignoring for years. She was helping him clear up some things. For the first time, he realized he was actually glad she’d come back to Shangri-La.
Torie brought up the treasure and Marc began to listen more carefully. Billy remembered it, but he claimed he didn’t know anything about what had happened to it, other than the newspaper accounts about Hunt having dumped it in the sea, and didn’t think anyone else knew anything new about it either.
“There’s really no one else still left around who was working at the place in those days,” Billy said earnestly. “Except Griswold, of course. But he’s not much use these days.”
They chatted for a few more minutes, and then Torie gave Billy a hug and they said good-bye. He rode off on his motorcycle; they got back on the horse.
“I’ll drop you at the house,” Marc told her. “I’ve got to get this little lady back home before she starts to worry about lunchtime.”
She smiled, liking that he had a sense of understanding for a horse. Okay, it was time to admit it. Down deep, she knew him well enough to know he was a pretty good guy. Unless something had changed him while he was overseas, he was one of the best men she’d ever known. Maybe his family had been cruel to her father—he hadn’t been involved. Not directly anyway.
Closing her eyes and letting the sway of the ride take her, she mused on life and the U-turns she seemed to find all along the way. So far, it had been a disappointing day as far as her aims and goals were concerned. What if she never found out the truth about her father? What if the truth was hidden somewhere and no one alive knew where it was? Could she live with that? Could she go back home and find a way to be happy? Could her mother snap out of the depressive state she’d been in for years?
Not likely.
Even more scary, what if she found out the truth and it was worse than she’d ever believed? What if her father was really and truly guilty? What if there was even more to it, more things he had done? Her mind cringed away from those stray thoughts. Some ideas were just too painful to explore.
Too soon, Shangri-La loomed on the hill ahead. She remembered she’d told Carl she would be back in time to go over the map with him again. That hadn’t happened. The time had long passed. He was going to be angry.
Oh well.
She turned back to look at Marc.
“Can I come with you to your neighbor’s?” she asked him. “I don’t want to go back to the house just yet.”
He nodded, his face unreadable. “Sure,” was all he said.
But he didn’t complain when she leaned back against him. He was strong and warm and she had a sudden fantasy of letting him be her champion in the world. She could use one. The only problem was, she had a feeling he wasn’t in the market for a girl like her. After all, she tried to get his attention before, when she was a chubby young adolescent. That hadn’t worked out so well.
Now she was back and he only cared because she was threatening his family’s reputation with her crazy theories and searches. But at least he was paying attention now. She smiled at the