NaNoWriMo, Day Five

While I normally put in a lot of  internal links to previous, related posts here, I won’t be doing that for what I hope will be thirty NaNoWriMo posts. If you have jumped into or stumbled onto this story in mid-adventure, there are plenty of other ways to navigate around the site to find previous installments. Actually doing so is left as an exercise to the student.

I find that it’s easiest to write using locations and setting that I’m at least a bit familiar with, especially if I’ve got pictures that I can review to help set the location in my head so that I can describe it better. Fortunately I travel a lot and (have you noticed) I take a lot of pictures! For example, we were in Denver, Manitou Springs, and Pikes Peak in 2008, and I live in Los Angeles. On the other hand, while some landmark & public places will get used (for example, the LA Zoo and Griffith Park in chapter two), most specific places are fictional (the Golden Horseshoe Motel and Pikes Peak Fine Chocolate & Confectionery Emporium in Manitou Springs).

I’m also finding that it’s sometimes tough to keep telling the story in third person. I think my natural writing style tends to gravitate toward first person, and given the nature of the action (and other factors) it often sounds in my head like it should be a gumshoe detective, noir story. But it’s not. I have a pretty clear tone and story destination in mind for this story and it really needs to be told from a more dispassionate, impersonal, outside viewpoint. That, of course, will be another thing to go through and “smooth out” in the next draft.

For now, onward fellow word herders! Time to see what new obstacles we can throw in front of our plucky hero!

CHAPTER FIVE

“When?” Tom asked anxiously. Despite spending his entire adult life with a well-earned reputation for being slow, methodical, and stodgy, he found that this odd journey that had been thrust upon him seemed to require almost reckless haste in its pursuit. Somehow he had grabbed a tiger by the tail.

“Are you staying here in town, or up in Denver?” Ellen asked.

“Here, down at the Golden Horseshoe Motel for tonight.”

“The Horseshoe, eh? You should have gone to the Manitou Manor Motel next door, they have better wi-fi and the owner there is a friend. Anyway, let me get in touch with my staff to make sure that the store’s covered for a few days. Unless there’s some ongoing disaster that I’m not aware of, we should be able to take off in the morning. Let’s say I’ll meet you here at 9:00 unless you hear otherwise from me.”

Tom took a moment to make sure that Ellen had his phone number and the room number at the motel. Ellen gave him her contact information in return, which Tom carefully wrote down on the back of his aunt’s picture. Tom paid for the hot chocolate and also bought boxes of chocolate to have sent to each of his kids.

“Do you have a car?” Ellen asked.

“Yes, I picked up a rental in Denver. It’s at the motel. I just walked down to the police station and back to here so I could see the town.”

“Did it come with chains and do you know how to drive in the snow?”

“It did and I do. My wife and I used to go up to Big Bear and Mammoth all the time to go skiing. Why?”

“There’s a system moving in and we’ll get snow overnight. You’ll be driving tomorrow, if that’s all right with you. My car hasn’t run well enough in months to take on a trip like that. I don’t drive it any further than I want to walk back. I just wanted to make sure that you could handle what Colorado can throw at you this time of year.”

“No problem. I’ll pick you up about nine o’clock. Care to tell me where we’ll be going?”

“I’d rather not say right now. We’ll be driving for most of the day, assuming we don’t get slowed down too much by the snow. It’s about five hundred miles, but it’s out in the middle of nowhere with no way to fly there unless you have your own plane, so we’ll do it the old fashioned way. Will that fit in with your travel schedule?”

“I’ll be okay for now,” Tom said. “I packed for four days just in case and we can figure something out if it goes longer. Anything else I’ll need or need to know?”

“Not that I can think of right now. I’ll text or call if there is. I’ll see you in the morning.”

As Tom stepped back out onto the sidewalk he was hit by a frigid blast. As Ellen had predicted, the sky was starting to fill with heavy grey clouds and the wind had picked up considerably. Even though it was technically still over an hour before sunset, the tall mountains on all sides left the town in deep shadow and the street lights had turned on.

Tom hustled back to his motel. Once in his room he sent a bland and brief message to his pet sitter regarding his travel plans and another to Jason regarding “the motorcycle”. Ellen was right, the wi-fi connection here was worse than he had seen anywhere in years, but it at least got that simple job done.

The front desk clerk was happy to direct him to one of the family restaurants nearby. Tom walked there and had a wonderful dinner. The meal had far more starch and meat than he was used to, but Tom had to admit that it tasted good. Given the recent stresses in his life, he was not going to feel guilty even if he had pie and ice cream for dessert. As he walked back to the motel following dinner, the first wisps of snow were starting to fall.

Back in his room, Tom checked the weather forecast for tomorrow. They were only supposed to get two or three inches of snow at the most down here, although there would be a lot more at higher elevations. But this was a small storm by the region’s standards. The weather guy on the local news broadcast didn’t seem too excited, so Tom wasn’t going to sweat it either.

What did bother him was the possible event that had occurred in Ellen’s store as they were talking. If he hadn’t seen the video from his house two days ago, he would have simply written off the cat’s behavior as Ellen had, assuming that they had simply seen a stoned cat spacing out on catnip. With his new perspective Tom was far more nervous about what they had seen, wondering what invisible activity might have been going this time. Even more worrisome, they still had no idea if it these events were dangerous, even though they seemed to be happening in close proximity to him.

That might be another question that needed answering. Were these “events” happening all over the place, or just around Tom? Tom was well aware of how a selection bias could skew interpretation of data, especially when the data set was extremely small. But if these events were dangerous, actively seeking to get more data introduced a whole new set of hazards and problems.

Tom tried to use the information he had gotten from Ellen to find more information on Auntie Annie’s whereabouts, particularly using the name “Dahlia”. Nothing simple came up and the slow connection prevented him from trying anything not simple. He left it alone for now, hoping that tomorrow’s trip might answer many of those questions on its own.

In the morning Tom was woken up just after 5:00 by the sound of a tractor clearing snow from the hotel parking lot. Peeking out the window, it looked like more than three inches were sitting on top of his car, but the lot was cleared quickly. The streets appeared to have been cleared as well. Tom got ready to go and see what answers Ellen could help him find.

Following a quick breakfast, Tom checked out of the Golden Horseshoe and drove down to Ellen’s chocolate shop. The roads had some snow on them but no ice. Since the plows were coming through regularly and the snow seemed to be letting up, Tom hadn’t bothered to put the chains on yet. He pulled up in front of the store about 8:55. The store was still dark so he settled in to wait.

At 9:05 a young woman pulled up and parked next to him. She ignored his car as she got out and walked up the steps to the porch in front of the store. Once there she pulled out out her keys and unlocked the door. As she entered, she turned the “closed” sign in the window around to “open”. Soon Tom could see lights turning on inside.

After another five minutes with no sign of Ellen, Tom was getting impatient and worried that something had gone wrong. He pulled out his phone and called Ellen’s number. After three rings the call went to a generic voice mailbox

“Hello, Ellen? This is Tom. I’m here in front of the store and it’s about ten after nine. Maybe I got the time or the place wrong, so please give me a call back as soon as you can so that we can get going. Thanks.”

With growing frustration, Tom got out, locked his car, and went into the store. The young lady who had parked next to him was bustling about, bringing out boxes of candy from the back room and restocking displays on the floor. She turned toward the door when he came in.

“Good morning, can I help you?”

“Maybe, I hope so at least,” Tom said. “I came in and talked with Ellen yesterday. We were supposed to meet here this morning at nine o’clock, but I guess I got it wrong since she’s not here. I’ve tried calling her but I just get voice mail. Do you have any other way to get in touch with her?”

The young lady looked at him with a puzzled expression. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Who are you again?”

“My name is Tom Tiernan. I’m trying to track down my aunt, who used to live in a commune near here. I went to the police station first and the policeman there suggested that I talk to Ellen, since Ellen’s mother might know my aunt. When I talked to her yesterday, Ellen recognized my aunt’s picture. We were going to drive to see her mother today. But Ellen’s pretty late getting here, so now I’m trying to find another way to get in touch with her.”

The young woman walked past Tom, over to the front windows of the store. Leaning up against the glass, she peered down the street. Pulling back she said, “I don’t know what to tell you, but not a lot of that makes sense. I would help you get in touch with Ms. Summers if I could, but I don’t know where she is.”

“What to do mean, that it doesn’t make sense?” Tom asked. “What part of it is unclear?”

“Ms. Summers called me last night and asked me to work some extra shifts for the next week to cover the store, which was great for me. I can use the hours whenever I can get them. Things have been tight around here, if you know what I mean. But she didn’t say anything about meeting anyone this morning. I didn’t get any details, but it sounded to me like she was leaving right away last evening.”

Tom was trying to make sense of that when his phone started to ring. The caller ID indicated that it was Ellen calling. Tom hit the icon to answer the call.

“Ellen, this is Tom,” he said without preamble. “I’m here at the store waiting for you. Is everything okay?”

“Tom, I don’t know who you are and I’m not Ellen,” said an unknown voice on the other end. “You left a message earlier on my voice mail and I was just calling to let you know that you had a wrong number.”

Tom quickly fished out the picture of his aunt with Ellen’s contact information written on it. “Wait, is this 719-129-3580? That’s the number I was given for Ellen Summers in Manitou Springs.”

“Yes, that’s my number, you dialed it correctly, but I’m not that person and I’m in Colorado Springs, not Manitou. I’m sorry, but somehow you’ve got the wrong number.”

Tom thought about it for a second, but it was starting to become obvious what had happened. “Thank you for calling back,” he told the anonymous caller. “I’m sorry to have bothered you this morning.”

“Good luck finding this Ellen lady,” the caller said as she cut the connection.

The chocolate store saleswoman was looking at Tom as he finished the call. “That was one of the other things that you said that didn’t make sense,” she said. ”Ms. Summers couldn’t possibly have given you her phone number. She doesn’t have a phone.”

Tom held out the photo to her. “What about this? And didn’t you say that she called you last night about covering the store?”

“She called from here, the store has a phone of course,” she explained. “But Ms. Summers doesn’t have a phone.” She took the sheet and looked at the information written on the back. “She doesn’t have an email account either, at least not that I know of. She doesn’t even have an email account on the company website, although the rest of us do. As long as I’ve known her, she’s always been living kind of, what’s the term, ‘off the grid’? It’s weird, but I always figured that it came from her being raised the way that she had been, up in that commune. Plus, it really wasn’t any of my business.”

Tom’s head was starting to pound and adrenaline was beginning to send his pulse soaring. Carefully he said, “Can you tell me where she lives so I can go ask her about this?”

“Oh, no, I don’t think that I should tell you that,” she said, as Tom had expected. “If she didn’t want you to contact her she must have had a reason. But I don’t think it matters. I can see her garage from here and her car’s gone. If it’s really important, I guess you might try to see her here when she gets back in a week or so. Or you could take a hint, if I might say so myself.”

Tom let the last comment slide. Losing his temper right now wouldn’t help him get any more information from this lady and at the moment she was his last potential source of clues regarding was going on. Also, if he made a scene, that nice cop from yesterday might not be so nice today.

“Thank you. But I still need to track down my aunt. Plus, Ellen told me yesterday that her car had been broken for months and couldn’t drive.”

“I don’t know why Ms. Summers would say that. She was always taking long trips and driving all over the place. In fact, she just bought a new four-wheel drive for the winter. She was real proud of it too.”

“I’m starting to wonder if anything she told me was the truth,” Tom said in frustration. “When she saw that picture, Ellen said that she had seen my aunt when she was younger and her mother might know where she is now. You wouldn’t happen to know where Ellen’s mother is, do you?”

“Sorry, but there you go with another thing that just doesn’t make any sense. Ms. Summer’s mother died about a year ago. I remember her being gone for almost a month for the funeral and to take care of her mom’s estate and stuff. It seemed like a long time to spend doing that, but that was about a year ago and I needed the hours so I didn’t ask questions.”

Tom sighed heavily as he folded up the picture and put it back in his pocket. “She told me just last night that I needed to meet her mother. That’s why I was supposed to meet her this morning, so that we could drive there. She said it would be a long drive and I was supposed to pick her up.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, mister. I had heard that her mom used to be in that commune up in the hills there by Cave of the Winds and she raised Ms. Summers there. But when that cult got kicked out, most of them scattered all over the place. A big group was supposed to have moved off to somewhere in New Mexico, there’s lots of odd places and groups out there. Some place up by the Four Corners area, on a reservation of some sort.  I never got told anything since it wasn’t my business, like I said, but I saw some phone calls to New Mexico on the bill when I did the accounting for the store here. Ms. Summers told me they were her personal calls and she paid for them herself. Then when she was gone for the funeral, I saw that number was the one that she called from when she would check in on us.”

“I don’t imagine you could let me have that New Mexico phone number, could you?” asked Tom.

“No way. I’m sorry, but I can’t. It looks a lot like Ms. Summers wasn’t buying what you’re selling, so I’ve already probably said too much. Like I said, not my business, but I do really need the job here, even if it is only part time.”

Tom took out his wallet and plucked out a business card. He circled his phone number and handed it to the saleswoman. “If Ellen calls in or comes back, please tell her I was here and at least give her my name and phone number again. I don’t know what’s going on here and I’m not some psycho or stalker, I just want to find my aunt. I thought that Ellen could help. At the very least, at this point I think I deserve an explanation or an apology from her.”

“I’ll keep the card, mister. I don’t know if she’ll call you back.”

“Thanks.” Tom turned and walked to the door. He stopped with his hand on the knob before turning back to the woman. “What about that big tomcat that was here yesterday? Do you take care of him while she’s gone as well?”

“Do you mean Lucifer? No, Ms. Summers always takes him with her when she goes on one of her trips. That’s another reason I know she’s gone. He’s gone, his travel case is gone, and a bunch of his food isn’t here either.”

Nodding his thanks, Tom went out into the cold. There still wasn’t any sunlight and the day looked like it was going to continue to be gray and snowy. With Manitou Springs now apparently a dead end, Tom got into his car and headed out of town. Alone with his thoughts, he got back on the highway and took it down out of the canyon to the interstate, where he turned south toward New Mexico.