Miss Lizzy's Legacy

He turned his back on Callie and braced wide, tanned hands on the side of her car, taking in the leather bucket seats and a dashboard with enough controls to confuse a fighter pilot. “You’re not from around here.”

A statement, not a question, yet Callie felt obligated to answer. “No, I’m from Dallas.”

“Nice car,” he said as he leaned over to peer into the back seat where her purse, overnight bag and several cameras were stashed.

“Thanks,” she murmured grudgingly as she edged closer, not sure whether she should trust the guy or not.

He picked up a Nikon, snapped off the lens cover and put his eye behind the viewfinder. “You a photographer?” he asked as he focused in on Callie.

“Don’t—” The shutter clicked and she groaned, dropping the hand she’d raised to stop him.

He lowered the camera. “Don’t, what?”

She snatched the Nikon from him. “Mess with my camera,” she muttered through tight lips. The pinging sound of water hitting metal had her slowly turning. Baby stood by the front left tire, his leg hiked, relieving himself on her chrome hubcap. Incensed by the audacity of both the dog and his owner, she snapped the lens cover back in place. “Don’t they have leash laws in this town?”

When he didn’t answer, she whipped her head around to glare at him. The lethal look in his eyes made her take a wary step backward. He held her gaze a good ten seconds that had Callie all but squirming before he settled a hand atop the dog’s head and scratched an ear. “Don’t need one,” he said in a lazy drawl. “The dogs in this town, as well as the residents, are friendly. It’s the visitors we have to keep an eye on.” He turned on his heel. “Come on, Baby,” he called as he strode away.

The black Labrador retriever hesitated, looked at Callie, barked, then finally loped off to follow his owner. Callie watched them both, her chest swelling in anger.

“Well, I never!” With a frustrated huff of breath, she jerked her overnight bag and purse from the back seat and headed across the street to the Harrison House.

* * *

“I’ve been propositioned by a truck driver, mauled by a beast I swear is half wolf and half dog, and put down by a local yokel. Prudy, the nicest thing I can say about the town so far is that it’s quaint.” Callie tucked the phone receiver between her shoulder and ear and stretched the phone cord as far as it would allow as she ran a hand along the carved front of an antique armoire in her hotel room, one more of the “quaint” features the town boasted.

“If you wanted to be propositioned, all you had to do was stand down on Harry Hines Boulevard with the rest of the hookers, and with the right command from John, Yogi would’ve taken a chunk out of your leg. ‘Quaint’ you can find within an hour’s drive of downtown Dallas.”

Though the reply was almost acid in delivery, Callie heard the concern beneath. After sharing studio space with Prudy for seven years, the two were more like sisters than business associates, and she’d learned that her friend hid her emotions behind a caustic tongue. “You miss me.”

“Hardly. Without your constant distraction, the studio is relatively quiet. I’ve actually put in a full day at my potter’s wheel and put shape to three really unique pieces.”

“Ouch! My ego is taking a beating.”

“If I thought for one second I could damage your ego, I’d worry.” A deep sigh crossed the phone wires, then, “Callie, come home.”

“Prudy, I didn’t move to Guthrie. I’m merely here on vacation.”

“A vacation is the Bahamas or Las Vegas or Vale. Guthrie is a hole-in-the-wall and a wild-goose chase you’re using as an excuse to escape—”

“Prudy...” Callie warned.

“Well, it’s true. Okay, so we all suffer a creative lag now and again, and considering the pressure Stephen’s put you under— Oh, I almost forgot. He called.”

Callie plopped down on the bed, her shoulders sagging. “Oh, no. You didn’t tell him where I was staying, did you?”

“No. But your mother called, too.”

“What did she want?”

“She wanted me to use my extraordinary persuasive powers to knock some sense into your head.”

Callie fell back across the bed, slinging her forearm across her eyes. And to think she’d thought she could escape a confrontation by leaving Stephen and her parents notes and high-tailing it to Oklahoma at her great-grandfather’s request before either had time to respond. What a joke! “Well, go ahead. Give it your best shot,” she said in a weary voice.

“I’ll tell you the same as I told your mother. I don’t interfere in other people’s lives.”

Though she felt more like curling up in a ball and having a good cry, Callie chuckled at the outrageous lie. “That’ll be the day.”

“It’s true! And besides,” Prudy added, with an offended sniff, “if I were going to interfere, I’d have stopped you from running away before you even left.”

Callie sat bolt upright on the bed. “Prudy! I have not run away. I’m simply fulfilling a request Papa made of me.”

“Oh, yes, Papa. The man is one hundred and four years old and about three bricks short of a load. For heaven’s sake, Callie. Half the time he doesn’t even know who you are. How can you possibly think he could remember enough about your family’s history for you to run off on some half-cocked errand to locate his mother’s grave for him?”

“Because I love him and because he asked me to and because I needed a vacation. Satisfied?”

“No.” Silence followed, then more reluctantly, “Just be careful and hurry home. I do miss you. Sort of.”

* * *

Anxious to escape her room before her mother or Stephen located her, Callie headed for the lobby. Behind the front desk, a man sat with his head bent, his back to her and seemingly oblivious to her presence as he scribbled entries into a ledger sprawled across a rolltop desk.

An old display case, the bubbles and waves in its glass a testament to its age, separated her from the clerk’s desk. The jewelry and trinkets filling it caught her eye, and she stopped to admire then. Colorful stones ensconced in various settings of silver, gold and platinum blinked up at her.

“Would you like to have a closer look?”

Startled, Callie glanced up to find the man still had his back to her. “No, just browsing.”

“Here on vacation?”

A particularly interesting cluster of stones on a brooch caught her eye, and she replied offhandedly, “That and a quest.”

“Yours wouldn’t be the first.” Tucking the pen in the valley created by the ledger’s swelled pages, he spun his chair around to smile at her. “And what quest would you be on?”

Tufts of white hair puffed over the man’s ears and a pair of reading glasses perched precariously on the end of his nose. He looked like an absentminded professor, but it was the openness of his smile that made Callie forget the brooch. After her encounter with the gunslinger on the street earlier, she’d been half-afraid the entire population of Guthrie shared his personality.

Thankful to discover that at least one person didn’t, she propped her elbows on the top of the glass and smiled back. “My great-grandfather’s to be honest. He asked me to track down some of his family who lived here during the late eighteen hundreds, but the only information I have is the woman’s maiden name. I’ve never done anything like this before. Any suggestions on where I might start?”

“The courthouse, the State Capital Publishing Museum, the Oklahoma Territorial Museum, the historical society, the police records, the—”

“Whoa!” Callie laughed as she straightened to dig a scrap of paper and a pen from her purse. She scribbled the information quickly, then glanced up. “Where else?”

Springs creaked as the man reared back in the chair and folded his arms across his ample middle. “That would depend on what information you have to work with.”

Callie shrugged, embarrassed that she had so little to go on. “A name, an approximate time she moved here...that’s about it.”

He puckered his lips thoughtfully. “All those places I mentioned will be helpful, but if you want to know more, Judd Barker down at the Blue Bell Saloon might be able to help you. He knows everything worth knowing about Guthrie.”

Callie tucked the slip of paper into her jacket pocket. Knowing that all the places he’d mentioned would be closed by now, she settled on the suggestion of talking to Judd Barker. “And where do I find the Blue Bell Saloon?”