Love in Disguise by Cox Carol

Author:Cox, Carol [Cox, Carol]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Historical Mystery
Publisher: Baker Book Group
Published: 2012-06-01T05:00:00+00:00

16

Got a minute?”

Steven looked up from his desk to see Milt Strickland leaning in the doorway. “Sure. What’s on your mind?”

“I want to show you something.”

Now what? Mystified, Steven followed his foreman to the mine entrance, hoping he wasn’t about to receive more bad news. The abrupt ending to Lavinia Stewart’s mine tour the day before left him with little optimism about his financial prospects. Plucky and adventuresome Mrs. Stewart might be, but no woman in her right mind would choose to invest in a venture she probably now viewed as a deathtrap.

He waited while Milt lit a lantern, then led the way down into the mine. “Is everything going all right with that new vein?”

“It’s going fine. It didn’t take long to clear away the debris and reset the beam. But I’ve got something else on my mind.” They turned toward the new shaft, but instead of entering it, Milt stopped and knelt at the right side of the entryway. “Take a look at this.”

Steven dropped to one knee beside him and watched as Milt moved a fist-sized rock to one side and pointed. The flickering lamplight showed it clearly enough—a slender spike driven into the wooden upright. One end of a thin wire about eighteen inches long was wrapped around the metal shaft.

Steven sat back on his heels. “What on earth?”

Milt pushed himself to his feet and stepped across to the other side of the entryway. “Now look down there.”

Steven studied the impassive face of his foreman and did as he was told. Milt obviously intended for him to figure something out for himself. The round end of an eyebolt protruded from the left upright at the same level as the spike on the right.

He stood and rubbed the back of his neck. “Call me thick-headed, but I still don’t see what you’re getting at.”

Milt reached behind a pile of rubble and scooped up a dark object. He held it out to Steven. “That’s the wedge that was holding this end of the brace in place.”

Steven reached out to take the wedge and noticed several feet of the same thin wire trailing away from the chunk of wood.

Milt traced a line from the top of the doorway down to the eyebolt. “It appears to me this wire was fastened to the wedge and run down here through the bolt, then across to the spike on the other side.”

Steven looked from the wedge in his hand to the top of the opening, then down to the eyebolt at his feet and across to the spike, trying to come up with some other explanation than the one that seemed all too obvious. He turned back to face Milt. “You mean—”

“Yeah. It was no accident.”

Steven braced one hand against the wall and hefted the wedge in the other hand. Someone meant to bring that beam down. All it would take was a boot catching the wire at the entrance to the tunnel. Like a flash, he remembered Mrs. Stewart stumbling as they entered the shaft, and anger roiled up through him.

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