A Change in Altitude Read Free

we’ll keep looking for Jay.”
    After all, she was running out of options. She needed to find someplace to settle, in case Joe decided to make good on his threats to come after her.
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    â€œHave you seen my key chain?” Olivia Theriot asked, as she combed through the box of miscellaneous junk that had collected beneath the cash register at the Dirty Sally Saloon. “It’s a real aspen leaf, encased in resin. D. J. gave it to me.”
    â€œAre your keys still attached to it?” Fellow bartender Jameso Clark looked up from the draft beer he was drawing.
    â€œNo, I have the keys. But I noticed last night the leaf was missing. I was hoping it had fallen off here and someone had found it.”
    â€œI haven’t seen it.” Jameso finished filling the glass and set the beer in front of Bob Prescott, who sat at the bar eating a bacon cheeseburger.
    â€œMaybe you lost it at the house,” Bob said.
    â€œMaybe so, but I looked there.” Olivia made a face. “I’m losing everything these days—my favorite pair of earrings, pens, and now my keychain. I think I’m just stressed out with the remodeling and everything.”
    â€œHow’s that coming?” Jameso asked.
    â€œSlow.” She and her boyfriend, D. J. Gruber, had bought the old miner’s house in a foreclosure sale last month. They’d gotten a sweet deal, but now they spent every spare moment trying to make the place livable. “I can’t wait until we can move in together. Maybe then I’ll stop misplacing things.” D. J.’s rental house was too small for the two of them and her teenage son, Lucas, so she lived with her mother, Eureka mayor Lucille Theriot. Besides, getting their own place and fixing it up together was symbolic of her and D. J. starting over. She was a big believer in symbols. D. J. said that was the artist in her. Lucas just said she was weird.
    â€œMaybe you have a pack rat,” Bob said.
    â€œWe do not have rats!” She shuddered. Mice were bad enough, but rats were enough to give her nightmares.
    â€œNot a regular rat, a pack rat.” Bob set down his burger. In his seventies, he was the picture of the grizzled miner, right down to his canvas pants, checked flannel shirt, and scraggly whiskers. Olivia suspected he cultivated this image carefully. “They’re bigger and hairier than your average rat, and they like to collect things and stash them in their nests.”
    â€œThey’re harmless,” Jameso said.
    She tried to push away the image of a giant, hairy rat wearing her favorite earrings and changed the subject. “How’s Maggie?” she asked Jameso. Maggie Stevens, a reporter at the local paper, had moved to town about the same time Olivia had come to Eureka, and had started dating Jameso not too long after.
    â€œPregnant.”
    She laughed. “That doesn’t answer my question. How’s she feeling?”
    â€œShe feels fine,” Jameso said. “But between the wedding plans and getting Barb’s B and B ready to open this summer, she’s driving me crazy.”
    Olivia tried to hide a smile and failed.
    â€œWhat are you smirking about?” Jameso asked.
    â€œThose two love ordering you around,” she said. Barb Stanowski, Maggie’s best friend, lived in Houston but spent a lot of time in Eureka. Right now, she was remodeling another of the town’s old homes into a fancy bed-and-breakfast inn. “I think they like the idea of domesticating the wild man.” Before Maggie had arrived in town, Jameso had a reputation as a hard-partying free spirit, a handsome rogue who refused to settle down. Now that he and Maggie were engaged, with a baby on the way, he’d definitely changed.
    â€œYeah, well, I’ll be glad when the B and B opens and the wedding’s over and things settle down.” He bent and began detaching the beer keg beneath the bar. “You got the