Grave Shadows Read online

“Nobody.” He turned. “Hey, Mr. Timberline, you going to take over if Bryce gets tired?”

  Sam shook his head. “They’ll have to drag him off that bike before I can take over.”

  Finally it was time to mount up. I couldn’t wait.

  Chapter 36

  Hayley’s aunt’s face was puffy and red.

  “What did those guys want?” Hayley said.

  “Gunnar. They wouldn’t stop asking questions, as if I knew something and didn’t want to tell them.”

  “Were they the police?” Hayley said.

  I knew they weren’t. At least, they didn’t look like any police officers I’d ever seen.

  Hayley’s aunt shook her head. “They wanted to go through his apartment, but I said no.”

  “Were they friends of his?” I said.

  “That’s what they said, but I’ve never seen them before.”

  I hurried to the window to write down their license-plate number, but they were already gone. I kicked myself for not thinking of it earlier.

  Hayley’s aunt wrung her hands. “They saw the article in the newspaper. They’ve been looking for Gunnar a long time.”

  “Did they know him from work?” I said.

  She shrugged, trembling. “I think Gunnar is in trouble.”

  Chapter 37

  I liked that we weren’t racing. Not that I don’t like competition, but everyone was riding against cancer and with each other.

  One of the Colorado Springs television stations sent their news truck and taped the start. The reporter, a nice-looking woman with short red hair, leaned down to ask Jeff some questions.

  When she finished we put on our helmets and checked the microphones. Jeff’s mom and dad took pictures as we got into position. Someone fired a starter gun, and we all whooped and hollered as we took off.

  Riding with the wind in our faces, going downhill, was the best. We’d waited for this for weeks, and Jeff had been planning it for months.

  The first few miles were paved as part of a bike track. We started in the middle of the pack and coasted. People around us gave Jeff high fives.

  Jeff’s voice came over the speakers in my helmet crystal clear. “We’re actually doing this, Timberline. Can you believe it?”

  “You’re gonna believe it the first time we have to go uphill,” I said.

  “I could ride a thousand hills today.”

  Jeff sounded pumped, but his skin was pale and his eyes droopy. We were also at a high elevation, so there was less oxygen than we were used to.

  The Alexanders drove slowly past us, shooting us with their video camera. Sam drove behind them and waved just before he turned around. There was something lonely about not having family with you but also something exciting. It was the summer adventure I’d been waiting for.

  I just hoped Jeff and I would finish this race together.

  Chapter 38

  Instead of heading straight home, I went to Johnny’s Pawn and Deli. People bring stuff in there to sell all the time, and I wondered if the owner had seen any of Jeff’s things.

  The owner is a round man with a bizarre-looking beard. Part of it is tied with rubber bands. He also has tattoos of snakes crawling up both arms.

  I showed him the list of stolen stuff. “I wish I had even one of these,” he said, shaking his head. “Good, expensive stuff.”

  “It was all actually stolen from a friend of mine. He has cancer.”

  The man clenched his teeth, and his jaw muscles flexed underneath the beard. “The kid that’s in the paper?”

  I nodded.

  He picked up a phone. “Hang on a minute.”

  While he talked I moseyed around his store, which carried everything from used saxophones to chain saws. He also sold guns and jewelry, and Mrs. Watson said he made the best turkey-and-ham sub in town.

  “I checked a couple of stores in the Springs,” he said. “We’ll all be on the lookout for this stuff.”

  I passed our middle school on the way back to my ATV. I was looking forward to being one of the oldest kids in school for a change.

  A concrete truck peeked out from the back of the building. A huge tarp stretched behind it, so I moved closer to see what was going on.

  A guy wearing a hard hat was drinking coffee out of a thermos and sitting on a light pole. He waved. “Can’t go back there.”

  “What are you building?”

  “Can’t say. Just stay away, okay?”

  Chapter 39

  The first four miles were easy. A stream ran by the bike trail, and it was a strange mix to hear water lapping over rocks and the click-click of bike chains, pedals, and tires on pavement.

  I glanced back at Jeff. He looked tired but was still smiling as riders passed and waved.

  “You okay?” I said.

  He panted like a spent dog. “Couldn’t be better.”

  As we neared an incline we talked about lunch, where we might camp that night, and what DVD to watch in his parents’ van.

  “I don’t want anything to do with the van,” Jeff said.

  I thought I’d better change the subject. “Anybody ever ask you about all the stuff in your trophy room?”

  He chuckled. “It’s funny. I don’t like sports that much. And I haven’t seen any movies of most of the stars who sent pictures.”

  “How’d they find out about you?”

  “Probably got my name on some list. Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate the thoughts, but the thing that means the most to me is the letter I got from the president.”

  “I’d like to see that,” I said.

  “It’s in the glass case. I wrote and told him I’d prayed for him and mentioned I was going through treatment for cancer. He sent a handwritten letter back and said he was moved by what I had written. He told me he would pray for me during our bike ride and even pledged some money.”

  “Wow!”

  “Yeah, I’m hoping to keep that letter a long time.”

  Chapter 40

  Bryce beeped me from the trail while they were on a 10-minute rest. I had asked Mom if I could keep her cell phone to stay in touch with him, and she said I could. I wanted to tell Bryce about the guys at Hayley’s aunt’s place, but he seemed in a hurry.

  “I need a favor,” he whispered. “Get Sam’s binoculars and go over to Jeff’s house.”

  “Why binoculars?”

  “I need you to look in the trophy room and see if there’s a framed, handwritten letter from the president. I’ll call you later.”

  I rode my ATV to Jeff’s house. Little flags stuck in the yard said things like “Good luck, Jeff” and “You go, boy!” I checked the doors and windows and found our pieces of paper still in place.

  The window to the trophy room was too high off the ground for me to see inside. The only thing that would put me high enough was a picnic table a few yards away. It took a few minutes to edge it close enough, but I didn’t need the binoculars. The glass case was empty except for one thing in the back corner. In fact, the whole room was empty. Nothing on the walls. Nothing on top of the case.

  Chapter 41

  After the first four miles, the riding got really hard. It made me wonder who had chosen the route—it almost felt like someone was trying to punish us.

  I rode with my head down, trying to focus on putting one foot in front of the other, and when I looked up, the sight took my breath away. Mountains rose on our right and left with trees so thick you couldn’t tell one from another.

  “Makes you feel pretty small, huh?” Jeff said, trying to catch his breath. He was working hard to keep up his end of the pedaling.

  We wound around a hill, always going up. The only thing between us and the edge was a guardrail. Others didn’t seem to struggle, but Jeff and I were going so slow it was hard to keep the bike upright.

  The Alexanders pulled up beside us. “Why don’t you get in and we’ll drive you to the top?” Jeff’s mom said.

  Jeff waved her off and pedaled harder. The bike lurched as he
grunted and strained.

  “Easy, big boy,” I said.

  “Parents,” Jeff said.

  By lunch we had gone up and down several hills. The leader and most experienced cyclist was a man named Gary. He was thin and wiry, and the muscles in his legs looked like ropes.

  “The next part is probably the toughest climb, outside of the long ascent to Woodland Park,” he said. “Everybody feeling okay?”

  Most shouted, “Yeah,” but I felt too tired to say anything. Jeff stared at his parents, still watching from their van.

  Chapter 42

  Bryce said he was on a bathroom break when he called. When I told him what I had seen at Jeff’s house, he couldn’t believe it.

  “Ash, I just looked in there a couple of days ago. There was still a lot of stuff left.”

  “Well, it’s gone now.”

  “Then why weren’t the pieces of paper disturbed?” he said.

  “Must be some other way in,” I said. “You want me to call the police?”

  “Not yet.”

  I told him about the men Hayley and I had run into at her aunt’s house.

  “Call Gunnar’s boss,” he said. “He might know these guys.”

  It felt odd being separated from Bryce, trying to solve two mysteries at once.

  Chapter 43

  That afternoon was the longest of my life. With the sun beating down I could hardly think about the beautiful scenery. I might as well have been biking through a desert or some hallway with no windows.

  Jeff spoke into a digital recorder, recording thoughts he could include in his next article.

  We went through a small town called Minturn, where there was a gas station with American flags flying and a general store. The houses looked like they’d been stuck there between the mountains by God himself.

  A sign told us we were going through the San Isabel National Forest. Clouds cast shadows on the mountains on both sides, moving across the landscape like slow trains. I wished I could get on one and ride it to the end of our trip.

  “You sure you don’t want to take your parents up on that ride in the van?” I said.

  “Keep pedaling,” Jeff said.

  With aspens to our right and pine trees to our left, we headed up again. We passed a lake we had seen from Sam’s flyover. People sat on the shore fishing.

  “Man, I’d like to do that someday,” Jeff said.

  “I’d like to do that right now.”

  We rode up one hill and saw a sign that said we were traveling the Tenth Mountain Division Memorial Highway. I remembered something about it from reading about World War II. The tenth was an elite division trained on ski slopes in Colorado to go into Europe and hunt down the bad guys. I wondered if their legs had felt like spaghetti like mine.

  We made it to the top of the last hill for the day and rode into Leadville. On a map, it doesn’t look that far from Vail, less than 40 miles, but this trip has taught me never to trust a map. My back felt like it would snap any minute, and my legs cramped. Others around us raised their fists.

  The leader, Gary, rode alongside Jeff and me as we hit the town. “Didn’t think you two were going to make it. Tomorrow’s going to be easier.”

  That felt like an answer to prayer.

  Chapter 44

  Hayley told me where Gunnar worked. I called just before closing and asked for his manager.

  “You got him.”

  I described the three men Hayley and I had met at her aunt’s.

  “Not anybody who works here,” he said.

  “Gunnar seem nervous about anything the last few days he was there?”

  “Like I told the police, he did seem jumpy. The phone would ring or somebody would walk in the office and he’d get skittish. He just said he wasn’t feeling well.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Nothing unusual. ’Cept he was always asking for an advance on his paycheck, but I wouldn’t give it to him. I don’t understand it. He always wore old clothes. I don’t think he paid rent to his mother. Only thing he spent money on was his car payment. What’d he need money for?”

  Chapter 45

  We rode through Leadville to curious stares along the main street. We passed old brick buildings, gift shops, a bank, and even an antique mall. Colorado Mountain College nearby specialized in teaching about the outdoors.

  Houses in town seemed old and some were leaning. A little hotel made me think the Hilton family didn’t have anything to worry about. Signs pointed to a mining museum, and others advertised mountain property.

  Jeff and I turned into a campground and found lots of tents and people gathered around picnic tables. We were the last to arrive, and people clapped as we pulled to a stop.

  We ate with Jeff’s parents, gazing at Mount Elbert to the west. The Arkansas River was not far away, and I heard we would be riding by it the next day.

  Mrs. Alexander kept asking Jeff to sleep in the van, and he finally walked away in a huff.

  “Did you move the rest of the stuff from the trophy room?” I said when he was gone.

  “We didn’t move anything,” Mr. Alexander said. “Why?”

  I told him what Ashley had seen.

  “She must have been looking in the wrong room,” Mrs. Alexander said. “We have another glass cabinet in an empty room.”

  That was a relief.

  I found Jeff in our tent, fuming and trying to get his sleeping bag unrolled.

  “I can’t believe they’re following us,” he said. “I wish they’d just go away.”

  I pressed my lips together, trying to keep quiet. But I couldn’t. “Why don’t you lay off your parents?” I yelled. “They’re just trying to help.”

  Chapter 46

  I called Taryn, Gunnar’s ex-girlfriend, and left a message on her answering machine to call me.

  Randy, Leigh’s boyfriend, was over for dinner.

  “My mom’s been reading the articles in the paper about Jeff,” Randy said. “I feel sorry for him, but he sure seems to have a strong faith.”

  Leigh sighed.

  Mom looked at her. “You don’t think his faith is helping him?”

  “I don’t want to rag on the kid,” Leigh said, “but he’s probably parroting stuff he’s heard from his parents.”

  I put my fork down and wiped my mouth. “I’ve been there when he writes his column. He doesn’t even pass it by his mom before he sends it to the paper.”

  “I’m just saying some of the stuff is probably from a sermon he’s heard.”

  Mom’s face turned red, and it was her turn to put her fork down, but she kept quiet.

  Sam looked back and forth between Leigh and Mom, then asked Dylan to pass the mashed potatoes. If I hadn’t taken them from him, they would have landed in the green beans.

  Randy broke the silence. “I don’t know. I think the kid’s working out what he thinks about God in the middle of something really scary. Gotta admire that.”

  “I’m sure thinking about God taking him to heaven will comfort him,” Leigh said. “I just don’t think it’s true.”

  “Why not?” Randy said.

  “God’s supposed to love everybody. Why would he give cancer to a kid? Why would he let those kids die the other day in the trailer fire we saw on the news? Or a mom and her daughter in a plane crash?”

  That shut everyone up. Dylan looked at us like there was a bomb under the table, and to be honest, it felt like it.

  Leigh finally put her napkin on the table and went to her room.

  “I didn’t mean to upset anybody,” Randy said.

  “Not your fault,” Sam drawled. “Truth is, there’s a lot more going on than you know.”

  Chapter 47

  Here I’d asked God to make me a good friend to Jeff, and now I’d yelled at him and blown it.

  “Sorry,” I said, “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “No, no, don’t be sorry. Be angry all you want.” He sat up. “You know how long it’s been since anybody got mad enough
at me to be honest?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “My parents, teachers, everybody tries to be so careful. Drives me crazy. I can be a jerk, but everybody’s feeling so sorry for me that they don’t say anything. You don’t know how good it feels to have someone actually get mad.”

  “You should spend more time around Ashley,” I said, and we both laughed.

  Jeff sighed. “People try to keep stuff from you when they should just go ahead and say it. Like, I know why the doctor said I could go on this ride. He doesn’t think I have much longer, but would he or anybody else tell me that? No.”

  I felt bad for keeping the trophy room secret from him, but I had promised his parents. He talked about school, people at church, and friends who talked down to him, like having cancer meant he couldn’t think anymore.

  “Know what?” he said. “The one I’m really mad at is God. I try not to, but the truth is, when you boil it down, he let me get cancer.”

  “Humph,” I said. “I always thought that God must trust you a lot to let you go through this.”

  Jeff flinched. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, he knew you believed in him. He must have known how you would react. He trusted you to go through it.”

  Jeff frowned. “That’s a thought. He’s the one giving me the strength. That’s funny. I’m mad at the one giving me strength.”

  I hadn’t meant to be profound. It just slipped out.

  Chapter 48

  I’d been praying for Leigh for a long time. She’d been upset about her mom and little sister dying, and I knew she blamed God, even though she said she didn’t believe he even existed. I left the table and went up to her room, which was like walking into a lion’s den—a lion who didn’t make her bed and was painting her toenails.