I park on Main Street and walk toward the general store for coffee and eggs because the last of both ran out yesterday. Routine keeps me from doing something reckless, like driving to the Aldrich compound and asking Ward directly what he meant bycourtesy, a question I'm saving.
The car catches my eye before the woman does.
A non-descript sedan parked on Main Street, which in a mountain town full of SUVs, crossovers, and pickups is its own kind of announcement. Colorado plates, rental sticker on the bumper, no personalization. I read it the way I used to read unmarked cars outside courthouses, by what's missing rather than what's there.
A woman is sitting on the bench outside the coffee shop. Tall, unhurried, dressed in layers that read functional rather than fashionable: a fleece vest over a flannel shirt, dark jeans, hiking boots that have seen actual trails. Her dark brown hair is pulled back in a fishtail braid that falls over one shoulder, and she's reading something on a tablet propped against a canvas messenger bag that takes up the other half of the bench. The bag is worn at the corners, stuffed full, and has the look of an object that goes everywhere its owner goes.
She doesn't fit. Wicked Falls has two modes of visitor: tourists in new Patagonia who photograph the waterfall and buy candles shaped like pinecones, and real estate developers in rented SUVs who calculate what the views are worth per square foot. This woman is neither. She's sitting on a public bench reading a tablet on a weekday morning like someone who has arrived for a specific purpose and is in no hurry to announce it.
I go into the store, buy coffee and eggs while the grocer bags them with his usual studied casualness and a sideways assessment he thinks I don't catch, and on my way out I don't walk to my car. I walk to the bench.
"State plates and hiking boots," I say. "You're either a very lost geologist or you're here about the mines."
She looks up. Her gaze is level, unhurried, and lands on me with the flat focus of someone who has already identified me and is now assessing the approach.
"Greer Holden," she says. Not a question.
"And you're not a geologist," I say.
"Naomi Pryce. Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety. I'm here on a compliance review of the Aldrich mining claims in this district." She stands and offers her hand. Her handshake is brief and informational, contact deployed as identification rather than connection. "I was going to find you this morning. You saved me the walk."
"The gas station woman told you where I'd be."
"She was very specific about your grocery schedule."
Aggie. Of course.
"Compliance review," I say. "Of the Aldrich claims."
"Among others."
"Others being a polite fiction to justify the budget, or actual other claims."
A flicker at the corner of her mouth that isn't a smile. "I'm reviewing all inactive claims in the county that still have active maintenance filings. The Aldrich properties are six of fourteen."
"But the Aldrich properties are why you drove into a mountain valley in October."
She adjusts the strap on her bag. The gesture is small, unhurried, and tells me she's choosing her words with the care of someone who values accuracy over speed.
"The Aldrich properties are the ones with irregularities."
Two separate lines of investigation converging on the same point from different directions. My mother spent decades documenting the Aldrich mining claims. Naomi Pryce drove here with a bag full of documents because she found something worth seeing for herself.
"Have you eaten?" I ask.
"Not since Durango."
"There's a diner two blocks east. The food is pretty good and the tables are far enough apart that the grocer can't lip-read."
"The grocer lip-reads?"
"Everyone in this town lip-reads. They just prefer different languages."
We walk. The diner is the kind of place that exists in every mountain town I've ever been in: vinyl booths, laminated menus, coffee that tastes like it was brewed sometime during the previous decade and kept alive through sheer institutional momentum. We take the booth farthest from the window. Naomi orders coffee and toast. I order coffee and nothing, because my appetite left me at the wordirregularitiesand hasn't come back.
"I should tell you upfront," she says, once the coffee arrives. "I know who you are. I know your mother recently passed. I know she held property adjacent to several of the Aldrich claims, and I know the family has been trying to acquire that property for decades. I also know that your mother filed two formal complaints with my office regarding unauthorized access to her land via the mining road. Those complaints were noted and filed and went exactly nowhere, and that failure is part of why I'm here."
"My mother filed complaints?"
