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ELEVEN
Riley woke up to a brilliant blue-sky day. The inn was charming, and her room was beautiful with a full-on view of Old Faithful. She stood at her window and stared out at the geyser. Hard to believe it hadn’t been conceived and constructed by a Disney Imagineer. Also hard to believe she was there to investigate the disappearance of an island.
She’d had a restless night, waking and reviewing everything that had happened in the past couple days. In her heart she wanted to discount Emerson’s ideas about mantle plumes and murders and secret societies. Her head told her to pay attention. They poked the bear and the bear attacked. And as long as they kept poking the bear it wasn’t going to go away. Sooner or later the bear was going to find them at Yellowstone.
She wasn’t ready to buy into the mantle plume theory connecting the island with the park deaths, but she knew with certainty that something bad had happened…and maybe was still happening. She knew this not because there was irrefutable evidence of a crime. She knew this because the people in question had overreacted and overplayed their hand.
She thought about her dad back in Texas. He never closed his eyes to things that were wrong. Even when he wasn’t acting as sheriff, he refused to look the other way when someone was behaving badly or breaking the law. She knew she couldn’t either. Like it or not, she was going to help Emerson find out why the bear didn’t like getting poked.
She left the window and went to the dining room to meet Emerson for breakfast. She found him already at a table, studying a map of the park.
“Have you eaten?” she asked him.
“Breakfast buffet. I recommend it. Fast and healthy if you make the right choices.”
Riley looked over at the buffet. It looked amazing, and she was sure she would make all the wrong choices. Bacon, eggs, pancakes, sausage, Danish pastries.
She signaled the waitress. “Coffee, fresh fruit, and two eggs scrambled.” She turned to Emerson. “So what’s the plan for today?”
“You and I are going to park headquarters in Mammoth Hot Springs. I want to talk with the Center for Resources and find out more about the mantle plume underneath the park. Then I want to talk to Visitor Protection and get a sense of where Search and Rescue looked for the missing hikers.”
Vernon waved from the entrance to the dining room and joined them.
“Did you see that buffet?” Vernon said. “I’m gonna eat everything there. Maybe not the smoked salmon and fish eggs, but everything else.”
Beth, the tour guide, walked into the room. Vernon waved at her, and she made her way to the table.
“We spent some time together last night, if you know what I mean,” Vernon said. “And I invited her to breakfast. I hope that’s okay. It’s her day off, and she said she’d show me and Little Buddy the sights.”
Beth was out of uniform, but still in tour guide mode. She greeted everyone with a smile and asked if Riley and Emerson were enjoying their breakfast. And were their accommodations satisfactory?
Riley and Emerson assured her they were indeed satisfactory.
“And what are your plans for the day?” Beth asked.
“Riley and I are going to Mammoth,” Emerson said. “I’d like to talk to someone about the newlyweds that disappeared.”
“That was a terrible tragedy,” Beth said. “They were a really nice couple.”
Emerson sat a little straighter in his chair. “Did you know them?”
“Not really. They’d hike the backcountry for a week, then show up at the inn and stay for a couple nights, then go off on another weeklong adventure. They were ski instructors, so they weren’t working. They planned to spend the entire summer at Yellowstone as a kind of honeymoon. I spoke to them from time to time.”
“Do you know where they went last, just before they were reported missing?” Emerson asked.
“No, but I think they always told the hotel concierge where they were headed before they’d leave for the backcountry. You know, for safety’s sake or just in case family wanted to reach them. It was the concierge who alerted the Park Police when the man and woman didn’t return to the inn on time.”
Beth pointed at a man kneeling beside a table on the other side of the dining room, drawing on a map with a red pen. “The concierge is actually right over there, helping that family, probably with driving directions. I’ll tell him to stop by after he’s done.”
“Isn’t she the best?” Vernon said. “She knows everything about everything. And you want directions you don’t have to ask that concierge, because Beth can give directions.”
Beth rolled her eyes and gave Vernon a punch in the arm. They went off to the breakfast bar, and Beth stopped on the way to talk to the concierge.
Riley was halfway through her eggs when the concierge walked across the room to talk with them.
“I hear you guys need some directions to Mammoth Hot Springs,” the man said.
“Actually we’re looking for information on the newlywed couple who went missing a month ago,” Emerson said. “We heard that you were the one who reported them missing.”
