Deep in the Valley by Robyn Carr Read Free Book Online Page A

want to count out silver.
    “Sam, you shouldn’t carry around all that money,” she said. “At least, don’t pull it out and count it off for customers. What if someone robs you?”
    “I don’t worry about that much,” he said.
    “You should,” she said, getting into her Jeep. “This town is growing. And changing.”
    “I’ll bear that in mind, June. In fact, I’ll think about that while I’m fishing. I was just looking for a subject to think about today.”
     
    Myrna lived in what Grace Valley residents considered the Hudson family home. Grandpa Hudson had made his money in mining and banking, married a young woman late in life and migrated up to Grace Valley when his baby daughter, Myrna Mae, was born. Twelve years later Elmer came along, and by then Grandpa Hudson was well into his sixties. Yet it was his young wife who died, at only thirty-four. That left Myrna, aged fourteen, and Elmer, aged two, and their daddy, facing his seventieth birthday. But he didn’t quite make it.
    As things often went back then, Myrna raised her brother in the house that was their parents’, even though she was a mere girl herself. She was completely devoted to Elmer, saw to his education, judiciously guarded the money that was left to them, invested with caution, kept the house clean and in good repair, and never gave a thought to herself or her own needs until Elmer was a certified doctor and married to June’s mother—all of which came when Elmer was in his thirties and Myrna in her forties.
    Remarkably, Myrna let go of Elmer with grace andpride. It wasn’t until then that she married Morton Claypool, a traveling salesman, with whom she had seventeen good years before she “misplaced” him. Her word. The whole story of that was yet to be revealed, but town gossip ranged from him having another family somewhere, to whom he returned, to him lying stiff and cold under Hudson House. Myrna, June believed, relished the mysteriousness this part of her life presented to the town. And in her own way, she encouraged the rumors.
    All those years—from the time she was a teenager, and like a single mother, through her marriage to a traveling salesman—Myrna was sustained by books. Then sometime in her early fifties, she began writing fiction—gothics, mysteries, romances, sagas. She wrote while Morton traveled, and she sold her work almost immediately. When Morton didn’t return after one of his many trips, Myrna barely seemed to notice. In fact, the stories were getting racier, and definitely more grisly. In one, a wife traveled to a small, distant town to hunt for her missing husband, who was buried in another woman’s backyard. In another, when a woman’s cheating husband came home, she killed him and sealed him behind a closet wall. These were not uncommon themes. People whispered, but they loved her.
    The Hudson family home wasn’t really a mansion, but it had that Victorian, gabled look about it. And it had been built in the early part of the century. Elmer had never been interested in living there once he had a wife and medical practice, and then a child. It was natural for him to move into the simple but homeydoctor’s house. June, however, had loved to visit Myrna when she was little. The nooks, crannies, closets, pantries, cellar and attic of her house were priceless. Myrna had never discarded a thing; every room was a treasure, an adventure.
    When June pulled up to the house, she saw from the car parked out front that one of the Barstow sisters was there. Some years back, when Myrna began to lose some of her physical stamina, she’d hired the Barstow twins, Amelia and Endeara, as maids and cooks. One at a time they came, almost every day. June wasn’t sure Myrna needed them so much as looked after them. The Barstows, cranky, bitter old women, had no source of income and couldn’t get along with anyone besides Myrna—including each other.
    Not surprisingly, it was Myrna who answered the door. “Thank