by Brenda Novak
“No one. I don’t know where you heard that, but it’s wrong. I never went home, sick or otherwise,” she said, and continued on her way.
Tug woke Claire from a deep sleep two hours after she’d canceled her appointments. When she raised her head and saw his name on caller ID, she didn’t want to answer. She wasn’t up to talking to anyone else today, even her stepfather. But she knew he was probably worried. If she didn’t answer, he and Roni might drive over.
That was more than she could handle right now.
Taking most of the bedding with her, she rolled toward the phone but dropped the handset. “Hello?” she said once she’d picked it up.
“You okay?”
Making an effort to shake the exhaustion that dragged at her as if she was under ten feet of water, she rubbed her face. He was worried, as she’d thought. She could hear it in his voice. “Fine. Who told you about the attack?”
“Leanne.”
“It’s not in the paper?”
“Might be. Haven’t checked.”
Everyone would hear about it, anyway, and they’d be talking. “Are you upset with me?” Claire knew he couldn’t be pleased. He was as adamant as Leanne that she leave the past alone.
“Not at all,” he replied. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
At last, a ray of sunshine for her soul. “Really?” She was almost afraid to believe it.
“Of course. I understand the…loss of your mother has been hard on you. I just… I wish you could let it go so you could be happy. That’s all.”
Why was she the only one who couldn’t? That drove her almost as crazy as everything else about her mother’s disappearance. “Don’t you want to know what happened? Where she went? Don’t you ever wonder?”
He seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “Of course I do. I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t. You know I hired a private eye right after she went missing, even offered a sizable reward, but it was all for nothing. We can’t let tragedy destroy our lives. Sometimes these things happen and there are no answers. At some point, you have to cut away the bad and focus on the good, forget the past and move toward the future.”
He’d done that. So had Leanne. She was the only one clinging to Alana’s memory. Was she being loyal? Or was she ruining her life?
“But what if there are answers out there?” she asked. “What if we could find them if we pursued them hard enough?”
“We could put all our time, energy and resources into this and still come up empty-handed and brokenhearted.”
He had Roni to help him look toward the future. Her stepfather was happy in his marriage, maybe even happier than he’d been with her mother. How much did that figure into his attitude?
Would she be so set on pursuing this if David hadn’t died?
Probably not. She’d felt less driven when she’d had him as an incentive to live and love again, to forget.
But he was gone, and the burning passion was back. It’d been building recently, returning to levels she hadn’t experienced since the years right after it happened. Which was why she had to ask Tug what she’d asked Leanne. “Do you know about Leanne coming home sick from school the day Mom went missing, Dad?”
She sensed surprise, but when he answered, he spoke in an even, measured tone. “No. Who told you she came home sick?”
“It’s in the school’s attendance log.”
A brief pause suggested he was scrambling for what to say next, and that upset her. She wanted to trust him. She did trust him. So why did she get the impression that he was trying to dodge this question?
“Wow, you really are chasing this thing again, aren’t you,” he finally said.
Draping her arm over her eyes, she sank back onto her pillow. “I have to, Dad. For whatever reason—for a lot of reasons—I can’t let it go.”
He didn’t respond right away, but when he did she could tell that something had changed. “Fine. You do what you have to, honey. And I’ll support you in it.”
Claire threw the covers aside and swung her feet over the edge of the bed. “You mean that?”
“Of course I do.”
Those four simple words subdued the sinking feeling that had settled in when she woke up. He wouldn’t relent if he’d killed Alana. He’d keep fighting to stop her. His past reluctance had troubled her all these years, so being able to move forward with his blessing meant a lot. “Why the change of heart?”
“What happened last night scares me. I lost your mother. I don’t want to lose you.”
When Claire’s chest constricted, she knew his feelings toward the investigation had been a bigger problem for her than she’d ever wanted to admit. “Leanne said it was my fault for going there in the first place.”
“You should be able to go to your mother’s studio without feeling you might get hurt. Maybe it was a freak encounter, or an attempted robbery. I got off the phone with the sheriff a second ago. He said there’s nothing to indicate it’s more than that, since whoever it was just shoved you and ran off. But…the fact that it occurred at Alana’s studio has him worried, and me, too.”
“You think it might be related to the past?”
“Everyone does, although there’s no proof. You didn’t get a look at the guy?”
“No.”
“Concentrate, honey. Can you remember anything about him? His height? His weight? Maybe some detail about his clothes or his smell?”
She wished she could, but it’d happened too fast. “No, nothing.”
“What about his car?”
“I didn’t realize he had a car, Dad. I didn’t see anyone behind me on the road, didn’t hear a vehicle approach. He must’ve followed at a distance and parked too far away.”
“The sheriff said Isaac Morgan came to your rescue.”
Again, Isaac’s passionate kiss, his hands on her body and his erection pressing against her legs flashed through her mind. Just when the memories of their nights together had grown tired and dim, she’d gone and created a fresh one. “Yes.”
“How do you know he didn’t shove you to begin with?”
“Because he’d have no reason to do that. And it’s not who he is.”
“He never liked that you ended up with David.”
He could’ve stopped it if he’d cared enough. “Believe me, that was no skin off his nose.”
“But he watches you. I’ve seen him do it.”
Her father had never mentioned this before. “What are you talking about? When does Isaac watch me?”
“Whenever. He can’t keep his eyes off you. At the bar. At the café. At the grocery store. Anywhere you both happen to be.”
That was because of their history. She watched him, too. She could feel his presence before she even saw him. “Trust me on this. It wasn’t Isaac. What we had didn’t mean anything to him. You know how he is with women. Anyway, the attack on me might’ve turned into more than just a shove if he hadn’t come running.” How else would he have gotten that terrible gash in his chest?
“Maybe, maybe not. But it’s awfully convenient that he was right there.”
“He lives close by.”
“Not close enough to hear anything. And…Claire?”
“Yes?”
He seemed to be struggling with what he wanted to say next.
“Dad?”
He sighed. “It’s so hard to know what to reveal and what not to reveal.”
Claire gripped the phone tighter. “There’s something you haven’t told me?”
“It’s not directly connected to Alana going missing. I’m sure of that. But…I’ve often debated whether it would make things easier on you to know. And now that you’ve asked… I don’t want this eating away at you, sending you down the wrong path.”
“Tell me.”
“You asked about Leanne being out of school for three hours on the day your mother went missing.”
A hard knot formed in Claire’s stomach. His manner worried her. “Yes?”
“That di
d happen.”
Leanne had just denied it. Initially, he’d denied it, too. “Then why’d you say—”
“The question took me off guard,” he broke in. “I’m so used to protecting her, so used to minimizing the damage caused by that day, it’s become instinctive to lie about it.”
Claire swallowed hard. “I don’t understand. There must be a reason you’d say she was out of school and keep saying it.”
“Yes. And if you’re going to pursue this, you need to know what it is.”
Whatever “it” was sounded pretty ominous. She took a shaky breath. “I’m listening.”
“It wasn’t your mother who was…involved in some way with Joe Kenyon.”
“Who was it?” Claire could barely make herself heard, but she must’ve spoken loudly enough because he responded with the name she’d suddenly guessed he was going to say.
“Leanne.”
“That can’t be true,” she said. “Leanne was only thirteen at the time. If…if Joe was molesting her, he should’ve been punished. Why would you lie to keep what he did a secret?”
“Because he didn’t molest her. What happened wasn’t his fault.”
Claire stared at the carpet, studying the large flowers as if tracing them on paper. “That doesn’t make sense. He was at least seventeen to eighteen years older than she was.”
“But she had a thing for him. You remember Katie, don’t you?”
How could she forget Katie? Her sister’s best friend had been almost as hard to put up with as Leanne. “Of course. She lived next door to Joe until her family moved during her and Leanne’s junior year.”
“That’s right. I guess—” his words fell off but he seemed to marshal the resolve to continue “—I guess Leanne was coming on to him.”
Sickened, Claire covered her mouth and spoke through her fingers. “How does a thirteen-year-old girl come on to a thirtysomething man?”
“I can’t talk about it. I…won’t talk about it. It’s too upsetting to me, and I’d rather keep the unflattering details private, for your sister’s sake. To be fair to her, that was a long time ago, and…and sometimes girls get themselves mixed up in stuff like that when they’re discovering their sexuality. Or so I’m told,” he added in a mumble.
Claire had never even been tempted to come on to a man nearly two decades older, but…she decided to give her sister the benefit of the doubt.
“Just know that she was young and confused and tried to…entice him,” he went on.
“And you’re sure he—” Her throat closed up. After swallowing, she began again. “Did he act on what she offered him?”
“No.”
“He might have done more than you think. Maybe that’s what instigated…her interest.”
“He had proof when he called us, Claire.”
Claire couldn’t help thinking of Leanne in that nightgown. She’d assumed her sister’s promiscuity stemmed from the accident, but this made her wonder if it’d started at a much earlier age. “What kind of proof?”
“A video she made for him.”
Gross… Claire couldn’t bear to think about it. But she still needed the answers she’d been searching for from the beginning. “So…what does Leanne’s being out of school on the day Mom went missing have to do with any of this?”
“It was that morning Joe contacted us with the…news. Your mother was so upset when she heard it, she called me in tears. I’d dropped her off after having a cup of coffee and a doughnut with her, had just arrived at the gun shop, so I asked her to wait until I could get off work, told her we’d deal with it then. I couldn’t leave. I had nobody to watch the store. Walt was out of town and depending on me, and Don Salter, who could’ve replaced me, wouldn’t answer his phone.” He took a moment to gather his thoughts or his emotions or both before continuing. “But apparently she couldn’t wait. She marched down and signed Leanne out of school so she could talk to her before you were home.”
“And what did Leanne have to say?”
“She denied the whole thing. So Alana took her over to Joe’s, and he showed them the tape.”
That was why Leanne had never mentioned being out of school. She didn’t want to admit she’d made a pornographic video at thirteen, which she used to solicit a married man. Claire also understood why Tug had kept quiet all these years. But how had Joe and that tape and Leanne’s behavior affected the investigation into Alana’s disappearance? It must have hampered the sheriff’s ability to do a thorough job with everyone being careful not to say too much about the day in question.
“Why hasn’t Joe told anyone?” Claire asked. “Like one of the investigators you hired?”
“Because he’s a good man.”
If what she was hearing was true, Claire had to agree. He’d tolerated a lot of talk, been convicted of committing adultery with her mother in the court of public opinion, and yet he’d never stepped forward to point a finger at Leanne. That certainly changed how she thought of him.
Now she could explain some of those “inconsistencies” listed in that file. But what did that have to do with her mother’s disappearance? Or were the incident with Joe and the kidnapping two separate items?
“So…Mom took her back to school?” Claire remembered there being some confusion about that in what she’d read.
“No. She was crying too hard. She’d had a terrible fight with Leanne. You can imagine what it must’ve been like after they left Joe’s. So I closed up and took Leanne back to school for her. I thought it might help your mother to have some time alone.”
“When was that?”
“I can’t remember exactly. About one o’clock, I think.”
But the log said Leanne hadn’t signed in until two. “And Mom was…”
“At the house. That’s where I left her.”
“And she was fine?”
“As fine as could be expected, under the circumstances.”
That meant Alana had gone missing between one and three-thirty, when she and Leanne got home. “That’s why you were so worried when I called that day.”
“Yes. I was worried before you called.”
This made sense, but what about the previous sightings of her car at Joe’s house—if those reports were true? “Thanks for telling me.”
He lowered his voice. “What are you going to do with the information? Roni, even Joe’s wife—they don’t know, Claire. I don’t want it coming out. It would really hurt Leanne and could cause problems for Joe.”
Obviously, he felt that being honest with her had betrayed her sister. They’d always been close. “Nothing. For now,” she told him.
“Leanne’s your sister.” The caution in his tone suggested she should protect the secret as well as he had. But if everyone was protecting this secret or that secret, how would the sheriff’s department ever get to the bottom of what had gone wrong?
Claire felt she owed Leanne a lot. They were sisters, as her stepfather had just pointed out. She understood how the slightest upset could throw Leanne into a tail-spin, especially since the accident. But did those considerations outweigh the hope that full disclosure and absolute honesty might bring Alana back—or catch the man who killed her?
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9
Claire frowned at the steak on the plate in front of her. “I told you. I already had dinner.”
Isaac folded his arms and leaned against the counter. The plastic containers he’d taken from the refrigerator were still strewn across the counter as if he thought she might want seconds. But as good as the food looked—there were sweet potatoes and asparagus to go with the steak—she couldn’t possibly eat more than he’d served her.
“You’re the reason I cooked extra,” he said with a wink.
She arched her eyebrows at him. “Don’t act like I stood you up. I told you I wasn’t coming.”
“You’re here now.”
Because it hadn’t occurred to her that caller ID
would identify the pay phone at the Kicking Horse Saloon. Or that he’d get out of bed to look for her in the middle of the night. “I don’t understand why it matters to you whether I eat.”
“You mean I’m such a hard-hearted bastard I don’t mind watching you waste away?”
“I’m not wasting away.”
“You won’t if you eat.” He motioned to her plate. “Dig in.”
“Fine.” Too tired to argue, Claire shoveled a bite of sweet potato into her mouth. She should’ve stayed home tonight. She hadn’t expected her date with Rusty to be exciting, but neither had she expected it to fail quite as badly as it did. “It feels weird to be sitting in the kitchen where I lived as a child,” she said.
He poured a glass of cranberry juice and put it on the table beside her. “Oh, yeah? Do you like what I’ve done with the place?”
Obviously, he was joking. It was well-maintained, but he hadn’t changed a single thing since he moved in three years ago and neither had the people who’d owned it before him. “I wouldn’t plan on hiring out as a decorator if I were you.”
He shrugged. “Maybe someday I’ll remodel.”
He’d done a lot with the shack he’d inherited from Tippy. It was small but well-kept and in such a beautiful setting he’d stayed there much longer than anyone had expected. That was where she’d always visited him before, where she’d always pictured him even after he bought this place.
“What made you give up Tippy’s house on the lake?” she asked.
“Mostly the size. I needed more room and this gave me a different view and even more privacy.”
“The pictures you’ve hung make it a nice bachelor’s pad.” Mostly wildlife photos he’d taken himself, they added a masculine touch. “It’s easy to tell you like what you do.” Her gaze lingered on a framed print of a hippopotamus submerged in a swampy river with just his eyes, ears and nostrils showing. “I think it’s great how much you love your work. You’re the perfect kind of guy for it.”
He poured himself some juice. “What kind of guy does it take?”
