“Stay back.” Owen raised his hand, and his fingers brushed her sleeve. “There might be a decent footprint. We don’t want to disturb anything.”
Victoria stepped backward, not needing physical contact with her long-ago beau added to her evening’s troubles. Her heart stuttered at the faint touch of his hand. Was it her imagination, or was he even more handsome than he’d been in high school?
“What’s the fuss in here?” Charlotte Newbright’s plump figure entered the room, and she gasped as she stared at the gaping safe, its locking mechanism collapsed in on itself. “We were robbed?”
Owen turned to the older woman. “Have you been in the building for the last ten minutes? You didn’t hear anything or see anyone?”
Charlotte’s dyed red hair in its choppy, gold-streaked cut fluttered as she shook her head. “I was in the northwest dining room, chatting with your brother Douglas and that pretty little Merry of his. Such a darling couple.” With that pronouncement, Charlotte planted her hands on her hips and turned to Victoria. “Everything was in the safe already, wasn’t it, dearie? You ran today’s report just before you left.”
“Yes. The whole weekend’s receipts,” Victoria tried to stifle the deluge of emotions that threatened to overwhelm her. “We were too busy for me to make it to the bank Saturday morning. Friday through Sunday were in that safe.”
Owen looked up from his notepad. “You’d already cleared out the cash register, even though Douglas and Merry were still here?”
“Oh, yes.” Charlotte waved her hand, answering for Victoria. “We close at eight on Sundays, you know, and they were the last ones here. When I asked them if they wanted dessert, they knew it was close to closing time, so they paid for their meal before I brought them their pie. Told them to take as long as they needed. Got to talking with them—such sweet folks.”
Victoria realized Charlotte might jabber on infinitely if she wasn’t interrupted. Her friendliness was an asset to the Sugar Plum, especially since Victoria preferred to stay in the kitchen, but the woman didn’t always know when to stop talking. “I’d just totaled out the cash register before I left to take the cookies up the street,” she clarified.
“I see. So all the money was in the safe. Can you tell me what was taken?” Owen asked.
Victoria squeezed her eyes shut. Yup, she could tell him exactly how much, but that didn’t mean she wanted to speak the words out loud, in front of her daughter and Charlotte, who would only worry.
“Let’s get you up to bed, Paige,” Charlotte suggested. “It’s almost bedtime.”
“But my cookie—”
“You can bring it upstairs.”
Paige’s eyes brightened and she consented to going upstairs with Charlotte. Victoria felt a rush of relief, glad Paige was leaving the room before Owen recognized anything of himself in her, or caught on to the significance of her age. As long as he didn’t find out when Paige’s birthday was, he likely wouldn’t make the connection.
As the two headed for the door, Owen cleared his throat.
Victoria tensed, fearful he’d ask Paige a telling question.
But his words were innocent enough. “Is my brother still here?”
“They left just before I came into the kitchen.” Charlotte shook her head. “I locked the front door after them. I’m sorry we didn’t see you come in or he might have come back to see for himself what was up, him being the police captain and all. But those two wanted a booth in the back corner, out of the way and to themselves. Didn’t even bring that little boy of hers with them, and you never see Merry without Tyler.” She gave her tongue a meaningful cluck. “That’s serious romance, if you ask me, getting a babysitter and all.”
“Thank you,” Victoria whispered to Charlotte gratefully. “Good night, Paige. I’ll be up to tuck you in shortly.”
“Take your time,” Charlotte said with a wink.
Victoria wasn’t sure what the wink was for. Because Charlotte was removing Paige from the potentially traumatizing crime scene? Or because she was leaving Victoria and Owen alone? Charlotte had her own ideas about Victoria’s need for a man in her life, but Victoria had made it clear she wasn’t interested in romance.
“Paige?” Owen called her back before she reached the steps. “Can I ask you one more question?”
Paige turned back to Owen, patiently looking at him with eyes so much like his—because they were his. Fitzgerald blue eyes.
“When is your birthday?”
“January 10.”
“And you turned nine this year?”
“Yes.”
Victoria worked up the courage to look at Owen. His attention was on Paige, and though he kept a kind smile on his lips, his blue eyes had hardened.
“I’m sorry I missed it by almost two months. Happy birthday, a little late.” He dismissed her with a wave, and she carried her cookie happily up the stairs with Charlotte huffing along behind her.
Owen stared after the little girl as she disappeared from sight.
She couldn’t be.
She had to be.
Was Paige his daughter? Owen flipped to the calendar at the back of his notebook and counted off the months. Nine months before January 10 would have been April 10. Ten years before, he and Victoria had been together until mid-May.
His head swirled and he tried to think. Victoria had left him, running off with Hank Monroe right after graduation. Paige was Hank’s daughter. Everybody knew it.
Except the calendar indicated otherwise.
Owen shook his head. Focus. He had to focus on the investigation. Ever since Olivia Henry’s death two months ago, the Fitzgerald Bay Police Department had fallen under intense scrutiny. Folks claimed they’d bungled the investigation of Olivia’s murder. People were demanding answers, afraid there was a killer loose among them.
He couldn’t yet answer the question of who killed Olivia Henry, but he could investigate this break-in with a straight head, even though questions about Paige’s paternity rose like bile in his throat.
Victoria had stepped around the center island. Was she trying to avoid him?
Determined not to bungle anything, Owen turned his attention to Victoria. “Can you tell me what was taken?”
Victoria looked across at the safe as though envisioning what had been inside less than half an hour before. “A red bank bag—the First Bank of Fitzgerald Bay. It contained all my receipts for the last three days.”
“How much?”
“This weekend was the best I’ve done since—” she swallowed “—since Olivia was found. Almost three thousand dollars. Only about five hundred of that was by credit card. The rest was cash or checks.”
Owen studied her face as she stared at the open safe, either transfixed by its emptiness or else stubbornly refusing to look at him. The top button of her white chef’s blouse was open, and he could see a vein throbbing madly, indicating she was frightened. Of the robber? Or of him?
The date on the calendar taunted him, and in spite of the year clearly printed at the top, Owen’s thoughts rushed a decade back in time. His life had been turned upside down in an instant. His cousin had been killed by Victoria’s father in a car accident, and Victoria had left town without contacting him, though they’d been seriously dating at the time. He’d tried to reach her, to let her know he didn’t blame her for what her father had done, but she’d left before he’d been able to find her, and soon the rumors had started flying.
Victoria wasn’t the only person to leave town abruptly after graduation. Hank Monroe had left, too, and the rumor was that Hank and Victoria had run away together. Owen had wanted to deny it, but then Hank’s father, a respected judge, had told him to his face that it was true. Victoria had only been using him to make Hank jealous. She’d gotten her man. She had no more use
for Owen.
For ten years, Owen had tried to convince himself that he was over Victoria, that the only feeling he felt toward her was anger. She’d used him and left him without so much as a goodbye. And now, if the nine months between April and January and Paige’s Fitzgerald-blue eyes were any indication, she’d stolen something even more precious than his heart. She’d taken his daughter.
Victoria couldn’t look at Owen. Had he guessed the truth? She forced herself to keep talking about what had been stolen from the safe. “That might sound like a lot of money, but most weekends I don’t make a fraction of that much, and midweek business is slower still. By the time I pay my employees and cover my costs for food and heating…” As she thought about her expenses, Victoria found herself feeling overwhelmed. She’d needed that income.
But God had seen her through plenty of tough times before, raising her daughter alone on one income. God had provided her with a flexible pastry chef position in New York City, and through that had taught her what she needed to know to run the Sugar Plum. Victoria believed God used everything in her life—even the difficult times—as ingredients for the recipe He had planned for her life.
But what good could God possibly bring from the broken safe and missing funds?
She shook her head. “I needed that money.”
“I’m sorry.” Owen’s words carried emotion, not the formal just-the-facts-ma’am voice he’d been using thus far.
For a second, Victoria was tempted to meet his eyes, to feel that human connection he offered in the sympathy in his voice. But she’d been head over heels in love with Owen when they were in high school. In the six months she’d been back in town, she had yet to spend any time around him. She’d seen him, of course, coming and going from the police station across the street, and her heart had always done a mad dance at the sight of him.
Because she dreaded telling him the truth? Or because she still had feelings for him, even after all these years? Until she was certain those feelings were gone for good, she didn’t want any traitorous emotions sneaking up on her—not with the confession she still needed to make. After all, Owen had every reason to hate her. It had broken her heart to leave him the first time around. She wasn’t eager to find out how upset he might be when he knew the whole story.
She felt fear rising in her heart and, hoping for a distraction, she turned to look at the ruined mess of cookies on the floor. The few that weren’t broken were a lost cause, anyway, never mind that she kept the floor spotless.
Owen must have seen where she was looking. “And the cookies?”
“Ten dozen. They sell for a dollar fifty each, or three for four dollars. It’s less than two hundred dollars lost revenue—”
“But your time…” Owen tapped his pencil against his notepad. “The bank bag I can understand. That’s a lot of money. It makes sense to steal that. But the cookies—what would anyone have to gain by breaking your cookies?”
Victoria looked at the crumbled mess as though she might find the answer there. The sight of the broken cookies, each one a heartfelt labor of love—some of her customers even called them works of art. Why would anyone destroy something so innocent?
“Do you have any enemies?”
“No.” Victoria cringed at his question. The closest thing she had to an enemy was Owen himself. How would he feel when he learned she’d hidden his daughter from him all these years? He would hate her. And yet, she knew she had to tell him. Her heart beat hard inside her, and she could feel a recreant blush rising up to her ears.
“Are you sure?”
It was an invitation to tell the truth, to be released from the secret that had burdened her ever since the day almost ten years before when she’d learned she was pregnant and wondered whether she should tell him. But her father had crashed his pickup into the car driven by Owen’s cousin two days before that. Patrick Fitzgerald had been killed instantly. Victoria had run away to New York to stay with her father’s sister. It had taken her almost ten years to work up the courage to return to town. She didn’t have the nerve to admit the shameful thing she’d done by hiding Paige from Owen all these years.
“Not anyone who could have done this.”
Owen stared at Victoria’s face. Why wouldn’t she look at him? His heart burned inside him with ferocious fire. Was the blue-eyed little girl who’d gone upstairs his daughter?
“Victoria?”
She looked up about as far as his chin. He wished she would lift her brown eyes a little higher so he could try to read the truth there. But then, he could see the truth in the color of her daughter’s eyes. Victoria’s eyes were brown, but Paige had blue eyes—Fitzgerald blue eyes, just like his.
“Hank Monroe has brown eyes. You have brown eyes, but Paige…”
Victoria’s chin quivered. “I came to Fitzgerald Bay to tell you the truth.”
Owen felt his stomach plummet. Was she saying what he thought she was saying? “You’ve been in town six months, and you haven’t spoken to me. Hank Monroe’s been going around claiming Paige is his. Were you aware of Hank’s claims?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve never denied them?” Owen had always scoffed at the suggestion that he’d inherited an Irish temper, but something was charging through his veins with fury. He wanted the truth, and he wanted it ten years ago.
Victoria’s voice cracked and broke off in a whisper, “I thought you should be first to hear the truth.”
TWO
Owen gripped the stainless steel island countertop. He wasn’t sure what was more upsetting—what Victoria wasn’t saying, or the fact she wasn’t saying it.
“Is Paige my daughter?”
“Yes.” Victoria’s voice broke to a whisper and she covered her face with her hands.
Rather than rip the countertop from the island, Owen let out a long, slow breath and willed himself to calm down.
He had a daughter.
“You hid her from me for ten years?” Anger hurled his words at her.
“We came back—”
“You know how important family is to me. How could you—”
She looked up at him with terrified eyes, and he let the question die unspoken. He was a law enforcement officer, sworn to keep the peace and uphold justice. There was nothing to be gained by shouting at Victoria. What if Paige heard him? What if he frightened his own daughter?
“Does Paige know I’m her father?”
Victoria shook her head. “I hoped that, by moving back to Fitzgerald Bay, she might get a chance to know you. That might make it easier when she learns she’s your daughter.”
He had a daughter.
Anger fought with doubt and betrayal and disbelief inside his heart. He needed to sort out his feelings before he spoke to Victoria anymore. He needed to talk to a lawyer. But that wasn’t going to happen tonight.
In the meantime, he had a robber to catch. And he had a job to do, if he was going to keep his daughter safe. He schooled his voice into something reasonably civil. “I’ll take a look around back and see if I can find any footprints. The perpetrator was gone by the time I ran around the side of the building. But then, Paige told the dispatcher she’d waited for him to leave before trying to use the phone.”
Victoria looked as though she wanted to say more, but she seemed to take her cue from his mechanically forced words. “How soon can I sweep up the cookies? I’ll need to get to work on another batch.”
Owen studied Victoria’s face—it was easy enough to do, since she refused to look at him. How could she be worried about cookies when he had a daughter upstairs, who’d seen the robber who’d punched the safe? How could she do anything as mundane as sweeping the floor, when his world had just been rocked to its core?
He wanted to punch something, but instead Owen crouche
d to inspect the trampled crumbs, putting himself through the motions of investigating. There were no clear footprints, no residue that might point to who had smashed them or where that person had last been. One perfect cookie teetered on a pile of broken crumbs, a bright green frosted frog with buggy eyes and a cheerful smile. He lifted it carefully.
“You can have that.”
“Hmm?” He looked up to see Victoria standing by with a broom and a dustpan.
“You can have that cookie if you want it. The floor is clean, but I can’t sell it now.”
He didn’t want a cookie. He wanted the past ten years back, but he couldn’t have them.
He took the cookie. “Thanks. You can sweep those up. I’d check the safe for prints, but if he was wearing gloves, as Paige said…” He let his voice trail off as he stepped out of Victoria’s way, and she immediately set to work sweeping.
The woman never stood still. Even in high school, she’d been in constant motion, a full schedule of classes, constantly taking care of her father since her mother had died when she was younger, and when she wasn’t busy with that, baking.
Always baking. When they’d dated, she’d insisted on bringing goodies over for the whole Fitzgerald clan. He’d suspected she was trying to win the affection of his family, but then she’d left him for Hank and never looked back, so perhaps he’d been wrong about that. Perhaps he’d been wrong about a lot of things concerning Victoria. He’d never dreamed she would do something so heartless as to steal his own daughter and hide her away from him.
He had to focus on the investigation and swallow his emotions. People claimed the FBPD officers had let their emotions toward his brother Charles color their perception of his potential guilt in Olivia’s murder. Owen couldn’t let his personal life get in the way of his police work. “I’ll check with Douglas after I’m done out back. Find out if he noticed anything.”
The Detective's Secret Daughter Page 2
