by Julie Miller
“At least.” Maybe a little hotter from Roy’s point of view. Melanie had to take another drink of the tart liquid to hide her amusement.
Melanie appreciated the shade as much as the raised perspective on the Jackson Trucking semi parked in front of the bakery and craft shop. Phyllis Schultz was checking off a manifest on a clipboard while the potbellied driver chowed down on a slice of pie beside her. Phyllis and her friend Bernie Jackson, however, weren’t the scenery Melanie was watching from her perch. Her eyes had latched on to the men moving furniture and boxes of trinkets made by the craftsmen on the farm from the shop into the back of the truck for distribution to outlets in Falls City, Warsaw and other small towns around the lakes. Truth be told, she was watching one man, in particular.
With a square of white gauze and tape sticking out like a tattoo against his tanned skin, Tom was easy to spot. With Silas off on an errand for her uncle, Tom was easily the biggest man here. Although she couldn’t hear the words, she read the teasing remark he aimed at Roy’s klutzy maneuver, and heard the resulting laughter among all the men.
Tom had a clever sense of humor that had tempted her to smile on more than one occasion. How unfair was it that someone so ruggedly built could also tell her an adorable story about being a toddler who’d stripped off all his clothes on an outing with his mother to go skinny-dipping in one of the fountains on the Plaza in Kansas City? Although it was impossible to ignore that body, which was fit enough to handle the farm’s physical workload—and strong enough to make a believer out of her when he’d shown her how to break a man’s nose or strangle him with his own shirt if she needed to defend herself—it was that sense of humor he shared in their morning meetings at the infirmary that spoke to something inside her. Tom seemed to have made more friends around the farm the past few days than she’d made in the past year. Strange for a man who preferred the solitude of the night shift.
After dinner, it had been all available hands on deck to help Bernie Jackson unload boxes of groceries and paper goods from the back of his truck and get them into Phyllis’s walk-in pantry inside the bakery before any of the food supplies were tainted by the heat. Now speed had given way to muscle as the men loaded the craft pieces into the truck for transport.
“He’s hot.” Deanna must be equally mesmerized by the show of testosterone.
“I bet they all are.”
Deanna peeked over the top of her sunglasses, rolling her eyes at the joke. Then she pushed the frames onto the bridge of her nose and turned her gaze back to the men. Most of them had taken off their shirts in deference to the heat. All of them were glistening with sweat. “I’m talking about the new guy.”
Melanie was surprised at the resentment that soured the lemonade on her tongue. She looked forward to Tom visiting her cottage for a check of his injury, then sharing coffee and some conversation about KC. She’d even had a few naughty fantasies about turning the impersonal contact they shared when he gave her those self-defense lessons into something very personal.
But that didn’t mean she had a monopoly on his company. She’d given him directions to a quiet spot at the lake, and he’d promised to help her and Daryl keep an eye on SueAnn. Those were the kinds of things friends did. The way he touched her hair or brushed against her just meant the man had no sense of boundaries—not that he was interested in her.
She had no claim on Tom, but if Deanna set her sights on him, then Melanie would have no chance at all to lure him over to the dowdy-cousin side. Not that she really wanted to get attached to any man here. Her plans to learn all she could about her father’s death and then leave depended on her ability to stay unattached. Still, she heard a jealous voice inside her, and pointed out, “I thought you were into Roy right now.”
“He’s got muscles that Roy doesn’t. Plus, he’s got that whole bad-boy vibe going for him.”
“Silas has that same bad-boy vibe,” Melanie said. “And he wants to be with you.”
Deanna dismissed Silas’s obsession with a toss of her dark hair. “Do you suppose Duff dances?”
“How would I know?” With a stab of something that felt like an impending sense of loss, Melanie’s gaze zeroed in on Tom’s broad back as he hefted one end of a dining room table onto the truck. He released the table and turned to her. Even at this distance she could see his gaze narrowing, as if he knew she’d been staring at him and was wondering why. Melanie swung her legs back over the railing to face the house instead of those curious green eyes. Even with the cold drink, she could feel her temperature rising. This conversation was getting under her skin a lot more than it should have. “You call him Duff?”
“All his friends do.”
Was Deanna simply repeating the party line Tom made with every introduction? Or had her cousin already gotten extra friendly with him? After working here for a week, was Melanie the only person still calling him Tom?
“I wonder if he’s going to the Lake Hanover dance. I think I’ll ask him.” Deanna looked over at her and laughed. “Relax, Mel. I’m not making plans to steal your man.”
“He’s not my man.”
“I bet he could be if you tried. He’s really into you for some reason. But you know, there’s such a thing as playing too hard to get. If you need some makeup tips, or want to borrow some clothes or—Oh, wait. Nothing I have would fit you, would it?” Her frown transformed into an excited smile. “We could go shopping in Falls City. I wonder if Duff would prefer you in a dress or tight-fitting jeans.”
“Stop trying to be helpful,” Melanie muttered.
When the front door swung open, she nearly leaped to her feet at the chance to escape the unsettling conversation. “Aunt Abby.”
“Girls?” Her aunt peeked out the screen door. With her hair drawn back into a ponytail, Abby was clearly in cleaning and planning mode. “If you’ve had enough of a break, I could use your help. I need to get the decorations for the dance down from the attic. Since we’re hosting it this year, I want everything to look just right.”
“I’ll go.” Melanie handed her lemonade glass off to her aunt and went inside. She’d have volunteered to scrub the toilets if it meant getting away from Deanna’s helpful observations about Melanie’s shortcomings when it came to getting a man to notice her. But her mood shifted from thoughts of escape to the opportunity to do more exploring to see if she could find anything else that had belonged to her father. “What am I looking for?”
“Three boxes marked Independence Day,” Abby called after her as Melanie hurried up the stairs. “I know it’s past the Fourth, but I thought the red, white and blue would make colorful decorations around the barn. The boxes should be on the metal shelves.”
“I’ll find them.” Abby turned her attention to Deanna while Melanie went to the end of the hallway and tugged on the rope to lower the attic stairs.
The air on the house’s third floor was heavy and warm. Melanie picked up one of the flashlights stored on a shelf beside the opening in the floor and switched it on. When her beam of light bounced off the window in the back wall, she briefly considered opening it to get some sort of breeze. But if she was up here long enough to need a breeze to cool off, someone would surely start to question her disappearance and come looking for her.
She’d have to settle for quick rather than thorough when it came to her search for clues. Melanie spotted the boxes as soon as she pulled the string to turn on the bare lightbulb overhead. She carried them to the top of the steps one by one, using each trip to study the shelves, furniture and hanging storage bags to see if she spotted anything that reminded her of her father.
The box where she’d found the watch seemed to have conveniently disappeared, but she read every label, hoping something would draw her attention. Halloween. Deanna—High School. Rodeo Pageants. Melanie lifted the lid on that box and found several mementos from her aunt’s career as a beauty queen. Although
her winning crown and hat were displayed in a hutch downstairs, this box contained framed certificates from county-fair contests, along with a couple of photograph albums and some of the decorative tack Abby had used when she’d competed.
Something about the carved grommets that had once decorated a show saddle, and the pockmarked chain of a bridle with the bit still attached, reminded Melanie of the ring of black steel she’d found out on her father’s boat. She tucked the flashlight beneath her chin and dug into her jeans to pull out the ring, holding both it and the chain up to the light. Not that the ring matched in terms of age or style, but the shape was similar. With the oblong protrusion on one side of the ring, and a tiny hole like the eye of a needle in the middle of that protrusion, it could be a link in some other type of chain.
If so, how did that help her? What would a chain be doing on her father’s boat? The metal was new, and the boat hadn’t been seaworthy for some time. This odd-shaped ring probably wasn’t a link to anything. Why couldn’t she just find a box marked Leroy Fiske or Don’t Show This to Mel? Ending up with more questions than answers, Melanie dropped the chain inside the box and pushed it to the back of the shelf to pull the next one forward.
Pulling the flashlight from beneath her chin, she shined the light into the space vacated by the box. “What is that?”
Gauging the length of time she’d been up in the attic by the perspiration trickling into the cleft between her breasts, Melanie decided to risk a few more minutes of explore time. She twisted her hair into a rope and tucked it inside the collar of her T-shirt. It wasn’t the box or the empty space that had snagged her curiosity, but what lay behind it.
A door.
A locked door, to be precise.
She pulled a couple of boxes to the floor to lighten the weight of the shelf, then lifted one corner slightly and angled it away from the wall. She froze for a second at the screech of metal across the wood floor. But there was no thunder of running feet at the noise, no shouts of alarm from below. With only the sound of her own excited breathing to keep her company, she continued her search. Melanie sidled behind the shelf to inspect the door that was barely as tall as she. She ran her fingers across the shiny steel hasp and padlock that sealed the door shut, wondering at the purpose of a new lock on an old door and who held the key to open it.
“What are you hiding in here?” And who was hiding it?
She tugged on the padlock, just in case the old door frame was brittle enough to break away, but the wood held fast. She needed a pry bar or a pair of bolt cutters to get inside.
Or a chain.
The fear of discovery hurried her feet around the shelves. She opened the box of Abby’s souvenirs and grabbed the broken bridle chain. With a little seesawing, the links were narrow enough that she could slip the chain behind the hasp just where the door and frame met. She scratched some of the wood pulling it through. But if she could get a long enough length on either side, she could wind the ends around both hands and pull, hopefully forcing the screws to pop. Just a little...
A board creaked in the shadows behind her.
Melanie spun around. She was still alone up here, right?
Then she heard another creak. And another.
“Oh, damn.” Someone was coming up the attic steps.
She tugged the chain from behind the hasp and hurriedly lifted and shoved the metal shelves back into place. There was no way to mask the noise, so she didn’t bother shutting off the lights and hiding. But if she was quick, she wouldn’t really have to lie about what she was doing up here. She thrust one box onto the shelf and picked up the other.
She froze a second time when a beam of light hit her back, silhouetting her head and shoulders against the box she hadn’t quite slid back into its place.
“What are you doing up here, girl?” Henry’s voice sounded more curious than perturbed. But all that would change if he suspected she’d been snooping around the door that someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to camouflage to keep inquisitive people like her away.
And then she realized she still held the chain in her hand. There was no way she could return it to the proper box without giving away that she had taken it. Pulling up the hem of her T-shirt, she stuffed it into the front of her jeans as quietly as she could before turning away from the box and praying she’d pushed it far enough onto the shelf so that it wouldn’t crash to the floor behind her.
Melanie pointed her flashlight back at Henry, blinding him a bit to the mess she’d left behind her. “Aunt Abby asked me to get the boxes of decorations for Saturday’s barn dance.”
Henry dropped the beam of his flashlight to the boxes she’d set at the top of the steps. “Looks like you got ’em all right here.”
“I didn’t remember how many there were. I wanted to make sure.” Melanie used the moment out of the spotlight to take several steps across the attic before Henry captured her in the beam of his light again. She pasted a smile on her face and shrugged. “It’s hotter than blazes up here and I don’t want to have to make another trip.”
His brown eyes were unreadable orbs in the attic’s dim light. “You sure you weren’t pokin’ your nose into things that don’t belong to you?”
“This used to be my home, too.” Melanie moved her arm over the bulging coil of chain tucked beneath her clothes. Hopefully, there were enough shadows in the room to mask the bulge of the contraband she’d been forced to take. “Anyway, could you blame me? I miss Dad. I miss the way things used to be when I was little and he and I were a family. I even miss the two of you being silly together—fishing together for hours and telling stories.” She glanced around the rafters and walls, carefully avoiding the shelves and hidden door behind her. “You’ve saved things from Deanna’s life and Abby’s and yours—but not Dad’s. Or mine.”
Melanie curled her toes into her boots, forcing herself to stand fast as her uncle closed the distance between them.
“I miss Leroy, too. I don’t have much left of him besides memories—and you. Once you could walk, you almost always tagged along with us.” He surprised her by squeezing her shoulder. She couldn’t help a tiny flinch, but she refused to give away the depth of her suspicions by running from him. “I’ll never forgive myself for not standing up to the great-aunts and cousins who helped themselves to the baby quilt our mother made for you before she died. They took Grandpa’s rolltop desk and all of Leroy’s fishing lures he tied, and who knows what else that should have gone to you. I guess they sold them as collectibles and antiques. Your daddy left the land to me, and I’ve provided well for you, I think—but the rest of it should have gone to you. I’m sorry I can’t change the past.”
“So am I.”
Henry pulled away to hook his thumb into the strap of his overalls, no doubt hearing the cynicism coloring her tone. “I was a grieving man. I had a baby of my own and a new little girl thrown into my lap who kept askin’ for her daddy. If it wasn’t for Abby and her strength, I don’t know how I would have gotten through that time.”
Melanie turned her head and blinked, hating the unshed tears that made her eyes gritty. She wanted to feel anger, not sadness. Crying wouldn’t answer any questions about her father’s death. “Maybe because his body was never recovered, I feel like I have nothing of his except that old wreck of a boat.”
“Tell you what, I’ll make some calls—see if any of those surviving relatives still have something of Leroy’s. If they aren’t willing to share, I’ll offer to buy it for you.” Didn’t he look pleased with himself? Almost like he cared about her. “I’ll make it an early birthday present.”
But what kind of man lied to his niece, the woman he’d supposedly raised as his own daughter, and smiled about it? It was a lot easier to feel the anger now.
“What about Dad’s pocket watch?” The heavy gold circle burned against her skin inside her pocket. “I remember
him carrying it every day—showing it to me nearly every night. I’d love to have that back.”
Henry scratched at one of his sideburns, frowning as if she’d spoken gibberish. “You asked me about that before. I told you it’s probably at the bottom of the lake with him.”
Liar!
Instead of giving her anger a voice or daring him to lie about the hidden door, as well, Melanie opted for escape. She returned her flashlight to its shelf and picked up a box. “I’d better get these down to Abby.”
“I’ll give you a hand.”
Did she imagine he hesitated at the top of the stairs? She could hardly turn back to see if he was shining his light around the attic, checking to see if she’d found anything she shouldn’t have.
Depositing the box in the kitchen where Deanna and Abby were working, she answered her aunt’s thanks with a muttered “Sure.”
“Melanie.” She paused in the doorway at her aunt’s voice and smelled the spice of her perfume coming closer. “Deanna tells me you need to go into town to shop for a dress for the dance.” Great. Abby and Deanna had been making plans for her love life again. But as Melanie faced her aunt, the bridle chain shifted inside her jeans and started to slide down her pant leg. “We’ll be going into Falls City on Thursday. You’re welcome to come with us.”
Melanie angled her hips to one side and hooked one ankle behind the other to keep the chain from sliding out onto the floor. If her hidden treasure was discovered, explaining why she had the weird souvenir would be awkward at best. At worst, it would make access to the attic to get a look behind that locked door impossible. So, instead of grabbing her pants and running, she stood there in a silly pose and hoped this conversation would end quickly. “I really have to go to this dance?”
“It would be an insult to Henry if you didn’t. He’s paying for everything. The festival is our last big celebration before harvest. I won’t let you wear boots and an old T-shirt to a party.” Melanie pressed her hand against her thigh as Abby moved closer to pull Mel’s hair out of her T-shirt. “Maybe we can do something with this mess while we’re in town, too.”
