“Don’t shoot her, Skip. Just walk away slowly.” Paul kept his eye on the big animal.
Skip broke into a run, going in the same direction the cub had fled.
“No, Skip, don’t—”
Mama bear took off after Skip at a lope that closed the distance fast.
“Aw, Skip—” Paul forced Sam into a run to get to his truck. “We’ve gotta help him.”
Finally coming out of his frozen stupor, Sam got to the truck and climbed into the passenger side. Paul got behind the wheel, switched on the ignition, and turned the headlights to high beam. He roared down the alley after Skip and the bear.
Skip had made it safely to his SUV, but so had the bear. She was up on her hind feet, rocking the deputy’s vehicle for all she was worth.
Paul laid on his truck horn, trying to frighten her off. She gave the SUV one more shake for good measure, then dropped to all fours and lumbered off into the darkness.
Sam blew out a long breath. “Guess I was wrong about the vandals being teenagers.”
“Yep. We can both say that.”
SHORTLY AFTER MIDNIGHT, Kate heard Paul’s truck arrive home. She’d gone to bed, but she hadn’t been able to go to sleep. Even if Paul hadn’t gone out, she was too upset about the children and what would become of them to sleep anyway.
Her head on the pillow, she waited for him in the bedroom.
He opened the door quietly and slipped into the room.
“How’d it go?” she asked.
“I thought you’d be asleep. I was trying not to wake you.”
She switched on the light beside the bed. “I always waited up for the children when they were out late. It seems only fair I wait up for you too.”
“You were worried, weren’t you?” He gave her a wry smile before pulling his sweater off over his head.
“About you and the children,” she said. “Did you catch the vandals?”
“In a manner of speaking.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and started to take off his shoes.
Kate suspected there was a reason he didn’t want to talk about what happened. “I was right, wasn’t I?”
“Yes, Katie, you were right. The biggest mama bear you ever saw, and her cub. Skip’s going to call the fish-and-wildlife authorities in the morning. It looked like the bear had been injured, maybe in an illegal bear trap, which is why she couldn’t forage for herself and her cub up in the hills where they belong. She was looking for easy pickings in town.” He glanced over at her with another wry smile. “You’d think after all these years, I’d learn to listen to you.”
She sat up in bed. “Was anyone hurt?”
“Skip got the worst of it. His pants were ripped by a dog.”
“A dog?”
“Orson Ulrich was walking his Doberman, who didn’t take kindly to us surprising them in the alley.”
Kate suppressed a smile.
“The bear gave Skip’s SUV a working over too. It’s going to need a few dents taken out and a new paint job. Same kind of scratches you pointed out on the hotel’s electric cart. Sheriff Roberts isn’t likely to take kindly to having to fix the SUV either.”
“Sounds like your evening was a mixed success.”
“To add insult to my stupidity, in all the excitement, I forgot to bring the thermos home. I’ll get it tomorrow.”
When he slid into bed beside Kate, he pulled her into his arms. “Next time I come up with some cockamamy scheme, remind me what a smart woman I married.”
“I’d be happy to, sweetie.” She smiled to herself and kissed her husband good night.
Chapter Eighteen
Thursday morning was bittersweet for Kate. Kate had helped the children pack their scant belongings in a couple of suitcases she had stored in the garage last night. The suitcases were lined up now by the garage door, along with Megan’s box of cornhusks and supplies for her dolls. The kids decided to leave the kite project with the Hanlons in the hope that Paul could help them finish the job before Old Timer’s Day the following week.
Megan stood by the kitchen window looking out at the garden. “We haven’t finished planting the garden yet.”
“When things settle down, you can come back and help me finish.” Kate slid her arm around Megan’s waist. “You’ll be all right with Renee, won’t you?”
She shrugged. “Sure. I’ll watch after Gwen and Beck like I always do.”
Tears stung Kate’s eyes, and she desperately tried to hold them back. “You’ll have to be careful, Megan. Hank’s brother and a friend may be looking for you.”
Slanting a look at Kate, Megan frowned. “Would they hurt my brother and sister?”
“I’ll be honest with you, honey...it’s possible. So stay close to Renee’s house until the sheriff can track the brother down. No one will know where to find you there.” Kate wasn’t sure how much to tell Megan about Perry Weller. She didn’t want to frighten the girl but felt she had to urge caution. “You’ll be fine with Renee.”
“And Kisses,” Megan said with a halfhearted smile.
Kate wrote her cell-phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to Megan. “If you need anything, anything at all, call me. Promise?”
“Sure.” The girl glanced at the number, neatly folded the note, and stuck it in the pocket of her jeans. “We’d better go or we’ll be late.”
Rounding up the children, Kate drove them to school. She gave each child a big hug and a kiss.
“I’m going to take your things to Renee’s house now. She’ll pick you up after school. You wait right here in front of the school for her. Okay?”
Acknowledging her instructions, the threesome trudged up the walk to the main entrance, one sibling on each side of Megan.
Kate’s throat was thick with grief and worry. It was hard enough as an adult to face the death of a parent. For children with nowhere else to turn, the pain of loss was doubly difficult.
Somehow Kate had to locate their father. He had to know of someone who could help his children.
She drove the short distance to Renee’s house, and Renee watched from the porch while Kate made three trips to the car to bring the children’s things inside. For the time being, she left them in the entryway.
“Has the social worker been here yet?” Kate asked.
“She was at my door at eight o’clock this morning.” Dressed in a pink velour robe, Renee fluttered her fingers toward the kitchen. “Mother and I hadn’t had a chance to have our morning tea yet. I made it quite clear to that woman that calling so early in the day was a serious breach of etiquette.”
Apparently Renee was unaware of, or preferred to ignore, her own habit of showing up at Kate’s door at the crack of dawn.
“Well, keep the children close to home for a few days.” Kate explained in some detail about the possible danger the kids faced from Perry Weller and his partner and apologized for not telling Renee about it sooner. “Keep an eye out for a white or cream-colored van too,” she warned.
“Don’t you worry about a thing, dear. Mother and I will take good care of them. I promise.”
She reminded Renee once more that she should pick the children up after school and then headed to the Mercantile to buy some trash bags. She wanted to make one more effort to find some record of Wyn Maddock in Glynis’ effects, as well as deal with the mess the diamond thieves had created.
SEVERAL HOURS LATER, Kate had thrown out six big bags of trash, found a few more family snapshots, and uncovered a box filled with old bills and receipts, which she planned to go through later.
When she finally got back home, she fixed herself a chicken salad tossed with diced apple, slivered almonds, and a spicy peanut dressing. She settled down at the dining table to catch up with the news in the Copper Mill Chronicle.
To her dismay, the bold headline read ACCIDENT VICTIM’S HOME RANSACKED. A photo of the Maddocks’ run-down trailer appeared above the newspaper fold.
She quickly read through the article, which quoted the police r
eport. No doubt Jennifer McCarthy was only doing her job as a reporter and checked police activity daily.
Kate also recalled that Jennifer was in the library on Monday when Kate had learned of Glynis’ death, which had apparently alerted the reporter to a possible local story.
Biting her lip, Kate found that Jennifer had done a thorough job of reporting. Perhaps too thorough. She’d indicated Glynis Maddock’s three school-age children, previous residents of Knoxville, were staying with a local pastor’s family, naming Kate and Paul Hanlon. While their address wasn’t given, it wouldn’t take a genius to check the telephone book for that information.
Kate didn’t know how Jennifer discovered that the children were staying with her and Paul, but any number of people in town knew.
“Oh, Jennifer, you don’t know what you’ve done,” she complained out loud. If Perry Weller happened to see the article, it was like waving a red flag in front of his nose.
She shoved her half-eaten chicken salad aside. If Sheriff Roberts’ APB didn’t result in the arrest of Weller and Smedley soon, it might be safer to move the children to a whole different county or another state.
After washing up her lunch dishes, she retrieved the box of Glynis’ bills and receipts from her car. She’d just started going through them when the phone rang.
She answered in the kitchen. “Hanlon residence.”
After a moment, an older female voice said, “You Kate Hanlon or the maid?”
Kate smiled. “I’m Kate Hanlon, and I wish I had a maid. Can I help you?”
“You was up here in Knoxville some time back askin’ about Glynis Maddock and left me your number.”
Kate’s heart nearly leaped out of her chest. The caller had to be the tiny gray-haired woman who lived across from Glynis’ old apartment.
“Yes, I’m the one.”
“I saw in the newspaper she got herself kilt in a car crash off in Nashville.”
“Yes, I was sorry to learn that too. Were you a good friend of Glynis’?”
“Good enough, I guess. Knew the kids too. Minded their manners real good.”
The woman seemed eager to talk about Glynis, so Kate didn’t interrupt.
“Thing is, I thought them youngsters would like to know she skedaddled out of Copper Mill with that crook Hank Weller ’cuz she knew his brother was comin’ after him. She was afraid the brother would hurt her kids if she let Hank stick around any longer.”
“How do you know that?” Kate asked carefully.
“’Cuz I called and warned her that Hank’s crazy brother was comin’ after him. Told her to get outta there.”
Suddenly Kate realized Glynis must have been on the phone talking to her former neighbor when she wrote the note Run! Run!! Run!!! She must have been terrified to learn that Hank’s brother was after them and knew that she and Hank had to leave town in a hurry.
“Do you think that by leaving Copper Mill, Glynis was trying to protect her children, not desert them?” Glynis must have planned to leave Hank in Nashville and return to her children that same weekend. The poor woman’s plan had gone dreadfully awry.
“Mercy me, she wouldn’t desert her babies. Loved ’em like there was no tomorrow. Guess now there won’t be no tomorrow for her, huh?”
“No, there won’t.” The knowledge that Glynis had died protecting the children buoyed Kate’s spirits. That was something positive the children could cling to. “Did Glynis ever mention to you where her husband, Wyn Maddock, was?”
“Locked up in some prison or other is what she said. But his name’s not Maddock. That’s her maiden name. She took it back after they locked her man up for running some poor guy down when he was drunk as a skunk, and she divorced him. Thought the kids would do better with her name than his. They was so young when he went to jail, don’t think they ever knew they had a different name.”
Kate carried the phone to the kitchen table and sat down heavily in a chair. She’d considered the possibility that Glynis had switched back to her maiden name after the divorce, but she’d been stymied when Megan didn’t recall the difference.
Which meant it was no surprise she hadn’t been able to locate Wyn Maddock. He didn’t exist. Which was also the reason she hadn’t been able to locate the children’s birth records.
“Do you know what his last name is?”
On the other end of the line, the woman sucked in a breath as though she was smoking. “Don’t recall Glynis ever saying.”
“Did you ever meet him?”
“Nope. He was long gone by the time she moved in here.”
“Where did she live before she moved into that apartment building?”
The woman hacked a deep-throated cough, and it was several seconds before she was able to speak again. “Talked about living in a house before, but I don’t know exactly where. The owners of these here apartments might know.”
Hope flared in Kate’s chest. If she could track Glynis back to a prior address, her husband’s name might be on the lease. “Could you give me the owners’ names and a phone number so I can talk to them?”
“Don’t imagine it’ll do Glynis any harm now if you talk to them.”
“It might help her children if I can locate their father.” If nothing else, he would have a right to some say about where his children should live, which might keep the siblings from being separated.
Kate wrote down the landlord’s name and phone number and also got the woman’s name and number in case she had more questions later.
Thanking the woman profusely, Kate hung up and immediately dialed the landlord.
To her dismay, an answering machine picked up. She left a message.
For the next hour or so, she plowed through the box of Glynis’ receipts, looking for any hint of her married name, but had no luck at all.
Frustrated by her lack of progress, she decided to work in her studio. With only slightly more than a week to go until Old Timer’s Day, she was well behind in making more stained-glass pieces for Steve to sell. Maybe working on the pieces would do her some good. Often when she was working with stained glass—or baking—and her right brain was fully engaged, it seemed as though her left brain automatically processed whatever problems she faced, and frequently an answer would come to her.
She pulled her stool up to her worktable in the studio and uncovered the sun catcher she’d been working on. The light danced off the golden petals of the sunflower and seemed to warm the verdant green leaves of glass.
She picked up her glass cutter and began to shape bits of bright blue that would fit into the unfinished sky, providing a backdrop for the sunflower.
Time moved like the gentle flow of a river toward the distant sea. The routine of cut, fit, and trim soothed Kate’s troubled mind. The work absorbed her attention in a comforting embrace, the silence in the house settling around her like an old friend she hadn’t seen in a long time.
Paul’s voice calling her startled Kate back to the moment.
“I’m in the studio,” she answered, amazed that the sun catcher was nearly complete. One more piece right there, and she was done. She fitted the bit of glass into place.
Paul appeared at the studio door, wearing a tan sport coat and dark brown slacks. “The house sure is quiet without the kids here. Did you get them settled at Renee’s?”
She glanced at her watch and discovered it was a little after four o’clock. “She was picking them up from school. I’m sure she would have called if anything had gone wrong.”
“You make any progress in locating their father?”
“Yes and no.” She told him about the phone call from Glynis’ neighbor in Knoxville. “At least now I know I was looking for the wrong name. I’ve put a call in to the landlord to see if he can find anything in his records about Glynis’ married name. He hasn’t called back yet.”
Rotating her neck and shoulders to ease the strain of sitting hunched over her worktable for so long, Kate stood up. “Guess I should start thinking about what to ha
ve for dinner.”
“We can go out, if you’d like. I know you’re missing the kids.”
“It’s all right. I can whip up something just for the two of us easily enough.”
As she passed him by, he took hold of her, using his thumbs to massage her tense neck and shoulder muscles.
“Mmm, that feels good.” She sighed with pleasure. Husbands were wonderful creatures to have around.
“Skip tells me the fish-and-wildlife authorities found the trail that the bears have been using to come into town. They’ve set up a safe trap to catch the mama bear and her cub. They’ll treat the mother’s injury and transport her and her cub to an unpopulated area higher in the mountains.”
“Then the bears will be all right?”
“Should be, as long as they stay away from town.”
“I’m glad.” She turned and slipped into his arms. “You know, I have a better idea about dinner. Why don’t we stop at the Country Diner, pick up a salad or some sandwiches, and have a picnic on the Town Green, just the two of us?”
“Sounds good to me. Let me change clothes, and it’s a date. We’ll have an early dinner.”
She decided to freshen up a bit too.
“Let me call Renee before we go,” Kate said. “Make sure she and her mother are handling everything okay.”
Paul smiled knowingly. “You miss the children already, don’t you?”
“I suppose I do.” Picking up the phone on the kitchen counter, she dialed Renee’s house.
“We’re doing wonderfully well,” Renee assured her. “Umpkins is in seventh heaven playing with Gwen and Beck. Megan’s working on a charming cornhusk doll at our kitchen table. I may have to buy it myself.”
“Did they do their homework?”
“Oh, we’ll get to that later. They need a little relaxation first.”
“Sounds good. I just wanted to check in before Paul and I go to dinner.”
“Go on and have a good time, dear. The children are fine with Mother and me, and Little Umpkins.”
After thanking Renee, Kate hung up, then eyed the phone again.
Paul handed Kate her purse. “Ready now, honey?”
“Ready.” The landlord probably wouldn’t phone after five o’clock anyway, she figured. And if he did, he’d leave a message.
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