Dangerous Inheritance

by Barbara Warren

  After getting her emotions under control, she reached for the box again. Her hand trembled as she used a paring knife to slit open an envelope. She hesitated for a moment, breathing deeply, before removing the contents and slowly unfolding the sheet of paper. The words struck her like a hammer blow.

  My darling Macy,

  I don’t suppose you’ll ever see this, just as you’ve never seen any of the other letters I’ve written, and Mattie has apparently blocked my calls in some way. But I can’t give up trying to reach you.

  I just want to tell you that I love you and I miss you terribly. What happened wasn’t your fault, but you have paid a high price for it.

  I pray that someday we’ll meet again.

  Your loving grandmother Opal.

  Macy gently placed the letter on the table and leaned back in her chair. Moments passed until she could get herself under control enough to sit up and open her eyes. After a few more minutes ticked by she managed to read a couple more, finding they were similar to the first. Her grandmother Opal wanted to see her, and Grandma Mattie had stood in the way. She was just beginning to understand how deeply the current of grief and rage had rampaged through their lives, like an underground torrent, destroying everything in its way.

  How could such an overwhelming anger and hatred so totally consume a person? But then again, Mattie Douglas’s son had been arrested and sent to prison for a crime she was convinced he’d never committed. He’d died there and she never saw him again. Until the funeral.

  She wouldn’t have had the money or the transportation to go see him, and she had been obsessed with protecting Macy from knowing what had happened to her parents.

  Macy could understand how her grandmother must have felt, even though she Macy resented what it had done to her. She got up and strode toward the window. Her grandmother Lassiter had lived in this house. Lived alone. She had written loving letters to her granddaughter, made an effort to stay in touch, hoping at least one letter would get through the blockade.

  Her grandmother Douglas had loved her, too. She had grown up feeling that love. But both women were mothers. Each had lost a child in a terrible way. Her grandmother Douglas grieving over the son she had lost, bitterly convinced he was innocent. Her grandmother Lassiter’s daughter had been brutally murdered.

  Macy stared unseeingly out the window, knowing if the two of them had just turned their problems over to God, he would have taken the bitterness from them. Yes, they would still have had to deal with the devastation of their loss, but they wouldn’t have had to go through it alone. Trusting in God could have eased their burdens and given them peace.

  She saw Nick’s patrol car pull into the drive and waited with a disturbing impatience for the doorbell to ring. She hadn’t expected to see him this morning, but just the sight of him comforted her in some way. The bell rang, and she hurried to answer. Her heart leaped in a disconcerting manner at the sight of Nick standing in the doorway, the sun caressing his dark hair. His lips were curved in that enticing smile she was beginning to know. The well-fitting police uniform gave him an air of confidence, of having everything under control. Macy took a step back. Nick Baldwin was one extremely handsome man.

  His eyes sharpened, staring into her own. “What’s wrong?”

  She tried to make her smile more natural, knowing she had probably failed miserably. “Nothing. Everything’s fine.”

  He shook his head, his expression stern. “Don’t give me that. I can tell by looking at you that everything is a long way from being fine. Now are you going to invite me in or do I have to stand out here on the porch?”

  Macy realized she might as well give in. He wouldn’t back off until she did. She stepped aside, letting him enter. “It’s just that I’ve been exploring.”

  He stopped, staring down at her. “What did you find?”

  “It’s in the kitchen. I’ll show you.” She led the way, not really wanting to share the letters with anyone, not even with Nick, but knowing this was another piece of the puzzling mystery of her life.

  She sat down at the table, motioning for him to do the same. After a moment, she indicated the box. “I found this in my grandmother’s closet. It’s filled with letters she sent me, but I never received.”

  His eyes shone with compassion. “I’m sorry. That has to be tough.”

  Macy nodded, not wanting to admit the truth, but knowing she had no choice, no matter how much it hurt to say the words. “Yes, it’s hard to accept, and evidently Hilda was right. I guess I owe her an apology. Apparently my grandmother Douglas returned the letters unopened. I never saw any of them.”

  The gentle understanding in his expression almost unnerved her. He reached for her hand, his touch tender and comforting. “Don’t let it hurt you. She must have had a reason.”

  She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice. “I’m sure she did. At least, it must have seemed so to her. But she hurt my grandmother Lassiter, and she hurt me.” In ways she hadn’t even begun to comprehend yet.

  “Do you want to read any more?” Nick indicated the box.

  Macy sagged against her chair. “No. But I know I have to. There might be something useful in them.”

  The thought of reading any more of those pain-filled pleas for a reply almost tore her apart. She wished she had never come to Walnut Grove.

  But then she wouldn’t have met Nick.

  The thought rippled through her like an electric shock. Was she getting too attached to Nick Baldwin? That hadn’t been part of her plan.

  * * *

  Nick watched Macy, noticing the slightly flushed cheeks, the way she avoided looking at him. He knew she was very upset by her discovery. He released her hand, feeling a subtle loss of warmth. He glanced at the box again, realizing how difficult it must be for her to read the letters. She was right. They needed to go through them, just in case they held something that would assist in the investigation, but he could help with that.

  He cleared his throat. “Would you consider letting me read them for you?”

  She stared at him, as if not sure he was serious. “Why would you do that?”

  He shrugged. “It’s just an idea. I’d take care of them, and you’d get them back. I just thought it might be easier for you if I read them. If I find any information I’ll share it with you.”

  As he’d told her before, he couldn’t talk about evidence in a case, but the letters belonged to Macy. He’d be careful of what he shared, but if it was something he could tell her without jeopardizing the investigation, he would let her know. And yes, there was an investigation. Not an official one, of course, or at least not yet, but he was looking around on his own.

  She just sat watching him, as if trying to decide if he could be trusted. He wanted to reassure her, but trust had to be earned. She didn’t know him very well yet, but she would before this was over. He waited for her to make up her mind.

  Eventually she nodded. “It hurts me to read them. Maybe I can handle it later, but not right now. I guess it would be all right if you’ll make sure I get them back.”

  “You can depend on it. As soon as I go through the letters and make any notes I’ll return them. I doubt if we find anything useful in them, but it’s one of the things we have to check. Have you had any more problems I need to know about?”

  “No. I hope the new locks will stop anyone from getting inside, and there haven’t been any more phone calls. I still have a feeling that someone is just waiting for a chance to get at me, though.”

  Nick had a hunch she was right, and it worried him. This house was too big, too empty, but he knew it would be useless to try to get her to move out, and she wouldn’t ask anyone to stay with her. But he had a feeling her being here alone was just trouble waiting to happen. The earlier attempts at breaking in, the phone call, the unlocked and open front door with the surprise photo, all pointed to someone playing a dangerous game, and there was no way he could prevent it.

  Nick took a deep breath, trying to
pull himself together. He needed to slow down, keep his wits about him. He had a killer to catch, and if he wasn’t careful his feelings toward Macy Douglas could get in his way. She had no idea how she affected him, and he had to keep it that way. Had to focus on the goal—learning the truth about what had happened seventeen years ago and what was going on now were his first priorities. He would read the letters, but he didn’t expect to learn much from them. Just a job that had to be done—one he could spare her. He could tell from her expression just how hard this had been.

  Macy reached out to touch the box. “It seems like everywhere I turn I hit a wall. I’ve been searching this house, but since I don’t know what I’m looking for, how can I know if I’ve found it? Does that make sense?”

  Nick nodded. “It makes a lot of sense, and I know exactly what you mean. I’m dealing with the same thing. I hear so many conflicting accounts of what things were like back with the initial investigation and I don’t know which one is true. I’m just stumbling around in the dark.” First Sam and then Hilda and Joe and each one believing his or her opinion was right. And he had barely started. Investigations took time. Time he wasn’t sure Macy had if someone really was after her.

  He had a few more people in mind he needed to talk to, and he doubted it would be possible to keep his actions from Sam. Sooner or later, he was headed for a confrontation he wasn’t looking forward to, but he was committed to the search for the truth. Regardless of the outcome, he believed he was doing the right thing. He was sure it was what his father would have done.

  “Look, Macy, all this happened a long time ago. People may forget important details and some older people who might have relevant information may have died.”

  “Then how can we hope to learn what really happened? We don’t have much going for us, do we? I’m beginning to think this is an impossible task.”

  The despair and frustration in her voice haunted him. He had to reassure her. “Don’t you believe it. We have God on our side. He’ll lead us through, Macy. Don’t ever doubt it.”

  “I want to believe, and most of the time I do, but it’s hard when I can’t see that we’re really accomplishing anything.”

  Nick leaned toward her, arms resting on the table, thinking of how to say this. “That’s the way it is with God. He doesn’t always answer with some big sign. Sometimes we don’t see what He’s done until we’ve weathered the storm, and then we look back and find He was there all the time. We just didn’t realize it.”

  * * *

  Macy stared at Nick. Where had that come from? She knew he was a Christian, she just hadn’t realized how strong his beliefs were. She felt a renewed hope stir. He was right. They had to keep on with what they were doing and leave the results up to God. She needed to focus on that. And she would. Grandma Douglas had taken her to church, made sure she learned about God. Now that she was facing more than she could handle on her own, she’d make a stronger effort to trust in the one thing she had going for her. God, who loved and protected her.

  Nick was talking and she pulled her attention back to him. He tapped the table with one forefinger. “Now here’s what we’re going to do. You go through this house one room at a time. Keep notes. Write down anything that looks the least bit out of place. I’ll keep notes, too, and then we’ll sit down and go over them together. With luck, we’ll see something that can help.”

  Except he’d been open that he couldn’t tell her everything. That still rankled, though she understood his reasoning. She grudgingly agreed. “All right. At least by keeping records we’ll have a database of sorts that might keep us from going over and over the same ground.”

  Although she hated to admit it, Nick’s suggestion made sense, but the silence of the house seemed to intensify, as if it waited for her, hushed, watching, hoping to catch her unaware. Fanciful, she knew, but that’s the way it felt, as if the house itself were her enemy, daring her to learn its secrets. It was too big, too silent and too empty. Living here was getting to her. Maybe she should consider Nick’s suggestion that she spend the nights at a motel.

  Macy shook her head, hating what she had become. A wimp. That’s what she was. Running away like a coward. She hadn’t been raised that way. Grandma Douglas would have been against her coming to Walnut Grove and this house, but once here, she would have expected her granddaughter to stay the course. And that was exactly what she intended to do.

  It might help if she got out more, got acquainted with other people, not just the ones at church. She could eat out once in a while, talk to people she met. Somehow she had to unlock her past one step at a time. First she would apologize to Hilda Yates, although just thinking about those letters cut her to the heart. But since Hilda was supposed to have been such a good friend of her grandmother Lassiter, maybe she had a few more little tidbits she could share.

  “Macy?”

  She glanced up to find Nick looking at her with a quizzical expression. “What?”

  “I asked if you’d found anything else.”

  She shook her head. “Just the letters.”

  No need to mention the cardboard file and the photo album. She’d look at them later when she was alone. She was beginning to trust Nick, but there were too many unanswered questions—some about him. After all, she didn’t know him very well yet. It might be a mistake to be too quick to trust.

  After Nick left, Macy thought about doing some more searching, but a nagging feeling of guilt wouldn’t let her rest. Finally she picked up the phone and called Hilda Yates. When Hilda answered she seemed a bit cool, and Macy had a hunch that was her fault.

  “Look, Hilda, I want to apologize, but I’d prefer to do it in person. If you’ll tell me where you live I’ll come there, or we could meet somewhere else if you’d rather. I need to talk to you, one on one.”

  “I’ll come to you. That seems like a good place for us to talk.”

  Macy hesitated. Now that Hilda had agreed, she wasn’t sure this was a good idea.

  Meet here? In her parents’ house? She’d prefer to see Hilda somewhere else that didn’t have such a connection to the past. But she reluctantly agreed. “All right. When do you want to come?”

  “How about now? I’m just a short distance away from Opal’s house. I could be there in the next ten minutes or less if that works.”

  “That’ll be fine. I’ll be looking for you.” Macy hung up the phone and wandered through the lower floor, seeing it in a new way.

  Opal’s home.

  She’d been thinking of it as her parents’ house. A place where she’d once lived, ignoring the fact that her grandmother Lassiter had lived here for the past seventeen years. Opal had to have left her imprint on it, maybe changed it, and possibly that was interfering with her recollection of how it used to be. She hadn’t thought of that.

  True to her word, Hilda Yates parked in the driveway less than ten minutes later. She walked toward the house and Macy opened the door to face her. “Thanks for coming, Hilda. Do you want to sit in the living room?”

  “I suppose that will be all right. Anywhere that’s good for you will work for me.”

  Macy led the way into the living room and took one of the gold brocade chairs. Hilda sat down in the other and looked around. “I can just see Opal here. She had a hard time adjusting at first because Megan’s body had been found in this room. But eventually she conquered her emotions and I believe she actually felt closer to her daughter in this house than anywhere else, just because Megan had once lived here.”

  Macy swallowed the lump in her throat. “I’m having a hard time adjusting, too. It might help if I could remember something, but I’ve lost track of the years I lived here. They’re gone as completely as if they had never happened.”

  Hilda stared at her. “Are you serious? I mean, yes, I can see you are, but you’re saying you can’t remember even living in this house?”

  Macy shook her head, and Hilda continued. “What about your parents? You remember them, don’t you?”

&n
bsp; “I don’t remember anything about them. My memory begins when I woke up in the hospital with Grandma Douglas sitting by my bedside. She never talked about my parents or anything to do with my past.”

  “Weren’t you curious? It seems as if you would have been.”

  Macy thought about how to answer this without making her grandmother look bad. “You have to remember I was badly injured at the time of my mother’s death. Her killer slammed me with the poker, I assume, since Nick says the police found it beside me and thought I’d been hit with the same weapon that killed my mother.”

  Hilda looked a little abashed, which encouraged Macy. “And then again, my grandmother was sure my mother’s family and the police here in Walnut Grove had conspired against her son. I never saw a picture of my mother until I came here, and I don’t see many pictures of my father posted in this house.”

  Hilda seemed to be thinking about this. Finally she said, “It looks like two bitter women refused to see anything except their own loss.”

  Macy nodded her agreement. “And apparently they used me as the pawn. I denied what you said in church, but now that I’ve seen the box I’ve had time to think about it, there’s some truth in your comment.”

  “Well, I know she did try to write to you because I saw the box where she kept the returned letters. She showed me some of them and they were addressed to you, but had never been opened. I didn’t read any of them.”

  Hilda glanced around the room, then looked back at Macy. “Like I told Nick, at the last Opal was behaving rather odd, and from some of the things she said, I have a feeling she was coming around to Mattie’s way of thinking.”

  “You mean she believed someone else killed my mother?” And Nick had talked to Hilda? He hadn’t mentioned that.