Undercover Bride (9781634094573)

by Brownley, Margaret

  The same was true in the orphanage, though she hadn’t really thought about it until then. It was as if those who’d led a hardscrabble life had somehow acquired an extra layer of protection against physical stresses.

  “You survived, and you’re strong.”

  “I guess you could say I was just lucky.” He tossed the washcloth in the basin and rubbed his neck as if to work out the kinks. “Let’s talk about you.”

  A knot tightened in her stomach. “Me?”

  “I’m curious. Why would a woman as… attractive as you answer an advertisement for a mail-order bride?”

  His compliment made her blush. “I could ask the same of you,” she said, throwing the verbal ball back at him. “Why would you place such an advertisement? I’m sure you could have your pick of local women.”

  “A scarred widower with two children? Not likely.”

  She studied him and felt a worrisome shift of allegiance. Her job required her to uncover the truth no matter the circumstances. There was no better time to question a suspect than when his defenses were down. But she had no desire to play detective. Not today. Taking advantage of Garrett’s vulnerable state would be like shooting an unarmed man, and that she could never do.

  “You underestimate yourself,” she said.

  He discounted this with a shrug. “You still haven’t answered my question,” he said. “I imagine you could have had your pick of suitors.”

  She felt another rush of warmth to her cheeks. “An old maid like me?”

  He laughed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I was just thinking about the day I picked you up from the train station. I have to admit to having second thoughts. I worried that a woman who willingly put herself in danger might be too impulsive for my family’s needs.” After a moment he added, “I was wrong.”

  Her pulse quickened. “What… changed your mind?”

  He glanced at her hand lovingly stroking Elise’s forehead. “That.”

  Chapter 16

  At four o’clock she left the house and drove the buckboard to the edge of town to pick Toby up from school. Worried about Elise and shaken by her confused feelings, she imagined herself falling into a bottomless pit with no means of escape.

  Pulling up in front of the school, she forced her worrisome thoughts aside.

  Toby greeted her with a frown, his slouch cap askew. It must have scared him to see his sister being carried out of the classroom, and she wished now she had thought to pick the boy up earlier.

  “Is Elise gonna die?”

  She didn’t want to answer the question—not even to herself. “Dr. Coldwell told us Elise will be fine once the fever breaks.”

  He scrambled onto the seat next to her, his eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “She has pneumonia.” Since she wasn’t sure if he knew what pneumonia was, she added, “Her lungs are sick. She needs our prayers.”

  Toby tightened his hands into fists and closed his eyes. “God, if You make my sister better, I’ll let her go to the moon. Promise.”

  She waited for him to finish his prayer. “She’ll like that,” she said with a nod of approval. Releasing the brake, she flicked the reins. The buckboard trembled as the wheels began to roll.

  Toby leaned forward as if urging Patches to hurry.

  She glanced at his stern young face. If she didn’t watch out, this kid would grow on her. The whole family would grow on her—if it hadn’t already—and that was a problem she didn’t know how to handle.

  For five days and four nights, Garrett and Maggie hardly left Elise’s bedside except to take Toby to school and to open the door to church members dropping off casseroles, thanks to Aunt Hetty who had sounded the alarm.

  Some offered to sit with Elise, but Garrett always turned them down, his manner brusque.

  “They just want to help,” Maggie said, gently, after one such episode.

  “They only want to help when it suits them,” he said and stalked away.

  Another time she found him in the parlor staring at the dish that someone from the church had just left.

  “That smells good,” she said.

  He shoved the casserole into her hands and returned to Elise’s room.

  During the course of the days and nights, they spent hours talking. Garrett spoke of his childhood, and the words flowed when he spoke about growing up with Aunt Hetty and Uncle Harry. It was harder for him to talk about the war, and long pauses accented his speech.

  “The prison was designed to hold ten thousand men, but there were more than thirty thousand of us cramped together. That’s another reason I didn’t want to move to Philadelphia like Katherine wanted. I couldn’t bear the thought of living in a crowded city. I like looking out the window and seeing nothing but land and mountains and sky.”

  Knowing what he went through, Maggie couldn’t blame him. But neither could she blame Katherine for wanting a better education for her children.

  “Your turn,” he said.

  Maggie didn’t want to speak of her childhood for fear of giving too much away, but he persisted. “The day my father died was the worst day of my life,” she said. That was the truth as far as it went. What she didn’t say was how he died.

  He studied her as if detecting something in her voice. “Were you close to him?”

  “No,” she said. “Not at all.”

  He looked at her with sympathy or maybe even compassion. “Sometimes those are the hardest deaths to deal with.” Following a stretch of silence, he asked, “What about your mother?”

  “We weren’t close, either,” she said a tad too quickly. She could never understand why a woman would stay with a man as mean-spirited as her father. Even more puzzling was how a woman could abandon her own children. At the age of seventeen she found out her mother had remarried. Though her new husband was well-to-do, her mother never bothered fetching her from the orphanage or tracking down her sons. In some ways, Maggie envied her mother’s ability to wipe the slate of her past clean and start over. But it hurt Maggie to think she could so easily be forgotten. It hurt a lot.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  A lump rose to her throat, and a heavy mass settled in her chest. Not because of his understanding or empathy, but because she couldn’t tell him the rest.

  On the morning of the fifth day, Maggie awoke to find a thin sliver of dawn slicing through the curtains of Elise’s room. She lifted her head from the foot of Elise’s bed and rubbed her stiff neck.

  Garrett was still in his chair, his head on the mattress next to hers. He was so close she could feel the warmth of his body, smell the sweet, spicy fragrance of his aftershave.

  Though she had persuaded him to go to bed, he had returned sometime in the night to be by his daughter’s side. Even in sleep his hand never left Elise’s. The tense set of his jaw remained, as did his furrowed brow.

  Elise’s breathing no longer sounded labored. Feeling a surge of hope, Maggie tiptoed around Garrett’s chair and laid her hand on the child’s forehead. Tears of relief sprang to her eyes.

  “Garrett,” she whispered, shaking him.

  He lifted his head from the bed and blinked away the haze of sleep.

  “Her fever broke.”

  He stared at her a moment then sprang to his feet and felt Elise’s forehead for himself.

  “She’s going to be all right,” Maggie assured him. “Praise the Lord!”

  Garrett looked terrible. He hadn’t shaved, and dark stubble shadowed his jaw and cheeks. His hair was mussed and his clothes wrinkled.

  She was in no better condition. Her hair, usually so carefully coifed, fell down her back in tangled curls. But none of that mattered as they stood smiling at each other like a couple of children sharing a secret.

  He reached for her hand. “Thank you,” he whispered. And just that quickly he pulled her into his arms.

  Emotions spent, she clung to him, and he buried his face in her hair. A sob rumbled through him. �
��Thank you,” he said again. His heart pounded in her ear matching the fast rhythm of her own.

  “For… for what?”

  He lifted his head. “For being here. For being you. For caring. For giving me hope.”

  For a moment—a brief and surprising moment—she saw a woman reflected in his eyes that she didn’t recognize. Garrett and his children brought out a part of her she hadn’t known existed; a nurturing, loving, and warm part far removed from the cool and relentless detective she had prided herself on being all these years.

  She pulled out of his arms, but only because she feared losing herself completely to the woman—the stranger—she hardly recognized as herself. That woman could never do what had to be done. She could never lie to him, betray him, or plot against him.

  No, the woman reflected in his eyes didn’t exist, but oh, how Maggie wished that she did.

  Chapter 17

  Elise’s illness had put a hold on the investigation, and now Maggie had to make up for lost time.

  She’d just completed a rather sketchy report to headquarters when she heard a knock. Thinking it was Aunt Hetty, she quickly slid the report under a chair cushion, smoothed the bun at the nape of her neck, and hurried to the door.

  “Howdy, ma’am. Have you got any rags for me today?”

  “Rikker!” Garrett was at work and Toby at school, but just in case Elise woke from her nap, Maggie stepped onto the porch. She left the door ajar so she could hear Elise should she cry out.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He moved his burlap sack from one shoulder to the next and threw the question back at her. “What are you doing? Haven’t seen hide or hair of you for days. I wouldn’t have even known you were alive had I not heard in town that Elise was sick.”

  She felt a surge of guilt. Her mind had been so occupied with concern for Elise, she’d hardly given her partner or the case more than a passing thought. That went against everything she’d been taught.

  “Then you must know that Elise has been ill.” The child still had a slight cough but otherwise had made a fast recovery, though she had yet to regain her appetite.

  Rikker dropped his persona. “Your purpose here is not to play nursemaid.”

  “I know what my purpose is,” she snapped.

  He reared back. “Oh my. Testy, aren’t we?” Eyes narrowed beneath his furrowed brow, he studied her like he would a suspect.

  “You look terrible.”

  “Thank you. I needed to hear that.” Even now that the crisis had passed, she’d hardly been able to sleep.

  “What’s really going on?”

  She blew out her breath. Drat! He always could read her like an open book. She rubbed her face with her hands. “I don’t think Garrett Thomas is our man.” It was the first time she admitted her doubts out loud.

  His eyebrows shot up. “What makes you say that?”

  “It’s just—” Rikker would expect her to think and act like a detective, but it was hard. So hard. She had come to know Garrett quite well these last few days as they watched over Elise. Could a man so kind, so gentle and loving, really be the coldhearted killer she was sent to investigate? Or were personal feelings getting in the way of good judgment?

  “I haven’t found anything to substantiate his guilt.” For a man who stole that much money, Garrett lived a comfortable yet modest life.

  “Need I remind you that a witness put him at the scene of the crime?”

  “You know as well as I that witnesses aren’t always reliable.”

  “This witness was quite credible. He described one of the men as having a scar, and his description fits Thomas to a T.” He ran his finger the length of his face to indicate. “In any case, how do you explain the money clip left behind with the initials GT?”

  “He’s a tinker.” The principal’s orders were to follow the money clip, and that’s what they’d done. “He’s probably sold dozens of them. Anyone could have left it behind.”

  “And the five large bills that showed up at the school fund-raiser? How do you account for that?”

  “I can’t,” she admitted. “It’s just so odd. I mean, the money suddenly showing up like that.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that Thomas was testing the waters to see if the money was marked? It’s not the first time something like that happened.”

  She’d considered that possibility at length. “Garrett’s no fool. He must have known that five Lincolns would draw attention. Especially since banks are no longer issuing them.” The last legal tender banknotes in hundred-dollar denominations were issued in 1880, the year of the robbery. “All the other donations had been smaller bills, fives and tens.

  “Maybe he thought enough time had passed. Or perhaps he was just pressing his luck. In any case, we can’t discount the clues.” Holding up his hand, he ticked them off on his fingers one at a time. “Money clip, witness, and five banknotes.”

  She did a mental count of her own. Garrett was thoughtful, gentle, and kind, but such traits would hardly hold up in a court of law. “I’ve searched this house from stem to stern and found nothing.”

  Rikker blew out his breath. “Found nothing at his shop, either. Nor is there a safe box at the bank belonging to him.” He shrugged in frustration. “I also checked the banks in Yuma and Phoenix. Nothing.”

  She arched a brow. “You’ve been busy.”

  “One of us has to keep the investigation going.” He shifted his bag of rags. “It’s got to be here at the house somewhere.”

  “Or maybe there isn’t any money. Maybe Garrett is exactly what he seems, a hardworking man and loving father.”

  Rikker’s gaze sharpened. “Has it ever occurred to you that the real reason he sent away for a mail-order bride is because he plans to leave town? Maybe he just wants someone to care for his children while he disappears and lives high on the hog somewhere else.”

  It was a shocking thought, but not all that far-fetched. Many outlaws had left the country to do exactly that. Some had to learn the hard way that no place on earth was out of Pinkerton’s reach. Recently an operative had crossed the Atlantic in an attempt to catch a jewel thief, cornering him in Rome.

  “I don’t know—”

  The door opened, and Elise stood in the entryway rubbing her eyes.

  “Oh, there you are pumpkin.” Maggie smoothed the hair away from Elise’s face. She still looked pale with none of her usual sparkle. “Wait for me in the kitchen, and I’ll fix you something to eat.”

  Elise vanished inside the house, and Rikker waited until she was out of earshot.

  “I have a plan.”

  “You always have a plan,” Maggie said. “What is it this time?”

  “Thomas is growing careless. He’s already spent five bills that we know of. It’s possible he’s spent more that we haven’t caught.”

  “We don’t know the money came from him,” she said stubbornly.

  “No, we don’t, but I think I know how we can find out. If the school donation came from your fiancé’s stash, then we might safely assume he has a weakness for a good cause.”

  She eyed him warily. “So what’s your plan?”

  “You, my dear, will tell him that the wedding is off. Your family is about to lose their farm and are in desperate need of money.” He thought for a moment. “So what do you think? Brilliant, huh?”

  Maggie rolled her eyes. “Your brilliance is second only to your modesty.

  “You’ll change your tune once you see how well this works. Tell Thomas you have to leave to help save the family farm. I’m willing to wager he’ll give you money on the spot to wire home.” He smiled. “What do you say to that?”

  “It’s a good plan,” she said, reluctantly. It wasn’t as elaborate as most of his plans, but the simple plans were always the ones that worked best. If only the idea of setting a trap for Garrett didn’t make her feel so downright miserable.

  Rikker was too busy congratulating himself on this latest scheme to notice her depr
essed state of mind. “Unless I miss my guess,” he all but crowed, “Thomas Garrett isn’t about to let his bride-to-be out of his sight. He’ll give you the money to save the farm. Mark my words.”

  Later that night, Maggie tucked Elise in bed and listened to her prayers. Earlier Garrett had raced through the house with his daughter on his back. It did Maggie a world of good to hear Elise’s childish giggles.

  The doctor said she could return to school Monday, and that was a relief. Maybe things could go back to normal—or as normal as circumstances allowed.

  She thought about Rikker’s plan. It was a good one, easy, uncomplicated. She had nothing to lose if Garrett didn’t fall for it and everything to gain if he did. So why was she so reluctant to put it into action?

  “Sleep tight,” she whispered. Dropping a kiss on Elise’s forehead, she walked out of the room.

  The door to Garrett’s room stood wide open. Toby sat on the floor, building some sort of contraption from scraps of metal from his father’s shop.

  He was too engrossed in his project to notice her. She watched him for a moment, unseen. Being the daughter of an outlaw had been difficult, but how much harder might it be for a son? Sighing, she moved away from the bedroom door.

  She found Garrett in the parlor bent over the chessboard. Elbows on his lap, his hands were folded beneath his chin. Earlier he and Toby had played a game. For such a young child, Toby was able to hold his own, and the game ended in a draw.

  Garrett glanced up as she neared, an easy smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “You play?”

  “’Fraid not,” she said.

  He considered her answer for a moment. “I learned to play chess while in the rebel prison. We drew a board in the dirt and used stones for chess pieces. Playing chess helped keep our minds sharp.”

  “Staring at stones did that?” she teased.

  He chuckled. “Sounds crazy, I know. But there’s actually a lot of mental work that goes into the game. It was also a great way to know my fellow prisoners. Know who to trust. Who was motivated. Honest. Know who was most likely to rob me.”