She bit her bottom lip. “Speaking of Cash, Aurore also finally admitted that Serena knew him.”
He took his eyes off the road for a second. “What did you do? Put truth serum in her coffee?”
“Very funny. I don’t know why she was so open, except that maybe she figures we’re going to find out anyway, so why keep up the pretense?”
“Did you show her the picture?”
“No, but I mentioned it. She said they met while Serena was in college a few years back.”
He thought about it a moment. “The timing sounds about right.”
“Did Cash go to college then?”
Dylan shook his head and shifted gears. “No, but he often worked on drug raids at college campuses.”
“I think Serena was talking about me, Dylan. I think Serena knows who took me when I was a baby, and she might have told Cash. That’s why they didn’t want you here and they’ve been so protective about people getting close to Serena.”
“They’re afraid someone is going to find out the truth. But honestly, after all this time, why would they care if someone knew you were taken from the Davcos? They knew. Obviously Aurore knew. I just don’t understand all the secrecy around it.”
* * *
Dylan drove for a while longer, silently looking at the road and nothing else. Tammie stared out the window as they passed a large farm. The farmer was on a tractor out in the fields, a large cloud of dust trailing behind him as he moved.
As she looked at the fields, Tammie thought of how different her life could have been. She would have grown up here. It was beautiful, but no more so than the small Oregon town that had been her home.
“Are you okay?” she asked, when she suddenly realized how tense Dylan had become.
He sighed, shook his head. “I haven’t been okay about this in a long time.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, reaching across and placing her hand over his on the stick shift. She let it linger there. Dylan didn’t seem in any hurry for her to move it “This must be very hard on you.”
“I was away too long,” he said. “There’s a whole lot about my brother that I didn’t know, and that’s upsetting. I feel like I failed him somehow.”
“It takes two to create distance. He could have come to you with his problems.”
“In his own way, he did. But for some reason, he didn’t confide in me about everything. I can see even in that picture that he loved Serena. She’s not just some girl he met on a job. She was someone important to him.”
He finally pulled his hand away, rubbing his hand over the shadow on his jaw. To her surprise, the separation jarred her. She’d meant to give him comfort, but she was startled to realize how much she’d liked the connection and the warmth that now seemed lost.
“I don’t know. I guess I always thought if there was a special woman in his life, he would have told me, you know?’
He paused, downshifted and took the left turn onto Main Street. Tammie held on to her seat as he made the turn. Then he hit the gas and accelerated again.
“Let’s just get to the library. I need to check some things out.”
* * *
The old stone-faced building was in the middle of town, across the street from the white church on the hill. Both buildings looked almost lost amid the throng of cars, vans, and trucks parked on every available inch of grass. People stood at the entrance to the church parking lot, waving orange flags to get motorists’ attention and convince them to pay money to park on the church grounds. A quick glance up Main Street and there were more people with orange flags herding cars deep into empty fields.
It was difficult to get around, now that the auction was in full swing. Unlike yesterday, when they’d been able to drive into town and park, they had to sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic before finding room in one of the makeshift parking lots.
They backtracked to the library, walking past people with empty carts that they’d obviously hoped to fill with a deal or two at the antique auctions.
Dylan held the library door open. As she walked inside, Tammie took a moment to let her eyes adjust to the light. The air inside was stuffy, as if the air-conditioning hadn’t yet been turned on and the windows weren’t providing sufficient air circulation.
Tammie breathed in deeply and followed Dylan up to a small table where a woman was sitting and checking in a pile of books. While he was talking to the woman, she took a moment to look around the room. The library was tiny in comparison to any library she’d ever seen, although it seemed to make the most of every inch of space. Stacks of books were everywhere, and the shelves had little room for two people to pass through. She imagined there probably wasn’t a lot of money to keep the library going and doubted it would hold any information of real value to them.
In the far corner, by a set of open windows and a small oscillating fan, sat a table with three computers. Beyond that, toward the back of the building, was a doorway to another room.
“Their computers were recently updated so they shouldn’t be too bad to work on. I’m going to check my email first. We lucked out. Although nothing has been digitized here, all the local newspapers are on microfiche, all the way back to the fifties.”
She tilted an eyebrow. “Lucky? That’ll take forever to look through.”
“It shouldn’t be too bad,” he said, keeping his voice low. “We have a narrow window to look at. And it’s a lot better than sifting through dusty, old crumbling newspapers in a vault.”
“You have a point.”
The woman behind the table stamped the last book and added it to the pile. Then she got up and walked over to them.
“This is Mrs. Martinez,” Dylan said, introducing Tammie to the woman. “Mrs. Martinez, this is Tammie Gardner. She came all the way out here from Oregon.”
Mrs. Martinez’s gaze lingered on Tammie’s face for a brief moment. “Amazing. Lois Caulfield said the resemblance was striking, but I said it couldn’t be that close a resemblance.”
“Mrs. Caulfield?” Dylan asked.
“She’s a schoolteacher in town, but she works a tent down at the auctions as a second job. She was Serena Davco’s teacher early on, and tutored her some at home when she was under the weather. She saw that load of furniture tumble from the truck and nearly hit you. At first she thought it was Serena, until someone told her your name.”
“She knew Serena well, then?”
Mrs. Martinez started toward the back room. “We all know Serena. She was such a sweet girl growing up. I’ll just get that microfiche from the vault and set you up on one of the machines.”
Dylan made a comical face when Mrs. Martinez turned her back. “They really do have a vault,” he said quietly.
Mrs. Martinez apparently heard. “Oh, yes. This used to be the town hall years ago, but the town grew too big. They used to have town meetings right there in the church across the street.”
“How interesting,” Tammie said.
Dylan stopped at the table with the computers. “I’ll meet you out back,” he said, sitting down at the computer closest to the room Mrs. Martinez had disappeared into.
“Now you’re looking for information about the Davco mansion fire, the young man said?”
“Yes, and any newspaper articles from the week before and one to two weeks after that.”
“I remember the fire, but I was quite young at the time. I don’t recall the month.” Mrs. Martinez handed Tammie a box. “Here are the boxes for that year. I’m afraid you’ll have to look through them to find the dates you’re looking for. We try to keep them in order, but people don’t always put them back in the right place.”
Tammie took the films and after a moment’s hesitation, asked, “Someone I talked to at the auction site mentioned something about a scandal with the church around the same time of the fire. Do you remember that?”
Mrs. Martinez thought a minute. “Scandal? Not that I recall. My family moved to Eastmeadow around that time, but I can’t say I remember ever hear
ing about a scandal with Pastor Robbins. He’s the only pastor I’ve known.” She took Tammie’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “If you need me, I’ll be right out front. This should get you started, though.”
Tammie settled in the back room, at the microfiche machine. The films were labeled with the year, but not the month.
“I have a feeling it’s going to be a long afternoon,” she muttered.
From where she was sitting, she could see Dylan settled into a chair at the computer closest to the doorway. He seemed to command the space around him. No woman with a pulse could walk into this library and not notice a man like Dylan Montgomery. He was quite a handsome man, strong and resolute. That kind of strength wasn’t just in muscle, but in character. That combination was sexy as hell.
As she scrutinized the dates on the black and white films whizzing past on the screen, she thought of what it had felt like last night, when Dylan kissed her. The feel of his body so close to her had been a drug so powerful, she still wanted it. She wanted more. The desire to be close was so powerful she had a hard time concentrating on anything else.
For months after her parents’ deaths, she hadn’t thought of dating at all. She no longer pictured the life ahead of her the way little girls dreamed. It was if she’d been stuck in a quagmire for far too long. The thought of walking down the aisle without her father’s arm hooked around hers...well, it all seemed so painful.
Something about Dylan brought those thoughts of family and the future back to her mind. But she quickly pushed them aside as she glanced at the dates on the fiche. She needed to concentrate, not think of how it felt to have Dylan’s lips against her. To feel his breath against her skin and to feel him respond when her hands touched him. It had been just a kiss. But she couldn’t get it out of her mind.
“February,” she muttered to herself as the date caught her attention on the fiche. She was getting closer. She’d been born in June and Mr. Beaumont had told her he’d been working at the auction grounds the night of the fire and remembered the glow. It made sense to check the month of June for any news about the auction and then go from there.
She changed the film and began searching again. Every so often, Tammie would glance over at Dylan. He was sitting in a chair that seemed almost too small for his frame. He was reading details on the monitor intently, and every so often, he typed fast, his face drawn into an adorable frown.
Adorable?
“Oh, puh-leeze, Tammie...” she whispered to herself, rolling her eyes.
She had no time for this. There was more at stake than the way she’d felt when Dylan Montgomery kissed her or when he held her last night. She was acting like one of her students with a crush on a boy in class.
Her mind was only half taking in the information on the microfiche until she came upon a small article announcing the upcoming auction. A picture of Main Street and the white church across the street was splashed on the page, as well. It looked much as it did today, with hordes of people roaming the streets. The only difference was that it looked like it was in a time warp, with fancy old cars that today would be considered collectors’ items.
As she slowly moved her fingers, changing from frame to frame, her mind was at war. She needed to concentrate on the fire at the mansion and any mention of Eleanor or Byron Davco.
“How’s it going?”
Tammie hadn’t even heard Dylan come up behind her, but the sound of the chair being dragged across the floor made her jump. He sat down next to her and glanced over her shoulder. She could feel the heat from his body, smell the clean scent of soap, and something more enticing. She closed her eyes for a brief moment, and then focused on the screen again.
“I’m just coming up on the month I was born.”
“Good. We should start to see something, then. When’s your birthday?”
“June fourteenth.”
“Assuming that’s your real birthday, let’s check there.”
It had never occurred to Tammie that the day she knew as her birthday could be wrong. Suddenly, that one small detail seemed vitally important. She didn’t want that taken away from her when so much else had been already.
The day she knew as her birthday came around. “Nothing,” Tammie said. “Just mentions of the auctions and a livestock fair in another town.”
Dylan moved his hand over the microfiche knob, covering her hand with his. Without thinking, she turned her hand over until her fingers locked with his. Dylan looked away from the screen and at her face. So many things were running through her mind, her head began to swim. She blinked to steady herself and pulled her hand away.
When she found her voice, she said, “Move ahead one day.”
It took a moment for him to turn his attention to the screen and move the frame forward. When he did, Tammie drew in a slow breath.
Then the newsprint practically exploded with detail.
“Bull’s-eye,” she said as mixed feelings collided. On the one hand, she wanted to find out the truth. But how much did she really want to see?
The front page headlines screamed that Eleanor Davco, daughter of one of the town’s oldest families, had been killed in a tragic fire. Tammie’s hand went to her chest, and she forced herself to breathe. There was a picture of Eleanor Davco. She couldn’t have been much older than Tammie was now.
Dylan read ahead. “The house wasn’t completely destroyed, but the damage was extensive. If your mother had just given birth to you, that may have been the reason she wasn’t able to escape the fire.”
“My birth mother,” Tammie said quietly. With each word she read, she felt as if the woman who had raised her, the parents she still mourned, were being ripped from her arms. She couldn’t quite bring herself to say that Eleanor Davco was her mother, even though she knew she was the woman who’d given birth to her.
Dylan glanced at her, seemed to sense her unease. But without saying a word, he put a gentle hand on her back to comfort her. Tammie wanted to curl into that comfort, but she kept to her task.
“There’s no mention of a baby. At least not what I can see,” Dylan said. He reached over and advanced the page forward again.
Tammie couldn’t move. It was as if she were frozen in place, trying to take in all the details. She didn’t know what she’d have done if she’d had to look through all this alone.
“Wait,” she said, putting her hand on his arm, when something caught her eye. “Backtrack a bit.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
She put her hand on the microfiche control and slowly scrolled until she found what had caught her eye. It hadn’t been front-page news, like the Davco mansion fire, but it had been news.
“That’s my father’s picture,” she said, tears springing to her eyes. “I don’t remember him being that young.”
“You were an infant when this was taken.”
“The money went missing the night of the fire,” she said, the shock of reading about her parents paralyzing her.
When she didn’t read on, Dylan continued. “‘Pastor Gardner and his wife have not been available for questioning regarding the missing funds. Town officials are urging the state police to inquire about the missing pastor and his wife and the allegations that they—’”
“Pastor? My father was a pastor? This is saying they stole money from the church. I don’t believe it,” she said as she speed read through the article. Tears blurred her vision, and her bottom lip wobbled.
Unable to see anymore, she sat back in the seat and let Dylan read on. When he was finished, she sat back in the chair and fought to keep herself from breaking down.
“This was the scandal Mr. Beaumont was talking about. My parents were part of this scandal. Does it say when they left?”
“This article just says that they hadn’t been found for questioning. Let’s look ahead.”
He hesitated, and she felt his body stiffen next to her.
Tammie could barely feel her hands moving on the microfiche
controls. Through her tear-filled eyes, she fought to see the newsprint on the screen.
“Here,” Dylan said, stilling her hand and backing up.
While the first article was on page three, this article was buried on page nineteen.
“This one says more of the same. Pastor Gardner and his wife are still being sought for questioning regarding the missing funds. They were last seen—” Tammie stopped short.
“That’s the night of the fire,” Dylan added.
Tears were rolling down her cheeks. Oh, God, what happened?
“I’ve got to get out of here,” she said, pulling herself away from the microfiche machine and standing up, unable to take in any more.
#
Chapter Eleven
Tammie spun around to look at Dylan. His face was sympathetic, and his eyes filled with a warmth that was hard for her to look at. She couldn’t. She didn’t want sympathy or reason or understanding. She just wanted someone to tell her that all these lies about the two people she’d loved most in the world weren’t true.
“I have to get out of here.”
She ran through the library and pushed out the door right into the busy street.
Without looking where she was going, she stepped off the curb and almost walked into traffic before a local cop pulled her back by the arm.
“Hold on a second, young lady. The antiques will still be there when the traffic goes by.”
Tammie was only marginally aware that the cop had stopped traffic for her and was motioning her to cross. Her feet and legs moved with a will of their own. Stunned was the only way she could have described herself.
All this time, she’d been searching for something. She’d wanted the truth, wanted to confirm her suspicions that her parents’ deaths hadn’t been some random accident.
Someone had to be responsible for this. And yet she hadn’t expected this.
Had someone killed them because they were criminals? Stealing church funds, and then—?
Reckless Hours: a Romantic Suspense novel (Heroes of Providence Book 3) Page 15
