Harlequin Heartwarming May 2016 Box Set: Through the StormHome for KeepsThe Firefighter's RefrainTo Catch a Wife

by Rula Sinara

  Rose furrowed her brow. “Nothing, really. He’d ask stuff like how long I’d worked there, where had I gone to school and where did I live. Stuff like that.”

  Jack sat back and waited for her to continue.

  “One day he sat at a table closer to the front and then the next time he came in, he sat at the counter where we could talk when I wasn’t waiting on other customers.”

  “Did your conversations change, get more personal?”

  “I guess.” Rose sipped some water. She seemed a little calmer now that she was finally opening up. “He asked questions about my family, about what it was like growing up without a dad, about the foster homes. He asked a lot of questions, actually.”

  “Did he ever talk about himself?”

  She shook her head. “Hardly ever. He told me he was from New York, and his parents were still there. He talked more about the future, how he planned to go back to the city and be an actor.”

  Jason Caruthers was from New York state, but not the city. He’d grown up in Albany, upstate. Jack suspected the lie was intended to impress Rose, and it seemed it had. Nothing about his background suggested an interest in theater. He was quite the actor, though.

  Now that Rose was on a roll, she kept talking. Jack let her continue without interrupting. She appeared to know nothing about Jason’s own experience as a kid who’d been abandoned by his parents and raised, not in foster homes but by an elderly grandmother. By all accounts, she had taken him into her home out of some misplaced sense of duty. Worse still, she had ignored and then subsequently denied the indicators her grandson was struggling with mental illness. The forensic psychiatrist who now worked with Jason had diagnosed him with borderline personality disorder.

  “Jason was one of the few people who ever really listened to me,” Rose said. “He wanted to know about my mother, the foster parents I had over the years, the social workers.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  Head down, she absently picked at the frayed threads on the knee of her jeans, expanding the gaping tear. “I told him everything. How bad it was with my mom, how the social workers would show up with the cops in the middle of the night...”

  She hesitated, shot him a quick, wary glance.

  Jack responded with a nod, hoping she could see his sympathy was genuine. In his early days with the CPD, he’d been present at a lot of child apprehensions. Too many. Every single one of them a heartbreaker.

  “I told him how much I hated moving into some stranger’s house, how I never felt like I belonged there, or anywhere. Do you think that’s why he...?”

  Murdered your mother? Words best left unsaid for now.

  “We don’t know what motivated him. Can you remember anything else he said about his own life?”

  She shook her head, slowly. “I can’t think of anything.”

  “Did you ever meet him away from the diner?”

  She hesitated, obviously startled by that question. “Um...he asked a couple of different times if I wanted to go someplace with him after work. I always said no. My boss was, like, superstrict about us ‘fraternizing with the patrons,’” she said, punctuating the sentence with air quotes. “A couple of months ago, I started running into him, though. Once at the Laundromat near my apartment building and another time at the convenience store on the corner. He told me he lived in the neighborhood.”

  Believing him had been her first mistake, but it was easy to understand why she had. Rose wore her neediness like a neon sign. Jason Caruthers had likely zeroed in on that before she’d served him his first cup of coffee.

  Jack shook his head. He needed to be honest with her. “Jason didn’t live in your neighborhood. He had a room near the Loop downtown.”

  Rose’s overly made-up eyes narrowed to slits. “So, what are you saying? Was he, like, stalking me or something?” A possibility she obviously hadn’t considered at the time.

  “All I can tell you for sure is he didn’t live anywhere near your place.”

  “That’s creepy.”

  He agreed. “To be clear, Rose, you used to see Jason pretty well every day at the diner, you ran into him a few times in your neighborhood, but you never went anywhere with him? No dates, no meet-ups anywhere?”

  “Never. I already told you that.”

  “You did, and I appreciate your honesty.” And his gut told him she was being honest. Still, he needed to keep stripping away the layers of this particular onion until there weren’t any left.

  “When was the last time you saw your mother?”

  “About two months ago. She had my cell number, and she called out of the blue.”

  “Did you get together with her?”

  Rose gave a wistful nod.

  “How was she?”

  “She sounded good on the phone. Like she had it together, you know?”

  “Did she come to the diner?”

  “No way. I never told her where I lived or where I was working. I met her downtown. Turned out the place she suggested was close to a shelter where she used to hang out, so I figured she must’ve been staying there again.”

  “The Helping Hands Women’s Shelter?”

  “Yeah, that’s the place.”

  “How was she when you saw her that day?”

  Rose lifted one bony shoulder, let it drop. “Okay, I guess. I bought her lunch, and she asked for money. She doesn’t call very often, but when she does—did—that’s always what she wanted. So I gave her my tips from the shift I’d worked the night before, and then I left.”

  For the first time since the interview started, he let his thoughts extend beyond the interview room. Compared to this poor kid, his upbringing had been decidedly normal. He would guess Emily’s was, as well. Her parents had been divorced for years, and he’d never heard much about her mother, come to think of it. She and her sisters had been raised by their father—a wheelchair-bound paraplegic who was something of a local hero in his own right—on the family farm. Thomas Finnegan could often be seen chauffeuring his grandson around in his specially equipped minivan. Last summer, Jack’s mother had raved about him being the marshal, on horseback no less, of the Riverboat Days parade. Jack would make a point of learning more about Emily’s family over dinner tonight.

  He turned his full attention back to Rose. “Giving your mom some money, that was a nice thing to do.”

  “Not really. I mean, she is—was—my mom and everything, but I knew she was going to use it to get high.”

  “Do you use drugs, Rose?”

  “No way.”

  “Just booze, then.”

  She had maintained eye contact throughout the exchange about her mother, but she quickly lowered her gaze when he mentioned the drinking. “Sometimes.”

  He let that drop. “Did you tell Jason about getting together with your mother?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. She swiped at her eyes with the back of one hand. For the first time since the interview had begun, her emotions were raw and gut-wrenchingly genuine.

  Jack slid a box of tissues across the table and leaned back in his chair, watching her closely. Rose dabbed at her eyes, scrunched the damp, black-smeared tissue into a ball and formed a fist around it.

  She’s grieving, he reminded himself. Give the poor kid a break.

  She snagged a second tissue, did a little more damage to the eyeliner, blew her nose.

  “I know this is hard,” he said, “but I need to ask a few more questions. Take your time and let me know when you’re ready.”

  She tossed the tissues into the trash. “I’m fine. Can we just get this over with?”

  “Sure. Tell me about your social worker, when you last saw her, what you told Jason about her.”

  Rose answered his questions, appearing to do her best to be accurate with dates a
nd places. The same was true when he moved on to her former foster mother. Her house had been the one place that had felt like a real home to Rose. She had screwed it up by acting out and finally stealing money from her foster mom’s purse so she could impress some of her so-called friends at school. Yes, she had told Jason about living there. Now she confessed to Jack, amid more tears, that she had embellished some of the facts and completely altered others to make herself seem like the victim.

  Jack studied Rose’s face as Jason’s motivation slowly dawned on her. She might not have wielded the knife. She might not be guilty of murder—certainly no jury would ever convict her—but her poor-me attitude, combined with her indiscretion and naïveté, had contributed to the senseless killing of three innocent people. Three people who had at various times cared for her and about her, whether or not they had done an adequate job of demonstrating it. Eventually, Rose would have to find a way to come to terms with the reality of what had happened to those women; otherwise she would stagger beneath the guilt for the rest of her life. There would always be doubt, self-recrimination, what-if questions. For Rose’s sake, Jack hoped she didn’t keep looking for answers in a bottle.

  “I’m going to recommend that the Riverton police let you go, on one condition. No more disappearing acts. I want you to keep me informed of your whereabouts at all times, and we’ll need you back in Chicago to testify at Jason’s trial. Agreed?”

  She nodded reluctantly. “Will I have to see him?”

  “I’m afraid so. Just in the courtroom, though, and there’ll be plenty of security.” At the beginning of the interview, he had toyed with the idea of putting her and Jason together before the trial to see if she could get him to admit he’d acted alone. Now that Jack had met Rose, he could see that wouldn’t be a good idea. Jason Caruthers was as intelligent as he was evil. He could easily manipulate Rose, and the whole plan could backfire. Better to let the forensics and Rose’s testimony do the talking.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  EMILY LOVED WORKING for the local newspaper. Being a journalist had been her dream for as long as she could remember, and most of the time it didn’t feel like work. However, her online blog was the most fun she had ever had with her writing. The banner at the top of the page was a wide-angle shot she had taken of Main Street from inside the clock tower of the old town hall. Superimposed over the banner was the title of her blog—Small Town, Big Hearts by Emily Finnegan.

  All these years later, she still remembered Miss Garth’s advice on a sixth-grade English assignment she had proudly handed in. Emily had written a story about a scuba-diving pirate and a mermaid who teamed up to search for sunken treasure and were attacked by sea monsters. Her teacher had commented on her flare for colorful descriptions and praised her imagination, but she had given the paper a C-minus and suggested, “Try writing what you know, Emily.” Her next piece had been about her dad who had fought in Desert Storm and returned home in a wheelchair, and what that had been like for her family. She had known it was a good story before she handed it in, but she had still been over the moon to see an A-plus at the bottom of the page.

  As much as she loved writing for he Riverton Gazette, the subject matter was limited, and her boss’s conservative ideas didn’t allow much room for self-expression. To make up for the lack of creativity, Emily had started blogging not long after moving back home. Following through with Miss Garth’s advice, Emily wrote about what she knew best—her hometown of Riverton, WI, and the humble and sometimes quirky people who made it her favorite place in the whole world. Some might think the blog a silly waste of time, but she had fun writing it. These days, she looked forward to the next report of a missing item, although she would never admit it to anyone. None of the items were valuable, so the police might be right to think the whole thing was a prank perpetrated by a handful of schoolkids or just plain carelessness on the part of the owners. Her boss told her things would probably stop disappearing if she stopped writing about them. That wasn’t going to happen, though. The number of followers of her blog had increased after she’d posted the first theft article—“The Mysterious Case of the Disappearing Garden Gnome.” The post had received more comments than earlier ones, and that trend had continued with subsequent articles, such as “Another Local Garden Gnome Gone Missing,” “The Welcome Mat’s Worrisome Whereabouts” and “The Window-Washing Squeegee from Gabe’s Gas ’n’ Go that Got Up and Went.” Her silliest title yet was “The Wellingtons that Went for a Walk.”

  She clicked the new post button and typed in a title—“Digging Up Dirt on the Garden Gnome Burglar.” Kind of corny, but she could always change it.

  Dear Hearts,

  The Garden Gnome Burglar has struck again, this time at the home of Walter and Norma Evans on Second Avenue. Norma, who we all know is an avid gardener, was ready to plant marigolds in her prize-winning front flower beds this afternoon. Imagine her dismay when she discovered her favorite garden trowel has vanished into thin air.

  The Riverton PD has yet to nab the perpetrator. They have no suspects at this time, no ransom notes have been received and no pictures of gnomes posing in Paris or Rome have come to light, either.

  Love,

  Emily

  She searched the files on her hard drive for a related photo. She found a picture she had taken of the Evans’s home after Norma had won first place in Riverton’s “House Proud” competition held on the Fourth of July last summer. Marigolds, pansies, geraniums and numerous other flowers Emily couldn’t identify bloomed everywhere. A pair of American flags fluttered patriotically on either side of the wide steps leading to the wreath-adorned front door and a covered veranda furnished with a wooden love seat swing and an inviting pair of Adirondacks. Emily closed her eyes and pictured herself sitting in one of those chairs, sipping sweet iced tea while Norma rocked on the swing with a baby in her arms.

  Oh, my! Her eyes flew open, and she quickly clicked Publish and then logged out of her blog. She took another look at Sig’s obituary, and again decided to leave it until tomorrow. Right now, she should get ready for...whatever it was she and Jack were doing tonight. He had called it a date, but she wasn’t convinced. He could have already had a change of heart. Yes, the baby changed everything, but she needed to be realistic. Becoming parents didn’t mean they were meant to be together or were right for one another. And it sure didn’t mean they should rush to the altar. The biggest issue of all was he didn’t love her. Emily wasn’t a hopeless romantic, but marriage was love or nothing. She would never marry for the sake of convenience.

  Fred had been absolutely right about her feelings. She had fallen crazy in love—or at least puppy love—with Jack Evans when she was fourteen. Back then, Jack and his perfect girlfriend, Belinda Bellows, had seemed inseparable. However, their relationship had ended after high school when Jack had gone away to college and Belinda hadn’t.

  Ancient history, she reminded herself. She sighed. She should really start getting ready for dinner, but instead she scrolled though older posts on her blog and perused the comments. More people read her articles in the Gazette, but they were all Riverton residents. With her blog, she could reach people worldwide. Not that the entire world read her stories, but the posts frequently had fifty or sixty hits, and some had garnered quite a few comments from readers, especially the garden-gnome posts. Many comments were made by people who disguised their identities with names like Catwoman37, DragonSlayer and Miss_Piggy. Some augmented their online personas with a corresponding avatar. Others, like AnnieF, were clearly her sister, while others still, like CJ’s Horsefeathers and her father’s Wheelman were slightly more subtle but still identifiable. Emily had been able to figure out the real identities of some of her local readers by the comments they posted, but quite a few remained a mystery. Who were they? Where were they? And was the garden-gnome thief himself—or herself—reading her posts? Pushing away from her desk, she scooped Tadpole out of
her little red box and nuzzled her with her nose.

  “Okay, stop stalling,” she said to herself as she gazed into the tiny creature’s shiny black eyes. “I need to get ready. I don’t need to think of it as a date. It just is what it is, that’s all.”

  She secured the hamster in her cage, picked up her mug, and made a face after taking a sip of tepid tea.

  “Gross.” She carried it into the kitchen, dumped the contents down the drain and set the empty mug in the sink along with her breakfast dishes.

  “I would love a cup of coffee.” She gazed longingly at the coffeemaker, desperately wishing for a cup of steaming hot caffeine. Instead, she settled for a glass of filtered water from the fridge.

  Emily looked through the window in the kitchen door that led to a narrow wooden deck with a railing that would never pass a safety inspection and a flight of stairs that served as a fire escape. Emily stared at the backs of the buildings across the lane, thinking as she often did, that back lanes told a city or town’s real story better than the facades that faced the street. Compared to most, Riverton’s lanes were surprisingly hospitable, but they still told a tale of their own. Hmm. This would make a good series of photo essays for her blog. As soon as she solved the garden-gnome mystery.

  Her stomach growled, bringing her back to reality.

  And before she solved that, she needed to get ready for dinner.

  She walked into her bedroom. It had been a crazy roller-coaster kind of day. She was having a baby, a reality she was still having an impossible time wrapping her mind around. On the one hand, she didn’t feel any different, although she knew that would change as her body changed. On the other, she was an emotional wreck with serious doubts about her ability to raise a child compounded by a concern she might be doing it alone. Still, after years of fantasizing about dating Jack, it was actually happening. Tonight.

  And now she was running a little late. She’d need to hurry if she was going to be ready when he arrived to pick her up. She shed her flowy top, peeled off her jeans and undies, and tossed everything into the hamper. In the bathroom, she turned on the shower, twisted her hair into a loose bun to keep it dry and stepped into the spray, lathering her loofah with vanilla-coconut-scented shower gel.