“Miranda.” Tucker hesitated. “If he has a police record and is wanted for a crime, the computer will spit that out, too.”
Miranda hadn’t thought of that. When she didn’t reply, Tucker added, “I want you to pay attention to his reaction when you suggest the fingerprinting. He might make an excuse not to come down. Or you might turn around and find out he’s disappeared. Poof! Just like that. Don’t be surprised.”
Somehow she was sure that Adam would be fine with the prospect of being fingerprinted. Then again, if he did have a criminal record, there was a good chance he didn’t remember.
“I think we can get to town by noon. Does that work for you, Tucker?”
“Noon would be fine,” Tucker said. “If something comes up, just call the station.”
He meant if his prediction came true.
When she walked back into the kitchen, her grandmother was clearing the table and Adam stood at the sink, washing dishes. He was wielding a big soapy sponge, his sleeves rolled to his elbows. He was wearing one of her grandfather’s old flannel shirts. Though Adam was tall, the shirt hung practically to his knees, and Gus’s old jeans sagged on his lean frame. He didn’t look the least bit dangerous.
Overriding Tucker’s sensible warnings—overriding the fact that she knew firsthand looks could be deceiving—Miranda felt something deep down inside that simply told her this man was not a threat in any way…except perhaps to her own heart.
“That was Tucker Tulley, the police officer who came here last night,” she explained. “If you want to go to the station and give them your fingerprints, he’ll run a computer check. It might turn up your identity.”
Adam turned to her. His dark eyes brightened. “How long does it take for them to check the prints? Did he say?”
“Tucker said the prints are run through a few different data bases—federal jobs and government contractors or consultants. Criminal records, too.”
“Sounds as if that takes a while then. But it’s a start.”
It certainly didn’t seem as if Adam was afraid of uncovering his identity. Still, Miranda felt relieved by his response.
Sophie stepped forward and took the sponge out of his hand. “I can finish up in here. You get cleaned up. I left you some towels and a plastic razor. There are more clothes in your room, too—on the chair. I know my husband’s clothes don’t fit very well,” she added, trying to hide a smile, “but you can pick up a few things in town. Miranda will take you.”
“These clothes are fine. I don’t need anything more.” He looked at Sophie and then at Miranda. “You’ve both done enough for me. I don’t want to bother you anymore. If you can give me a ride to town, I’ll find some help from a social service agency. Maybe stay in a shelter until I can figure things out. Someone at the hospital said that could be arranged.”
Miranda knew that was the logical solution. Especially after Tucker’s warnings. But she didn’t want Adam to go into a shelter. But before she could say anything, her grandmother turned from the sink, looking appalled.
“No, sir. I won’t hear of it.” Sophie shook her head, her swirl of white hair nearly coming loose from its pins. “Miranda will take you into town, and you’ll do what you need to do with the police. Then you must come back here and stay as long as you need to. We don’t mind having you stay here. It’s no trouble at all, is it Miranda?”
“Not at all. Honestly,” Miranda told him. “Besides, it probably won’t be for long. You might find out that someone is already looking for you, if not today, then maybe tomorrow.”
Adam looked as if he was about to protest, then seemed to reconsider. “If I stay, I have to work. There must be some way I can help out here.” He looked back at Miranda. “I don’t know what kind of painter I am…but I can probably meet your standards.”
Was he teasing her? Miranda didn’t mean to smile, but couldn’t help it.
“Probably,” she admitted.
“All right, we have a deal,” Sophie cut in. “You stay and we’ll put you to work if you feel up to it.”
“I do,” he insisted.
“I need to change.” Miranda glanced at her watch. “We’ll leave in about half an hour, okay?”
He met her eyes and nodded. “I’ll be ready.”
Upstairs in her room, Miranda tried to change quickly, but struggled with the choice of what to wear. She settled on a blue sweater with a shawl collar, jeans, and boots. She brushed out her long hair, leaving it down, then put it back in a ponytail again. She did her usual amount of makeup for a trip to town, which was next to none. Finally, she slipped on some thin silver bracelets and a pair of earrings set with blue topaz, her own creation. Nothing she wouldn’t usually wear to town, she kept telling herself, but all the while, conscious that she was going to spend time with Adam and wanted to look a bit better than usual.
She grinned at her reflection as the reality of the situation hit her. This is so not a date, she reminded herself. You’re taking the man to a police station to be fingerprinted, remember?
When she came back downstairs, Miranda found Adam waiting for her in the front parlor. He sat in an armchair with Dixie leaning against his leg, staring up at him adoringly. He petted her head in an absentminded way, his expression pensive.
“Waiting long?” Miranda asked. “Sorry I was so slow.”
At the sound of her voice, his expression brightened. She could tell he was surprised at the change in her appearance. She was equally surprised by his. Adam’s face was smoothly shaven, his hair slicked back wet from a shower, emphasizing his rugged features, large, dark eyes, wide mouth, and strong jaw. He wore a gray pullover with a black T-shirt underneath and a pair of jeans that were oversized but not comically baggy.
She was suddenly glad there weren’t any clothes around that actually fit him. That would have been a real problem.
She cleared her throat. “We’d better go. I told Tucker twelve.”
“Sure. Let’s go.” He quickly slipped on the big parka she had found the night before.
Sophie peeked into the room. “Miranda, you had a phone call while you were upstairs. A jewelry shop in town, the Golden Moon or something or other. I wrote down the name and number for you.”
Miranda walked over and took the slip of paper. She recognized the name of the caller, Krista Mullan. A few weeks ago, they had met at a crafts fair and Krista took some of Miranda’s jewelry to sell in her shop.
“Thanks, Grandma. Maybe I’ll stop by while we’re in town.”
“All right, see you later,” Sophie said.
Miranda led the way outside to the orchard’s truck, and they climbed in.
“How far are we from the town?” Adam asked as they started out.
“Oh, about fifteen minutes.” She headed down the private road from the house and turned onto Beach Road that led to the village.
He gazed out the window as she drove. “If I had to get lost somewhere, I sure picked a beautiful spot.”
The comment made her laugh. “Yes, you did. It’s very pretty here. Unspoiled. We’re not too far from Boston—two hours, maybe less. Depends on your driving.”
His dark brows drew together and she could see him struggling with something she had said.
“Boston. In Massachusetts,” she prompted. “Do you ever remember being there?”
“Yes, I do. There’s the Old North Church, where Paul Revere saw the lights in the tower that meant that the British were coming. The state house, with a gold dome roof…and the swan boats in the Public Garden.”
She nodded, staring out at the road. “That’s right. Sounds as if you know it well. Maybe you live there?”
He considered this for a moment. “No…I don’t think so. I don’t get that feeling anyway when I think about the place.”
He looked out at the passing scenery. There were very few houses visible on the winding road, even in winter. The road was a tunnel through bare arching branches, fragments of blue sky visible in between. Vines twined around
the old trees, hanging in clumps like decorations. Brush along the roadside grew dense and wild in the summer, but now there were only bare brown stalks.
“Did you grow up around here, Miranda?”
“Down in Connecticut. I’ve always loved it here, though. My parents would bring us up around the Fourth of July, and then they’d leave us with my grandparents for a long visit. My grandmother would let us run wild. It was better than sleepaway camp.”
“How did you end up here? Living with your grandmother?”
She glanced at him, surprised at all the personal questions. But maybe it was easier for him to be interested in her story right now than focus on his own. She actually didn’t like being asked these types of questions much. They made her uncomfortable. Her life was almost as confusing as his was right now, she thought.
“Let’s see, there were a few reasons. Mainly, because my grandfather died a few years ago and my grandmother was left alone. No one in the family wanted to help her run the orchard and she was too old to do it on her own. Everyone—my dad, my aunts—thought she should put the place up for sale. And she eventually agreed it was the most reasonable thing to do. We even packed all her things. But she didn’t want to go. I could see it was breaking her heart.”
He had asked a simple question and here she was, going on and on. Delivering a Shakespearean monologue. She had to be boring him silly with the personal details.
But Adam didn’t look bored. “So you volunteered to stay with her,” he filled in. “That was very generous.”
“It worked out for me, too. I had been living in New York and I had reached sort of a dead end there. City life wasn’t working out for me, but I didn’t know where else to go, what to do.”
“What kind of work did you do there?”
“I was trying to make it as an actress. But I was mostly waiting tables or doing temp work in offices.” She glanced at him and smiled. “I got some small parts, Off-Off Broadway, a TV commercial, a few lines in a soap opera. But I never got that big break that makes the difference.”
“I guess that could wear you down.”
“After a few years…yeah, it did. I probably wasn’t thick-skinned enough. You try not to take it personally when you miss out on a part. But it’s hard not to.”
The cattle call auditions, the constant judgment and rejection, the fierce competition, even with friends. And boyfriends.
During most of those struggling years, she had been in love. Miranda met Jake in an acting class when they were matched by their teacher to prepare a scene from A Streetcar Named Desire. The chemistry had been instantaneous. After that, they were together constantly.
They shared their work and understood each other. Or so Miranda had thought. She expected that they would marry sooner or later but had never pushed Jake for a real commitment. They had to establish their careers, he kept saying. It was foolish to make plans before then. She wasn’t the type to pressure a man or lay down ultimatums. Then he left for someone else, a woman who was an attorney, and married her six months later. He had been drawn to her self-confidence, he told Miranda. She knew what she wanted and went after it. Miranda guessed he meant that she was the opposite. Too nice. Too easygoing.
Well, maybe she was all that. She couldn’t change herself. She didn’t want to. Maybe she wasn’t tough enough for acting, for city life.
It wasn’t a very original plot and not one she cared to share with Adam. The betrayal had hurt her deeply and it was hard for her even now to trust men.
“Are you still involved with acting?”
“A little. I’m more selective now, though.” She paused, deciding not to mention her callback or her own conflicted feelings about it. “I also make jewelry—simple pieces, my own designs. I sell a little at flea markets and shops in town, but mostly, it’s for fun.”
He glanced at her and smiled. “So you keep pretty busy. Running an orchard, acting, making jewelry…rescuing people.”
She shrugged. “The rescue work is just a hobby, too. I don’t think you should include it in my resumé.”
“You’re good at it. You might want to reconsider.”
The way he looked at her made Miranda feel self-conscious and strangely happy. She fixed her eyes on the road and tried not to show her reaction.
“So, we’re two hours from Boston; north or south?” he asked, changing the subject.
“Southeast. It’s a fairly direct route on Highway 95, which runs north, through New England. I guess you don’t remember where you were coming from?”
He sighed. “That would be too easy.”
“I’ll show you a map when we get home. Maybe that will jog your memory.”
“Maybe,” he agreed, but he didn’t sound hopeful. “You would think I would have left a car somewhere around here. I couldn’t have just dropped down from the sky.”
“I think we can safely rule out that possibility. Tucker said the police were still looking. If you were lost and drove off onto one of the side roads around here, it might take a while for them to find it.”
“I suppose that’s possible.” He sat staring out the window again, seeming to sink into his own thoughts. Miranda felt bad for him. She couldn’t imagine being so lost, so unanchored by everything familiar in your life.
“I’m sure someone out there must be looking for you,” she said. “Even if your memory doesn’t return for a few days, I think we’ll find out very soon who you are and where you’re from.”
He glanced at her, a warm look in his eyes. “There must be someone, right?”
“Yes, I’m sure there is.” She smiled back, feeling that connection again, but knowing that there had to be someone—a girlfriend or even a wife—searching for him.
When they reached town, Miranda parked on Main Street in front of Village Hall, which also housed the police station. They stopped at the front desk and gave their names to the officer on duty. Tucker soon came out to greet them and lead them back to the squad room.
He was friendly and efficient, Miranda noticed. If he still believed Adam’s fingerprints might reveal a criminal history, he didn’t show it. Tucker took a photo of Adam, facing forward and then sideways. Then he took his fingerprints, pressing Adam’s inky fingertips one by one onto a white card.
“The prints and photo will run through different data banks, nationwide,” Tucker explained. “We’ll also send your photo and description to all the police stations in the state, over the Internet.”
Adam sat back, wiping the dark ink off his fingers. “How long does it take for the computer search?”
“A few days. Maybe less, maybe more. Heck, you could get lucky and we could hear back in an hour. I made a note about that matchbook in your pocket. I was right about the Charles Hotel. It’s a fancy place in Cambridge. The Regatta Bar is one of its restaurants. I’m going to call over there, ask if someone remembers you. I’ll send them the picture, too.”
“Sounds good.” Adam looked encouraged. “What about a car? I guess you would have told me if you had found one by now.”
“Still working on that. We’ve widened the search and are checking with the highway patrol. It’s possible your car broke down someplace on the main roads, far from here and you hitched a ride.”
“I didn’t think of that,” Adam admitted.
“We haven’t found a missing persons report that fits your description. But that might come through today or tomorrow. From the looks of the clothes you had on last night, I would guess that you haven’t been lost very long.”
“Probably not,” Adam agreed. “It just feels like a long time.”
Tucker looked sympathetic, but when he spoke again his tone was all business. “I was talking to Roger Lester this morning. He’s a county detective who works on these kinds of cases—missing persons and all that. He suggested you go public, get some news coverage. Sara Franklin, a reporter at the paper here in town, already picked up the story from the police blotter this morning. Said she would put it out on the Ass
ociated Press wire and send a copy to the TV and radio stations.”
Miranda noticed Tucker watching Adam’s reaction. Did he think Adam was about to bolt again? Adam did look uncomfortable. He didn’t answer right away.
“What do you think?” Tucker persisted. “Want to try it?”
“It makes sense. But I feel a little odd, talking to a reporter. I don’t have much to say.” He shook his head. “I never thought I would end up being some believe-it-or-not news story.”
“Sara is a great person,” Miranda assured him. “She won’t make you feel like a freak.”
Adam nodded and glanced at Tucker. “I guess I can’t pass up any ideas right now.”
“I’ll call her and give her a heads-up.” Tucker called the newspaper and had a brief conversation with Sara. “She said you could drop by anytime today,” he told them. “Listen, before you go, that detective gave me the name of a psychologist in Newburyport. Says he might be able to help you if your memory doesn’t come back in a day or so.” Tucker handed Adam a slip of paper with the doctor’s name and phone number.
Adam glanced at the information and slipped it in his pocket. “Thank you. And thanks for all your help, Officer. I appreciate all you’re trying to do.”
“You don’t have to thank me. It’s my job. I hope we have some news for you soon.”
“You can call the orchard if you hear anything,” Miranda said. “He’ll be staying with us and doing some work around the place. We can use the help for a few days.”
Tucker didn’t look pleased by the plan. He jotted a note in his file and then closed the folder. “Sounds like you have that all settled. I’ll call you if I hear anything.”
“That would be great,” Miranda said, though she couldn’t help hoping that it might be a while before Tucker called.
They left the police station, stepping out into the wintry air. “The newspaper office isn’t far. It’s just down at the end of Main Street,” Miranda explained. “Want to take a walk and see the village?”
“Sure, I can use a walk,” Adam agreed. “I’ve decided I probably wasn’t in law enforcement. I don’t like hanging around police stations much.”
A Christmas Visitor Page 5
