Finding Home (St. John Sibling Series Book 2)

by Barbara Raffin

  Sam forced a smile. "Time I change into my barn clothes. I'll be back to check on the progress of that mountain we're building."

  The kid grinned. Reassured he'd diverted Ben's concerns, he headed for the house, pausing only long enough by Nana in her rocker to get a, "Go. I'll keep an eye on Ben," from her.

  Dixie's bedroom door was closed, hers and Annie's voices agitated, their words muffled. He raised his hand to knock. But Dixie had called Annie, not him. He should leave them to their girl talk. Then he remembered Dixie had said she was going to check her email.

  A chill slithered up his spine. He went into his room—went straight to the cell phone on the bureau, thinking it might hold for him the answer to what trouble had Dixie and Annie so agitated next door. As though it were a poisonous snake, he picked the cell up and called up the list of messages. They were all from Stuart, of course, most cursing him out for not answering his phone. But it was the last one that chilled him to the bone, not because there was a detached tone to the message that others from Stuart lacked, but because of the words.

  Implant the attached file on her computer and upload it, from her computer, to as many social networks as you can.

  Something told him he didn't want to see what was on that file. But, that same niggling premonition told him the file had everything to do with why Annie and Dixie were closed up together in Dixie's bedroom…even though he hadn't uploaded it.

  He opened the file. The first still picture to pop up on the cell phone screen looked familiar. Dixie and him kissing in the open doorway of the barn. But there was something not right about the tiny picture, something he couldn't quite decipher on the small screen. The second shot left no doubts about their purpose. Dixie arching beneath him on her bed…naked. Then He scanned several more shots. Convenient how his head was never in frame. Even the shot of them framed in the open barn door had showed only the back of his head.

  He ground his teeth together—wanted to shout, to throw something. Damn, he hated seeing their most intimate moments caught by someone—someone with an agenda… and a camera with a powerful lens. No one had gotten that close to them.

  He flipped back to the shot of them together in the open barn door. That first magic kiss ruined by an interloper. Even the shots taken of them in her darkened room were pretty clear. He knew who could afford such high end equipment. The same man who had ordered him to upload the pictures to the Internet from Dixie's computer.

  He closed his eyes against the realization he'd been used by the old man to ruin Dixie. Naïve to have believed Stuart had depended on him alone to dig up dirt on Dixie.

  Teeth gritted, he opened his eyes, the barn picture on the cell screen sharply detailed. He was about to punch the phone off when it struck what it was that was not quite right about that shot. Small as the cell phone screen was, he could barely make out the error. Dixie's shirt was missing. She hadn't taken it off until they were behind the hay bales. This shot was doctored and he could testify to that fact before any judge. He might yet be able to keep Stuart from making Dixie out to be a woman with morals too low to raise a child.

  But he couldn't just burst into her room and announce what he'd just learned. To do so, he would have to reveal the file on his phone—reveal that he was part of Stuart's latest plan to discredit her. She'd kick him out before he could explain he hadn't loaded the pictures onto her computer.

  But clearly some had.

  If not him, then who?

  A hacker?

  Why had Stuart even bothered to order him to upload the pictures when he could get any number of computer whizzes to hack into her system and upload them? Or maybe what was going on in the room next to his had nothing to do with these pictures.

  Silently, he slipped out his window and over the railing onto Dixie's balcony. He hunkered down beside her door, his ear trained on the sounds inside her room.

  Whatever had upset Dixie enough for her to call Annie, he had to fix.

  #

  Dixie sat on the edge of her bed, Annie's arm around her shoulders, her cheeks wet with the tears she'd shed. "I still don't understand why anyone would plant a file like this on my computer."

  "Not anyone, Stuart," Annie said. "Who else wants to hurt you?"

  "Does he think invading my privacy like this will make me appear to be an unfit mother—to persuade some judge to take Ben away from me? Does he think it'll embarrass me enough to make me give him up? He doesn't know me at all if he thinks embarrassing me would ever make me give up Ben."

  Annie's arms tightened around her. "This is embarrassing, but it's not enough for a judge to rule you an unfit mother."

  "But it can still hurt my reputation—hurt the restaurant."

  "Your regulars won't abandon you."

  "I was just beginning to expand my clientele base, people like the Hostettler sisters. Hortense hears about these pictures and I can kiss any expansion good-bye."

  "Maybe they won't find out about them. Maybe Stuart had the pictures uploaded to your computer as a warning—that they're not already out there in cyberspace."

  "I don't get it," Dixie said. "Stuart's threats have always been very straight forward. This—this subterfuge, I don't understand."

  "He's a wretched old man."

  "I never dreamt he'd stoop so low to get custody of Ben."

  "Dix, you realize he had to have someone upload those pictures to your computer."

  Dixie stilled, reluctant to ask Annie what she suspected. "What are you saying?"

  Annie's arms loosened a bit. "Do you think…could it be possible…?"

  "No," Dixie said, pressing her head against Annie's shoulder, knowing what—who Annie was suggesting was behind this.

  "The cancelled meat order," Annie continued. "The cooler getting turned off. Equipment breaking down on you."

  Dixie lifted her head from Annie's shoulder, quick with a defense. "I bought used equipment for the most part. It's not surprising it should break down."

  "Did you ever find out who fiddled with the gauges on the cooler?"

  "I assume—"

  "Don't assume anything. Put it together. Somebody FAXed a cancellation of your meat order from your number. Do you really think Nana could have accidently done that?"

  Dixie shook her head. "No, but—"

  "These incidents aren't coincidence. There's too many of them in too short a time. And if Jim hadn't called you about the meat order and you hadn't discovered the cooler issue soon enough, they could have been major catastrophes for you—for the restaurant."

  "The cooler was a major catastrophe as it was. I had to replace most of the produce and all of the dairy."

  "Every one of those equipment breakdowns cost you."

  "Which means someone here is doing the tampering." Dixie slumped against Annie, knowing she not long had a choice but to face Annie's suspicions.

  "Has it occurred to you that all these incidents have happened since Sam arrived?" Annie asked.

  Nausea rolled through Dixie's stomach. "It can't be Sam," she said even though she could read the evidence as well as Annie. "He's been helping me. He's loaned me the money to cover the costs of my losses."

  "Who has access to your computer?"

  "Anybody who's ever been in the house."

  "You don't really believe some customer or delivery man could have gotten past you into your private quarters, not when Ben's safety is at stake."

  "Maybe Miss Weston…"

  "She was here a good month before Sam arrived. Were there any problems during that time?"

  Reluctantly, Dixie shook her head. "But not Sam. He-he's—"

  "Your lover?" Annie gave her a squeeze. "I like Sam a whole lot. I don't want it to be him, either. But you've got to consider all possibilities and he's one of them."

  #

  Sam heard the whisper of a door opening and closing. Annie leaving the bedroom? Both of them leaving? He was feeling too dejected by what Annie had said about him to listen for further sounds. So,
when the balcony door opened…

  He started and looked up. Dixie looked down on him, more somber looking than he'd ever seen her.

  "How long have you been sitting there, Sam?"

  "Long enough to know something terrible has happened. Long enough to know Annie suspects me to be behind everything bad that's happened here this past month."

  Two steps and Dixie was at the front of the narrow balcony overlooking the driveway and outbuildings. While sitting outside her room, eavesdropping on her and Annie, he'd noted how limited a view anyone on the highway or even in the parking lot out front had of the balcony let alone into Dixie's bedroom. And though he could hear Ben calling for Nana to come see what he'd done in the sandbox, the angles and abutments of the Victorian era house blocked any view of the backyard from the balcony and vice versa. Besides, those pictures had been taken straight on.

  He rose and stepped up alongside Dixie. The scent of apple blossoms drifted up from the tree occupying the oasis between the lanes of the circular drive. It was hard to see anything clearly through the branches of the tree and, presumably, for even for the long lens of a camera to see them. He wanted to point out that fact.

  But to bring up the pictures would mean he'd have to admit he knew about them. Then he'd have to confess how he knew about them—how they got onto his phone and why they'd been put there.

  "Tell me you didn't have anything to do with any of this," Dixie said before he could work out whether or not he was still too much a coward to confess.

  The words he knew he should speak stuck in his throat.

  Coward.

  Or maybe he believed telling her he had nothing to do with the troubles plaguing her would be a lie since Stuart had sent him here. He could, however, answer her with what truth he knew. He faced her.

  "I didn't cancel your meat order. I didn't turn off the cooler. I did nothing intentional to hurt you."

  "Nothing intentional?" She faced him. "What does that mean, Sam?"

  The weight of what he'd allowed to happen pulled at his mouth—at his eyes. "It means I would never do anything to hurt you, Red. Please believe me."

  "I believe you," she said, lifting her fingertips to his cheek, their caress no weightier than a breath. Yet her touch stung as though she'd slapped him. It was what he deserved and he wanted to shout "You're too trusting, Red."

  "Come," she said, taking him by the hand and turning toward her bedroom door.

  He let her tow him inside—sat when she motioned him into her computer chair. "Something new has come up," she said.

  Bringing the computer out of sleep mode, she pointed at an odd icon almost hidden among the others. "That wasn't there yesterday."

  He tensed, knowing what the newly added file contained.

  She tapped the icon twice and thumbprints of a dozen or more pictures filled the monitor screen. She clicked on one, enlarging it, then another and another until he pushed her hand off the computer mouse.

  "Enough," he said, clicking shut the folder.

  "Is this why you didn't want to make love to me—why your carefully worded denial, that you would never do anything to intentionally hurt me?"

  The pain of his complicity rolled through him and came out in a groan. "If I hadn't been here, Red… If I had kept my hands off you…"

  "Did you know this is what would happen?"

  He looked her deep in her trusting eyes, his answer truer than anything he'd ever told her. "No."

  Her pained eyes softened on him. "No one could have anticipated this."

  "No one," he murmured, utter misery creeping through him.

  "Tell me you had no idea Stuart would go this low to get Ben away from me?"

  He closed his eyes and shook his head. "I don't want to believe he would be this hateful." He looked Dixie in the eye. "But, he's a bitter old man who's lost his only son. He wants a second chance. He wants Ben to replace Mickey. I don't know any more what he's capable of."

  She exhaled. "Okay. But you still know him best. Assuming he's behind the pictures, do you think he'll go further than to threaten me with them?"

  Upload them to every social media site you know of…from her computer.

  The last order issued from his cell phone drained Sam of all warmth. The old man wanted that the file uploaded from her computer not to embarrass her but to prove her moral unfitness. He couldn't prove immorality based on her having multiple partners, but he could paint her as a woman with an exhibitionist fetish and that could well be just as damaging.

  Sam reached behind the computer and disconnected the cable cord.

  "What are doing?" she asked.

  "A precaution," Sam said. "Clearly, someone hacked into your computer and put that file there."

  "And you're afraid they'll do something worse," she said.

  He looked deep into her worried eyes. "I'm going to drive into Green Bay and get the best scrubbing software and security program I can find. Then I'm coming back here and we are going to clean your computer and make it impregnable. Don't plug it back into the Internet."

  She hugged him, murmuring in his ear, "Once again you come to my rescue."

  #

  So she still thought he was her hero. He could have bought it if he wasn't part of the problem. At least he'd been able to scour her hard drive clean of any implanted files—made her computer nearly impregnable by installing the best security software on the market. He'd even purchased a tablet from which he'd checked Dixie's Facebook page for any sign of the pictures. After checking other social media and a few porn sites that specialized in posting "home pictures," he was satisfied her pictures hadn't been spread around…yet. Important as it seemed to the culprit that the pictures be uploaded from Dixie's computer, there was no guarantee they wouldn't be uploaded from another computer. Desperate people often took desperate measures, as evidenced by the pictures themselves.

  He and Dixie spent that night in her bed, drapes closed tight and doors locked. They didn't make love. He simply held her, sharing her fitful sleep. Neither met the next day with their usual enthusiasm. Both threw themselves into restaurant work, keeping themselves busy even though it left Jessie poking around for jobs to do. They both waited for the proverbial second shoe to drop.

  But when it dropped during the lull between breakfast and lunch crowds, neither saw it for what it was.

  Miss Weston burst through the door between private and restaurant kitchens, shrieking. "My monkey is missing!"

  "It's not in here," Sam said.

  "What's she talking about?" Jessie asked.

  "She carries a stuffed monkey around in that big bag of hers," Sam said, slicing a chicken wrap in half.

  Weston stepped further into the kitchen. Dixie blocked her before she got within a foot of the prep table. "Get out of my kitchen."

  "My monkey is missing."

  "So go look in your room."

  "I have. It's not there. And it's not in the dining rooms, the living quarters, or the yard."

  "You're not searching my kitchen," Sam said, not hiding the fact he yet held a knife. "You even being in here is against health codes."

  "Then I'll just have to search everyone's bedrooms," Weston said.

  Sam dropped the knife and followed Dixie as she dogged Weston into the private quarters, shouting, "You will not go rummaging through anyone's bedroom."

  "What's the ruckus?" Nana asked, coming in from the back porch.

  "Weston lost her monkey and thinks she's going to search our bedrooms," Sam said.

  Nana crossed her arms over her chest. "I'll make sure she keeps her nose out of people's private business even if I have to sit guard up in the hall."

  "You're watching Ben," Dixie said.

  "The girls are with him. They'll keep him out of mischief."

  "Mischief." Miss Weston sniffed. "That boy of yours has always had an interest in my monkey."

  "He's afraid of it, thanks to you," Sam said. "He wouldn't touch it."

  "Maybe it fell out of y
our purse on the porch or in the yard," Dixie said on a shuddering breath.

  With a huff, Weston wheeled toward the back door.

  "Don't know what she's so hot about that monkey for anyway," Nana said. "It's the mangiest stuffed animal I've ever seen."

  "Yeah," Sam said, wondering about the woman's attachment to what most would consider a children's toy.

  #

  The scream reverberated through the house from the upper level. Dixie nearly dropped the pitcher of milk on the table and Ben scrabbled back into the furthest corner of the bench under the stairs.

  "What the hell?" Annie asked, sliding the plate of cookies onto the table between where her girls sat across from Ben.

  Sam bolted from the restaurant kitchen into the family quarters just as Miss Weston's foot came down on the bottom step. She shook a ragged strip of fake fur in the air.

  "It's his tail," she shrieked.

  "Didn't find it in any of our rooms," Nana said, appearing on the steps behind the ranting woman. "I've been sitting in the upstairs hall ever since she come back in the house."

  Weston descended into the kitchen. Sam advanced on her in an attempt to put himself between her and the others. Weston dangled the monkey tail in his face.

  "It's my monkey's tail and it was in my room with a ransom note."

  At a loss for a response, Sam glanced back at Dixie and Annie. But they were looking at the floor, struggling to suppress snickers.

  "It's not funny," howled Weston.

  A barely composed Dixie faced Weston. "Of course it's not." But she nearly lost it again when she asked, "What did the monkey-nappers demand?"

  Sam had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.

  Weston squared herself. "They demanded my smart phone."

  Dixie, Annie, and Sam sobered and all looked at the table under the stairs around which the children sat. Ben huddled in the corner, eyes wide while the twins munched cookies, exchanging fleeting glances.

  "Girls," Annie said. "Do you have something to tell me?"

  The twins giggled.

  Annie snatched the cookies out of their hands and hauled them out from behind the table. "Where's the rest of the monkey?"