The Double Wedding Ring

by Clare O'Donohue

  Allie laughed. “You’re already old and cranky. But Anna said that since you’re not family you might not be around when I grow up. Is that true?”

  I could feel my face flush. It was one thing for Anna to mess with my head, but quite another to confuse this little girl. “I’ll always be here for you, Allie,” I said. “No matter what.”

  Allie studied me then looked down at the salmon on her plate. “Even if I don’t finish my dinner?”

  Now it was my turn to laugh. Finally an easy question with an easy answer. But even as I was laughing, there was another question forming in my mind, and this one had no answer yet. It had been hours since I’d picked Allie up from school. Where was Jesse?

  CHAPTER 31

  After dinner, Allie and I read stories to each other. We played cards and watched TV. I tried calling Jesse several times, but it went to voice mail. It was unlike him to be unreachable. I briefly considered that Anna had taken his phone to keep him from being in touch, but that seemed a bit extreme. Besides, Jesse was used to calls from the station and from Allie. If his cell were lost, he’d find the nearest phone and check in just in case.

  Not calling, pocketing evidence, and keeping Greg out of the loop of an investigation—the “out of character” moves were starting to add up. There had to be an explanation. And whatever it was, everything would be fine. I’d been telling that to myself for a couple of days now, and as mantras go, it was getting a little stale. He wasn’t the latest victim of Roger’s killer, I decided, or checking into a hotel room with his best friend’s widow. He was lost in the memory of his dead wife, and had forgotten about his girlfriend and daughter.

  I was about to suggest that Allie get ready for bed when there was a noise at the front door. Finally. I went to it, ready to fling it open and give Jesse a piece of my mind. But just as my hand reached the knob, I looked through the window and realized it wasn’t Jesse. It was Bob Marshall, and he was, for lack of a better word, lurking. It was one thing to stop by Someday, but now Jesse’s? We were bumping into each other one too many times for my comfort level.

  “Allie, do me a favor and go upstairs.”

  “But it’s not my bedtime yet. I have fifteen more minutes.”

  “I know that,” I said. “I’m not asking you to go to bed. I’m asking you to go upstairs to your room and close the door. Bring the phone with you and call Eleanor on her cell phone. Tell her I’m going to talk to the nice man outside and then tell her all about your day. Don’t get off the phone with her until I come get you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Eleanor misses you when she doesn’t see you, and I have to talk to the man outside.”

  Because, I thought, I might be overreacting, but there was no harm in that. And if I wasn’t, someone else needed to know that we were in the house alone in case Bob Marshall gets past me.

  I watched Allie go upstairs, then I picked up my cell phone and called Jesse. Still voice mail. I called Greg’s cell.

  “Hey, Nell, what’s up?”

  “I’m at Jesse’s house alone with Allie. Bob Marshall is outside.”

  “Who is Bob Marshall?”

  “The guy Jesse keeps giving tickets to.”

  “I’m leaving now. I’ll be there in two minutes.”

  I hung up. I switched the porch light on. Marshall was standing on the other side of the door, looking at me through the window in the center of it.

  “Hey, Nell Fitzgerald, we meet again. I guess you’re more than a passing acquaintance of the police chief.”

  “I’m a friend,” I said.

  He smiled. “Half the town is betting that it will be a surprise double wedding when your grandmother gets married next Saturday. The nice lady who owns the pharmacy told me that she had a vision that you’ll announce your engagement there.”

  Bernie. She meant well, but gossip was her second favorite hobby after quilting. The hairs on my neck were standing, but I decided, one last time, to assume an innocent explanation for his being at the door. “Look, Mr. Marshall, I appreciate that you’re new in town . . .”

  He seemed both amused and slightly annoyed. “I think we both know I’m not moving to Archers Rest. In fact, I’ll bet we both know exactly why I’m here.”

  “Jesse’s busy making dinner right now,” I said. “If you want to talk to him you’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

  “Jesse isn’t here.”

  “Yes, he is. . . .”

  “Nell.” He stretched out my name in a way that was, I guessed, meant to convey he was running out of patience. “His car isn’t here. After he told you to pick up Allie from school, he drove off with Roger’s widow. I’m guessing you don’t even know where he is.”

  “I know exactly where he is.” I hit the number 1 on my speed dial. Jesse’s number. I held it to my ear and listened as, once again, it went to voice mail.

  “Hey, Jesse,” I said to the recording. “Bob Marshall came to the house to see you. . . . He’s here now. . . . Okay. . . . I’ll tell him to call you at the station tomorrow.” I hung up. “Jesse said he’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  I felt ludicrous doing it, and clearly Marshall didn’t think much of my acting skills because he didn’t react like a man who believed me.

  We stood for a moment, watching each other with only a thin piece of glass surrounded by a wood door that was maybe three inches thick. How hard would it be to kick down a door, I wondered. Marshall looked like he could do it if he wanted to. He’d broken the jaw of a police officer, what could he do to me if he wanted?

  His eyes didn’t leave me. I tried to match his intensity with my own stare. His face looked older than his years, wrinkled and ashen. Maybe prison does that to a person. But did he look angry? No. About to pounce? Hard to say. Maybe he just wanted to charm me into some con, and when that didn’t work, scare me.

  “Mr. Marshall,” I said, “I would appreciate it if you left now, and tomorrow you can tell Jesse what you wanted to tell him.”

  “I’m not here for Jesse.”

  “Then tomorrow I’ll meet you at the police station and you can tell me what you wanted to tell me there.”

  “Nell, why don’t you let me in so we can talk? We had a nice chat this afternoon at the shop, didn’t we? I’m not going to harm you. I just want to talk,” he said. “And Allie is upstairs, right? She won’t overhear what we say.”

  My throat went dry. “Well, Bob,” I said with as much strength as was possible under the circumstances. “Since you’re so well versed in the town’s activities, you probably already know that Allie is on the phone with my grandmother, and the chief detective of Archers Rest is on his way here right now.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Nell, listen to me. You need to be careful,” he said. “Your Nancy Drew decoder ring isn’t going to help you this time.” Then he turned and walked off the porch. I saw him get into his car and drive away just as Greg’s car pulled up in front of the house.

  “You okay?” Greg asked when I let him inside.

  “Don’t know yet. Give me a minute.” I went upstairs to get Allie ready for bed, and to assure my grandmother that whatever threat I may or may not have been under was over now. Greg was with me.

  “Where’s Jesse?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If he’s not home in an hour, you bring Allie to this house and have her spend the night here,” she insisted.

  I agreed. There was no way I was letting that little girl stay in the house when Marshall could be back at any minute. I came back downstairs to find Greg making tea. We sat together in the kitchen and I relayed the entire conversation start to finish while he listened, looking more alarmed with each moment.

  “I tried the chief when you called me and I left a message,” he said.

  “Where is he?” It was a dumb question. He didn’t know any more than I did.r />
  “I’ll stay until Jesse gets home,” he said as he sipped his tea. “And tomorrow I’ll run a background check on Marshall.”

  I almost told him that the women in my quilt group had already found out about Marshall’s past, but I didn’t. I’d been told to stay out of the investigation, so it was probably better if it seemed like I had. In the morning Greg would find out everything we knew about Marshall, and probably some things that we didn’t.

  “I’m scared of him,” I admitted.

  “He threatened you.”

  “Did he?” I was thinking out loud. “It almost felt like he was warning me, as if the danger was from somewhere else.”

  “From where?”

  I closed my mouth tightly, for fear the words would get out. And once they were said, I wouldn’t be able to un-say them. But in the end, my lips parted and the sounds leaked out. “I think he was warning me to be careful of Jesse.”

  CHAPTER 32

  It was after nine o’clock when Jesse came home. Allie was asleep, and I was worried and furious. I took comfort in two things: he was safe and he was alone. I wasn’t going to have to listen to another round of “Nell’s not good enough.” I had as much of that as I could stand.

  As soon as Jesse walked in the house, Greg stood up from his place on the couch and excused himself with a quick, “See you tomorrow, Chief.” He seemed anxious to get out from under what must have seemed like the beginning of an argument.

  Jesse didn’t ask why Greg was there. He just let him leave and turned his focus on me. “I’m sorry,” he said as his first words.

  “You’re darn right you are.” I had to shout in a whisper so I wouldn’t wake Allie. “Where have you been all this time? I called your cell about a dozen times.”

  “It’s been a tough day.” He dropped onto the couch. “I know you’re mad and you have every right to be, but sit with me a minute and then yell.”

  Reluctantly, I sat. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. How’s Allie?”

  “She’s great. Where were you?”

  I wanted to give him a rundown on everything that had happened that evening, and I wanted to withhold it as well. Now that I knew he was alive, I resented the fact that he hadn’t been here to keep Allie and me safe.

  “How was your day?” he asked. There was no interest in the question. He was asking it to avoid answering me. I decided to ignore it.

  “Where’s your houseguest?”

  “Anna’s business partner came into town today. He’s staying at the bed and breakfast. She went over there with him.”

  “For the night?”

  “No. I don’t think so anyway. She went to help him get settled in. She’ll be home in a while, I guess.”

  “Is she, I mean, are they a couple?” I remembered what Greg had said earlier about the man, but I didn’t know if he was certain or just guessing.

  “I think so. He rushed up to be with her, which is a lot for someone who’s just a business partner. Anna hasn’t said anything, but I mean, why not? She and Roger have been apart for a while.”

  It didn’t seem to occur to Jesse that the “business partner” was the reason for the separation. If he had one blind spot, it was in his loyalty to his friends. It sometimes didn’t allow him to see faults that were so obvious to others.

  “Were you at the cemetery this whole time?” I asked.

  He put his hand on my cheek and brushed back my hair. His eyes were watery and soft. “No. Just a few minutes. It’s freezing out there. We brought some flowers and left them there. I never go. It seems maudlin to bring Allie and I don’t know . . .” He trailed off for a moment before speaking again. “After the cemetery, Anna met up with the guy, Ken something, Ken Tremayne, and they went to get some food. I had some work back at the station, and then I took a drive. I didn’t realize I was out of cell range. If you drive north on the back roads it gets spotty.”

  “Why did you go for a drive?”

  “I had to think. I’m sorry I left you with Allie all this time. I’m sure you had a million things to do.”

  “I love spending time with Allie,” I said, “but I don’t like what’s going on with you. It isn’t like you to promise to be home in an hour but not come home, or call, for nearly six hours. You scared me half to death.”

  “I know. I am sorry. You don’t know how happy I am to come home to you.” Jesse kissed my neck, and slowly moved his hand from his lap to my thigh.

  “Not if your life depended on it.”

  He laughed. “I am a terrible boyfriend and a worse father.”

  “You are not, on either count. You’re in the middle of a difficult time, so you get to have a bad day here and there. I know you don’t want me to help, but do you want me to listen?”

  As I spoke I wondered if I’d put Maggie’s notes back in the tote bag, and felt relieved when I remembered that I had. The binder was still next to the computer, but that was all wedding-related stuff.

  “The investigation is at a standstill. I still have no idea what Roger came up here to do, or why he was killed trying to do it.”

  “It obviously has to do with Bob Marshall. He . . .”

  Jesse pulled away from me. “Nell . . .”

  “Don’t ‘Nell’ me. I’m an objective ear, a logical, interested person you can talk to. Someone completely on your side, who will love you no matter what. You can say anything about your past, about Roger’s past, and I will be a sounding board you can trust,” I said. “Tell me you don’t need that.”

  I sat and waited while Jesse considered my offer. I didn’t know how much he knew about Marshall’s conviction and the missing five hundred thousand, but it was hard to believe he knew nothing. Still, it had happened in the last months of Lizzie’s life and just after her death. Jesse would have been too preoccupied to care much about the goings-on of his former colleagues in New York.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “It doesn’t have anything to do with us.”

  “But it does.” I took a deep breath, then told him about my encounter with Marshall earlier in the evening, and the fact that because I couldn’t reach him, I’d called Greg.

  Jesse leapt off the couch and checked his cell phone. “Four messages. I’m so sorry. I just . . . I have no explanation. I can’t believe I put you in this position.”

  “Why does Bob Marshall want to talk to me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Jesse . . .”

  “I don’t know, Nell. I swear to you. Look, Marshall’s not going to hurt you, but you have to promise me that you’ll stay away from him.”

  “I can promise that, Jesse. What I can’t promise is that he’ll stay away from me. It’s time you and I talked, and told each other everything.”

  Jesse put his hands to his face and rubbed his eyes. “Not tonight,” he said. “I just want a peaceful night tonight, but what do you say we pick up here tomorrow?”

  He took my hand and led me upstairs, a comforting and familiar exercise. Except this time the other hand was on his gun.

  CHAPTER 33

  We all have a past. In the sixteen months I’d lived in Archers Rest I’d uncovered things about my grandmother, my friends in the quilt group, even myself. But now Jesse’s past and our future were bumping up against each other. It seemed only one of them could win, and I wasn’t sure it would be us.

  As he checked the doors, windows, and who knows what else, to make sure everything was locked, I called Eleanor.

  “You didn’t tell Mom and Dad about Allie’s call, did you?”

  “They were having dinner in town,” she said. “But if there’s a reason to be concerned I can’t keep it from them.”

  “I don’t know if there is, but let’s just wait and see.”

  “Okay.” I could hear the hesitation in her voice, and I h
ated that anything was worrying her when she should be focusing on her own happiness.

  “Were you at the quilt group when Allie called?”

  “I didn’t make quilt group. Oliver’s daughter arrived from Canada this afternoon, so they came over for coffee. They were just walking out the door when my cell phone rang.”

  As glad as I was that Eleanor had been there to talk to Allie, I was sorry another member had missed the group meeting. “Did you give Maggie the key to the shop so they could still meet?”

  “I didn’t have to. Carrie ended up having to go home to a sick child and Susanne was on deadline for a quilt show she entered. Poor Maggie. She said she didn’t think it was much of a group to sit in the classroom alone.”

  “We’ll get less busy after the wedding,” I said, then I remembered that Eleanor would likely be leaving soon after. “I’ll see you at work tomorrow?”

  “You bet. We have lots to do. I can’t wait to show you something.”

  Jesse walked into the bedroom, put his gun in the nightstand drawer, and dropped onto the bed. I said my good night to Eleanor, though a big part of me wanted to stay on the phone and find out what it was she couldn’t wait to share.

  “All locked up tight?” I asked Jesse after I hung up the phone.

  He nodded. “I don’t want you to be afraid. Nothing will happen to you. I promise.”

  “What were you thinking about when you went on that drive?”

  His smile was sad. “Nothing.”

  “That’s not true.” I settled back on the pillow and waited.

  “I was thinking about Roger. He was the funniest guy in any room.” He laughed a little. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m kind of a serious guy. . . .”

  “Really?” I smiled. “You hide it well.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Roger was my opposite. I was careful; he was willing to take chances. He saved lives because he went in without backup. I just wouldn’t do that,” he said. “I don’t know why we became friends, really, but we were friends. And then Lizzie and Anna became friends, and we were like this mighty foursome, together every weekend. When Allie was born, we made Roger and Anna her godparents. And when Lizzie got sick . . .” His voice trailed off. “Roger was there for me in so many ways I couldn’t even count them.”