Caught Redhanded

by Gayle Roper

  And given a minute to think, I did. Back in the old days, Mac would probably have slept with whomever he was dating and thus he’d have an alibi. But Dawn held firm to the scripture that taught chastity outside marriage and consequently Mac had slept alone in his own bed.

  Jo’s cell rang and as she reached into her purse for it, she said, “Tell Dawn I’m thinking of her and Mac and praying for them.”

  I hid my surprise at the praying-for-them comment and said, “I will. Thanks.”

  As I walked to Ferretti’s to meet Dawn, I didn’t know what to expect. I hadn’t talked to her since the murder, so I didn’t know what she knew or how she felt about what she knew. Was Mac being a murder suspect enough to kill their romance?

  She was waiting for me, dark circles under her eyes. As I slid into my seat, she yawned.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled from behind her hand. “I’ve been at the hospital since 3:00 a.m. I came here from there. Second night in a row.”

  “Mac told me about the first one.” I grinned as I remembered his face when he said the mom was naming the baby after him.

  “He was so cute,” she said, her eyes warming. “So proud.”

  Proud I could buy. But cute? Mac? If ever a man had outgrown cute, it was Mac. Talk about the eye of the beholder.

  “Tell me about last night.”

  “She had two, a set of fraternal twins, a boy and a girl. The little girl was a complete surprise to all of us.”

  “Is she going to keep them or put them up for adoption?”

  Dawn shook her head and covered another yawn. “I’ve got to get something to eat before I fall over! And I don’t know. She doesn’t know. She’s only been with us a couple of weeks and she’s spent most of that time refusing to listen to anything I or any of the counselors say.”

  Astrid appeared.

  “Still no new server?” I said.

  Looking disgruntled, she shook her head. “My feet are killing me. I’m not used to being on them all day. I got a stool behind the reception desk so’s I can take a load off. No time for taking loads off working tables.”

  As soon as she disappeared with our orders, Dawn leaned in. “So how’s he doing?”

  I knew she meant Mac. “It’s hard to tell. He sits at his desk barking out orders as usual, but he’s got to be feeling the strain. I understand Sergeant Poole was in again this morning to talk with him.” I eyed her. “How do you think he’s doing?”

  Dawn began making concentric circles on the table with her iced-tea glass. “He won’t talk with me about it. He says, ‘I don’t want to drag you down into my dirt.’”

  “Oh, boy. He’s trying to be noble.”

  “But I don’t want noble.” Her voice was fierce. “I thought we were way beyond noble. I thought we had gotten to sharing.”

  Oh, Mac, you’re going to ruin it if you’re not careful.

  “Dawn, look at it from his point of view. To him you are the quintessential good girl, and he is the clichéd bad boy. For some reason he has fallen for you, probably against his better judgment, and to his surprise you’ve returned the favor. When things were moving at their natural pace between you, he could deal with the little steps, the one-at-a-time issues. But now things are anything but normal and he feels he has to protect you from his wild past and the complications it’s caused.”

  Dawn rubbed her temple as if she had a headache brewing. “I spent last night in the hospital with a seventeen-year-old who had twins without benefit of marriage. One was white, the other mixed race. She’d had no prenatal care at all. None. She was riddled with venereal disease—active open sores—and she wasn’t with us long enough for the doctor to make delivery safe. My heart breaks for the problems these babies might face as a result.”

  Talk about the sins of the parents being visited on the next generation.

  “I do not live in an ivory tower or a cloister,” Dawn said emphatically. “I know the score. Just because I’m a virgin doesn’t mean I don’t know about life. I probably know more about the seamier parts of it than he does, seen more of the dead-end lives that come from it. And if my own work weren’t enough, my dad ran a rescue mission for years in downtown New York back when Times Square was corrupt and vile, an open sewer of sin.”

  “Have you told him all this?”

  “Repeatedly, but he doesn’t seem to get it. He certainly doesn’t get forgiveness, either mine or God’s.”

  “He’s got you on a pedestal.”

  “I don’t want to be on a pedestal. I want to be a partner.” She all but snarled it.

  “You two look like you’re having a happy conversation.”

  We both turned and found Mac standing beside our booth. He had his hands in his Dockers pockets, trying to look nonchalant. I hoped he didn’t notice all the people at the other tables staring surreptitiously at him.

  Guilty until proven innocent.

  SEVENTEEN

  Dawn slid over on her bench seat and Mac slid in beside her.

  She looked at him. “We were talking about you.”

  “Oh.” He sighed, then glanced around at all the people who quickly averted their eyes. “Well, so is everyone else.”

  Poor Mac. He was all too aware of what people were thinking and he looked miserable—and fearful?

  He gave Dawn a sickly grin, no match at all for his usual cocky one. “I figured you’d be here with Merry and I just stopped to say hi.” He cleared his throat nervously and grabbed Dawn’s iced tea. He took a long pull on her straw. She picked the glass up as soon as he put it down and took a lengthy sip herself.

  He stared at her and I wondered if he’d gotten her subtle I-care-for-you-we-even-share-germs message. I thought maybe he had until he said, “Well, I’d better get back to the newsroom.” He started to slide from the booth.

  My heart broke a bit to see hard-nosed, brash, cynical Mac afraid he was going to lose the woman he had come to love. Not that he was, but he thought he might. It was a very painful way to come to terms with the consequences of past actions.

  Dawn grabbed his hand in both of hers. “Don’t you dare leave.”

  He sat, expression uncertain and painfully hopeful. Dawn kept a firm grip on him, leaning into him, lowering her head to his shoulder briefly.

  “I was just telling Merry that you’re driving me crazy,” she said when she straightened.

  He gave her a half smile and with his free hand traced the circles under her eyes.

  “Another night in the delivery room,” she said.

  He nodded. “Everything go all right?”

  “Twins. One mixed-race boy. One white girl.”

  He blinked. “Same mother?”

  Dawn nodded. By now they were clasping hands and leaning toward each other. “That’s reminds me of an issue I want to talk with you about,” she said.

  They’d forgotten I was there, so I grabbed my purse and walked to the cashier. “Tell Astrid I’ll take my BLT to go.”

  I ate at my desk, thinking how strange life was and praying that Mac would understand the totality of God’s forgiveness. When Jo came back from her lunch with Edie, they demanded I tell them all about my lunch with Dawn. Well, Jolene demanded and Edie nodded approval. I gave them an expurgated version, telling them how tired Dawn looked and why as well as telling how people were watching Mac. All I said about Dawn’s and my conversation was that Dawn was on our side in believing in Mac’s innocence.

  “Yes!” Jo pumped the air.

  Edie smiled. “I knew she was a good woman.”

  At two I left to visit Fenton Strickland, one of the largest corporate sponsors of Good Hands. Over the past thirty years Mr. Strickland had built his architectural firm from one employee—“Me, working from our basement”—to more than fifty in three Chester County locations.

  “At first we gave money and encouraged our people to help Good Hands for PR reasons. It made Strickland Architecture look good. Then I realized that the teams of Strickland employees who helped Good Hand
s on ‘our’ days had this common bond that carried back to work. There was a camaraderie created in sweating together while painting or roofing or repairing leaks.”

  Mr. Strickland grinned and fiddled with the knot of his tie. I’d noticed that all the men in this office wore ties and the women dresses or pantsuits. Professional though not pompous was my assessment.

  Mr. Strickland angled his head to indicate all the people outside his office. “They especially liked seeing me in a Strickland T-shirt getting every bit as grubby as they were.”

  What was it about seeing the boss in a parity situation that so pleased employees?

  “Some of our employees began bringing their teens to help and I started bringing my son Chaz. A lot of the teen–parent tension between him and me disappeared as we hammered and sanded together.”

  Interesting, I thought. Maybe I should talk to Chaz. Get his take on things.

  Mr. Strickland leaned forward, suddenly intent. “Though all the reasons I’ve mentioned are important, it finally dawned on me that the reason to help Good Hands is very simple. It’s the right thing to do.”

  I stood and thanked him for talking with me. “You’ve given me exactly what I want.”

  “Would you like to take a picture of all the personnel here who have worked with Good Hands?” he asked.

  “That’d be great.” I usually avoided large group photos because they had to be sized down so much for the paper that you couldn’t see the individuals. Still, there was no way I could say no to this suggestion. The use of the picture would be up to Mac.

  I leaned over and pulled my camera out of my purse. When I straightened, Mr. Strickland’s dress shirt and tie were gone, and he was wearing a gray T-shirt with Strickland Architecture in crimson letters. He turned around and on the back were the words “dirty hands make Good Hands.”

  I was laughing as I walked out of his office and saw that several men had shed their dress shirts and ties and were wearing their T-shirts. The women had pulled their shirts on over their dresses or blouses. They quickly gathered outside in front of a large evergreen.

  I clicked several pictures and pulled out my notebook to get names when one of the women handed me a neatly typed sheet with all the names in the right order.

  “We decided to be ready just in case,” Mr. Strickland said as he walked me to my car. “We planned it all yesterday. Good team building, you know.”

  “And not bad PR,” I said with a smile.

  He grinned back. “Absolutely.”

  I smiled all the way back to the office where I spent the rest of the afternoon entering the interview and all the employee names into the story file, and speaking to other sponsors on the phone. All in all, a good day.

  When I pulled into my parking space after work, I met Mrs. Anderson climbing out of her car.

  “Hello, dear,” she said. “A week from tomorrow.” And she grinned.

  I grinned back.

  This evening she was wearing a smart royal blue pantsuit with white sandals and purse. Her makeup was nicely done and her hair was neatly combed, though the purple streaks at her temples were still evident. Her injured arm was now in a sling made of a scarf that coordinated with her pantsuit. She sparkled with spirit and joie de vivre.

  We walked past the lilac together and I looked at my palm. The orange of the antiseptic they’d painted me with had almost disappeared.

  “Have you ever been to the Elizabethan Tearoom?” Mrs. Anderson asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Oh, my dear.” She laid a hand on my arm. “You must go some day for high tea. It’s wonderful! Little party sandwiches, scones with clotted cream, pastries including the most wonderful meringues. You’d absolutely love it! Why, I feel like I won’t have to eat again until your reception.” She patted her convex tummy with satisfaction.

  A meow interrupted us.

  I glanced up and there sat Whiskers on the living room windowsill. He often sat there, watching the birds, salivating as if he were thinking about what he could do if someone just gave him the chance. Usually he sat there on the inside. Now he sat on the outside.

  “Baby!” I hurried toward him and he stood, meowing for me. He leaped into my arms. “What are you doing out here?” I stroked him, trying to calm him. “You’re okay now. You’re okay.”

  Mrs. Anderson scratched him behind the ears and under the chin with her good hand. “How long has he been out here? I didn’t see him when I left to meet my friends for tea.”

  I was certain he had been inside when I left the apartment this morning. For all his grandiose plans for lowering the bird population, he didn’t like it much outside. The grass felt funny under his house-soft pads, and other creatures live outside, some quite big and canine. The wind blew, ruffling his fur and unnerving him.

  Maybe he’d somehow gotten out when I was bringing in my wedding gown. I’d left the door open while I hung the dress and while I went back to the car for the veil box. I didn’t recall checking to see that he was inside before I left.

  Thinking about my wedding gown made it shimmer before my eyes and the mystery of Whiskers’ escape dimmed.

  “Mrs. Anderson, would you like to see my wedding gown? I brought it home this morning.”

  It was probably bad luck to show it to someone ahead of time—or was that just for the groom seeing the bride on their wedding day? And who cared?

  Mrs. Anderson’s face glowed. “Oh, Merry, what a treat! I’d love to see it.”

  I fished my keys from my purse and unlocked my front door, my only door. I pushed it open. Whiskers shifted in my arms, and I hesitated before stepping in. What if someone had been here when Mrs. Anderson and I were both gone and that was when Whiskers had gotten out? With all that had happened recently, I couldn’t discount that possibility, could I? My reluctance could be wisdom or paranoia. I preferred to think of it as wisdom.

  I stuck my head in and looked right and left. Everything looked normal though something smelled strange. I wrinkled my nose. Looking straight ahead through the dining room into the kitchen, I could see something shining on the counter. Broken glass. The window directly above was broken, but there were no jagged shards caught in the frame like there would be if a neighborhood kid had thrown a ball through. The frame had been scraped clear. Then I noticed the hair standing up on Whiskers’s back. He knew something was wrong, too.

  Knowing I was probably making a fool of myself but past caring, I turned and ran, grabbing Mrs. Anderson’s good arm and dragging her with me.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked as we burst off the porch.

  “I don’t know,” I yelled as I propelled her into the yard. I was heading for shelter behind the lilac tree when a horrendous crack of sound tore the air and a great gust of wind knocked us off our feet. Again.

  EIGHTEEN

  I sat on the sofa in Maddie and Doug Reeder’s living room, Whiskers in my lap, and felt the tears wetting my face though I wasn’t making any noise. I was beyond noise.

  My apartment had been blown up and I had almost been blown up with it. I hadn’t been, but everything that I hadn’t yet taken to Curt’s had been.

  “My wedding gown!” I blurted again. “My wedding gown!” That beautiful dress that made me look elegant. That glorious veil that fell from a circle of flowers that allowed my spiky hair to spike as usual.

  “It’s okay, honey.” Curt tightened his arm around me. “I’d be happy to marry you in a burlap bag.”

  I abandoned my misery for a moment to pull back and glare at him.

  He looked startled. “What?”

  “You don’t understand!”

  “I guess I’m too busy being grateful you’re still alive to worry about some dress.”

  “Some dress? Some dress? It was my wedding gown!”

  Maddie hurried into the room. “Holly’s finally down for the night.” Six-month-old Holly was the light of Maddie and Doug’s lives.

  Maddie came over and knelt in front of me. She took my
hands in hers. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  I nodded miserably. Physically, I was fine. A couple of bruises from hitting the ground too hard, but that was it. Mrs. Anderson was all right, too, though her lovely blue pantsuit would never see use again. She was at her daughter’s, being loved just like I was.

  “I lost that beautiful picture of Curt’s and my joined hands that he painted for me for Christmas.”

  She nodded, her eyes teary on my behalf.

  “I didn’t want to take it off the wall. I loved looking at it and wasn’t going to take it to his house—our house—until Thursday. Then I was going to hang it in the bedroom.” A huge sob caught in my throat. “It’s gone.”

  “I’ll paint you another, sweetheart.” Curt kissed the top of my head. “Don’t you worry about it.”

  I nodded and patted his knee. “Thanks.” I knew he meant well, but it wouldn’t be the same. That picture represented the turning point for him, the moment when he became willing to risk loving me in spite of his history of loss. The replacement wouldn’t mean the same thing. I sniffed and blinked. Maddie was a blur.

  “And my wedding gown, Maddie! My wedding gown!” My nose was so stuffed I could hardly breathe.

  “Merry, no! I was so relieved when I thought it was still at the Primrose.”

  “Uh-uh. I had my final fitting today and brought it home. It was hanging on the bedroom door.” My voice had risen several octaves by the time I was finished.

  Maddie made a horrified noise of total understanding and I threw myself into her arms.

  “Honey, it’s okay,” Curt said, patting my back. “We’ll just get you another.”

  “It won’t be the same,” I sobbed, my nose choosing this moment to start running. I pulled back before I soaked Maddie’s shoulder. “Tissues.” I held out my hand.

  Maddie slapped a box in my hand. “Don’t try to understand, Curt. It’s a girl thing.”

  “A piece of advice, buddy,” Doug offered from his observation seat in the leather recliner across the room. “You have to determine if she wants advice, I’ll-fix-it-for-you words or just sympathy. Hands down, this is sympathy time.”