by B. J Daniels
Charity felt Mitch’s gaze on her. “Nina was Alma’s daughter?” Charity asked.
The older woman looked at her, then Mitch. “Isn’t that what I just said?”
“Would you mind if we came in for a few minutes?” Mitch asked.
Harriet hesitated, eyes small and hooded like a snake’s as she looked at him. “I have to get to work soon.”
“We won’t take up any more of your time than we have to,” he said, and she stepped back to let them in.
The house was dark inside and had that old closed-up smell, heightened by the odor of stale cigarette smoke. Harriet led them into a living room, motioning to a broken-down couch covered in what looked like the original plastic from when it was purchased probably fifty years ago.
Harriet sat in a threadbare recliner across from them, shook a cigarette from the pack in her uniform pocket and touched the flame of a lighter to the end. She took a deep drag, exhaled and squinted at the two of them through the smoke. “So what’s Nina done now?”
Mitch had taken off his hat and now held it in his hands. “I’m sorry to have to tell you that she’s dead. Apparent homicide.”
The older woman let out a snort. “I’m not surprised. The boyfriend do it?”
“What boyfriend would that be?”
Harriet shrugged. “Some no-count. She sure could pick ’em. They never lasted long enough for me to get their names.”
“When was the last time you saw Nina?”
“A month ago. I told her not to go to Timber Falls. Look what happened to her mother up there.”
Charity figured Harriet was referring to Angela Dennison’s abduction—and Alma’s subsequent firing, but Harriet added, “Ended up pregnant.”
“Alma was pregnant when she returned from Timber Falls?”
“Dropped off a baby for me to raise,” Harriet said.
“You’re sure it was her baby?” Charity had to ask, thinking of Angela. She could feel Mitch’s gaze and belatedly remembered her promise just to sit quietly and let him do the talking.
The old woman frowned. “Of course it was her baby.”
“You said you raised Nina? Do you have her birth certificate?” Mitch asked.
“I got a copy. You’re wondering who the father is, right? Well, it wasn’t on the birth certificate, and Alma would never tell. He was married. Why else would he give her all that money unless it was to keep her mouth shut?”
Charity shot Mitch an I-told-you-so look.
“Alma ran off right after dropping that bawling baby off, leaving me to raise the brat,” Harriet was saying. “You think it’s easy raising a kid by yourself? Did Nina appreciate the sacrifices I made? Ha. She always thought she deserved better.”
“Could I see that copy of her birth certificate?” Mitch asked.
Harriet glanced at her watch, made an unpleasant face and pushed herself out of the recliner, then left the room. Charity could hear her rummaging around in a nearby room. The old woman returned after a few minutes and handed Mitch an Oregon birth certificate for Nina Ann Bromdale. Charity leaned close enough to read it. Nina was born in March—just two months after Angela Dennison, then three months old, had been taken from her crib in Timber Falls.
“How old was the baby when Alma left her with you?” Charity just had to ask.
Harriet shrugged. “Six, eight months old.” It was obvious it made no difference to her.
“Do you mind if I take this?” Mitch asked, holding up the certificate.
“Keep it. I don’t want it,” Harriet said. “I imagine you’ll want me to bury her. Just got through burying her mother in September. Cancer.” The woman nodded as if Alma had brought the cancer on herself.
“Alma say anything about Nina’s father before she died?” Mitch asked.
Harriett glared down at the cigarette between her fingers. “I didn’t even hear she was dead until Nina came back from Mexico and told me. On her deathbed she had someone track down Nina, just had to tell Nina a bunch of stuff that she knew would set the girl off.”
“Like what?” Charity asked.
“Maybe about the girl’s father. Alma wasn’t even cold in her grave before Nina took off for Timber Falls, saying she was going to finally get what she deserved. Guess she did.”
“I don’t think anyone deserves to be murdered,” Mitch said.
Harriet barked a laugh. “You didn’t know Nina now, did you.”
“So Nina went to Timber Falls to see her father?”
“See him?” Harriet let out another sarcastic bark. “She hated him. Blamed him for everything. She went up there to blackmail every last cent out of him, then make him pay. That’s what she said, ‘make him damned sorry.”’
“Did Alma ever talk about the baby that was abducted while she was a nanny in Timber Falls?” Mitch asked.
Harriet took a puff on her cigarette. “Those rich people’s baby? They fired Alma over it.”
“What was her side of the story?” Mitch asked.
“She said she didn’t know nothin’.” Harriet rolled her eyes. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Alma had something to do with that baby disappearing.”
“Why do you say that?” Mitch asked.
“All that money she supposedly got from her baby’s father,” Harriet said. “What man would do that?”
Charity looked at Mitch.
“Didn’t you ever wonder if maybe the baby your sister brought you was the Dennison’s missing baby?” he asked.
“I’m no fool,” Harriet said, sounding angry. “But I also know when to keep my mouth shut. Didn’t have nothin’ to do with me.”
Charity watched Mitch rake his hand through his hair in frustration. “Have you ever seen this?” Mitch said as he pulled the baby spoon out of his pocket.
Harriett started to reach for it, but then pulled her hand back. “That belonged to that baby, didn’t it?”
He nodded. “Did Alma ever show it to you?”
She shook her head violently.
“Nina had this spoon,” he said.
Harriett got to her feet a little unsteadily. “I have to get to work.”
Mitch and Charity got to their feet, as well. “If you think of anything else…” Mitch handed Harriet his card.
She took it reluctantly, as if she thought it might contaminate her. “It’s that town. It’s evil.”
MITCH COULD TELL that Charity was bursting at the seams to say something. “Nina Ann Bromdale could have been Angela,” she said the moment they were in the patrol car. “Even if the birth certificate is real, Harriet had no idea how old Nina was when she got her.”
He nodded. “But nothing is definite without DNA testing, and I’m not sure Wade will agree to it.”
“That’s crazy. If Nina was Angela… You don’t think Wade would kill his own daughter?”
Mitch shook his head, remembering Wade’s reaction. “I think there’s more to the story and I’m not convinced Nina was Angela.”
Charity was quiet for a few miles. “The town isn’t evil.”
“It’s the rain,” he said. “The rain and the isolation, the dark days trapped inside. It makes people in Timber Falls crazy.”
She looked over at him. “So why do you stay?”
The question took him by surprise. He frowned, unable to answer.
Charity was smiling smugly as if she thought she knew the reason. He’d only left long enough to graduate from college. She’d left only long enough to get her journalism degree. Did she think he only stayed because she was there?
“I want to talk to the jeweler in Eugene who made the baby spoon,” he said, changing the subject. “But I would imagine you’re hungry again, aren’t you?”
They ate in a small café overlooking the water. Charity had fried oysters, French fries and coleslaw, followed by a piece of coconut-cream pie. He had the red snapper, but he hardly tasted it. He couldn’t quit thinking about Nina and Wade and Angela, and those damned motorcycle tracks in the mud. Or what Harriet had said about Nina
coming back from Mexico to see her mother. Mexico.
“This pie isn’t as good as Betty’s,” Charity said, and smiled at him.
Why did he stay in Timber Falls? He had a bad feeling it was because of the woman across the table from him. And an even worse feeling that she knew it.
A NICELY DRESSED gray-haired woman looked up from behind the counter at Hart’s Jewelry as they entered.
The woman’s face brightened at the sight of them. “Good afternoon. Let me guess. You’re looking for an engagement ring. I can always tell.”
Mitch saw Charity’s face redden with embarrassment. His own stomach tightened. “We’re here on official business,” he said, and flashed his badge.
“I’m sorry, I just… What can I help you with, Sheriff? I’m Lois Hart, the owner.”
Charity wandered over to a display case. He watched her admire a silver bracelet as he took the baby spoon from his pocket and set it gingerly on the glass counter.
The clerk picked it up, seeming to recognize it.
“I understand this spoon was made here, designed especially for Wade Dennison of Dennison Ducks,” Mitch said, watching her face.
“My husband made it.” Her voice broke and Mitch knew what was coming: “He died four years ago.”
“I’m sorry. How many of these did your husband make?”
“Two sets. One for the first baby, engraved with that baby’s name, and a second for the new baby. Mr. Dennison was very explicit. He made my husband promise never to make another set like them. Of course my husband never did.”
“You’re sure this is your husband’s work?”
“Oh, yes,” she said with a soft smile.
“No one ever requested he make another set?”
She shook her head. “We were just sick when we heard about what happened, someone stealing that baby. Was she ever found?”
He shook his head.
She held out the baby spoon to him as if she no longer liked holding it. “What kind of monster would do that?”
Mitch wished he knew. “Well, thank you for your time,” he said as he took the spoon and pocketed it again. Charity was still at the display counter looking at the silver bracelet again. “Here is my card if you think of anything else.”
“Sorry about that mix-up back there,” he said as he and Charity headed for his patrol car.
She gave him a small smile. “I’ve pretty much accepted that I’m going to be an old maid.”
He laughed. “I can’t see you as an old maid.” He hated the thought of Charity not being loved and cherished and cared for. She deserved more. But he also hated the thought of her with another man. “But then, you already have the cat.”
She made a face. “Where to now?”
He pulled his keys out of his pocket as they reached the patrol car. “I just remembered something I forgot to ask Mrs. Hart. Wait for me in the car for a minute?”
She nodded and took the keys.
He trotted back to the store. Lois Hart looked up in surprise. “There’s a silver bracelet my friend was looking at.” He pointed to the one Charity hadn’t been able to take her eyes off. “Would you wrap it? I’d like to buy it.”
Lois Hart smiled. “So I was right about the two of you.”
Mitch didn’t bother to correct her. As he walked back to the patrol car and Charity, he felt the small wrapped jewelry box in his pocket and wondered what had possessed him. He couldn’t give it to her. She’d get the wrong impression, and that would only make things worse between them.
He cursed his moment of weakness. He hadn’t thought. He’d just wanted her to have the bracelet.
“Did you ask her the question you forgot?” Charity inquired as he climbed behind the wheel.
“Yeah.” He turned on the ignition, the small package in his pocket feeling as weighty as the silver spoon.
On the way back to Timber Falls, Charity gave up trying to draw him into conversation and finally curled up and slept.
Mitch got the call just outside of town. “Nina Bromdale’s got a sheet on her,” the trooper from the state police informed him. He rattled off a series of arrests for shoplifting, misdemeanor theft and driving while under the influence. “Her last arrest was in San Diego. She and her boyfriend were both picked up after a city cop pulled her over. The boyfriend was driving. He got a DUI. She got thirty days for resisting arrest and disorderly conduct.”
“Boyfriend?”
“Let me check here. Yeah. Name’s Jesse Tanner. Tanner. Any relation?”
“Afraid so.” Jesse hadn’t just known Nina, he’d shared the back seat of a cop car with her. Mitch felt sick. So much for his brother’s coming back to Timber Falls because he was homesick—or to steal Charity. Jesse had come back because of Nina. But what worried Mitch were the motorcycle tracks on the road into where Nina’s car—and body—were found.
Charity was snuggled against the passenger-side door sound asleep when he pulled up in front of his house. When he went around and opened the passenger-side door, she practically tumbled into his arms, stirring just long enough to wrap her arms around his neck.
As he carried her into the house, she sighed against his neck and smiled in her sleep, murmuring something that sounded…like banana cream?
By the time he lowered her to the bed in the spare room, she was snoring softly. He smiled to himself as he slipped off her boots and drew the quilt over her. Then he stood for a moment just looking down at her.
How was he going to protect her from herself?
That was when he remembered her cat. He called her house. Florie had gone home it seemed. He dug a can of tuna out of his kitchen cabinet and walked next door with Charity’s house key from her purse.
“Winky? Winky?” In the kitchen he opened the tuna. Still no cat. Didn’t most cats come running when they heard the can opener? Leave it to Charity to have a cat that was the exception to the rule.
He put the can of tuna on the floor and glanced around. No cat. Why was he surprised she even had a cat? He locked up behind him and hurried back to his house.
Charity was still fast asleep. He shook his head, smiling to himself, then stretched out, fully clothed, on the couch in the next room. She was safe. At least for tonight. He closed his eyes, listening to the sound of her breathing on the other side of the wall, no longer kidding himself.
He stayed in Timber Falls because of Charity.
Chapter Fourteen
Halloween
Charity opened her eyes, the remnants of the dream still clinging and the blinding daylight coming through the window. She didn’t want to leave the dream—and Mitch, who was wearing that black tuxedo again and looked so handsome….
She blinked. Why were the curtains open? Why were there no curtains at all? She blinked again. Because it wasn’t her bedroom. It wasn’t her bed. It wasn’t even her house!
She sat up with a start, not sure for a moment where she was. Then she saw Mitch’s uniform hat on a bureau by the door and through the open doorway, spotted his boots off the end of the couch.
She pulled down the quilt, disappointed to see that she was fully dressed. Darn. Slipping her legs over the side of the bed, she got up and tiptoed into the living room, trying to piece together last night.
Something told her nothing had happened between her and Mitch. Nothing at all. The man either had the strength of will of a saint or she wasn’t as irresistible as she’d hoped. That was an awful thought.
Then she reminded herself she was holding out for marriage. Right.
Mitch was sound asleep on the couch. He looked wonderful. She leaned closer to study his handsome face. Suddenly he grabbed her, flipped her over on the couch and was on top of her before she knew what was happening.
“NEVER SNEAK UP on a man of the law,” he growled down at her. “I could have shot you.”
She smiled. “You would never shoot me. You might want to but—”
He silenced her with a kiss, drawing her into his arms without even
thinking. She was still warm from sleep, soft in all the right places, her mouth so absolutely perfect. He could have kissed her until Christmas—
He jerked back at the sound of someone banging on his front door. Past Charity, he could see Wade Dennison’s large frame through the bamboo blinds. Damn. Mitch looked at Charity. Desire burned bright in her eyes, making him weak in the knees. This woman would be the death of him. But the pounding on the door was too insistent to ignore.
“I need to talk to Wade,” he said as rolled off her. Wade had saved him. So why wasn’t he happy about that?
“I need to go to the paper,” Charity said. “You aren’t going to try to stop me from doing the story on Nina’s murder, are you?”
He heard the challenge in her voice. “I’m no fool.” That, of course, was debatable. He couldn’t keep her from doing the story any more than he could keep her with him 24/7, and they both knew it.
“But you’re taking a deputy with you,” he said. “No arguments.” He picked up his cell phone and made the call as he tried to calm down physically before opening the door.
She didn’t argue as she sashayed into the spare bedroom for her shoes. Mitch went to the front door and opened it.
“I have to talk to you.” Wade shot a look at Charity as she swept past him, but had the good sense not to say anything. The moment the door closed behind Charity, Wade crossed to a chair and slumped into it.
“Nina was my daughter,” Wade said, and put his head in his hands.
Mitch sat down. “Angela?”
“Angela?” Wade raised his head and frowned. “Not Angela. Nina. Aren’t you listening to me? Do I have to spell it out for you? I had an affair with Alma.”
Mitch stared at him. “Alma? Alma was pregnant with your baby?”
He nodded. “Daisy was pregnant and driving me crazy. There were rumors that the baby wasn’t mine…” He waved a hand. “Alma overheard us arguing one night and…comforted me after Daisy went to bed….” He stopped and looked up.
“Alma got pregnant?”
Wade nodded.
“How much money did you give her to keep quiet?”
