Past Suspicion (Christian Romantic Suspense)

by Therese Heckenkamp

  Instead I wondered what I would do if I were the one who had found the map. But it would depend on the circumstances, and I didn’t know the circumstances. I’d never felt such utter frustration. Compared to this, I thought wryly, physics class would be a pleasure.

  Since I couldn’t know what the circumstances were when my mother found the map, I could only speculate. But I didn’t want to speculate; that was all anyone ever did, and it didn’t satisfy me.

  But if I had discovered the map, I thought, giving in and returning to my previous theory, I’d be careful—I’d need time to think what to do next. I’d take the map home and—taking no chances—not mention it to anyone, but hide it away somewhere safe, most likely in my room.

  I pushed aside the damp hair plastered to my forehead. Yes, the only logical conclusion was to hide the map. Temporarily, of course. And then what?

  I frowned. It had all seemed to make sense the way Philip explained it, but there were other ways of looking at it. Too many. I couldn’t help wondering if there was still something I was missing.

  “She must have put it somewhere—hidden it—between the time she found it and the accident.” Philip had said this so confidently, but he didn’t know when my mother had found the map. What if she had found it the same day as her accident? For that matter, she could have found it after her accident. Philip hadn’t even considered that.

  My mind played with the idea of my mother finding the map the same day as her accident. The map might never have left the mansion. Maybe my mother merely transferred its hiding place. I didn’t know why she would do that, but it was a possibility. Because if she hadn’t transferred the map to another hiding place, the map would have been discovered in her possession at the scene of the accident.

  But it wasn’t.

  Was it?

  For a brief moment I became conscious of the sweat trickling down my forehead, but my mind, refusing to be distracted, moved on to its conclusion. Maybe the person who found my mother also found the map.

  But I knew who that person was: Christopher Renton.

  I need to find him! screamed my brain.

  My head ached under the hot sun, but I continued aimlessly down the sidewalk, which sent shimmering waves of heat to my face. When I finally looked at my surroundings, I saw I was passing a long, plastic-roofed tunnel. Curious, I slowed my steps and squinted. Rows of flowers and green plants standing on tables came into focus underneath the curved roof. Adjacent to this stood a building of crumbly gray stone, above which hung a sign, Sunroof Nursery.

  I became aware of the faint, spritzy sound of a revolving sprinkler coming from somewhere in the greenhouse, and I began imagining how refreshing the water would feel on my skin. I stepped off the sidewalk, crossed a gravel path, and passed through the archway. Almost immediately, a gentle mist descended upon me. I closed my eyes, savoring the coolness while the smell of sun-soaked plants filled my nostrils.

  I heard a door open from the adjacent building. I hurried away from the sprinkler and tried to compose myself and act as if I knew what I was doing. Catching sight of a rack of seed packets, I hastened over to them and screwed up my forehead, pretending to be absorbed in reading the planting instructions, while out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of yellow.

  “Hello there, dear,” chimed a voice at my side. (What was it that made women over the age of forty always refer to me in endearing terms? Sweetie, honey, dear—they wouldn’t call me these names if they knew what I was really like. At this moment, for example, I wished this woman would get lost.) “Are you finding everything you need?”

  “Yes, thank you,” I answered, not turning to face her. I could feel water droplets clinging to the hairs on my arms, and I wished they would hurry and evaporate.

  “Good, good,” the woman said, pumping more enthusiasm into those two words than I’d ever heard anyone use. “Just call out if you need anything, anything at all. That’s what I’m here for. Are you looking for anything special?”

  “No. I was just—”

  “What sort of garden do you have? Vegetable or flower? Both, perhaps?”

  “Actually,” I reluctantly turned to face her, as I was beginning to feel ridiculous talking to seed packets, “neither.”

  “Oh, I see. You want to start a garden.” The woman clasped her hands in anticipation. “What kind do you want?”

  “Um—” my eyes focused on the bright yellow ribbon in the woman’s gray hair—“a vegetable garden.” Where had those words come from? I did not want a garden.

  The woman’s wide face grew wider with her smile. “Then you don’t want seeds, my dear. Oh, no—they’ll take too long to get started—and here it is practically June! What you need are plants. Big healthy plants! I have some that would do nicely for you, I think, though most have been picked over already—by the ones who come bright and early, you know. But don’t worry; it’s not too late. We’ll find something. What do you think you’d like? Zucchinis? Peppers? Cucumbers? Those always produce nicely . . .”

  She had been rambling eagerly, and I wondered why she let the sentence fade. She regarded me with her head slightly tilted, and I could tell her focus had drifted. I shifted on my feet self-consciously, wondering what was wrong. Were my arms and hair still glistening with water? Did she somehow know the truth, that I had not come here to buy plants? I was struck with fear that she could read my mind.

  “Forgive me, my dear,” she said, “I’m getting old, I know, but—I never do forget a face. Tell me, what is your name?”

  I told her.

  “But you are related to Tiffany Hutch, aren’t you?” She said it in such a matter-of-fact way, I could only give her a blank stare.

  “Yes, you are! I can’t believe I didn’t see it sooner. You look so much like her!” The woman clapped her hands together like a happy child. “A little shorter, perhaps, and with a little broader face, but yes—yes—you must be her daughter!”

  How could she possibly know?

  “Oh, my dear, my dear, you must tell me all about her. My, it’s been so long! She used to buy all her gardening things from me. Tiffany loved to garden, and she had quite a green thumb, too. But I’m babbling. Please, tell me how she is.”

  Finally finding my voice, I grappled to steady it over the frantic beating of my heart. “Y—you’re right,” I said stupidly, for the woman obviously needed no reassurance of this. “My mother was Tiffany Hutch.” I told myself to stop overreacting, that it was not unusual that someone should remember my mother, who had lived in Lorens for eighteen years. Still, my heartbeat refused to slow. “She’s dead.” I hadn’t meant it to come out so abruptly, but then I’d never been a tactful speaker.

  “Oh, dear.” A pause. “I’m sorry.” The woman sounded it, and I braced myself for a dramatic display of this sorrow. “I have such fond memories of Tiffany.” She smoothed her hands over her sky blue pants and spoke slowly. “Here I am, living to such an ancient age, my friends dying and leaving me behind . . .” She smiled suddenly, and her eyes, which had clouded over, cleared. “Ah, but there are always new friends to make.”

  She took my hand. Surprisingly, I welcomed her dry, wrinkled palm, and felt somehow comforted, as I hadn’t in a long time. Her touch said so much more than words. I felt a brush of sadness, but I didn’t want to cry. I wanted this grandmotherly soul to tell me everything she knew about my mother; but first, I had to tell her about myself.

  I told her I was here visiting my uncle for part of the summer (I didn’t say for how long—no reason to go into that), and that I’d been living with my mother in California when she died. While I talked, I wondered how well this woman had known my mother. Apparently well enough to remember her and recognize her in me, even after twenty years. She probably knew more about her than I did, or at least the part of her life that she had spent as Tiffany Hutch.

  “Your mother and I were good friends,” she explained, “and it didn’t matter that I was thirty years older. She needed someone, y
ou know, after her parents died. She had her brother, of course, and he did everything he could for her—dropped out of college to come home and look after her—but every girl needs a mother, in one way or another. I like to think that I helped fill that role for Tiffany.

  “She was delightful, so energetic and ambitious.” The woman chuckled. “All you had to do to get her to do something was tell her it couldn’t be done. She loved a challenge. But she didn’t always think before she acted, and that got her into trouble more than a couple of times.” She shook her head, still smiling. “Oh, where the time goes . . . It seems like only yesterday she was in here, chattering on about her graduation and plans for the future.” The woman’s smile flickered. It was obvious what she was remembering, and I knew it hurt her—it hurt me, too—but I needed her to go on.

  “Can you—can you tell me about it?” I attempted. “About what happened at—the mansion? I know some of the story, but . . .”

  “Poor child.” I wasn’t sure whether she was referring to me or to Tiffany. I could feel the woman reading my eyes, sensing the longing that was there, the longing for all I did not know, and I knew she wanted to help me. Maybe—maybe even as a favor for Tiffany.

  “It was such a sad thing to happen,” the woman began. But when she told the story, it was as I’d already heard it . . . from my uncle, from the newspaper articles . . . and I wasn’t satisfied. Because everyone thought they knew what had happened. But they didn’t. Not really. Because they hadn’t been there.

  If indeed my mother’s fall had been an accident, then yes, it was a terrible thing to have happen. But was it a reason to leave home? To never come back and never make contact with family or friends left behind? No. There had to be something more. Was I the only one who saw it this way?

  “Did you ever see her again? After the accident, I mean?”

  “Oh, yes. Of course. I saw her in the hospital as soon as they let me. Poor girl. She was never the same after it happened. Oh, her memory came back—most of it, at least—but the fall and the shock combined left some sort of scar—on the inside, I mean.” The woman shook her head. “Psychological or emotional, they call it. And it takes a long time for something like that to heal, if ever.”

  An emotional scar. How awful it sounded.

  “Tiffany was right, I suppose, when she said the best thing was to get away. She was so anxious to get away, it almost seemed as if—but of course that is the best way when something like that happens. Start over. A new town, a new life.”

  I wanted the woman to back up to the “as if”—it was the “if’s” I was after.

  The woman sighed. I wished I could reach inside her mind and pull out every strand of memory that had anything to do with my mother, anything that might trigger something else and give me answers instead of more questions. My only hope was to keep her talking.

  “Did you know my father?”

  The woman shook her head. “Tiffany became very closed and secretive after the accident. But she did tell me she was getting married—that was a few months after the accident. So quickly it happened! I think he was one of her doctors.”

  I swallowed a lump in my throat. “Yes. Dr. Robert Finley. I don’t remember much about him. He—died when I was two. A car accident.” I blamed it on those twisty mountain roads of Colorado. Maybe my mother did, too; maybe that was why we moved to California. But I guess I’d never know for sure.

  “So both your parents are gone?” she asked, and I nodded. “And now you’re living with Peter. Odd how life turns in a circle.” I agreed, and didn’t bother to contradict that I was not “living” here, merely visiting.

  “Poor Tiffany.” The woman shook her head. “Tragedy after tragedy. She never had it easy. But perhaps now she finally has peace, rest her soul.”

  I was quiet. I hoped my mother was at peace.

  But this did nothing for me, her daughter, who was still living and struggling in a very confused world. There was so much my mother had left behind, so much she’d left undone, and as her daughter, I felt bound to finish it.

  “Tiffany didn’t tell me where she was moving, and I didn’t press her. I was glad she was getting married. What she needed was stability, a family, a husband. I only hoped she’d made the right choice.” Realizing what this implied, the woman patted my hand and hurriedly added, “I didn’t mean it to sound that way, my dear. Things change, and I’m sure your mother loved your father very much. It’s just that it was such a surprise. She had seemed so serious about another man. Before the accident, I mean. I even suspected they were making plans to run away together.” Her eyes twinkled mischievously. “Of course, Peter wouldn’t have approved—but I wasn’t going to tell him. Ah, young love . . .” The woman lifted her eyes skyward. “And he was such a striking young man, too. Tall and dark, such classic good looks. And she was a petite beauty. They seemed so right for each other! Tiffany confided in me, you see, and I knew she loved this young man. He worked in Hanson’s Hardware store, and they were together so much those couple of months before . . .”

  I was relieved when she let the sentence trail off. If I heard the word “accident” one more time, I’d probably scream.

  “Tiffany had seemed so happy, so sure, before the accident”—I bit my tongue—“I don’t see why her fall had to change all that. But then again, it might not have had anything to do with her change of heart. That’s another thing about young love. The heart is fickle.

  “Oh, but I’m rambling,” the woman said, taking me by the arm and leading me between a row of low tables on which green plants tangled together. “I’m sorry. I know this isn’t why you came, to hear me reminisce about the past. I’ll help you find some plants now and stop taking up your time. But you were just such a surprise! I could almost believe you were Tiffany stopping in for one of our chats.”

  If she only knew how eager I was to hear any detail she could recall. Like a dry sponge, I’d been soaking up every drop of information. I didn’t want anything to sidetrack us, least of all plants.

  “This young man,” I said, stopping under a hanging plant. It began dripping water on my head, but I didn’t move. “You really think she was serious about him? Really, truly serious?” I waited, my muscles tense.

  “As serious as an eighteen-year-old can be.”

  I knew that that was serious.

  “And his name,” I persisted, “do you remember it?” I hoped she didn’t think I was becoming overly inquisitive, that my interest was stretching beyond natural, healthy curiosity. But she didn’t indicate anything to suggest this. She seemed, in fact, quite eager to continue.

  “Oh, yes,” and my mind spoke the name as she said it, “Christopher Renton.” She looked very pleased with herself for remembering, but I made no comment, merely clenched my hands.

  I had known it would be him.

  “I always thought they were going to marry,” the woman continued. “It was only a matter of time. And when Tiffany confided she had a secret, it wouldn’t have surprised me if it was that she was engaged. But that was before the accident. And she never did tell me.”

  A secret. I wondered what it had been. Plans to marry Christopher Renton, as this woman suspected, or . . . the discovery of a treasure map?

  “Oh, dear, you’re getting wet.” I let the woman lead me out from under the dripping plant. I needed her to lead me out because it was as if my mind were disengaged from my body. My feet moved but my mind wasn’t controlling them. It was too taken up with questions.

  I let the woman load me up with plants she thought I wanted, and I nodded automatically to the gardening advice she rattled off, though I absorbed none of it. She continued to chatter as she arranged the plants in a shallow box. “For easy carrying,” she explained. Then, “My goodness, I don’t believe I told you my name! It’s Martha Myers, but please call me Martha.”

  Only after promising to “come again anytime for a short little chat,” was I able to leave. I was reluctant to go, but I noticed the sky w
as darkening, and I didn’t want to get caught in a spring storm. I promised Martha I’d be back soon, and I meant it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  If I had been familiar with Wisconsin weather, I would have realized I had to hurry if I wanted to reach my uncle’s house before the storm struck. Unfortunately, I wasn’t, and I lingered along, absorbed in my thoughts, mulling over all Martha had told me. It wasn’t until the box of plants began weighing heavy in my arms, becoming almost impossible to carry because the wind kept snatching at it, did I look to the sky and panic.

  A threatening mountain of clouds was rumbling in from the west, so quickly I could actually see the mass swelling and growing. Green leaves whirled by me in a cyclone and my eyes raced to the skyline in fear of sighting a tornado.

  In the time it took me to cross the street, the black clouds were almost on top of me. I shivered in a gust of wind, and my bare legs and arms prickled when I saw how deserted the street had become. I felt as if I were the last person on earth, left alone to the mercy of the storm.

  The blast of a horn, then a voice, startled me. “Hey, Robin! Jump in!”

  Even as I turned, I knew who it was. Justin. I wasn’t stranded in the storm after all. Amazing. How did he always manage to appear at such unexpected—yet perfectly convenient—moments? I hadn’t heard him pull up. Now he was idling his Jeep at the curb, holding the door open and waiting for me.

  Ominous as the sky was, I hesitated, shifting the box of plants in my arms. Even in the middle of such a predicament as this, something in me—stubbornness, pride, or both—didn’t want to accept his help; it battled the other part of me that wanted so strongly to run to him with no urging at all. My realization of such divided feelings scared me. While I worried, large drops of rain began firing down from the sky, sounding like a thousand bullets striking the pavement.

  “Are you going to stand there all day?” I thought I saw Justin make a move as if to close the door and drive off without me, so I ran forward.