Lone Witness

by Shirlee McCoy

  Henry had seen the photo, too. Everly’s name and photo had been kept private because she was a minor, but a blurry photo of Tessa had been splashed across national news stations for a week. She had refused interviews and ducked away from cameras, but she hadn’t been able to avoid being named as part of one of the biggest news stories of the year.

  Now, he understood her reluctance to exploit her five minutes of fame.

  What he didn’t understand was why she hadn’t told him the truth.

  He’d given her plenty of opportunities, he’d asked plenty of questions. He’d given her every reason to trust him and to trust the system. He pushed aside disappointment and frustration. There wasn’t time for either of those emotions. No matter who Tessa was, no matter what she’d run from, she’d saved Everly’s life. He wasn’t going to allow her to lose hers because of it.

  Someone knocked on the front door, and he took her arm.

  “We have a possible suspect for the kidnapping, Tessa. One of our agents is going to find him. From what we can tell, he’s currently at his home in Saugus.”

  “Not in Provincetown stalking me,” she said. “So, I was right. This is Patrick’s doing.”

  “Maybe. Probably. One way or another, we’re going to find out. You’re not alone anymore, Tessa. You don’t have to be afraid. You have a bunch of people standing beside you, fighting with you. Trust in that, and in God. Everything really will be okay.”

  He led her out of the destroyed room.

  Chief Simpson was standing in the living room, ice on his hair and his shoulders. “I got a call that there was some trouble out here. I can see that was an understatement. Are you okay, Tessa?”

  “Yes,” Tessa murmured, her face still colorless.

  “I suppose you two have a theory for what’s going on here?” he said, meeting Wren’s eyes and then Henry’s.

  Henry explained quickly and succinctly.

  When he finished, the chief frowned.

  “So, you want me to believe that this is about old jewelry that was taken more than three years ago?” he asked, his gaze dropping to the destroyed pillows and the cotton stuffing that was strewn across the room.

  “Not just old jewelry. Patrick sold expensive estate items. He once sold a ten-million-dollar ring to someone in Hollywood,” Tessa offered.

  “Must have been a very fancy ring,” Simpson said. “What did you take from his safe? The ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz? A crown worn by Princess Grace?” The questions were nearly flip in their terseness, but he called in a request for a patrol car at the savings and loan before Tessa could answer.

  When he finished, he ran his hand over thick salt-and-pepper hair. “You’ve gotten yourself into quite a mess, Tessa.”

  “I know.”

  “But being in a mess doesn’t mean staying in one. If your friends will drive you over to the bank, I’ll have the owner, Orlando Smithson, open the place up for you. He’ll be grumpy about it, but we’re hunting buddies, and he’s not going to say no. I think we need to look at what you stole...took from the safe. Maybe there’s something in it worth more than money.”

  That was exactly what Henry had been thinking.

  “I really do appreciate this, Chief Simpson,” Tessa said.

  “Thank me by getting this cleared up. I don’t like trouble in my town, and I don’t like troublemakers.”

  “I’ve never tried to be one,” she responded, and he shook his head.

  “You never have been one, but you sure are attracting them to the area. The kidnapper—”

  “That had nothing to do with her,” Henry pointed out.

  “The Molotov cocktail this morning. Now this. What’s next?”

  “Hopefully answers to a lot of questions,” Wren said, stepping back inside. “I made a call to our Los Angeles field office and asked for any information regarding Patrick Hamilton. I’m curious to see if he has been on their radar for any reason. I’d also like to know what he has been up to these past few years. I plan to do a background check and contact the LA police department. That will be easier to do at headquarters. If you two can handle things here, I’ll walk back to the Halifax place. The weather is going to be horrible all weekend. Maybe the girls would rather spend their time in Boston?” She met Henry’s eyes. “I could escort your in-laws and the girls to your place, suggest that they go to the children’s museum tomorrow and, maybe, get ice cream afterward. That would give them some fun things to do until the weather clears.”

  And, it will get them away from the danger.

  She didn’t add the rest.

  She didn’t need to.

  Desperate people did desperate things, and Patrick Hamilton seemed desperate to recover whatever it was he’d lost. Henry didn’t want the twins anywhere nearby if he came calling.

  “Great idea. How about we drop you off at the house before we go to the savings and loan? That way I can explain things to everyone.”

  “Whatever works for you,” Wren said.

  “It’s fine if you plan to drop her off, but I suggest you not take too long doing it. Orlando is not going to be happy if you make him wait,” the chief warned.

  The girls weren’t going to be happy, either.

  They’d expected a fun-filled weekend on the Cape, spending time with their new favorite person. Tessa had entered their lives, and the girls seemed to believe that she would always be there.

  But that wasn’t the way life worked.

  People didn’t always stay.

  And when it came to people with pasts like Tessa’s, they often didn’t.

  He’d explain that to the girls when this was over and they’d all moved on with their lives.

  NINE

  Provincetown Savings and Loan was on the northern edge of town, set apart from the touristy areas and still sitting in the center of the eighty-acre lot that banker Gerald Smithson had purchased nearly seventy years ago. There were a few houses nearby, tucked into a tidy court that had been paved and built after Gerald had finally agreed to sell sixty acres of his property to a developer. His only child, Orlando, lived on what remained—a 40-by-300 slice of land that backed up to the bank’s parking lot.

  Tessa hadn’t been around when the sale had taken place, but Vera, the sixty-five-year-old bank teller who’d been working at Provincetown Savings and Loan since the 1970s, had told her all about it. She’d also told Tessa that Orlando had never forgiven his father for selling the property and spending the money on a retirement home in Florida. Nor had he forgiven him for willing Orlando the bank with the stipulation that it never be sold outside the family. Orlando had three children. None of them were interested in running the savings and loan.

  Tessa had spent enough time with Orlando to understand why.

  He was a mean and crusty version of Santa Claus. White beard and mustache, red cheeks, big belly and blue eyes, he smoked like a chimney and drank like a fish. His least favorite thing to do, it seemed, was talk to people.

  He wasn’t going to be happy about being asked to open the place at nine o’clock at night.

  Tessa could see him as Henry pulled into the nearly empty parking lot, a yellow parka pulled over what looked like flannel pajamas, a hood covering his white hair but not hiding his irritated expression. A uniformed police officer stood a few feet away, not looking at Orlando and not speaking to him. Jessica was beside him, tapping her foot impatiently, waiting for them to arrive. Wren must have asked her to come.

  “Hurry it up!” Orlando yelled as they got out of the SUV. “I’m in the middle of watching my programming, and you’re making me miss it.”

  “Sorry about this, Mr. Smithson,” Tessa replied, nearly running across the slippery parking lot in her hurry to reach him. Her foot slid as she stepped onto the ice-coated cement sidewalk in front of the building, and she would have fallen if Henry hadn’t grab
bed her arm.

  “Careful,” he said, not releasing her as Orlando used three keys to unlock the door, then rushed inside to disarm the alarm.

  “I’m not sure what the all-fire hurry is, Tessa,” Orlando griped. “You’ve got six days a week you can come in here and get a look in that box, and suddenly, nine o’clock on a Friday night rolls around, and you decided you need to see it now.”

  He pushed down his hood and stomped across the lobby, his winter boots leaving wet splotches on the carpet.

  “I know this is a bother, sir, but it really is an emergency,” Henry interjected.

  Orlando whirled around, fire in his eyes and a scowl on his face. “Your created crisis isn’t my problem, young man.”

  “I’m Special Agent Henry Miller. My associate and I are with the FBI.” He gestured toward Jessica, who’d stepped into the bank behind them. The uniformed officer had, probably wisely, waited outside.

  “They let women in the FBI now, huh?” Orlando said, turning away and finishing his trek to a metal door marked with an employees-only sign.

  “They have been doing that for a long time, Mr. Smithson,” Jessica responded without any heat in her voice. She’d probably taken classes on how not to become enraged by rude people.

  “Good to know,” he replied. “I got me a granddaughter who wants to be a police officer. I think the FBI has got more money in it for her, and I’d venture, a better retirement plan. What do you say? Is that true?” He fished a key ring from his pocket and fumbled through dozens of keys until he found the one he wanted.

  “Maybe, but money shouldn’t be the main reason for pursuing a career.”

  Orlando snorted. “Says a young woman who’s wearing two-hundred-dollar boots.”

  “Says an elderly man who knows what a two-hundred-dollar pair of boots looks like,” Jessica responded.

  Orlando howled with laughter. “You’ve got a brain in your head, Ms. FBI Agent.”

  “And you’ve got an eye for nice footwear.”

  “My Dora loved shoes. May God rest her shoe-hoarding soul. She left a closet full when she passed seven years ago. I ended up selling them on eBay. Twisted Sisters thrift store wouldn’t take them off my hands because they were too pricey for local blood.” He shoved a key into the lock and turned it. The door swung open, and he flicked on the light in a narrow hallway.

  He unlocked a second door and ushered them into a room with floor-to-ceiling safe-deposit boxes. “All right. So, you are number what, Tessa?”

  She pulled the key from her pocket and read the number engraved on it. “Two twenty-five.”

  “One of our smaller ones. This way.” He stomped across the room and pointed to a box smack-dab in the middle of the wall. Tessa remembered it from three years ago. This time, her hands weren’t shaking when she turned the key in the lock, and she wasn’t trying to hide the cloth-wrapped jewelry as she took all of it out of the box.

  She handed Henry the pieces one at a time, and he carried them to a small table that sat in the middle of the room.

  There was more than she remembered. Fifteen pieces. Mostly small boxes that she’d wrapped in pieces of a flowery silk dress.

  She’d hated that dress, and she hated looking at proof of who she’d been.

  Who she still was.

  Just because she’d purchased a new identity didn’t mean she’d become a new person. She’d allowed herself to forget that for a while.

  “Do you want to unwrap them, or do you want me to?” Henry asked, his eyes boring into hers. She knew he was upset, and she didn’t blame him. She’d lied to him, to his family, to everyone in Provincetown.

  “I’ll do it.” She lifted the first box and pulled off the rubber band, releasing the silk it held in place and opening the box it contained.

  She did the same with the remainder, finally stopping when she unwrapped a beautiful gold watch. She set it carefully on the table and stepped back. Ten rings. Two bracelets. Two necklaces. A set of gold cuff links. A watch.

  “Whoa! Tessa! You’ve got quite a haul there,” Orlando crowed. “What’d you do? Rob a bank?” He cackled gleefully.

  No one else was laughing.

  The jewelry had to be worth a small fortune, and the watch was probably real gold. She’d stolen enough to qualify for a federal charge. That was for sure.

  “Kind of interesting,” Orlando said, moving closer to the table.

  “What?” she asked, wishing she could bundle everything up and shove it into the safe-deposit box again.

  “You’ve got all those beautiful old pieces.” He pointed to one of the rings. “That is a mourning ring. Eighteenth century. Probably twenty-four-karat gold. Real sapphires and rubies in the flower. Not those fake ones that are made in labs.”

  “Your wife collected antique jewelry, too?” Jessica asked.

  “My mother did. I still have a lot of her pieces. Got one a lot like that.” He pointed to a diamond tennis bracelet. “From the 1940s. Mine-cut. Probably worth ten thousand on a bad day. Seems like you’ve got some really good taste and some really fine pieces, and then you’ve got that.” He jabbed his finger at the watch.

  “What about it?” she asked.

  “It’s a watch.”

  “A nice one,” Henry pointed out.

  “That’s an understatement,” Orlando said with a soft snort. “That’s a Rolex. I don’t know much about them, but I know they cost money. I also think that’s modern, and I’m wondering why you’d ruin a perfectly good antique jewelry collection with a modern piece.”

  “That’s a good question,” Tessa said, lifting the watch. She hadn’t touched it in over three years, and she’d forgotten how heavy it was.

  “Well, it’s your collection, Tessa,” Orlando said. “You’re the one who should be answering it.”

  “Right.” But, of course, she couldn’t. She had no idea why Patrick had been keeping the Rolex in the house safe. He didn’t deal in antique watches. That was something she’d heard him discuss with clients and with friends they had over for dinner. She’d often picked at her plate of food while he and his business partner, Ryan Wilder, entertained some of their wealthier customers.

  Unlike Patrick, Ryan had always tried to include Tessa in the conversations. His wife had been the same. Sheila had been down-to-earth and easy to talk to, her unapologetic laughter always making Tessa smile. The fact that she’d married Patrick wasn’t a surprise, though. They’d had everything in common—age, sophistication, and love of fine wine, good food and expensive clothes.

  Still, Tessa had expected Sheila to mourn for a lot longer than the year and a half it had taken her to get engaged to her deceased husband’s business partner. Maybe she’d been lonely and looking for someone to fill the emptiness. She’d loved Ryan the way Tessa had wanted to be loved. A month before he was murdered in a botched burglary attempt at the Los Angeles antiques store, Sheila had thrown him a surprise birthday party. It had been his forty-fifth, and he’d arrived dressed in worn jeans, a sweatshirt and a pair of scuffed running shoes.

  No one had commented on the casual clothes. That had struck Tessa, because she’d been forced to wear five-inch black stilettos and a perfectly fitted cocktail dress. Patrick had made her change outfits three times before they’d left for the venue—a country club a few miles from their home—because she’d needed to “live up to the standard of the people she’d be dining with.”

  The standard Ryan had set was much more her style, but when he’d walked into the reserved ballroom, Tessa had braced to hear complaints from Sheila. Instead, Sheila had thrown her arms around him and told him how fabulous he looked for a man of his advanced age.

  Everyone had laughed.

  Except for Patrick.

  Later, when Sheila had presented Ryan with his gift, she hadn’t seemed to care that his outfit hadn’t matched the expensive Role
x.

  Tessa frowned.

  Ryan’s watch had looked a lot like the one she was holding. As a matter of fact, if she didn’t know better, she would have thought they were the same.

  But, of course, they couldn’t be.

  Ryan’s watch had been stolen the night he’d been murdered. As far as she knew, it hadn’t been recovered. Plus, it had been engraved. He’d passed it around at the dinner party so that everyone could read the inscription.

  She flipped the watch over, her heart skipping a beat as she saw the words on the back casing.

  Until forever ceases to exist, I’ll love you.

  “That’s strange,” she murmured, flipping it over again as if that would someone explain what she’d seen.

  “What is?” Henry asked.

  “This watch is engraved.”

  “Lots of watches are,” Orlando replied. “There’s nothing strange about it, and as much as I’ve enjoyed seeing all those fine pieces, I am missing my shows. Are you taking those things with you, or putting them back? If it were me, I’d lock them up again, but...not my choice.”

  “Is there a reason why the engraving is strange?” Henry asked, ignoring Orlando’s comment.

  “This belonged to Patrick’s business partner. Ryan Wilder. He was killed several months before I left Napa Valley.”

  “Killed in an accident? Or murdered?”

  “Murdered. In a botched robbery attempt at the antiques store in Los Angeles. That store was his baby. The ones in Napa Valley were more Patrick’s. Ryan told his wife, Sheila, that he had to work on inventory and left their town house around ten that night. The police think he surprised a burglar.”

  “Did his wife give Patrick the watch as a token to remember Ryan by?” Jessica asked.

  “To be honest, I thought Sheila told me it had been stolen. The store lost around fifty thousand dollars’ worth of items. More would have been taken, but the thief broke secured display cases and set off an alarm.”

  “If it was stolen, how did it end up here?” Jessica took it from her hand and flipped it so that she could read the inscription.