His Brother's Bride

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Except that she’d never had a father, loving or otherwise.

  “Laurel London!” Philo exclaimed, his smile widening as he reached his arms out to Laurel.

  Not a hugger by nature, she didn’t even hesitate as she stepped into that embrace, feeling her throat tighten with emotion.

  “How you doing, Philo?” she asked when the older man let her go.

  “Can’t complain,” he said, still grinning at her. “I hear you went to the big city and got yourself a fancy TV job.”

  “Laurel? Laurel London?” Laurel was saved from Philo’s inquisition by an enthusiastic greeting from his wife. A greeting that was only different from his in that it was even more physical in nature. Phyllis not only gave Laurel a long, tight hug, but kissed both of her cheeks as well.

  “I’ve been wondering if you’d ever come back to us,” Phyllis said, tears gathering in her eyes.

  The motherly woman was a beautiful sight to Laurel.

  “I just needed some time,” Laurel told her softly. She couldn’t lie to Phyllis. She didn’t think anyone could keep things from the gentle, giving woman.

  Scott shifted beside her, and Philo said, “Scott’s here to ask us some questions.” Then he looked back at Laurel, a worried frown creasing his brow.

  “You aren’t in any trouble, are you, my dear?”

  “Of course not,” Scott said before Laurel could reply. “Laurel’s helping me with the investigation.”

  “It’s what she does for television in New York,” Phyllis told her husband as though he might actually not have been in possession of that information himself. She led them all back to the office at the rear of the store, instructing Philo to bring in a couple of extra chairs for Laurel and Scott.

  The Coopers were distraught when they heard that one of Twin Oaks’s guests was missing. But when Scott described William to them, neither could remember seeing him.

  “He was driving a black BMW,” Laurel said. “A rental. You didn’t happen to notice it around town, did you?”

  “Yes!” Phyllis cried, sitting forward. “I think I did see it.”

  “When? Where?” Scott’s gaze was intent, his pen poised over the notebook he’d taken from his pocket.

  “Saturday afternoon, just down the street.”

  “You’re sure?” Scott asked.

  “Positive. I was just on my way from the store back down to the barbecue. I had to come back to get more coleslaw. Mable was in charge of coleslaw and one of her kids dropped the biggest bowl of it getting from the car to the table. I remember thinking how odd it was to have someone here in town with all the free food at the barbecue.”

  “That is odd,” Philo said. “Of course, as Phyllis and I decided, the car just could’ve been parked there. It didn’t mean anyone was actually in the vicinity. Maybe the owner walked down to the barbecue.”

  “Was the diner open?” Laurel asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Phyllis said. “For passers-through and tourists. Though if they saw the signs for the barbecue, those who’ve got the time would come join us there instead. The car wasn’t parked outside the café, though. It was several yards down the block.”

  Scott lifted an ankle to rest on his knee. “Has anyone said anything about noticing an unfamiliar gentleman around town? Know of anyone who might have taken him in if he got too drunk last night to make it back to Twin Oaks?”

  The Coopers shook their heads in unison. “The car’s gone, too.”

  “Did you notice when it left?”

  “We didn’t come back this way after the barbecue,” Phyllis told him.

  “She’d had a little too much of that maple candy,” Philo said with an affectionate grin at his wife. “Her stomach was hurting her a bit.”

  Laurel looked over at Scott and was surprised to find that instead of watching the exchange between the older couple, he was staring at her. The look in his unusual blue eyes was unsettling.

  And definitely not happy.

  “You know,” Philo said, diverting Laurel’s attention. She looked back to see him tapping his wife on the shoulder. “Our daughter Bonnie was out at Twin Oaks yesterday. She did the plumbing on the place and had one last fixture to install in the kitchen. It had just come in late Wednesday. Maybe you ought to talk to her.”

  “Yeah,” Phyllis said, nodding vigorously. “If there was anything out there to notice, our Bonnie would have seen it. She’s a smart girl, that one.”

  “Bonnie became a plumber?” Laurel asked, loving the sound of that. The Coopers’ daughter had been five years younger than Laurel, but she’d gotten to know Bonnie rather well during her sojourns at the grocery.

  Laurel had always admired her spunk. Nothing seemed to keep Bonnie down. Even in a town as small as Cooper’s Corner, she hadn’t been swayed by what other people thought. She’d been as outgoing as Laurel was reserved. There’d been a time in her life when Laurel had secretly wished she was Bonnie Cooper.

  After a couple more questions—and no more answers—Scott and Laurel left, but not before Laurel had promised to come back and have dinner with the Coopers before her vacation was over.

  Odd how she wished Scott had been included in that invitation.

  * * *

  THE COOPERS SAID BONNIE had been called out to a plumbing emergency at the Johnsons’ place that afternoon. She’d been there, but was gone. Mrs. Johnson was pretty certain Bonnie was heading over to the library to fix a leak that had sprung in the bathroom.

  Scott was used to chasing around after leads, so that wasn’t a problem. But having Laurel in the seat beside him was beginning to take its toll. His tolerance was wearing a little thin.

  He loved having her there too much, and knew there was no hope of ever keeping her in his life—even as a friend. Eventually she was going to find out he hadn’t been driving the day Paul had been killed—and why.

  All of the disbelief and anger she’d spewed forth onto him the morning of the accident would spring forth again. But this time she wouldn’t merely be killing the messenger. She’d be killing him.

  “So Bonnie Cooper’s a plumber...” she said as they drove back across town toward the library.

  “Not too hard to believe, though, is it?” Scott asked. “She always was into...”

  “...hardware,” Laurel finished for him. “Poor Phyllis. She tried to interest Bonnie in the grocery side of the business, but all Bonnie wanted to do was play with screws and see what you could do with tools.”

  “You sound like you spent a lot of time at the Coopers’ place,” Scott said. He hadn’t known that about her.

  “I did. Almost every afternoon after school my freshman year. And part of my sophomore year, too. Until I started hanging out at...” She broke off.

  “At our place,” Scott finished for her.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve still got the house.”

  “You live there alone?”

  Scott nodded.

  “How come you never married?” she asked quietly, staring out the front windshield. “As I recall you always had about four girls going at a time.”

  Scott shrugged. How did he tell her that he had nothing left to offer on a full-time basis without also telling her why?

  “Guess I just never met the woman I wanted to sign on with for fifty years or more.”

  He had, of course. She was sitting right next to him. And that was why he’d never married.

  Instead he had his work. He would be the best damn cop he could be. Contribute something to the world in the hopes that when his time came to face the final judgment, he’d have done enough good deeds to be offered some token of forgiveness for the things he’d done so horribly wrong.

  Scott turned the corner, taking a shortcut to the library, and immediately wished he could turn b
ack. Straight ahead of them, shining bright in the sun, was the pristine white church that was to have been the site of Laurel’s wedding. Instead, it had been the scene of what had to have been the worst moment of her life.

  Right there, in that corner of the parking lot, he’d told her that Paul was not going to make it to their wedding. Still dazed and in shock himself, he’d tried to take her in his arms, and had fought off her blows instead as she railed against him for telling her something so completely unbearable.

  Scott could still feel those blows. Every single one of them.

  He glanced surreptitiously sideways, wondering if he should acknowledge the building just ahead, or pretend it wasn’t there. Just as they’d been pretending that Paul’s death wasn’t there between them, occupying both of their minds. That the pain wasn’t still as fresh as it had been in that churchyard three and a half years before.

  Laurel was looking out her side window, her head turned at an unnatural angle, as though she was trying to cut the church out of even her peripheral vision.

  She apparently wasn’t ready to talk about that day.

  Scott was relieved as hell.

  He wasn’t ready, either.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  LAUREL WAS SURPRISED to get a phone call at Twin Oaks later that evening. Still dressed in the clothes she’d had on all day, she’d just finished summarizing her observations on the little handheld tape recorder that was her constant companion, and was lying in the dark on the big four-poster bed, staring out the window, trying to make sense of something.

  Of anything.

  Byrd’s disappearance. Her feeling of homecoming in the Coopers’ arms that afternoon. Scott.

  And Paul. Always Paul.

  Clint’s son, Keegan, knocked on her door to tell her she had a call. She could take it in the office, he said.

  Not sure who’d be calling her or why—except maybe the Coopers to confirm a dinner date—Laurel reluctantly left her cocoon of darkness.

  Was there any point in furthering her relationship with the Coopers? It wasn’t likely that she’d ever be back to Cooper’s Corner again after Byrd was found.

  The caller was Scott.

  Laurel sank down into the roller chair behind Maureen’s desk, ignoring the pleasure she felt at hearing his voice.

  After following Bonnie around town that afternoon, always just missing her, Scott had finally brought Laurel back to Twin Oaks, accepting Maureen’s invitation to join them all for breakfast in the morning before he and Laurel met Bonnie Cooper in town.

  There’d been nothing said about any contact before then.

  “Just wanted to fill you in on what I know so you have as much time to mull it over as I do,” he said now, almost without preamble.

  Good. That was good. “What’ve you got?”

  “A photo of Byrd, for one. We got it from his publisher.”

  “That’ll sure help when we’re talking to people.”

  They’d been a bit handicapped that afternoon with only a verbal description of the man.

  “Has his family been notified?”

  That was something else they’d talked about late that afternoon.

  “He doesn’t appear to have any.”

  Laurel felt a new affinity for the missing man.

  “I got a call back on the birth certificate.”

  She sat up straight. “What’d they say?”

  “Leslie Renwick is the daughter of Robert and Gloria Renwick of New Bedford, Massachusetts. She lives in Worcester. I have her address.”

  “So why would William Byrd have her birth certificate?” Laurel asked, immediately alert.

  “And why have it out at Twin Oaks?”

  “Do we know if Byrd was ever married?”

  “There’s no record of him having married.”

  Again, Laurel felt a personal connection to the older man, a sense that finding him alive and well was important to her own ability to move on with her life.

  “As far as I can tell, he’s been living alone in Connecticut for almost thirty years. I called a private detective friend of mine to check things out in Connecticut for me—Byrd’s neighbors, possible friends, his usual haunting grounds. So far, nobody’s seen him.”

  “So,” Laurel finally said, “why would a man in his early sixties have a birth certificate for a much younger woman with the parents’ names whited out?”

  “My guess is when we get that answer, we’ll be well on our way toward finding Byrd,” Scott said.

  His voice sounded a little like Paul’s over the phone. Laurel had never noticed that before.

  “It’s highly likely that certificate had something to do with why he left in such a hurry,” Laurel observed.

  “There was no sign of struggle, but we should probably consider that someone could have shown up at Twin Oaks with blackmail on their mind.”

  “Like maybe Byrd fathered that child, and now, thirty-five years later, someone’s going to blackmail him over it?” Laurel didn’t think so.

  “Hardly makes sense, does it?” Scott said softly. “He has no family, no one to be hurt by something like that coming to light....”

  “So no grounds for blackmail that we know of...”

  “And even if he had fathered a child—if Leslie was his—why would discovering that cause him to disappear into thin air?”

  “Can’t think of any good reason.”

  Laurel rubbed her hand across her forehead and down over her eyes. “Maybe we’re completely on the wrong track here.”

  “How so?”

  “What if William Byrd just found that certificate—maybe sticking out from the bottom of a dresser drawer, or something? The rooms here are all furnished with antiques, a lot of them purchased during the past year. Could be somebody hid or lost that certificate years ago and Byrd just happened upon it.”

  The idea might sound far-fetched, but Laurel had heard of things a lot more bizarre than that.

  “That could explain why he’d just left it sitting out. He’d hardly think it was confidential if he’d found it stuck in a drawer,” Scott said slowly.

  “Good point,” Laurel agreed. “So where does that leave us?”

  “Well, since we don’t have an official case, or even know for certain that we have a missing person, I can’t really call Leslie Renwick and ask her if she knows why William Byrd might have a copy of her birth certificate. I guess for the time being, we assume that Byrd’s finding the certificate was a fluke.”

  “So we’re back to square one.”

  “We know he parked in town after he left Twin Oaks on Saturday,” Scott reminded her.

  “Do you think he intended to go to the barbecue and just never made it?” She’d been so focused on that birth certificate, certain that whatever had caused Byrd to disappear had occurred at the bed-and-breakfast, that she hadn’t considered any other possibility.

  “Everyone at Twin Oaks heard him say he’d be there...”

  Laurel started to feel slightly sick.

  “...so we have to consider the possibility that...”

  “Someone abducted him right there in the middle of town while everyone was down at the barbecue,” she finished, seeming to have more control if she was the one to actually say the words rather than hear them.

  “It could have happened without any outward sign of a struggle....”

  “Especially if they took him in his own car.”

  Scott’s sigh was so deep she could almost feel the weight of it. “I have some other news.”

  She didn’t like the sound of his voice. “What?”

  “I called that bed-and-breakfast in Vermont. Byrd had a reservation there for tonight and tomorrow night. He was scheduled to arrive this afternoon.”


  “And he didn’t.”

  “Nope.”

  Okay, well, he hadn’t been back to Twin Oaks yet, either. That didn’t mean...

  She wasn’t going to stop believing the older man was okay. “So what else have we got to go on?”

  “What about the woman’s negligee?” Scott asked, his voice subdued.

  Staring down at the floorboards directly in front of her, Laurel hesitated before answering. “He’s been alone a long time.” She hated to say it. “He could just have some alternative tastes.”

  “Unfortunately, I can’t think of a better explanation at the moment.”

  “If he’d had a woman here, someone would have noticed,” Laurel said. “Nothing gets past Keegan.” She hated where they were going with this but couldn’t find a more plausible route.

  “And if he’d been planning to have a woman in, why wouldn’t he just say so?” Scott added. “He’d have to know that wasn’t something you could keep secret in a place like Twin Oaks. So what clues does this leave us with?” he asked, sounding like he needed a good night’s rest.

  Laurel continued to study the pattern of floorboards in Maureen and Clint’s office for a few moments. There were seven boards directly in front of her, all with varying degrees of widening grain as they approached the desk. Each board represented a clue to her.

  “We have an encrypted laptop,” she began.

  “And a black-and-white photo of a couple getting ready to kiss,” Scott added.

  “Could be someone he met when he was visiting the inn on that page of the book,” Laurel said.

  “And they became friends...” Scott added, playing along.

  “They could even be the owners.”

  “Maybe Leslie Renwick is their daughter.” Scott’s voice, while still tired, had lightened.

  Laurel grinned, though it wasn’t her best effort. “And they mailed him the birth certificate with their picture to include in his next book,” she joked.

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” Scott said, his voice leaving her warmer than she’d felt all evening.

  “Okay,” she answered as softly, intimately.