by Arlene James
“Absolutely,” she said, putting down her half-eaten pizza. She told herself that she was relieved, that she could recover her emotional equilibrium without him there babying her. “Go. Honestly. I’ll be fine. This is too important to let some minor indisposition of mine get in the way.”
“I don’t consider any ‘indisposition’ of yours minor,” he said, squeezing her knee gently, “but this is important, and I should be back by seven or so tomorrow evening.”
“Don’t worry about it. I mean it, Mitch,” she told him softly. “Go do your job.”
He nodded, smiled and planted a kiss in the center of her forehead before helping himself to more pizza. Sitting back, he turned his attention to the weather report. She folded her arms and pretended an equal interest in the television screen, both warmed and chilled—warmed by his so obvious regard for her, chilled by the inescapable fear that it could end very badly indeed.
How could a man like Mitch love a woman who had killed someone dear to her?
Chapter Eleven
Mitch pulled a photograph from his breast pocket and slid it across the table to the scarred, dignified man in the chair opposite him. Tall and gaunt with sad black eyes, shiny black skin and hair prematurely gray, he studied the photo with purposeful intensity, finally nodding his head.
“Aye. That is the man. It was a small company of warriors, but they were armed with machetes and automatic guns.” He pecked the photo with the nailless tip of one finger. “This man was the leader. They said they were rebels from the neighboring province, but we heard that he had been refused by one of our women.” He shook his head mournfully. “Perhaps that is why they killed the women first, why they attacked when the men were in the fields.” He uttered a harsh, guttural word, then translated it for Mitch. “Cowards. They ran when the men came. We heard the shooting and screaming from our plots.”
The man confirmed that the doctor had been in the village to administer vaccinations, as he had apparently done several times a year since learning in college of their efficacy.
“Maa’tobe was the first of our people to go to school,” the man told Mitch proudly before his face contorted in a grimace. “They tied him to a post and shot him in the legs.” He drilled two fingertips against the puckered scars in the hollows of his cheeks. “They shot me through the face as they were running away, and he tended me before he set the shattered bones in his own legs.”
Mitch gulped. His client was a hero, as was the courageous gentleman sitting opposite him. That made his burden of legal defense both easier and more burdensome. Heroes were always easier to defend, but failure would result in a huge miscarriage of justice. He could not let that happen. Glancing at his watch, he saw that he still had time to make the Austin-to-Houston flight if he hurried.
“You’ve been very helpful,” he told the man, switching off his tape recorder and nodding at the friend whose office he had appropriated for this interview.
“I’ll have my secretary type up the deposition,” his friend Dan Creighton offered, “and messenger it to you in Dallas.”
“Thanks. I’ll expect a bill with it.”
Creighton shook his blond head. “I’ll take care of it.”
“You sure?”
“Consider it my contribution to the cause.”
Mitch smiled. Since Dan was assistant counsel to the city of Austin, his endorsement would mean a good deal, a fact Mitch had considered when making his arrangements. He couldn’t wait to tell Piper how the case was shaping up. He wondered how she was feeling, and concern threatened his triumph. True, she’d seemed almost her usual self when he’d stopped by that morning, but he couldn’t help feeling that something was horribly wrong. His father said it was an overreaction on his part born of experience, and Mitch knew that supposition held truth.
Putting away his concern as best as he was able, he shook the hand of his witness, thanking him again for his time and forthrightness.
“You’re helping to bring the murderer of your village to justice,” he said, and the fellow beamed at him, revealing healthy pink gums and sturdy white teeth—those in front, anyway. All the back ones were missing, no doubt destroyed by the bullet that had passed through his face.
“I’ll be in touch,” Mitch promised, pocketing the photo and the tiny tape recorder. Snatching up his briefcase, he nodded once more at his friend and swept from the room, all but jogging toward the elevator.
He made the flight to Houston with minutes to spare, long enough to call Piper on the phone he had borrowed from his mother. She sounded well, said that she was doing some reading and admonished him again not to worry about her. He told himself that he wasn’t worried really—he just liked to hear her voice, and, of course, he wanted to share his discoveries with her.
She was suitably impressed and moved. “You say all his back teeth are missing? Couldn’t something be done? A bridge, dentures, implants?”
Mitch smiled. It would make a suitable reward, but he couldn’t broach the subject until after the case was settled; he must avoid the appearance of purchased testimony. Even then the matter would require diplomatic handling for several reasons. Chiefly, Mitch wouldn’t for the world trample on the man’s dignity by offering unwanted charity.
“I’ll look into it,” he promised. “Gotta go, honey. If everything works as planned, I’ll see you later.”
“Would it be good if I had dinner ready for you?”
“No, no. You just take care of yourself. I’ll grab something along the way.”
“Whatever you say.”
He almost said that he loved her. The words floated on his tongue, and they almost tumbled out of his mouth. Only the shock of realizing they were there at all kept them behind his teeth. He mumbled something about the plane being ready for loading and broke the connection.
Putting back his head, he let the commotion of the crowded airport waiting area fade and thought about what he’d almost said to her. He still didn’t know what God’s purpose was in all of this, but he couldn’t deny what he was feeling. His heart swelled with it. Bright and hopeful, it filled him with a warm glow, and yet it carried the bite of pain beneath the joy of it. If he should lose her, too…
Father God, I need to know. I need to know why You’ve brought her into my life. I need to understand what You want of me where she’s concerned. I know Your plan isn’t to break my heart, but that’s something I can do to myself if I go wrong with her. Please, God. You know I want to be obedient to Your will.
Moments later when the ticket agent called for boarding, Mitch queued up along with everyone else, troubled despite his earnest prayers. His turn came, and he showed his boarding pass, edging through the turnstile to the enclosed ramp. Two women had passed through in front of him, both carrying briefcases, and as he followed them up the short, straight, movable hallway he saw something flutter to the floor.
“Ma’am,” he called, bending to swoop up the business card as the pair stopped and turned. “You dropped this.”
The younger, more smartly dressed of the two smiled and reached out her hand. “Thank you.”
Suddenly struck by the thought of the letter that he had found in just such a manner in another airport, he knew he had to find its owner. Only then would his prayers be fully answered. A throat cleared, and Mitch realized that he was standing in the middle of the narrow ramp, the women having gone on ahead, as of course they should have. With an apologetic glance at his fellow travelers stacking up behind him, he hurried toward the plane, his mind whirring with plans.
Mitch’s second interview of the day followed closely the pattern of the first. If this fellow was more embittered than the other, Mitch deemed it understandable, given that he had no use at all of his right arm.
“One hand,” he said, shaking his left. “One hand with which to feed my family. That is what those bad men did to me. I work in a bakery. Takes me twice as long as anyone else to make the little cakes for frying.” He took a deep breath, calming himsel
f, and added, “In America there is no tribe, no village, but at least there is work. Maa’tobe, he saved the arm, but it is useless.” His brow suddenly furrowed with worry. “You will not tell the Immigration, will you? I refused to answer when they asked me if I could work. Maa’tobe, he told them that I could.”
Mitch felt sure that Immigration was fully aware of this man’s physical condition. How Maa’tobe had talked them into letting the fellow into the country anyway he didn’t know, but it was one more mark in his client’s favor.
“Immigration only cares that you are employed,” Mitch assured the man.
The fellow nodded and told his story with clarity and brevity, confirming all that Mitch had already been told. He barely glanced at the photo of Maa’tobe’s nemesis before curling his lip in disgust.
“That is the one. If I ever see him in person, I’ll stick him with a knife!”
“That’s just what’s got Maa’tobe in trouble,” Mitch told the fellow wryly. “But you’re going to help get him out of it. Okay?”
“Okay, sure. But not because he’s the chief’s son. Because he told the Immigration I could work.”
The chief’s son. Well, well. Wouldn’t Piper find that interesting!
He willfully put aside thoughts of Piper before they could tempt him to forget pursuing another contact in Houston, one he hadn’t planned on but should have. He had allowed himself to be distracted too long from his mission of reuniting the lost letter with its troubled owner.
Turning his attention back to the interview, he made short work of it. His own secretary would transcribe the tape, but to expedite the process he took signed affidavits from the two attorneys and one clerk who sat in on the deposition. Then he checked his watch and found a quiet place in a corridor to use the telephone.
Determined in his quest, he’d switched his flight to a later one before he’d left the Houston airport for the interview. Now he dug out the telephone number of one of the airline passengers whose name he’d been given weeks earlier. It was a business number, and several minutes of persuasion were required before he finally talked his way through to the man himself. Once he’d explained his purpose, he was rewarded, finally, with the information he’d been seeking since he’d first spied that folded sheet of paper on the airport boarding ramp more than two months ago.
“Yeah, now that you mention it,” the voice on the other end of the telephone said, “I did see her drop a piece of paper. It was one of those old-fashioned kinds that you tear off a stationery pad. You know, the sort with light blue lines on it, personal letter size. I didn’t even know they still made that stuff.”
“Her?” Mitch prompted, his heart suddenly pounding in his ears.
“Yeah, the little blonde—or redhead. I guess you call her a strawberry blonde, but to me it was more, I don’t know, polished copper, maybe. Almost garish, if you ask me, but it looked natural.”
“Polished copper,” Mitch echoed, the words nearly choking him. It had to be Piper. It had to be, and yet he couldn’t quite accept that it was. “Did she wear her hair braided?” he choked out.
“Yeah, that’s right. She had a thick braid hanging down her back.”
Mitch couldn’t seem to get his breath. “You’re sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.” The voice sounded slightly offended now. “I tried to tell her, you know, that she’d dropped something, but she just looked at me, right through me, to be precise. You get how they are, the good-looking ones. Snotty, like every guy’s trying to pick them up.” He snorted, and Mitch gritted his teeth. It wasn’t because of the insult, which barely registered.
Surely no other woman on that airplane, maybe in the world, could fit that description but Piper.
Gut roiling, he thanked the fellow for the information, trying not to think how unwelcome it was, and got off the phone. Rubbing a hand over his face, he let the awful truth sink in. It couldn’t be anyone else. That letter belonged to Piper Wynne. Gasping, he tried to wrap his mind around the implications.
She was hiding something—now he was sure of it.
The secret she was protecting, the grief he sensed in her—who had she lost? A child? A son?
Mitch clapped a hand over his heart. Oh, God, please don’t let it be that.
But if it was, then Piper had a much worse secret than one of loss.
He closed his eyes. If she was married…if she was married… He couldn’t even complete the thought.
For long moments he tried not to think at all, but he didn’t have to study the problem to know what he had to do next. Whatever the truth was, he had to know it. Only then would he understand how to proceed.
He bowed his head and poured out his heart, needing courage and strength for what lay ahead. Then finally he took out his cell phone again and dialed local information.
“I need a telephone number for Ransome Wynne.”
He was late, so late—over three hours—that she was quite convinced he wasn’t coming. Obviously something had not gone according to plan, but only the fact that he hadn’t called to explain bothered her. She wasn’t exactly worried, though it did seem un-characteristic of Mitch not to keep in touch, so much so that she’d given in earlier and called the mobile number that he’d left her. When she’d heard his mother’s voice on the recorded greeting, however, she’d hung up without leaving a message.
She considered and rejected, due to the late hour, calling his parents’ house. Surely, at the very least, she would see Mitch tomorrow in the square for lunch. Unable to justify taking another day off, she was determined to go in to work. Perhaps she should call his office and leave a message to that effect. Or perhaps he would call at some atrocious hour, and she could tell him then.
Yes, she decided, he would call in the middle of the night, exhausted and apologetic and full of news about the case—his most interesting to date, as far as she was concerned. And she would be appallingly glad, only too willing to rouse herself from a fitful sleep in order to hear about his day.
Preparing for bed, she brushed her teeth, washed her face and coiled her hair, pinning it up on top of her head so that she could sleep comfortably without rolling over and yanking herself awake every hour or so. She had just kicked off her shoes and pulled her T-shirt over her head when she heard a tapping at her door; elation shot through her.
The misery that had swamped her these past two days evaporated like so much smoke. Mitch was home! She slipped the T-shirt back on and hurried into the living room in stocking feet, a smile blossoming on her face.
“You didn’t have to come by this late,” she said, opening the door, “but I’m glad you did.”
He stood for a moment, shoulders hunched against the chill night, and regarded her from beneath the crag of his brow. Not the greeting she had expected. A tiny alarm bell sounded in the deepest recesses of her mind. Finally he stepped over the threshold.
He rubbed a hand over his face, palm rasping against the dark shadow of his unshaven jaw. “I brought you something.”
A gift? she wondered. More likely a remedy.
“I feel fine,” she told him. “I’ve already laid out my work clothes for tomorrow, so your only concern for tonight should be yourself.” She touched a hand to his face. “You look tired.”
He nodded and reached into his pocket, extracting a folded sheet of paper. “But you need this, Piper, and I need to talk to you about it. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?” she asked, gingerly taking the paper from him. She glanced at it, saw the looping black lines of script and felt horror wash over her. “I don’t understand. Where did you get this?”
He simply regarded her, slowly tilting his head to one side. “You don’t remember dropping it?”
She couldn’t think what he meant, didn’t want to imagine how he might have come into possession of this. She shivered. He knew.
“You really don’t remember dropping it,” he concluded on a sigh. “I can’t imagine how that can be, but you obviou
sly don’t. This is the letter that I found in the airport just before I boarded the plane in Houston on the day we met. It belongs to you.”
She shook her head. He knew!
“Look at it again.”
Mechanically she unfolded the letter and briefly scanned the top few lines.
“…of him will surely never subside,” it began, “and will one day be, not a cross to bear, but a cherished joy. His memory will sustain us until—”
She refolded the letter with trembling hands. This was it, then. “You know.”
“Of course I know!” Mitch snapped, suddenly angry. “It’s part of the letter that your brother, Gordon, pinned to your front door the day before you ran away!”
She wrapped her arms around herself, as if that could keep her from spinning apart. She’d found the letter as she was leaving the house for the final time that last morning, and she’d stuck it into her handbag, unopened. Later, waiting at the airport gate, she’d gone so far as to slit the seal and remove the pages from the envelope, but she hadn’t been able to force her eyes past the salutation.
“I never read that letter,” she whispered, one more condemning fact in a long list of them.
All the anger seemed to drain out of Mitch. “Oh, Piper,” he said.
She couldn’t believe that this was happening to her. This ridiculous accident was going to cost her everything, all that was left. But then, she’d always known that something would.
“You’ve obviously read this,” she said, waving the letter at him. She was aware that her tone was faintly accusing and that it was unfair, but she couldn’t help herself.
“Yes.”
“All this interest, all this effort—airlines sending out notices to planeloads of passengers!—for a single page of an unread letter!”
Mitch looked stricken, and for the first time that evening he reached out to her. “Piper, I believe that my finding that letter was no accident. I can help you if you’ll let me.”