“Last weekend? That couldn’t be a coincidence.”
“Probably not. Collectors tend to baby their cars, so they don’t use them for everyday errands. I’m guessing the owner of that yellow car your neighbor saw brought it out for the show.”
“Then you can contact the group who organized the show!”
“That’s the first step. Odds are good that the person we’re after is a member, or that I’ll find someone who knows him.”
Amelia closed her eyes briefly. She exhaled on a sigh. “Hank, this is wonderful. Thank you so much for helping me.”
“I haven’t found anything yet, Amelia.”
“I know, but at least you’ve given me hope.”
Her anxiety over the painting appeared as genuine as it had when they’d met in his office. Now that he’d seen for himself how she’d been living, he could understand how she might be feeling emotionally raw. That made it more difficult for him to broach the next subject. “Do you believe that Ruth’s observations are reliable?”
“For sure. And with all the gardening she does, she likely knows everything that goes on in the neighborhood.”
“Then I hope you could explain something to me. She was certain she saw your family celebrating on Sunday afternoon.”
“What?”
“She said you had just gotten home.”
Amelia wiped her palms on her knees. “Sunday?”
“In the afternoon. Ruth saw you hugging Jenny and Will. She said the boys joined in, too.”
“That was before I found out the painting was missing.”
“What was going on?”
“Jenny made more than five hundred dollars at the yard sale.”
“Was that what you were celebrating?”
“Five hundred dollars is a lot of money.”
“From what Ruth described, you appeared very excited. I just wondered whether there was more to it. Was there?”
“Why would you ask that?”
“You seem nervous, and you’re not looking at me.”
She rubbed her knees once more, then folded her hands in her lap. “Money’s a sensitive subject for me.”
“Sorry.”
“And I don’t appreciate being given the third degree. If I had a dollar for every time people have given me attitude about the fortune I lost, I’d be halfway to getting it back by now.”
“I wasn’t giving you attitude, Amelia, or the third degree. I was just trying to make sense of what I heard. That’s how I work.”
“Well, what Ruth observed had nothing to do with the painting. It wasn’t until we came inside that I saw it was gone.”
“I see.”
“Good. Then let’s concentrate on that. What happens next?”
“Hmm?”
“Once you find out who owns that yellow car.”
“Then I go and talk to him.”
“In person?”
“That’s right. I prefer to speak with people face-to-face whenever possible. It gets better results. It’s too easy to say no over the phone.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“Why?”
“I could help. He might be more willing to talk to a couple than to a man on his own.”
“I do have some experience conducting interviews.”
“Why wouldn’t you want me along? We both want the same thing, don’t we?”
Hank always worked alone. It was one of the aspects of his profession that he truly enjoyed. He had never allowed a client to interfere with his methods, much less accompany him on an investigation. “What about your own job at Mae B’s?” he asked. “Won’t you be too busy?”
“They let me go.”
“What? When?”
“Yesterday. They gave my job to the owner’s niece.”
“Amelia, I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “I’ll find something else, but at the moment I have plenty of spare time so there’s no reason why I shouldn’t help you. It’s only fair, since you’re waiving your fee. And besides...” She smiled. “It would be more efficient if we work together. You wouldn’t need to waste time giving me updates.”
Her smile set off another flash from the past. It was the first full smile Amelia had given him in more than a decade, and like everything else she did, she put herself into it one hundred percent. Eagerness shone from her face. Her lips curved, her cheeks dimpled and her eyes gleamed the familiar, unique blue-green that made his brain shut down.
He’d never had any defense against that smile. His reasons for refusing her seemed trivial when weighed against the prospect of spending more time in her company. Sure, he normally worked alone, yet he’d known this case would be anything but normal from the moment Amelia had shown up at his office. It wasn’t merely curiosity that had convinced him to help her. He would have gone along with whatever she’d asked, regardless of how slim the chances of success, because his knee-jerk reaction had been to make her happy.
It still was.
Terrific. Obviously, nothing had truly changed in the past fifteen years. Amelia was still smart enough to talk circles around him. She still had the ability to wrap him around her little freckled finger.
And apparently, when it came to Amelia, Hank was still a fool.
CHAPTER FIVE
A ROW OF ragged spireas grew along the side of the garage and partially blocked the only window. Amelia lifted her arms to keep them from getting scratched, twisted around and used her back to push her way between the bushes. Once she reached the wall, she discovered that the window was coated with several years’ worth of grime. She cleared a peephole with the heel of her hand and leaned close to the glass. Although there was an hour to go before sunset, an ominously dark bank of clouds towered in the west, bringing an early dusk. “I can’t see anything, Hank,” she said. She cupped her hands around her eyes. “It’s too dim.”
“Hang on.” Branches rustled as Hank joined her. He took a handkerchief from the back pocket of his jeans and expanded the circle she’d cleaned, then clicked on a small flashlight and angled it against the window. The narrow beam slanted through the shadows inside the garage to reveal a dull, flat expanse of pale blue fabric.
“That doesn’t look like a car,” she said.
Hank passed her the handkerchief, waited while she wiped off her palm, then folded the cloth dirty-side-in and returned it to his pocket. He continued his inspection of the garage. “It’s a tarp. There’s a car underneath.”
She squinted. He was right. The fabric was draped over a large, bulky shape that could only be a car. “That’s got to be it.”
Hank continued to play his light over the tarp until he reached the lower edge. There was a sudden glint from a chrome bumper and the gleam of a highly polished fender. A yellow fender. “It’s the right color, and the shape does correspond to a fifty-seven Chevy. Whether it’s the right car remains to be seen.”
She knew that Hank was cautious by nature—after all, what other man his age would carry a clean handkerchief in his jeans?—so she tried to contain her impatience. He must know what he was doing. He had been right about the car jogging her sister-in-law’s memory. As soon as Amelia had described what Ruth had observed, Jenny had remembered how the man who had bought the painting had wrapped it in a quilt he’d had in his car trunk. She hadn’t noticed what model of car it had been, since she’d had to deal with other customers at the same time, but she did remember glimpsing bright yellow.
Amelia had relayed the information to Hank immediately, but it had taken him two days to get a response from someone at the car club who had organized the show last weekend, and another two days to learn which members had a fondness for canary-yellow paint. Of the six who owned cars of the right era that came close to the right color, three lived out west and two were in Quebec. Only one, Kemp Forsythe, whose spirea bushes they were currently standing in, lived within an hour’s drive of Port Hope.
“It’s the car, Hank.”
“Possibly.”
Still don’t like to make a commitment, do you? she thought. She swatted at a mosquito that hummed near her ear and turned to study Kemp Forsythe’s house. According to Hank’s research, the man owned a small computer repair business in town, and had lived at this address for twelve years. No one had answered the door when they’d arrived, and the windows were still dark, despite the rapidly deepening dusk. The ranch-style, brick bungalow appeared to be around thirty years old and was set well back from the road. A cornfield stretched out behind it and at least two acres of yellowed grass plus an apple orchard separated it from the nearest neighbor. The road itself was a winding, potholed length of tarred gravel that branched off a county road twenty kilometers north of the highway.
Hank had driven most of the way under the speed limit. Part of the reason for that might have been due to his choice of vehicle. For a man whose father owned a car dealership, he drove a remarkably unremarkable sedan. It was sensible, gray and at least six years old. She likely could have coaxed more speed out of Will’s old Chevette.
“We’ll give him another half hour,” Hank said. “If he doesn’t show up, we’ll come back tomorrow or next week. Tuesday evenings are usually good for finding people at home.”
“Come back? No way. My painting’s here. It has to be. We can’t leave.”
“Seeing how it’s Saturday, we could have a long wait.” Lightning flickered through the clouds, followed by a rolling grumble of thunder. Hank reached past her to push aside the branches that blocked her path. “Storm’s going to break soon. We can’t stay out here.”
There wasn’t much space between the bushes and the garage wall. His chest nudged her shoulder, his arm slid against hers, and instantly, warmth tingled across her skin.
The memory of another summer evening stole into her mind, when Hank had driven her to the lakeshore in the old jalopy he’d been so proud of. They’d left their shoes in the car and had gone to the water’s edge to watch a storm roll in. The breeze had been heavy with the smell of seaweed, wet sand and impending rain. The air had crackled, both from the storm and from their own sense of something about to happen. Their typical teenaged garb of shorts and T-shirts had turned every casual touch into the delicious feel of skin against skin. That had been the night their friendship had entered new territory, one they’d both been enthusiastic to explore. They’d begun the journey by sharing their first kiss....
Hank eased farther to the side, breaking the contact.
More thunder, louder than before. Amelia could sense electricity in the air now, too. She exhaled slowly and maneuvered out of the spireas. She brushed herself off more briskly than necessary. It didn’t work. The memories clung like static-charged lint. “We could try phoning him.”
“Do you have somewhere else you need to be?”
“No, of course not. Finding the painting is my number one priority.”
“Do you have an issue with the way I work?”
“No.”
“But?”
She crossed her arms. “But I’m not good at waiting.”
“Wow, really? You? Never would have guessed.” He looked pointedly at her right hand.
She was tapping her fingers against her upper arm. She slid her hands into the pockets of her shorts. “We know where he works. We could have talked to him there.”
“Sure, but if he’s got the painting, it’s more likely to be in his house. If he agrees to sell it back to you, we don’t want to give him any opportunity to change his mind.”
“If he agrees?”
“Another reason to speak with him in person. It’s too easy to say no over the phone.”
“Okay, you told me that before, and I understand your reasoning, but—”
“Relax, Amelia. There could be plenty of simple explanations why he’s not here yet. He could have a date. He might have decided to work overtime, or he might have had a flat tire on the way home. Or he could have bitten down on a walnut shell in a muffin at lunch and needed emergency dental surgery.”
Yes, there were lots of possible reasons why Forsythe wasn’t home, more than fifty-two million of them. He could have found the ticket. He could already have gone to the lottery office to cash it in. He might have been burning rubber down Highway 401 to Toronto while Hank had been poking his way along the back roads as if he had all the time in the world.
Lightning forked over the line of trees beyond the cornfield. The crash that followed was loud enough to make her jump.
“We’d better get in the car,” Hank said.
She resumed her study of the house. They had only knocked at the door—they hadn’t tried the knob. They hadn’t tried the windows, either. One of them might be unlocked. The orchard blocked the view of the neighbors, and the approaching storm was making it darker by the second.
“Don’t even think it, Amelia.”
“What?”
“We’re not breaking in.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to take a closer look. We might be able to spot the painting through a window.”
“And then what? We still need to wait for Forsythe. I said I would help you, but that doesn’t extend to committing a crime.” Fat droplets splatted in warning as the wind kicked up dust and bits of dried grass around them. He grasped her arm and turned her toward the driveway. “Come on. It’s starting to rain.”
Would he consider breaking in if he knew about the ticket? Would he be tempted to compromise his principles for fifty-two million dollars?
Knowing Hank, she doubted he would. The boy she remembered wouldn’t have taken a risk like that. Neither would the hankie-carrying, slow-driving man he’d become. If she wanted to search the house for the painting, she would have to come back on her own.
They returned to Hank’s car. Within minutes, the downpour was pelting the roof and streaming over the windows in silver sheets. The dampness made Amelia shiver. She pulled her heels onto her seat and wrapped her arms around her legs.
This was how that memorable evening by the lakeshore had gone, too. They’d been half-soaked by the time they’d reached Hank’s car. They hadn’t cared. They’d shivered together, keeping each other warm, laughing at the fogged-up windows and secretly wishing the storm would never end.
“You cold?” Hank asked, raising his voice over the drumming rain.
“I’m fine.”
He reached into the backseat and retrieved a denim jacket. “Here. Use this.”
“No, I’m okay.”
He draped the jacket over her knees like a blanket and tucked it behind her shoulders. “It’s all part of the service.”
She breathed shallowly for a while, trying to ignore the scent that clung to the denim collar. It was no use. Even after more than a decade, she recognized the smell of Hank’s skin, in particular the scent of his jaw and the back of his neck. It was pure...Hank, untinged by anything other than a trace of Irish Spring soap, which had been his favorite brand in the old days, too. He hadn’t used any styling products in his hair—he wouldn’t have thought of it—and he’d seldom used aftershave, on those occasions when he’d actually needed to shave. She couldn’t detect any now, either.
Spencer had been the opposite. He’d been meticulous about getting his short hair trimmed every two weeks and wouldn’t step out the door without inspecting his reflection in the mirror at least three times. He’d used a sandalwood-scented balm to minimize the irritation from his razor, since he’d shaved twice a day. He’d had a heavy beard, and had been concerned he would appear slightly piratical when his five-o’clock shadow set in. She’d thought his concern was groundless, because Spencer had been the picture of buttoned-down fastidiousness, and trustworthiness, and honesty.
She’d truly been an idiot.
“If you’re still cold, I can run the heater awhile.”
“No, thanks, really, I’m fine.” She paused, then added, “As long as you don’t count being stuck in a thunderstorm in the middle of nowhere while we wait for some computer geek to finish gallivanting aro
und town.”
“In my business, you get used to it.”
She thumped the back of her head against the headrest a few times. “It’s going to be a week tomorrow since I lost that painting.”
“I’m doing all I can, Amelia.”
“I realize that, Hank, and I appreciate your efforts. I’m just...”
“Not good at waiting.”
“Me? Really?”
He chuckled. The car seat creaked as he shifted his weight to lean his shoulder against the door. He rested one elbow on the steering wheel. “This case is progressing pretty well, considering what we started with. We’ve made more headway than I thought we would.”
“That’s encouraging. I think.”
“It is.”
“I hope this isn’t taking too much time away from your other cases.”
“I can manage.”
She held on to the edges of his jacket to keep it in place and turned her head toward him. Though the shadows hid his expression, his body language appeared relaxed. The Hank she used to know had been unflappable. She couldn’t recall seeing him panicked over anything. That hadn’t meant he didn’t have feelings. He did, only he kept his deep inside. “I hope this isn’t cutting into your social life, either,” she said.
“Don’t worry about that.”
“I mean, it is Saturday night.”
“I’m not seeing anyone, Amelia, if that’s what you were getting at.”
It was, but she’d really had no business asking. “I suppose your profession means you need to work odd hours.”
“From time to time. Most of the stuff I do is pretty routine.”
“Can you give me an example? Or is that privileged?”
“Not as long as I don’t name names. Last week I got some video to prove a guy was faking a bad back. Week before that, I tracked down a woman whose brother needed her signature so he could close the sale on their family farm.” He lifted his palm. “Port Hope isn’t exactly a hotbed of intrigue.”
“I heard you work for your father sometimes.”
“Will told you about that loan, did he?”
“Yes, but he understands.” It was only half a lie, since Will did grasp the reasons he’d been turned down. He just wasn’t very understanding. She rested her chin on her knees. The jacket collar tickled her cheek. “What made you decide to go into detective work? I don’t remember you mentioning it when we were kids.”
Winning Amelia Page 6