by Janice Olson
“Tell me how you came to work for her. What was she like? Did you like working for her? How long have you worked here anyway?” BJ stopped, feeling a little foolish with her rush of questions.
“I’ll start with your last question first.” He took a swig of tea setting the cup back on the counter.
“After being in the military for twenty years, I retired. Never married and no family to speak of, I didn’t have any particular place in mind to settle down. One place was as good as the next.
“I was passing through Serenity and heard The Rose was looking for a steward. I applied. Mr. O’Connell hired me on the spot. I believe, with his military background, my Air Force experience had a lot to do with why he offered me the job. And I’ve been here ever since. Thirty-six years now.” Sidney hesitated, a reflective glint in his eyes. “At first, I didn’t really know what I was doing, but over time …”
BJ enjoyed listening to Sidney. She tucked away the small scraps he offered about Madelyne, tidbits of information he’d unwittingly given to her, her appetite ravenous for knowledge of someone who could be so devious, yet liked so well by those in her employ.
The desire to become familiar and understand the woman who had taken pains to autocratically arrange BJ’s life was first and foremost. Questions churned, tumbled, pulverizing all her previous notions of who she believed the woman to be. Irritated, that while Sidney talked, the ever-tipping scale of knowledge that the woman had been impeccably charitable left BJ with the knowledge she would never begin to comprehend Madelyne’s complexities. Her thrust for knowledge of the woman, who played god with her life and now dangled the carrot of hidden secrets in front of her nose, outweighed all reason.
Yet, when Sidney finished, Madelyne Loveless McConnell was still a mystery.
Chapter 47
The sun peeked above the horizon to the east and the sky had turned from black to light blue with gray. The reddish-orange clouds gave off an eerie blood-like glow to the rising sun. Jason normally loved this time in the morning, but not today. Worry festered like an ulcer in his gut. His Jeep bounced over potholes and ruts, spitting rocks pinged his undercarriage. If it hadn’t been for the seat belt holding fast, he would have been a statistic by now.
Up ahead, he saw his ranch truck, but no sign of Mateo. He let up on the gas pedal and stomped the brake, skidding on the gravel and dirt while he cramped his wheels to the left and the Jeep came to a stop at the edge of the drop off. He released his seat belt, jumped down at a run, as dust settled from the air and the forlorn sound of a whining siren grew closer with each second.
Stopping at the rim, he glanced at the cattle off in the distance. Down in the ravine, he spotted two men near the bottom hovered over a form—Reuben? The morning sun hadn’t reached the gully and destroyed his ability to see what was taking place.
Jason half-slid, half-ran down the steep angle to the bottom. Mateo looked up at him, his dark eyes red-rimmed and puffy. Jason’s heart slammed against his chest, a scream erupted in his head. He prayed hard as he slid to a stop, pleading for Reuben’s life.
He dropped to his knees. The battered, swollen face of the young man didn’t look like Reuben. Mateo held his shirt to his son’s shoulder, while he spoke gentle, loving words to the unconscious boy.
Sam pressed a blood-sopped rag against Reuben’s chest. He shook his head before looking away, tears brimming at the edge of the old man’s lashes.
“His pulse is weak.” Mateo choked out the words. “And he’s lost so much blood.”
“Found him lying under that there brush.” Sam’s head jerked, indicating a scraggly mesquite a couple of feet up the hill. The old man’s craggy features were riddled with hate and vengeance. “The dirty cowards half drag, half carried, then dumped him there, trying to hide him from sight.” He spat on the ground. “Wouldn’t have found him if the knuckleheads hadn’t left his scatter gun behind. The kid didn’t even get off a shot. It’s still in the chamber.” He spit again and said a few choice words.
A noise at the top of the hill drew their attention. Chief Doggett and two paramedics stared down at them.
The chief shoved his hat further up his forehead. He cupped his hands over his mouth. “Do the paramedics need a stretcher or a body bag?”
Chapter 48
BJ, hand shielding her eyes from the glare, watched Randi drive out of sight. As if poked with a shot of adrenalin, BJ ran inside and upstairs to her room. She didn’t exactly want to mislead Randi when she had asked what was going on, but BJ knew telling Randi would mean Randi would never leave for Austin. She wasn’t about to let that happen because she needed Randi back here as soon as possible to get Heritage House in order.
Inside her hoodie pocket her fingers circled the key. Pain stabbed like a knife. Madelyne had been cruel and misleading all along. And though BJ feared what she might find in the lockbox, she still had to know.
The trip to the bank took less time than BJ wanted. She sat staring at Serenity First Bank waffling about entering. How would she get inside the vault? Weren’t there procedures, with signature match? Her nervous fingers reached for the car door handle. Two beefy hands clamped over her open window and prevented her from opening the door. Looking up, her heart stopped.
Chief Doggett shoved his face within inches of hers. “What do you think you’re doing here? Didn’t I warn you to leave town. I guess you haven’t learned who runs this Serenity yet.”
Wearing dark glasses, she couldn’t see his eyes, but she could feel the pure hate emanating from him.
Her temper flared and she shoved her old fears aside. Through clenched teeth she said, “Get your hands off my door.”
When he didn’t move, she grabbed her purse, pulled her keys out of the ignition, and pressed the panic button on the keypad. Above the den of the blasting horn BJ asked, “Do I need to scream also?”
People on the sidewalk stopped and gawked at them.
“Don’t think for a minute this is over between us. You’ll regret your actions.” Chief Doggett removed his hands, stood back, then sauntered across the street to his car.
BJ depressed the button stopping the noise. She sat back collecting her jumbled nerves while the sidewalk gapers lost interest and moved on.
Seeing that Doggett sat in his car watching, and not wanting him to think he’d bested her, BJ got out of the car and headed for the bank, her insides quaking.
The cool bank brought a welcome relief to her overwrought nerves and heated temper. BJ walked to a center table, pulled out her checkbook, and although she didn’t need the money, she wrote a check out to cash for one hundred dollars, then moved to a cashier’s window. The simple task calmed her and helped to shove the whole incident with Doggett out of her mind.
After receiving her cash, BJ moved toward the woman who helped her open the checking account several weeks back. Guarded and worried, she wondered if she could gain entrance to the vault. BJ nervously fingered the key in her hand as she approached the woman.
“Good morning, Mrs. Jenkins.”
“Good morning, Ms. Spencer. What may I do for you?”
Pleasantly surprised the accounts manager remembered her, BJ held out the brass key. “I have this key. I believe—”
“Do you need to get into your safety deposit box?”
“Yes, please.” The woman stood, not making any move to take the key from her. BJ closed her fingers around her future and her past.
“One moment. I’ll get the vault key and your signature card.”
“Card?” Her voice faded when she noticed Mrs. Jenkins was well out of earshot.
More than a little disconcerted, BJ stared blankly at the gaping door where the woman had disappeared. She hadn’t signed a card, just documents the first time she was here, and she knew that without paperwork she wouldn’t be allowed to access the box.
Mrs. Jenkins returned with a large oval key ring dangling from her wrist and a card in her hand.
“If you’ll follow me, please.�
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“Mrs. Jenkins, I don’t recall signing a card.”
The woman made an abrupt stop, gave the card a thorough inspection before she held it out to BJ. “This is your signature, isn’t it?” Tiny questioning lines squiggled across the woman’s forehead.
The manager couldn’t have been more puzzled than BJ when she saw her signature written at the top. Instant recognition flashed in her mind. “Yes, that’s my signature.”
Mrs. Jenkins pulled back the card, a satisfied smile in place as she proceeded toward a hallway at the rear of the bank.
BJ barely remembered the card she’d signed right after graduation. Headmistress Simmons had said it was a formality for their records and all children had to sign a card upon leaving the home. And since BJ would be heading off to college in September, the headmistress felt it best to get the formality out of the way.
Without a doubt, Madelyne had instigated the ruse.
Mrs. Jenkins’ idle chitchat circled around BJ while her mind whirled over the many possibilities of her identity. The contents of her stomach came up into her throat. Her legs didn’t want to support her one step further. By sheer determination, BJ pushed the nausea back down where it belonged and followed Mrs. Jenkins down the little narrow hall with dark paneled walls, away from the lobby noise.
The one-foot thick steel door stood ajar. They passed through the opening into a cool, austere room. The atmosphere more like a prison than a place of answers. Three walls of brass drawer fronts in various sizes, with small handles and brass numbers, reached from floor to ceiling. BJ wondered how many of the tiny boxes concealed secrets inside, playing god with peoples’ lives, holding answers.
She wasn’t sure if she really wanted to know where she came from, who her parents were, why she’d been left at the orphanage at the age of three months. Her mother didn’t want her, didn’t claim any knowledge of her. For BJ, not knowing held a kind of security, a defense mechanism, just as the certainty of knowing who she was held fear and panic.
What if she were opening Pandora’s box? Once opened, she could never close it again to go back to life as normal.
Her eyes gazed at the thick, polished brass bars in the middle of the back wall. Closed, locked in place, covering the opening into a darkened vault. The significance of those bars seemed to represent the total sum of BJ.
She had been held in a prison of not knowing, wondering, yet torn up inside over not being loved or wanted. Standing always in the darkness of ambiguity—a void of sorts. Looking out through invisible bars, bars that held her behind Heritage’s doors, never allowing entrance to the other side. And later, her own self-imposed prison of not getting involved for fear of rejection.
But the whys were the worst of all. Why wasn’t she loved and wanted like other children—normal children?
Jarred to the present by the manager’s silence, BJ noticed the woman bent over a table, writing on a ledger sheet. BJ looked about. The only other objects in the room were a chair, trash can, stepstool, and a black, out-of-date rotary telephone hanging on the wall. She didn’t realize that type of telephone still existed.
To BJ’s already frayed nerves, the silence of the room, with the scratching of the pen, was deafening. Cold reached deep inside, making her wish she could roll up into a fetal position and hide from what she would find in the box. Her mother may have been too young to care for her. But what if her mother was a drug addict, or even worst, BJ was a product of … rape.
“I will need you to sign your name and date it with today’s date.” Mrs. Jenkins pointed to the sheet where she’d marked an X. “And if you’ll give me the key, I’ll open your box.”
BJ handed over the key that seemed seared into the palm of her hand and signed the ledger. She turned to watch the manager insert the bank key, then her own, into one of the largest boxes on the wall, middle way down. She extracted the bank key but left BJ’s in place.
After the manager checked BJ’s signature against the card she still held in her hand, she smiled. “Please make use of the desk to go through the box. In the drawer—” She pointed to the table. “—you’ll find a cloth bag if you wish to remove or take anything with you. Once you’re finished with your safety deposit box, slip it back in, close the door, and twist the key. If you need anything, just pick up the receiver.” She motioned toward the antiquated phone on the wall. “It rings at my desk.”
BJ waited until the manager left the room before moving to the safety deposit box. Her fingers wrapped around the thin cold handle and pulled. To her surprise the container slid out effortlessly and into her waiting palm. Heavier than BJ realized, the contents shifted and the box almost fell to the floor. She grasped the container with both hands, placed it on the table, hesitant to look inside.
Before courage could desert her, BJ opened the lid.
From inside she removed a host of small jewel cases, a blue cloth zipper bag, quite heavy with the jingling sound of coins, and something else. At the very bottom of the container she found documents, letters, and papers, some quite yellowed with age.
BJ forgot about the contents on the table. But one by one, she opened the documents until she came across—Certificate of Birth … Billy Jo Loveless.
Chapter 49
The medicinal smells of Trinity Hospital and the underlying hum of the facility gnawed at Jason. Absorbed with old memories of sitting in this same surgical waiting room five years ago, Jason fought his personal demons. Back then, time dragged on, just like now, as he waited for results, suffocating with fear, remembering all too well the outcome.
Lindsey … a lifetime ago.
He brushed a hand over his eyes, doing his best to wipe away the resurrected demons of his past. The images roamed arbitrarily through his mind from the moment he had stepped into the hospital. Her death, senseless, the same as Reuben’s shooting. Both were circumstances gone awry and out of his control.
His gaze traveled to his foreman and the family gathered, fear for their companion.
Mateo sat, his head back against the wall, eyes closed, but Jason knew his friend didn’t sleep. Ever so slightly his lips moved—prayers most likely. His wife Rosa sat beside him, knitting needles clickety-clacking as strings of baby blue yarn came together in a long succession of tiny, perfect rows. Earlier, Rosa had mentioned Joseph, their middle born, had called only yesterday to say he would be a proud papa in six months. Rosa espoused the belief it would be a boy, consequently the blue blanket for her already beloved soon-to-be grandchild.
Jason’s child would have been a boy. But Lindsey … Let it go.
He knew all too well the death of Reuben would leave a gaping hole in Rosa and Mateo that would take an eternity to heal, if ever.
That couldn’t happen. His prayer … a quiet utterance.
Mateo’s and Rosa’s other two sons and their families had arrived about an hour ago, hovering together as a unit, silent, each with their own thoughts and memories, yet all feeling pain. Occasionally someone would tell a story about Reuben. There would be laughter, but always the lingering fear would filter back into the room, surround them with a dark cloak of uncertainty.
Watching the relationships between Mateo and Rosa and their children caused a potent desire in Jason for a family. But he had never had much success in that department. He needed someone that wouldn’t desert him and leave him behind as they seemed to always do.
A mental picture of BJ surfaced, and just as quickly he snuffed out his strong yearnings. He was better off on his own. Less complications. No one to worry over as Mateo and Rosa were doing now.
Reuben. Four hours since they’d rolled him into surgery and still no word about him.
Jason shoved up from the chair, paced over to the window that overlooked the parking lot. His hand kneaded the tight muscle in his neck as he looked out beyond the room and saw the backdrop of the mega dot com skyline of Austin. Beyond the buildings, cars flew up and down I-35, oblivious to the scenario playing out in Trinity’s surgical waiti
ng room.
Why did he agree to use Reuben? It sounded reasonable at the time, but now … He should have been on duty himself. Too young, too inexperienced, and it wasn’t Reuben’s job to take on such a responsibility. And if he dies, what then?
A silent stirring brought instant awareness that someone had entered, pulling Jason’s attention from the window to the entrance of the waiting room. In green scrubs, the surgeon, Dr. Richardson, moved toward the family. A multicolor surgical hat covered thin grey strands with long sprigs of hair hanging low on his neck while other wisps poked out at odd angles, giving the notion he wasn’t fond of haircuts.
Jason blocked out the onslaught of bad news that rushed in with the sight of the doctor. No matter what the outcome, he alone held full responsibility for what had happened to Reuben. Someone would pay.
Mateo stood, stretching a hand toward Rosa. Her knitting needles dropped to the table and the sound seemed to bounce off the walls jarring the room into action. The family gathered and surrounded their parents, almost like a barrier to ward off any bad news and to support them whatever the outcome. One huddled mass. All hoping for the best, but fearing the worst.
“Mr. and Mrs. Hernandez?” The practiced look of one carrying bad news was drawn on the doctor’s face. “Reuben lost a lot of blood before he arrived at the hospital. When we took him into surgery his vitals were low.”
Rosa slumped into her husband’s side, her one hand covering her quivering lips. Mateo slipped an arm around her waist, pulling her up tight against him, seemingly bolstering her with his strength. Concern rode deep in the lines of his face and dark-rimmed eyes. The grown children hovered close to their parents, adding their strength.
The doctor rubbed one finger over his eyelid before he continued. “The bullet in his shoulder passed straight through the tissue. We were able to repair the tear in his muscle and close up the front and back wounds without much trouble. But the bullet in his chest was a different matter. It deflected off one of his ribs and did a lot of damage inside. One lung …”