The letter practically burned the fingers of her right hand. She held it close to her side, hoping Gail wouldn’t notice.
“Did you want to see the garage?” Gail asked. She shifted from one stiletto heel to the other, obviously baffled as to how to respond to finding a minister’s wife in a possibly compromising situation.
“Yes, that would be great,” Kate said, but she couldn’t figure out how to get the letter back in the desk without alerting Gail as to what she’d done.
She followed Gail out of the bedroom and, with the other woman’s back to her, stuffed the letter into her purse. Sending up a quick prayer for forgiveness, since she was on shaky moral ground, she hooked her purse back over her shoulder and tried to keep up with Gail’s brisk strides.
WHEN KATE LEFT Mavis Bixby’s house, Paul still hadn’t returned from his meeting since his truck wasn’t in the driveway. The Ministers Association must have been enjoying their ribs quite thoroughly. The return walk across the lawn to her own home seemed a hundred miles long, and her purse hung heavily on her shoulder.
Some minister’s wife.
Why hadn’t she simply shown the letter to Gail? Instinct had held her back, bid her act against her morals. And once she’d tucked the letter in her purse, it was too late. She was committed to her course.
But what course was that exactly? She still couldn’t prove that Mavis Bixby’s abrupt departure could be classified as a disappearance. There were few hard facts to suggest anything sinister. Still, small details troubled her: Mavis’ lack of intimates in the midst of such a close-knit community. Her use of general delivery instead of her home address. The pierced and sinister young man asking around town about her. And the fact that no one could tell her where Mavis had gone.
Even Paul thought she was overreacting, so how was she ever going to tell her pastor-husband about the letter she’d taken from Mavis’ home? Perhaps Paul was right. She’d gotten so carried away because of the mysteries she’d solved since moving to Copper Mill that she was seeing subterfuge and intrigue where none existed.
Kate let herself into the house and went to the kitchen to put the kettle on the stove. A cup of tea always helped clarify her thoughts when they were muddled.
She flipped on the faucet and was filling the kettle when the phone rang. Kate plucked up the receiver. “Hello?” Perhaps a mundane phone call about Sunday-school materials or the next women’s fellowship meeting would take her mind off Mavis Bixby for a few minutes.
“Hello?” Kate repeated when the person on the other end remained silent.
“Quit stirring up trouble,” a gravelly voice finally whispered. “Stay out of other people’s business.”
A shiver ran through Kate. “Who is this?”
“Mind your own beeswax,” the man said more loudly. “Or you’ll be sorry.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. What do you mean?” Kate knew very well what the caller was talking about, but she wanted to keep him on the line.
“Mavis Bixby is fine. Leave her alone.”
The tingling down Kate’s spine became a full-fledged shiver.
“I need to speak with her,” Kate improvised. “I have something that belongs to her, something I think she’d want to have.”
The caller paused. “Lady, you can’t do anything for her. Stay out of it.”
With a click, the line went dead. Kate grasped the receiver tightly, still pressing it to her ear.
“Wait!” But it was too late. Her knees began to shake, and she returned the receiver to its cradle, her fingers uncurling from their death grip.
So, it hadn’t been her overactive imagination after all. Something was very, very wrong. Her gaze went to her purse on the countertop. She couldn’t open the letter herself—possessing it was bad enough—but she knew someone who could.
Kate scooped up her purse and her car keys from the kitchen counter and headed out the door.
Chapter Six
Kate drove the five miles north to Pine Ridge and parked on the street across from the antebellum courthouse. The building was one of the town’s historical treasures, with its combination of tall white Grecian columns and severely proportional Federalist-style windows, and it graced the Pine Ridge town square like Scarlett O’Hara holding court at Twelve Oaks. The courthouse had been used as a Union hospital during the Civil War, and visitors could still see graffiti scribbled on the walls by the soldiers.
Rather than take the wide steps that led to the main entrance, Kate made her way down the side of the building to another outside entrance marked Harrington County Sheriff’s Office. She had never been to Alan Robert’s headquarters before, since he could so often be found in Copper Mill, either at the Town Hall or eating a piece of lemon meringue pie at the Country Diner, but when Kate called Town Hall earlier, Skip had told her the sheriff was at his main office. Kate found these more formal surroundings a little more intimidating.
A middle-aged woman with frosted hair sat behind the reception desk.
“Good morning,” she said with a polite, if not effusive, smile. The sign on her desk said “Rosalie Merriman.”
“Hello. My name is Kate Hanlon. I need to speak with the sheriff, if he’s not too busy.”
“The sheriff’s tied up at the moment, Mrs.Hanlon. If you don’t mind waiting . . .”—she waved toward the handful of vinyl-and-chrome chairs near her desk—“I’ll let him know you’re here as soon as he’s available.”
“Thank you.” Kate’s purse hung from her shoulder like a dead weight, even though she knew the only undue pressure on her at the moment came from a guilty conscience.
The letter bothered her more than the phone call she’d received earlier. Now that she’d had the drive to the sheriff’s office in Pine Ridge to think things over, she didn’t feel very threatened by someone who used the word beeswax when warning her away from Mavis Bixby.
The sheriff emerged from his office a few moments later.
“Good afternoon, Kate.” He looked wearier than usual, the lines on his forehead and around his mouth more pronounced than the last time Kate had seen him. “What can I help you with today?”
Somehow Kate had to get the sheriff to open the mysterious letter, but to get him to do so, she would have to confess how she came by it in the first place, a necessity she wasn’t looking forward to.
“If we could speak in private?” she asked.
Rosalie didn’t disguise her interest in the conversation, ignoring the ringing phone on her desk.
Kate’s eyes flicked toward Rosalie, and the sheriff gave a small smile. “Sure. Come on in.”
Kate followed Sheriff Roberts gratefully to his office. He motioned for her to take a seat.
“So, how can I be of help today? Other than by getting you out of earshot of Rosalie.”
“How are you?” Kate couldn’t help but ask before attending to her own business. It was an ingrained response from years of keeping an eye on her husband’s flock.
The sheriff waved away her question. “I’m fine. Thanks for asking. Nothing that a good night’s sleep won’t cure.”
But his eyes didn’t meet hers. Suddenly Kate wondered if she should be bothering him with her problem. Of course he had more serious matters to worry about that didn’t involve elderly women moving away from town without incident and phone calls where nosy preacher’s wives were told to mind their own beeswax. Unless, of course, Kate was right, and Mavis Bixby hadn’t disappeared of her own accord. That would be a matter as serious as any Sheriff Roberts faced.
“So, what’s on your mind?” he asked again.
Kate opened her purse and pulled the purloined letter from it. “It’s about this,” she said, reaching over to place the envelope on the sheriff’s desk.
“A letter? What is it?” His eyes darkened. “Hate mail? A threat?”
“I don’t know, to tell the truth.”
The sheriff frowned at the envelope lying on his desk blotter. “Haven’t you opened it?
”
Kate gripped the strap of her purse. “Well, no, actually, I haven’t. Because it’s not addressed to me. See?” Kate pointed to the writing on the front.
The sheriff leaned forward in his chair and placed both his hands on the desktop. “Kate, I don’t have a lot of time or energy to waste today, so why don’t you just give it to me straight?”
“It’s still about Mavis Bixby.”
The sheriff groaned as he sank back in his squeaky desk chair. “I thought we agreed that there was no mystery there.”
“Not exactly.” Kate kept her head high. She’d learned long ago that when it came to trying to change people’s point of view, it was often better to act first and ask forgiveness later.
“You said there was no mystery, and I just didn’t argue with you.” At least her words brought a slight smile on the sheriff’s face. “I found this letter at Mavis’ house.”
He slapped the desk in exasperation. “How in the name of all that’s holy did you get into her house?”
Kate had never been intimidated by masculine bluster, and she wasn’t about to start today. “I had a legitimate purpose for asking Gail Carson to show me the house.”
“And that would be?” He arched his eyebrows.
“I believe the church might have some use for the property.”
The sheriff scowled. “Did you come to this interest in the church acquiring the property before or after your obsession with Mavis Bixby began?”
“Before.” Frustrated, Kate wanted to slap the desk herself. As it was, she had to content herself with twisting her purse strap between her fingers. “I promise.”
The sheriff rolled his eyes, but he also picked up the envelope and read the address. “Kevin Baxter. Never heard of him. Probably a Christmas letter that never made it into the mail.”
“Perhaps,” Kate agreed. “But it doesn’t have a stamp on it. And it was hidden in a desk.”
“Hidden in a desk, huh?”
Kate had the good grace to blush.
“I’m sure it’s just an overlooked piece of mail.” He tapped the envelope against his palm.
“It was taped to the underside of a desk drawer, as if someone didn’t want it to be found.”
The sheriff rubbed his right temple with his fingertips. “I’m not even going to ask.”
“I didn’t mean to snoop, but my curiosity got the best of me, and then Gail Carson came back in the room, and there I was with that letter in my hands.”
Sheriff Roberts chuckled. “So the preacher’s wife was caught red-handed, huh?”
Kate had to smile too. “Something like that.”
“And now you want me to open this letter.”
“It might give us some explanation of what happened to Mavis.”
Sheriff Roberts tapped the edge of the envelope against the desk. He blew out a big gust of air, tossed the letter back on the desktop, and crossed his arms over his barrel of a chest. “Well, the thing is, Kate, I know what happened to Mavis Bixby.”
Kate felt her jaw drop. “What? Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“I shouldn’t be telling you now.” He leaned forward. “I could lose my job.”
Kate’s pulse picked up. She waited for the sheriff to continue.
“As far as I know, Mavis Bixby left town of her own accord,” the sheriff said, but the seriousness of his tone kept Kate from exhaling the breath she was holding. “I haven’t heard anything of her or from her since she left last year.”
“Why couldn’t you tell me that before?”
If the sheriff knew where Mavis was, then surely she was fine.
“Kate, Mavis came to Copper Mill as part of the Federal Witness Protection Program.”
A shiver went through her. Mavis Bixby? It seemed so surreal that someone in Copper Mill might have been in hiding.
“Really? Witness protection?” Kate didn’t know that much about the program, other than what she’d seen on television. Weren’t the people involved usually mob informants who had turned against their superiors? “How in the world would an elderly woman like Mavis get caught up in something like that?”
“I can’t tell you any more.” The sheriff rose from his chair, and Kate, bewildered, followed his example. Surely, though, she could tease some additional information out of him.
“So you don’t know for sure that she’s safe?” Just when she thought she’d be able to set this particular mystery aside . . .
“I have no reason to believe that she’s not.” The sheriff’s hand grasped the doorknob, but he didn’t look her in the eye.
“Why did she leave town?” Kate pressed on, anxiety rising in her throat. “Did they relocate her for some reason?”
“All right, all right. But this is the last thing I can tell you.” The sheriff frowned. “Mavis left the Witness Protection Program of her own accord. She didn’t tell me what she was planning, or I would have tried to talk her out of it.”
A little seed of hope sprouted in Kate’s chest. “She must have felt like she was safe again, that she didn’t need to worry anymore.”
Sheriff Roberts shook his head. “The authorities don’t put you into the program unless the threat is serious.”
“Then you think she’s still in danger?”
“There’s no way to know,” the sheriff replied. “All I can tell you is that no one who has abided by the rules of the program has ever been harmed.”
“And the people who have walked away?” Now she knew why he was frowning so ferociously.
He shook his head. “They’re the ones who become the statistics.” He tugged the door open. “That’s all I can tell you, Kate.”
“So you won’t follow up on this?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “There’s nothing to follow up on.”
“But, the letter—”
“Was illegally obtained. I’m going to put it in Mavis’ file and forget you ever mentioned it.”
Kate cast a glance over her shoulder at the envelope, where it still lay on the sheriff’s desk. “But what if—”
“I can forward it to the federal authorities if that would make you feel better. But they won’t do anything, not since Mavis left the program of her own free will.”
A knot formed in Kate’s stomach. “So we’ll never know if Mavis is okay?”
The sheriff patted her shoulder. “Maybe not. But we’ll never know that she’s not okay either. Most likely she’s gone to live with family. Perhaps she had reason to believe the danger to her had passed.”
Kate nodded, tears of frustration stinging her eyes.
“I know you like to get to the bottom of things like this,” the sheriff said with some sympathy, “but not all mysteries have nice neat solutions. If twenty years in law enforcement has taught me anything, it’s taught me that.”
Kate sighed. “Yes, but if thirty years as a minister’s wife has taught me anything, it’s that people don’t just leave town for no reason. And”—she looked meaningfully at the sheriff—“the Lord would like us to go looking for the lost sheep.”
The sheriff had the grace to smile at that. “Yes, but shouldn’t we be sure they’re lost to begin with?” His words echoed Paul’s almost exactly.
Clearly they were at an impasse. Kate reached out her hand, and the sheriff shook it.
“I appreciate your concern for your fellow man, Kate. We need more of that around here. But you’ll have to follow my judgment on this one. I hope you feel like you can trust me to know my job.”
Kate nodded. “I do, Sheriff. Even though it may not seem like it sometimes.”
“Thank you. I appreciate that.” He walked with Kate out of his office and across the reception area. “And I’ll forward that letter on if that would make you rest easier. If anything comes of it, I’ll let you know.”
“Thanks.” Kate turned toward the receptionist. “Good-bye, Rosalie.”
“Good-bye, Mrs.Hanlon.”
Kate waved at both of them over her shoulder
and headed out the door. She knew she should at least feel a little better, but the sheriff’s assurances hadn’t allayed her concerns. And now she didn’t even have the letter, her most important clue. If only she’d taken the time to copy off the name and address on the envelope. It was a Chicago address, she remembered, and the first name had been Kevin. The last name started with a B . . . or was that simply stuck in her brain because of Mavis Bixby’s last name?
Head down, she walked toward her car. Next time she’d know better than to sacrifice a clue so easily, guilty conscience or not.
LIVVY JENNER WAS ON DUTY at the Copper Mill Public Library, and Kate breathed a sigh of relief when she found her manning the reference desk. She needed help, but she hadn’t wanted to ask either of the part-time librarians.
The mystery of Mavis Bixby had become more than a concern for Kate; now it was a matter of life and death. Before, she’d thought it odd that Mavis would simply pull up stakes and relocate without a word to anyone. Now that she knew more sinister forces had touched Mavis’ life, she was sure her departure was no simple move to reunite with friends and family. But what had propelled Mavis into the Witness Protection Program in the first place? To be honest, all Kate knew about the program was what she’d seen in the movies or on television. It was time to change that.
“Kate!” Livvy’s face was wreathed in a smile as Kate approached the reference desk. “What a nice surprise. It’s always good to see a friendly face.”
“You mean there are unfriendly faces in a library?” Kate teased. “I thought only studious egghead types hang out here.”
“Then you’ve never been here at 3:15 when the middle-school kids descend upon me like a hoard of locusts. Pharaoh never saw such plagues.” Livvy’s smile softened her words.
The Copper Mill Public Library was as much a community center as a seat of learning.
“What can I help you with today?”
“You don’t think I’m here just to say hello to my good friend?”
Livvy laughed. “No offense, Kate, but you never come here unless there’s a mystery brewing. What’s up today?”
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