Harlequin Superromance November 2013 - Bundle 1 of 2

by Mary Brady

  Finally standing again, she faced her brother. “Is this really what my room looked like then?”

  “Messier,” he said. “Not bad, because Mom was so anal.” He grimaced. “Is so anal. You had a computer. I guess they got rid of that.”

  “It would have been a little dated by now.”

  He laughed. “No kidding. Um. There was a bulletin board. We weren’t allowed to ruin the walls by sticking thumbtacks in or using tape.”

  She rotated until she was looking at the desk. “There, right over the desk.”

  “Yeah.” He sounded a little gruff.

  “This room looks like something out of a model home. Designed for a ten-year-old.”

  “Mom didn’t pay much attention to what you wanted.”

  She met his dark eyes. “What about you? Did you get what you wanted?”

  He shifted, and she recognized his level of discomfort. “You really don’t remember, do you?”

  “Not much.”

  Felix glanced over his shoulder, and she realized he was checking to be sure neither parent had followed them up the stairs. Then he looked at her, and pain was apparent in his eyes.

  “Yeah, I mostly got what I wanted. Especially from Mom. She was always harder on you. I never understood.”

  No, she didn’t remember, but Nell wasn’t surprised, either.

  “Even when I was little, it was obvious. Her voice changed when she talked to you.”

  “What about Dad?” Her voice was low.

  He twitched a little. “He might have been more invested in me because I was a boy. I’m not sure. Mostly it wasn’t him, but he also didn’t notice or pay attention to stuff that should have been obvious.”

  “I wondered if...” The words caught in her throat, but she felt as if they needed to be said. “If they’d have preferred I stayed tragically missing or dead.”

  “God, Maddie!”

  She could tell she’d shocked him, but she was determined to follow her thoughts to the logical conclusion. “They didn’t act the way most parents would when I showed up. Mom almost seemed mad because, wow, I put them through all that for nothing?” She drew a shaky breath. “It’s been weird.”

  She suspected he wanted to deny it but couldn’t. “Things were strained at dinner,” he admitted after a minute.

  “You should have been there when Mom and I had lunch the other day. We had the kind of conversation you make when a stranger politely lets you share her table because the café is jammed and there’s no other place to sit.”

  That pained look was back in his eyes. “Mom tried to make you in her image.”

  “I sort of looked like her, but I wasn’t pretty.”

  He did some more squirming. Nell realized how far out of his comfort zone this conversation must be for a twenty-five-year-old guy. His “I don’t think it was that” sounded weak.

  “What then?” she asked in a hard voice.

  “You just weren’t...”

  Waiting through his hesitation, she held herself stiffly. I will not let this hurt. But she knew better. Of course it would. Or at least it had, when she lived at home and wanted to be pretty enough, poised enough, graceful and athletic enough, to please her parents. What she felt now was more like an echo.

  “She couldn’t understand why you weren’t more popular. She said it was your own fault. You hung back, you didn’t try.”

  “We fought.”

  Felix shook his head. “I wished sometimes you would. She’d be icy, and you’d just sort of...”

  “Shrivel.”

  His grimace was apologetic. “Yeah. It sucked,” he said with sudden vehemence. “I felt so guilty.”

  “There’s no reason. It wasn’t your fault. You know that.” She managed a kind of smile. “I’m only sorry I didn’t have enough backbone to go out and get a tattoo and maybe a nose ring and dye my hair black.”

  Felix grinned. “It’s not too late, you know.”

  “I think it is, because the truth is I don’t care what she thinks anymore.” Nell examined the concept and something settled in her. “I’m okay with who I am. If she doesn’t like it, she can shove it.”

  That earned her a rakish grin from this brother who had inexplicably turned into a man. “You tell her, sis.”

  “I just might.” She returned his smile. “Hey, how long are you here for?”

  “Until Sunday. I ditched a few days of classes when Mom called to say you were home.”

  “Thank you.” Blast it, she was getting teary-eyed again. “You, I’m really glad to see.”

  “Ditto.” He looked over his shoulder. “Incoming.”

  “Can we do something one of these days?” she asked hurriedly.

  “Tomorrow. We’ll go cruise some old hangouts.”

  “I came to see why you two disappeared for so long,” Helen said from beyond him.

  “Just talking.” Felix winked at Nell. “Long time no see, you know.”

  “I’d probably better get going,” she said, but as she passed her brother she murmured, “I’ll call you in the morning.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “WELL, ISN’T THAT INTERESTING,” Colin murmured, staring down at the key card Backpack Boy had apparently been carrying. A key card designed to open doors at Arrow Lake Lodge and Resort—owned by none other than Marc Dubeau. “If a kid disappeared during a stay at Arrow Lake,” he said, “why wouldn’t we have heard about it? Have him listed as missing?”

  Duane shook his head. “Couldn’t have been staying there. Maybe he’d snitched it and thought he could get into rooms to help himself to some valuables.”

  Colin could think of half a dozen other possibilities without even trying, none of which explained the young man ending up dead and buried in the park. “It’s something,” he finally said. “We can show the picture to Dubeau and any longtime staff.”

  He was only half-listening as the rest discussed the eight-by-ten photo. Protected from the elements by frame and glass, it was the first item from the backpack Colin had looked at. The damage around the edges hadn’t spread to the subjects, a dark-eyed, dark-haired woman and boy. From the resemblance, they had to be mother and son.

  Jane Vahalik, part of the huddle that also included Ronnie Orr, her trainee, volunteered to contact the studio whose stamp appeared on the back. It was located on the west side of the mountains in Eugene.

  “Good,” Duane said. “No guarantee that boy grew up to be our victim, but it’s worth a try. If we can identify the woman, she may be able to tell us something.”

  Jane tapped her finger on the table, dragging Colin’s gaze from the key card and photo, lying side by side. “Here’s something interesting, too.”

  A Purple Heart, he saw, startled. The ribbon was in bad shape, but Linda had cleaned up the medal.

  “Damn,” Colin murmured, hit hard by his sudden understanding. “The kid was carrying around his memories of his parents. Why would he do that?”

  Linda indicated the remnants of a few items of clothing. “Briefs, T-shirt, socks. A change of clothes, minus the jeans, which are maybe too bulky to carry all the time?”

  Homeless. Shit. Colin didn’t like the thought that was taking shape in his mind. He couldn’t dismiss it, though. Homeless guy, sixteen, seventeen years old, probably good-looking—if he were the cute kid in the photo some years later. Killed, or at least buried, a stone’s throw from where Maddie had very nearly also been killed.

  Say something? Or keep what he was thinking to himself until he could talk to Nell?

  “This is all very interesting,” Duane said, “but here’s what I brought you down to see.”

  Colin followed him to a brightly lit magnifier. Beneath it was a bank deposit slip, and his puzzlement became sharp interest when he took in the
amount—$30,000.

  “It survived,” Linda said, “because it was in a plastic bag, the kind you put green beans in at the grocery store. There were a couple of photos in there, too. I’ll see what I can do to restore the second one, but it may be hopeless.”

  The better of the two suffered from smeared and faded color, but Colin could make out enough to feel a chill. The photographer had been standing a distance away and had nothing like a telephoto lens, but Colin was easily able to recognize Police Chief Gary Bystrom, talking to another man Colin didn’t know. Their expressions were intense. In the background... He leaned closer. “Isn’t that the airfield at Arrow Lake?”

  Marc Dubeau’s resort was one of the few around Angel Butte that allowed small plane owners to fly in and out. The resort included some time-share condominiums and cabins, and a few larger, fancier ones leased year-round. An Oregon senator used one of the more impressive homes, a massive log structure, to host parties, offer getaways to staff and for vacations for himself and family. His passion for hunting didn’t help his cause with the Sierra Club crowd.

  Duane was right beside him, staring down at the same photo. “I think so.”

  “Anyone traced that deposit slip?”

  “Yeah, that’s why you’re here.” Duane glanced at the others. “Linda, is that everything so far?”

  She gestured toward a wad of papers that appeared glued into a block. “I’ll work on separating those, but what little I’ve seen so far appears to be class notes, quizzes. This kid was in school somewhere.”

  That information didn’t tie to the rest of Colin’s speculation. If the kid were in school, damn it, where?

  Duane nodded. “Good work, all. You know what to do.”

  Vahalik and her sidekick took their cue and headed for the door. Duane glanced at Colin. “Let’s step outside.”

  Colin raised his eyebrows but went. They stopped under the overhang of the building.

  “This is a political hot potato,” Duane said bluntly. “The account number belongs to Bystrom’s wife.”

  Forgetting this wasn’t shirtsleeve weather, Colin gazed, unseeing, across the parking lot, his thoughts racing. It wasn’t so much the amount deposited. The Bystroms’ lifestyle suggested they were loaded. This amount could have been from a small inheritance, money moved from a CD that had come due, who knew what. The bigger question was why a murder victim thought the deposit slip held any significance.

  “You want me to get a warrant.”

  “Can we justify it?”

  Colin rolled his shoulders and thought some more. This could be career suicide. Duane waited.

  “I’ll need a copy.”

  “Linda already emailed it to you.”

  Colin grunted. “Coward.”

  Duane gave him a puckish grin. “This is why you have the office with the best view.”

  Colin laughed, thinking of the brick wall he looked out at. “That’s gotta be it.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  Not exactly the truth. Of course they had to pursue every lead in a murder investigation. If he were going to step out on a limb already cracking under his feet, though, he needed some backing.

  It was no stretch to decide the time had come to find out where Mayor Noah Chandler stood and what he was made of.

  * * *

  WITH COPIES OF the photograph and the deposit slip folded and tucked in the inside pocket of his suit jacket, Colin waited outside the mayor’s office a few hours later.

  He knew Chandler in a superficial way. As he’d told Brian Cooper, he had gained the impression that the new mayor wasn’t all that impressed with his police chief. Which didn’t mean he’d give Colin the go-ahead to rake through Bystrom’s financial dealings.

  Colin managed a surreptitious look at the time by checking for messages on his phone. Nothing from Nell. At least today she wasn’t alone. Her brother was supposed to have picked her up at ten and they were spending the day together. He wished that let him feel easy about her, but it didn’t. She was still out and about. Vulnerable.

  Despite his best intentions, last night Colin had opened the front door the instant he’d heard Nell’s car, and she’d come in for a cup of tea. The scrape on her cheek had scabbed over but served as a graphic reminder of her close call. She’d admitted to having a few panic attacks on the drive from her parents’ house when she thought one set of headlights was behind her too long, but she’d followed his advice and realized after a turn or two that no one was following her.

  Her face had momentarily glowed when she told him that her brother had come home to see her. The glow dimmed when she repeated the highlights from the private talk she and Felix had had.

  Her perplexity made him ache with self-doubt. If he’d let her go on the way she had been, her life wouldn’t have been threatened.

  Except he wasn’t so sure that was true. He had stumbled on her. Someone else could have just as well. All he had to do was remember her terror the night he confronted her to know that she carried that fear with her at all times. Answers might allow her to let go of the fear.

  And what? Go back to her life as Nell Smith? He was having trouble imagining that. Maddie—Nell, damn it—had filled his world since he’d caught that fleeting glimpse of her on television. Look at him, nerves jumping under his skin only because he didn’t know where she was or what she was doing right this minute.

  At least she’d agreed to let him take her out to dinner tonight. He had a plan for afterward he thought she’d like.

  “Captain McAllister?” the assistant said pleasantly. “The mayor will be glad to see you now.”

  Colin nodded his thanks and stood. No one had exited Chandler’s office. Colin hoped keeping him waiting hadn’t been some cheap power play.

  The mayor’s office was more stripped down than Colin had expected. A couple of impressive paintings by local artists decorated the walls. The desk was a nice one, but it didn’t appear custom-made the way the desk installed by Chandler’s predecessor had. When Noah Chandler himself stood and came around the corner of it to greet Colin, he wore black slacks and a roll-neck sweater rather than a business suit. Heavy boots, too, which bore traces of dried mud.

  Seeing the direction of Colin’s glance, Chandler grinned ruefully. “I was inspecting possible sites for a new sewer treatment plant. The ground’s a mess today.”

  “I noticed.”

  They shook hands and measured each other.

  The guy had one of those faces that was too crude to call handsome. Thuggish came to mind. He had longshoreman shoulders, too, and hands that looked as if they should be wielding a sledgehammer or maybe drawing beer for a living. No rings, his watch was utilitarian. The ponytail might be gone, but well-cut hair hadn’t succeeded in giving him a glossy veneer. Blue eyes were intelligent and guarded. Noah Chandler wouldn’t be an easy read.

  “Sit down.” He gestured toward several leather chairs grouped around a coffee table.

  Colin chose one and waited while Chandler did the same.

  “I assume this isn’t a let’s-get-acquainted meeting.” Bluntness seemed to be his style, which Colin liked.

  “No. I’d like your backing to do something that could get ugly.”

  Chandler’s mouth quirked. “That sounds interesting. Explain.”

  “Are you aware of the bones found in River Park when the contractors hauled a stump out of the ground?”

  Chandler leaned forward, his elbows braced on his knees. “Sure. Have you identified the victim yet?”

  “We were stymied when the ground was frozen. Once we were able to start digging again, some more bones turned up right away. With them was a backpack.”

  That sharp gaze didn’t waver.

  “Techs are st
ill trying to peel apart papers that look like schoolwork. For now, though, they’ve found a couple of interesting things.”

  “Which is where I come in, I take it.”

  Colin’s jaw muscles flexed. “Yes. The kid was carrying a key card for a room at Marc Dubeau’s resort. These were also in the pack, sealed together in a plastic bag.” He removed the folded sheets of paper from his pocket and handed them over. “Copies, of course.”

  Chandler unfolded them and studied the picture in silence for a minute. His eyebrows momentarily climbed when he saw the amount on the deposit slip. At last he looked up. “You do have a problem,” he said. “I assume the account number is your boss’s?”

  “His wife’s.”

  “And you believe these items are in some way connected to the murder.”

  He’d been right; Noah Chandler wasn’t giving much away.

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Colin said, choosing his words with care. “At this point, however, we have to pursue what few leads we have. We have no missing persons listed who were staying at Arrow Lake Lodge, nor from any resorts in the close vicinity. The medical examiner is sure the bones belong to a young male, likely between about sixteen and twenty years of age. Given that we have the jaw, we’ve been able to compare teeth with X-rays from a couple of young men who are listed as missing in the right time frame, one from Bend, the other from Klamath Falls. Neither matched. Who was this guy? What was his connection to Dubeau’s resort? And why was he carrying that photo and the deposit slip? Packaged together, no less.”