The Stolen Bride

by Jacqueline Diamond

  “She uses our law office, you know.”

  “Did Mom revise her will?” Erin blurted.

  “No, that wasn’t why—” Breaking off, Suzanne ducked her head in a gesture reminiscent of Joseph when he was disconcerted. “I didn’t mean to discuss a client. Please forget I said anything.”

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  A tutor came in to request Suzanne’s help. Erin and Joseph accompanied her to the main room, where they enjoyed observing the activities for a while before departing

  “I’m proud of my mom,” Joseph said as they got into his car.

  “You should be. She’s impressive.”

  He cupped his hand over hers before returning it to the wheel and steering north on Sundown Boulevard. “She always liked you.”

  “I always liked her, too.” One point from their conversation nagged at Erin. “Why do you suppose my mother went to see her lawyer if it wasn’t to change her will?”

  “Might have been a business matter,” he said.

  “The Marshall Company employs its own legal staff,” she pointed out.

  “She could have added Lance to the title of the house.”

  That was a reasonable supposition. “I guess so. It’s likely she changed her will at some point though, isn’t it?”

  “I’m sure Lance did his best to talk her into it.”

  Joseph turned left at Grove Street. They passed the Mercantile Building, where Binh Nguyen had been killed. Before that tragedy, Erin used to love to browse through the crafts shops, but since then the place made her uneasy.

  It seemed haunted, both by the friendly Vietnamese jeweler and by the quiet, kind man who’d been Joseph’s father. By the time she’d met him, he’d left drinking in the past. Despite the trace of sadness behind his eyes, he’d had a merry sense of humor that always made Erin feel like one of the family.

  “At the risk of poking into something that’s none of my business, I was wondering whether you have a will,” Joseph said.

  “Me? Yes.” Two years ago, Abe Fitch, one of Suzanne’s employers, had suggested after reading her father’s will that, with such a large inheritance, she needed to make one out for herself. “I left my trust fund to Friend of a Friend Foundation and my interest in the Marshall Company to Mom.”

  “That would give her complete control of a company worth, what? At least a hundred million dollars?” he said.

  “Something like that.” She didn’t like the obvious conclusion. “Which means that if she did leave her interest to Lance and both of us died, he’d get the whole thing.”

  “Not a happy prospect, is it?”

  “If I revise it, I don’t know who to name.” Other than Marie, there were no close relatives. “Maybe I should leave the whole thing to the foundation. I don’t know.” She rubbed her temples, which had begun to pound.

  “No hurry,” Joseph said. “I just thought I’d mention it.”

  Erin’s brain wouldn’t drop the subject. Her not-for-profit foundation, which didn’t require a full-time staff because of its limited scope, was run by an executive at the Bank of Sundown Valley. Her father had helped her set it up three years earlier, when she’d decided to turn over the generous annual allowance he gave her and live on her earnings. Only a year later, her income had skyrocketed after his death. Even so, the board remained small, consisting of a few of Erin’s former teachers and friends of her parents who’d been sworn to secrecy about her sponsorship. They weren’t prepared to run the Marshall Company, that was certain.

  Fortunately, she didn’t intend to die any time soon, she reminded herself, so the question of altering her will could wait.

  Returning to Joseph’s cabin felt like coming home. She hoped Todd’s death meant the danger had passed, but there remained the question of who had killed him and why.

  Inside, Joseph double-checked the window coverings before flicking the light switch. A warm glow filled the expan sive room. “Care for some entertainment or are you ready to turn in?”

  “I’m tired but wide awake.” Erin’s watch read eight o’clock.

  “How about some music?”

  “Sure.” She settled onto the couch while he slid a CD into the player. She was wondering why he didn’t give her a choice, when the familiar chords of a hit from their teen years began to play.

  “Isn’t that one of the songs we…” She stopped, hearing background chatter. Instead of the recording artist, her own voice began to sing, more or less on key. A moment later, Joseph’s tenor joined in a duet. “I can’t believe you saved that! My recorder ate my copy.” The loss had nearly broken her heart all over again.

  “I had it transferred to a CD for safekeeping.” Easing onto the couch beside her, Joseph stretched his legs atop the parquet coffee table. “I can burn it for you if you’d like.”

  “I’d love it!” She closed her eyes, reveling in the music despite their vocal flaws. The night Joseph had taken her to the karaoke bar had been one of the happiest of her life.

  Ironically, the previous night, her sixteenth birthday, her parents had hosted a country club dinner in her honor that had been tedious at best. Although Erin had requested a party, she’d pictured something casual at a local nightspot, not this stiff affair populated half by friends and associates of her parents.

  Joseph and Tina and her other pals had been good sports, but she could tell they didn’t feel at home. The Norrises hadn’t been country club members then and neither had the Lowerys, so for them it must have seemed like alien territory. Even the dancing had been restrained.

  The only gratifying part was the generous pile of gifts. The following week, she’d enjoyed donating many of them—not the ones from her close friends, though—to a women’s shelter.

  That had been on Friday night. On Saturday, Joseph had surprised her with a trip to a karaoke bar. In front of a room full of strangers, they’d recorded versions of their favorite songs. The good-natured clapping and cheering had buoyed Erin, and she’d left on a high.

  That night, she’d nearly made love with Joseph. He’d had the maturity to hold back. He’d been protecting her even then.

  “You were the best friend I ever had,” she said. “I wish we could have stayed together.”

  He draped one arm over the back of the couch. “I’m sorry I cut you off so abruptly. I figured you’d reject me sooner or later, so I lashed out like a wounded animal.”

  “You should have accepted support from the people who cared about you.” Erin rested her head against his forearm. “My heart ached for you. And for myself, too. I missed you a lot.”

  When he didn’t respond, she wondered if she’d made a mistake by raising the subject. Then he said, “When I wasn’t licking my wounds, I put all my energy into bucking up Mom and Dad. There wasn’t room for anyone else. Not even you.”

  Erin did exactly what she’d wanted to do all those years ago when she hadn’t had the chance. She reached out and pressed her palm against Joseph’s cheek and gazed directly into his eyes.

  “I hope someday there’ll be room for me again,” she said.

  “There already is room for you. Right here.” When he drew her onto his lap and encircled her in his arms, Erin buried her face in the curve of his neck.

  She loved the gentleness with which he held her and the tension in his body that told her he wanted more. This was where she’d yearned to be for as long as she could remember, even when she hadn’t allowed herself to acknowledge it.

  As he stroked her hair, his lips came down on hers. The kiss lingered until he tightened his grip on her, but there was none of the rushed quality they’d experienced the night before.

  They simply melted into each other as the heat rose slowly. This was both more intimate and more real, Erin thought. Toying with the buttons on his shirt, she began to remove the barrier between them.

  To her disappointment, Joseph shifted her onto the couch. “Let’s not get started,” he said. “You don’t need this, not af
ter what you’ve been through today.”

  “If it feels good, why not?”

  “In two days, while already suffering from post-traumatic stress, you’ve called off your wedding, had a couple of good scares and discovered a dead body. It’s a wonder you’re not a basket case,” Joseph told her. “A man would have to be a real jerk to take advantage of those circumstances.”

  She sighed. “Why did I have to choose the world’s most ethical male?”

  He wrapped her in a bear hug and they rocked together for a long, wonderful moment. “Peace?” Joseph asked when he let her go.

  “For now,” Erin conceded with as much grace as she could muster.

  On the CD player, Joseph’s seventeen-year-old tenor voice was crooning a mournful ballad. After they broke up, she used to play this tape over and over, even though it made her sob, because while he was singing, she’d felt as if she could see directly into his soul.

  Yes, there remained a bond between them. Yet she had to admit that she didn’t know him as an adult. He’d gone to college, become a police officer and handled cases that must have affected him. Surely he’d had other involvements that had changed him as well.

  And in some ways she didn’t even know herself, Erin admitted. Away from her job, estranged from her mother, she wanted to crawl into a nest and stay here forever. Perhaps he was right. She might be clinging to Joseph because he represented security.

  Maybe a few precious days were all they had. A part of her wanted to throw caution to the wind and make love so that she’d have wonderful memories to treasure forever. But they’d hurt each other deeply before and might again. Joseph had hit one thing right: Erin was in no condition to risk a broken heart.

  He cleared his throat. “Maybe this wasn’t the best choice of music.”

  She was about to ask why not when she registered the tears streaming down her cheeks. They accompanied this song so naturally that she’d hardly noticed them.

  “Don’t mind me,” she said. “I’m sentimental.”

  They listened for a while longer, until the disk ended. Erin listened with regret to the faint whirr of the machine disconnecting.

  “Want something to drink?” Joseph asked.

  “Sure.”

  While he put on a Yanni CD and went into the kitchen, Erin picked up Jean’s yearbook from the coffee table. She flipped back to the sophomore class and looked up Marie Flanders.

  The family resemblance was unmistakable despite the dyed-black hair—or maybe that was her aunt’s natural color—and the heavy 1970s makeup. Until now, Erin had thought she didn’t have a clear memory of Marie, but the ironic twist of her mouth was surprisingly familiar.

  She hoped Aunt Marie was, as Joseph had suggested, sunning herself in Hawaii. It was hard to fathom that a person could simply disappear without anyone knowing what had happened. She might be trapped somewhere, or lying comatose in a hospital bed, or in a shallow grave. What if the same fate was closing in on Erin and Alice?

  She jumped when glasses clinked close to her ear. “Sorry,” Joseph said. “I was wondering if you’d like some of this fruit juice blend. It’s supposed to be soothing, but from your reaction I’d say it has the opposite effect.”

  She smiled apologetically. “Don’t blame the juice. My imagination got the better of me.”

  “Good. Let’s hope this stuff lives up to its reputation, then.”

  As he knelt beside the coffee table to pour from the carafe, Erin noticed that the yearbook had flipped to photos of students hanging out on campus. She was about to close it when several faces jumped out at her.

  There was Aunt Marie with that long black hair. Todd Wilde, the boy whose picture she’d updated only yesterday and whose body lay in the morgue, perched beside her atop a picnic table. Behind them, wearing an expression of uncertainty, stood a chestnut-haired girl Erin recognized with a jolt.

  Thirty years ago, she hadn’t developed pouches under her eyes and she’d worn her hair loose instead of pulled into a bun. But the woman hanging around with Todd and Marie was unmistakably Brandy Schorr, Alice’s new housekeeper.

  Chapter Ten

  In the middle of the night, Joseph arose and, on a large sheet of paper, set to work on a chart resembling a family tree. As long as he couldn’t sleep, he might as well do something useful. Maybe, he reflected as he ran his hand through his disordered hair, a chart would help him identify more clearly the connections between these people.

  After Erin’s discovery in the yearbook, he’d gone to the database, where he’d learned that Brandy had had a few minor skirmishes with the law over the years for such offenses as substance abuse and petty theft. She’d also undergone rehab. Armed with the information, he’d called Rick to explain about Brandy and her link to the missing Marie.

  “I’m more interested in her involvement with Wilde,” Rick had said. “I’ll interview her first thing tomorrow. We still don’t know why he was snooping.”

  Despite knowing Rick would pursue the subject, Erin had been too upset to sleep. To calm her, Joseph had put on a CD of musical accompaniment for karaoke and persuaded her to sing with him. The ploy had worked. Soon they’d been enjoying old favorites, laughing at their slipups and inventing new words to the songs.

  When she cut loose that way, Erin lit up his heart. That hadn’t changed and probably never would, Joseph thought.

  After she went to bed, he’d dozed on the couch and awak ened two hours later with his mind abuzz. When sleep continued to elude him, he’d decided to draw this relationship tree.

  Thirty years ago, Alice and Jean had been seniors in high school, Marie and Todd sophomores and Brandy a freshman. Not until Alice was in college had she met Erin’s father, so Joseph drew a branch for him farther up the tree. His own father had grown up twenty miles away and Edgar Norris had moved to town as an adult, so their branches joined even higher.

  Next came their children: himself, Erin, Gene and Tina. He omitted Jean’s kids, since they didn’t appear to figure into the puzzle. Toward the top he penciled in branches for Chet and Lance and, on impulse, Rick. Chet and Lance were from L.A., he noted, and Rick from San Diego.

  If you looked at it one way, they were all tied to one another in various ways, which meant you could weave a theory pointing to almost anyone, Joseph thought wearily. The problem was, you could also shoot down those theories if you tried hard enough.

  What was he missing?

  Although Marie’s disappearance might be unrelated, it troubled him. She’d left voluntarily, according to her roommate, but someone else might have enticed her away or caught up with her later.

  He also wasn’t comfortable with the idea that Chet had acquired enough money to loan a large amount to his campaign. A six-figure salary and a talent with stocks made a plausible explanation, and yet…and yet…

  And yet I’m not seeing the whole picture. I guess I’m too tired. Or too absorbed in Erin to think straight.

  Joseph went to the window and, between the blinds, stared into the night. When he bought this house, it had been a place of refuge, and he was glad it could provide shelter for Erin now. But in the long run, the only effective way to guard her was to figure out what was going on and who was behind it.

  It would be easier if he didn’t suspect this case might touch upon his father’s wrongful conviction. His old wounds made it doubly hard to keep things in perspective.

  There were so many possibilities. Old conspirators turning against one another. Todd, the absent Lorenz and someone else, smarter than those two. Someone who might still be living in Sundown Valley. Someone who had everything to lose if he—or she—were caught.

  Perhaps Todd Wilde had been foolish or desperate enough to blackmail a former conspirator from the Nguyen murder, Joseph thought. But that was, of course, just another theory. And it didn’t explain Todd’s apparent interest in the Boldings.

  There was, he realized, one person he hadn’t talked to who might be able to shed light, at least on his f
ather’s case. Manuel Lima, who had hired Joseph, had been chief of police when Lewis Lowery was convicted.

  Although he’d retired three years ago, he still lived in town. The police database probably contained his phone number and address.

  If Joseph contacted Lima, he had no idea whether his former boss would agree to keep their discussion confidential from Norris. But even at the risk of putting his job in jeopardy, it all boiled down to the need to keep Erin safe. Whatever the cost, Joseph had to follow up on every lead and talk to every witness.

  Tomorrow, he was going to give Lima a call.

  ON MONDAY, the Sundown Sentinel hit painfully close to home. In addition to an old photo of Todd, the paper ran a picture of Erin in her wedding dress, complete with tiara and choker. It had obviously been shot by the photographer she’d hired for the event.

  In the picture, she clasped her bouquet in front of her as if it were a shield. Despite the wistful smile on her face, to Erin her eyes appeared vulnerable and a little frightened. She’d let down her guard and given the man a glimpse of her inner turmoil. Apparently he’d felt no compunctions about selling it.

  Although the main story focused on the finding of Todd’s body, a sidebar speculated about why the town’s heiress, supposedly so incapacitated she’d called off her wedding, had gone boating with a suspended police detective who used to be her high school boyfriend. It was the kind of gossip readers would hash over during their coffee breaks. Remembering Gene’s concern about the effects on Chet’s campaign, she suspected this was what he’d been worrying about.

  “There’s nothing we can do about it,” Joseph said when he noticed her staring at the photograph. They were finishing a late breakfast since, after yesterday’s excitement, Erin had slept until nearly noon. “Besides, that picture makes you look gorgeous, which isn’t difficult.”

  “I think I look wounded,” she admitted.

  “Then people should sympathize,” he responded with maddening nonchalance. “Are you still planning to talk to that financial officer about your trust fund? I can come with you if you like.”