He’d been here only three days and already he’d been approached by half a dozen people with offers of odd jobs. Most of them were parishioners of Sarah Fleming or relatives of her parishioners. None of them had the presence and air of gentility this woman possessed. “I’m just passing through, ma’am,” he said, not really certain why he did. He hadn’t made up his mind to leave town—not right away, anyway. Not till he found out what he’d come to learn about Tyler.
“Oh.” She sounded disappointed. “I see.”
“Who recommended you see me about the work?”
“Moira Schweinhagen suggested it. She manages the Hair Affair.”
“Never heard of her.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t imagine you have. But Tyler’s a small town and you’re a stranger here. That gets you talked about.”
“I imagine it does. Is that who told you my name? This Moira person?”
“Actually, no. That was my daughter-in-law. She heard about you from her friend Sarah Fleming.”
So he’d been wrong about her being so different from the others who had approached him. She did belong here, odd as that might seem.
“Do you want the work or not?” She wasn’t about to be cowed by his curt replies.
“What work do you want done?”
“It’s my porch. The railing needs mending. There are a few other odd jobs I’d like done, as well. It’s an old house. And like people, once you get to a certain age it’s patch, patch, patch.” She smiled, and he was hard put not to return it.
“A broken porch railing doesn’t sound too taxing.”
“No, I imagine it wouldn’t be. But if you’re not going to be staying around town...”
“I might be here long enough to fix your porch,” he conceded. “Where do you live?”
“One fifty-three Elm Street. It’s a big white Victorian. The Ingalls house.”
“And that’s your name? Ingalls?” So he’d just met one of the members of the most important family in town. The Ingalls name was everywhere, on the factory outside of town, the park down by the school and the street that ran behind it.
She laughed, a pleasant, chiming sound every bit as classy as the rest of her. “I used to be. Years ago. My name is Wocheck now. Alyssa Wocheck.”
“I’ll be by to take a look at your porch, Mrs. Wocheck. After that I’ll let you know if I’ll take the job.”
“That’s fair, Mr. Kenton. I’ll be expecting you.” She turned and walked away. He watched her go, then looked back to see Murphy standing in the doorway of his store.
“You do good work for Alyssa and she’ll treat you right. Good people, the Ingallses and the Barons.”
“Barons?” Michael tensed, then went on arranging the lumber he’d just bought from the man. “I thought she said her name was Wocheck.”
“It is now. Married Eddie Wocheck four years back. But before that she was Alyssa Baron. Mrs. Ronald Baron. ‘Course, she was a widow long before Eddie Wocheck came back to town.”
“Ronald Baron’s widow?” Michael had trouble getting the words out.
“Yeah. Old Ronald up and blew his brains out one day twelve—” Murphy narrowed his eyes and scratched the top of his nearly bald head “—no, damn it, time sure has a way of getting away from you. It was closer to fifteen years ago that the elevator went bust and old Ronald put that gun to his head.”
* * *
SARAH LOOKED OUT her kitchen window at the small square of light spilling onto the landing at the top of the stairway. Michael Kenton was home. She’d heard his truck pull into the driveway more than an hour ago, but he hadn’t come down for his meal. She glanced over at the tray on the table, then at the pot of vegetable soup simmering on the stove. He’d only eaten in her kitchen, at her table, that first evening he’d been in town. From then on he’d taken his meals alone.
She wondered if something was wrong. He was usually very punctual coming to her back door to fetch the tray each evening and returning it to her, with clean dishes, every morning. Perhaps something had happened. Maybe he had hurt himself at work, or maybe he was ill.
Sarah’s heart sped up, responding to the faint anxiety she was feeling. She’d felt just this way when Eric hadn’t come home on time the day he was killed. She hated waiting. Spinning away from the window, she grabbed the soup ladle and filled a bowl with soup, covered it, added three blueberry muffins she’d bought that morning at Marge’s Diner to the tray and reached into the refrigerator for a second, smaller covered bowl filled with fruit salad. Balancing the tray carefully on one hand, she let herself out the back door and started across the yard to the garage.
It was already fully dark and there was the promise of frost in the air, although it was only a little past seven in the evening. The moon was a faint silver arc, low in the sky, and the starlight was no more than a faint dusting of glitter on black velvet. The mournful honking of a flock of Canada geese could be heard in the distance as they settled for the night onto the placid waters of the lake. A car drove by and a dog barked at its passing, and overhead she could hear the rustling of startled sparrows as she walked beneath the branches where they slept.
At the top of the apartment stairs she shifted the tray to her left hand and prepared to knock. The door opened before she could accomplish the tricky task, and Michael Kenton stood in the doorway, tall and silent, blocking the light and making her feel small and awkward standing there with the heavy tray in her hands.
“Hi,” she said, slipping into her Reverend Sarah persona, trying to recreate, as always, what she remembered of Eric’s easy, friendly way with people. “I brought your supper.”
“You didn’t have to do that.” His tone was as stony as the expression on his face.
Sarah felt the smile falter and fade away. “I...it was part of our agreement that I give you your meals. I’ll take it back with me if you’re not hungry.”
He remained silent. She made a move to turn and leave. “No. Wait,” he said. “I am hungry. Come on inside.”
Sarah hadn’t been inside the garage apartment for months before Michael Kenton arrived. It consisted of one big room with cracked and peeling linoleum on the floor, an old iron bedstead and a warped chest of drawers at one end, a couch and chair and coffee table, castoffs from parishioners, grouped in the center opposite the door, and a bare-bones kitchen with a wooden table and chairs along the back wall. In the far corner, a partitioned-off rectangle held an even-more-utilitarian bathroom.
There were overhead light fixtures above the kitchen table and the bed, and one floor lamp positioned between the couch and chair. At the moment that lamp was the only source of light in the long, shadowy room. Sarah couldn’t see the chest of drawers and the bed where Michael Kenton slept, and for some reason she preferred not to confront, she was glad.
He took the tray from her hands. Sarah followed his movement with her eyes and saw a half-empty bottle of whiskey and a glass sitting on the table. He looked up and saw her frowning at the liquor. “I suppose you don’t believe in a man having a drink, do you?”
“The denomination that my church is affiliated with does frown on the use of alcohol,” Sarah said carefully. She didn’t drink herself, but she personally didn’t feel that it was a sin to have a glass of wine or a bottle of beer now and then.
“Then I won’t ask you to share one with me.”
Sarah looked up quickly, but the light was too faint to allow her to tell for certain if he was serious or not. It wasn’t a joking matter, as far as many of her parishioners were concerned. She didn’t want to ruffle any feathers. “I’d appreciate it if you would limit your consumption while you’re staying here.”
He screwed the lid onto the bottle and put it inside one of the dingy, pale green cupboards. “I think I can manage that.”
“Thank you.” He was w
earing a flannel shirt, unbuttoned over a surprisingly white cotton T-shirt, and he wasn’t wearing shoes, only heavy socks, also white enough to have been in a detergent commercial. He might have been a homeless drifter, but he thought enough of himself to take care of his clothes.
“You’d better eat your soup. It will get cold.” Sarah wrapped her arms around herself. The whole room was cold. Michael Kenton hadn’t bothered to light the fuel-oil stove next to the bathroom wall. Perhaps he thought he was responsible for the cost of the heating oil if he used the stove. He saw her looking in that direction and read her mind.
“I didn’t light the stove. I planned on turning in early tonight. I’ve got to get an early start tomorrow.”
“Oh.” Sarah felt herself flushing. “I—I just didn’t want you to think you might be responsible for the cost of the heating oil. The church council okayed your staying here as long as you were doing work for us. That means the utilities are included.”
“I agreed to make whatever repairs they wanted done,” he said. “If they ever make up their minds as to what they are.”
Sarah smiled without thinking—a real smile, her own, not Reverend Sarah’s. “Spending money doesn’t come easily to the church council. Usually because we have very little extra to spend. The thought of getting so much done for only the cost of materials and your room and board has gone to their heads.”
“I imagine the whole batch of them were up all night praying about it.”
Sarah’s smile faded away. “They’re good people,” she said. “They have faith in God and themselves.”
“Yeah,” he said, not meeting her eye. “Early to bed, early to rise. A fair day’s pay for a hard day’s work.”
“Yes,” Sarah said, smiling again. “Exactly what you said you meant to do tomorrow.”
He had the grace to look sheepish. “I guess I did.” He smiled, too—a fleeting, reluctant grin that caused an unexpected and unwelcome flutter in her pulse.
“I’d better be going.” She turned back to the door, which she’d purposefully left open. Her parishioners were not mean or vindictive people, but their values were rooted in time and tradition, and one of the things that an unmarried female minister did not do was visit a strange man in his room at night.
“Wait.” He didn’t move a muscle, but Sarah felt as if he’d reached out and taken her by the hand. Her skin actually tingled and she had to stop herself from rubbing the feeling away. “Can’t you stay for a minute?”
“I shouldn’t. I have my sermon for Sunday worship to work on.” He hadn’t been at the service Sunday morning. She hadn’t expected him to be.
“It’s only Tuesday. It can wait another day. I—I wanted to ask you something.”
“Of course.” Sarah wondered what on earth this hard-edged, self-contained man could need her advice about.
“Do you know Alyssa Wocheck?”
“Everyone knows Alyssa,” Sarah replied, surprised by his question. It wasn’t what she had expected. “Her family helped build the town. She was Alyssa Ingalls. Her father is Judson Ingalls, founder of the F and M.”
“Ingalls Farm and Machinery. Ingalls Park. Ingalls Avenue.”
“Yes.”
“Is Alyssa all that’s left of the family?”
“No. Although Alyssa was an only child. Her mother was killed many years ago.” Sarah felt uncomfortable gossiping about Jeff and Cece’s family. Cece was her friend. Cece’s first husband had been one of Eric’s best friends, although Sarah had not known the man personally, had only met Jeff and Cece Baron after Eric accepted the pulpit at Tyler Fellowship.
“Killed?” Something in her tone of voice must have given her away. “Do you mean murdered?”
“Yes. Her body was discovered four years ago, out at Timberlake Lodge. Before that, for forty years, everyone thought she had run away with a lover. Judson Ingalls was accused of the murder. There was a trial and everything.”
“Did he do it?”
Sarah shook her head. “No. He was acquitted.”
“That only means the jury couldn’t agree that he was guilty.”
Sarah lifted her head. “Another man killed her. A lover of Margaret’s. He came back to Tyler and tried to kill Alyssa before she could remember that, as a little girl, she had seen him in her mother’s room the night she died. But there was no more proof than Alyssa’s repressed memories, and he couldn’t be charged.”
“But now the whole town believes Judson Ingalls was innocent.”
“He’s a good man.” Sarah could be as stubborn as he was.
“How come I haven’t run into any of these Ingallses before today?” He started taking the lid off the soup bowl, and Sarah could have sworn for a moment, just a moment, that his hands were trembling.
“The rest of the family lives in Milwaukee. At least the ones I know of. But all of Alyssa’s children live here in Tyler. Of course they aren’t Ingallses, they’re Barons. Or they used to be.” He was watching her from beneath dark brows that shadowed his eyes and his thoughts. His intensity flustered her. “The girls, I mean. Liza—she’s the youngest—is married to Cliff Forrester. Amanda is a lawyer. She was her grandfather’s defense attorney. She’s married to Ethan Trask. He was the man who prosecuted her grandfather, but they fell in love anyway. He’s a judge now and Amanda has a practice here in Tyler. And then there’s Jeff. He’s the oldest. Dr. Jeffrey Baron...”
“Dr. Jeffrey Baron.”
“Yes. He’s the chief of staff at Tyler General. He has a private practice, too. A clinic. The Ronald Baron Memorial Clinic. I volunteer there one day a week.” She didn’t add that more than a few of her parishioners took advantage of the clinic’s sliding fee-payment scale, or what a blessing it was to them. Somehow the thundercloud darkness of his face made the words stick in her throat.
“Ronald Baron Memorial Clinic.” There was a sneer in his voice, if not on his face.
She nodded. “It was named for Ronald Baron, Jeff’s and Amanda’s and Liza’s father.”
“Yeah, I heard about him. Good old Ronald. The one who upped and blew his brains out one day some years back.”
“His business went bankrupt. He couldn’t face telling all the farmers who had counted on him to sell their grain. It was a terrible time for the family.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Cece says it was especially hard on Jeff. He was the oldest. The only son. He and his father were very close. Is your father living, Mr. Kenton?”
“No,” he said, turning his back on her and signaling an end to the conversation in no uncertain terms. “My father’s dead. As a matter of fact, he committed suicide just the way Ronald Baron did.”
CHAPTER THREE
“YOU’RE RIGHT, LYSSA. The twins’ costumes were ‘udderly’ adorable.” Edward Wocheck smiled down at the photographs he held in his hands. “And Margaret Alyssa looks absolutely fiendish.”
“She’d be thrilled to death to hear you say that. If she knew what the word meant.”
Alyssa leaned back in her chair and smiled across the table at her husband. It was his first night home, and they were having dinner at Timberlake Lodge so that Edward’s father, Phil, could be present at his homecoming. But the old man’s arthritis was bothering him this rainy November evening and he’d already retired to his suite in the west wing of the hotel, leaving Edward and Alyssa to finish their meal alone.
“I wish you’d been here to see them trick-or-treating.”
“Next year,” Edward promised. “Devon’s just about got a handle on the restructuring of Addison International. Old Arthur’s death hit Nikki pretty hard. She’s been difficult about the changes.” Nicole, Lady Holmes, was Edward’s ex-wife and Devon’s mother.
“Is that why you left Kathleen behind in London with Devon?”
Kathleen Ke
lsey was Edward’s executive assistant and the daughter of Alyssa’s dearest friends, Anna and Johnny Kelsey.
Edward nodded. “The boy’s snowed under with paperwork. She can help him dig his way out.”
“And give him a convenient dinner companion on the nights his mother tries to matchmake with some overbred and underfed offshoot of the royal family.”
Edward laughed. “Alyssa, your Midwestern prejudices are showing.”
Alyssa felt herself blush. “Sorry,” she said. She usually didn’t let herself be goaded into saying anything negative about Edward’s ex-wife. She changed the subject. “I hired someone to fix the porch railing.”
“That was good of Joe to work you into his schedule.” Edward nodded over the rim of the dessert menu. The menus were newly printed, and he studied his closely, even though he’d okayed the new design before he left for London two weeks before.
Alyssa smiled to herself. Edward’s business dealings stretched over half the world, but Timberlake Lodge, which had once belonged to her family, was his pride and joy, and he kept an eagle eye on its management and day to day operations. She couldn’t blame him. Even though she had recently hired a manager for the F and M, she still spent several days a week in the office herself.
“You’re not listening,” Alyssa scolded. “Not Joe Santori. I hired a man that Jeff and Cece told me about. He came into town the day after the storm.”
“A drifter?” Edward closed the menu and gave her his full attention. As always, the intensity of his dark gaze traveled along her nerve endings like fire. Even though his hair had turned to silver and the laugh lines had deepened at the corners of his mouth and eyes, he was still a very handsome man—the sexiest man in the world—and she would think that way until the day she died.
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