by Diana Palmer
The box of dental records was on the table. The skull was there, too, grinning morosely at her as she took a chair. She studied the fillings in the teeth, then lifted out the first record. It belonged to Lexine Baxter. She studied Lexine’s dental chart and wondered about the girl who had disappeared.
No one had given a damn about her, it seemed. Tracy found that sad. She glanced at the skull. She wondered if anyone had cared about him.
The next record was for a man who would have been about the right age. She noted the last name was Thomas. The records obviously weren’t in alphabetical order. Looking at the careless way they’d been inserted into the storage box, she realized someone had probably spilled the folders and stuffed them back again as quickly as possible.
She sighed. It was going to be a long day.
At noon, Rafe Rawlings showed up carrying three bag lunches from the Hip Hop Café. He gave one to Judd and joined Tracy at the conference table.
“How’s it going?” He eyed the stack of records she’d already gone through.
“No luck so far.”
“You sound discouraged.”
She smiled. “I’m not, but this is practically our last hope. I really wanted to solve this case.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you looking for clues to your parents?” she asked.
He shrugged. “It would be nice to know where I came from,” he admitted.
“A young woman in trouble,” she told him gently.
His lack of biological roots had made him an outsider in many ways, she realized. He was wary of people and involvement. Lily Mae had said he didn’t have a regular girl.
“That’s almost always the case with an abandoned baby. The father usually doesn’t know about the child.”
“Or doesn’t care if he does know,” Rafe added, picking up his sandwich and taking a bite with stoic calm.
Tracy felt he hid much behind that placid exterior.
Judd spoke from his desk. “Did you think there might be a connection between you and the bones?”
Rafe shrugged. “I was found in the woods—not the same ones, but close enough. There was a possibility. When Tracy told me the blood type, though, I knew it was no go. I’m negative. The bones were positive.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Tracy told him.
“Wouldn’t both parents have to be negative for the child to be? Doesn’t the positive factor override the negative one?”
“Yes, if those two genes meet in the child. But two positive parents can have a negative-blood-type child if they both carry the recessive gene.”
“But the chance is less likely.”
She nodded and bit into the thick sandwich of ham and sprouts with a savory dressing that was low-fat and delicious.
After Rafe left, Judd called her to him. She went and sat in his lap. They napped for twenty minutes. The secretary returned from lunch and walked in, waking them.
“Oh-oh,” she said. “Look, Boss, you’re going to have to start locking the door if you’re going to make out in the office.”
Sterling walked in behind her. He flashed his badge. “Vice squad. I’m investigating a hot tip about kissing and…” There was a dramatic pause “…other stuff going on in public offices. Looks like I caught you red-handed with the goods on you.”
Tracy snickered as Sterling eyed her sternly. She liked being the “goods” found on Judd.
“You have the right to remain silent,” Sterling intoned, reading from his wallet card.
Judd threw a pencil eraser at his best detective. “Get out of here, or you’ll find yourself on night patrol up in the mountain pass for the winter.”
“Hey, you don’t have to take it personally,” Sterling protested. He headed for the exit.
“By the way, you want to be my best man on Tuesday?” Judd called before he got out the door.
Sterling stopped at Judd’s casual question. “Yes…hell yes,” he said. He let out a whoop. “Wait till I tell Jessica. She and Maggie have a bet going about the wedding date. Jessica said before the month was over. Looks like she won.”
After he and the secretary left, Judd turned to Tracy. “The whole town will know by suppertime. Who’s going to be your best woman?”
“Winona. Or do you think I should ask Lily Mae, in case she ends up as my stepmother?”
“Winona. Though I think we’re going to see a lot of Lily Mae in the future. God, I never thought she’d be a possible mama-in-law.”
“Well, she hasn’t wrestled him down the aisle yet.”
A short while later Tracy returned to her task. She worked the rest of the day and got a bit over halfway through the long box. When Judd stuck his head in the door, she was ready to go. She put the file she’d just picked up back in the box.
On the drive home, she wondered how it was possible to be so happy…and yet sad. Judd had asked her to marry him, but he was holding back, too. He was still guarding his heart.
The next day, dressed in a hurriedly bought silk outfit in her favorite golden yellow color from a new boutique near the Hip Hop Café, Tracy stood on the courthouse steps with Judd.
The mayor stood between them and smiled at the press, his wife at Judd’s side. Lightbulbs flashed and camera whirred as the news media took advantage of the photo opportunity thus provided of the heroine and the sheriff…who happened to be her ex-husband as well as her soon-to-be new husband.
“It’s so romantic,” Tracy heard one reporter exclaim.
“It’ll make the national news,” another predicted with great satisfaction. He stepped closer with a mike when the mayor opened the book of marriage vows and took his place.
Winona leaned close to Tracy. “I told you you’d stay.”
“Nobody likes people who say ‘I told you so,’” she whispered back. She kissed the older woman’s cheek. “But I love you just the same.”
Winona wore a blue silk dress the color of the Montana sky. Her hair was neatly braided and wrapped around her head. She wore shoes and stockings and a discreet crystal necklace. On her shoulder was an orchid, pinned there by Judd who also planted a kiss on her cheek.
On the white Bible Tracy held, a red rose and a white one, their stems entwined, were the only adornment.
When the vows were over, the entire county went across the street to the park for a cookout. The meal was followed by cake and punch and a few fireworks, which were illegal, but the sheriff didn’t arrest his chief deputy or the young cop who helped set them off.
Lightheaded from champagne, Tracy held on to Judd when they were dropped off at their house by a grinning rookie cop, who left in a hurry when his boss scowled at him.
Judd decided he should carry Tracy across the threshold. He made it, but stumbled one step inside the door. They went down in a tumble. One of the crutches barked him on the shin of his good leg. He cursed soundly.
“A fine way to talk,” Tracy scolded. “How will it sound to our grandchildren when they learn their grandfather dropped his bride and cussed like a Montana miner on his wedding day?”
He quit rubbing his leg. “What grandchildren?”
She drew a slow breath. “The ones our child will probably have.” She gave him a sweet smile that trembled only a little and waited anxiously for his response.
Judd stared into Tracy’s eyes and realized this wasn’t a joke. Emotion roiled within him. Another child. A picture of Thadd, still and lifeless, rushed into his mind. He sat up and rubbed a hand over his face, shutting out the pain of that nightmare.
A child. He hadn’t counted on that. He’d thought…if it was just him and Trace, with no other complications…he’d thought he could live with that, deal with it if anything happened to her. But to start over…to go through it all again…
“Judd?”
She touched him lightly on the arm and withdrew. He had to look at her then. Her skin, always pale as fresh milk, seemed whiter and drawn against the fine bones of her face. Her gaze was anxious…and pleadi
ng.
God, did she know what she was asking him?
“Are you sure you’re pregnant?” he asked. He didn’t recognize his own voice, it was so strained.
She nodded and visibly swallowed. Her hands plucked nervously at her wedding dress. She removed her hat with the net that covered half her face, laid it on a chair, then slipped out of her satin shoes and pushed them aside.
Without looking at him, she sat quietly, staring out the open door. Her face was still, as still as death…no, don’t think that. Oh, God, to go through it again…to love a child.
“How…when? You’ve known…for how long?” He was stalling for time, for some insight to tell him how to deal with this.
“When I was in the hospital,” she said. “I felt queasy, so I asked Kane to do the test.”
“The pregnancy test,” Judd mumbled, looking stunned.
“Yes.”
“I thought…after Thadd…” He gestured helplessly.
“Yes. The doctors said it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, for me to conceive. And I didn’t during all those years. Oh, Judd,” she cried softly, “it’s like a miracle. We’ll be a family again, like we were…”
Tracy stopped at the grimace of pain that crossed his face. She watched anxiously as he gripped one crutch like a lifeline. She hadn’t realized it would be so hard on him to accept the idea of another family. It was too soon. She hadn’t prepared him for fatherhood again.
“Please, say something.” Fear ate at her, and she could hardly speak. “Please say you want it—our child…. I need you to say it….” Her world teetered on the brink of destruction.
He reached for her then. Pulling her close, he buried his face in her hair. She felt a shudder run through his hard, lean frame and she wrapped her arms around him, wanting to comfort him.
“It’ll be all right,” she whispered. “It will, Judd.”
“I know,” he said at last. “I know.”
He took her face between his hands and gazed into her eyes. “I do want the child. It was…for a minute, I thought of the risk….”
“The risk of childbirth?” She’d had an easy birth. Judd knew that. He’d been with her throughout the labor.
“The risk of loving. I remembered how it felt to lose our son, and then to lose you. I thought of going through that again.”
“You’ll never lose me.” She realized she couldn’t give total guarantees for the future. “Life can be dangerous. I can’t promise it won’t be, but I’ll never voluntarily leave you.”
He laid a finger over her lips. “That day at the mine, when you went down for Jimmy, I thought if you died, then it would be over for me. The pain of it, Trace, God, the pain.”
She made a little sound, trying to soothe and reassure him. She knew the anguish he spoke of.
He sighed. “That’s a coward’s way of thinking. There’s always a risk in living. In loving, too.”
His gaze held hers. She listened with all her heart while he sorted through his feelings, knowing this moment was vital to their future happiness. She wanted complete commitment from him now, for her and her love and for their child.
“Kids are curious beings,” he went on. “They go off on their own to explore the world. That’s natural.”
“Yes.” She realized Judd was accepting the past as she had that day in the cemetery. Like her, he was facing the sorrow, the pain, and letting it go. She held very still and waited.
“Things happen—car wrecks, cave-ins, fire, flood. The world is full of disaster. It’s on the nightly news. But there are a thousand other moments, each one precious, each one blessed with love and joy. That’s what I forgot with Thadd. The joy of knowing him. I remembered only the pain.” He touched his forehead to hers. “Forgive me, my love.”
“For what—being human?”
“I told you in the hospital I loved you. I’ve told you I didn’t want to live when I thought you might die. But it wasn’t the whole truth. You see, I thought I could love you a little bit. That it would be safe if things didn’t get too involved. As long as it was just the two of us, without other complications.”
“And then you learn about a new baby,” she murmured, seeing what he was getting at. She’d sensed he was holding back, but she’d thought it was because he didn’t completely trust her love yet. She’d thought, with time, it would come.
He gave a wry, husky laugh. “Life doesn’t work in half measures, it seems.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, the words strained. “I didn’t mean to make it so hard for you—”
“No,” he said, cutting off her apology. “Don’t be sorry. I want this child. I want you and our love and everything that love can possibly offer. I want it all, Trace. Everything.”
Looking into his eyes, she saw he meant it. The barriers were completely gone. Love gleamed in those dark depths, bright as the rising sun…bright as all the tomorrows to come.
She lifted her face and felt his kiss on her mouth. A pledge, she realized, to the future, to their children.
Now…now she felt she was truly his wife, each of them part of the other and of the whole fabric of life.
“Where were we?” he asked. “Oh, yes, I was about to ravish you, Mrs. Hensley.”
They made love there on the floor at eight o’clock on a late summer’s evening with the door wide open. Fortunately, all the neighbors were still at the party.
Fourteen
Tracy woke at dawn. Judd was tickling her nose with the corner of the blanket. She laughed, pushed his hand away and scratched the offended part.
“What do you want to do today?” he asked.
“Well,” she drawled, “what did you have in mind?”
“We’ve never had a honeymoon,” he reminded her. He combed her tangled curls with his fingers. “The first time we couldn’t afford it. But now we can. I’d like to take you somewhere special, to a place you’ve always wanted to go, but never had the chance.”
“There’s only one place,” she said softly. “It’s here, in your arms. From the moment I met you, this is where I’ve longed to be. Always.” She caressed his strong jaw and ran her thumb over his lips. “For me, this is paradise.”
They stayed in bed another hour, and Judd said all the things she wanted to hear, the special things that lovers say. She loved it that he opened himself to her and expressed his feelings, and she told him so.
“If only we’d talked before,” he said at one point.
She laid a hand over his mouth. “No regrets,” she ordered. “We look forward from this moment on.”
“No regrets,” he agreed. His kiss was his promise.
“Well, look who’s here—the folks who ran out on their own wedding party.” Sterling laid a report on the secretary’s desk and followed the couple into the other room.
“It was either that or arrest half the town, including the chief deputy, for disturbing the peace.” Judd hung his hat on a peg and hobbled over to his chair.
Tracy grinned at the two and left them. Going into the small conference room, she plunked her purse on a chair, took her seat and picked up where she’d left off two days ago. Today she would finish the box of records.
A tingle of excitement shot through her as she lifted the next file, opened it, glanced at the macabre grin on the skeleton and looked at the dental record.
A filling in a molar matched, she saw. And another. And another. The root canal in a bicuspid was the same. The lower back molars had been extracted, according to the dental chart. The lower back molars were missing from the skull.
“Judd!” she yelled. “Sterling!”
The two men stopped their monthly planning session and peered through the open door at her.
“I’ve found him!” she said. “I’ve found our cowboy!”
Both men leapt to their feet and stampeded into the room. One on each side, they peered over her shoulders.
“Look.” She pointed to each detail on the chart and on the teeth in the skull. Eve
ry one was the same.
“What’s the name?” Judd demanded. “Who is it?”
She turned the card over and peered at the information side. “Charles Avery,” she read. “Oh…”
“What just occurred to you?” Judd asked, his eyes narrowed on her as if she were the suspect in the case.
“He was the one…Lily Mae told me about him and the Baxter girl who used to live here. Everyone thought they’d run off together. That was about twenty-eight years ago. Oh, Judd, Melissa Avery from the Hip Hop Café—the bones…they belong to her father.”
“Hmm,” Sterling mused aloud, “did she kill him?”
“Melissa? She couldn’t have. She was just a baby at the time,” Tracy explained.
Sterling gave her a pained look. “I meant the woman he was supposed to have run off with.”
“Lexine Baxter?”
“She would have had to be pretty strong to have killed him with a rock,” Judd said.
“She wasn’t an Amazon type, not that I remember,” Tracy put in. “I don’t think Avery was dead when he was pushed under the ledge. Remember, I found blood in the soil there? He could have been in a daze, then gone into a coma.”
“And bled to death,” Sterling concluded.
“Winona saw our cowboy…Charles Avery,” Tracy amended. “She saw him fighting with another man. Maybe that was who did him in and left him to die.”
“But who was that?” Judd frowned, then gave Sterling a wicked grin. “I know just the man to put to work on a twenty-eight-year-old murder mystery.”
Sterling said a rude word.
The telephone rang. Tracy hit the speaker button. “Tracy Roper…Hensley,” she said in her official voice, grinning at Judd’s scowl.
“Tracy, I have some news for you.”
“Winona,” Tracy said warmly. She had news of her own. “We know who the cowboy was. I found his dental records. You’ll never guess in a million years—”
Winona wasn’t the least interested in the past. “It’s a girl,” she said smugly. “But the next one will be a boy.”
ISBN: 978-1-55254-767-0