Harlequin Heartwarming May 2016 Box Set: Through the StormHome for KeepsThe Firefighter's RefrainTo Catch a Wife

by Rula Sinara

  Just what every girl dreamed of. Not.

  She was convinced he hadn’t meant it anyway. He was probably in shock and blurted out the first thought that popped into his head, the thing that was considered the right thing to do. Emily sighed. She hadn’t known what to expect when she told him about the baby, but she hadn’t anticipated that. He had asked her out to dinner, which made tonight a first date, a prospect that should have her filled with anticipation, not trepidation.

  “Why can’t you be normal?” she asked her reflection in the mirror.

  Her father had always said her tendency to march to the sound of her own drum was part and parcel of being the middle child. She shuddered to think what he would say about this, and she was in no hurry to find out. Fred, with whom she had shared her most secret hopes and dreams, claimed her at times unorthodox behavior was on account of her mother leaving when Emily was so young. As she became older and learned how to talk herself out of doing the wrong thing, she realized both her friend and her father were probably right.

  And when she considered her sisters’ place in the birth order—Annie, the oldest, having to be the responsible one, and CJ, the youngest, a little flaky and a bit too self-centered—Emily decided she was better off being the one in the middle.

  Feeling more in control, she splashed cold water on her face and returned to the living room. Tadpole had given up her search for another peanut and was running on her lopsided wheel. Emily found the intermittent squeak, squeak, squeak oddly comforting. It meant she wasn’t alone in the apartment.

  She sat at her desk, eased her feet out of her shoes and wriggled her toes. She opened the file with Sig Sorrenson’s obituary. She read and reread the first paragraph three times, realized the futility of trying to edit without the ability to concentrate. She couldn’t do justice to this man’s long life while she was completely absorbed in her own, so she closed the document and logged into her email instead, scrolling up the list and deleting coupon offers for a spa treatment, an oil change and a two-for-one brunch special at a pancake house in Madison. She read a message from her boss reminding her about the town council meeting on Monday afternoon, and she checked her calendar to be sure she had entered the correct time. She had three new followers on Twitter and a reminder that two new comments had been posted on her latest blog entry. The sender of the most recent email nearly caused another panic attack.

  From: Norma Evans

  Why would Jack’s mother send her an email? Surely, he hadn’t told his parents about them yet. No, he wouldn’t. She was sure of it. They needed to get to know each other first.

  Subject: Missing garden gnomes, etc.

  “Okay, breathe. This is about the blog, not the baby.” She opened the email and started to read.

  Dear Emily,

  I thought you would be interested to know that along with all the other things that have gone missing around this lovely little town of ours, my garden trowel has disappeared. And before you ask, I can assure you I did not misplace it. I was using it yesterday afternoon in one of my flower beds, the one right outside the front door, because with this lovely weather we’re having, I’m getting ready to plant my marigolds. Some say it’s still too early for them, but those flowers are hardy and can hold their own against a late spring frost. When I went in to make dinner, I stuck the trowel in the ground and left it there on purpose because I was planning to finish the flower bed this afternoon.

  Well, you can imagine my surprise when I went out after lunch today and my trowel was gone! My first thought was Walt had put it away, but when I asked him about it, he said he never touched it. So this must be the work of the Garden Gnome Bandit, don’t you think? There’s really no other explanation. I called the police, but they don’t seem to be taking these thefts seriously. We need someone like my son, Jack, on the Riverton PD, don’t you agree?

  I hope your family is doing well. Tell your father hello from us, and remind your sister Annie I’ll see her at the Hospital Auxiliary’s bazaar and rummage sale in a few weeks. I’m looking forward to sampling some of that strudel of hers.

  Yours truly,

  Norma Evans

  Emily let out a long breath, realizing she’d been holding it while reading through to the end of the message and waiting for the penny to drop. Norma Evans was nothing if not long-winded, but she had given no indication she knew anything about her impending grandparenthood. The disappearance of her garden trowel coinciding with the appearance of those two pink lines was purely coincidence.

  Welcoming the distraction, even though it had come from Jack’s mother, she pushed away from her desk and stood to look at the Riverton street map she’d pinned to the bulletin board above the bookcase. She plucked a pushpin from the box on the top shelf and stuck it into the map to mark the location of the Evans’s family home.

  The missing items now totalled nine, and the location of the red plastic ball on the head of this pin fit the pattern that had been slowly emerging. Every item had been taken from a nine-square-block residential area a little to the north of the historic downtown area. The one outlier was Gabe’s Gas ’n’ Go on the highway, but that was only two blocks to the west. Next, she scanned her list of things that had been stolen.

  Three garden gnomes, one welcome mat, a pair of black rubber boots, a garden stake with a hand-painted sign reading Weed it and Reap, and now one garden trowel. And of course the window-washing squeegee from Gabe’s. The boots had disappeared on two consecutive nights from Ferguson’s back door, and Emily had resisted the urge to ask why the remaining boot hadn’t been put away after the first one went missing.

  The trowel fit the pattern. It was small and the sort of thing a person would intentionally place in a garden or accidentally leave outside because who would bother stealing it? She fetched her camera from her bag, snapped a photo of the updated street map. The rhythmic whirring of the hamster wheel, punctuated by its squeak, squeak, squeak stopped abruptly, and Tadpole gazed up at her, dark eyes filled with anticipation. Emily opened the door and lifted her out, holding the warm little body close to her heart while she contemplated the map for a moment. After a few seconds, she settled Tad into the little red plastic box on the corner of her desk that served as the rodent’s home away from home and gave her another peanut. Then she uploaded the new photo to a folder on her desktop and logged into her blog.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  WITH ONE HAND on the doorknob of the interview room where Rose Daniels sat waiting, Jack paused long enough to clear his head of babies, job offers and Emily. Yes, even her. Every interview demanded focus and control, this one more than most because there was a possibility this young woman had been more than an innocent bystander to three murders. The grizzly stabbings that had occurred on three consecutive days, in three different parts of Chicago, to three women who appeared to have nothing in common. In spite of that, Jack had been convinced they were connected.

  There had been no sign of robbery—even the homeless woman was found with two pieces of ID, fourteen dollars and change, and her next fix in her coat pocket. All three victims were fully clothed. There had been no physical assault and no sign of a struggle, which suggested the women had either been skillfully ambushed or they had not felt threatened by their assailant. Jack’s gut told him it was the latter and that there was a single perpetrator. He’d learned to go with his gut, and it almost always paid off.

  The common thread had turned out to be Rose Daniels. Daughter of the drug addict, former client of the social worker, former foster child of the housewife. Rose had recently worked as a waitress at an all-night diner in the Rogers Park area, and she had been on duty at the time of all three murders. Rose’s boss, a sinewy woman with bad teeth and tobacco-stained fingers, along with her gum-chewing coworker, a handful of late-night regulars and tedious hours of grainy surveillance footage had provided Rose with a rock-solid alibi. Problem
was, by the time Jack had connected the dots, Rose had vanished. He hadn’t known if she was dead or alive, but now here she was in his hometown, of all places. He adjusted his posture, pushed open the door and strode into the room.

  Rose lounged carelessly in a chair designed for anything but comfort. Jack closed the door, and she barely glanced up from the purple polish she was picking off her thumbnail. Her dark brown hair, which had been long in all the photographs and video he’d seen, had been shorn into a short pixie cut. Long, purple-streaked bangs were swept to one side, covering one eye. Rose’s visible eye was black rimmed and bloodshot. She wore faded, distressed jeans and scuffed combat boots. Her black-and-white T-shirt sported a cat’s face with a thought bubble above its head. “Meow.”

  Jack set a bottle of water in front of her, then pulled the other chair away from the table and dragged it around so he could sit facing her without the table between them. “Hi, Rose. I’m Detective Jack Evans, Chicago PD.”

  “Took you long enough.” She didn’t look up.

  He ignored the quip. “I need you to know I’m going to record our conversation.” He placed a recorder on the table, in plain view, pushed the record button and said his name again.

  “I need you to state your name, please, and spell it.” She complied. Rose Marie Daniels.

  “Thank you, Rose,” he said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  She made eye contact then, briefly, warily, then shrugged and looked away. “Whatever.”

  So this is how it’s going to be. He had pored over her police file and her mother’s, had spoken with several social workers and former foster parents at length, so he understood where the attitude came from. He was a patient man, and he had all afternoon, his anticipated rendezvous with Emily Finnegan notwithstanding. Given the tremble in Rose Daniels’s hands and the way her gaze darted around the small room, she didn’t have that luxury. She needed a drink.

  “Can I get you anything besides water?” he offered. “A soda, maybe?”

  “How ’bout a smoke?”

  “Sorry. That’ll have to wait till we’re done here.”

  That earned him another shrug.

  It would be interesting to see how long the cold shoulder would hold up against the young woman’s need for another drink, a nicotine fix or any other substance she craved.

  “So, Rose, Riverton’s a long way from Chicago. What brings you here?”

  She brushed flecks of purple polish off her jeans and started chipping away at the other thumbnail. “Vacation.”

  Sure, because Riverton was right up there with Disney World and Vegas. “I get that,” he said instead. “I’m sure you needed a break from working at the diner.”

  Rose flicked him a glance.

  “Oh, wait. You quit that job, didn’t you? Or are you on a leave of absence? Your boss wasn’t sure.”

  “I got bored.”

  “Fair enough. How long do you plan to stay here?”

  “A few days. A week, maybe.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “At some bed-and-breakfast place.”

  Interesting. The only B & B in town was operated by Annie Finnegan, who also happened to be Emily’s older sister. This was either one very weird set of coincidences, or it wasn’t.

  “That would be Finnegan Farm,” he said, careful not to make it a question. “Out on River Road.” The more Rose believed he already knew about her, the more likely she’d be to spill the details he didn’t.

  She looked startled. “Yeah.”

  “Tell me about your mother.”

  “She was lousy at being one.”

  According to social services, Rose had been in and out of foster care for most of her childhood. Six different homes in all. She’d been returned to her mother’s care five times—after Scarlett Daniels had done a stint in rehab, promising every time she was clean for good. Those periods had been brief, lasting anywhere from three to six months. Scarlett would end up back on the street and Rose in yet another foster home.

  “So I’ve been told,” he said. “I’ve also heard she tried to turn her life around, more than once, but the drugs always got the best of her.”

  “Yeah, those and the stupid, loser boyfriends.”

  “Do you want to talk about them?”

  “Not really.”

  “What about you? Do you have a boyfriend?”

  She looked up, and this time challenged him with a direct stare. “What do you think?”

  “I hear you’ve been hanging around with a guy named Jason Caruthers. I hear he’s pretty crazy about you.”

  Rose huffed and then rolled her eyes in a way that was meant to show her disdain. However, it wasn’t quick enough to mask a wave of panic.

  “I hear he’d do pretty much anything you asked him to do,” Jack said.

  The girl’s reaction was swift and forceful. “I never asked him to do anything for me. Never.” She practically spat the last word before regaining a smattering of self-control. “Anything he did—if he did anything—it was all his doing.”

  “Oh, he did some stuff, all right. As for acting alone, that’s not what Jason’s saying.” He leaned closer. “I’m going to level with you, Rose. You could be in a lot of trouble here. Three people who were close to you are dead. Your boyfriend’s DNA was found at each crime scene. He’s up on murder one charges on all three counts, and he’s implicated you as an accomplice.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend.” She reached for the bottle of water and, with shaky hands, struggled with the cap.

  Jack took it from her, broke the seal and handed the bottle back to her.

  She unscrewed the cap, gulped the water too quickly, coughed and sputtered, set the bottle on the table, and swiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” she said again. “It was never like that.”

  “Okay.” He wasn’t sure he believed her, but he needed her to believe he did. “If Jason wasn’t your boyfriend, then how about you start at the beginning and tell me what it was like? I can’t help you, Rose, unless I have all the facts.”

  She gave a quick head toss that flipped the too-long bangs away from her face, momentarily revealing the distrust and indecision in those dark, black-lined eyes. He watched her roll the bottle lid back and forth between her fingers, glad she’d finally stopped picking at the scabby remains of her nail polish. She remained silent.

  Jack leaned back a ways, confident he had more staying power than she did.

  Rose continued her nervous fidgeting until the lid unexpectedly spun out of her fingers. He deftly caught it in midair and returned it to the startled girl.

  “How old are you, Rose?”

  “Twenty.”

  “You spent a lot of time in foster homes. How long have you been on your own?”

  “Coupla years.”

  “Don’t kids in Illinois stay in foster care until they’re twenty-one?”

  “Yeah, in sleazy group homes,” she snapped, her voice dripping with disdain. “I can look after myself.”

  Right. Everyone knew how well that turned out. But he would let it drop and try penetrating the tough-girl attitude with a different line of questioning.

  “Have you ever been in prison?”

  She gave him a sharp stare. “No.”

  “Just that one stint in juvie,” he reminded her.

  “Right.” The single word was barely audible.

  “What was that?”

  “Right,” she repeated, this time with force.

  He leaned forward again, forearms on his thighs, and wove his fingers together. “Compared to a maximum-security prison, juvie’s like a walk in the park, summer camp, all fun and games.” He gave her a few seconds to absorb that before he continued. “If som
eone accused me of some bad stuff I didn’t do...I’d be doing whatever I could to avoid doing time. You know what I’m saying, Rose?”

  Eyes downcast, she responded with a one-shouldered shrug. Over the years, he’d met a lot of kids—young adults, he reminded himself—like Rose. They’d grown up in the system but had pretty much raised themselves. Street smart, yet socially inept and immature, a thin veneer of tough-guy attitude barely masking their vulnerability.

  Rose swallowed. “I never asked him to hurt anybody. I swear I didn’t.”

  Finally, a chink in the armor. “Okay. Tell me about Jason. How did you meet him?”

  “At the diner. He’d come in for coffee. At first, he’d sit at a table near the back. He always had a tablet with him, and the diner has Wi-Fi, so sometimes he’d hang out for quite a while.”

  “Did you ever see what he was doing online?”

  “Not really, but I’m pretty sure he has a Facebook page.”

  The reality was he had several, each created with a different identity. He’d used the tablet to surreptitiously take photographs of Rose and post them on his All-night Diner Guy page. The captions showed a creepy obsession with the young woman he referred to as My Caffeine Fix. Using a host of additional fictitious identities, he had also frequented numerous online chat rooms where the topics of discussion were dark and disturbingly morbid.

  Better to withhold this information, Jack decided. Give Rose a chance to tell her story, her way. If she was as innocent as she claimed to be, they might be able to use her to get a confession from an unsuspecting Jason Caruthers.

  “So he’d just sit at the back of the diner and drink coffee?” Jack asked.

  “Yeah, at first, anyway. Then he started talking to me once in a while.”

  “What did you talk about?”