Buried Sins

by Marta Perry

  Afterward, he’d put the cash back into the box, and Caroline had returned it to the bank’s care. What else was there to do? If it hadn’t been for Caroline’s name on that lease, the bank officer would have sealed the box himself, not letting them do anything but look for a will until someone was present from the Department of Revenue.

  Caroline transferred her gaze from the sculls to him. “It’s not my money.”

  She’d been saying that, in one variation or another, since they’d left the bank.

  “If it belonged to your husband, then it belongs to you, unless he made a will leaving it elsewhere.”

  “As far as I know, Tony didn’t make a will. But then, there’s a lot that I don’t know, obviously.” Her voice held an edge.

  “Barring a will, it would go to you as next of kin.”

  “I don’t want it.” The suppressed emotion in her voice startled him. “Even if it did belong to Tony, I can’t imagine that he came by it honestly.”

  “You said he took money out of your account. You could probably legitimately claim that, even if—”

  He stopped, because she was shaking her head. “I don’t want it, I tell you. I just want to forget I ever saw it.”

  Her voice had the ring of truth. She had to be hard up for money, if Gibson really had cleaned her out, but she seemed adamant about that.

  “I can understand, I guess,” he said slowly, “but I don’t think you’re going to be able to do that. Seems to me you ought to notify the Santa Fe police.”

  Fear flared in those green eyes. “No! I mean, I don’t want to have anything to do with it.”

  Anything to do with the police—that was what she meant. He hated to push her. What he wanted to do was put his arm around her shoulder, pull her close and tell her everything was going to be all right.

  But he couldn’t. It wouldn’t be professional, for one thing. And he couldn’t promise things were going to be fine. His instincts told him a law had been violated somewhere in all of this, even if he couldn’t put his finger on it yet.

  “Where do you think the money came from?” Maybe if he could get her thinking, the fear would leave her eyes and they could talk about notifying the police in a rational manner.

  “I don’t know.” She rubbed the sleeves of her suit jacket. “Based on when he rented the safe-deposit box, it was several months ago. I just can’t imagine, but obviously I didn’t have a clue about his finances.”

  “What about gambling winnings?”

  She winced a little, but she kept her back ramrod straight, reminding him of her grandmother. “I guess that’s one possibility.”

  She clearly didn’t want to admit that, but it seemed the obvious answer to a lot of the problems she’d been having. A compulsive gambler, losing money he couldn’t repay, might resort to stealing from his wife or even driving his car off the side of a mountain.

  The trouble with that scenario was that it didn’t fit the facts. Tony, with a safe-deposit box stuffed with cash, didn’t look like any loser he’d ever seen.

  He studied Caroline’s face. Those normally clear green eyes were clouded, the shadows under them looking like bruises on the fair skin. There were lines of strain around her generous mouth, and he had the sense that she was hanging on to her composure by a thread.

  Sooner or later, information about the money would have to be passed on to the Santa Fe police. Since Tony’s death wasn’t being investigated, he didn’t feel an urgency to do it today.

  He could give Caroline another day, maybe. But if she hadn’t decided by then to talk to the New Mexico cops, he’d have to do it.

  “Do you want to head home now?” He planted his hand on the top slat of the bench, ready to get up.

  She looked up, startled. “We’re going to try and find Tony’s family, aren’t we? You said that you had a possible address.”

  “I do. But I thought maybe you’d had enough for one day.”

  She managed a smile. “Think how offended my grandmother would be at the idea that an Unger wouldn’t do her duty, no matter what.”

  “You don’t have to prove anything, Caroline.” But maybe, in her mind, she did.

  She rose, slinging the strap of her leather bag on her shoulder. “I’d rather get it over with. If Tony has family here in Philadelphia, I think it’s time I met them.”

  “Are you sure this is the right address?” Caroline stared through the windshield. The row house, its brick faded and stained, sat behind its wire mesh fence with an air of cringing away from the street. Small wonder. This wasn’t the worst neighborhood in Philadelphia, but it had an air of having come down in the world considerably in recent years.

  Zach consulted the address in his notebook, checked the GPS monitor and nodded. “This is it, all right. Not what you expected?”

  “No. I can’t imagine Tony growing up here.” She thought of the safe-deposit box stuffed with money, and her stomach tightened. “But I seem to have been wrong about plenty of things where Tony was concerned.”

  Tony, who were you? Was there anything real about our marriage?

  The look Zach sent her seemed to assess her stability. “Are you sure you want to do this now?”

  She took a deep breath. In a situation like this, her grandmother would rely on her faith. For a moment she felt a twinge of something that might be envy. To feel that Someone was always there—

  But she couldn’t. She grabbed the door handle. “Let’s go.”

  “Wait a second.” He reached across her to clasp her hand before she could open the door. For a moment she couldn’t seem to breathe. He was too close, much too close. She could smell the clean scent of his soap, feel the hard muscles in the arm that pressed against her.

  “Why?” She forced out the word, her voice breathless.

  He drew back, as if he’d just realized how close he was. “Maybe it would be better if I took the lead in talking to them. If they don’t already know that Tony was married—”

  “Yes, of course you’re right.” That was yet another nightmare to think about. Tony’s family would have no reason to welcome, or believe in, a previously unknown wife. “Just—”

  “What?”

  She hesitated a moment and then shook her head. “I was going to say be tactful, but maybe there’s nothing left to be tactful about.”

  He squeezed her hand, so lightly that she might have imagined it. “I’ll do my best.”

  She slid out of the car and waited until he joined her on the sidewalk. The gate shrieked in protest when he pushed it open, and she followed him up the walk, stepping over the cracks where weeds flourished unchecked.

  Three steps up to a concrete stoop, and then Zach rapped sharply on the door, ignoring the doorbell. Moments passed. The lace curtain on the window beside the door twitched. Someone was checking them out.

  They must have looked presentable, because the woman swung the door open. “Something I can do for you?”

  She was probably not more than thirty, Caro guessed. Blond hair, dark roots showing, was pulled back into a ponytail. She wore a faded navy cardigan over a waitress uniform, and the bag slung over her shoulder seemed to say that she had either just come in or was just going out.

  “We’re looking for Anthony Gibson. Does he live here?”

  She jerked a nod and turned to look over her shoulder. “Somebody for you, Tony. Listen, I have to go. I’ll see you later.”

  She held the door so that they could enter and then slid past them as if eager to make her departure.

  “What do you folks want?” The tone held a trace of suspicion. The man thumped his way toward them with a walker. Tall, like Tony, with dark eyes.

  But the world was full of tall men with dark eyes. Surely this couldn’t be Tony’s father. The setting was wrong, and he must be too old—he looked nearly as old as Grams, rather than being a contemporary of her mother.

  “You’re Tony Gibson?” Zach nudged her forward as he spoke.

  “That’s right.�
� The man came to a stop at a mustard-colored recliner and sat, shoving the walker to one side.

  “I’m Zachary Burkhalter, Chief of Police over in Churchville in Lancaster County. This is Caroline Hampton. We wanted to talk to you about your son.”

  She opened her mouth to say that this couldn’t be her Tony’s father, and then she closed it again, because Tony’s picture sat on top of the upright piano in the corner. A much younger Tony, but that smile was unmistakable.

  The lines in the man’s face seemed to grow deeper. “My son died a month ago. If he owed you money, you’re wasting your time coming here for it.”

  “No, nothing like that,” Zach said easily. “We’re just trying to clear up some questions that came up after Tony’s death. We weren’t sure we had the right family.”

  The old man—Tony’s father, she reminded herself—leaned back in the recliner, grabbing the handle so that the footrest flipped up. “My son, all right.” He pointed to the picture on the piano. “If that’s the Tony Gibson you’re looking for.”

  “Yes.” She forced herself to speak. “Yes, it is.”

  “Died out west. New Mexico, it was.” He didn’t look grieved, just resigned. “I always figured it would happen that way. Somebody’d call and tell us he was gone.”

  “What made you think that?” Zach’s voice had gentled, as if he recognized pain behind the resignation.

  He shrugged. “Always skating too near the edge of the law, Tony was. You can’t keep doing that and not get into trouble at some point.”

  “Had you heard from him lately?” Did he tell you about me? That was what she wanted to ask, but something held her back.

  “Not for months. He sent Mary Alice a hundred bucks back in January, I think it was. Said she should get Christmas presents with it.”

  Mary Alice was apparently the woman who’d opened the door to them. Tony’s sister, she supposed, left here to look after their ailing father.

  “Were you expecting a visit from him this spring?” She put the question abruptly, hearing Tony’s voice in her mind. We’ll go back east in the spring, sweetheart. We’ll surprise both our families. He’d spun her around in a hug. My folks will be crazy about you.

  “No. And I wouldn’t have believed him if he had said so.” He planted his hands on the arms of the recliner and leaned toward her. “What is all this, anyway? Why do you want to know about my son? What are you to him?”

  “We just—” Zach began, but she shook her head.

  “Don’t, Zach.” She took a breath. For good or ill, the man had a right to know she was his son’s widow. “I’m sorry to blurt it out this way, Mr. Gibson. I’m actually Caroline Hampton Gibson. I was married to Tony.”

  He didn’t speak, but a wave of red flushed alarmingly into his face. He jerked the recliner back into the upright position with a thump.

  She took a step backward. “I don’t want anything from you. I just thought you ought to know—”

  “You’re crazy, that’s what you are.” He grabbed the walker and took a step toward her. “Or you’re trying to pull something. Some of his friends, most likely, just as crooked as he was.”

  “Nothing like that.” Zach’s tone was soothing.

  The old man ignored him, glaring at Caroline. “I don’t know who you are. But I know who you’re not. You’re not my son’s wife. Mary Alice is Tony’s wife, and she’s the mother of his little girl.”

  NINE

  Caroline spread the old quilt over the table in the barn, handling it as carefully as if it were a living creature. Maybe working on the quilt would distract her from the memory of yesterday’s shocking revelations.

  Maybe, but she doubted it.

  She forced herself to concentrate on the pattern. The research she’d done had told her that the particular way the flying geese and star were combined on this quilt was unusual. She wanted to see it more clearly, but the colors were muted by an inevitable coating of dust. Going over it with the brush attachment of the vacuum cleaner on low power was the recommended process.

  The soft hum of the vacuum blocked out other sounds. Unfortunately, it couldn’t block out her thoughts. They kept leaping rebelliously back to that disastrous trip to Philadelphia.

  Maybe disastrous wasn’t the right word. The revelations, one after the other, had been painful, but would she be better off if she didn’t know? The truth would be the truth, whether she wanted to hear it or not.

  She still wasn’t sure how she’d gotten out of that house after Tony’s father had dropped his bombshell. Zach had taken over, of course. That would always be his automatic response. He’d soothed the man as best he could and piloted her back to the car.

  She hadn’t been able to talk about it during the drive back. Maybe it would have been better to get it out, but she couldn’t. She’d been numb, maybe in shock.

  Zach hadn’t pressed her, other than to urge her to tell her grandmother or her sisters what happened. He’d left her with the promise that he’d check the records and find out the facts.

  She hadn’t taken Zach’s advice, good as it probably was. She’d been in limbo, unable to decide anything. She’d spent the evening with Grams and Rachel, taking comfort in their chatter, listening to Grams’s stories, reviving a sense of belonging she hadn’t had in a very long time.

  She switched off the vacuum and stood back to look at the results. The experts appeared to be right—the area she’d gone over was discernibly brighter, the deep, saturated colors coming to life.

  The sound of a step had her turning, seeing the shadow he cast in the patch of sunlight on the barn boards before she saw him. Zach stood in the doorway, his figure a dark shape against the brightness outside.

  His uniform didn’t induce that instinctive revulsion any longer, but her stomach still tightened at the sight of him. He might have found out. He might know the truth about her marriage.

  “Hi. Your sister told me I’d find you here.” He came toward her, heels sounding on the wide planks. A shaft of sunlight turned his sandy hair to gold for a moment, and then it darkened when he moved out of the light. He studied the quilt. “Are you taking up quilting now?”

  “This is the quilt your sister and I were talking about. It apparently dates from the 1850s. I’m trying, very cautiously, to clean it up.” She was a coward, but she’d rather talk about the quilt than what had brought him here.

  “I’m surprised Agatha Morris wasn’t interested. I’d expect her to be here leaning over your shoulder, telling you you’re doing it all wrong.”

  “I may be, but eight out of ten experts on the Internet agreed that vacuuming with a soft brush was a good first step.”

  “What would we do without the Internet?”

  He said the words casually, but she heard something beneath them that alerted her.

  “You’ve found out, haven’t you?” She let go of the vacuum hose, and it clattered to the floor.

  He nodded toward a bench against the low wall that separated the hay mow from the rest of the barn floor. “Let’s have a seat. I see Cal left behind some of the improvements he made when this was his workshop.”

  She followed him, not interested in whether her brother-in-law had made the bench or not, just intent on sitting down before her knees did something stupid.

  “The Internet does make searching records easier. Tony married Mary Alice seven years ago in Philadelphia.”

  She ought to be shaken, shocked and appalled. Maybe she was, but at the moment she mostly seemed numb. “You’re sure—” She shook her head. “Of course you’re sure, or you wouldn’t be telling me. What about the child?”

  “Their daughter, Allison Mary, was born seven months later. A shotgun wedding, maybe.”

  It would be tempting to try and rationalize what Tony had done in that light, but she found she couldn’t. He’d had a wife. A child. He had a duty to them, not to her.

  “Did he get a divorce?” A voice she barely recognized as hers asked the question.

&n
bsp; He hesitated for a moment, as if knowing how much this would hurt her. His very silence told her the answer before he said the word.

  “No.” His stretched his arm along the back of the bench and touched her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Caroline.”

  She nodded, trying to think this through. “So the marriage he went through with me wasn’t legal. Am I—did I do anything against the law in marrying him?”

  “No. He was the bigamist, not you.”

  She took a deep breath. “I guess mostly I don’t understand. He must have known I’d find out the truth eventually. Why would he do such a thing?”

  “That’s a good question. Can you think of any reason—anything that might explain what was going through his mind?”

  “If I could, don’t you think I’d have mentioned that by now? There’s nothing.” She planted her hands on her knees. “Maybe if I threw something I’d feel better—preferably something at Tony’s head.”

  “I don’t think that would help.” His voice was mild, as it always was. That didn’t tell her whether he believed her or not. “It’s natural enough to be angry at him.”

  “He’s well beyond the reach of my anger now.” That in itself was cause for wrath. Tony had escaped, and left her to deal with everything. “I’m relieved about one thing, though. Since I wasn’t really his wife, I don’t have to do anything about that money.”

  He didn’t answer. Didn’t move. How, then, did she know that he wanted something—something in relation to the money?

  “What?” Impatience threaded her voice.

  “You should talk to the Santa Fe police about it. They’re the ones investigating his death, and it could have an impact upon that case.”

  “I don’t want to.” Her fingers twisted together in her lap. He put his hand over hers, stilling the restless movement.

  “That’s pretty obvious. Would you mind telling me why?”

  Zach studied the expression on Caroline’s face. What was going on with her? For that matter, what was going on with him? He ought to be looking at this situation, at her, with his usual professional detachment.