by Brenda Novak
The rattle of the newspaper behind her reminded her that she had other things to think about.
She poured Caleb Trovato a cup of coffee and a glass of orange juice and motioned for Brianna to put down her fork and quit staring daggers at him.
“Thanks,” he said, lowering the paper enough to look over it. He glanced at Brianna, grinned and went back to reading his paper.
Brianna’s expression darkened the moment she realized her acute unhappiness at his presence caused Caleb no discomfort.
Madison decided she really had to talk to Danny about unifying their efforts to raise their daughter as a happy, well-adjusted child. “Did you sleep well?” she asked Caleb, cracking an egg into the skillet she’d just gotten out.
He folded the paper and set it to one side. “Very well. You?”
She was more than a little curious about Caleb’s late-night visitor. But she wasn’t about to mention it. She didn’t want to seem like a nosy landlady—especially when she guarded her own privacy so carefully. “Fine, thanks.”
“Was that the brother who came by last night?” he asked, nodding toward the telephone.
“No, that was Tye. He’s a year older than Johnny.”
“Do you have any other siblings?”
“Just the two brothers.”
“They’re both weird,” Brianna volunteered, wrinkling her nose. “And Johnny stinks.”
Embarrassed by Brianna’s behavior, Madison grappled for patience. “Brianna, that’s not polite. You’re talking about your own uncles. And Johnny smells like smoke. That doesn’t mean he stinks.”
“He stinks to Elizabeth. And he stinks to Dad,” she said smugly. “Dad says it’s a wonder Johnny hasn’t—”
“Let’s not go into what your father has to say,” Madison interrupted, knowing it wouldn’t be nice. She added a pancake and a piece of bacon to Brianna’s plate, and set the food in front of her in hopes she’d soon be too busy eating to speak.
But Brianna only stared at her food. “He doesn’t like you, either,” her daughter responded sullenly. “He said you couldn’t see what was right in front of your eyes. He told Leslie that no-good son of a bitch father of yours nearly ruined his life.”
Madison’s jaw dropped. Brianna’s words were obviously a direct quote, but that didn’t make it any easier to hear them. “Brianna, you know better than to use that kind of language!”
“Dad says it,” she said smugly.
“That doesn’t make it right. Why don’t you go to your room and see if you can remember what we talked about the last time you used a bad word.”
Brianna spared her an angry glance before heading out of the kitchen, carrying Elizabeth smashed beneath one arm. She walked with her spine ramrod straight and her head held high, but it wasn’t long before Madison heard sniffles coming from the direction of her bedroom.
Torn between going to her daughter and trying to remain firm, Madison closed her eyes and shook her head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Tro—”
“It’s Caleb, remember?” he said gently.
“Caleb, I’m sorry. I’m afraid we’re dealing with some…issues here. If you’d rather, I could bring your meals over to your place in the future.”
“No, that’s okay. Brianna doesn’t bother me. I’m sure she’s a great kid.”
A lump swelled in Madison’s throat. “She is a great kid. She’s just a little out of her element right now. Her father remarried this past year, almost the day our divorce was final, which hasn’t helped. The woman who’s now her stepmother was already pregnant.”
“That’s a lot for a child to deal with.”
Madison got another plate from the cupboard. “I’m afraid she’s blaming me for all the changes, but I don’t want to be too hard on her.”
“A bright girl like Brianna will figure things out.”
Madison scooped two eggs onto his plate. “I hope so.”
“Here.” Standing, he crossed the distance between them and guided her to Brianna’s seat. “Why don’t you sit down and relax a minute? I can get my own food.”
Madison would have argued, but she’d been taking care of her mother and Brianna—and Danny before that—for so long, it felt good to let someone else take charge.
Using the fork Brianna had been so fixated on twirling, she began picking at the food she’d dished up for her daughter.
Caleb set a cup of coffee near her plate. “Sounds as though your ex-husband doesn’t like your father much.” Gathering his own plate, now heaped with food, he took his seat.
She put her fork aside and added some cream to her coffee. “My father’s dead.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Caleb paused, his own coffee in hand. “When did he pass away?”
For her, Ellis had died just recently—the day she’d found that box. Somehow, letting go of the man she’d believed him to be felt worse than living without his physical presence. “It’s been a year or so.”
He took a sip. “That’s too bad. How old was he?”
“Fifty-eight.”
“Fifty-eight’s pretty young. Did he have a heart attack?”
Normally Madison didn’t like talking about her father. But Caleb was a complete stranger, which meant he had no stake in the situation. That seemed to make a difference. “He shot himself in our backyard.”
His eyebrows drew together, and his gaze briefly touched her face. “That must have been terrible for you.”
“It was.” She remembered Johnny calling her the day it had happened. She’d felt shock and grief, of course, but also an incendiary anger. She’d believed the police and the media had finally badgered Ellis to the point where he could tolerate no more. She’d stood in the middle of the mall, her cell phone pressed tightly to her ear, her legs shaky as Johnny told her what he’d found. And once she’d hung up she had to break the news to her mother.
“Was he going through some type of depression?” Caleb asked. His attention was on his food, but the tone of his voice invited her confidence.
Madison wondered if telling him a little might bring her some solace. “My father was Ellis Purcell,” she said.
Caleb set his coffee cup down with a clink. “Not the Ellis Purcell who was implicated in the killings over by the university.”
“I’m afraid that’s the one.” Her father had been on the national news and in the papers so many times, it would’ve been much more surprising if Caleb hadn’t recognized his name, but it was still a little disconcerting to have him clue in so fast.
Caleb didn’t say anything for a moment, and Madison immediately regretted being so forthright. “I shouldn’t have told you,” she said.
There was a hesitancy in his expression that gave her the impression he agreed with her. But his words seemed to contradict that. “Why not?” he asked, stirring more sugar into his coffee before taking another sip.
She couldn’t see his expression behind his cup. “Because I’ve spent years trying to escape the taint of it.”
He put his coffee back on the table and finally looked at her. “I’m sorry,” he said, the tone of his voice compassionate.
The ache that had begun deep inside her at the outset of the conversation seemed to intensify. She wanted to hang on to someone, to break away from her troubled past and be like other people. But it was impossible. Her father, or whoever had left those sickening souvenirs under the house, had seen to that. “That’s what my ex-husband was referring to when he said what he did in front of Brianna,” she explained.
“I see.” Caleb cleared his throat. “How old were you when the first woman went missing?”
“Fifteen. I remember my mother talking about it one night. But it was just another story on the news to me then.” She chuckled humorlessly. “Little did I know how much it would affect me later….”
He started eating his pancakes. “What was your father’s reaction to the news?”
“He didn’t really say anything. My mother was the one talking about it.”
When Caleb had swallowed, he said, “Your father must not have been a suspect right away, then.”
“No, he wasn’t drawn into it until two years later, when some woman claimed she saw my father’s truck leaving the house of her neighbor—who’d just been murdered. Then the police started coming over, asking questions. They contacted just about everyone who’d ever known us. They searched the house.”
“What did they find?” he asked, pushing his plate away.
“Besides the fact that I was exchanging love letters with a boy my father had forbidden me to associate with, and I had just bought my first pair of sexy underwear?” She laughed. “Nothing.”
Caleb’s lips curved in a sympathetic smile. “They exposed all your girlish secrets, huh?”
“To this day I stay away from airports just in case security decides to rifle through my bags.”
She’d meant her comments to sound flip but was afraid they didn’t come across that way when Caleb remained serious. “So what do you think?” he asked.
“About what?”
“You probably knew your father as well as anyone.” She could suddenly feel the depth of his focus, which seemed at odds with his casual pose. “Did he do it?”
She’d faced this question before, dozens of times. And she’d always had a ready, if passionate, answer. But that was before. Should she tell him what she’d believed throughout the investigation? Or should she admit that she might’ve been wrong all along?
She’d opened her mouth to tell him she didn’t know what to think when the telephone interrupted.
“Excuse me,” she said, and picked up the handset.
“Good news,” Annette announced from the other end of the line, her voice cheerful.
“What’s that?” Madison glanced down the hall toward Brianna’s room, feeling as though she could use some good news at the moment.
“I’ve decided to sell the house.”
“What?”
“I’m ready to move. I know it’s taken me a while to come to this, but it’s time.”
A vision of her mother stumbling upon the shoes and underwear—and that locket and rope—flashed through Madison’s mind. “There’s no hurry, Mom,” she said, turning away from Caleb. “Why don’t you wait until spring?”
“Because I don’t want to spend another Christmas here without Ellis. Do you think you can sell this house inside a couple of months?”
“I—I’m not sure.”
“If not, maybe I’ll rent it out. Now that I’ve made my decision, the memories are crowding so close.”
“I understand. But…”
“But what?”
Madison looked at Caleb, wishing for the second time that she hadn’t shared so many personal details with him. There was still a great deal to protect. She had to be more careful. “Don’t start packing yet,” she said.
“Why not?”
She groped for something that would sound logical. “Wait until I can help you.”
“You’re so busy. You just worry about getting this place sold. I’ll have Toby next door help me.”
“When?” Madison asked, her panic rising.
“He said he could do it the weekend following next.”
The weekend following next…
She needed to move that box. And she needed to do it sometime in the next two weeks.
CALEB CURSED the untimely interruption of the telephone. He’d just had Madison talking to him about her father. She’d been open and warm, completely the opposite of what he’d expected her to be.
And then her mother had called.
He helped himself to another pancake and took his time eating, hoping they could return to their conversation as soon as Madison hung up. But when she got off the phone, she looked upset.
“How’s your mother?” he asked, setting his napkin next to his plate as he finished.
“Fine.”
“Does she live close?”
She gathered up the dishes. “Just beyond the university, for the time being.”
“For the time being?”
She ran hot water in the sink. “She’s talking about moving.”
“Does that upset you?”
Madison glanced over at him and, if he wasn’t mistaken, a wariness entered her eyes that hadn’t been nearly as pronounced when they were talking earlier. “No, why?”
“You seem a little tense, that’s all.”
“I’m the one who’s been telling her to move,” she said. “It’s tough to stay in the same house where everything went so wrong.” Suddenly, she turned off the water. “Will you excuse me, please?”
“Of course.”
She disappeared down the hall and, after a moment, he could hear her talking in a soft voice to her daughter. “Do you understand why I wasn’t happy with what you said at the table, Bri?…Do you think you could try a little harder to remember your manners?…Okay, come give Mommy a hug…. I know things haven’t been easy lately, princess, but they’ll get better…. Are you ready to eat?”
Caleb felt he should probably leave. There were several people he still needed to interview. And he wanted to talk to Jennifer Allred, the woman Holly had met last night, just to see if he could jog her memory for details. But the odd change that had come over Madison made him believe there was more to that phone call with her mother than she was saying, and he hoped to figure it out before he left.
“Breakfast was great,” he said when she came back into the kitchen holding Brianna’s hand.
“Thanks,” she responded. “Have you always had someone cook and clean for you?”
He almost admitted that he hadn’t, but he wanted to make it sound as though this type of arrangement wasn’t anything new, so she’d relax around him even more. “Occasionally.”
“Must be nice.”
Brianna glowered at him, still sulky, as he carried the cream and sugar to the counter, searching for an excuse to linger. It was the weekend. He could probably spend more time with Madison if only he could think of something menial to do for her. He could fix something, wash her car, mow the grass—
The overgrown grass. Perfect.
“Any chance you’d like to work in the yard this afternoon?” he asked. “I’ve got a few hours. I thought I could mow the lawn and maybe trim some of the bushes while you and Brianna handled the weeds.”
Madison set the frying pan in the soapy water and let her hands dangle in the sink. “Really?”
When he heard the gratitude in her voice, he felt less than an inch tall. But he had to stay focused, had to make this work. “If you don’t mind my help.”
She shook her head. “I don’t mind at all. I’ll even take some money off your rent, or trade you a couple of meals. I’m falling behind out there. My business takes every extra minute. I just lost my top agent and I’ve been trying to find someone to replace her. And my office manager doubles as typist for the agents, but she’s a much better typist than she is a manager.”
“We can do the grass ourselves,” Brianna said, out of nowhere.
“Brianna…” Madison used her tone as another warning.
“Or you could help us,” she added grudgingly.
Caleb grinned. “There’s no need to compensate me.” He knew it would only make him feel worse. “I think it’ll be good to get out. I cut my folks’ grass for years.”
“Where do your folks live?”
“On Fidalgo Island.”
“Really?” Madison’s eyebrows rose. “That’s not far.”
“Farther than I’d want to drive to reach downtown,” he said, so she wouldn’t wonder why he’d rented her cottage, instead of staying with family.
“Do you often work downtown?”
“Not often. Once in a while.”
“I see.” Madison glanced at the clock over the table. “I’m afraid I have to run a few errands this morning. What time do you want to do the yard?”
“One o’clock okay?”
“Perfect.”
He smiled. “See you then.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
MADISON WAS NEARLY thirty minutes late returning from her errands. She’d had to deliver some tax returns to a loan agent for a buyer who was trying to purchase a vacation home outside Langley, and had gotten caught up talking to him about another deal they’d been working on, which had fallen apart. She’d also drawn up a purchase offer for one of her own listings, a small two-bedroom, two-bath located just down the street, even though she knew the buyer was coming in so low the seller would probably be offended and not even bother to counter. She was so busy managing the other agents and running the office that she didn’t have the chance to get out and sell much, but she was doing everything she could to turn her business around, which meant she sometimes had to act as a regular agent, too.
Fortunately, once she and Brianna left the house, Brianna’s mood had dramatically improved. Madison talked to her about being polite to guests and how important it was that Brianna, Madison and Danny treat each other with fairness and respect even though they were no longer living as a family. But it was difficult to tell whether Brianna actually grasped these concepts. It was the sort of stuff older children had problems sorting out. How could Madison expect a six-year-old to understand?
Pushing back the sleeve of her gray suit, she glanced nervously at her watch as she pulled into the drive. She hoped Caleb hadn’t given up on her.
As soon as she cut the engine, she could hear the steady roar of the lawnmower coming from the backyard, and felt a measure of relief. She loved where she lived and was anxious to get the grounds cleaned up. Because the previous owner had taken such meticulous care of the place, with Caleb’s help it would soon look as good as it used to.
“You ready to do some weeding?” she asked Brianna as she got out.
Her daughter didn’t move.
“You like working in the yard,” Madison said, leaning back inside the car. “Come on. It’ll be fun. We’ll probably find some snails.”
Reluctantly, Brianna climbed out.
The lawnmower fell silent and Caleb came around the house, carrying the grass bin. At her first sight of him, Brianna’s expression darkened, but Madison had trouble fighting an appreciative smile. He’d obviously been working for some time—long enough to get too heated for his T-shirt, which he’d taken off and stuffed in his back pocket. Sweat gleamed on his golden torso, making the contours of his muscular chest and arms seem that much more defined.