Most of all he wasn’t going to be the poor fool who was lied to. No matter what Nonnie wanted.
* * *
ADDY WAS ON CAMPUS midmorning on Thursday, dropping off Wednesday’s assignment, when her cell phone vibrated in her bag.
Greg Richards was calling.
She called him back as soon as she was out of earshot.
“It might be over soon, Addy!” The man sounded almost jubilant.
“What?”
“One of the names on the list of female athletes you turned over yesterday—one of the women who was turned down for a scholarship that same year that Susan was granted her scholarship—lives in Phoenix. I went to the closest post office to her home address this morning, just on a hunch, and the postage stamp identically matched the stamp they use, down to a little bit of missing ink in the left corner of the ring due to a chipped rubber stamp! We know who sent the letters.”
“Have you talked to her?”
“Not yet. I’m still in Phoenix, waiting for local backup, but with any luck, this will soon be over. I’ll keep you posted.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
ADDY’S CAR WAS in the driveway when Mark pulled in after class late Thursday morning. He ignored it.
Did he need to call and tell Addy not to come over that night for Abe’s visit? Or would she just know not to show up? She was a lawyer. She’d be up on all of the social norms.
The car was still there half an hour later when he kissed his grandmother on the cheek and headed out the front door on his way to work. He saw it in his peripheral vision. He wasn’t looking. It didn’t matter.
“Mark?”
He stopped. If he’d looked, he’d have seen her sitting on the step just outside her front door. “Yeah?”
“They found what they were looking for,” she said. He wasn’t sure what that had to do with him.
“I don’t know what effect that will have on anything where you’re concerned, but they know that your education is not directly connected to what they were looking for.”
He was sure that made sense to someone.
Shaking his head, he stared at her, raising one eyebrow. It was the best he could do without releasing the flood of disturbing emotions rumbling inside of him.
Why the heck he didn’t just head to his truck he didn’t know.
“I...also want you to know...now that my job here is more or less done...my name isn’t Adele Kennedy.”
She swallowed. He couldn’t care less.
“It’s Adrianna Keller. Adele lied to you, Mark. Adrianna never did.”
Now she was splitting hairs. Or telling him something. Either way, he didn’t care.
He had to get going or be late to work. “Thanks for letting me know,” he said, and continued down the steps and out to his truck without looking back.
* * *
THERE WAS NOTHING for her to do but pack up and go. As eager as she’d been earlier in the week to get out of town and never look back, Addy was having a hard time getting her clothes into suitcases. She had to do the laundry first.
She couldn’t pack up her kitchen stuff until she was sure she wouldn’t need to cook another meal.
Until she connected with Will, she couldn’t know about the exact timing. She was still on his payroll. Depending on how everything played out, he might still need a lawyer.
The sheets on her bed would need to be washed and packed. She wasn’t ready to strip them off the mattress yet. They were one of the few physical reminders she had of Mark.
Addy took a bath instead. A long hot bath.
At two o’clock, Greg called back.
“She’s in custody” were the first words out of the man’s mouth. “Along with her brother. I’m still here, helping with the interrogation, making sure they have everything they need for an airtight case.”
“What does her brother have to do with this?”
“He was the mastermind behind the plan. He figured that she deserved a hundred thousand dollars, at least, for having been denied the same opportunities Susan had been granted at Montford.
“I told her about the spreadsheet you came up with. As soon as she heard that, academically, she was worse off than Susan was, she backed down. And, incidentally, all of the other rejected applicants also had lower test scores than Susan.”
Which didn’t completely let Will off the hook. There were still ten students—eleven including Mark—who’d received the benefits of a Montford education without meeting the entrance qualifications.
“Once we got her downtown and she heard that she was being charged with blackmail and extortion, she changed her story, insisting then that she never intended to follow through on the demands for money.”
“Threatening even without intent to extort money is a crime.”
“Which is what I told her.”
“Does Will know?”
“I called him just before I called you. If you hadn’t caught that situation with Randi and Susan, we likely wouldn’t have been able to stop this girl before she filed a suit,” he said.
“I thought you just said she wasn’t going to follow through on the monetary demands.”
“She’s not now. She was going to, no matter what she claimed after she realized she could do prison time. I saw a check from her brother made out to the courts in the amount of a filing fee on the desk in her living room.”
“She’d hired an attorney?”
“I have no proof of that.”
“Even if she’d filed and won, the school’s insurance would have covered Will’s losses since he was working in an official capacity,” she said. “I’m very relieved to know that this really was just a disgruntled student believing she had a legitimate case. With the letters coming in such an underhanded fashion, I was having visions of someone with a personal vendetta against Will doing whatever it took to bring him down. I’ve seen some crazy, vindictive and vicious things in the seven years I’ve been in practice, and sometimes you pay a heavy price even when you’re in the right.”
“Well, I know that Will’s eyes have been opened wide. You can believe that all policies and practices at Montford are going to get a thorough review and be strictly enforced from here on out.”
She had to talk to Will about the liabilities involved with the eleven under-qualified students who’d been granted admission to the university. He couldn’t take back those educations. Or the benefits they’d gained. And Montford could never withstand the hit if they attempted to compensate every similarly situated student who’d applied and been turned away. The most he could do was hope those eleven never came to light.
Which they would only if one of the students who was allowed entrance was not allowed to complete his education as the other ten had been allowed to do.
It was a matter of reasonable expectation....
“He asked me to have you call him,” the sheriff was saying and then, telling her he’d be in touch, hung up.
She tried Will immediately. He wasn’t in.
* * *
ADDY WASN’T A passive sort. She wasn’t used to hanging around, waiting, surrendering control of the things that mattered most to her. She went into town, to the quaint women’s clothing store, and bought herself a pair of sexy black leggings and a gauzy blouse that hung just below her thighs. A pair of insanely high wedges were next.
She might be practical. Conservative. But that didn’t mean she had to feel undesirable. It
didn’t mean she couldn’t be sexy when she needed to. She asked the saleslady to put her old clothes in the bag and wore her new outfit home.
If she’d crossed paths with anyone she used to know while she was in town, she hadn’t realized it. Hadn’t recognized them.
And that was how she needed it to be.
She wasn’t hanging around Shelter Valley for any reason having to do with her past. She was procrastinating because she’d given her heart away and couldn’t pack up the rest of her things and leave without it.
Nonnie had told her Mark was off at five—in time to babysit. And when he arrived home, she’d be waiting for him. Either he was going to forgive her, or give her heart back.
And then she’d move home.
Will called while she was still downtown. She sat in her parked car and talked to him. While he was immeasurably relieved the threats had been dealt with, he was also concerned about the other areas of liability Addy had uncovered through her research. He asked her to continue to represent him as they sorted through everything. She’d have to take the Arizona bar exam, but she wasn’t opposed to doing so.
She agreed to represent him on two conditions. Her first being that she be able to work from Colorado and travel to Shelter Valley only when absolutely necessary. The second condition had to do with Mark Heber.
What Will told her about him shocked her.
MARK HAD JUST finished working on a machine on the line, helping out the technician whose job it was to keep the machines in working repair, when he was paged to the front offices.
Four o’clock in the afternoon and he was getting paged? Pushing through the door from the factory to the office complex, Mark saw the police officer standing there before the other man saw him.
He wasn’t just a police officer, he noted as he got closer. He was the sheriff. Mark’s faculties nearly shut down.
Something had happened to Nonnie. He wasn’t ready.
“Mark Heber?”
“Yeah, that’s me.”
A tanned hand reached out to him. “I’m Greg Richards.”
The man’s grip was strong, his shake friendly enough. “Good to meet you,” Mark said automatically. His manners were Nonnie’s doing. He’d made it his business to live a life that would honor her, not shame her.
“You, too,” Richards said. “I’m here because your name came up in an investigation I was involved with....”
This wasn’t about Nonnie. Anything else was superfluous.
“I was made aware that you know about the fact that your Montford University education might be in question.”
He nodded, not quite sure what was going on.
“Ordinarily I wouldn’t have anything to do with such things, but because there was an investigation—and I believe it’s best that the reasons for the investigation remain private—I am here to tell you that your education is not in jeopardy.”
A brick fell from his shoulders. He hadn’t even known it was there.
“Really?” He said the word like a cool guy who didn’t give a damn when he felt anything but cool inside.
“You were administered an IQ test the day you met with your guidance counselor.”
“An aptitude test,” he clarified. “To assess my best course of study.”
The sheriff shook his head. “Montford uses the exam sometimes to help with student placement when other test scores are unavailable, but it is a nationally accredited IQ exam.”
So? Mark wasn’t following any of this.
“IQ scores are kept confidential, and because they are not part of the official entrance qualifications, those scores are not included in any admittance files. However, they are on file in the guidance office.”
Mark stood, without moving, summing up this man that Addy knew—even if just as a professional acquaintance.
“The particular IQ test you were administered is a legally accepted test that allows the university to override all other entrance qualifications, assuming the score is high enough.”
Hot damn.
“You came out here to tell me I have a high IQ, Sheriff?”
“I’m here to tell you that the files you saw regarding your education have been destroyed and to inform you that any doubts placed on your right to be studying at the university or your right to the funds you’ve been awarded no longer exist.”
“Addy sent you.”
“I’m not at liberty to say how I came to know about your knowledge of the files. However, I will tell you that Ms. Keller did inform the university on your behalf that they would be putting themselves in jeopardy of a huge lawsuit if they denied your education after they’d let you enroll. However, the point was moot.”
She’d turned on the people who’d hired her?
For him?
“It was important to her that you be told right away,” the man said then, his gaze serious.
Mark got the message.
“Sheriff?” Greg Richards had started to walk away but turned back.
“The other names on that list...were they like me, legitimately allowed entrance due to criteria not noted in the admittance papers?”
“Yes.”
“All eleven of them?”
“Yes.”
So whatever lawsuit implications Addy had been hired to find were gone. Did that mean she was out of a job? Or that she’d be around longer while she kept looking?
She’d gone to the wall for him.
“One more thing.”
“Sure.” Richards stood casually, looking as if he’d stay there all day if Mark asked.
“Where would a guy go if he wanted to find out information on a fire that took place, probably in Colorado, at the Keller home a quarter of a century ago.” He’d been thinking a lot about that fire. About Addy’s aloneness.
The sheriff’s easy expression tightened. “I’d leave that one alone.”
“You know about it?” That shocked him. He’d had the impression he’d been the only one Addy had told about the tragedy.
The man appeared to consider his next words carefully and then said, “It happened here. Addy was born in Shelter Valley.”
He could feel the truth shudder through him. And so much made sense. The recurrence of a nightmare she hadn’t had for years. Her need to talk about something that had happened so long ago.
The breakdown on her back porch...
She’d been reliving the past because she’d come face-to-face with it.
Had she been out to her old neighborhood? Seen where the fire had taken place?
Had she borne that pain all alone?
Realizing that the sheriff of Shelter Valley had just gone out on a limb for him, understanding small-town protocol, Mark asked, “Is that why she was here...brought in to investigate whatever threats had been made? She knew someone involved?”
“Will Parsons.”
“The university president, Will Parsons?”
“His family took her in after the fire....”
Mark came from a small close-knit town. And knew what he had to do. “I’d guess, since she’s so well situated, there’d be a way to get hold of the case file on that fire.”
Greg Richards frowned. “What are you getting at?”
“The memory of that night haunts her, Sheriff. I don’t know what I can do to change that, but...I’d like to try.” It was the right thing to do. Friends looked out for each other. A favor for a favor... “I was the fire investigator back in Bierly, where
I come from. Fire forensics have only been around about ten years, but I’m pretty up on the newest studies. I was thinking maybe, if I could re-create the fire for her—figuratively—if I could take her to the site, live through it with her, she could see it through the eyes of an adult instead of a traumatized child. I’d been thinking I’d have to travel to Colorado to accomplish that, but if it’s all right here...” He was talking faster than he was thinking. “Maybe, if we can help her there...she’d...consider staying...”
Because it was his only hope of keeping the love of his life.
After a long, piercing glance, the sheriff nodded, pulled a card from his top pocket and handed it to Mark. “Give me a call. I’ll see what I can do. There are some times us guys have to stick together.”
Richards grinned and Mark had a feeling he and the other man would get along just fine. He also knew that he would be the only one to help Addy through this. He’d figure out the truth of what happened, as best he could. He’d take Addy through the horror, and sit with her as long as it took her to lay the past to rest. No one else needed to know what her father had done. That secret would stay between the two of them.
Forever.
* * *
ADDY CLEANED UP her research. She checked in on Nonnie, who treated her as though nothing had changed, even complimenting her on her new outfit. When she returned home, she responded to email from her firm. There’d been a couple of requests for her services that looked interesting. She was ready for a new case.
She wrote back, requesting more information on both of them.
And she waited. She had to see Mark. In the morning she’d call Will. They were going to be in touch more regularly moving forward.
Maybe get to know each other as adults.
Someday, she’d like to meet the rest of the family again.
Not yet, though. She was too emotionally raw. Right now she just needed to be back home. To get her emotional footing back. She had what it took to make it on her own. She always had.
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