The Second Family

by Janice Carter

  It had taken several days for this pattern to evolve, but everyone seemed content with it, a fact that Tess noted and was oddly pleased about. She knew this pleasure stemmed from her love of organization, but there was something else, too. A familiarity to the day that was reassuring and comforting. She realized that she no longer had the nervous stomach and jitters that her workday in Chicago began with.

  Molly and Nick walked down the drive to wait for their school buses while Tess waved goodbye from the front door. Nick had told her she didn’t need to do this, but she suspected their mother had and wanted to continue the practice. Besides, she found herself liking it. After closing the door, she wanted to call Mavis and tell her about the decision she’d made, but sensed that she needed to assess things in the rational light of day. Not that she was afraid of changing her mind, but more that she needed to do some serious thinking about how to raise two children in Chicago.

  Still, her most distracting thought of the morning was that Alec hadn’t telephoned last night as he had promised. She forced herself to focus on the household tasks of laundry and shopping lists rather than fret over the countless reasons he might have had for not calling. When the doorbell rang midmorning, she was in the laundry room emptying the dryer and she rushed to it, hoping it might be Alec.

  Larry Stone was standing on the doorstep. He held his Stetson in his right hand and gestured with it in greeting. “Morning, Tess. Sorry to disturb you so early.”

  Tess hid her disappointment. “Not at all, Larry. Come in.”

  He stepped inside, turning to say, “I got home late last night so didn’t know until an hour or so ago that you’d dropped by for a drink. Thanks very much for the wine. I love red so you made a good guess.”

  Tess smiled. “Thank you, Larry, for your help.”

  “Thought I’d check out the work my man did for you yesterday.”

  “Would you like some coffee? I can make it while you go out back.”

  “That would be nice,” he said and followed her into the house. He continued on down the hall while Tess began to set up the coffee machine. When he came back, he said, “Well, I’m pleased with the job. I hope you are, too.”

  “I certainly am!”

  “Hold on to the receipts for when you get around to making an insurance claim.” He set his hat down on the counter and looked around the kitchen. “Looks like you’ve got this place in shipshape.”

  Tess had to smile. She thought the room was a mess compared to her condo in Chicago, which was spotless. ’Cause you were so seldom in it. “I think you’re being polite,” she said as she set out mugs, cream and sugar.

  “Seriously, things seem to be getting in order and that’s great for the kiddies. Does this mean you’ll be taking on guardianship of them?”

  “Perhaps.” She was evasive, unwilling to tell him before she’d even told the children or Alec. “Have a seat, Larry. I must admit,” she said, sitting across from him, “that I was surprised that you and Marci were thinking of buying this place.”

  “Marci told me that she might have upset you, talking about buying the place. But did she mention that we’ve always loved it? We had a joke between the four of us that whenever Richard and Gabriela decided to move, we’d be all too happy to take the place over.”

  “I can’t imagine their wanting to move,” she commented. “The house seems so perfect for them.”

  He stirred sugar into his coffee and took a long sip. “I agree. In many ways it was, but I had a feeling the last couple of years that Gabriela longed for more. This place is so remote and quiet.” He took another sip.

  Tess was interested in his version of the family. “Why did you think that?”

  He shrugged. “Just certain things she’d say. She was a lot younger than your father, you know.” Stone frowned, thinking. “We had just been here at the house for her fortieth birthday the month before the accident.” He fell silent.

  “I think my father would have been about fifty-eight when he died,” Tess murmured. Funny, she’d never thought about his age. Fifty-eight was still so very young, with a lifetime of work ahead.

  “Really?” was all he said. Finally, he broke the silence that had fallen over the room. “Look, I don’t want to rush things. If I hadn’t bumped into Jed Walker at the bank the other day, I wouldn’t even have known he was selling the place.”

  Jed Walker. The name was beginning to conjure the same distaste with her that it did with Alec.

  “In fact,” Stone was saying, “it wasn’t as if I made a serious offer or anything. It was pure impulse on my part.” He paused, keeping his eyes fixed on hers. “I can even phone him if you like and tell him I may want to reconsider.”

  The gesture was a generous one. But knowing the sale of the house might still have to occur, she said, “No, don’t do that just yet. As I told Jed, I haven’t quite made up my mind. You know, about the kids and everything.” Wanting to change the subject away from the guardianship, she asked, “Would you like to see some sketches my father made of a place near Lyons?”

  He set his empty coffee mug down. “I would.”

  Tess rushed to get the folder of drawings that Nick had found. “I forgot to tell Jed that we have them,” she said, coming back into the kitchen. She set the folder on the table in front of him. “I suspect Jed will want to have them assessed for the estate. They might be valuable.”

  She watched him examine them. “Maybe I’ll buy them myself,” she said.

  He glanced up. “If you don’t, I will,” he announced. Then he laughed. “God, I sound like some crass tycoon, don’t I? Coming over here and wanting to buy everything.” He looked down at the sketch in his hand. “Just that I know what Richard was getting for his work. Even these pencil drawings would be worth quite a lot.”

  “We went there on the weekend,” Tess said. “Nick took us.” She chose not to spell out who the us referred to, hoping he would assume she meant the two children. “He seems to think Richard owns the place.”

  Larry looked up and frowned. “What? The place in these sketches? I doubt it.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “Because Richard was always talking about buying land but he never actually came out and announced that he’d done it.”

  “Maybe he just never told you.”

  He thought that over, but dismissed the suggestion with a shake of his head. “Nah, don’t think so. Mainly because the two of us were always complaining about the development around Estes. I remember Rich saying once that he’d be tempted to buy some land just so that it couldn’t be developed.” His eyes focused on hers. “So if he had, he’d have told me.”

  Tess realized that was probably the case. “Nick may have heard Richard talking about the idea, without knowing it hadn’t happened.”

  “I bet.”

  The washing machine in the laundry room next to the bathroom suddenly began to vibrate loudly. Tess excused herself and ran to reset the machine. When she returned to the kitchen, Larry was standing beside the table as if to leave. But he was staring at the back of one of the sketches and at Tess’s entry, dropped it onto the table.

  “Got to go,” he said, moving away from the table. “Thanks for the coffee and I promise I’ll get back to Walker for you. I can see you’ll need more time to think things through. It’s a big responsibility,” he was saying as she walked with him to the front door, “looking after two youngsters. I have to say,” he chuckled lightly, “I don’t envy you. It means giving up a lot of the freedom that a young single person like yourself is accustomed to.”

  Tess merely smiled, noting how he and his wife Marci were on the same track with that. After he left, she cleared the coffee mugs and picked up the sketches to put them away. The one that Larry had been so engrossed in was lying facedown on the others. Tess was about to flip it over when she noticed numbers and letters jotted in pencil in the bottom right corner. She stared at them, wondering if they were what had drawn Stone’s interest. Other than the
fact that they bore a strong resemblance to a Colorado license plate number, they appeared to be fairly insignificant. She didn’t think of them again, until toward the end of her conversation with Alec later that day.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ALEC DID HIS BEST to concentrate on what Tess was saying but all he could focus on was the melodious lilt her voice took on when she was excited. He knew now how she sounded when she liked the way he was kissing her but he couldn’t help fantasize how those vocal cords might ring when he finally got to make love to her. Relax, Malone. Calm down. There’s most of a workday ahead of you.

  “Are you still there?” she suddenly asked.

  “Hmm?” Some, but not all of me, he was thinking.

  “You’re so quiet. I thought you’d be interested that the Stones want to buy this place.”

  “Well, it is a beautiful house—”

  “But they just live down the road in their own beautiful house. Even if it isn’t quite equal to this one.”

  “It was good of the guy to get your windows fixed,” he pointed out.

  “Yes. He’s really a nice man. But there’s one thing that seemed odd. Just before he left, I showed him the sketches that Nick found. You know, of the campsite? I had to leave the room for a minute and when I returned, he was staring at the back of one of them. After he left, I noticed a set of numbers and letters. I went out to check the Volvo and for sure these numbers are from a Colorado license plate.”

  Alec’s head was spinning. Had she always been this talkative, he wondered? While he had a chance, he got to the reason for his call. “Tess, listen. The reason I didn’t phone last night was because Karen needed me to come out and help Ken with a shipment of stuff he’d ordered. By the time I got home, it was kinda late so I didn’t bother. But Karen has invited the kids for the weekend and—”

  “She has?”

  “Yeah, she really likes them and apparently last weekend Nick had offered to help Ken with the late spring planting, which is what Ken plans to do this weekend.”

  “But what about Molly’s birthday?”

  “It’s on Sunday, isn’t it? We can make sure everyone’s back by then.”

  “Well sure, I’ll mention it to them. I guess they’ll want to go. What about me?” She gave a little laugh.

  This was the best part. “I thought you’d like to come over to my place Friday night for dinner and…and, uh, well maybe we can get together for the weekend.”

  There was a long silence that had him sweating until she uttered another laugh—more of a giggle really—and said, her voice all throaty, “That sounds very…nice.”

  Nice. Personally, he thought he could do better than that. “Okay, great. So will you be able to drive them out to the ranch yourself after school on Friday? Think you can remember the way?”

  “Oh, yes, and Nick can help. He’s good with directions.”

  He is? It wasn’t a trait Alec had particularly noticed in the boy but he liked the fact that Tess had. It showed promise, he thought. Before he rang off, she asked, “Listen, I know this is crazy but can you do me a favor?”

  “Yeesss.” He wasn’t sure what he was getting into, but the prospect of Friday night loomed.

  “Is there any way you could find out who the owner is of that license plate? You know, on the sketch?”

  “Maybe, but why?”

  “I’m curious. I wonder why my father jotted it there, just on the back of a sketch. I mean, would an artist mark up his work like that?”

  Jeez. “I’m not an artist, Tess,” he said, feeling a tad impatient with all the license talk. “I couldn’t say. But I do have a buddy in the Denver police. Maybe he can find out the owner. That okay?”

  “That’s wonderful,” she gushed. “Oh, and one more thing.”

  Uh-oh. Friday night better be fantastic. “Yes?”

  “Larry also mentioned that he doubted very much that my father owned the land where we went camping. Is there any way—?”

  “To find out who does?” he interrupted. “Yeah. Like calling the Denver Land Registry. There must be a local office here in Boulder.” He sighed, sensing where this was going. “You want me to—?”

  “Oh, yes!”

  Before he hung up, she gave him the license plate from the sketch.

  AFTER TESS REPLACED the receiver, she ate a quick lunch and decided to drive into Boulder to confront Tomas Kozinski about the painting.

  He didn’t look well. In fact, he looked downright unhappy to see her standing in the middle of the art gallery. Tess noted his hollow cheeks and dark-circled eyes. Either business was bad, or he had a guilty conscience. She was betting on the latter, though wasn’t sure where her suspicions were leading her just yet. She simply believed, in spite of all of Kozinski’s protestations to the contrary, that her father would never cut apart a painting. Especially that particular painting. For the second time, she tried to explain it to the art dealer.

  “But he did!” Kozinski repeated, forking his long thin fingers through his spiked blond hair, then dragging them down the sides of his unshaven cheeks.

  The effect, along with his haggard face, was scary. Tess shifted into power-play mode. “Look, Mr. Kozinski, the fact is that the painting—in its entirety—was left to me. Since part of it is missing, I can only conclude that some kind of fraud has occurred.”

  He shook his head vigorously. “Someone was interested in buying the still life side. This was right after the fire and Richard was desperate for money until the insurance company paid up.”

  “Then who bought it?” she asked, “because I want to find that person and buy it back if I can.”

  “I can’t tell you who bought it. That kind of information is confidential. My clients are wealthy. They’re also very paranoid about people—especially government people—finding out how they’re spending their money. Your father gave his consent.”

  Tess pursed her lips. She didn’t believe him, but knew that unless she pursued the matter through the civil courts, it wasn’t likely she’d get the truth from him. Still, she wasn’t about to let him sense her lack of confidence.

  “Fine then. You’ll be hearing from my lawyer.”

  “Mr. Walker’s already talked to me about this,” he said, his voice pitching in anger.

  “Great. But Mr. Walker isn’t my lawyer,” she said. The look in his face was worth the trip, she was thinking, as she marched out the door. Even if she’d learned nothing. While she was on a roll, she decided to visit Jed Walker.

  She hadn’t phoned for an appointment, Walker’s secretary solemnly informed her fifteen minutes later, so Tess could either wait or schedule an appointment for the next day.

  “I’ll wait, then I won’t have to come back into town,” she said and plopped down in one of the leather chairs in the tiny reception area. Tess was thumbing through her third magazine when Walker’s office door opened. A handsome, brown-haired man in an expensive suit stood in the doorway. In spite of his relatively stocky frame, his bearing was confident. He glanced quickly around the reception, his dark-brown eyes sweeping over Tess, before turning back to shake hands with Jed Walker.

  The man said something that Tess didn’t catch, but what did attract her attention was the expression in Walker’s face when he noticed her ensconced in one of his chairs. Strike Two. Someone else who isn’t happy to see me today. She stood up as the man brushed past her on his way out.

  “Tess, I wasn’t expecting to see you today,” Walker said.

  “I decided to drop in on Tomas Kozinski and then thought maybe I should see you. It won’t take long, if you’re busy.”

  He loosened the tie at his throat and waved a hand in obvious resignation. “No, no. I can spare five or ten minutes.” He asked his secretary to put any incoming calls on hold for the next ten minutes and preceded Tess into his office.

  She took a seat in front of his desk while he hurriedly swept up documents and a large piece of paper that looked like some kind of a map. These he stashed
on top of a tall filing cabinet directly behind his desk. Then he turned round and asked, “What can I do for you?” He managed a smile.

  Tess couldn’t help but think, as she took in his chiseled features, cool blue eyes and styled blond hair that a month ago she’d have been attracted to a man like Jed Walker. Of course, he was practically a clone of many of the well-groomed men working in Chicago’s financial district, like the man who’d left his office minutes ago. The comparison took her right to Douglas Reed and how hollow their relationship had been. That it had never ignited a spark inside, much less released the kind of passion she’d felt with Alec Malone the other night.

  “You wanted to see me?” he prompted.

  “It’s about my meeting with Tomas Kozinski.”

  “Yes?”

  “I wanted to find out what had happened to the painting.”

  “And what did Kozinski have to say?”

  “I thought you called him about it. What explanation did he give you?”

  Walker’s expression implied she was belaboring a point. “That Richard had given permission for the piece to be separated because there was a buyer who wanted the still life but couldn’t afford the price of both.”

  “That’s what I can’t believe. My father would never do that.”

  “Unless you can prove otherwise, I don’t think you’ll have much success pursuing this matter in the legal system, Ms. Wheaton. My advice is to take the piece you’ve got and drop the matter.”

  Which obviously was what he wanted to do, she thought, noticing that he had dropped her first name as well. This wasn’t going well, but she sensed that she wasn’t going to get any further with the painting issue right then. She wasn’t finished with it, but he didn’t have to know that. Perhaps she’d have to carry out her threat to Kozinski after all, and look for another lawyer. For now, Jed Walker—as imperfect as the man was shaping up to be—was all she had.