Bay Hideaway (10 page)

There were so many other questions he wanted to ask, each exploding through his brain like popcorn. Had Judi kept her past a secret out of shame or self-interest? What more did she have to reveal? Why hadn’t she warned him before they married, especially knowing his political aspirations? A bombshell like this had the power to derail him permanently if he were unaware and not prepared for it with damage control.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said perceptively. “You’re not only wondering why I felt the need to steal, but why I felt the need to keep my past hidden from you.” When Nathan shifted slightly, she sadly smiled her acknowledgment. “I stole because I wanted what I could never have living on a poor father’s salary. Designer jeans and the latest shirts made it easier to fit into a world where I didn’t belong.” She gave an indifferent shrug. “I never shared my sordid past with you because I realized early in this game of life that a straight arrow like you wouldn’t have given me the time of day if you had known. Besides, I had no idea someone would dig up the information that should have been expunged decades ago and use it against me.”

“You thought I wouldn’t understand, much less marry you,” he remarked with studied civility.

“I know you wouldn’t have.” She frowned grimly. “Especially if you had known that I never graduated with a degree from Penn State.”

Nathan narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”

Judi wandered over to the sliding glass door, and Nathan twisted around and followed her with his eyes. Her fingers touched the vertical blinds as she looked out at the lake, her back toward him.

“Why not make a clean sweep of my prior misdeeds?” she exclaimed, turning to face him. “This is the last thing those letters held over me.” The blinds swayed lightly behind her as she let go. “I went to a nine-month secretarial school and took a mail-order class on being a legal assistant.” She flung her arms in the air. “When I went to apply for the job at your law firm, I lied on the application to get the job. There was no Happy Valley and there was no four-year degree as a paralegal.”

“But your skills were impeccable!”

“Impeccable, yes,” she agreed. “Honest, no. There was no way I could afford to go to a real college, and a scholarship was out of the question.” She gave a bitter laugh. “I wasn’t the most interested or best student in high school, and no college would give a scholarship to a student with my grade point average. Instead, I studied on my own and learned everything there was to learn about being a paralegal. I had the skills and know-how, just not the degree. And I knew your firm wouldn’t hire me without that little piece of paper proving my educational worth.”

“Anything else?” he dared to ask, with trepidation firmly entrenched in his mind of what she might say.

“No,” she answered. “I think you’ll find that these three big sins are the ones recalled in one letter or another.” Her voice softened as she moved slightly toward him. “I do want you to know that when I met you and then God that year, I turned my life around. I went straight after that.” She clasped her hands together nervously. “I had left that past behind when we married and erased it from my memory—until the first letter arrived.”

“That put you into a bind, didn’t it?”

She nodded. “I couldn’t come to you for help, not without revealing my past and losing everything. Your family hated me and mine was distant. If I went to the police, my secret past would be made public. There was nowhere to turn.” A deep sigh escaped. “I almost decided to risk telling you after the scary bird nest letter came.”

“The one mentioning how birds didn’t like breathing carbon monoxide?” Nathan asked, turning slightly to sort through the letters once more.

“That’s the one.” Her face turned grim. “Remember when my father’s chimney flue became clogged with the makings of a bird’s nest and the house filled up with carbon monoxide?” When he nodded with a frown, she continued. “The clog was no accident. Someone had stuffed it under the chimney cap and blocked the shaft.” She nodded toward the paper in his hand. “The letter had come two days before the incident, but I didn’t understand the significance. The other letters had come
after
the deeds.” She paused. “I almost came to you when I realized my father could have died and the person who wrote the notes was responsible.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“When I went into your office at home, you were gone. I don’t know. Maybe you received a call from your campaign manager and had to leave—that happened a lot.” Pressing her fingers over one temple, she lightly shook her head. “But you had been in the middle of paying the bills and left the checks lying on the desk. It was then I realized how much the writing looked like yours. When I compared the letter to your writing and it matched, things started to add up.”

“That’s when you started planning a way to escape?”

“What else could I do?” she pleaded. “By then, I’d realized that you had somehow found out about my past and wanted me out of the picture. But you wanted me to be the one to leave, not you. I thought it was all about your aspirations to become a U.S. senator.”

“I wish you would have come to me.”

“How could I?”

“You should have had a little faith in me.”

“My faith in everything was gone by that time.” Her eyes grew somber. “You would have wanted an explanation of the letters. Then what? Would you still have loved me after learning about my past? Would your family have let you love me?”

It took a moment for Nathan to sort out exactly what his reaction might have been. “I don’t know what I would have done,” he finally answered. “But I know that I wouldn’t have abandoned you.”

She acknowledged his answer, but her eyes told him she didn’t quite believe that scenario would have played out as he said.

He tried again. “My coming here should tell you one thing.”

She lifted one brow. “What is that?”

“It should convince you that I’m not the author of these letters.” He thrust a hand out in front of him. “Think about it. If I had written these letters and you disappeared from the scene so nice and tidy, there would be no reason for me to come searching for you. Am I right?”

“Maybe.” She seemed to think it over. “That is a logical conclusion.”

“And you weren’t easy to find.”

This perked up her attention. “I was very meticulous in securing my new identity.”

“I know!”

“Yet you found me.”

“True!”

“How?”

“It’s a long story.”

She sat back in the chair. “That’s all right. If you have the story, I have the time.”

Judi settled back in the chair across from Nathan. Finally, the worst of the interrogation was over. She’d spilled her guts and lived to talk about it—for now. What Nathan thought of her past was anyone’s guess. His expression never changed from one of concentration and study. But he was good in that way. There were times when clients would give the most horrendous accounts of their dealings and Nathan held the same you’re-in-capable-hands air people found comforting.

She found it disconcerting!

Did Nathan loathe her more than ever before? Was he repulsed and disgusted, wishing he had listened to his family? Maybe he was already envisioning the inevitable I-told-you-so party his mother would throw. If so, then she, as his wife, had done him a terrible disservice. Could Nathan be telling the truth? As he had mentioned before, if he had been the author of the threats there would be no feasible reason for him to come to Bay Island.

If it wasn’t Nathan, then who did write the letters? Two possibilities sprang to mind: his campaign manager and his mother. Both disliked her! Yet neither would have access to her cleared juvenile records. She glanced at Nathan, his head still bent over the papers, organizing them for the second time into some type of order. Again, she sensed he was having trouble seeing clearly and wondered if he had been struck with the dreaded forty-and-over farsightedness that turned ordinary people into trombone players. What the man needed was a pair of glasses.

Nathan looked up, seemingly unperturbed by her stare.

“I’ll tell you what,” he told her, fitting the papers neatly into a folder. “I’ll fill you in on how I came to find you, if you’ll do two things.”

She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Just two?”

He stood and stretched his back; she heard it crack, cringing at the sound. He only smiled at her reaction. “Sorry! You never did like the snap, crackle, pop unless it was in your cereal, did you? But sometimes a guy just has to loosen the spine.” He looked at his watch. “We’ve been at this thing for several hours, which brings me to my first request. Would you be kind enough to scavenge through your refrigerator and make me a sandwich of some sort?”

“That’s an easy one,” she lightly answered back, still intently watching him. He was tired, she could tell, reminding her of those long days he used to put in while campaigning. “What’s your second request?”

“I’ll tell you all about my journey to locate a lost wife if you’ll fill me in on a few details of your plan-of-escape that also seem to be missing.”

“Sounds like a bargain.” She moved toward the refrigerator. “Although it’s just a matter of curiosity on my part, I am interested to know what bases I failed to cover.”

He followed her to the kitchen counter where his glass of water was sitting, the ice now melted, and lifted it to take a drink. A droplet of condensation fell haphazardly on his tie. He brushed it away and looked back at her. “It should be more than just a matter of curiosity.”

The warning tone in his voice told her he was hinting at something serious. “If you were able to locate me, then the person who wrote those notes could find me, too. Is that it?” She pulled a bag of deli ham from the fridge and two plates from the cupboard. “Not a comforting thought.”

“True,” he agreed solemnly, a measure of concern etching his face. “But it’s something we should consider.”

He did have a point. She had been so upset at his unexpected appearance, she hadn’t considered that angle before. Closing the freezer door, she automatically dropped a handful of ice cubes into his water glass. “Does anyone else know why you’re here?”

“Just my assistant, Thomas,” he answered, his eyes following her as she opened the bread bag. “You don’t need to worry about him. He’s extremely good at what he does and is even better at keeping things under wraps. Then there’s the fact that he came on staff after you were gone and didn’t even know you.”

“Then I’m sure he’s safe.” She took four slices of bread out and twirled the yellow bread bag shut until it formed an airtight wrap and grabbed the twist tie. She held the plastic-covered wire tie toward him. “Still losing twisty ties and eating stale bread?”

“Of course,” he answered with a reluctant but slow, mischievous smile.

She laughed. How an intelligent, grown man could misplace every twist tie he’d ever had the misfortune to handle was a mystery. How many times the vacuum cleaner had eaten those twist ties couldn’t be counted.

Judi put the finishing touches on the sandwiches and handed him a plate. “Heavy on the cheese and light on the mayo.”

He murmured his thanks as he accepted the plate and grabbed his drink. Sliding her own plate off the counter and into her hand, she trailed him into the living room. Again they sat in their same places, opposite each other, only the coffee table serving as a buffer between them.

Sitting in the chair, Judi rested her plate on the makeshift lap of her legs, both feet slipped securely beneath. “Your story has to start at the very beginning,” she informed him, watching him take a bite of the sandwich, “starting with the reason for your search. I’m certain there was nothing left behind to cause doubt or raise any suspicions that my death was anything but an accidental drowning. Everything went off without a hitch.”

He waited to finish chewing and chased it down with a swallow of water. “Everyone was convinced; the police, your family, my family—even me.”

“Then something must have happened to change your mind,” she guessed, trying to read his face. “What was it? What did I leave behind?”

“It’s not what you left behind,” he answered, his long mouth twisting ruefully. “It’s what you didn’t leave behind.”

Judi racked her brain. She hadn’t taken anything! Her purse, keys, clothes, jewelry, makeup—they were all left behind. Not even a toothbrush was taken. “That’s impossible,” she finally concluded.

“You probably thought I wouldn’t notice,” he consoled. “Of course, I was having a difficult time dealing with your death and admit I was grabbing at straws, but you were acting very distant and peculiar before the so-called accident. So, when I noticed the ruby brooch missing, I began to have my first suspicions about the drowning.”

Puzzled, Judi shook her head. “You’re not talking about my grandmother’s ruby pin?”

“That’s the one.”

“The ruby brooch is gone?”

“By the surprise in your voice am I to presume you didn’t take it with you?” It was his turn to look mystified.

The brooch was missing! Judi wanted to jump from the chair and had to snatch the sandwich plate before it went flying to the edge of the cushion. “I didn’t take the brooch with me. It can’t be gone!”

“I assure you the pin wasn’t in your jewelry box.” He seemed troubled by her outburst, a wary line creasing his forehead.

“Nathan, I’m telling you; the brooch was left in the jewelry box. I never took it with me.” She dropped the plate on the coffee table rather hard but didn’t care and slumped back in the chair. “How can it be missing?”

He shrugged. “When the ruby wasn’t there, I assumed you had taken it with you. I knew how important it was to you, being your grandmother’s heirloom.”

“But I didn’t take it with me,” she protested, her hands clutching angrily at the arm of the chair. There were only two worldly possessions she owned that meant anything—the heirloom pin and her vintage 1972 yellow Volkswagen Beetle. Both had to be left behind, but if she had known the ruby pin would be taken, she would have risked bringing it with her. She thought it would be safe with Nathan. At the very least, the brooch should have been given to her father. “This is terrible news!”