Hard Hat Man (17 page)

The bribes to get workers to leave hadn’t scared this Kyle off. The fire hadn’t worked, either.
He should have burned the house instead of the barn. Now the sheriff was suspicious and had brought in the state fire marshal. What evidence
had
the marshal
found
? He didn’t dare risk another fire
, did he?
He’d have to think of something else
to get Kyle and this woman to leave
. Something better.

***

Jan stepped into the library and gasped. Kyle sat cross-legged on the floor with Esther’s family
Bible
open in his lap.

“Oh. That’s Esther’s family
Bible
. Why did you bring it in here?”

Kyle looked up at her and frowned. “I didn’t. It was laying here on the desk, open to the
family
records page.”

“But I left it on the end-table in the living room. Remember? We talked about it just before we left to go into town for supper.”

“Yeah, I guess we did. I forgot about that. So how did it get into this room?”

Jan swallowed hard, staring at him. “You’re not playing a trick on me? I mean, because I said I sa
w
Aunt Esther in the rocking chair upstairs?”

Kyle got to his feet, laying the
Bible
aside on the long wooden library table. “Jan, believe me, I
’d never
d
o something like
that. I don’t ha
ve a malicious bone in my body.”

“Really?” She tried to smile. “I thought all boys loved practical jokes. You
used to pull my pigtails in grade school. You
didn’t put frogs and garter snakes in your sisters’ beds?”

He shook his head. “I never had a sister. And my dad would have paddled my backside if he’d heard I’d done something like that at school.”

Jan sank into a wooden chair beside the long table. “Then how did that
Bible
get in here? Was someone here while we were out?”

Kyle chewed his lip. “I didn’t see any evidence of it. The door was still locked as we left it. Let’s walk through the house to see if anything else seems out of place or missing.”

They walked through all the rooms, snapping on lights as they went and checking everything from top to bottom. Nothing else seemed different.

Kyle checked the locks on all the windows and doors as they went, but all seemed in order.

Mystified, they returned to the library. “Maybe I’m losing it,” Jan said. “Maybe I did move it myself and just forgot.”

Kyle sent her a
disbelieving glance.
“
Hey, am I losing it at the same time? I was in the living room and saw the
Bible
there right before we left, too, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. So, are there really ghosts? Did I really did see Aunt Esther upstairs the other day?”

Kyle shrugged. “I don’t know. I have no experience with paranormal things.”

“Neither have I. But if she’s here and moved the
Bible
in here because she knew we’d we working in here, why? What does she want to tell us?”

Kyle stared at her. “You really think that’s possible?
Can ghosts pick up things and move them around?
”

“Who knows? Do you have a better explanation?”

“No.”

Kyle ran an impatient hand through his curly brown hair, leaving it even more disheveled than it had been. Jan’s fingers itched to smooth those curls, but she restrained them. “
Well, let’s get back to work.” With a sigh,
Jan
turned away from him,
took an armload of books from the shelf
and brought them to the table. She began sorting them into piles.
Bible
s and concordances,
Bible
references, various books on theology and collections of sermons.

She also found a few mysteries and even some NYT best-selling novels.

“Nice to know he did read something besides religion,” Kyle commented, adding another collection of sermons to the box of religious works.

“Yeah, but notice that most of the novels say, ‘Oprah pick’ on the cover. She liked novels that ‘taught a lesson.’”

“So they had that in common, I guess,” Kyle agreed.

“Yeah. Nancy used to dread her father’s lectures worse than any other punishment,” Jan said. “She would do almost anything to avoid th
ose s
e
r
m
ons, as she called them
.”

“Even disappear?” Kyle guessed. “Could that have been why she left?”

“Who knows
?
But the big mystery was why she never let her mother know where she was. She and Esther were pretty close.”

Kyle’s brows dipped in thought. “Would she
be afraid
that Horace would find out her whereabouts from Esther and come after her?”

Jan eyed Kyle. “Maybe. I never thought of that. Horace was pretty domineering. And Esther
always
seemed to give in to his demands rather than stand up to him about anything.
She was pretty timid.
”

Jan
flipped through yet another
Bible
, noting the highlighted passages. “An eye for an eye,” she read. “Yeah, that was Horace all right. He believed all the old testament rules and forgot about the new testament’s focus on forgiveness and redemption.” She snapped the book shut and tossed it into the already full box. “Better start another box for the religious stuff. I doubt even Goodwill will know what to do with all of these.”

“This shelf seems to be mostly Minnesota history,” Kyle said, pulling down several volumes. “I’ll bet Mrs. Robards will want these.”

“Good. Put them in this box. I’m glad to find a few things for her.”

“Yeah. Have to keep the old biddy happy,” Kyle said, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

Jan
g
la
nced at him.
“You don’t like her much, do you?”

“No. She’s cost me a lot of money over the years.
”

“Cost you money? How?”

“S
he stopped one of Dad’s road-building projects because they would be removing an old rock and cement foundation of a house, they found buried about six feet underground.
She got an order for them to stop work while she tried to get the state historical society to declare that the foundation should be preserved.
”

Jan laughed. “That’s
ridicul
ous. Did she think tourists would come to look down in a hole
in the ground to see
an old foundation?”

Kyle’s mouth twisted.
“I know. It’s funny now, but
it sure wasn’t at the time. S
topping the project cost Dad a lot of bucks
in wages and work time lost
until they ruled on it.
”

“So, how did they rule?”

“
In favor of Dad,
as everyone but Mrs. Robards expected.
”

“Thank goodness some people in authority had common sense.”

“Yeah.” Kyle stood and stretched.

“You’re tired,” Jan said, standing as well.
She tried not to notice the way his muscles rippled under his tee shirt. The man was seriously buff. How she wanted to run her fingers along those muscles. They looked hard as a rock. She swallowed hard.
“We’d better get some sleep. I’ll work on this more tomorrow.” She eyed the rows of shelves they’d emptied. “Thanks for helping me. We made some good progress, didn’t we?”

“Sure did. Goodnight.” He headed
back to the living room where he’d been sleeping on
the sofa
.

“You don’t have to stay here, you know. You’d get a better night’s sleep in your own bed.”

“I know. But I wouldn’t sleep there anyway, worrying about what whoever is pulling these stunts is up to next, and whether you are safe here. You don’t mind my staying?”

Jan shook her head. “I appreciate it. Just feel guilty about it.”

“Well, don’t. It’s my choice, okay?”

“Thanks. Goodnight.” She smiled and went down the hall to the guest room Esther had used.

***

Hours later, Kyle awoke to muffled screams. He sat up and listened and heard another scream, then crying. He threw back the blanket
, pulled on his pants,
and ran down the hall
, following the so
u
nds to the bedroom he’d seen Jan enter the night before. He tried the knob. It opened easily. He reached inside to snap on the light and entered.

Inside, Jan tossed on the bed, crying and moaning, but still asleep.

“Jan?” He moved to the bed and sat on the edge, shaking her gently.
The soft scent of her strawberry shampoo combined with warm woman teased his nostrils and sent desire for her surging through him.
“Jan, wake up!”

Jan’s eyes flew open and she sat up and looked around. “Wha..at?”

Kyle cautiously moved back. “You were screaming and crying in your sleep. Were you dreaming?”

She swallowed and nodded, then rubbed a hand across her wet face.

He handed her a tissue from the box on her night table. “Did you dream something bad? You were crying…”

“Yes,” she said wiping her face with the tissue and blowing her nose. She shuddered.

“Care to talk about it? Sometimes that helps.”

She leaned back against the pillow, closing her eyes. “It was awful. Nancy was running and screaming and a
big man
was
chas
ing
her.
”

“Did he catch her?”

Jan nodded and wiped her nose.
“She fought h
i
m,
crying and screaming,
but
h
e
hit her with something
and, and…”