House of Strangers (Harlequin Super Romance) (20 page)

“You have any idea what time of day it used to run?”

“Early morning and mid-afternoon, I think. But it’s been so long, child. I’m sure bus companies have records of their old runs. You could find out.”

“Thanks, Gram.”

So it was possible that Michelle could have caught a local bus and stopped at Rossiter.

Then it was possible she
hadn’t
arranged to meet Uncle David. Maybe she simply dropped in unexpectedly. Boy, would that be a kick in the teeth. Of course, even if she’d come to Rossiter on the bus, she’d still have needed a ride out to Uncle David’s house. Must have taken some nerve to walk up the front drive.

There was one obvious place Ann hadn’t looked for Aunt Addy’s journal. She found the button box and dumped its contents unceremoniously on her worktable in a jumble of yarn and buttons.

She caught the edge of the leather lining and pried it up. The glue was old, but it came up in one piece. Nothing. She did the same thing with the top. Again nothing.

She replaced the yarn and buttons neatly. Suddenly she stopped and her breath caught. This couldn’t be.

She had to see that photo of Michelle again. She grabbed the magnifying glass from her stripping kit and stuck it and the small envelope from the box into the pocket of her jeans. Then she and Dante raced back across the street.

Nobody was in the upstairs hall. Buddy had left for his shift with the Rossiter police. She could hear voices from
the front bathroom, where the men were installing the new toilet and sink.

She slipped back into Paul’s room and picked up the photo of Michelle again. This time she used her magnifying glass.

She took out the small packet of buttons she’d picked up from the box. They were perhaps three-quarters of an inch across. Black enamel painted with delicate white patterns. Here was a bird, there a frog, a rose, a butterfly—there couldn’t possibly be two sets of buttons exactly like this in the entire world, and definitely not in Rossiter, Tennessee.

There was only one way they could have found their way into Aunt Addy’s button box. Somebody had cut them off Michelle’s dress and saved them.

Since Michelle had left her suitcase at the bus station, she wouldn’t have had another dress with her.

She wouldn’t have taken it off for anybody but Uncle David.

Unless she wasn’t the one who took it off. And unless she was past resisting when she was stripped.

Ann couldn’t move, couldn’t think.

She could not visualize tiny Aunt Addy killing anybody.

But there were two women in the Delaney family who were capable of murder. Karen Delaney Lowrance and Maribelle Norwood Delaney.

Maribelle was long dead. Karen, however, was very much alive.

The new phone lines had still not been installed in the house, and Ann didn’t carry a cell phone. She never remembered to charge it, so the battery was always flat.

She had to tell Paul.

She had to tell Buddy. It was time to bring the police in on this.

By now the men were finished for the day. The upstairs was silent when she left Paul’s room again. Downstairs in the kitchen she could hear a couple of men arguing about the new countertops. On impulse she opened the door to the dumbwaiter and yelled, “Hey, you guys down there. Anybody got a cell phone?”

“What the…Ann? Is that you up there?”

“Yeah, Cal, you have a cell phone?”

“Sure.”

“Stay where you are. I’m coming down to borrow it.”

Buddy was out on patrol. The station would give him her message and ask him to swing by the house.

Hack said Paul had left the airfield to get something in town. He’d be back shortly.

Ann didn’t know his cell number so she handed the phone back to Cal.

“You want us to stick around?”

“No, go on. I’ll wait for Buddy, then I’m out of here, too.”

They nodded and left.

She perched on top of the newly mounted slate countertop and worried the cuticle of her thumbnail.

That damn journal! It must have been thrown away. She’d looked every place she could think of.

Across the kitchen, the door to the dumbwaiter stood open. Half-a-dozen gallons of paint sat on the platform inside ready for the ride upstairs tomorrow morning.

“I’m crazy to think this is even possible,” she said. She removed the cans of paint and set them on the floor. Would Aunt Addy have gone to these lengths to conceal her journal? She was certainly small and limber enough.

Ann raised the platform so that she could check under it. Nothing.

She took a flashlight off the kitchen counter and shone it down the shaft. No motor. Strictly hand-operated. She shone the light up the shaft, but the light petered out before it reached the top.

Okay, nothing for it but to climb aboard and haul.

“Dante, go lie down and wait for me.”

The dog obediently padded off into the dining room and lay down.

She had a problem fitting herself into the dumbwaiter, but she managed it in the end. As she pulled, she checked for any signs of a niche in the walls. Nothing was immediately apparent.

Before she slid out into the second-floor hallway, she shone her light up. The shaft went all the way into the attic. She hadn’t seen another door up there.

She took a deep breath and began to pull. It wasn’t easy lifting her own weight, even with the counterweights that had been set up to make the platform run smoothly. As the light from the hall faded below her, she held the flashlight between her teeth and used both hands to haul herself up.

She’d almost reached the pulleys at the top of the shaft before she saw it. Someone—Aunt Addy—had fitted a bracket against the side of the shaft. The platform wouldn’t have been able to pass it, but then, the dumbwaiter was never used above the second floor. The pulleys cleared it easily.

Ann slipped the brake onto the dumbwaiter and twisted so that she could reach the package.

It came into her hand as though it had been waiting for her.

It was heavier and bulkier than she would have guessed,
and the shape was much more irregular than a single book.

She lowered herself to the second-floor opening and worked herself out without dropping her parcel.

She didn’t want to get caught in Paul’s room again, but she was impatient to see what she’d found. She slipped into Paul’s bathroom, closed the shutters on the window, turned on the light and sat down on the closed toilet to investigate her prize.

She undid the twine with shaking fingers and began to unwrap the parcel. There was no journal inside, merely a sheaf of handwritten yellowing pages that bore the Delaney name and address across the top.

Another parcel had been wrapped separately, then included with this one and wrapped again. She put the pages on the sink and unwrapped the second one carefully.

When she saw what was inside, she nearly threw up.

“C
ALL FOR YOU
in the office,” Hack told Paul. It was nearly dark. Both men were exhausted. Paul had worked like a demon all afternoon. He wanted the plane airworthy and he wanted it now.

“Can I call back?”

“Says it’s urgent.”

“Ann?” he asked, unable to hide the hope in his voice.

“A woman, but not Ann.”

“Oh, hell, all right.”

He picked up the telephone. He recognized Karen Lowrance’s upper-class drawl instantly.

“Mr. Bouvet? Paul, I wonder if you’d do me a really big favor and drive by my house on your way home?”

Her house was in the opposite direction from his home and he told her so.

“It’s truly important, Mr. Bouvet.”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

“Marshall, my husband, is here.” She gave a husky laugh. “In case you don’t want to be alone with me.”

He’d rather be alone with Jack the Ripper, but he didn’t say that. He tried several more times to get out of seeing her, but she was so persistent that he finally agreed. After he hung up, he turned to Hank.

“I brought some clean clothes. Can I shower in your trailer?”

“Sure. Clean towels on the right as you enter.”

When Paul left ten minutes later he looked presentable.

At the Lowrance house the front door was opened by a tubby man with gray hair, bright blue eyes and a puzzled expression. “Mr. Bouvet?” He stuck out his hand. “I’m Marshall Lowrance. I don’t believe we’ve met, sir.”

Paul completed the formalities.

“Karen’s waiting for you in the library.” He led Paul toward the room he’d been in before. As he held the door for Paul, he called out, “Honey, I’ll just be across the hall if you need me.”

Or if I do,
Paul thought.

Karen had on black slacks and a black sweater. “Do sit down. Thank you so much for coming like this. May I get you something to drink?”

He shook his head and took the wing chair across from her. The Manhattan glass on the side table contained only melting ice cubes. He hoped that meant Karen was relatively sober.

She took a deep breath and said in the same easy way, “I know who you are.” Her red-tipped fingers gripped the leather armrest hard enough to make dents. Her voice, however, remained calm.

He was not surprised. Nothing about this family surprised him anymore. He’d felt the tightening of her fin
gers, seen her startled expression the first time she’d shaken his hand. He’d wondered at the time whether she’d seen a resemblance between him and his father.

She’d been so charming afterward, however, that he’d dismissed the idea.

“Really,” he said, trying to keep his body and face relaxed. “Who am I?”

She took another deep breath and hugged herself as though she needed to protect her body from him. He could see the muscles along her jaw tighten.

“You’re my husband’s bastard son by the French whore he had an affair with in Paris.”

She spat the words at him, then her eyes opened wide as though the viciousness of her words startled her.

Paul had never raised a finger against a woman, but in that moment he had to clench his fists to keep from leaning across the ottoman between them and slapping her. Not for himself, but for his mother. His face flamed.

He sucked in a breath and tried with only moderate success to stay calm and relaxed. He did manage to force a smile, but from the way Karen recoiled, he must have looked pretty scary. She got up to go to the bar.

He stood when she did. “I’m much more than that,” he said. “I am Paul David Delaney’s one and only legitimate son. He
married
my mother in France.
Your
son is the bastard.”

“Liar!” she screeched, and flew at him.

Her fingers reached out to claw his face.

He caught her wrists and held her at arm’s length. “Stop that!”

“Liar, liar, liar!”

She had the strength of a tiger defending her cub.

She kicked at his shins, tried to bring a knee up into
his groin, twisted and squirmed to break his hold on her arms, all the while screaming, “Liar!”

He felt his right arm begin to tremble. She’d be able to break his hold as soon as his strength gave out.

“Honey?” came a plaintive voice from the hall.

“I’m fine, Marshall. We’ll be out in a minute.”

“It’s the truth,” Paul hissed through gritted teeth. “Calm down, for God’s sake. I don’t want to hurt you.”

She stared at him openmouthed.

“Hurt me?” She began to shake. “You don’t want to hurt me?” Suddenly she was laughing hysterically with her head thrown back so that he could see the sinews in her aging throat.

She went limp. He slid his left arm around her waist and led her to the couch.

When he let her go, she collapsed with her face buried in her lap. The sobs that were half laughter continued to rack her.

Paul poured two fingers of bourbon into a crystal glass, dropped in a couple of pieces of ice and took it to her. “Here.”

For a moment he thought she’d slap the glass out of his hand.

Instead, she reached out with shaking fingers, took the glass and brought it to her mouth using both hands.

She drained the bourbon in one gulp. “Another,” she said, and held the glass out to him.

“I don’t think so. Can I get you some water?”

“Said the executioner as he lifted the ax.”

That sent her into another fit of laughing and crying. He stood and watched her. If she’d calm down, he could talk to her, but not like this.

“All right. Water. Lots of it.”

He brought her a tumbler filled with ice and water.
Again she took it and drank it so greedily that water ran down both sides of her open mouth and dripped off her chin to form dark circles on her sweater.

She handed the empty glass back to him, but didn’t ask for more. When he turned back to her after putting the glass on the bar, she was watching him warily.

He sat down across from her on the ottoman.

“Can you prove it?” she said quietly.

He nodded. “I have the papers. I have affidavits from the
mairie
in which they were married and from the witnesses. I even have the seal from the American Embassy that my…that he had to get in order to be legally married in France.”

She closed her eyes. “I don’t understand. How could he be married and marry me?”

“He couldn’t. Not legally.”

She shivered. Her eyes were now very frightened. “We were never married?”

“You lived with him until he died. Even if you were never legally married, you would be considered a common-law wife.”

She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “A common-law wife? My God, that’s what trailer trash say when they’ve been shacking up for years without ever getting around to making it legal.” She looked at him calmly for the first time. “How much?”

“I beg your pardon.”

“How much do you want to go away and leave us in peace?”

“Mrs. Lowrance, I have plenty of money.”

“Then what? Do you want it all? What do you know about cattle or soybeans or cotton? Trey has…my God, he has a home, a family, a place in this community. To tell him he’s the bastard son of a bigamist, that he’s going
to lose everything he owns, everything he loves, to some French interloper who literally dropped out of the sky…” She leaned back against the couch. “I’ll kill you first.” The words were as matter-of-fact as a comment about the weather.