The Honeymoon Cottage (A Pajaro Bay Romance) (7 page)

He laughed out loud, a warm, rumbling sound that seemed to surprise him as much as it did her. "You couldn't be a 'criminal type' if you tried." He glanced her way quickly before starting the car. "I really do believe you're innocent, you know."

She felt such a surge of relief it surprised her. Why did his opinion matter so much? Because the shame felt too familiar, too much like something she'd been running from all her life.

He still watched her, looking a bit wary at the fleeting emotions that must—as always—be obvious on her face. She smiled at him, forcing herself to stop thinking about herself. "So, I suppose you've seen a lot of criminals. How long have you been a cop?"

"Ten years in major crime with the Sacramento PD before I came here two years ago. Homicide, drugs, pretty much everything. Listen—" He shot her another quick glance. "You're holding up just fine." He seemed to want to say something more, but just pulled the car out of the parking lot.

"What? What do you want to say?" she asked.

"I wanted to ask...."

Her expression must have been transparent, because he added, almost reluctantly, "I'm not asking officially. What happened in San Jose is out of my jurisdiction. I'd just like to hear your story. Maybe I can help."

Maybe he could help. She was so tired of dealing with this on her own. But she knew she couldn't really open up to him. Still, maybe telling him about Dennis would get him off her back. Maybe saying it all out loud would answer all his questions and then he wouldn't bother her anymore. "It's all right," she finally said, making up her mind. "I've told the story so many times, what's one more?"

She leaned back against the vinyl seat. "Where can I start? Let's see. I worked for Felix Cordova."

Ryan whistled. "Cordova Computing? The big high-tech firm? I guess it didn't register just how big a company you'd been part of."

That was the reaction everyone had when she said it. She used to be so proud when she announced where she worked. The cutting-edge computer firm run by the brilliant ex-astronaut supposedly hired only the best graduates from top universities.

"Yeah. It was a lucky break. I interned in their payroll department when I was earning my accounting degree from San Jose State." She skipped everything that happened before college. He didn't need to know any of that.

"It doesn't sound like luck. You must be pretty good at your job to get hired while still in college."

She sighed. She used to think she was. "Like I said, it was a lucky break. Anyway. I used to eat lunch in a park next to the company grounds—a lot of employees took their lunches there. Oh, no," she added as it struck her. "Dennis must have known that. He was staking out the park looking for—"

"—Somebody from the payroll department. Probably." Ryan pulled the SUV to a stop and turned to her. "So you met him in the park?"

"Right. He was there with Oliver. It was really Oliver I noticed first. The little boy, so closed-in, needing something—"

"—Someone," he said softly.

She didn't know how to explain it. The feeling that had come over her when she'd seen Oliver. It had been almost like seeing herself as a child. Almost like recognizing something familiar in him, something deep inside of her that she'd been avoiding all her life.

She tried to figure out how to explain how her life had turned upside down so suddenly without revealing too much about herself. "It was almost like Dennis was looking for a woman who liked his son, more than him." She was talking almost to herself, remembering, trying to put it together. "They were there many times during my lunch hour, and we got to talking, and I heard his story."

"Which was?"

"He was a single father. Oliver's mother had died in a car accident. I think I wouldn't have been so quick to trust him if he was just some guy hitting on me in the park. It was the picture of them, a father and son trying to rebuild their lives after Oliver's mother died. They were so alone. I knew what that felt like."

"Being alone?"

She hurried on with the story, afraid she had said too much. "So anyway, that's why I fell for him. He was so...."

"Vulnerable?"

"Yeah."

"So what does Dennis look like?"

"Look like? That's funny. I don't even have a photograph of him, of us together, or even of Oliver with him. I guess I'd describe him as average. Really average. Brown hair and eyes, medium height, medium build, no particular habits that stand out." She might have been more wary if Dennis had been more handsome, more flashy. "He was just average, in a non-threatening way. He looked so nice."

"Of course."

"What do you mean, of course?"

"He's a con man. He's going to be easy to like, easy to get along with, agreeable and, yeah, 'nice'."

"But I should have realized." She found she was wringing her hands, and deliberately unclasped them. "Looking back, there were red flags everywhere. His interest in my job, in how I handled my money, my computer. His vague explanations about his own job and where he went all day while I was at work."

She sighed. "I was an idiot. I was on my way to meet him to elope and go to Hawaii—I had my wedding dress on a hanger in my cubicle—the day the police came. They had thrown me a party. I was sitting at my desk finishing up some work on the quarterly report. I remember I was stuffed full of pineapple cake and wearing a pink lei around my neck and... was happy." It had seemed like her life was falling into place so easily. Everything was so effortless.

She shook her head. "And then the police appeared at my desk and hauled me away in handcuffs in front of everyone. The head of the department had discovered the theft. Someone using my computer codes had transferred over a million dollars to a bogus account in the middle of the night. Then the account was closed and cashed out before I got to work that morning. I worked on those computers and I still don't know how he pulled it off. He might have used a worm," she muttered, going over the details in her mind again. "Something to track my keystrokes. But how he got it on the computer at work I can't imagine."

She pulled her mind back to the facts. "I should have known. Should have seen it coming. But he just seemed so... comfortable. He made me feel relaxed."

Unlike the man sitting next to her, prickly and overbearing. It wasn't just his uniform—the constant reminder that he had the authority to check into her background, to dig up every bit of dirt from her past. The problem was more than that. It was him. His presence making the car feel too small, too close. She looked out the window and realized they were parked in front of the cottage.

"I'm sorry you have to go through all this, Camilla. If there's anything I can do to help you, I will." His intense gaze pinned her to the seat, but finally she forced herself to turn away.

She unfastened her seat belt as nonchalantly as possible and opened the door to get out, then hesitated. "Coffee?" she asked tentatively, wondering if she was nuts to actually invite him in. "It's instant, but it's drinkable."

He nodded and got out of the car, too. He seemed hesitant, too, and that relaxed her for some reason. He wasn't as cold as he seemed, maybe. Maybe that was what was drawing her to him. That almost-hidden vulnerability peeking through his armor.

He came around the front of the car to meet her.

"Why me?" she asked. "That's what I keep asking myself. Why did he pick me? It's almost like he planned to leave Oliver with me, like he planned to leave me alone with this junky cottage and his son. Why would he do that?" On a roll, she recklessly voiced her real fear: "Was he able to see something in me that made me deserve this?"

He smiled. "You sound like one of our town's aging hippies. Do you really believe you have some kind of karma that attracts trouble to you?"

"Maybe I deserve trouble," she mumbled, then wished she could take it back.

He leaned in closer, and those eyes glinted as he picked up on the importance of what she'd said. "Why would you deserve trouble?" he asked, his voice so soft she felt herself leaning closer to him to catch the words.

She shrank back. Oh, Captain Knight was a good interrogator, wasn't he? That's the way these cops were. They always found a way to mess up your story. Picking away at you endlessly until you slipped up. She took a step back and straightened up. She turned away from the dangerous subject of her own past and said, "I just mean that out of all the people in the world, he did this to me. I guess it just seems so weird to be targeted like this."

Ryan pulled back, too, and seemed to relax. "I don't know the answers, Camilla. But maybe we can figure it out. Every criminal has an M.O. We can find Dennis Hutchins's. So, has he left his son with other women?"

She was glad to move back onto safer territory. Ryan was a cop. He could help figure this out. He wasn't investigating her, but just curious about Dennis, so she needed to get herself under control and focus on the problem in front of her. "I'm pretty sure Dennis never had any other woman legally adopt Oliver," she said matter-of-factly. "At least, not as far as I know. That's part of the problem. I don't know much. Half of what Oliver said today was news to me. He thinks telling me about his father would be snitching, and the police don't seem to know much about any of this. They're more focused on the missing money than on Oliver being abandoned."

"Oliver isn't abandoned." He was smiling that tentative smile at her again.

"No," she agreed. "I'll never abandon him. He's safe with me."

"Yes, he is." Ryan leaned against the side of the SUV. "So go over the story again."

She quickly went through the timeline again. She tried to skip over her shame and embarrassment. Her love of Oliver. How she got swept up in the suddenness of it all and lost her sense. How it all came crashing down. But somehow she felt he saw all of it through those cold blue eyes of his.

When she stopped he said, "Well at least I can understand why he picked you."

She froze. So he did believe she deserved this? "You think he likes redheads?" she said sarcastically.

"I'm serious."

"So am I," she said defensively. "I have no idea what made him target me, except my complete gullibility."

"No. He trusted you."

"Trusted me?" Of all the things he might have said, that was the most ridiculous. "He knew I was an idiot he could scam, you mean."

"No, that's not what I mean." He looked at her very seriously. "I mean he trusted you with his son's life. He trusted you not to take out your anger—your very understandable anger toward him—on his son."

"What are you talking about? Of course I would never blame Oliver."

"Exactly. There are women who would."

"Who would hurt a little child like him? He's darling. Give me a break."

"You don't think anyone ever hurts darling, innocent children?"

She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. She was wringing her hands again, and this time he definitely noticed.

He covered her hands with his own. The touch of those large, rough hands was surprisingly warm, and she felt her clenched fingers relax in his palms. "You're a decent person, Camilla." He let go of her suddenly, and she missed the warmth. "You would never hurt Oliver."

"I wouldn’t do that, no matter what."

Ryan nodded. "And he could read you, 'like a book' you said. He knew you had a compassionate heart."

"You don’t even know me." But she worried that he did know too much about her, and she didn't like how it made her feel.

He continued on calmly, in that cool way of his. "I know you are broke, out of work, and struggling to get on your feet, but you took time out of your first day in town to enroll Oliver in school."

"He'll get behind if I don’t."

"Right."

She felt uncomfortable, like he too could read her like a book. That sensation made her feel unsafe. She wished she hadn't invited him in for coffee, and wondered how to brush him off.

"Why do you feel guilty?" he asked. "You're the victim, not the criminal."

"Haven't you ever made a single mistake and had it snowball into something awful?"

He stepped back like she'd stabbed him in the heart.

What had she said?

"Let's take a rain check on the coffee," he said stiffly. "I'd better be getting to work. Good day, Ma'am." He got back into the SUV and pulled away, leaving her standing there in the road.

~*~

Chapter 4

The county sheriff department's substation was just a little place in the center of town, tucked between Santos' Market and the modern art gallery. This month Santos' front window was advertising red fishing worms on sale, and the gallery, appropriately enough, had their front window full of abstract sculptures made from sinewy curves of copper pipe.

Ryan felt he should find that amusing, but he was in a foul mood. "Ever do something small that changes everything?" Camilla had said. Why was this woman getting to him? She was simply saying what he'd thought a million times himself. So why did it sound like an accusation coming from her? The weird part was, after seeing her with Oliver, after seeing the softness that sometimes came through in her eyes when she wasn't on her guard, he felt like she was one of the few people he could talk to about why he couldn't be a cop anymore....

There was a deep compassion in her, something rare. She was brave, and honest, and whip-smart, but the thing that made her different from everyone else he'd ever met was that unwavering kindness. She treated Oliver like her own child, though she could have dumped him into the system without a backward glance. The boy was difficult and moody, and he knew how to push her buttons, but she still treated him with that compassionate, gentle kindness. She was a rare person.

So why did that make him so uncomfortable?

He slammed the car door and stalked into the building.

The substation was already open. Ryan's deputy, Joe Serrano, always started his shift at eight.

Ryan hung up his hat next to Joe's on the coat rack by the door. There was a small waiting area, then four desks—Joe was on the phone at his, Ryan's own desk was piled with papers, and the two other desks sat pristinely empty, waiting for the reserve deputies who'd be assigned here from the county seat in June.