The Stranger's Sin (2 page)

C
HASE
B
RADFORD SET DOWN
the car seat that doubled as a carrier, acting as if it made perfect sense for the invited guest at the Indigo Springs library’s Summer Speaker Series to bring along a sleeping year-old baby.

“Dream on, buddy,” he whispered, squashing an urge to kiss one of Toby’s flushed, chubby cheeks. “Please, please dream on.”

He wouldn’t have called himself soft-hearted before Toby came into his life, but it had taken Chase about ten seconds flat to fall in love with the little guy.

He’d fallen pretty quickly for Toby’s mother, too, but that turned out to have nothing to do with love. He wasn’t usually impulsive when it came to women. After Mandy, he wouldn’t be again.

“You sure that baby will be okay there?” asked Louise Wiesneski, the big-boned, florid-faced librarian who’d set up the talk.

“He’ll be fine, Louise,” Chase said with more confidence than he felt.

Her eyebrows formed an inverted V and her mouth twisted. “If you say so.”

She turned to the small group of people milling about
the meeting room. Chase recognized a few faces, but the group consisted mostly of the outdoor enthusiasts who descended on the town in summer to hike, bike and ride the white water down the Lehigh River.

“Please take a seat,” she commanded. “We’re about to start.”

The people who weren’t yet seated pulled chairs out from the tables facing the front of the room, the legs scraping on the linoleum floor.

Toby promptly woke up, his baby blues opening wide.

His tiny face crumpled, he kicked his short legs and he opened his little mouth. Chase bent down before he could scream, filling the baby’s field of vision with his familiar face. Toby closed his mouth, his lips forming into a pout, and stretched out both arms.

As timing went, Toby’s couldn’t have been worse.

Unbuckling the baby from the carrier, Chase resigned himself to having a partner during his presentation. He picked up Toby, smoothing his blond hair back from his flushed face, hoping the baby would be a silent partner.

A few dozen faces stared up at him while he said a silent prayer of thanks that he hadn’t opted for a slide show. The way things were going, he’d have a hard enough time passing around the oversize photos he’d brought along.

“Tonight we have Chase Bradford, a wildlife conservation officer whose talk is titled: ‘That Wasn’t a Mountain Lion.’” Louise’s voice sounded amplified even without a microphone. “Chase will speak about some of the species of wildlife that can be spotted in the Poconos.”

Doing his best to pretend he didn’t have a baby in his
arms, Chase held up a photo of a man kneeling beside a large, dead animal. “Can anybody tell me what this is?”

The hand of a freckled-faced boy sitting in the front row shot up. He was no older than ten, the youngest person in the room. Before Chase could acknowledge him, the boy asked, “Are you a policeman?”

“Not exactly,” he said just as Toby covered his badge with a chubby hand. “Think of me as policing the woods and waters. I help hunters, fishermen and outdoor enthusiasts enjoy our state’s resources responsibly.”

Chase repositioned Toby and asked again, “Now does anybody have a guess about this animal?”

“It’s a mountain lion,” answered a man wearing hiking clothing and a sunburn.

“That’s right,” Chase said. “A big one, too. Probably somewhere in the two-hundred-pound range. So now you’re probably wondering about the title of my talk.”

Toby squirmed, obviously still out of sorts from being awakened so abruptly. The baby almost never napped in the early evening but had fallen asleep on the drive over. His routine was seriously messed up.

“This photo made the rounds on the Internet a while back, with the text claiming the animal had been hit by a truck in a number of locations, including right here in Pennsylvania.”

Toby whimpered, and Chase bounced the baby the way he’d seen mothers calm their fussy children. Unfortunately motion wasn’t usually the key to soothing Toby. The baby was the ultimate outdoors enthusiast. Take him outside and he instantly quieted.

Louise crossed her arms over her chest, her lips flatlining.

“But there are no mountain lions in Pennsylvania and haven’t been since the late 1800s,” Chase said just as Toby let out a lusty wail. He bounced the baby some more, with no success. “This big cat was killed in northern Arizona.”

The volume of Toby’s cries increased. The freckled-faced boy in the front row covered his ears.

“Over the years, people have claimed mountain lions are roaming our hills.” Chase spoke louder to be heard above Toby’s cries. “But then some Pennsylvanians also claim to have seen Sasquatch.”

Nobody laughed.

Louise straightened from where she’d been leaning against the wall, marched over to Chase and held out her arms. “I’ll take him.”

Chase’s grip on the baby tightened, but he couldn’t continue the presentation over Toby’s howls. “Sorry about this. He’ll calm down if you take him outside.”

He had a moment’s doubt before handing the baby over, but the librarian’s entire body softened when she took him. She headed for the door, whispering soothing words, and Chase relaxed.

The freckled boy’s hand raised, bringing Chase’s attention back to the group. “Do you bring your baby on patrol, too?”

Considering its inauspicious beginning, the talk went over well. Chase showed the group photos of black bears, coyotes, red foxes and bobcats. The young boy was particularly interested in what Chase had to say
about timber rattlers and copperheads, which was basically “Poison—stay away.”

The talk finally over, Chase picked up the baby carrier and went in search of Toby and the librarian. He found them on the sidewalk outside the library, with Louise balancing the baby on her hip as she pointed out the things around them in a soft, pleasant voice.

Sky. Tree. Grass. Bench.

“We just finished up,” Chase said as he walked toward them. “Thanks for watching Toby for me, Louise.”

The librarian’s demeanor instantly changed, her whole body turning rigid and uncompromising. She handed Toby over, but not before Chase saw her press a quick, furtive kiss to the back of the baby’s head.

“What were you thinking bringing a baby with you?” she demanded.

He was thinking he needed to talk his retired father into carrying a cell phone. Then he could have reminded him of his promise to babysit.

“My dad and I got our signals crossed.” Chase should have mentioned the talk when he got home from work, but figured whatever errand his father needed to run wouldn’t take long. He’d figured wrong.

“Your dad?” Her voice had a hard, suspicious edge. “Isn’t he a widower?”

How had she known that? Tourism had arrived in Indigo Springs years before Chase’s parents bought the vacation home where Chase now lived with his father. While Indigo Springs still had a small-town feel, it wasn’t so insular that residents automatically knew everyone else’s business.

“Yes, he is.” Chase bent to lower Toby into the carrier and started buckling him in, making sure the straps went over the baby’s shoulders and between his legs. “My mother died nine months ago.”

“I was sorry to hear about that,” she mumbled, then added in a clearer voice, “So if your father’s watching Toby for you, that must mean Mandy’s still out of town.”

Chase looked up at her sharply at the mention of Toby’s mother. “How do you know Mandy?”

“She was a regular at the library. She mentioned once she was living with a wildlife conservation officer. That’s how I got the idea to ask you to speak.”

Chase turned back to Toby and finished buckling the gurgling baby into the carrier. He squashed an impulse to demand Louise immediately tell him what she knew about Mandy. Picking up the carrier by its sturdy plastic handle, he forced himself to sound casual.

“Were you and Mandy friends?”

“Oh, no,” the librarian said. “She just came in here to read her magazines—
People, Vogue, Cosmo.
Never touched
Parents
magazine or
American Baby,
though she had this little one and told one of the other librarians she was pregnant. She had a miscarriage, didn’t she?”

Chase kept his expression stoic, determined that Louise not guess she’d hit on a sore spot. “Yeah, she did.”

“Wasn’t that about three weeks ago?” Louise didn’t wait for confirmation, suggesting she’d been downwind from some serious gossip. “I heard she left town right after. Where did she go anyway?”

That was the million-dollar question.

“Nowhere in particular,” he said carefully. “She just needed to get away.”

“From her baby?” Louise arched a skeptical eyebrow. “When will she be back?”

Chase nearly told her to mind her own business, but she clearly liked to gossip. Since she was bound to give her co-workers a cry-by-cry account of tonight’s bring-a-baby-to-work fiasco, it would be best not to alienate her.

“Soon,” he said.

“I certainly hope so,” she said. “A baby needs his mother.”

In Toby’s case, Chase disagreed.

Toby uttered some gibberish, awarding Chase with one of his priceless grins.

“Thanks again for having me,” he told Louise, “but I need to get this happy little guy home so I can get him to bed on time.”

He felt like a politician on the campaign trail, putting the best possible spin on a situation after getting called for a misstep. Damage control, the politicians called it.

He headed for his Jeep before she could ask another question. He’d been facing more and more of them lately, most dealing with whether he and his father were equipped to handle a baby.

It was only a matter of time before somebody guessed that Chase didn’t have a clue where Mandy had gone.

Or whether she was ever coming back.

T
HE GLOW OF THE
microwave brightened the dark side of the kitchen; Chase hadn’t bothered to turn on a light.
He waited for the shrill beep, then opened the microwave door, noting the time on the digital display.

Eleven fifty-six, a good three hours since he’d put Toby down for the night and at least an hour since Chase had turned out his own bedside light.

He’d switched it back on again a few minutes ago.

He removed the mug from the microwave, his eyes drifting to the whiteboard affixed to the side of the refrigerator. It was too dark to read the lines his father had scribbled in black marker but he knew them by heart.

Don’t worry. Home late.

The mystery of where his early-to-bed father had gone paled only in comparison to Mandy’s disappearing act.

Chase heard the mechanical sound of the garage door raising, signaling that he’d soon find out the answer to at least one of the puzzles.

“Hi, Dad,” he said when his father walked into the kitchen a few moments later.

His father’s body jerked, then relaxed. A tall man with a full head of gray hair, he’d nearly shattered when his wife died but lately Chase had seen signs that he was coming back to life. Not only had he gone out tonight, but he’d taken care with his appearance, wearing a new-looking short-sleeved polo shirt with his favorite khakis.

“I didn’t see you there.” Charlie Bradford carried his shoes in one hand, as though afraid the click of his heels on the hardwood would wake up the household. “I thought you’d be asleep.”

Chase held up his mug. “I’m trying Mom’s remedy.”

“Ah, warm milk,” his father said.

Chase brought the mug to his lips, blew on the liquid and took a sip. The thick, chalky taste filled his mouth, and he made a face. “Ugh. As terrible as ever.”

His father chuckled softly. “I never could stand the stuff. Always thought it was better to talk about what’s keeping you up.”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Asked the man drinking warm milk in the middle of summer,” his father quipped.

Chase set the mug down on the kitchen counter. “It’s Toby.”

“Is he all right?” his father asked sharply.

“He’s fine,” Chase assured him, “but I’ve been thinking about that message Mandy left on my cell phone.”

Chase had received the voice mail a few days after he discovered her “miscarriage” was a convenient way to explain away a pregnancy that had never been, not that he’d shared that embarrassing tidbit with his father or anyone else.

He’d met Mandy Smith at the tail end of a year he’d been in Harrisburg attending training school to become a Pennsylvania Game Commission employee. After his March graduation, he’d been assigned a territory that included Indigo Springs. Weeks later, she’d phoned to tell him their single night together had resulted in pregnancy.

What else could he do but invite her to live with him? Had the pregnancy progressed, he would have asked her to marry him. It would have been the right thing to do. Instead he’d been played for a fool.

In the voice mail Mandy had rambled on about leaving Toby, but explained that she wasn’t cut out to be a mother.

“I don’t think she’s coming back for him,” Chase said.

“That could be,” his father said. “That girl wasn’t much of a mother.”

His father should know. During the two months Mandy had lived with them in Indigo Springs, his dad had spent more time with Toby than Mandy had.

Chase drew in a breath, then put into words the conclusion he’d reached while lying in bed. “I need to contact the Department of Public Welfare.”

“No! That’s a terrible idea,” his father cried. “Where’s this coming from? Did something happen tonight?”

“Yes and no,” Chase said. “It’s just that the librarian who set up my speech asked a lot of questions.”

His father put a hand to his head and groaned, then sank into a chair beside Chase. “I forgot about your speech.”

“Yeah, you did.”

“You don’t usually need me on your day off, but I still should have remembered.” He grimaced. “You had to take Toby with you, didn’t you?”

“I tried some of the neighbors but nobody could watch him,” Chase said.

“How was he?”