The Stranger's Sin (6 page)

“If you want, leave the necklace and I’ll see Mandy gets it when I find her,” he said. “I’ve gotta run. How ’bout you? Are you going back to New York today?”

“I, uh, haven’t decided.” She hadn’t found out all she could about Mandy, but launching an interrogation when he’d apparently abandoned his didn’t seem wise.

“Help yourself to coffee and whatever’s in the refrigerator,” he called.

He was halfway out of the kitchen before he hesitated, turned around and retraced his steps, not stopping until he stood directly in front of her. She tipped her chin, her gaze focusing on his mouth. His lips were lush, a tantalizing contrast to his masculine features. Her breath caught and for a crazy moment, she thought he was going to kiss her. But then he stuck out a hand.

She took it, and a bizarre sensation hit her like tiny fingers dancing over her skin.

“I’m sorry about all those questions last night,” he said. “If I don’t see you again, thanks. For everything.”

He was dismissing her, she realized. He held on to her hand for a few moments longer. Or maybe she was the one doing the holding. Then he let go and she felt…bereft. And guilty as hell for convincing him she’d told the truth about Mandy.

When he was gone, she attached the suction toy she found on the kitchen table to Toby’s high chair, taking in his oatmeal breath and the lingering smell of baby powder.

“What do you think, Toby?” she asked him while he played with the colorful toy’s spinning, sliding, blinking shapes. “Am I a terrible person? And did you see me
almost drool when he shook my hand? I mean, he’s hot, but really.”

“I don’t think you’re a terrible person because you think my son’s hot.” Charlie Bradford said, grinning at her from under the archway that led to the kitchen.

Kelly’s face suddenly felt so warm it was as if she’d fallen asleep under a tanning lamp. “I didn’t know you were there.”

“You can find out the darnedest things by eavesdropping on people talking to themselves,” he said, obviously unaware he’d misinterpreted at least one of her comments.

“Chase just left.” She changed the subject, hoping he’d let what she’d said drop. “I offered to stay so you could sleep in.”

“Thanks, but my alarm spoiled that plan.” He walked over to Toby and stroked his blond head. “’Morning, buddy.”

“How are you feeling this morning?” Kelly asked.

“Foolish.” He went to a cupboard and pulled out two mugs. He held one up to her. “Coffee?”

“Please.” She added that she liked it with cream but no sugar. “And don’t feel foolish. I think it’s a common mistake.”

“That’s what they told me in the E.R.” He poured the coffee and added the cream. “But I still can’t help feeling my son is a heartbreaker while I’m a heartburner.”

So much for trying to change the subject.

“I’m too smart to get my heart broken by a man who’s involved with someone else, Charlie.”

“Chase isn’t involved with anyone else,” he denied.

“Not even the mother of his son?”

“Toby’s not Chase’s son.”

“But the clerk at the B and B said…” Kelly’s voice trailed off, trying to remember exactly what the friendly woman had said after Kelly asked for directions to Chase’s house. “She said Mandy moved in with Chase when she got pregnant.”

“She didn’t mean pregnant with Toby.” Charlie carried both coffee mugs to the kitchen table, then sat down beside her. Toby was happily occupied with the toy. “Chase and Mandy met earlier this year. She lived with us until her miscarriage.”

Kelly shoved aside the momentary guilt that she was about to ply Chase’s father for information about his son. “So he’s not in love with her?”

“Never was. But you’ve got to understand something about my boy. He always tries to do the right thing. So when Mandy told him she was pregnant, he stepped up. I’m sure he would have asked her to marry him.”

Kelly drank her coffee, thinking about Chase doing the honorable thing. She couldn’t quite believe he didn’t have feelings for Mandy.

“If he doesn’t love her, why is he looking for her?”

“To get her to sign over custody of Toby,” Charlie answered. “I’m praying she turns up soon because otherwise he’s got this fool notion that he needs to go to DPW and do everything nice and legal. It seems his conscience gets heavier whenever anybody asks about Mandy.”

“But you and Chase don’t have any blood ties to Toby,” Kelly said. “If you go to DPW, you could lose him.”

“That’s what I told him,” Charlie said. “God knows he loves that boy, but I think the only thing stopping him
from going to DPW is we can’t be positive Mandy’s not coming back. Not after three weeks.”

“What has Chase done to try to find her?” she asked.

“Everything but poll the community, but that probably wouldn’t help anyway,” he said. “Mandy didn’t socialize much. She didn’t talk about out-of-town friends, she doesn’t have any family Chase knows of and Smith is probably the most common surname in the United States. He didn’t have a whole lot to go on until you showed up.”

Guilt spiraled through Kelly for not revealing everything she knew, but she couldn’t afford to trust anybody when a mistake could land her in prison. “I’m afraid I haven’t been much help.”

“I know. Chase told me about it last night. On the way back from the hospital,” he added wryly, “not on the way there.”

“Did she have any friends in town? Maybe they know something.”

“She took a dislike to Indigo Springs right off the bat, so she didn’t try very hard to fit in,” Charlie said. “About the only effort she made was getting that waitress job.”

Kelly’s heart started to pound. If Mandy had held down a job, her employer would have records for tax purposes, maybe even references. If Kelly got names, she might find somebody who knew where Mandy was.

“Where was she a waitress?” she asked.

“Angelo’s. Serves the best food in Indigo Springs, if you ask me,” he said.

“Was that the only place she worked?”

“Only place I know of,” he said, “although she did
apply for a job with the new lawyer in town. I remember because she was mad as a hornet when Sara didn’t hire her.”

“Mad?” Kelly thought that was strange. “Not disappointed?”

“Definitely mad. She went on and on about something or other. References, I think it was. Yeah, that’s it. Something about her references.”

Another avenue to explore if Kelly couldn’t find the information she needed at the restaurant.

“Are you hungry?” Charlie asked. “I could get you some breakfast.”

“No, thanks,” she said, her mind already plotting ahead. If Angelo’s was open for lunch, somebody should be at the restaurant as early as ten or eleven o’clock. “I’m staying at the Blue Stream B and B. Breakfast comes with the room.”

Considering she hadn’t used her room last night, she might as well get something for her money.

“Let me finish my coffee and I’ll drive you back to town,” he said.

“Oh, no. That’s not necessary. It’s such a beautiful morning, I can walk.”

“A gentleman doesn’t let a lady who spent the night on a sofa because of him walk back to her hotel,” Charlie said. “Isn’t that right, Toby?”

Toby looked up from his toy and grinned, then said something in a language only he could understand.

“See,” Charlie said. “Toby says I’m absolutely right.”

“In that case, how can I refuse?” Kelly said, but guilt laced her smile.

One Bradford male was just as charming as the next—and she was lying to all three of them. The fact that she didn’t have a choice was small comfort.

A
DRAWBACK TO LIVING IN
a town known for its surrounding mountains was that there weren’t many flat places to push a baby stroller.

Charlie Bradford and his late wife hadn’t considered the terrain when they bought a vacation home in a hilly, tree-lined neighborhood. Neither had they looked for a place with sidewalks. But then Charlie hadn’t anticipated ending up spending his retirement from the post office as a widower with primary care of a baby.

He didn’t mind looking after Toby. He did mind that the only place relatively level enough to stroll him, weather permitting, was downtown Indigo Springs’s sidewalks.

Especially because his lack of options had enabled one of the most beautiful women in town to find him.

“I hate that you didn’t call me last night,” Teresa Jessup said, keeping step beside him as he carefully navigated the stroller over a stretch of slightly uneven sidewalk.

At sixty-two, Teresa was five years younger than Charlie but could have passed for a decade younger than she was. Not that she tried. She had classic features, blond hair that made it difficult to see the gray and an aversion to cheating the aging process. Teresa was that much lovelier because she was completely natural.

“You know why I couldn’t call you.” Charlie lowered his voice to a whisper so Toby wouldn’t hear, which he realized was silly. The baby had drifted off and wouldn’t understand what was going on even if he was awake.

“So, if you had been having a heart attack and, God forbid, you’d died, I wouldn’t know about it until I read your obituary in the newspaper?”

He usually loved the way her mind worked. She took a situation and zeroed in on what was most important, which was why she made such a good insurance agent. But in this case, she was exaggerating.

“Indigo Springs is still a pretty small town,” Charlie said. “Somebody would have mentioned me dying before you saw it in the paper.”

He couldn’t be sure if she stamped her foot because they were, after all, walking. “You know what I mean, Charlie Bradford.”

“I know you’re making a big deal out of nothing,” he said. “Have a little compassion, woman. Do you know how embarrassing it is to go to the emergency room for heartburn?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Although I’ve gotta tell you the doctor was pretty understanding,” he continued as though she hadn’t interrupted. “I had my heart checked out after Emily died, but he said you can never be too careful about these things.”

“Are you all right?” She laid a hand on his arm, her blue gaze searching his face. He was reminded that six years ago her husband, Bill, had also died of a heart attack. “Is there something wrong with you that you’re not telling me?”

“I scheduled a physical Monday just to be sure, but the E.R. doc said it was nothing that laying off spicy foods won’t cure,” he said. “But, you know, my blood
pressure would be lower if you used that pretty mouth of yours to smile at me instead of arguing with me.”

She smiled, just as he hoped, but it was a grudging smile. “I don’t know why I put up with you, Charlie Bradford.”

“Because I’m hands-down the sexiest man you’ve ever known,” he suggested.

She laughed.

“I don’t like the sound of that laugh. Who do you know sexier than me? Anybody under sixty doesn’t count.” He waggled his eyebrows at her.

“You make it really hard to stay mad at you,” she said.

“Then don’t stay mad,” he suggested. “We’re still on for tonight, right? Eight o’clock.”

“Yes, we’re still on,” she said. “But don’t think for a minute that we’re not going to hash this out.”

They had been walking in the area of town where pedestrian traffic was lightest, but now more people were on the sidewalk. Most of them were tourists paying attention to the businesses lining the street rather than to Charlie and Teresa, but he couldn’t be too careful.

“We can hash it out when there aren’t so many people around,” he said in a soft voice.

She huffed out a breath, loud enough that he heard it. “I suppose you’re not crazy about us walking through town together, either.”

He didn’t reply, because she knew very well his position on the subject.

“Fine,” she said. “But one way or the other, we’re settling this tonight.”

He nodded, already trying to think of ways he could
distract her when tonight came. She picked up her pace, putting distance between herself and the baby stroller. The rigid set of her shoulders gave away her displeasure.

She looked like a woman who’d had enough.

A touch of what felt like last night’s heartburn returned, making his chest hurt. This time the reason wasn’t spicy food, but a sick feeling that she might have run out of patience.

Then, as she was waiting to cross a side street, she turned around.

The heavy feeling in his chest lessened. He grinned and waved, thinking that he just might be able to buy some more time after all.

K
ELLY’S PALMS SWEATED
and her stomach clutched as she waited for the owner of Angelo’s to react to her story about the broken necklace. The more she told the tale, the more holes it seemed to have.

Or maybe, after apparently convincing Chase she was telling the truth, she’d lost her taste for lying.

Kelly shored up her nerve and looked Aaron Hirschell directly in the eyes, reminding herself she’d do whatever it took to find Mandy.

Hirschell cast a backward glance at the kitchen, one of many since he’d reluctantly responded to her loud knocking. He’d already told her the restaurant wouldn’t be open for business for another thirty minutes.

“Mandy doesn’t work here anymore so I don’t understand why you came to me.” Hirschell tapped his foot against the glazed porcelain-tile floor. He was a fair-skinned, light-haired man in his fifties, as far removed from Kelly’s image of an Italian restaurant owner as he could be.

Kelly relaxed slightly, relieved he hadn’t asked any questions about the necklace. “I thought you might be able to tell me about her. Previous address. Names
of references. Any information that would help me find her.”

“Find her? What happened to her? Is she a missing person?”

Kelly stifled a groan. She was loathe to make trouble for Chase by advertising that Mandy had abandoned her child.

“Oh, no, nothing like that,” Kelly insisted. “She’s out of town, that’s all.”

The interested light left his eyes. “If she’s out of town, ask that forest ranger she lives with where she is. A good guy. Name of Chase Bradford. He’s probably in the phone book.”

Kelly hesitated, mentally phrasing her response so he wouldn’t know she’d been in contact with Chase. “Since I’m already here, I might as well find out what you know.”

His arms crisscrossed over his chest, his foot tapping a steady beat, his brows drawing together. “Not much. She only worked here a few weeks.”

“Then you must still have her application,” Kelly said, then added lightly, “and her employment papers.”

Specifically her tax form. If Kelly could get her hands on Mandy’s social security number…

“What business is that of yours?” Hirschell’s demeanor switched at a lightning clip from impatience to suspicion. “Are you some kind of investigator?”

Kelly could have kicked herself. In her zeal to find Mandy, she’d gone too far. “Of course not. Why would you think that?”

“You come in here, telling some cock-and-bull story about a necklace, then wonder how I caught on to you.”
He pointed his index finger toward the door. “I’d like you to leave.”

“But—”

“Just go.” He waved her away with a sweep of his hand, pivoted on his heel and disappeared into the kitchen.

She stared after him, trying to figure out why he thought she was a private investigator, and why he’d gotten so upset. Asking about Mandy’s employment papers admittedly was a mistake since they were confidential, but it shouldn’t have put him on the defensive unless…

He suspected Kelly not of being a private eye but of investigating tax fraud for the IRS. It could be that Aaron Hirschell was paying his waitresses under the table.

The theory crystallized during her next stop, the law office of Sara Brenneman.

The lawyer was a tall, engaging brunette dressed in a leopard-skin top and slacks instead of a business suit. She sported a sparkly engagement ring Kelly might not have noticed if Sara hadn’t kept fingering it.

“You’re going to all this trouble because of a necklace?” Sara quirked a brow, her demeanor even more skeptical than the restaurant owner’s. Kelly didn’t dare wipe her damp palms on her blue-jean skirt.

“The necklace is a favorite of hers.” Kelly didn’t know if that was true, but it could be. “She’d want it back.”

“Then why not leave the necklace with Chase Bradford?”

Kelly repeated the name as though she’d never heard it before. “Chase Bradford?”

“He’s a really good guy,” Sara said, marking the third
time today somebody had vouched for Chase’s character. First Chase’s father, then the restaurant owner and now Sara. “I’m sure he’d help you. He and Mandy were living together until she left town.”

Kelly noted that Sara used the past tense. She warned herself to tread carefully because her guess was that Sara and Chase were friends.

“I could get Chase on the phone for you,” Sara offered, bolstering Kelly’s theory.

“Thank you but I’d really like to hear what you know about Mandy,” Kelly said.

Sara had opted to sit in a chair beside Kelly rather than behind her desk. She angled her body and leaned forward at the waist, balancing her elbows on her thighs.

“Why come to me?” Sara sounded as though she was cross-examining a witness. “How can I possibly help you find Mandy?”

Kelly fought to keep her cool. “I heard Mandy interviewed with you for a job.”

“That’s true,” she said slowly. “But who—?”

“I also heard Mandy was upset you didn’t hire her, that it had something to do with her references. I thought you still might have them.”

“Her references, you mean?” Sara asked, successfully sidetracked.

“Yes.” Kelly nodded for emphasis. “I thought someone she used as a reference might know where she is.”

“She was of the opinion she shouldn’t have to give me any.” Sara sounded bewildered by the assumption. “She made quite a scene about it, in fact.”

Kelly’s brain raced, speculating about what might have
happened next. Could Mandy have turned to an employer who didn’t ask questions? Or, in Aaron Hirschell’s case, possibly require any documentation at all?

Once Kelly made the intuitive leap, another theory took hold. No, not a theory, a conclusion.

Mandy was on the run from something. Maybe Mandy Smith wasn’t even her real name, the way Kelly Delaney wasn’t hers.

It takes one to know one, she thought.

“Do you know if she was friends with anybody in town?” Kelly asked. “Or anywhere she used to hang out?”

“I saw her a couple times at the Blue Haven.”

Kelly recognized the name as belonging to a pub on Main Street.

“But let’s backtrack,” Sara said. “Who told you Mandy applied for a job with me?”

Kelly shifted in her seat, concluding she had no choice but to tell the truth. Sara would surely figure out if she lied. “Charlie Bradford.”

“Charlie?” Sara looked shocked. “If you know Charlie, why haven’t you talked to Chase?”

“Chase doesn’t know where she is.” Before Sara could point out that Kelly had given the impression she’d never heard of Chase, Kelly stood up. “Thanks for your time. I won’t take up any more of it.”

Kelly squelched an urge to sprint for the exit, proceeding as though panic wasn’t squeezing her lungs. She didn’t take a deep breath until she was across the street from the law office in the sunshine of a lovely summer afternoon.

She wasn’t cut out for a life on the run, she thought as she composed herself. If she didn’t show up for her
preliminary hearing next Friday, however, a bench warrant would be issued for her arrest.

She headed for the Blue Haven with purpose in her step, praying that Mandy had confided her plans to somebody who worked there and wishing she wasn’t so alone.

She wished she could confide in Chase Bradford, who had a compelling reason of his own to find Mandy.

But even though Chase’s father, the restaurant owner and the lawyer had vouched for him, Kelly couldn’t afford to trust anybody with her freedom.

C
HASE DISCONNECTED THE
cell-phone call, swung his Jeep from the two-lane road into the gravel parking lot adjacent to a trailhead, turned around and headed back toward Indigo Springs.

He’d planned to spend the rest of today patrolling his territory for illegal hunting and fishing activity, but that would have to wait.

Kelly Delaney was reportedly questioning people in Indigo Springs who knew Mandy, which spelled trouble. Plenty of people were aware Mandy had left town, but precious few realized Chase had no idea where she’d gone. Once word spread that her whereabouts were unknown, he’d no longer be able to justify withholding news of Toby’s abandonment to DPW.

He could hardly defend his actions now, even though dread filled him at the prospect of losing Toby and his father kept insisting it was too soon to alert the authorities.

This morning when he’d said goodbye to Kelly, he’d given up hope she had any information that could help
him find Mandy. After a phone call from Sara Brenneman, who’d recently become engaged to Chase’s friend Michael Donahue, he wasn’t so sure.

“Something’s not right with her,” Sara told him after reporting Kelly had paid her a visit. “Why would she go to such lengths to return a necklace?”

That question had raised Chase’s initial suspicions, which he’d let fade when Kelly took over during his father’s crisis. She’d been clearheaded, caring and competent, the perfect antidote to Chase’s panic.

He’d discovered something else about Kelly the morning after the wild ride to the hospital emergency room—he enjoyed being around her. She had an understated sense of humor that he found attractive and a nurturing quality that Mandy lacked.

She’d proven he could trust her with Toby, so he’d allowed himself to believe she was who she said she was: A woman doing a good deed after a chance encounter with Mandy.

Sara’s phone call had resurrected his doubts—and his questions. For the life of him, Chase still couldn’t come up with a reason for Kelly to lie.

After he found a coveted parking spot on Main Street, he placed a quick call to one of his buddies in the police department, asking him to find out what he could about a Kelly Delaney from Schenectady, New York.

Then he went in search of Kelly. He found her on a bar stool at the Blue Haven Pub, which Sara had tipped him off as her destination. She looked like an all-American girl in a blue-jean skirt and gauzy yellow top, her thick brown hair loose around her shoulders. She
was chatting with Annie Sublinski, who ran an outfit down by the river that offered whitewater, biking and hiking excursions.

The booths and tables were filling up, a sign that the owners of the pub had made a good decision to open the bar for lunch during tourist season. Only Kelly, Annie and two men holding a loud, not entirely friendly conversation had opted to sit at the bar. The men looked to be in their twenties with identical shaved heads. The thinner of the two sported a goatee while his buddy had a chin-strap beard.

Chase slipped onto the stool next to the women. “Hi, ladies.”

“Hi, Chase,” Annie said easily.

Kelly shifted her attention from Annie, her mouth and eyes rounding. Was that guilt he glimpsed in her expression?

“Chase,” she said. “I thought you were working.”

“Just taking a short break.” He looked around her to Annie. “How about you, Annie? Isn’t this high season? How can you tear yourself away from business in the middle of the afternoon?”

“Desperation. I’m short guides this weekend so stopped by to rope Jill into doing a run for me.” She nodded to the bartender, a young woman with short, curly black hair who was delivering another round of drinks to the two men at the opposite end of the bar. “I’ve been short-handed since Kenny Grieb went back to being an auto mechanic.”

“Annie’s so desperate she even asked if I was the outdoors type,” Kelly supplied.

“You never know when you’re going to find another—” Annie stopped talking in midsentence, her face growing pale, her hand rising to cover the birth-mark on one side of her face. Her gaze focused on a spot behind Chase. He turned to see Ryan Whitmore, the doctor who’d given him his physical last week, walk into the bar. An older man waved Ryan over to the booth farthest from where they sat.

“Do you know that man, Annie?” Kelly asked.

“Used to,” Annie said, her voice oddly strangled. “He must be visiting.”

“He’s doing more than visiting,” Chase said. “He’s filling in for his sister. She broke her leg so he’ll be here at least two months, maybe more.”

“Two months,” Annie repeated, her lips moving but hardly any sound escaping. She got up abruptly from the bar stool, mumbling something about getting back to work before she hurried out the front door.

“That was odd,” Kelly remarked at the same time the man with the goatee loudly accused his drinking companion of moving in on his girlfriend.

Jill the bartender was heading their way, but cast a wary glance backward as one man told the other he was imagining things.

“What can I get you?” Jill asked Chase. It was too early for lunch so he ordered a soda. While Jill poured his drink, he checked on the two men he’d mentally started referring to as Goatee and Chin Strap. Goatee seemed mollified by Chin Strap’s denial, but Chase sensed trouble ahead.

Jill pushed the soda toward him. “Seems like I’ve seen you in here before.”

“A few times.” Chase hadn’t had much opportunity to hang out in bars since Toby had entered his life, something that hadn’t stopped Mandy even though at the time she’d been pretending to be pregnant. “I would have been with a redhead. Mandy Smith.”

“We were just talking about her,” Jill exclaimed as though it was a coincidence. “Mandy used to come in here pretty regularly and sit at the bar, but I haven’t seen her in a couple of weeks.”

Chase waited for Kelly to ask why a pregnant woman had hung out in a bar, but she didn’t. Hell, maybe she thought Mandy had been drinking tonic water.

“Jill was just telling me how she and Mandy used to talk about vintage costume jewelry,” Kelly supplied.

“We like the same kind of thing.” The bartender gestured to her necklace. A large round silver pendant set with black onyx dangled from a silver chain interlocked with black onyx stones. Chase would have been hard-pressed to tell it was a reproduction.

“Did Mandy ever talk about other things, like her out-of-town friends or places she wanted to visit?” Chase asked.

“Not that I can remember. Aside from the jewelry, she mostly talked about how much she hated Indigo Springs.” Jill tipped her head. “Why do you want to know? Did something happen to her?”