The Stranger's Sin (12 page)

Singing off-key in a duet with a character on
Sesame Street
with Toby in his arms.

Insisting he be the one who changed Toby’s diaper before he rushed off to work this morning.

Leaving them both with a kiss.

“There’s another block over there,” she told Toby, pointing to a bright-red one under a Queen Anne armchair.

Toby crawled over to the block on chubby knees. He was such a champion crawler that she thought it was why he hadn’t yet taken his first step.

She’d miss his first step, she realized. His first step and his first sentence and his first night in a big-boy bed.

She wasn’t making any headway finding Mandy while sitting in the Bradford family room, no matter how attached she was getting to the trio of males who shared it with her.

A few days ago she’d decided against taking a trip to Harrisburg because Chase had already covered that ground. With her options running low, it was time to reconsider. She could recanvas the bar where he’d met Mandy and the hotel where the other woman had lived in case he’d missed something. This time she could ask if the name Mandy
Johnson
was familiar.

Toby suddenly started to whimper.

“What’s wrong, Toby?” she asked, gathering the little boy into her arms.

He screwed up his face, in obvious discomfort. He felt a little warm even though Charlie had lowered the setting on the air conditioner to counteract the heat from the oven.

Ten minutes later, Toby was wailing as she walked him around the house. She’d also identified the source of his distress—he was teething.

“I’ll get something to make it better, sweetheart,” she told him.

She found baby aspirin and gel to rub on his sore gums, but neither of them helped. Then she remembered a tactic to get him to calm down that Chase had shared.

“C’mon, little guy,” she said, heading for the door. “We’re going outside.”

C
HASE LEFT HIS
J
EEP
in the driveway, even though he could see through the row of small windows lining the top of the panel door that the one-car garage was empty of his father’s car.

He’d spent the day like a nomad, constantly on the move as he patrolled his territory for illegal fishing activity, but his mind kept returning to one place.

Home.

Even though he hadn’t grown up there, he’d started thinking of the Cape Cod on Elm Street as home almost as soon as his parents had relocated. His mother’s death had rendered the place merely a house, but the people who filled it were slowly transforming it into a home once again.

His father, whose health had checked out just fine at the doctor’s office to Chase’s tremendous relief.

Toby, whom he loved without reservation.

And Kelly, who…well, he wasn’t ready to put a label on what he felt for her.

He’d been so busy at work both today and yesterday that they hadn’t made any progress in their search for Mandy. They needed to put their heads together and come up with a firm plan.

Not tonight, though. Tonight he planned to enjoy the company of his three favorite people. He walked quickly toward the house, then stopped suddenly. A dull, steady noise rang in his ears.

Trying to identify the source, he surveyed the immediate vicinity. But no, the noise wasn’t coming from outside. It was emanating from…the house?

He hurried toward the entrance, the noise growing incrementally louder with each step he took. He tried the doorknob, found it unlocked and yanked open the door.

A shrill mechanical scream assaulted his ears. The smoke alarm!

At the end of the short hallway that led to the kitchen, a haze of smoke wafted in the air.

Oh, God, no!

Heart pounding and adrenaline surging, he raced toward the kitchen.

“Kelly!” he screamed. “Toby!”

He braced himself to get assaulted with a wall of heat, dreading the sight of flames licking at the walls, of Toby and Kelly unresponsive on the floor.

But he saw no fire, only smoke.

It curled toward the ceiling in thin gray puffs, its origin the oven. His eyes stinging from the smoke, he hurried over and turned it off. He pulled on the thick oven mitt beside the sink, then yanked open the oven door and hauled out a shallow pan. Inside was a beef roast, overcooked but not burned, swimming in bubbling juices.

He put the pan on the counter and bent down, finally identifying the cause of the smoke. The juices had
spilled over the side of the pan and splashed on the heating element.

Luckily it wasn’t true that where there was smoke, there was fire.

He drew in a relieved breath, the smoke immediately clogging his lungs and making him cough.

He flicked the switch that turned on the oven fan, then located the still-shrieking smoke alarm, jerking out the batteries.

Returning to the kitchen, he spotted an unopened package of baby spinach beside an empty salad bowl. Kelly had obviously been in the middle of preparing dinner, but then where was she?

“Kelly!” he called, his voice less frantic.

She didn’t answer, which seemed strange. Where would she have gone when there was a roast in the oven, especially since his father seemed to have taken the car?

His mind still on the puzzle, he moved to open the kitchen window that overlooked the backyard. There, dashing through the sprinkler that was set to switch on automatically in the early evening, was Kelly. She held Toby securely in her arms.

He opened the window, barely noticing the clean, sweet air that streamed into the house, his attention focused on the woman and the baby.

They were a good distance away, which was probably why she hadn’t heard the alarm. Chase saw the white flash of her teeth. He could tell Toby was also smiling by the way the little boy waved his arms. They were both drenched.

Amid the smoke and the smell of overdone beef,
something inside him softened, radiating from his heart until his chest felt full.

He finished opening the rest of the windows on the first floor, enabling a cross breeze to flow through the house. Then he went into the backyard, still transfixed by the sight of woman and baby.

Kelly was making another pass under the sprinkler, singing loudly and off tune about raindrops falling on their heads. Toby’s giggles were so infectious Chase felt his lips curve upward. Kelly looked up, a broader smile wreathing her face.

“Look, Toby,” she said. “Look who it is.”

Toby stopped giggling. Stretching out his arms, his mouth still open in a charming grin, he said, “Da-da.”

Time seemed to freeze.

Chase noticed little things. The drops of water in Toby’s hair. Kelly’s slim, sure hands at the baby’s waist as she half lifted him toward Chase. The happy sparkle in Toby’s eyes.

The moment burned into his memory as surely as if he’d taken a photograph, Chase reached for the little boy he thought of as his son.

Toby came willingly, flapping his arms with delight as though he were still playing in the sprinkler.

“Da-da,” he said again.

Chase’s throat felt thick, rendering him momentarily speechless.

“That’s the first time he’s called you that,” Kelly stated.

Chase cleared the thickness from his throat. “You can tell, huh?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“How you doin’ today, sport?” he asked Toby, although the answer seemed fairly obvious. Chase would be doing great, too, if he’d spent the day with Kelly.

The little boy patted his own head.

“He’s telling you the raindrops were falling on his head,” Kelly translated.

“Yeah, I saw that,” Chase said.

“I wanted to take his mind off his t-e-e-t-h.” Kelly spelled out the last word. “More of them must be coming in because he was crying something awful.”

“We have some gel in the medicine cabinet that’s supposed to help,” Chase said.

“He was already in full cry when I tried that so I brought him outside to distract him. The sprinkler came on, and the next thing I knew we were running through it.” Kelly pushed her wet hair back from her face as she relayed the story. Her T-shirt clung to her curves very nicely. “It seemed to work.”

“How long ago was that?” Chase asked.

“Maybe a half hour. Not long after your father went to the grocery store. I told him…” Her voice trailed off and she smacked her head. “The pot roast! I told him I’d watch the pot roast but I totally forgot.”

She hurried toward the house, with Chase following. “Kelly! Wait! There’s something you should know before you go into the house.”

She turned around, her expression pained. “I ruined it, didn’t I?”

“Almost, but that’s not it. Some juices got on the heating element so the house is pretty smoky.”

She cradled her head with both hands. “I’m so sorry.
I shouldn’t have left the house with something in the oven. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“I do.” He closed the distance between them. “You were thinking of a way to get Toby to stop crying, and you did that.”

“Yes, but—”

“No buts.” Balancing Toby with one arm, he reached out with the other and covered her lips with two of his fingers. “The house is smoky, but so what. There’s no harm done.”

“Yeah, but no self-respecting cook would have let that happen. I guess the secret’s out that I’m terrible in the kitchen.”

“You’re wonderful with Toby, and that’s far more important.” Chase lifted the boy in the air, relishing his immediate baby giggles. “Isn’t that right, Toby? Isn’t Kelly the best?”

They waited a few more minutes for the smoke to clear, then went into the house, working in tandem to rescue the edible parts of the roast.

The rest of the evening didn’t play out exactly as Chase had envisioned, but it was close enough. His father was strangely subdued during dinner, something so out of character that Chase did something he’d sworn he’d never do.

“You’re actually suggesting we play charades?” Charlie asked. His father paid little mind to the fact that it was a party game, better played with a group of people. Whenever they had a guest in the house, even it if was only a single guest, Charlie tried to get up a game.

Chase always resisted, partly because the game was
corny but mostly because his father was a spectacularly lousy player.

“Yeah,” Chase said. “But if you make a big deal of it, I might change my mind.”

At the threat, his father leaped to his feet. As always, he insisted on going first. Ten long minutes later, he collapsed against the sofa cushions.

“How could you guess
Babe
when the answer was
King Kong?
” his father asked Kelly, his voice laced with mock exasperation.

“They’re both movie titles,” Kelly said, giggling. Toby, who was sitting on her lap, giggled, too.

“Yeah, but King Kong’s a big ape,” his father said, sounding put out. “Babe is a little pig.”

“You indicated it was something fat.”

“Not fat. Big. An ape can be big and not be fat. A pig is always fat. There’s a real distinction. How could you get them mixed up?”

Kelly’s giggles turned to full-fledged laughter, and she wiped at her eyes. Chase smiled, enjoying the affectionate interplay between the two. Kelly belonged here, just like his father, just like Toby. She’d told him earlier that she loved Indigo Springs. Maybe he could persuade her to stay.

“Look at it from my standpoint,” Kelly said. “You described an ape the same way you would a pig.”

The phone rang, interrupting their mock argument. Chase was closest so he rose from his seat beside Kelly and picked up the portable receiver on the third ring. “Hello?”

“This is Helene Heffinger.” The jewelry-maker’s
voice came over the line, so unexpected it was jarring. He covered the mouthpiece, walking quickly out of the living room and away from the noise. “It turns out I did have that phone number you wanted.”

A sense of foreboding swept over him, although he wasn’t sure why. “Do you have a name?”

“Of course I have a name,” she said testily. “I wouldn’t have the phone number if I didn’t have a name, too.”

“What is it?” Chase prodded.

“Jasper Johnson.”

Johnson. The same last name that allegedly belonged to Mandy.

While Heffinger gave him the rest of the information, Chase watched his father, Kelly and Toby, all of whom where still laughing. For them, nothing had changed.

But in the space of a phone call, Chase’s entire world had been upended.

Mandy had always maintained she didn’t know who had fathered Toby. She also claimed she’d never been married. Those statements could still be true but it struck Chase as too big a coincidence that Mandy shared a last name with the man who’d bought her the necklace.

On the day Toby had called him Da-da for the first time, Helene Heffinger might have just provided Chase with information that could lead him to the baby’s biological father.

G
O-KARTS WHIZZED AROUND
a serpentine track Tuesday night, mostly driven by male teens too young to hold drivers’ licenses.

Kelly spotted only one couple in line, the female half of the pair a petite blonde who was dwarfed by her tall, brawny boyfriend. They held hands, their eyes mostly on each other rather than the noisy machines circling the track.

If she tried hard enough, Kelly supposed she could pretend she and Chase had driven an hour to the Allentown track known as Scooters in search of a fun, unusual date. But she was too old for fairy tales, even though she’d been living one for the past few days in the company of the Bradford men.

She’d made a step in the right direction this morning by moving out of Chase’s house and back into the Blue Stream Bed-and-Breakfast. Now it was time to bring her search for Mandy back to the forefront, where it belonged. She was running out of time and money. No matter what happened tonight, she needed to stop fooling herself that she and Chase were a normal couple.

She needed to harden herself against falling in love with him.

“Are you sure we’re in the right place?” she asked him.

They were standing outside a chain-link fence that looked over the track, just steps from the small building where customers paid admission and teenagers played video games.

“Pretty sure,” he said. “I kept getting the answering machine when I called the number Heffinger gave me, but Scooters is definitely the right place. Heffinger remembered that Jasper Johnson worked as a go-kart attendant.”

“That doesn’t mean he still works here,” she said.

“True, but it’s time we caught a break.”

He took a few deep breaths as though he was steeling himself, too, but she knew his private battle had everything to do with Toby. “Are you ready to do this?”

She put a hand on his arm to detain him. “You know, Jasper Johnson may not be Toby’s father.”

Chase had put forth his suspicion about Toby’s parentage when he’d gotten off the phone last night, but since then had shied away from discussing the issue. His sigh was audible even over the track noise. “I guess it’s pretty obvious I’ve been worried about that.”

“I’ve become attuned to the Bradford men over the past few days,” she said. “When something’s bothering you, you clam up. Your dad jokes around.”

“My dad always jokes around,” he remarked.

“Not so much now that he and Teresa are having trouble.”

“What do you mean having trouble?”

“They’re involved, aren’t they?”

“What!” His mouth gaped open, and he shook his head. “My dad and Teresa aren’t involved.”

“Are you sure?” She’d gotten the opposite impression at the festival, when Charlie had been overly interested in Teresa’s whereabouts. Just yesterday Charlie had told her Teresa was considering moving to Philadelphia. He’d claimed to be concerned that she’d be making a mistake but Kelly thought he was more worried about losing her.

“Of course I’m sure,” Chase said. “They’ve been friends for years but that’s it. Besides, my mother hasn’t even been gone a year.”

Kelly didn’t believe love followed a timetable, but now wasn’t the time to discuss it, especially with Chase so uneasy over the prospect of meeting Jasper Johnson.

“Then I must be wrong.” She put her hand over his and squeezed, disguising her own nervousness. With her preliminary hearing fast approaching, she had as much at stake as Chase did. “Ready?”

Inside the building the teenage boy behind the ticket counter directed them outside to the track. “Yeah, J.J.’s here. Ask around. He won’t be hard to find.”

On the track a small contingent of men wearing red Scooters T-shirts shuffled young thrill seekers in and out of go-karts, making sure their seat belts were secure, then helping them unstrap. The most impressive employee was a muscular fair-haired man in his twenties who resembled Jim Waverly, but about twenty percent inflated.

“I think that big guy over there might be him.” Chase spoke into her ear, the apprehension in his voice hinting he’d also noticed the man’s resemblance to Waverly. It
followed that a woman who’d been involved with Waverly would also find the muscular, blond Scooters’ employee attractive.

“Hell, no. I’m not Jasper Johnson.” The blond snorted when they finally got his attention. He spoke in a loud voice to be heard above the roar of the go-karts. “J.J.’s over there with the tattoos.”

The man he indicated was a wiry five foot six or seven, with thick forearms decorated with what looked like tattoos of eagles. He had a receding hairline and appeared to be in his late forties or early fifties, easily twice Mandy’s age. He said something to one of his co-workers, then skirted the line of chatty teenagers, disappearing around the side of the building that housed the video games.

Chase thanked the muscular blond, then took Kelly’s hand. “Let’s go.”

She had to hurry to keep pace with him as they followed the path the man had just taken. She shared his urgency. Although the go-kart complex was entirely fenced, she was irrationally afraid Jasper Johnson would disappear.

Instead he was leaning against the side of the building, one leg bent at the knee and braced against the concrete, smoking a cigarette. He regarded their approach warily.

“Are you Jasper Johnson?” Chase asked. The building blocked some of the noise, making it possible to talk without shouting.

The man grimaced. “Aw, hell. I only missed the one time.”

“Missed what?” Chase asked.

“The probation meeting.” Jasper Johnson’s already small eyes narrowed. He did not look friendly. “You’re a cop, aren’t you? Because you sure look like a cop.”

Chase didn’t deny what was essentially the truth. “I’m here as a friend of Mandy’s.”

Johnson straightened from the wall, his posture tense. “Where is she?”

“We were hoping you could tell us,” Chase said. “We’re looking for her.”

“And you think I know?” Johnson made a disbelieving sound, then resumed his position against the building and took a long drag of his cigarette before answering. “Hell, I haven’t seen her since I got out of the joint. Must’ve been a year and a half ago.”

That was the same time frame Heffinger had given. Kelly quickly did the math. Toby was a year old, which meant that eighteen months ago Mandy would have been three months pregnant. If Johnson’s estimate was correct, he couldn’t possibly be Toby’s father.

She produced Mandy’s broken necklace and showed it to him. “Is that when you gave her this?”

His tough-guy expression faltered before he quickly resurrected it. “She said she was going to keep that. Did she give it to you?”

“No. She lost it. Why? Does it have special meaning? Is that why you had it made for her?”

“How’d you know I got it made for her?” he demanded, his face turning red. “Did she tell you I ripped her last one off her neck? ’Cause that’s not true. It was an accident!”

The quick flare of Johnson’s temper hinted otherwise. Kelly took a step closer to Chase before offering an explanation. “Helene Heffinger told us about the necklace. That’s how we found you. She said you showed her a drawing and commissioned her to reproduce it.”

“So what? A father’s got the right to give his daughter a necklace.”

“You’re her father?” Chase sounded stunned.

“She told you I was dead, didn’t she?” Jasper Johnson’s voice was harsh. He nodded at Chase. “You her boyfriend?”

“Ex,” Chase said. “Have you been in touch with her lately? Maybe have a phone number for her?”

Johnson took another drag of the cigarette, the smoke filling the air between them. “I’ve been trying to find her myself. We’re having a bit of a…misunderstanding.”

“What kind of misunderstanding?” Kelly asked, but figured it had something to do with the necklace he’d ripped off Mandy’s throat.

“She didn’t accept my apology, okay?” Johnson threw the cigarette butt on the ground and stomped it out with his foot. “Why all the questions? Why you looking for her? What’s she done?”

Chase didn’t hesitate. “She ran out on me.”

“You and me both, man.” He walked back toward the go-kart track, not even bothering to say goodbye, smoke lingering behind him.

“Did you get the feeling Jasper Johnson is the reason Mandy was going by the name of Smith?” Chase asked.

“Most definitely,” Kelly said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he was in jail on an assault charge.”

“If that’s true,” Chase said, “Mandy should have told me about him.”

“Maybe she was embarrassed,” Kelly said. “It’s not always easy to tell someone you have a parent in prison.”

He gazed steadily back at her, realizing instantly what she’d admitted. “Your father?”

“I lost track of him a long time ago, but no…” She’d been so young all she remembered about him was her mother’s assertion that he wasn’t interested in being a father. “I was talking about my mother.”

“She’s the reason you went into foster care when you were only eight,” he said, a statement not a question.

If he’d asked what crime her mother had committed to land her in prison, Kelly might have skirted the question. Because he’d focused on the lost little girl she’d been, she found herself wanting to tell him everything.

“She stabbed another woman to death. They were at a party and they’d been drinking pretty heavily. She claimed self-defense, but witnesses said they’d been arguing. Over a man, I think, although that was never clear.” She took a breath, determined to finish the story. “She got thirty years to life. It might have been less but she had a rap sheet. Shoplifting, DUI, drunk and disorderly. That kind of thing.”

Motors hummed and teenagers shouted, but she barely noticed the background noise. Her focal point was his face. She waited, barely breathing, for him to regard her differently, the way most people did when they found out about her mother.

He took hold of her hand, a simple gesture but one that spoke volumes. He squeezed gently, offering her his support. “Do you keep in contact with her?”

“I visit her once a year on her birthday, but that’s it,” she said, finding it easier to tell the rest of it. “I was never a priority in her life so I can’t let her become one
in mine. Being related by blood isn’t enough. Some people just aren’t cut out to be parents.”

“Like Jasper Johnson?” he asked.

“Yes,” she agreed. “And Mandy. I’ve spent only a few days around you and Toby but I can already tell the best place for him is with you.”

She couldn’t gauge what impact her reasoning was having on him, but needed to make him understand. She took a step closer to him, wanting to make sure he heard her above the hum of the nearby go-karts. “That’s why you can’t go to DPW. Even if there’s only a chance they’ll take Toby away from you, you can’t risk it. You have to keep him with you.”

“I know,” he said.

His statement represented such a huge departure from his previous position that she needed to make sure she’d heard him correctly. “You know? When did this happen?”

“Just now. When we met Jasper Johnson.”

“So let me get this straight. You no longer feel like it’s your duty to report to DPW that Mandy abandoned her child?” she asked.

“That’s right,” he said, quite an admission from a man who usually viewed the world through lenses that filtered every color except white and black. “My duty to Toby is more important.”

“Is that why you didn’t tell Johnson he had a grandson?”

“That’s why,” Chase said, steel in his voice. “This doesn’t mean I’m going to stop looking for Mandy. I’m not. If I don’t find her in another week or so, I’ll hire a P.I. I have time.”

He was right. Now that he’d let go of his stubborn insistence to do things by the book, Toby could stay exactly where he was. Chase did have time.

But for Kelly, time had run out.

“Now I have a very important question to ask you,” Chase said, his countenance grave.

She peered at him, hoping it wouldn’t be a question she couldn’t answer truthfully.

His expression suddenly cleared, his eyebrows dancing. “Wanna race me? I’m hell in a go-kart.”

The conclusion he’d come to regarding Toby had lightened his mood, but Kelly’s heart was heavy because she’d made a decision of her own. She smiled at him anyway, determined to enjoy what was left of the evening.

“You’re on,” she said.

A short time later as they raced their go-karts around the course and through the winding turns, they took their eyes off the track at regular intervals to grin at each other. The wind whipped through Kelly’s hair, along with the certainty that she’d come to the right conclusion.

She’d yet to decide whether to return to Wenona for her preliminary hearing, but every day that passed brought her closer to being a fugitive.

With that prospect looming over her, she couldn’t in good conscience continue to keep company with the law-enforcement officer who had found his way into her heart.

Chase might have altered his stance on reporting Mandy’s abandonment to DPW, but the essence of who he was hadn’t changed.

That’s why she needed to leave Indigo Springs.

Tomorrow.