In His Wife's Name

“You think?” Mary laughed and playfully dabbed at a splotch of drool on her daughter’s chin. “I hope she has more teeth by the time she hits high school.”

Luke took a stab at shifting the conversation to the more personal. “Did you go to high school here in Blossom Valley? Place doesn’t look big enough to have a high school.”

“There’s a high school in one of the nearby towns.”

Luke kept his smile steady despite the way she’d sidestepped his question. Again. “I’ll bet you got all A’s in art class. Is that where you learned to paint—in high school? Or did you major in art at university?”

“Actually I taught myself to paint from books and magazines, then took a few craft classes. I was an administrative assistant before I decided to turn my hobby into a business. I have to say I much prefer being my own boss to being someone else’s gofer.”

“What kind of company did you work for?”

“The government,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand as if all government offices were the same. “It gave me a whole new perspective on office politics. Though I miss the regular paycheck. That’s one thing you might want to keep in mind if you’re going into business for yourself,” she said pointedly.

“There’s that,” he agreed. “I guess I’d miss my soon-to-be ex-brother-in-law and the rest of his crew. It must be isolating working for yourself.” Luke took a sip of water, deliberately waiting to see if Mary picked up the thread and carried the conversation. Perhaps mention the department where she’d worked or the names of co-workers she missed or still kept in touch with. Anything that might help him confirm her identity.

Usually if you waited long enough, people felt obligated to fill silences.

And Luke was vitally aware that this Mary might have the answers that would fill the yawning silence in his heart. His gaze settled on her expectantly.

She moistened her lips. “I’m too busy to feel isolated. Taking care of Samantha and keeping up with orders keeps me on my toes. Speaking of orders, what hours are you available tomorrow?” she asked, rocking the baby on her hip. Dropping her gaze, she pulled a pencil from a jar, her expression all business as she examined the day planner open on the table.

She’d changed the subject so effectively Luke realized he couldn’t push the topic any further today without raising her suspicions. But while he might have surrendered this minor skirmish, he wasn’t going to lose the war. As Mary penciled in a four-hour shift on the calendar for the next day, he promised himself that someday soon, whether she liked it or not, he’d be downright intimate with her personal history.

BILL OAKES WAS HOME when Luke rang the bell beneath the faded sign reading Shady Pines Resort, Management. He was an elderly man with humped shoulders, elfin ears and a cheek-splitting grin that declared life still agreed with him. Or else he was showing off thousands of dollars worth of dentures, Luke mused.

The resort caretaker’s shrewd brown eyes assessed Luke as he explained his desire to rent a cottage for two weeks and gave Mary Calder’s name as a reference. “She’s hired me to do some woodworking for her.”

Bill Oakes nodded. “Mary’s a nice girl. She re-painted my butterflies for me.” He gestured at five vibrantly painted wooden butterflies that looked as if they had just alighted on the blue siding of his residence. “My wife—God rest her soul—bought those for the cottage years ago. They were looking faded. I’m not good with paints and such, but Mary offered to do them for me. Didn’t charge me a cent.”

“She did a wonderful job,” Luke said. “Has she been your tenant long?”

“Oh, let’s see…A year ago last April. It was right after her husband died. She needed a change, what with the baby coming and all.”

Luke quickly computed the dates. Mary had been murdered in March of that year, on St. Patrick’s Day. “Yes, she mentioned he’d died and that she wasn’t from this area originally,” he murmured conversationally, grateful that Mary had suggested there might be a cottage available for rent at the resort. Renting here could provide him with additional opportunities to find out more about the woman with his wife’s name.

“She’s got a mother and an aunt in the East, I believe,” Bill Oakes said, withdrawing a ring of keys from his pocket. “Now I do have a couple of cottages available for weekly or monthly arrangements. One’s a lot nicer than the other. Come on, I’ll give you a tour. We’ve got our own private beach.”

Luke waited for Bill Oakes to lock the front door, then walked with the elderly gentleman along a series of paths that wound from one lot to the next. Glimpses of Kettle Lake were visible through the trees, diamonds of sunlight dancing across its blue waters. Regaling Luke with tales of his six siblings, their children and grandchildren, Bill Oakes extolled the virtues of Shady Pine’s sandy beach, then showed him the two available cottages.

Luke chose the smaller of the cottages, a drab decaying structure that boasted one bedroom the size of a janitor’s closet and indoor plumbing. The furnishings smelled musty and damp, but it was a two-minute walk to Mary’s cottage. And Bill didn’t have any objection to his moving in that evening.

On his way to the motel to grab his luggage, Luke mulled over the two kernels of information that Oakes had given him about Mary: she might originally be from the East, and she’d arrived in Blossom Valley a couple of weeks after his wife’s murder. It wasn’t much to work with, but combined with Mary’s vagueness about her history and her coincidental resemblance to his wife, it opened the door wide to the possibility that there might be some connection between this woman and his wife’s murder.

Luke’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel as the unease that had lingered in his belly all day like an undigested meal rose sharply in his throat. Despite the steady wave of cool air blasting from the air conditioner, Luke broke out in a cold sweat. He’d arrested people from all walks of life and knew that almost anyone given enough motivation was capable of committing the most heinous of crimes. But the thought that this Mary Calder had been involved in such a brutal act sickened him. Slamming on the brakes, he pulled off the road and bounced onto the grassy shoulder of a peach orchard. A bell pinged repeatedly, reminding him he’d left his keys in the ignition as he climbed out of his rental car. He needed fresh air.

He gulped in two ragged breaths, then doubled over and vomited onto the freshly mown grass.

THE PHONE RANG at ten-thirty in the evening just as Mary was washing her paintbrushes. She’d finished the fine-detail work on the plant pokes and gotten a head start on the signs, but she was too tired to do more tonight. She quickly dried her hands on a paper towel and reached for the phone. Who could be calling her at this hour? Her mother and Aunt Jayne were in Halifax—in a time zone three hours ahead. And they always called from pay phones so Shannon’s number couldn’t show up on a phone bill.

Could it possibly be Luke Mathews calling to say he’d be late tomorrow or had changed his mind about working for her because she’d been such an idiot today?

Why did that thought make her experience a sharp pang of disappointment?

Because ever since she’d walked out on her marriage to Rob, she hadn’t allowed herself to look twice at a handsome man, much less enjoy the simple pleasure of conversation. She’d been too focused on running and being safe. Even the eight months Rob had spent in prison after she’d pressed stalking charges against him, she’d been afraid to make new friends, afraid to share information about herself, worried that she might inadvertently give away her location or her new place of employment…and Rob would somehow find her again.

Even though she had Samantha, having Luke here today had made her painfully aware of how starved she was for friendship and adult company.

The phone rang again.

“Hello?” she said softly, breathlessly, into the receiver, her pulse spiking as an image of Luke, dusty and virile, unfolded in her mind.

Silence met her greeting. But the line hadn’t gone dead. She could hear sounds in the background: the unmistakable clinking of cutlery.

“Hello,” she repeated patiently, feeling the roots of fear sink deep into her chest and twine around her heart. “Who’s calling? What number are you trying to reach?”

The caller didn’t respond. But she could still hear the noises.

Shannon hung up slowly, telling herself it was probably a wrong number, someone who’d misdialed and been confused by the sound of an unfamiliar voice. It couldn’t possibly be Rob this time—even though it was the third wrong number she’d received this week. She shook her head firmly, ticking off on her fingers all the logical reasons it couldn’t possibly be Rob. She’d taken all kinds of precautions—to the point of cutting off all contact with friends. Aunt Jayne and her mother didn’t even have her new name or phone number written down out of fear the information might somehow end up in Rob’s hands. They’d kept news of Samantha’s birth private and didn’t even keep photos of Samantha and Shannon at home. Instead, Shannon mailed them to a post-office box belonging to an acquaintance of her mother’s—a bridge partner—who kept them in her home, no questions asked, so her mother could see them at her weekly bridge games. Shannon never included a return address, and the acquaintance had no idea of Shannon’s new identity. She and Samantha were safe here.

Still, tonight’s phone call disturbed Shannon.

Enough to keep her awake into the early hours of the morning.

Chapter Three

“Sorry I couldn’t get back to you yesterday on the license plate. I was working on another unsolved murder,” Detective Vaughn told Luke over the phone the next morning. His voice was brisk and merciless, like a wire brush scraping rusted metal. Luke heard the sounds of papers being leafed through in a file. “The truck is registered to Mary Tatiana Calder.”

Luke grunted a noncommittal response. Hearing his wife’s middle name spoken out loud by another human being rankled. It seemed a violation of the trust his wife had had in him. A secret only the two of them had shared. But there were no secrets from the police.

And this Mary Calder would have no secrets from him.

Luke brought the detective up to speed about the change in his accommodations and his interview with Bill Oakes. “He told me the suspect has been renting since a year ago last April—two weeks after Mary died. She told him her husband was dead, which is the same line she gave me.”

Vaughn was silent a moment. “You think there’s a custody issue involved?”

“Possibly. It makes the most sense to me. I didn’t see any pictures of a man when I was in the house. I checked the garage for boxes of personal belongings, but no dice.”

“So maybe the husband slit the tire?” Vaughn suggested. Luke could almost hear the gears churning in the detective’s head. “That puts an interesting spin on the situation. You got a name for the husband?”

“No, not even a first name. But then, she’s evasive whenever I ask personal questions. My gut feeling is she’s running from something.”

“Or someone. Think you can get her prints? We might be able to identify her. Stands to reason that if she was involved in Mary’s murder or is the type to buy stolen ID, she may have been in trouble with the law before. She might have a record.”

“I’ll get them,” Luke promised.

Vaughn instructed him to keep in touch and hung up.

Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, with the small cell phone tucked into his pocket, Luke took the dirt path by the lake in the direction of Mary’s cottage. She wasn’t expecting him for another half hour, but he figured he could get the lay of the land and keep a vigilant eye on her cottage at the same time. The person who’d slit her tire might be keeping close tabs on her. And Luke didn’t want anything to happen to Mary and her daughter. Mary was the key to the answers he needed.