Wanted Woman Page 17

  “Bellingham, Washington. Good night, Jesse.” She hung up.

  “Is everything all right up there?” Mitch asked, sounding concerned.

  “Fine. Thanks.” He hung up.

  “What?” Maggie said on a breath as he put the cell phone on the table by the door.

  “Henry Abernathy was a cop in Bellingham, Washington.”

  “That’s not far from Seattle,” she said. “It says here they were working on a mutual case. That means they could have known each other.”

  He nodded, frowning. “But Lydia’s husband died before you were born. Even if he knew Blackmore, it doesn’t make any sense where you come into this.”

  “Unless Aunt Lydia also knows Blackmore.” She was shaking her head, not wanting to believe it. That little old white-haired lady? She couldn’t see her with a man like Blackmore.

  “Did anyone mention how she ended up in a wheelchair?” he asked Maggie. When she shook her head, he told her how Wade had been driving the car. The night of the accident that killed Lydia’s husband and put her in a wheelchair.

  Maggie closed her eyes. “You think she would try to get back at him by stealing one of his children?”

  “It sounds crazy to me but some people…”

  She opened her eyes and looked at him. “If her husband knew Blackmore, it’s the only link we have so far. She must know him. It’s too much of a coincidence.”

  He nodded in agreement, obviously not wanting to believe it any more than she did. “I think we’d better pay Aunt Lydia a visit come morning.”

  Maggie rose from the table and went to him, putting her arms around him, just wanting to curl up next to him in the big bed for the rest of the night.

  He stroked his hand over her hair and looked into her eyes, clearly thinking something along those lines.

  That’s when they heard the first gunshot.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jesse rushed up the stairs with Maggie at his heels. He dressed quickly and grabbed his gun.

  “Stay here.” And he was gone out the door. She heard him lock it behind him.

  Maggie dressed in jeans, a sweater and boots. She retrieved the small handgun Jesse had given her.

  Where was Jesse?

  She went to the screened-in deck and stood in the darkness looking down into the jungle of trees and ferns and vines. She couldn’t see him. Beyond the screens, a breeze whispered in the pine boughs. Dawn softened the darkness to the east over the treetops. But it was still pitch black in the woods surrounding the cabin.

  The moment she heard the two quick soft pops, she recognized them from the night at the pier. Someone shooting with a silencer. Jesse’s gun didn’t have one so he hadn’t fired.

  She turned and ran down the stairs, slowing down only long enough to open the front door and ease herself out onto the steps. She waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, then with the weapon in both hands, headed toward the place where she’d heard the shots.

  She hadn’t gone far when she saw the body. Jesse? Oh, God, not Jesse.

  Breath left her as she started to rush forward.

  “Maggie.” She swung around, ready to fire. She pulled up short when she saw that it was Jesse.

  She fell into his arms, surprising herself by crying. “Oh, thank God, I thought…”

  “It’s okay, baby,” he whispered against her hair as he held her to him.

  “Who is it?” she asked, glancing at the body on the ground.

  “Bruno. His real name is Jerome Lovelace.” Charity had investigated him for some story she was doing.

  “The guy who was Daisy’s bodyguard at the party,” she said. “Is he…?”

  Jesse nodded. “Dead, yes. Shot twice, both bull’s-eyes.”

  She glanced up at him. “Blackmore.”

  “Whoever shot Bruno, shot to kill.”

  She looked into the trees. Still hours before dawn. “What about that earlier shot?”

  “Looks like it came from Bruno’s gun.”

  She glanced at the weapon lying on the ground next to Bruno.

  “It’s been fired once.”

  She heard a noise and turned, bringing her weapon up.

  “Easy,” Jesse said. “It’s just the state cops. They were protecting the perimeter hoping to catch whoever fell into the net.”

  The state officer looked chagrined since the killer had slipped the net. “All our officers are fine. We had one down. Hit from behind. Possible concussion. One of the men caught a glimpse of the shooter as he escaped off the mountain. Big man. Older. Possibly wounded. Limping. He got away.”

  Blackmore.

  Back at the cabin, Jesse checked to make sure they were alone while the state boys took care of Bruno.

  “Why would Blackmore kill Daisy’s bodyguard?” Maggie asked.

  Jesse shook his head. Nothing made any sense. He picked up the cell phone and called Mitch.

  “This better not be trivia again,” his little brother warned him. “It isn’t even light out yet.”

  Jesse heard a soft click on the line as Charity picked up the extension. “Bruno, aka Jerome Lovelace, is dead. Two slugs. Killer used a silencer. Bruno might have wounded the shooter, but he got away.”

  Mitch swore.

  “Either Bruno came up there to kill Maggie and someone whacked him before he could,” Mitch said. “Or—”

  “Or he was here to kill someone else and got himself whacked,” Jesse said.

  “Did I mention where Bruno was originally from?” Charity asked making it known she was on the line. “His last known address was a post office box in Seattle, but I found an old car registration in his glove box—”

  Jesse heard Mitch swearing in the background.

  “And he used to live in Plentygrove not far from where Daisy was originally from,” Charity finished.

  “Thanks, Charity. Talk to you later, bro.” Jesse hung up and looked at Maggie. Plentygrove? “We need to take a little trip.”

  “Are we going to talk to Lydia?” she asked.

  “There’s something else I need to do first.” He’d only put it off because he became involved with Maggie. “We’re going to pay my mother a visit.”

  Maggie frowned. “But I thought your mother was dead?”

  “She left my dad when Mitch was six and I was nine. She’s been dead to me ever since.”

  Maggie raised a brow. “And you suddenly have an urge to go see her?”

  “She was at the Dennison house on the day of the kidnapping,” he said. “And it seems my mother lives in the same town that Bruno hailed from. Maybe it’s a coincidence but I have to wonder what brought him to Timber Falls. Certainly not the weather.”

  ALL THE WAY off the mountain, Rupert Blackmore could think of only one thing. Murdering the person who’d set him up. The person who had his wife. The person who’d been responsible for Angela Dennison’s kidnapping. The person who’d blackmailed him.

  He’d listened to enough gossip at the café to know who the obvious players were. But he’d found in his career that sometimes a man had to look behind the obvious.

  He drove back into town, went to his motel room and took a shower, bandaging the flesh wound to his leg. He knew better than to run where Bruno had shot him. The state cops would have the roads out of here blocked. And he wasn’t ready to leave anyway.

  He called one of his snitches.

  “Do you have any idea what time it is, man?”

  “Just listen.” He opened the wallet he’d taken off the man who’d been sent to kill him. An amateur. “Find out everything you can for me about a man named Jerome Lovelace and I need it yesterday.” He gave him his cell phone number, hung up and began to go through Jerome’s wallet.

  RUTH ANNE TANNER had remarried a guy named Art Fellers and lived in an older part of Plentygrove. That had been all the information his father’s lawyer had been able to get on her but it was enough to provide Jesse with an address.

  It turned out to be a one-story ranch bui
lt in the 1950s, but well kept up. It was late morning when he and Maggie walked up the sidewalk to the front door. The lawn had been cut recently and someone had planted geraniums in matching pots on each side of the door.

  He rang the bell and waited. Inside the house he could hear music. He was trying to place the song rather than think about his mother when the door opened.

  Jesse had thought she’d look older, be gray, maybe even fat. He definitely didn’t expect her to be pretty anymore. But the woman who answered the door had a cap of dark hair that was only flecked with gray and she was slim, athletic-looking. She wore a cap-sleeved T-shirt that matched her Capri pants and white sandals. Her face was unlined, the only wrinkles were around her eyes as she squinted into the sun peeking through the clouds to see them.

  “Yes?”

  This woman didn’t look almost sixty. She was pretty and he realized, she looked happy.

  Bitterness tore at his insides. “Hello, Mother.”

  Her eyes widened and she gripped the door, leaning into it as if she needed the support. She blinked either because of the glare or because she was trying to place him and didn’t know which son he was.

  “Jesse, but I can understand how you might have forgotten.”

  Her gaze shifted to Maggie and she seemed to regain her earlier composure. “Please, come in.” She moved back and as much as he didn’t want to, he stepped into her house after Maggie.

  The house was clean and cool inside, the furnishings nice but not expensive.

  “Jesse.” Her eyes welled and she looked away as she wiped the tears at her cheeks. “Would you like something to drink?”

  “Nothing—”

  “I’d take something cold if you have it,” Maggie said and followed Ruth Anne into the kitchen. “I’m…Maggie.”

  Jesse followed, just wanting to get this over with.

  The kitchen was clean and cute. There was a photo on the fridge of a bald man with his arm around Ruth Anne at some party.

  Obviously she’d left Timber Falls and made a new life for herself. He’d always imagined her alone, bitter, hateful, spending his father’s money on booze or drugs.

  Maggie touched his arm and he took the glass of iced tea she offered him.

  “Please, sit down,” his mother said motioning to the breakfast nook.

  “This isn’t a social call,” Jesse said more sharply than he’d meant to. He took a sip of the drink, his throat dry, his nerves raw.

  “Do you mind if I take a look at your garden?” Maggie asked and didn’t wait for an answer as she opened the patio door and stepped out, closing the door behind her.

  Jesse waited for his mother to say something. Like she was sorry. Right. Could he ever forgive her? No. How was Mitch? What did she care. He thought she’d at least ask about his life.

  She didn’t. She sat down at the table, folded her hands in front of her and seemed to be waiting.

  He wanted to yell at her. To tell her how badly she’d hurt him, his brother, his father. To ask why. To make her feel guilty.

  But instead he heard himself ask, “Did you have anything to do with Angela Dennison’s kidnapping?”

  She leaned back in her chair, her eyes clouding over as if the name forced her to return to a place she’d left far behind, something seeing him obviously hadn’t done. “She was never found?” She sounded surprised by that.

  He realized he had her eyes and felt an ache in his chest.

  Tears welled again in her eyes and her lower lip trembled. “I can’t explain the woman I was when I—” She made a swipe at her tears, as one coursed down her cheek, and shook her head. “I didn’t take the baby. I never even saw her. As I was leaving I passed the nanny. She had come down the stairs. She had a cold,” his mother said as if just remembering that detail.

  All that had been in the sheriff’s report. “Did you see anyone else in the house other than Daisy and the nanny?”

  She shook her head. “Wade came home. I passed him on the road. His sister was with him in the car.”

  “Lydia?” he asked in surprise. That hadn’t been in the file.

  “Why are you asking these questions now after all these years?”

  He looked past her to Maggie standing by a row of huge sunflowers. “That woman out there is Angela Dennison. Whoever kidnapped her is determined to kill her.”

  Ruth Anne winced and looked through the patio doors at Maggie. “She is beautiful. She looks like Daisy.” She slowly shifted her gaze to Jesse. “And her father?”

  “Wade,” he said.

  She nodded. “Good. I’m sure you’re relieved since you’re obviously in love with her.”

  Jesse got to his feet, angry that she could know anything about him. “Do you know a man named Jerome Lovelace? He goes by Bruno.”

  She shook her head, seeming distracted. “Your father… I always hoped he and Daisy would get together,” she said as she stood.

  He stared at her. Was she serious?

  Maggie came back in and he ushered her toward the front door.

  His mother didn’t try to keep him any longer. Didn’t ask about his life or Mitch’s or their father’s.

  “Goodbye, Jesse,” Ruth Anne said at the door. She smiled and nodded as if pleased by him.

  He didn’t say goodbye, just stepped out the door, but he couldn’t help himself. He turned to look back at the last moment before the door closed. That’s when he saw it behind his mother. One of his paintings on the wall in her living room.

  The door closed and she was gone again.

  “Are you all right?” Maggie asked and took his hand.

  He nodded, surprised that he was. “She seems happy. She was so miserable with us.”

  “People change. She wasn’t even yet your age when she left, right?”

  He nodded surprised that he could no longer feel hate for the woman he’d just seen. “She made a lasting impression on Mitch and me. I didn’t think Mitch would ever ask Charity to marry him he was so scared of marriage. I’m thirty-five and I’ve never been serious about anyone before.”

  She looked away. “I used to wonder what normal families were like.”

  He laughed. “Me, too. Think there are any?”

  “She had your painting on the wall,” Maggie said and looked over at him. “She hasn’t forgotten you or your brother. She just couldn’t handle things at that time of her own life.”

  He nodded. “I guess I wanted her to say she was sorry.”

  “Would the words really have made that much difference?”

  He shook his head. “She did tell me something about the afternoon of the kidnapping. She said she passed Wade coming home when she left. Lydia was with him.”

  “Her name keeps coming up,” Maggie said.

  “It’s just strange that it never came up in the sheriff’s report that Lydia had been out there that night,” Jesse noted. “How did she get home? Did Wade drive her or did Angus pick her up?”

  “You think Lydia might know something?”

  “It’s worth asking her.” Jesse realized Lydia could provide an alibi for his mother. If Ruth was telling the truth, then Lydia had seen her leave before the baby disappeared.

  And what if Lydia had looked in on Angela that evening? She might have been the last person to see Angela before she was kidnapped.

  “Let’s not forget the possible connection between her now deceased husband and Blackmore,” Maggie said.

  Jesse shook his head. He hadn’t forgotten. So far, it was the only tie-in they had between Blackmore and Timber Falls.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Rupert Blackmore found only one thing of interest in Jerome “Bruno” Lovelace’s wallet.

  A business card. It was worn and soiled as if it had been pulled out a lot and there was writing on the back, hard to read notes.

  He looked at the front of the card. The Busy Bee, Antiques and Collectibles. Proprietor Lydia Dennison Abernathy.

  His cell rang. Teresa. But it wasn’t Teresa
, just as he knew it wouldn’t be. His source had come up with information on Jerome Lovelace, a small-time offender from Seattle via Plentygrove.

  There was only one offense that Rupert found interesting. The fencing of stolen property. The property in question had been antiques.

  He’d learned a long time ago that cases had threads, threads that directed you where to go.

  He studied the card, following the thread, following his gut instincts.

  Abernathy? He rooted around in the drawer of the motel’s bedside table for the phonebook. It was so small and thin he missed it at first.

  Abernathy. Why did that name sound so familiar?

  IT WAS DARK by the time they returned to Timber Falls. Jesse called Mitch as soon as he was close enough to town to get a signal on the cell phone.

  He told Mitch what Maggie had discovered about Henry Abernathy and a possible connection to Blackmore.

  He didn’t mention that he’d seen their mother. “I also stumbled across a note that revealed Wade brought his sister home the night Angela was kidnapped. Maggie and I are headed there. We’re almost to Timber Falls.”

  “Lydia was at the house that night?” Mitch said. “Why didn’t she say anything years ago?”

  Good question.

  “Jesse, be careful.”

  Jesse had just clicked off the phone when he heard a loud pop an instant before the front tire blew.

  “Get down!” he yelled at Maggie as he wrestled the steering wheel, fighting to keep the pickup on the road.

  He shoved Maggie down as the windshield shattered with the impact of a second shot. The other front tire blew an instant later.

  The pickup careened down into the ditch, still moving too fast. Jesse saw the tree coming up and tried to brace himself in that instant before the pickup crashed into it and the lights went out.

  “JESSE!” Maggie cried, sitting up.

  He was slumped over the steering wheel. She could see blood on his forehead.

  “Jesse!” Still stunned from the impact, Maggie touched his shoulder, shook him gently. He didn’t respond. She fought to get her seat belt unhooked. Jesse needed her. Her mind raced. She had to get him help. Get help. Someone had shot at them. Someone—