Buried Sins (7 page)

“If he’s dead, who would want his widow to think he was still alive? And why?”

“Good question. And a good reason for you to keep an eye on the Hampton woman. Thing is, she had access to the kind of people Gibson liked to con, through that gallery job of hers. There’s no reason to believe she was involved, but there it is. She could have been.”

A few more exchanges, and he was off the phone, but he sat staring at it. Rojas had talked because he wanted to keep a line on Caroline Hampton, however tenuous.

If Tony Gibson had been involved in the kind of scam Rojas suspected, he had been a dangerous man to know. Caroline might be an innocent victim.

Or she might be involved.

He knew more now than he had fifteen minutes ago, but he couldn’t say that it made him any happier.

Caroline had never intended to go to church that Sunday. However, she hadn’t been prepared to combat Grams’s calm assumption that of course she’d go to the worship service at the small church across the road from the inn.

If she’d thought about it, she might have come up with some reason, or rather some excuse, that wouldn’t hurt Grams’s feelings. As it was, she’d nodded, smiled and tried to close her eyes and ears to the service.

She had a deal with God. He left her alone, and she left Him alone. She didn’t want to change that, but she also didn’t want to try to explain it to Grams.

The churchyard gate creaked shut as they exited, and she took a breath of relief. It was over, with no harm done. Next Sunday she’d be ready with an excuse.

Grams linked arms with her as they started across the street, Rachel behind them, chatting with Andrea and Cal. “What did you think of the service, Caro?”

Caroline glanced back at the stone church that had stood within its encircling stone wall for the past two hundred and fifty years. The green lawn was splashed with color from spring dresses—in Churchville, people obviously still believed that worship called for their best. In their own way, they were as traditional as the Amish, meeting in someone’s house or barn today.

Realizing Grams was looking at her for an answer, she managed a smile. “Nice.” That didn’t seem to quite cover it. “I noticed Zach Burkhalter with his little girl.” She was sorry the moment the words were out. She didn’t want to sound as if she were asking about him.

“Not just Zach,” Rachel commented as they reached the sidewalk in front of the inn. “I think the Burkhalters have expanded to two pews, haven’t they? That was his mother, sitting on the far side of Ruthie.”

“I met her at the craft show. And Karen was very helpful.” Did that sound stilted? Probably. She hadn’t been able to forget the way Zach had snatched his little girl away from her, as if her troubles were contagious.

“They’re all helping him raise that child,” Grams said. “It’s a lovely thing to see.”

“He’s not married?”

Grams shook her head. “Oh, no. Ruthie is the daughter of some friends he made when he was stationed in the Middle East with the military. The parents were killed very tragically, and Zach adopted her.”

She blinked. “I didn’t realize.” She’d been making assumptions that were amazingly far from the truth.

“She’s a dear little thing.” Grams smiled. “And so appropriately named. Ruth, finding a home in an alien place.”

She nodded, the story from long-ago Sunday school days coming back to her. Apparently this little Ruth had found the place where she belonged, thanks to Zach.

She’d figured him for a straight arrow, but he obviously wasn’t the cold fish she’d assumed. She’d seen that when she’d seen him with his little girl.

“I have a casserole in the oven.” Rachel headed back toward the kitchen the moment they got inside. “We’ll be ready for brunch in a few minutes.”

“I’ll help you.” Caroline followed her to the kitchen, catching the look of surprise that was quickly hidden by Rachel’s smile.

Fair enough. She hadn’t been much help to anyone since she’d come back, obsessed as she was with her own problems. It was time she changed that.

“What can I do?” She washed her hands quickly and turned back to Rachel, who was pulling a casserole from the oven, her cheeks rosy.

“There’s a fruit salad in the fridge that goes on the table. I’ll just stick the rolls in to heat up for a minute.”

She nodded, lifting the glass bowl from the fridge and removing the plastic wrap that covered the assortment of melon, blueberries, pears and bananas. “Lovely.”

Rachel shrugged. “Everything’s left over from the guest breakfast. Makes Sunday easier—otherwise I’d never make it to church.”

That would suit her. Maybe she could offer to stay behind and make dinner next week, but somehow she didn’t think Grams would agree to that.

“Your schedule is pretty tight. I didn’t realize what went into running a B & B.”

“It’s worth it.” Rachel’s expression softened. “I feel as if I came home when I came back here. Mom certainly never gave us anything that was remotely like a home.”

She carried the fruit in and set it on the table. Rachel, following her, took silverware from the massive corner cupboard.

“You and Andrea had more memories from this place than I did. I was too young to have built up much.” Was that jealousy she felt? Surely not.

“Doesn’t mean you can’t start now.” Rachel set the table swiftly. “I saw Keith Morris talking with you after service. What do you think of our mayor?”

“Not bad, but his mother tried to freeze me dead with a look. Guess she doesn’t fancy me for her baby boy.”

Rachel grinned. “She’s more likely to snub you for insulting her knowledge of local history.”

“On the contrary, I asked very humbly for her advice. About the 1850s quilt we found, remember?”

“You mean she didn’t take the opportunity to lecture you on the history of the township?”

“Just said it was ‘of no historic interest’ and walked off.”

“She probably hates that someone else owned it. You ought to talk to Emma’s mother-in-law about it. She knows everything there is to know about quilts.”

“Who knows everything about quilts?” Grams came into the room, followed by Andrea and Cal.

“Levi Zook’s mother. Caro wants to find out more about the flying geese quilt that grandfather’s grandmother made.”

Grams nodded. “I think there might be something about it in some family letters your grandfather collected. I’ll see what I can find.”

“Thanks, Grams. I’d like that. I’m not sure why it fascinates me so. I actually had a dream the other night about the geese.” She’d been flying with them, soaring away from everything that held her back.

“You must have the quilt, since it seems to have touched you,” Grams said gently.

Tears stung her eyes, sudden and unexpected. “You shouldn’t—I mean, it might be valuable, whatever Mrs. Morris thinks.”

“It’s yours.” Grams pressed her hands. “We’ll say no more about it.”

She looked from face to face, seeing…what? Love? Acceptance?

Panic swept through her for a moment. She’d told herself that what they thought of her didn’t matter—told herself that she was better off relying on no one but herself.

It wasn’t true. The longer she was here, the more she became enmeshed in something she’d given up a long time ago.

And the more she risked, when they would eventually let her down.

S
o that was what Caroline was hiding in her past. Zach had known instinctively there was something.

He leaned back in his desk chair, hearing its familiar squeak, and stared at the computer screen in front of him. It hadn’t even been that hard to find—the record of the arrest of the then-sixteen-year-old Caroline Hampton, charged in the robbery of a convenience store in Chicago.

Sixteen. The criminal record of a sixteen-year-old shouldn’t be so readily available, but sometimes the legal system didn’t work the way it should.

He frowned, leaning forward to read through the report again, filling in the blanks from experience. Two older boys had actually done the crime, roughing up the elderly store owner in the process. Caroline had apparently been the driver, waiting outside.

His frown deepened. She was only sixteen, and she hadn’t been inside the store when the crime was committed. A good attorney should have been able to get her off with probation, with her record wiped clean at the end of it. That hadn’t happened. Why?

There were only two possibilities that he could see. Either she was far more involved than the bare facts would indicate, or she hadn’t had decent representation. Hard to believe that the Unger family wouldn’t have hired a lawyer for their granddaughter, but it was always possible they hadn’t known. It was the mother who had custody, not Fredrick and Katherine Unger.

He flipped through the text, looking for the resolution of the case. And found it. Caroline Hampton had been confined in a teen correctional facility until her eighteenth birthday.

Pity stirred in him. That was pretty harsh, given her age and the fact that she didn’t seem to have been in trouble before. Still, everyone’s life wasn’t an open book on the Internet. There might have been—must have been—other factors involved.

He drummed his fingers on the scarred edge of the desk. No one had mentioned this serious blip in Caroline’s past, at least not to him. Well, they wouldn’t, would they?

Still, he’d give a lot to know what the family knew about it. And what they thought about it. Was that a piece of whatever had kept the sisters apart for so long?

More to the point, could it be related to what was happening now? On the surface that seemed unlikely, but he’d learned not to discount anything.

There was a tap on his office door, followed by the creak as it opened. The face of young Eric Snyder appeared. He looked worried, but that meant nothing. Snyder always looked worried, as if he were completely convinced that whatever he decided to do, it was wrong.

As it usually was. He’d never seen anyone with less natural aptitude for police work, but the boy’s uncle was a county commissioner, which meant the police force was stuck with him for the moment.

“What is it, Snyder?”

“Ms. Hampton is here to see you, Chief.”

Rachel? Or Caroline? Well, he didn’t want either of them to see the report in from of him. He saved the file and clicked off.

“Ask her to come in.”

A moment later Caroline sidled through the door, looking around as if expecting trouble. “I wanted to see you,” she said abruptly.

He stood, noting the by-now-familiar flinch away from him. Well, now he knew why. That aversion of hers to anyone in a uniform could be a sign of guilt. Or it could be the reaction of injured innocence.

“I promised I’d let you know if anything else happened.”

“I’m glad you remembered.” He reached out to pull his lightweight jacket from the coatrack. “No reason why we have to stay inside on such a nice day. Let’s take a walk and talk about it.”

Her sigh of relief was audible. “Good.” She turned, moving back through the door so quickly that it was almost flight.

He followed, glancing at Snyder. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Take any calls that come in.”

The boy gulped, nodding. He didn’t like being left in charge of the office. Again, not a desirable quality in a cop.

Caroline was already out on the sidewalk, waiting in the sunshine, hugging her dark denim jacket around her. Under it she wore a blouse that seemed to be made of handkerchiefs sewn together, and her silver and turquoise earrings tangled in her hair.

He joined her, falling into step as she strode away from police headquarters. “Even warmer than yesterday was. Nice Sunday, wasn’t it? Did you enjoy the sermon?”

He’d intended the casual comment to relax her, but it seemed to have the opposite effect. She jammed her hands into the pockets of the denim jacket, her shoulders hunching. “Yes. It made my grandmother happy to have all of us in church with her.”

“That sounds as if you wouldn’t go on your own.”

She shot him a look that bordered on dislike. “That doesn’t have anything to do with why I came to see you.”

He shrugged. “Just making conversation.” But he really did wonder where she was spiritually. It seemed as if Caroline could use a solid underpinning of faith right now. “Sorry. Something else has happened?”

They’d walked past the bakery before she nodded. Reluctant. Caroline was always reluctant when it came to him. He understood that a little better than he had before he’d unearthed the story of her past.

“I got something in the mail.” Her hands were shoved tightly into her pockets. “I can’t explain it.”

He came to a halt at the bench in front of Dora’s Yarn Shop, planting his hands on its back and looking at her. The pot of pansies next to the bench gave a bright spot of color to the street. “You plan to let me see it?”

She didn’t want to—that much was evident in the apprehension that darkened those green eyes. So why had she come? She was perfectly capable of ignoring that promise he’d screwed out of her.

Maybe she’d run out of excuses. Probably he was the least of a number of bad choices.

She yanked an envelope from her pocket and shoved it toward him. “This came in today’s mail. I didn’t know what to do about it.”

He took it, handling it by the edges automatically. A business-size envelope, Caroline’s name and address printed in computer-generated letters. No return address. The postmark read Philadelphia.

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other impatiently. “Open it.”

She obviously already had, no doubt further obscuring any fingerprints that might have survived the handling of the postal service, unlikely as that was. He teased out the enclosure—a folded fragment of copy paper with something hard inside it.

He flipped it open. The briefest of notes in block printing. A small key held fast to the paper with a strip of cellophane tape.

“It’s a safe-deposit key,” she said impatiently. “I’m sure of it.”

He studied the key more closely. “I think you’re right. It may be possible to find out what bank it’s from, especially if it’s in Philadelphia.”

“It will be.” She stared at the note as if it were a snake. “Tony had family there. Anyway, he said he did. I never met them. Never even talked to them. Tony was going to tell them about our marriage when we came east. That’s what he said, anyway.”

He nodded slowly, frowning at the words on the page. “Is this your husband’s handwriting?”

She took a breath, the sound ragged, as if she had to yank the air in. “I think so.”

Black letters. Three short words. She couldn’t be positive from that small a sample, but she probably had a fairly good idea who wrote those words.

“For my wife.”

What had possessed her to tell Zach, of all people? He stood there on the sidewalk looking at her, gray eyes intent and watchful, as if weighing every word and gesture. Judging her.

Still, what choice did she have? Who else would she tell?

A brisk breeze ruffled the faces of the pansies, making them shiver, and she shivered with them. The truth was that she couldn’t keep this to herself any longer. She didn’t know what to do or how to find out what it meant.

She certainly couldn’t take this to Grams. And while Andrea’s cool common sense might have been welcome, she’d have to tell her everything for the story to make any sense.

At least Zach already knew. She might not be happy about that, but it was a fact.

He nodded, murmuring a greeting to someone passing by. The woman sent a bright, curious gaze Caro’s way, and she turned, pulling the collar of her jacket up, as if that might shield her from prying eyes.

Zach folded the envelope and pushed it into his jacket pocket. He took her arm.

“Let’s go to the café and have some coffee. You look as if you could stand to warm up. And it won’t be crowded this time in the afternoon.”

He steered her down the street, turning in to the Distelfink Café. The door closed behind them, and they were enveloped in the mingled aromas of coffee, chicken soup and something baking that smelled like cinnamon.

“See? Empty.” Zach led her past several round tables to a booth against the far wall. The tables were covered with brightly painted stencils of the Distelfink, the stylized, mythical bird that appeared on so much Pennsylvania Dutch folk art.

She slid into the booth. The wooden tabletop bore place mats in the same pattern, and the salt and pepper shakers were in the shape of the fanciful birds.

Zach folded himself into the booth and nodded toward the elderly woman who’d emerged from the kitchen. She was as plump and round and rosy as one of the stenciled figures herself. “Two coffees, Annie.”

“Sure thing, Zach. How about some peach cobbler to go with it?”

“Sounds good.”

She disappeared, and Caroline shook her head. “I don’t want any cobbler. I just want to talk about this—”

“If we take Annie up on the peach cobbler, she won’t be popping out of the kitchen every two seconds to offer us something else.” He turned a laminated menu toward her. “Unless there’s something else you want.”

She shook her head. The menu, like everything else, was decorated with stenciled figures—birds, stars, Amish buggies. She flipped it over.

“I see they still offer a free ice cream to any child who memorizes the Distelfink poem.”

He smiled, his big hands clasped loosely on the table in front of him. “Sure thing. It’s a rite of passage in Churchville. You must have done it.”

“Oh, yes.” Memory teased her. “As I recall, I insisted on standing up on my chair and declaiming it to the entire café. I’m sure I embarrassed my family no end.”

“I imagine they thought it was cute. Ruthie’s been working on it every time we come in. She’ll probably get the whole thing mastered by the next time we’re here.”

His doting smile told her that he wouldn’t be embarrassed by anything his little daughter chose to do.

Annie bustled out of the kitchen with a tray, sliding thick white coffee mugs and huge bowls of peach cobbler, thick with cream and cinnamon, in front of them.

“Anything else I can get for you folks?”

“We’re fine, Annie. Thanks.” Something in his voice must have indicated this wasn’t the time for chitchat. The woman vanished back into the kitchen, leaving them alone.

Caro took a gulp of the coffee, welcoming the warmth that flooded through her. But it wouldn’t—couldn’t—touch the cold at her very center; the cold that she’d felt when she saw the letter.

Zach didn’t pull the envelope out again, and at some level she was grateful. “Have you showed it to your family?”

“No.” She thought of all the reasons why not. “I haven’t told them much about Tony. Showing them this would mean I’d have to tell them everything. They’d be upset, and I don’t want that.”

That wasn’t all the reason. She knew it. Maybe he did, too. He watched her, the steady gaze making her nervous.

“Your choice,” he said finally. “Question is, do you really think it’s genuine?”

She stared down into her mug, as if she could read an answer there. “It looks like Tony’s handwriting. I’m not an expert.”

“If someone had a sample, it wouldn’t be that hard to fake three words.”

“I guess not.” She pressed her fingertips against her temples, as if that might make her thoughts clearer. “What would be the point of faking it?”

He shrugged. “What would be the point of sending it, even if it’s genuine?”

“Exactly.” At least they agreed on that. “It’s not as if the sender is asking me to do anything. It’s just a key.”

“Seems like if someone sends you a key, they intend you to use it to open something,” he said mildly.

“I get that.” She found she was gritting her teeth together and forced herself to stop. “It’s postmarked Philadelphia. As I told you, Tony said he had family in Philadelphia.”

“That’s a link. Still, it’s odd, assuming this is from your husband—”

“I don’t think we—I can assume that. It could be a fake, or it could be something Tony wrote that someone else sent me.”

“Why?”

“I wish I knew.” She rubbed her temples again. “Just when I get a line of logic going, it falls apart on me. Why would anyone do any of the things that have happened?”

“Good question.” He was silent for a moment, but she felt his gaze on her face. “Should I assume you want to get to the bottom of this?”

“What I want is to be left alone, but it doesn’t look as if that’s going to happen.”
You could run,
the voice whispered at the back of her mind.
You could run away again.

But she couldn’t. At some point, for a reason she didn’t quite understand, she’d stopped running. She was here. She was staying. So—

“Yes,” she said, surprised by how firm her voice was. “I want to get to the bottom of this whole thing. But how?”

She looked up at him when she asked the question, finding his gaze fixed on her face. For a moment she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. He was too close.

Don’t be ridiculous,
she scolded herself.
He’s clear across the table.
But he seemed much nearer.

“I might be able to identify the bank where the safe-deposit box is.” He frowned a little. “And with some more information, I might also be able to trace any family he had. What did he tell you about them?”

“Not much.” Almost nothing, in fact. Now that seemed suspicious, but at the time, it hadn’t surprised her. After all, she didn’t see much of her family, so why would she expect something else from him?