Hooked (26 page)

If she hadn't been so distressed about the letter from Mrs. Wilberforce, Meg would have turned tail and ran. Foreboding came from the room. That and . . .
wait a minute.

Meg walked slowly to the desk. There, laying curled on a handkerchief, was her hair. Several strands of it. She knew it was hers, plain as day. Copper. Such a coppery hue that was unmistakable. Why did he have her hair? Gooseflesh rose on her arms. Any other circumstance and she would have thought the find was utterly romantic. Vernon Wilberforce had saved her hair. But now, she was fearful of his motives.

Inasmuch as she felt she had the right to be here, she felt like a lowly peeper. She didn't like it, not one
little bit. Seeing his private things didn't give her the satisfaction she thought it would. Instead, she felt ashamed that she was looking at them without his knowledge.

She might very well have left and confronted him elsewhere had she not seen the stack of notations—and a name, a name that was very familiar to her.

Lowering herself onto the bed, she picked up the notepad with its numerous pages written on and folded over. The top sheet, not yet wrinkled but with doodles on the headline, had several fragments and sentences. But the two words written on it jumped out at her as if they'd been penned in red. Both were underlined.

Wayne Brooks.

She skimmed the page.

Motives. Objectives. Probability for stocking the lake. Money spent. Waverly hatchery. Talk to fish farmer again. Monday. Read about speciality casts. How to control loop shape and speed to get different results.

Then once more below the notations:

Wayne Brooks.

She couldn't get her heartbeat to cease its fear-filled thumping. Why would Mr. Wilberforce have her brother's name written down? Those horrible and untrue words: stocking the lake.

Wayne had never been found guilty of cheating in the contest last year. Yet there had been many men who had believed otherwise because he'd won. And yes, it was suspect that he'd only caught brown trout in a lake that supported mostly rainbows. But Wayne wouldn't do anything deceptive. As much as she and Wayne had their spats, she knew his character was above low-down tactics.

Mr. Wilberforce was trying to dredge up trouble against her brother. This was almost a worse slap in the face than the letter from Battlefield. He was now trying to ruin her family's respectable name. Wayne might be a bit starchy, but he was the only brother she had.

With renewed offense, Meg flipped through the other tablet pages and found endless notations on how to fish and what different parts of the tackle did what—as if Mr. Wilberforce hadn't a clue. In between the third and fourth sheets of paper, a letter had been stored. She looked at the return address.

David West
. San Francisco.

Having no qualms now at all about rifling through Mr. Wilberforce's things, she easily slipped the letter from the envelope and read:

Matthew—

I've looked over the Preliminary notes of your article on the fishing tournament in Harmony and I think an angel on how it was rigged will go over well with our readers. Who says modern cities are the roots of all evil? Hanky panky goes on in even the smallest of towns.

Rigged!

The word shot from the page. So did the name “Matthew.” Matthew Who? Not Matthew Wilberforce . . . or was it Matthew Somebody and Wilberforce was a nobody?

Meg turned and looked at the other items on the
bed. There was a writing box with initials on it as well. Only these were not V.W. They were M.G.

M.G.

Matthew G.

Oh my goodness. What horrible thing had she stumbled onto? Or worse . . . what had happened to . . .

A key fit into the door. Meg's chin shot up. Alarm knifed through her. But she had no time to escape as the panel swung inward.

*  *  *

Gage stopped just shy of entering his room as soon as he saw Meg sitting on the bed with David's letter in her hands. Her complexion was as pale as alabaster paint and her fingers quivered as she dropped the piece of paper and stood.

She knows.

He expected as much. He'd just come from the post office. Calhoon told him that he'd given Meg his letters. Two of them. Gage didn't have to guess who they were from.

Closing the door behind him, he set his journal case on the floor beside the jamb.

“Meg.” He took a step toward her.

She ran to the fireplace and pressed her back up to the mantel. “Don't you come near me, you . . . you—whoever you are!”

Gage remained where he was, not wanting to agitate her further by going closer. He thought through how much she knew about him from the return addresses on those letters she'd just picked up. He didn't think she'd read them. But obviously she'd read David's letter addressed to Matthew Gage.

From the frightened look on her face, she was wondering
who Matthew was. Dammit, he should have told her last night.

“Why do you have my brother's name written in your tablet?” she lashed out.

Rubbing the roughness of his chin, then removing his hat and tossing it onto the bed, Gage folded his arms across his chest.

“I'm investigating him.”

“Investigating him! For what?”

“Illegal activities.”

Her neck grew flushed and she put a hand to her throat. “My brother hasn't done anything illegal.”

Gage calmly replied, “I'm trying to find hard facts to prove that.”

Meg's voice was quiet, but held an undertone of icy fear. “Who's Matthew?”

Gage moved to the bed, bent down, and picked up David's letter, then began to straighten the papers that littered the coverlet.

Sinking onto the edge of the bed, he rested his elbows on his knees. “I am.”

Her body stiffened, less from shock and more from indignance. “Why did you lie?” Then without warning and with pure terror in her eyes, she gazed at Wilberforce's traveling case. “What did you do with Mr. Wilberforce? Did you shoot him with your gun?”

“I left him in a Bozeman jail cell. Very much alive.”

“I don't understand.” Her whisper sounded petrified. “Who are you?”

He couldn't blame her for being scared. He'd put fear in bigger fish than her. Men in high places; women with shady pasts.

“My real name is Matthew Gage. I work as a stunt reporter for
The San Francisco Chronicle.”

13

“S
tunt reporter!” she exclaimed. Then added in a distasteful tone, as if she needed a harsher noun, “A flimflammer.”

Gage didn't care to think of himself as such.

“You write all that nasty trash about people and then people have to go around apologizing for it or admitting it was the truth. Either way, they're ruined.”

“I wouldn't put it like that.”

Meg buried her face in her hands. Her fingers trembled She gasped for breath, as if she were fighting back tears. Humiliation. That's what he'd given her, and it cut Gage to the quick. “You're not Mr. Wilberforce.” The words were muffled with acute pain and a wavering sense of loss.

Right at that moment, Gage wished he was Mr. Wilberforce.

“No, I'm not.”

“You l-lied to me.” Her voice broke. Then she shot her chin up. “Why did you put Mr. Wilberforce in jail?”

“I didn't put him there. He was able enough to get himself arrested.”

“On what charge? As if it matters,” she went on, tears pooling in her eyes. They were a mixture of grief and anger and Gage could do nothing to comfort her.

“Theft.”

“Why are you pretending to be him? No wonder you couldn't sell a carpet sweeper. You aren't a salesman. You've never pushed a Bissell in your life.”

“You're right.”

“Of course I'm right,” she all but shouted. “You may think me stupid, but right now I'm seeing things very clearly. You lied to me. You lied to everybody. And to think I told you . . . things.” She colored, fiercely and emotionally. Her body shuddered. Remorsefully. Her eyes lowered, then lifted. She rapidly blinked.

“I wanted to tell you last night, Meg. But you wouldn't let me.”

She aimed her finger at him. “You let me make a fool of myself. You let me tell you what I told you and you did nothing to stop me. You kissed me.”

“You kissed me back.”

“How dare you point that out.”

Meg's shoulders trembled. Gage wanted to reach out to her, but he knew she wouldn't have anything to do with his empathy. He had wronged her. He admitted that to himself; he should have admitted it to her. He'd wanted to right that wrong last night. She hadn't given him the chance. This wasn't how she was supposed to find out.

“Meg, I'm sorry.”

“Sorry doesn't begin to make up for what you've done. What you're doing.” She laid her palm across
her forehead and knocked a wisp of fiery bang from her eyes. “Why are you trying to ruin Wayne? How did you even know about my brother?”

Gage straightened, tucking his arms at his side. “Sit down and I'll tell you. Everything.”

Meg's hand fell on the back of the chair. She slid the feet away from the desk and lowered herself onto the cushion. “Go ahead. And don't spare me.”

Gage told her everything from the Ladies Cultured Artists Society to meeting up with Wilberforce by accident two weeks ago in Bozeman. He went on to tell Meg about Wilberforce being entered in the contest. How Gage hadn't been interested in Harmony until after Wilberforce mentioned somebody had won a thousand dollars in last year's fishing competition, somebody who was an unlikely winner. Gage told her how he and Wilberforce concocted a story that would keep Wilberforce's wife from finding out he'd been incarcerated, and Gage in disguise.

“Wayne caught those fish honestly,” Meg interrupted. “People saw him bring them in on his line, for heaven's sake. How could he fake that?”

“By paying Leroy Doolin to release brown trout into Evergreen Creek the night before the competition.”

“He wouldn't have.”

“He could have.” Gage rose and paced the room. “I've seen Doolin twice. Even described your brother to him.”

“How?” came her soft question.

Gage stopped and faced her. A heaviness settled in his stomach. “I saw his photograph at your house last night.”

Meg abruptly stood. “You came to my house to see
if you could find a picture of my brother?” she squeaked. “You're lower than I thought.”

“That wasn't why I came, Meg. I came because you asked me to. Remember? It wasn't my idea.”

She sputtered, “Well, you made me feel sorry for you. Silly me.”

“Meg, don't.”

Slowly she sat back down. She worried her lower lip. “Did Mr. Doolin ever do business with my brother?”

“Not that he will admit.”

“There.” Her eyes brightened. “You see. Wayne isn't guilty.”

“I want to believe he's innocent, Meg. More than you know. But something isn't right.” Gage omitted the fact that Hamilton Beauregarde had been out to see Doolin. Uncertain of Ham's motives, Gage didn't want to bring his name into this.

“You're not right,” Meg returned. “You've been . . . teasing me. Making me think you were somebody you're not. You . . .”

Hurt me. Used me . . .

The words were left unspoken in the room, hovering there between them.

“I never meant to get involved with you.”

“How could you not?” She dashed a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand. “Wayne's my brother. Let's see what his sister knows about him, shall we? Well, now you know the truth. He did nothing wrong. And you'll have to live with yourself you . . . you . . .” Gathering her momentum, she taunted, “You scallywag.”

Gage lifted a brow. “Scallywag?”

“I was desperate,” she said, shoulders slumping in
that Meg-like way that made him want to smile in spite of the tension charging the room. “The word was fresh in my mind. I just heard Mr. Calhoon use it. I wouldn't have picked such an archaic insult, but I was at a loss for a good punch.”