The Stranger's Sin Read online

  Then, as she was waiting to cross a side street, she turned around.

  The heavy feeling in his chest lessened. He grinned and waved, thinking that he just might be able to buy some more time after all.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  KELLY’S PALMS SWEATED and her stomach clutched as she waited for the owner of Angelo’s to react to her story about the broken necklace. The more she told the tale, the more holes it seemed to have.

  Or maybe, after apparently convincing Chase she was telling the truth, she’d lost her taste for lying.

  Kelly shored up her nerve and looked Aaron Hirschell directly in the eyes, reminding herself she’d do whatever it took to find Mandy.

  Hirschell cast a backward glance at the kitchen, one of many since he’d reluctantly responded to her loud knocking. He’d already told her the restaurant wouldn’t be open for business for another thirty minutes.

  “Mandy doesn’t work here anymore so I don’t understand why you came to me.” Hirschell tapped his foot against the glazed porcelain-tile floor. He was a fair-skinned, light-haired man in his fifties, as far removed from Kelly’s image of an Italian restaurant owner as he could be.

  Kelly relaxed slightly, relieved he hadn’t asked any questions about the necklace. “I thought you might be able to tell me about her. Previous address. Names of references. Any information that would help me find her.”

  “Find her? What happened to her? Is she a missing person?”

  Kelly stifled a groan. She was loathe to make trouble for Chase by advertising that Mandy had abandoned her child.

  “Oh, no, nothing like that,” Kelly insisted. “She’s out of town, that’s all.”

  The interested light left his eyes. “If she’s out of town, ask that forest ranger she lives with where she is. A good guy. Name of Chase Bradford. He’s probably in the phone book.”

  Kelly hesitated, mentally phrasing her response so he wouldn’t know she’d been in contact with Chase. “Since I’m already here, I might as well find out what you know.”

  His arms crisscrossed over his chest, his foot tapping a steady beat, his brows drawing together. “Not much. She only worked here a few weeks.”

  “Then you must still have her application,” Kelly said, then added lightly, “and her employment papers.”

  Specifically her tax form. If Kelly could get her hands on Mandy’s social security number…

  “What business is that of yours?” Hirschell’s demeanor switched at a lightning clip from impatience to suspicion. “Are you some kind of investigator?”

  Kelly could have kicked herself. In her zeal to find Mandy, she’d gone too far. “Of course not. Why would you think that?”

  “You come in here, telling some cock-and-bull story about a necklace, then wonder how I caught on to you.” He pointed his index finger toward the door. “I’d like you to leave.”

  “But—”

  “Just go.” He waved her away with a sweep of his hand, pivoted on his heel and disappeared into the kitchen.

  She stared after him, trying to figure out why he thought she was a private investigator, and why he’d gotten so upset. Asking about Mandy’s employment papers admittedly was a mistake since they were confidential, but it shouldn’t have put him on the defensive unless…

  He suspected Kelly not of being a private eye but of investigating tax fraud for the IRS. It could be that Aaron Hirschell was paying his waitresses under the table.

  The theory crystallized during her next stop, the law office of Sara Brenneman.

  The lawyer was a tall, engaging brunette dressed in a leopard-skin top and slacks instead of a business suit. She sported a sparkly engagement ring Kelly might not have noticed if Sara hadn’t kept fingering it.

  “You’re going to all this trouble because of a necklace?” Sara quirked a brow, her demeanor even more skeptical than the restaurant owner’s. Kelly didn’t dare wipe her damp palms on her blue-jean skirt.

  “The necklace is a favorite of hers.” Kelly didn’t know if that was true, but it could be. “She’d want it back.”

  “Then why not leave the necklace with Chase Bradford?”

  Kelly repeated the name as though she’d never heard it before. “Chase Bradford?”

  “He’s a really good guy,” Sara said, marking the third time today somebody had vouched for Chase’s character. First Chase’s father, then the restaurant owner and now Sara. “I’m sure he’d help you. He and Mandy were living together until she left town.”

  Kelly noted that Sara used the past tense. She warned herself to tread carefully because her guess was that Sara and Chase were friends.

  “I could get Chase on the phone for you,” Sara offered, bolstering Kelly’s theory.

  “Thank you but I’d really like to hear what you know about Mandy,” Kelly said.

  Sara had opted to sit in a chair beside Kelly rather than behind her desk. She angled her body and leaned forward at the waist, balancing her elbows on her thighs.

  “Why come to me?” Sara sounded as though she was cross-examining a witness. “How can I possibly help you find Mandy?”

  Kelly fought to keep her cool. “I heard Mandy interviewed with you for a job.”

  “That’s true,” she said slowly. “But who—?”

  “I also heard Mandy was upset you didn’t hire her, that it had something to do with her references. I thought you still might have them.”

  “Her references, you mean?” Sara asked, successfully sidetracked.

  “Yes.” Kelly nodded for emphasis. “I thought someone she used as a reference might know where she is.”

  “She was of the opinion she shouldn’t have to give me any.” Sara sounded bewildered by the assumption. “She made quite a scene about it, in fact.”

  Kelly’s brain raced, speculating about what might have happened next. Could Mandy have turned to an employer who didn’t ask questions? Or, in Aaron Hirschell’s case, possibly require any documentation at all?

  Once Kelly made the intuitive leap, another theory took hold. No, not a theory, a conclusion.

  Mandy was on the run from something. Maybe Mandy Smith wasn’t even her real name, the way Kelly Delaney wasn’t hers.

  It takes one to know one, she thought.

  “Do you know if she was friends with anybody in town?” Kelly asked. “Or anywhere she used to hang out?”

  “I saw her a couple times at the Blue Haven.”

  Kelly recognized the name as belonging to a pub on Main Street.

  “But let’s backtrack,” Sara said. “Who told you Mandy applied for a job with me?”

  Kelly shifted in her seat, concluding she had no choice but to tell the truth. Sara would surely figure out if she lied. “Charlie Bradford.”

  “Charlie?” Sara looked shocked. “If you know Charlie, why haven’t you talked to Chase?”

  “Chase doesn’t know where she is.” Before Sara could point out that Kelly had given the impression she’d never heard of Chase, Kelly stood up. “Thanks for your time. I won’t take up any more of it.”

  Kelly squelched an urge to sprint for the exit, proceeding as though panic wasn’t squeezing her lungs. She didn’t take a deep breath until she was across the street from the law office in the sunshine of a lovely summer afternoon.

  She wasn’t cut out for a life on the run, she thought as she composed herself. If she didn’t show up for her preliminary hearing next Friday, however, a bench warrant would be issued for her arrest.

  She headed for the Blue Haven with purpose in her step, praying that Mandy had confided her plans to somebody who worked there and wishing she wasn’t so alone.

  She wished she could confide in Chase Bradford, who had a compelling reason of his own to find Mandy.

  But even though Chase’s father, the restaurant owner and the lawyer had vouched for him, Kelly couldn’t afford to trust anybody with her freedom.

  CHASE DISCONNECTED THE cell-phone call, swung his Jeep from the two-lane road into the g
ravel parking lot adjacent to a trailhead, turned around and headed back toward Indigo Springs.

  He’d planned to spend the rest of today patrolling his territory for illegal hunting and fishing activity, but that would have to wait.

  Kelly Delaney was reportedly questioning people in Indigo Springs who knew Mandy, which spelled trouble. Plenty of people were aware Mandy had left town, but precious few realized Chase had no idea where she’d gone. Once word spread that her whereabouts were unknown, he’d no longer be able to justify withholding news of Toby’s abandonment to DPW.

  He could hardly defend his actions now, even though dread filled him at the prospect of losing Toby and his father kept insisting it was too soon to alert the authorities.

  This morning when he’d said goodbye to Kelly, he’d given up hope she had any information that could help him find Mandy. After a phone call from Sara Brenneman, who’d recently become engaged to Chase’s friend Michael Donahue, he wasn’t so sure.

  “Something’s not right with her,” Sara told him after reporting Kelly had paid her a visit. “Why would she go to such lengths to return a necklace?”

  That question had raised Chase’s initial suspicions, which he’d let fade when Kelly took over during his father’s crisis. She’d been clearheaded, caring and competent, the perfect antidote to Chase’s panic.

  He’d discovered something else about Kelly the morning after the wild ride to the hospital emergency room—he enjoyed being around her. She had an understated sense of humor that he found attractive and a nurturing quality that Mandy lacked.

  She’d proven he could trust her with Toby, so he’d allowed himself to believe she was who she said she was: A woman doing a good deed after a chance encounter with Mandy.

  Sara’s phone call had resurrected his doubts—and his questions. For the life of him, Chase still couldn’t come up with a reason for Kelly to lie.

  After he found a coveted parking spot on Main Street, he placed a quick call to one of his buddies in the police department, asking him to find out what he could about a Kelly Delaney from Schenectady, New York.

  Then he went in search of Kelly. He found her on a bar stool at the Blue Haven Pub, which Sara had tipped him off as her destination. She looked like an all-American girl in a blue-jean skirt and gauzy yellow top, her thick brown hair loose around her shoulders. She was chatting with Annie Sublinski, who ran an outfit down by the river that offered whitewater, biking and hiking excursions.

  The booths and tables were filling up, a sign that the owners of the pub had made a good decision to open the bar for lunch during tourist season. Only Kelly, Annie and two men holding a loud, not entirely friendly conversation had opted to sit at the bar. The men looked to be in their twenties with identical shaved heads. The thinner of the two sported a goatee while his buddy had a chin-strap beard.

  Chase slipped onto the stool next to the women. “Hi, ladies.”

  “Hi, Chase,” Annie said easily.

  Kelly shifted her attention from Annie, her mouth and eyes rounding. Was that guilt he glimpsed in her expression?

  “Chase,” she said. “I thought you were working.”

  “Just taking a short break.” He looked around her to Annie. “How about you, Annie? Isn’t this high season? How can you tear yourself away from business in the middle of the afternoon?”

  “Desperation. I’m short guides this weekend so stopped by to rope Jill into doing a run for me.” She nodded to the bartender, a young woman with short, curly black hair who was delivering another round of drinks to the two men at the opposite end of the bar. “I’ve been short-handed since Kenny Grieb went back to being an auto mechanic.”

  “Annie’s so desperate she even asked if I was the outdoors type,” Kelly supplied.

  “You never know when you’re going to find another—” Annie stopped talking in midsentence, her face growing pale, her hand rising to cover the birth-mark on one side of her face. Her gaze focused on a spot behind Chase. He turned to see Ryan Whitmore, the doctor who’d given him his physical last week, walk into the bar. An older man waved Ryan over to the booth farthest from where they sat.

  “Do you know that man, Annie?” Kelly asked.

  “Used to,” Annie said, her voice oddly strangled. “He must be visiting.”

  “He’s doing more than visiting,” Chase said. “He’s filling in for his sister. She broke her leg so he’ll be here at least two months, maybe more.”

  “Two months,” Annie repeated, her lips moving but hardly any sound escaping. She got up abruptly from the bar stool, mumbling something about getting back to work before she hurried out the front door.

  “That was odd,” Kelly remarked at the same time the man with the goatee loudly accused his drinking companion of moving in on his girlfriend.

  Jill the bartender was heading their way, but cast a wary glance backward as one man told the other he was imagining things.

  “What can I get you?” Jill asked Chase. It was too early for lunch so he ordered a soda. While Jill poured his drink, he checked on the two men he’d mentally started referring to as Goatee and Chin Strap. Goatee seemed mollified by Chin Strap’s denial, but Chase sensed trouble ahead.

  Jill pushed the soda toward him. “Seems like I’ve seen you in here before.”

  “A few times.” Chase hadn’t had much opportunity to hang out in bars since Toby had entered his life, something that hadn’t stopped Mandy even though at the time she’d been pretending to be pregnant. “I would have been with a redhead. Mandy Smith.”

  “We were just talking about her,” Jill exclaimed as though it was a coincidence. “Mandy used to come in here pretty regularly and sit at the bar, but I haven’t seen her in a couple of weeks.”

  Chase waited for Kelly to ask why a pregnant woman had hung out in a bar, but she didn’t. Hell, maybe she thought Mandy had been drinking tonic water.

  “Jill was just telling me how she and Mandy used to talk about vintage costume jewelry,” Kelly supplied.

  “We like the same kind of thing.” The bartender gestured to her necklace. A large round silver pendant set with black onyx dangled from a silver chain interlocked with black onyx stones. Chase would have been hard-pressed to tell it was a reproduction.

  “Did Mandy ever talk about other things, like her out-of-town friends or places she wanted to visit?” Chase asked.

  “Not that I can remember. Aside from the jewelry, she mostly talked about how much she hated Indigo Springs.” Jill tipped her head. “Why do you want to know? Did something happen to her?”

  “Nothing like that,” Chase interjected, wondering how long it would be before it spread through town Mandy was gone. “She left word that she needed to get away for a while. She just didn’t say where she was going.”

  Jill waved a hand. “I wouldn’t worry. Mandy always seemed wound up pretty tight so she probably just wanted some space. She’ll come back in her own time.”

  “Yeah,” Chase said, although it seemed increasingly likely that Mandy truly had abandoned her son.

  “So you really have no idea where she might have gone?” Kelly sounded as desperate for a clue as Chase, causing him another prick of suspicion. “I’m really eager to get the necklace back to her.”

  “It must be some necklace,” Jill commented, telling Chase he wasn’t off base. Kelly’s story didn’t hold weight. “Can I see it?”

  “Sure,” Kelly said, fishing the necklace from her purse.

  A movement at the end of the bar drew his eye. A thin, short woman with straight, coal-black hair had joined the two men. She directed Goatee to move over a bar stool and sat down between him and Chin Strap.

  “I remember Mandy wearing this!” Jill exclaimed.

  The bartender held the ends of Mandy’s necklace in either hand. The afternoon sun streamed through an overhead window and struck the fake jewels, making them glint.

  “This necklace was one of her favorites,” Jill continued. “I think it’s a Heffinger
.”

  Kelly frowned. “A what?”

  Jill laughed. “It’s a who. Helene Heffinger. She’s a very talented jewelry designer. She usually signs her pieces.” She turned over the broken clasp and read the signature. “I was right. It is a Heffinger.”

  “This Heffinger, does she have a shop somewhere?” Chase asked, already thinking about sales receipts and records.

  “Nope. Doesn’t have the temperament for it. You can’t find her on the Internet, either. She’s old-school, kind of a tough old broad.”

  “Then how do her customers find her?” The question came from Kelly, whose forearms rested on the bar as she leaned forward.

  “She’s a regular on the craft-show circuit. Come to think of it, there’s a show down in Allentown this weekend. She lives somewhere in the Lehigh Valley so I’m betting she’ll be there.”

  “Hey, barkeep!” Chin Strap yelled, his words slurring. “Can we get a beer for the lady?”

  “Be right there,” Jill called, then handed the necklace back to Kelly.

  Silence stretched a few beats after the bartender left until Chase broke it. “You’re thinking of going to that craft show.”

  “I am going. Helene Heffinger might keep a mailing list of her customers. She might have a phone number or an old address for Mandy.” Kelly voiced the possibilities that had run through Chase’s head. “You’re going, too, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “but my going makes sense. I’ve got Mandy’s baby. You’ve got her necklace. A necklace I said I’d return for you.”

  She moistened her lips. “How can you return it when you don’t know where Mandy is, either?”

  The verbal dancing had gone on long enough. He pinned her with his gaze. “Why is it so important for you to find her?”

  “I already told you,” she said. “To give her back the necklace.”

  She looked him straight in the eyes, the way somebody who was telling the truth would, but he wasn’t falling for her act anymore. Too much didn’t make sense, including the sketch she’d drawn of Mandy. Who went to that much trouble to return a relatively inexpensive piece of jewelry to a stranger?