Lisa Childs - Return of the Lawman

“She’s not here, you know.” Lindsey couldn’t imagine where her mother would be. To get here from the sanatorium, she’d have had to walk miles. Did she have a jacket to keep her warm? Where had she slept? Lying in some rotted leaves in a ditch on the side of the road? Had they passed her?

Lindsey fought down the panic. “Her doctors think she might be schizophrenic, but her erratic symptoms have made her hard to diagnose. She wouldn’t have recognized the old house, let alone the rebuilt one.”

“But it’s at the same address. We should check.”

“I just left here a little while ago, on my way to see you at the police station.”

He opened his door. “You can stay here. I’ll check. Give me your keys.”

“I left them in the Jeep.”

He chuckled. “Well, I suppose it’s safe. I doubt anyone will steal it.”

She rewarded his obvious effort with a weak smile. “I’m sure Dad stashes the spare in the same place.” She hopped out and strode to the door. They’d take a quick gander inside and resume their search. Retha Warner wasn’t there. But they would find her. They had to.

Before Lindsey could reach above the door frame for the key, the kitchen door opened. A fragile-looking woman with dull black hair and glassy eyes reached for Lindsey. “Sweet heart, there you are! I couldn’t catch you when you left the house for school earlier. Are you skipping class?” The woman made a tsking noise.

As she stood stiffly in the fragile arms of her mother, Lindsey trembled, and her stomach pitched as a flurry of emotions surged through her.

Her mother. She pushed some of the scraggly hair from her mother’s scarred cheek. How did she recognize Lindsey now after all these years when she hadn’t then, when a teenage girl had so desperately needed her mother?

“Deputy Matthews,” Retha Warner said in a welcoming voice. “Thank you for bringing her home. She causing you trouble again?” She actually winked at him.

How had her mother known of Lindsey’s infatuation with the young deputy? She’d always seemed oblivious to her surroundings.

“Mom,” she finally said, struggling to clear her throat of the jerky sobs threatening as memories flooded her mind. “Mom, I’m not in school anymore. I’m almost twenty-seven now.”

“Always trying to rush things, Lindsey,” her mother scoffed affectionately. “Come in, you two. I’ve baked cookies and started coffee.”

Dylan’s hand on her back urged Lindsey inside the warm kitchen. Cookies cooled on waxed paper on the counter, and an announcer chattered from the radio on top of the refrigerator.

“Mom, please.” She followed Retha to the counter and put a trembling hand on her shoulder. “You must know that you don’t live here anymore.”

“I know the house looks different. Remodeled, finally. I love it.” Her mother smiled as she poured them mugs of steaming coffee.

Lindsey took her mother’s hands in hers, running her fingers over the scarred flesh of the right one. She squeezed her eyes shut and struggled for a breath. Her mother hadn’t even cried over the burns. But Lindsey had.

Dylan rubbed her back. “Let me tell her, Lindsey.”

She shook her head and opened her eyes. Her mother’s once beautiful face held concern and con fusion. Lindsey dragged in a quick, choking breath. “Mom, you live in the sanatorium now.”

“What? There is no sanatorium in Winter Falls.” A frown puckered Retha’s otherwise unlined forehead. She pulled her hands from Lindsey’s.

Lindsey brushed the hair away from her mother’s face. The thin strands of black slid smoothly between Lindsey’s fingers. At least they kept her clean at the sanatorium even though they hadn’t kept her safe.

Lindsey took in another breath and caught the scent of roses. Her mother’s perfumed soap clung to her.

“Arborview, Mom.”

Her mother shuddered now. “Arborview is the home for unwed mothers, Lindsey. You shouldn’t know anything about that place.” She slid her scarred hand over Lindsey’s cheek.

“It hasn’t been that for years, Mom. You live there.” Lindsey spoke as slowly and gently as she would to a child. Because she didn’t possess any of her own, she figured she must have borrowed some of Dylan’s patience and strength. His long, lean body hovered so near, his heat warmed her.

“You’re doing great,” he murmured by her ear.

Her mother shook her head. “No, no, I don’t anymore. That was just for a little while and so long ago.”

Lindsey brushed the hair back from her mother’s face again. The sting of tears and guilt blinded her for a moment. “You’ve lived there nine years now, Mom.”

Her mother laughed. “Lindsey, always spinning your yarns, just like your father.”

“No, Mom…”

“Shh,” her mother said, pressing a finger over Lindsey’s lips. “Listen.”

The radio news caster reported Chet Oliver’s death. Her mother laughed again. “The old bastard. He deserved to die.”

“What, Mom?”

“Selling babies the way he did—the bastard!” Then her laughter turned into hysterical sobbing.

Lindsey pulled her mother into her arms, more to restrain than to comfort. “Calm down, Mom.”

“He stole babies, Lindsey…” Her body went limp, sagging heavily against Lindsey, as she fainted dead away.

DYLAN WAITED in the wide corridor outside Retha Warner’s room at the sanatorium. Beside him, Lindsey leaned against the wall. She dragged the toe of her hiking boot back and forth over the squares of spark ling clean linoleum.

“You don’t have to stay,” she repeated. “Dad’s here. He can give me a ride home, you know. I’ll be fine if you leave. You have a lot going on with this murder and all.”

He stepped in front of her and lifted her chin, so she would finally look him in the eye. Then he pressed a finger across her lips before she could say any more. “I’m staying.”

He didn’t know if he got through to her because the door behind him opened. Her father exhaled a ragged breath and brushed a hand through his thinning gray hair. “Is she all right, Mr. Warner?”

The older man nodded and took Dylan’s arm. “They’ve sedated her. Thank you, Deputy, for finding her, for being there.” Then William Warner reached out a hand toward his daughter, but Lindsey shook her head. “Lindsey?”

“No, Dad. I want some answers for once. I want the real reason she’s like that!” Lindsey straightened from the wall, bristling with anger. “I want to know why she called Chet Oliver a baby thief! You know, but you’ve never told me!”

Dylan had never seen Lindsey so distraught. But she wasn’t the girl he’d once known. She was a woman now. Then he realized he’d never known the girl, either. “Lindsey, your father—”

“No.” Mr. Warner sighed and shoved his trembling hands into his pockets. “She’s right. You know about the miscarriages, Lindsey.”

She nodded. “After me, she couldn’t carry another baby to full term. She really wanted another baby, a boy….”

Bitterness dripped from Lindsey’s words. Apparently she thought she’d never been enough to make her mother happy. While Dylan hated being involved in other people’s emotional scenes, he found he couldn’t detach himself from this one. When he held out a hand for her, she grasped it tightly in both of hers.

William Warner shook his head. “No, honey. She wanted a boy to replace the one she gave up a few years before we met at college. This place—” He waved his arms around the wide corridor.

“—used to be a home for unwed mothers,” Lindsey finished. “That’s what she meant when she said she’d been here long ago. She’d—”

“Been sent here by her parents when she became pregnant during her senior year of high school in Chicago. They wanted her to have the baby and give him up for adoption. She was to go off to college that fall. So she came to this place, but she didn’t want to give up her baby.”

Despite his misgivings, Dylan found himself drawn into the story, into a young girl’s loss. “But she did.”

Warner nodded. “Yes. Lindsey, I met your mother at college. When she heard I was from this town, well…”

Lindsey didn’t say anything, but her fingers clutched Dylan’s hand so tightly, he’d have indentations of her short, no-nonsense nails in his skin.

“She told me everything,” Will Warner explained.

“What was ‘everything,’ Mr. Warner?” Dylan asked. “I mean, how did Chet Oliver figure into this?”

“He was the lawyer who handled the adoptions.”

“A baby broker. Is that legal?” Lindsey’s dark eyes widened.

“It was if your mother signed away her parental rights of her own free will,” Dylan clarified. “It would be considered a private adoption. A lot of people prefer them.”

“And if it wasn’t of her own free will?” Lindsey’s dark eyes swam with her mother’s pain and loss. “Then you have a motive for Chet Oliver’s murder. That’s why you’re here, huh, Dylan?” She dropped his hand and whirled away.

“Lindsey!” But she didn’t stop. She stomped down the corridor, and the guard at the outside door didn’t attempt to stop her.

“Is that true, Dylan?” Mr. Warner grabbed Dylan’s arm again. “Is my wife a suspect?”

Dylan shrugged. “I don’t know, sir. She left here early yesterday afternoon. She wasn’t found until late this morning. Chet was murdered last night. No one can account for her whereabouts. I don’t know.”

LINDSEY DIDN’T GLANCE UP when Dylan approached her. She continued to balance one hip on the front bumper of the patrol car. With the toe of her hiking boot she pushed a couple of leaves across the asphalt. “What’s that saying about going home again?” she asked.

“You can’t do it.” His tone was flat, unemotional. People said that about him. His mother died when he was still a boy, and with her had died Dylan Matthews’s capacity for emotion. But Lindsey never believed what people said when it came to Dylan Matthews.

She shook her head. “Naw. It feels like it always did. Marge gossiping about me down at the diner. Mom having her episodes. Dad keeping his secrets. Naw. If this was ever really my home, then I came back to it. Why would I do something so stupid?”

His shadow fell across the asphalt at her feet. She glanced up, but he’d put on his sun glasses again. What did it matter? She’d never had a chance of reading his mind. But she was a reporter to her soul. She had to ask her questions. “Why would you?”

He expelled a breath through his nostrils. “Why would I come back? I had to do something about the house.”

She raised a brow. “You can do better than that.”

“There was nothing for me in Detroit.”

“After ten years? No little woman to keep the home fires burning?”

He snorted now. “Yeah, right. What about you, Lindsey? Nobody for you?”

“The rumor is I came home with a broken heart, remember?” She forced the levity. “Really?”

She almost believed he wanted to know. She shrugged. “You know the gossip in this town, only about half of it’s ever true. I may be bruised, but I’m not broken.”

Half his mouth lifted into a sexy smile. “Lindsey. Why are you home?”

“Nothing for me in Chicago. And maybe home is where the heart is, or the heart ache.” She sighed and dropped her gaze to the long shadow Dylan Matthews cast. He’d been there, a shadow across her heart, for the last ten years.

“I figured you had probably hot-wired my car and taken off. You were steamed in there, just a few minutes ago,” he reminded her.