Читать книгу Father By Choice - M.J. Rodgers - Страница 10

EMILY SWIPED THE CLUMPS of dirt from Brad’s sport coat with overly energetic strokes of the clothes brush. When he’d all but collapsed on the stairs, her heart had lodged in her throat.

The man was exactly what he proclaimed himself to be—pigheaded and obstinate.

But it was hard not to admire a guy who boldly admitted his faults, even when he seemed to revel in them.

As he reentered the office, his eyes glanced toward his sport coat, which she’d hung on the coatrack. “Thanks.”

She shrugged and gestured toward the chair in front of her desk.

As he settled himself he asked, “How well do you know the guy who had the stroke?”

“Not well. Wayne is one of our senior historians, a longtime friend of Oliver’s. He used to be his accountant at Smithson Pharmaceuticals before they both retired.”

“Sounded as though Oliver still considers him more of an employee than friend.”

“That’s Oliver.”

“So, what do we do first?”

“You go downstairs to the reception and submit to many accolades while indulging yourself with hors d’oeuvres, which I promise you are delicious if you haven’t tasted them.”

“What, the accolades or the hors d’oeuvres?”

She refused to smile. “Both will be, I’m sure.”

“You’re not coming?”

“I’ve already had lunch. Besides, schmoozing is not my style.”

“Not my style, either.”

“Dr. Winslow, there are a lot of important people downstairs who are going to want to shake your hand and pump you for information about how you knew the skeleton was a hundred years old. You achieved celebrity status today. Go savor your moment in the limelight.”

“I’ll pass, thanks. So, what’s the best way to go about this document cataloging?”

His eagerness for the task didn’t sit quite right with Emily. Her suspicions began to resurface.

“Your offer to help with the skeleton is appreciated,” she said carefully, “but being here when I catalog the contents of the capsule isn’t necessary.”

“And you’re saying that because…?”

“Because the chance that something in the documents could lead to the skeleton’s identity is pretty slim. If the mayor at the time had known there was a body being buried with the capsule, he would have said something in the letter he wrote.”

“How did you know the time capsule was beneath the sundial?”

“That’s been common knowledge among local historians since the day it was put in the ground. The date the capsule was to be opened was carved on the sundial as well.”

“Who put the capsule in place?”

“Leading citizens of the community were given the honor of lowering it by rope into the pit. That large sundial was then set over the pit. They later carved their initials on the stone face.”

“Makes you wonder how they could have missed a body. Is it possible the sundial was later lifted and the body dumped in?”

Emily shook her head. “It took a bunch of strong, able-bodied men to set the sundial into place a hundred years ago. For decades afterward that sundial marked the center of town. No one could have lifted it without an audience.”

“So unless the entire town was in on a conspiracy to keep the death of this guy a secret, we’re going to have to look elsewhere for answers,” Brad said. “The documents might give a clue as to who the guy was, even if they don’t reveal how he got there.”

“Your investment won’t be worth the slim chance of reward. This is a time-consuming task.”

“Then we’d better get started.”

“You mean now?”

“You had something else planned?”

“No, I’m just surprised you don’t.”

“Normally, I do work Saturday and Sunday. But I’ve pulled a few double shifts this past week, so, at the moment, I’m looking at a whole weekend off. What do we do first?”

This good-looking, single doctor wanted to bury his nose in old records on his rare weekend off when he could be downstairs making important contacts and letting attractive women come on to him?

Emily looked him straight in the eye. “Why are you here?”

He didn’t so much as blink. “Do you really want to know?”

Did she? She’d purposely avoided this confrontation yesterday because she believed she could keep the truth from him. But if he had somehow found out she’d gotten his sperm, it would be better to discuss the matter openly than to continue to worry about hidden meanings and motivations in everything he said and did.

“Yes, I want to know,” she said.

“I got dumped.”

That caught her completely by surprise. “You what?”

“Woman I’d been seeing over the past few weeks canceled our time together. Seems some fortune-teller read her tea leaves and warned her that everyone whose name starts with the letter B was going to bring her bad luck over the next few days. She decided to spend the weekend in the far safer pursuits of skin exfoliation and incense burning.”

“Where did the dumping come in?”

“Right after I assured her that she would have felt at home with the ignorant savages who read falling tree leaves a few thousand years ago and got the message to sacrifice the village’s virgin to ward off the approaching bad weather.”

Yes, she could imagine him saying that.

“I take it you don’t believe in anything beyond the five senses,” Emily said.

“When someone can’t breathe or is bleeding, science provides the tools that enable me to help them. But, I’ve also seen prayer and nothing but a strong will to live keep someone alive well beyond what should have been medically possible.”

“So you are open to other possibilities.”

“I don’t pretend to have all the answers. But I do believe that whatever gives meaning to someone’s life shouldn’t demean or belittle someone else’s. When a person is branded as a threat simply because the first letter of his name starts with a B, then the line into superstitious lunacy has been crossed.”

He wore the expression of a warrior who’d gone into conversational battle on this subject more than once. And was weary of it.

“After your brother and I got to talking at the bar last night,” Brad continued, “he decided that what I needed was to be dragged to the Founders Day Celebration. Good thing, too, or I’d probably be forced to study for my board certification exams coming up next month.”

“That still doesn’t explain why you aren’t downstairs shaking hands and drinking the very best in champagne.”

“I’ve found that I react to people best when I take them like a potent prescription—one at a time and never mixed with alcohol.”

His explanation filled her with relief. Maybe she hadn’t been quite so prepared for that confrontation as she’d convinced herself.

“Too bad your weekend turned into such a disappointment,” she said.

“Oh, I’d say things are definitely looking up. So, what do we do first?”

He had the kind of smile that made a woman want to smile back. She resisted.

“Go through everything and make a list of what type of things we have and how many,” she answered. “Then we can start the process of scanning them into the hard drive.”

She handed him a pad and pen. “You get the task of record keeping.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“You consider it beneath you?”

“I consider it far above me. All those stories you’ve heard about how doctors can’t write legibly? They’re absolutely true.”

It was the serious look on his face that had her lips twitching, despite her best efforts. “How are you at typing?”

He held up all ten fingers. “My hand-eye coordination has always rated within the top one percent.”

“Of E.R. doctors?”

“Of volleyball players. You can catch our games Sunday afternoons out on the beach near the big barbecue pit.”

The smile was getting harder to contain.

“You’ll recognize me,” Brad said nonchalantly as he shifted in his chair. “I’m the one who’s always falling into the pit.”

She was grinning now, couldn’t help it. Brad Winslow had a very nice personality beneath his staid doctor’s countenance.

“So what do you and your husband do for fun?”

Emily’s grin subsided. “I’m not married.”

“Sorry.”

“I’m not.”

She faced the computer monitor and opened a word-processing document. After naming it “Time Capsule Artifacts” she came to her feet.

“Okay, Mr. Nimble Fingers, you get the job of entering a list of the contents into the computer file as I read them off to you.”

They switched chairs so he could have access to the computer, and she was closer to the time capsule.

Once settled, she raised the lid and slipped on some protective gloves. “First item is the letter Patrick O’Shea read that was signed by the mayor and the eleven other men who were chosen to set the sundial in place.”

She heard the confident click of keys as Brad entered the information. Peeking over at the screen, she could see he’d already finished the identifying sentence. Nimble fingers indeed.

“What do you want to list about the letter?” he asked.

“Let’s put in the names of those who signed it, starting with the mayor’s. This is the first time I heard that there were twelve men chosen to put the sundial in place. There are only eleven initials carved on its surface.”

“Whose initials are missing?” Brad asked.

“Something I plan to check on later.” One by one she read the signatures at the bottom of the letter to him.

“What’s next?”

“The pictures.”

Emily picked up the first—a gorgeous shot of a ship in full sail. Even though it was in black-and-white, her mind’s eye filled in an azure sky and turquoise sea. Turning it over, she found to her delight that someone had printed the name of the vessel. Every item in the cargo unloaded at the Courage Bay dock was listed.

“I can see why this could become a very time-consuming task,” Brad said.

Her head came up at his comment. It was only then that she realized she’d been studying the photo for some time. After describing it briefly for Brad, she set the picture aside.

“Good thing you’re here,” she admitted. “I could so easily get lost in these.”

“Are you one of those people who feels as though she were born a hundred years too late?”

She shook her head. “I admit I’m drawn to the natural beauty of their less crowded time, their deeper connection with one another that came from a slower pace of life. But I’m spoiled. I want my hot showers, Internet access and an epidural when the time comes to deliver Sprout.”

He nodded. “When it came to medicine, there was a lot about the good old days that wasn’t that good.”

“This is the photograph of the young woman that Phoebe Landru showed to the crowd,” Emily said as she picked it up. She turned it over and was happy to see a printed identification.

“She’s Serena Fitzwalter. I knew I recognized her. Looks as though Gerald Fitzwalter had more than one family member represented in this time capsule.”

“He was the one in the crowd who seemed the most irritated when Councilman Himlot balked at having his ancestor’s letter read,” Brad said as he entered the information about the second photo into the computer. “Is Himlot always so…self-focused?”

“Of all our city’s councilmen, Dean’s normally the easiest to get along with. I don’t know what made him decide to demand that letter from his ancestor. He and his family have generously shared a lot of their historical documents with the Society.”

“Maybe he missed out on his bran muffin at breakfast,” Brad said.

Emily smiled. “His ancestors as well as many others who settled Courage Bay are represented in family portraits downstairs,” she said.

“I’ll have to take a look at them sometime. There seem to be a lot of interesting things to study in this building.”

There was absolutely no readable expression on his face. Emily decided she’d interpret his comment to mean he was developing an interest in Courage Bay’s history.

“Serena Fitzwalter here has a double claim,” Emily said gesturing to her picture. “She married into another prominent family, Landru.”

“And Phoebe Landru didn’t say anything about holding up her ancestor’s photo?”

“She wasn’t wearing her glasses,” Emily said as she set the photo aside. “It was probably just a blur to her.”

Most of the next dozen or so photographs were scenes of fishing boats, birds and low tidelands alive with sea creatures and shells. As Emily read off the descriptions, Brad added them to his growing list on the computer.

The next photograph she picked up was of the Smithson Apothecary. She showed it to Brad. “This is where Oliver’s pharmaceutical company got its start.”

“His was one of the original families?”

Emily explained that the Smithsons weren’t descendants of the Ranger crew. They’d been Nevada miners. When the silver petered out of their claim, they came to Courage Bay in the latter half of the nineteenth century looking for a new start. Using the Indians’ knowledge of native medicinal plants, they opened the apothecary. It grew into a multimillion-dollar business.

“A Smithson ancestor originally owned this building and left it to the Historical Society when she passed,” Emily said as she set the apothecary picture aside and came to another set of photographs of people.

She recognized more names. “Look, an O’Shea. Wait until the mayor finds out he has an ancestor represented. Oh, and here’s a Giroux. I have to tell Natalie when I see her. She works at the hospital. You must know her.”

“I work with her brother, Alec, in the E.R.,” Brad said. “I don’t really know Natalie. Alec rarely mentions her.”

Most brothers rarely mentioned their sisters, a fact for which Emily was growing more thankful by the moment.

“Is Dot a descendant of one of the pioneers?” he asked.

Emily nodded. “Her family arrived from the East toward the end of the nineteenth century. Dot’s doctoral thesis chronicled the local history of Courage Bay at the beginning of the last century. She was in time to rescue copies of the old Courage Bay newspaper as well as other memorabilia from neighborhood attics.”

“Are we likely to find a Corbin in here?” Brad asked.

“No. My grandparents relocated here after World War II, like so many other military families who flocked to California.”

“What got you interested in the Historical Society?” he asked.

“Dot recruited me into it last year. There’s so much history in the origins of the beautiful plants here at the Botanical Gardens. The origins of the people who planted and cultivated them began to draw me as well. Courage Bay is one of those few Southern California communities where you can still find four-, five-, even six-generation families. I’m still a novice when it comes to the history of the people, of course. But it’s nice to live in a place with such sturdy roots. What about the Winslow clan?”

“Don’t know much about it,” Brad said.

His voice had gone curiously flat. She tried to remember the part of his sperm-bank questionnaire where it asked about his parents, but the only thing that came to mind was that there had been no known illnesses on either side of his family tree.

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask, but too many questions could make him suspicious. Better to err on the side of prudence and let the matter drop.

As she turned her attention back to the photographs, she found some very interesting group shots of the townspeople, even one of a traveling salesman.

She went through each, reading off the descriptions on the backs so Brad could enter them into the computer. Then she placed each photograph within sheets of acid-free paper and laid it inside a chest in the corner of her office.

“Are the photographs getting special attention for some reason?” Brad asked, as he watched her close the lid of the chest.

“They’re in such great shape, I hate to expose them to the elements even for a short time.”

“Where will the originals of all these things eventually be placed?”

She retook her chair next to the capsule. “In the basement of this building. Light, heat, humidity and acid are the four enemies of archival treasurers. That dark dehumidified dungeon is climatically controlled to near perfection.”

“Oliver Smithson mentioned something about your research. Is it in this kind of preservation?”

“No, my research is the kind that grows in the Botanical Gardens’ greenhouse.”

“Let me guess. Your favorite TV shows are on The Learning Channel and the Home and Garden Network?”

“Pretty close,” she admitted. “I suppose you were hooked on the TV E.R. series?”

“Naw, too much blood. What’s next?”

Emily caught herself smiling again. Seemed he did have a really good sense of humor, after all.

She began to rethink her earlier comment about this job taking less time because he was here. It might actually take more if she didn’t get her mind back on business. She turned back to the time capsule.

A cylinder at the side of some packaged items caught her eye. As she pulled it out, she wondered for a moment what she held.

“Of course,” she said finally. “This is an old phonograph record. I doubt there’s even a machine around that can play it.”

“Probably the newest gadget of its day,” Brad said. “If we put the latest CD in a time capsule today, I doubt there’d be an antiquated computer around in the year 2104 that could retrieve the information on it, either.”

“By 2104 I imagine most machines will be obsolete. We’ll all have a computer chip in our brains to store information.”

“Well, at least it’s good to know I’ll still have a job,” he said.

“You sure?”

“Someone’s going to have to insert that computer chip.”

“Unless they have a robot doing it.”

“Oh, great. Just what I needed to hear. Four years of premed, four years of medical school, four years of residency and now I can look forward to being replaced by a robot.”

She chuckled.

After a click of keys he announced, “I’ve entered it as phonograph record of cylinder shape and indeterminate age. What’s next?”

“The newspapers.” She quickly counted them. “There are sixteen here, randomly selected it appears from the two years before the capsule’s burial.”

As she started to rearrange them in chronological order, she found one with the same date as the time capsule’s interment. The lead story was the fact that it was being buried that day. But what caught Emily’s attention was the headline immediately below that one. She grew quiet as she read the story.

“What’s wrong?” Brad asked after a moment.

She looked up, only realizing then that she’d been frowning.

“An article in this newspaper reports that a day before the time capsule’s burial, five members of a local family died when a houseguest went insane and set fire to their home.”

“The article actually uses the word insane?” Brad asked.

“Must not have been considered politically incorrect in those days. The family’s six-year-old boy awakened to the smell of smoke and saw the drapes in flames. The houseguest was throwing lit candles and crying hysterically about demons. He fled the house to get help, but returned too late. The houseguest as well as the rest of his family had perished.”

“That article has upset you.”

His voice had grown gentle. When her eyes rose to his, she saw the concern on his face.