Читать книгу Unforgettable - Molly Rice - Страница 9

It wasn’t until the sounds of screaming and screeching tires penetrated her mind that Stacy realized the screams were coming from her own throat and that she had acted on impulse and jumped away from the oncoming car. She lay on the pavement, her arms protectively curved over her head, and began to sob hysterically.

When she felt the hands prying at her arms, she screamed again and fought off her assailant.

“Stacy, for God’s sake, stop that screaming and let me see if you’re hurt.”

For a moment, when she recognized Derek’s voice, she wanted to rush into his arms for comfort and safety. But suspicion came rapidly.

“You tried to kill me!” she shouted.

“Are you nuts?” he shouted in return, “I heard your screams and came to find out what happened.”

“And you just happened to be in the neighborhood.”

Derek fought for calm. “I was in front of my building, not ten feet from here. I heard your screams and came running.”

“T-ten f-feet?”

Derek recognized the teeth-chattering as a symptom of shock. He knelt beside Stacy and took off his jacket. “Here, you’re chilled. Let me get you over to my office and give you a hot drink.”

She let him guide her through the fog because she felt helpless to do otherwise. Somewhere out there in the eerie grayness that covered everything was someone who had been determined to run her down. Someone who would probably try again.

She stammered her fear of that as Derek poured hot water over a tea bag in a pottery mug in the small kitchen behind the sheriff’s office.

“No way,” Derek said, generously spooning sugar into the tea. “If someone were deliberately trying to kill you, they’d have turned around and made a second try. No...” he shook his head and handed her the mug. “It was probably more likely that the driver couldn’t see you in time in all that fog.”

“Then why didn’t he—or she—stop to find out if I was all right?”

Derek shrugged, a gesture Stacy was beginning to recognize as one of his personal mannerisms.

“Might have been a kid who didn’t want to run up against the cops, or a driver without the required insurance.”

“Why don’t you ever believe me?”

“Why would anyone in this town want you dead?”

They stared at each other, mirror images of irritation and belligerence.

Derek broke first. “Drink your tea, Stacy.” He sounded tired, and the least little bit patronizing.

She flinched at the syrupy sweetness but obediently drank most of the hot liquid. The sugar went to her bloodstream almost immediately, restoring her energy, while the heat of the beverage chased away the last of the chills. She held out the mug for a refill.

“Good,” Derek said as he took the mug, “now maybe we can approach the situation logically.”

Men thrived on logic, she knew, while women put more faith in intuition. He was going to have a perfectly logical argument for what had happened, while she was going to continue to hold on to her belief that there was someone in this town who was stalking her and at the very least intended to give her one hell of a scare.

“Derek, would you consider this, maybe we’re both right. Nobody is trying to kill me. You’re probably right about that. But at least give me this, someone is trying to scare me.”

“Why?”

“To get me to leave town.”

“Why?”

“Because...because they don’t want me to find out about my parents.”

“Why?”

Exasperation replaced calm. “I don’t know! That’s what I wanted you to find out!”

She didn’t wait for his retort but threw his jacket off her shoulders and rushed back out into the fog.

* * *

PAM LIFTED THE RECEIVER on the third ring, keeping her place in the account ledger with her index finger. “Yes,” she said, after she’d exchanged greetings with her caller, “I got your message. She’s still out but when she comes in, I’ll give you a ring.”

She tapped manicured fingers on the ledger page as her caller went into a lecture reminding Pam where her loyalty belonged, how dangerous it could be for Stacy Millman to be allowed to do too much digging.

“I know all that,” Pam reminded, fighting to keep her tone respectful, always mindful of the fact that the Hunters held the mortgage on the inn.

“Well, let me just make one last reminder, Pam, you don’t own the inn free and clear yet and if you let us down, you could lose it.”

Bile rose in Pam’s throat. She could kill Stacy Millman. Her arrival in town had shaken Pam’s world right down to the foundation. And if the girl won out, despite all the effort being made to keep her in the dark, she, Pam, would be blamed for failing to fulfill her part in the plan. She could lose everything.

“Don’t worry,” she said into the mouthpiece. “She’s staying under my roof. I’m sure I can keep tabs on her.”

“See that you do.”

Pam heard the click and after a breath-held moment, she replaced her own receiver. She got up and went to the window. The fog seemed to be lifting; at least she thought she could see more of the front yard as she peered through the glass.

Where could the Millman girl have gone in this mess? The locals usually didn’t venture out in it; they knew the hazards of such limited visibility. If she’d been on her toes, she’d have been aware that the girl had left the inn before breakfast. But she only had a chef for the dinner hours, during the off-season, so she’d been in the kitchen preparing the morning meal herself when Stacy Millman had apparently gone out.

She went back to her desk and tried to concentrate on the figures in the ledger. The echoes of threat in her caller’s tone kept recurring in her head and she finally slammed the ledger cover shut and reached for a cigarette. It wasn’t only the call that was bothering her, she knew. There was also the business of seeing Millman in the bar with Derek Chancelor. It had given her a less than peaceful night, tossing, turning, wondering how they’d got so cozy so quickly.

She knew she didn’t have a right in the world to be jealous; Derek had never responded to any of the signals she’d sent his way. Even when he complimented her on her appearance, it had always been in the spirit of friendship. Maybe she’d been too laid-back, waiting for him to see her attributes and make a move. Maybe she should have out and out seduced him, shown him that their ten year age difference really didn’t matter at this stage in their lives.

It wasn’t only that Derek was the last eligible bachelor in town, it was also that she’d had a secret crush on him since he was eighteen years old and a lifeguard at the public beach. He’d asked her to put suntan lotion on his back and shoulders. At that first feel of his smooth, sun-warmed skin, his hard muscles beneath, she’d felt her stomach lurch and her blood heat with immediate lust. She had only to think of that day to remember caressing him, wanting him, willing him to feel what she was feeling.

He never had. But that didn’t mean he never would. Unless he was actually taking an interest in the Millman bitch.

Yes, she could cheerfully kill the girl. She flicked ashes and was about to take another drag when there was a knock at her door.

“Come in.” She stubbed out the cigarette and turned an expectant face to the door. Incredibly, it was the person foremost on her mind.

“Hi. I hope I’m not bothering you, Pam. I just wondered if you have a lockup policy at night.”

Pam forced a smile. “Lockup, Ms. Millman? Oh, you mean the front doors?”

“Call me Stacy, please. Yes. I wondered if your guests have a curfew or whether we get a key to the front door in case we’re in after lockup.”

Pam laughed. “This is a very small town, Stacy. We don’t lock doors here. There’s never been any need.”

And if there had been, where would Stacy Millman have to go until late at night in this burg? The only answer to that would be Derek. Fury rose in her chest, tightened her breathing.

“I never thought of that,” Stacy said, laughing at her own stupidity. “It would never occur to a New Yorker.”

Pam made herself pretend a friendly interest. “Yes, I’ve seen TV shows where New Yorkers have two or three locks on their doors.”

Stacy nodded. “I guess that’s one of the things I won’t miss while I’m here.”

“Then you plan on staying awhile?”

“You sound surprised. Is there any reason I shouldn’t?”

“Why...why, no, of course not. I did tell you, didn’t I, that my rooms fill up almost entirely the first part of June.”

“Yes, and I will let you know soon, if I plan to stay that long.” She looked around the well-appointed office, at the ashtray at Pam’s elbow, an accounts journal in front of her. She smiled. “Well, I won’t keep you from your work. I think I’ll go to my room and rest before lunch. I’ve had a pretty stressful morning.”

Despite herself, Pam expressed an interest. “Stressful? Oh, you’re probably not used to our fog, it’s quite formidable at times.”

“As a matter of fact, I had a near accident. A car came at me in the fog and almost ran me down.”

Pam didn’t have to fake surprise. “You weren’t hurt, I take it?”

“Just a little bruising from falling out of the way. But other than that, I was mostly shaken up. If Derek...uh, the sheriff...hadn’t come along and delivered hot tea and sympathy, I might have been worse off.”

Pam bit her lip. Derek again. Coming to the rescue of a damsel in distress. “Well, good for our sheriff. And I guess you’ve definitely earned that rest. Would you like me to knock at your door when lunch is ready?”

“Yes, please, I’m sure I’ll be restored by then.”

As the door closed behind Stacy, Pam swiveled in her chair and reached for another cigarette.

A near accident. Too bad. If she’d been driving she might have done a better job of it. She lit the cigarette and mused. Surely the person who wanted to keep Stacy from finding out... No! Nobody would go that far just to prevent a little information from leaking. Would they?

She shivered suddenly. How desperate was the situation? She remembered the threats. Maybe she was better off not knowing. She opened the journal and forced her attention back to her work.

* * *

DEREK ENTERED THE LIBRARY, removed his hat, looked around. There were none of the usual patrons in sight and Edie was behind the desk, leisurely cataloging a new shipment of books.

“Hi, Mom,” he called out as he strode toward her.

Edie looked up, an expression of surprise on her round, still pretty face. She had a pencil tucked behind her ear and her short gray blond hair was tousled. “Hi, son. This is a surprise. Am I under arrest or did you get lost in the fog?”

Derek chuckled. “Okay, so I’m a bad son who doesn’t visit his mother often enough.”

“So, what catastrophic event makes today different?”

“Mom, you ever hear of any family around here named Millman?”

“No, never!” The pencil fell and Edie bent to pick it up, knocking a stack of books off the counter. She swore under her breath and Derek rushed around the counter to help her pick up the books. They bumped heads and Edie fell back on her rump, laughing and moaning and rubbing her forehead. Derek helped Edie to her feet and set her down on the stool. “Sit there. I’ll get the books.”

He stacked them on the counter and then turned to his mother. “Where were we? Oh, yeah. The Millmans. You’re sure you never heard of them?”

“I’m sure. What’s your interest in these people anyway, have they committed some kind of crime?”

Derek shrugged. “No, not that I know of. For that matter, I don’t even know if they ever lived around here.”

“So, who are they? Where did you get that name?”

Derek pondered how much to tell his mother. Now that he thought about it, she’d answered his question much too quickly, as though she’d been primed for it and rehearsed her response. With all the names Edie came upon through her work as head librarian, she should have had to stop and sift through her memory before answering.

“I met someone who thinks her parents came from here. Name of Millman.”

“Her parents? And she doesn’t know for sure where they came from? What’s her name?”

“Stacy. Short for Anastasia. Stacy Millman.”

Was it only his imagination or did his mother blanch at Stacy’s name? But she immediately bent to get something from the shelf under the counter and he couldn’t be sure. When she raised her head, she was her usual composed head librarian persona. She had her purse in her hands and was removing tissues. She blew her nose delicately and shook her head.

“Sorry, I can’t help you, Derek, and in my opinion, people shouldn’t go digging into the past, anyway. Tell your friend it’s better to live in the present than go snooping around into the past.”

Derek chuckled. “I’m not sure I’d call us friends. But as for your advice, it doesn’t apply unless you know of something someone has to hide.”

“Really, Derek, this is too much. I don’t see you for days in a town that has about a five-mile radius, and when I do you pump me for information and accuse me of hiding things from you.”

“Gee, Mom, how did you get all that out of a simple question about a family name?”

Her sputtering came to a halt and Edie fixed her son with a no-nonsense glare. “I’ve got work to do, Derek. Go away.”

He laughed and leaned forward to pinch her soft, reddened cheek. “See ya, Edie.”

He snatched his hat off the counter and ambled out. Standing on the front steps of the library, he set the Stetson on his head and surveyed the street. The fog had lifted and hung about seven feet over the pavements so at least people could walk around now and see where they were going. At this rate it would have dissipated by early afternoon and life would go on as usual.

What was unusual he mused, as he went down the steps to the street, was his mother’s strange behavior. First of all, she definitely knew something...the name was not unfamiliar to her. And secondly, she wore the stereotypical image of a small-town librarian to a tee, never allowing anything to ruffle her feathers, never raising her voice, even when bringing up a feisty boy with a father who was more of a dreamer than a disciplinarian.

Did those conclusions lead to support of Stacy’s determination that someone in town was out to get her, or to scare her away? Not necessarily. And then he realized what he’d left out in talking to his mother.

Hurriedly he retraced his steps, bursting into the library to find his mother on the phone.

She hung up as soon as she saw it was Derek.

He blurted his question before she had a chance to react to his return.

“Mom, can you think of any reason the Hunters would be upset by Stacy Millman’s arrival in town?”

“The Hunters? Why should they be? What makes you think they are?”

Again she’d answered too quickly. It made him think of something else that had begun to bother him lately.

“Mom, why did the Hunters pay for my college education? Whenever I’ve been around old Mrs. Hunter she’s been downright disagreeable, as though she dislikes me, so why should she give you money for me?”

He’d only found out about the money recently. At the time he’d been too stunned to question it.

“Mrs. Hunter has always valued industry in young people. When you juggled your job at the beach with gardening work on the estate, she felt you were entitled to help. You know she’s always seen herself as the town benefactress and she thought you were deserving of her charity.”

“Why should we need charity from the Hunters?”

He could see she was becoming exasperated by his questions. She slapped her eyeglasses on in the way she had always done to show the conversation was at an end as far as she was concerned.

“I don’t know,” she snapped. “Why don’t you ask them!”

Once again Derek left the library feeling that his mother was not being wholly truthful with him, and once again he was dismayed by her unaccustomed deceptiveness.

Funny, before Stacy Millman had shown up on the edge of town, he’d had fleeting thoughts that there were undercurrents of something unhealthy happening around him, but he’d always been able to push them away. He’d been a busy lad, never working less than two jobs from the time he was fourteen, and then the college years and three years in the army as a military policeman. When he’d returned home, he’d been hired immediately into the Wabasha County sheriff’s department as a deputy. When Sheriff Townsend had retired, Derek had run for sheriff, and though his election had been a landslide, there’d been plenty of work to occupy his mind with the campaign beforehand.

Now he was being forced to pay more heed to his unease concerning the Hunters, his parents, and some of the other townsfolk.

He glanced at his watch. He had a meeting with Sheriff Job over in Dakota County at two. From the looks of things, the fog was on its way out, and he’d be able to keep the appointment. He had time for a quick trip out to the Hunter estate before lunch. He’d check into the office and if everything was quiet, he’d drive out there.

He wasn’t a kid anymore. Old Mrs. Hunter could no longer intimidate him. He’d get some straight answers from her; she’d never been one to sidestep the truth, it was almost a weapon in her hands.

The Hunter estate, consisting of a huge white stone house with extensive grounds all around, was located just a mile outside of the town proper. Derek eased the car under the portico alongside the kitchen entrance at the side of the house.

He knew the cook, Vera, not only as a neighbor but from his summers of working the grounds. She’d always made it a point to have icy fresh lemonade for him on hot days and she used to add little treats to the lunches she’d been told to provide for the gardening crew.

Vera announced his arrival to Mrs. Hunter from the kitchen intercom and, after a deliberate pause, Derek heard Mrs. Hunter tell Vera to send him into the library.

“You know the way, Derek,” Vera reminded him. “And on your way out you’ll stop and have a slice of fresh cinnamon cake, yes?”

“If I can take it with me, Vera. I’m on my way to lunch from here.”

The library was a large square room, with a fireplace on the south wall and tall windows overlooking the gardens on the north. Bookshelves rose to the ceiling and wooden ladders on a ceiling track made the upper shelves accessible.

Selma Hunter was wrapped in an afghan, sitting in a wing chair in front of a blazing fire. To Derek, who hadn’t seen her up close in quite some time, she seemed more frail than he remembered, but that might have been a trick of the flames reflecting on her face or the gloom from outside that penetrated the room from the windows on the north wall.

“You’re looking well, Mrs. Hunter,” Derek said politely as he approached her.

“As are you, Sheriff. Sit down, please.”

Derek found the heat from the fire oppressive, but he sat in the chair across from the old woman, holding his Stetson on his lap.

“This is a surprise visit, Sheriff. Has one of my employees done something wrong?”

It was like her to assume that he was there regarding one of her help rather than herself and that she keep referring to him by his title rather than his name though she’d known him most of his life and had used to call him Derek before he became sheriff. He knew it was her way of keeping him in his place. Public servants were no more of the elite than the servants who worked on the estate.

“I came to ask a few questions, Mrs. Hunter. First of all, I’m wondering if you’re familiar with any family from around here by the name of Millman.”

Mrs. Hunter’s face was smooth as glass. “No.”

Derek was taken aback. He was beginning to recognize a pattern in that facial expression, the quick way people said no without even having to give it some thought.

“Would have been twenty-five years ago, they lived here, if indeed they did,” Derek prompted. “Maybe you’d like time to think back.”

“No need, Sheriff. I know what I know. Time won’t alter facts. Is that all you wanted?”

“Would you mind telling me why you paid my way through college, Mrs. Hunter?” He could see he’d caught her off guard with this question.

“Why...why...however did you...” She banged her small, freckled fist on the arm of her chair. “I meant the gift to remain anonymous. I will certainly take your mother to task for telling you.”

“But why should you have done it in the first place?”

“Young man, what I do with my money is my own business. You should show a little more gratitude and quit snooping in things that are none of your