Father By Choice
Father By Choice
M.J. Rodgers
Emily Barrett wants a baby in her life–not a husband.And that's the reason she went to a sperm bank. Through some detective work she's able to work out who the donor is, but she doesn't ever plan to reveal to Dr. Brad Winslow that he's about to become a father.Yet when the two are forced to work together to solve a century-old mystery with a modern-day twist, Emily begins to wonder if she should revise her life plan.
Amazing a woman like this had gotten involved with such losers
Emily gazed out at the boats again. “The problem with my old life plan was that it required the cooperation of someone else to work. With my new life plan, I don’t need anyone else’s cooperation.”
So that’s why she’d gone the artificial insemination route. Her choice made a little more sense to Brad now. But understanding her reasons hadn’t changed his opinion of her actions.
Except the timing was lousy. He was in his final year as an E.R. resident and had those Board Certification exams to study for. Finding the hours he’d need to establish a close relationship with Emily was going to be difficult.
But his baby would be a reality in seven months’ time—a reality that couldn’t be ignored. He was going to be there to see to its emotional, physical and financial needs. That’s what a responsible father—and a real man—did.
Her initial life plan had included a father for her child. It was only the bastards she’d picked who had soured her on the idea.
He could make it sweet for her again.
Dear Reader,
Father by Choice is the first book in a new series called CODE RED. This series tells the stories of dedicated medical professionals, police and firefighters as they save lives and fall in love in the fictional community of Courage Bay, located in Southern California.
Courage Bay’s residents are proud of their long history of selfless acts of bravery. In this first story we get a glimpse into the community’s earliest history after a time capsule is dug up to reveal a hundred-year-old mystery. Solving the case will take the cooperation of two unlikely sleuths: Brad Winslow—an E.R. resident at Courage Bay Hospital and a man on the front lines of the community’s emergency teams—and Emily Barrett, the curator of the city’s botanical gardens and a member of its esteemed historical society.
As they join forces to find the answers to the mystery unearthed with the time capsule, Brad and Emily soon discover themselves confronted with a few modern-day surprises, as well. And the best of those surprises turns out to be the deep and very unexpected love that they begin to share.
I hope you enjoy Brad and Emily’s story. If you would like a personally autographed sticker for your book, send me a SASE at P.O. Box 284, Seabeck, Washington, 98380-0284.
Warmly,
M.J.
Father by Choice
M.J. Rodgers
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This book is for Frances Demoor of Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Fran is a real heroine.
Even when faced with the worst of life’s heartbreaks,
she always responds with kindness and love.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER ONE
EMILY BARRETT KNEW WHEN to stop and smell the roses. And those that opened beneath the dazzling April sunshine filling Courage Bay’s Botanical Gardens were irresistible.
She buried her nose inside the fragrant petals of “Perfect Moment,” a red-orange bloom with a center fold of pure gold and then went on to the “Chicago Peace” behind it, a lush pink that measured no less than five inches across. The bright lemon yellow of “Graceland” farther down the trellised walkway was already producing more flowers than any other bush. And then there was “Unforgettable”—so perfectly named—a robust giant with petals as soft as a baby’s cheek.
No gardener could take credit for creating a rose. But when she met their needs, Emily felt as proud as any parent could gazing into their beautiful fresh faces.
“We’re going to miss the crane guy,” Josh Smithson warned.
She looked up to see her assistant purposely eyeing his wristwatch. Nothing was as impatient as youth.
“Don’t you like flowers?” she asked as she straightened, feeling grateful for every one of her thirty-three years.
“They’re all right, I guess.”
The sweep of Emily’s hand encompassed the colorful blooms fluttering in the early afternoon breeze. “All right? What could be more impressive than this?”
“I don’t know.”
Josh’s most frequent answer to any question she asked. Either he knew very little about his own feelings or was hesitant to reveal them.
When Emily was nineteen, she knew exactly how she felt and had no problem sharing it. As her brothers used to complain, getting her to shut up was the real trick. Maybe this was a gender thing. Most of the males she knew refused to acknowledge they even had feelings, much less took the time to examine them.
“You want me to like the flowers, Dr. Barrett?”
If Josh had asked that sarcastically, she would have laughed. But the flat-open sincerity in his words bothered Emily.
“You don’t have to like them for me. Or anyone else. Like them for you or not at all.”
“You won’t be disappointed?”
“Hey, you work hard, and you’re dependable. I’ve never had a better assistant. So if flowers aren’t your thing, it’s okay.”
He greeted her assurance with a bony shoulder shrug.
“What is your thing, Josh?”
“I don’t know.”
There it was again. And the saddest thing about his words was that Emily believed them. Why did high schools require all kids learn algebra—something which most of them would never use—and yet fail to teach them how important it was to get to know themselves—something they could all use?
“Has taking this year off before going to college helped at all?” she asked.
Another shrug.
“Your folks have any suggestions?” she persisted.
“My dad and granddad want me to study science like they did and join the firm. But I suck at that stuff.”
“So outside of being a great assistant, what don’t you suck at?”
“I don’t know.”
Emily gave up. Josh was a good worker, but as a conversationalist he left a lot to be desired. Her thoughts were rudely interrupted by the sudden blast of a leaf blower. Oh, no. Not again. She whirled around, trying to determine where he was. Then the breeze blew a faint whiff of gasoline fumes in her face and she knew.
Emily charged up the path through the rose garden, past the swaying beds of fragrant lilacs, and broke into a jog around the lily pond. Turning the corner, she saw Lester inside the greenhouse. He was shuffling to the tune he heard in his headphones, the leaf blower in his hand blasting dirt and debris off the stone path.
She’d asked him repeatedly not to use that polluting piece of crap in the Botanical Gardens, especially not the greenhouse. The toxic fumes were dangerous to the more fragile plant species, not to mention human lungs.
But Lester considered sweeping with a broom to be beneath his manhood. Which was why, every time he thought she wasn’t around, he brought out the leaf blower.
Emily waved, trying to get his attention. But he wasn’t looking in her direction. She hurried up the cobblestone path toward him, feeling her nostrils burn, trying not to inhale too deeply. She called out to him, but he obviously couldn’t hear her above the noise of the leaf blower and whatever he considered music in his ears.
Her temples had begun to throb. She entered the greenhouse, knowing she’d have to grab his arm to get his attention. But before she could, the heat and exhaust hit her full blast.
And she was sinking into a spinning, blinding nothingness.
BRAD WINSLOW OFTEN THOUGHT that working in the E.R. was a lot like going to the theater. It was always high drama with life hanging in the balance. But whether he ultimately found himself part of a mystery, triumph, tragedy or farce sometimes depended less on the skill and dedication of Courage Bay’s team of medical professionals than it did on the assortment of characters coming through the door.
Today the E.R. was overflowing with crazy fools bent on tempting fate and the limits of their medical insurance.
Behind curtains one and two were a pair of middle-aged golfers with head wounds—continuing to exchange obscenities while they waited for their CT scans. They’d been so bent on ramming each other’s golf carts as they raced to the next green that they never noticed they’d taken a wrong turn.
Fortunately, the driver of the industrial-size lawn mower they’d smashed into had escaped injury. It was the two idiots who had landed on his windshield that needed their heads examined.
Then there was the guy behind curtain three who decided to sail his son’s skateboard down his daughter’s slide to see how much lift he could get. He lifted over his neighbor’s fence and landed in the swimming pool.
Lucky for him the neighbor had filled it that morning or he’d have cracked a lot more than a collarbone.
And behind curtain four was the teenage artist determined to have a butterfly tattoo on her boob no matter how much her parents objected. She’d assembled a sewing needle, candle, some food coloring and had at it—until her swallowtail turned into an infected swirl of blisters.
Sometimes the most difficult part of being an E.R. physician was maintaining the controlled detachment that was a necessity in the face of such human folly.
Brad was passing the base radio station when the paramedic line began to ring. The nurse who generally answered the calls was trying to get a naked seventy-year-old loony balancing a bedpan on his head to return to the examining room.
Yep, it was definitely the day for crazies. Brad stopped to pick up the phone.
“Courage Bay E.R. Winslow.”
“It’s Paramedic Kellison on Rescue Squad Two. How do you copy?”
“Loud and clear, Kellison.”
“We’re en route to your location with a Code Red.”
Code Red meant they were coming in with red lights and siren—the emergency team’s protocol whenever they were faced with a possible life-threatening situation.
“We’ve got a female, around thirty, fell without warning onto a cobblestone path approximately twenty minutes ago,” Kellison continued. “Unconsciousness. No observable wounds. Her pressure is ninety-five over sixty, rate about seventy. She’s somewhat pale, but nondiaphoretic at this time. ETA to ambulance bay about three minutes.”
“We’ll be expecting you,” Brad said. “CB clear.”
“Number Two clear.”
Brad signaled to a passing trauma nurse and went to put on a fresh gown and gloves. With a little luck maybe this patient wouldn’t turn out to be a loony.
EMILY WAS ENCASED in thick white mosquito nets. She was thankful. The incessant buzzing that was going on outside was getting louder. Last time she’d been bitten by one of those bloodsuckers, she’d endured a painful welt for several days. Had one of the sprinkler systems developed a leak? Was water pooling somewhere? Were they breeding within the Botanical Gardens?
She tried to respect all life. But mosquitoes were a species that stretched the limits of her tolerance. She could hear one of them now—very loud and insistent.
“Wake up, Emily. I know you can hear me.”
Not a mosquito. An urgent voice—deep and very male—from someone used to being listened to. Her eyes fluttered open to a blinding light. She grimaced and quickly shut them again.
A hand closed over her forearm—large, warm. “Emily, you lost consciousness. You’re in Courage Bay’s Emergency Room.”
She still couldn’t make sense out of the blurred words coming through the thick mosquito netting, but the deep resonance of his voice vibrated nicely in her ears.
“Emily, we’re taking good care of you. But I need you to tell me if you hurt anywhere. I’m Dr. Brad Winslow.”
Brad Winslow?
“English ancestry. Thirty-one. Six foot three. One hundred ninety pounds. Black hair. Gray eyes. Birthday, March 25. Favorite color, blue. Favorite food, cheesecake. Favorite song—”
“What?”
The sharp demand of his voice sliced through the net surrounding Emily’s woolly thoughts and brought her to a full and sudden consciousness. She opened her eyes and blinked into the blurry face of the big-shouldered man hovering over her.
“Tell me who you are,” he said.
“Emily Barrett,” she responded to the fuzzy outline. “Who are you?”
“Dr. Brad Winslow.”
She’d just been dreaming about Brad Winslow. Was she still dreaming? Slowly, her vision cleared and his features came into focus. Thick, dark hair. Straight eyebrows. A face full of strong bones and clean lines. And eyes the color of polished pewter. Wow. No, he couldn’t be. Could he?
Pulling herself into a sitting position, she looked around. She was in an E.R. examining room, all right. Fully clothed, thankfully, except for her shoes. A blood-pressure cuff circled her left arm. A nurse was pumping it up.
“What happened?” Emily asked.
“You lost consciousness,” Brad said. “The paramedics brought you in.”
The nurse released the pressure on her arm and took off the cuff. “One ten over seventy.”
“How do you feel?” Brad asked.
“Fine.” Physically, she was. But mentally and emotionally, she was still reeling from the shock of awakening to find him.
“Do you know where you are?” he asked.
“I’m in the Courage Bay E.R.”
“And why are you here?”
“You just told me it was because I lost consciousness.”
“Lucid and responsive to verbal stimuli,” he said to the nurse who nodded and made a note on the sheet attached to the clipboard she held.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” Brad asked.
“Walking into the greenhouse,” Emily said.
He shone a small flashlight in her eye. She blinked.
“Are you in pain anywhere?”
“No.”
“Do you have any medical conditions?”
“No.”
He switched the light to her other eye. “Are you on any medication?”
“No.”
“Have you had any alcohol today?”
“Of course not.”
“Drugs?”
She understood these questions probably had to be asked. But she was beginning to resent them. “Half a cup of coffee this morning,” she said. “But I’m trying to get clean.”
Not even a twitch to his lip. So much for his purported sense of humor.
“Have you had any operations?” he asked.
“No,” she responded.
He turned off the light. “How many fingers do you see?”
“One.”
And a strong-looking hand, well formed. At least the physical part of him appeared to be as advertised. When he positioned the listening end of the stethoscope in his ears, she knew what was coming. Even so, she gave a small start when he slipped the circular disk beneath the V-neck of her blouse.
Brad showed no sign that he noticed, but the nurse smiled at her in sympathy. “Cold, isn’t it?”
Thankful her response had been misinterpreted, Emily gratefully returned her smile. Before Brad could ask her to take a deep breath and hold it, she had done so.
After listening to what was going on inside her from several different spots, he checked the reflexes in her elbows and knees all the while continuing to ask questions about her medical history.
Emily was proud of her calm and cognizant answers. Especially when she considered how incredible it was meeting him this way. Or meeting him any way for that matter.
Another nurse interrupted the examination when she poked her head into the room. “Two victims of a construction accident en route. Scaffolding collapsed from beneath them when they were two stories up. They’re both critical. ETA is four minutes.”
“I’ll join you when I’m finished here,” Brad called over his shoulder before addressing the nurse beside him. “Why don’t you go help her prep. I’ll handle this.”
The nurse nodded and followed the other one out.
Brad’s hands circled to the back of Emily’s neck and felt their way into her scalp, his probing fingers firm but gentle.
“Do you feel any tenderness here?”
His expression was one of total concentration as he gazed at a blank wall to the right.
She realized she was staring at the slight cleft in his chin and averted her eyes. “Uh…no.”
“What about here?”
“No. I’m fine. Really.”
He ceased the exploration of her scalp, placed a finger on her pulse. His eyes focused on his wristwatch.
“People who are fine don’t suddenly lose consciousness for nearly thirty minutes. Have you had anything to eat or drink today?”
“Breakfast was light. Normally I have a full lunch at noon, but I had to attend to some business about that time. How did I get here?”
Brad glanced at the clipboard that the nurse had left lying on the bed table. “A Josh Smithson called the paramedics. Identified himself as your assistant.”
“Poor Josh. I must have scared him to death.”
“What is your business?”
“I take care of plants.”
“Have you been using any new pesticides or fertilizers in your duties?”
“No.”
He released her hand. “Your pulse is a little fast.”
With him taking it, she wasn’t surprised.
He picked up the chart to make a note. “Any chance you’re pregnant?”
Thank God he’d taken her pulse before asking that question. “No chance about it. I’m eight weeks pregnant.”
His eyes shot to hers. “Why didn’t you tell me that when I asked if you had any medical conditions?”
She sat up a bit straighter, annoyed at the insinuated censure of his question. “A medical condition implies something’s wrong. Nothing’s wrong with being pregnant. That’s why I fainted, isn’t it?”
“Fainting during early and middle pregnancy is a common experience. The hormone, progesterone, is at an all-time high, relaxing the walls of the blood vessels, making the blood pool in your hands and feet and away from your head. The medical term for it is postural hypotension.”
“So, it’s perfectly normal.”
“Remaining unconscious for nearly thirty minutes is not normal. Fainting is the way the body gets the head down so blood can immediately return to it. You should have come out of the faint in a minute or two. We need to find out why you didn’t.”
“The leaf blower.”
“Excuse me?”
“The exhaust from a leaf blower our maintenance man was using. The smell was bad enough out in the open air, but inside the greenhouse, the concentration was lethal. I’ve always been sensitive to fumes. When I was a kid, the buildup of carbon monoxide at the back of a school bus could put me out. And often did.”
“What’s the temperature in the greenhouse?”
“Ten to fifteen degrees warmer than the ambient outside air.”
He scribbled something on the chart. “The prolonged unconsciousness could have resulted from the combination of postural hypotension, exhaust fumes and exposure to sudden heat. Your vital signs are normal. I don’t see that you’ve suffered any ill effects. But there’s no point in taking chances. I’m going to order some blood work to make sure we’re not missing anything.”
If he ordered tests on her, there was a good chance that he’d discover her other records at this hospital. Emily couldn’t risk that.
“I appreciate the thoroughness, but that won’t be necessary. I feel fine.”
“Ms. Barrett, it’s important you have the tests. For you and your fetus.”
“I believe you. And your concern is appreciated. Really. But I have an appointment with my doctor on Monday, and I’d feel more comfortable talking things over with her, woman to woman. I’m sure you understand.”
It was the perfect out. No male doctor could argue with a woman about her preference in such a matter.
But Brad Winslow sure looked as if he wanted to. “Your doctor will want to talk to me. Give me her name so that I can note the chart. When she calls, the nurse will know to put her through.”
No way Emily was going to let her doctor call Brad Winslow—or let him know her doctor’s real name. He was waiting for an answer. She quickly searched her mind for a substitute and came up with her favorite grade-school teacher. “Landerman.”
He wrote down the name. “Is Dr. Landerman new to Courage Bay?”
“Her practice is in L.A.,” Emily lied, then realized the other questions that might raise. “She’s an old friend of the family, which is why I don’t mind driving so far to see her.”
“What’s her number?”
“I don’t have it memorized. Thanks for everything.”
Emily could see her shoes on the bottom shelf of the cart next to the bed. She scooted to the side of the examining table, intent on slipping off it and getting to them.
But before she could swing her legs over, Brad stepped forward, rested the hospital chart on the edge of the bed’s metal rim and effectively blocked her path.
“Your assistant wasn’t able to provide your home address, number and next of kin. Let’s take a moment to fill in the blanks, shall we?”
“No reason to take up your time with that,” Emily said quickly. “I’ll give my insurance information to the clerk in admissions. She’ll be able to get whatever she requires from it.”
“You sound like you know your way around this hospital.”
“I’ve visited friends here from time to time.”
She waited for him to move out of her way. He didn’t.
“All right, Ms. Barrett, how do you know about me?”
His authoritative tone had developed an even sharper edge and his eyes were chips of granite.
For a second Emily stared at him. Then it hit her. Dear heavens. Those things she’d been thinking about him before she came to. She must have said them aloud. Oh, hell.
Don’t panic, Emily. You can handle this. Remember, the best defense when cornered is to act innocent.
She squinted at him like someone who’d forgotten her glasses. “I’m sorry. I don’t seem to recognize you, Doctor. Do we know each other?”
His skeptical expression told her he wasn’t buying the act. The sound of a siren approached. Footsteps rushed past in the hallway. The injured men from the construction site were here. This was her chance to escape.
Second-best defense—run to the nearest exit.
“You have people who need you,” she said. “I’d better be on my way. Thank you for taking care of me, Dr…uh… I’m sorry. What was your name again?”
“Where did you find out those very personal things about me?” he demanded, not budging an inch.
She did her best to look confused. “What things?”
“My ethnic background, coloring, height, weight, age, favorite color, favorite—”
“I’m sorry,” she interrupted with a regretful shake of her head, “but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You expect me to believe you don’t remember what you said?”
“I have no memory of meeting you before today, Doctor. When am I supposed to have said these things?”
“You said them while lying on this bed not five minutes ago. And you know it. You’re not leaving here until you tell me exactly where you learned those personal details of my life.”
She could see he damn well meant it, too. There was only one choice left.
Third-best defense—scare the hell out of the opponent so he runs to the nearest exit.
Emily plastered a look of excitement on her face. “I told you about personal details in your life? And they were accurate? Well, well. That hasn’t happened in quite a while.”
“What hasn’t?”
“When I’ve been in semiconscious states before, I’ve shown…well, that is, people have told me I display very strong psychic powers.”
For a fraction of a second, something that looked like discomfort flashed across his stoic features.
Emily settled farther back on the bed, no longer making any attempt to leave. As a matter of fact, she was doing her best to convey the impression that she planned to stay awhile.
“Once I collapsed in a store and before I came to, I’d told the owner all about the affair he was having with his bookkeeper,” she lied blithely. “Of course, he was a little upset at me since his wife was standing right next to him at the time. But that’s one of the drawbacks of being a semiconscious psychic.”
Brad’s eyes darted toward the phone on the wall. Debating whether he should call for restraints or a psychiatric consultation?
“This is really exciting, Doctor. You don’t know how glad I am you told me. So many people are afraid of acknowledging any sense beyond the mundane five—especially people from the so-called scientific disciplines. Why most doctors wouldn’t dream of repeating what you did for fear of being ridiculed.”
His eyebrows inched so tightly together, they were about to meet.
“Please, you must give me the details of everything you said and what I told you,” she begged. “When I tell people about this, they’re going to want to be sure you didn’t give me any hints. Not that I blame them for being skeptical. There are so many fakes out there. Do you mind if I borrow some paper and a pen to take notes?”
To his credit, he didn’t so much as flinch. But he was clenching the hospital chart so hard, his knuckles were white. It took an effort of will for Emily to keep a straight face.
A nurse rapped once on the door, then stuck her head into the room. “You want the concussion or the bleeder?”
“The bleeder,” he said. “Ms. Barrett is ready to be released.”
He shoved the paperwork in the nurse’s hands and was out of the room so fast that Emily could feel the gust of air displaced in his wake.
She let out a sigh of relief. Well, she’d managed to dodge that bullet. But only just. On paper, Brad Winslow had been very impressive. In person he was one formidable son of a gun.
“ARE YOU SURE YOU’RE OKAY, EM?” Dorothy Mission asked for the umpteenth time as they worked together to prepare dinner in her kitchen.
Dumping the romaine lettuce she’d chopped into a large salad bowl, Emily sent her friend a look of exasperation. “If you don’t stop asking me if I’m okay, I’m going to throw this salad at you.”
Dorothy smiled. “Could you wait until you slice in the tomatoes? A green outfit always looks more festive with a nice splash of red.”
Emily chuckled as she went back to her task. “Truth is, I nearly had a heart attack when it dawned on me that I’d unconsciously blabbed all that stuff to Brad Winslow.”
“Imagine the jolt he must have felt hearing what you said.”
“At least he made sure I was okay and everything that was medical had been attended to before he tried to nail me to the wall on it.”
“Em, I know you said you never wanted to meet him, but now that you have, are you glad?”
She gave the question some serious thought as she chopped the carrots. “I admit it did satisfy a certain curiosity.”
“Is he everything that you…hoped?”
Emily glanced over at the speculative look on her friend’s face. “Forget it, Dot. He’s just a man like any other. And, as far as I’m concerned, good for one thing and one thing only.”
“Oh, I think they might have one or two other uses,” her friend said with a mischievous smile.
“I can open tight jars and take out the trash myself, thank you,” Emily said, knowing perfectly well that was not what Dot had been referring to.
“Come on,” Dorothy persisted. “You selected Brad Winslow out of the hundreds you could have picked. You must think he’s special. What stood out most strongly when you met him today?”
“That he’s no one to fool around with. If I hadn’t lied my head off and known what button to push, he’d have found me out, and I’d be in serious trouble now.”
“Em, I respect your wishes on this, really I do. But you’re such a nice person that… I mean even after all you’ve been through, I guess I still hope you’ll…oh, forget it. You’re right. I can’t pretend to understand what I haven’t experienced. And people who say they know how someone else feels are irritating.”
“On that we agree wholeheartedly,” Emily said.
“You two are agreeing?” Holly Mission said as she entered the room. “Oh, this can’t be good.”
Dorothy gave her daughter a hug. Holly was both smart and sweet—a seventeen-year-old version of her mom.
“So, is Lester gone?” Dorothy asked Holly.
“Yeah, Josh and I stuck around until he got his stuff together and drove off.”
“Did you get his key to the maintenance gate?”
“Oh, hell, Mom. I forgot.”
“Key?” Emily repeated.
“Lester quit,” Dorothy said. “When I went to bawl him out about the leaf blower incident sending you to the E.R. this afternoon, I found him loading sacks of organic fertilizer into his pickup.”
“He was stealing them?”
Dorothy nodded. “First story he gave me was that he was moving the sacks to the other side of the Gardens so they’d be in place when he fertilized next week. But when I pointed to some of your new rose hybrids in between the sacks of fertilizer in his pickup, he had no convenient lie ready for why they were there.”
Emily shook her head. “I’ve been wondering why so many of our supplies seemed to be missing lately.”
“His father has opened a small nursery on the outskirts of town,” Dorothy said. “No doubt Lester’s been taking the supplies from the Botanical Gardens over to him. I told him he had a choice. Either quit or I’d see to it that you fired him.”
“That must have been hard for you, Dot.”
“I never should have suggested you hire him in the first place. I love my cousin but her kid is a loser. I swear he got all of his father’s genes and not one of hers. When Lester was thirteen, I caught him stealing from her purse so he could buy marijuana from another kid pushing it at school. Supposedly, he got himself clean. But clean or not, ten years later and he’s still a thief.”
“I’m sorry about forgetting the key, Emily,” Holly said. “But I don’t think Lester will come back. I watched closely to make sure that he didn’t try to put anything that wasn’t his into his pickup. Josh was right beside me, scowling at him the whole time he was getting his stuff together. And when he started to drive away, Josh yelled at him not to come back.”
“Well, good for our Josh,” Dorothy said. “He seems to be working out okay despite his grandfather’s claim that the boy’s clueless.”
“Josh is a very good assistant,” Emily said. “He simply needs a little time to find his direction in life.”
“Speaking of time,” Holly said, “Josh asked me to remind you to meet with the crane guy today.”
“I have. The sundial has been prepped and readied for tomorrow.”
“Do you need my help on anything?” Dorothy asked.
“Thanks, but I took care of the other last-minute details before coming over. Gardens, dignitaries and media are all in line. We are good to go, Mission Control.”
Dorothy smiled as she set a plate of sliced roast beef on the kitchen table. Emily put the mixed-salad bowl between the beef and a basket of steaming baked potatoes. The fact that her friend still insisted on eating in the kitchen when Emily joined them always made her feel like one of the Mission family.
“Smartest thing I ever did was to convince my fellow board members to put you in charge of the Founders Day Celebration. It’s going to be a smashing success, Em.”
“Okay, what are all you smashing women smashing now?” Ted Mission asked with a grin as he came rustling in the back door, keys and briefcase jangling by his side.
Dorothy immediately stopped what she was doing and went to greet her husband.
Ted and Dorothy Mission had been married more than twenty-five years, were past fifty and packed a dozen extra pounds of good living around their middles. But the embrace and kiss they shared were as hot as young lovers’.
“They’re at it again,” Holly said, shaking her head, but wearing a smile.
Emily watched her friends as she always did—with undisguised envy. Dorothy and Ted had it all—rewarding careers, a long-term love match and a brainy daughter headed for Harvard in the fall.
Once Emily had dreamed of having it all. Now she knew that fulfilling work and a precious baby to love would be enough.
For men might come and go. But a child was forever.
ATTENDING PHYSICIAN Alec Giroux was going over charts when Brad walked by his office on his way out. He waved Brad over.
“You certainly had your share of crazies today,” Alec said as he gestured to the stack of charts in front of him. “Nice save on that chest wound.”
“We were lucky we didn’t lose anyone,” Brad said as he folded his arms and rested his leg against the desk.
Alec leaned back in his chair, the expression on his face conveying the fact that he knew luck had nothing to do with it. “You’re going to ace those board exams next month.”
Brad appreciated the vote of confidence. From the moment he’d begun his residency in emergency medicine at Courage Bay Hospital four years before, Alec had been far more friend and supporter than supervisor.
“You going to take Guy up on his offer of a permanent position here when the exams are over?” Alec asked.
Brad wanted to. In his first month on the job he’d learned more from Alec and his brother, Guy, their chief of emergency medicine, than he’d learned in all his years at medical school. They were the best.
But the money at the community hospital was not. He hadn’t paid off all of his eight years of staggering school loans.
“I’m giving it some thought,” he said, honestly.
Alec nodded. As a single father, he probably knew how difficult it could be to catch up on bills and make ends meet.
“I was reviewing Emily Barrett’s chart,” he said. “Surprised to see it among the bunch of wackos we had walking the halls today.”
Even hearing her name was enough to get Brad to un-cross his arms and plant both feet firmly beneath him. “You know Emily Barrett?”
“My sister, Natalie, says she’s a regular in the pediatric and geriatric wards upstairs.”
Yeah, Brad figured knowing someone at this hospital was how Emily had really learned that personal stuff about him.
“Emily brings flowers and potted plants to the patients who don’t get visitors,” Alec continued. “Nice lady.”
“Certifiable kook,” Brad said beneath his breath.
“I pulled her hospital records,” Alec went on, not having heard the comment. “I was hoping they might shed some light on her prolonged unconsciousness today, but no clues there. You were right to suggest more tests. Shame she refused them. All we can do is trust that she’ll follow up with her obstetrician.”
Brad took a step forward. “She didn’t tell me she’d been admitted to this hospital.”
“Outpatient in the OB-GYN clinic for her artificial insemination eight weeks ago,” Alec explained as he handed over the record. “Dr. Jill Crispin does all of her inseminations and deliveries here.”
Brad started, not sure he’d heard right. “Are you telling me Jill Crispin from the Crispin Fertility Clinic is Emily Barrett’s doctor?”
“You know Dr. Crispin?”
“I’ve heard of her,” Brad said as he quickly read through the hospital record of Emily Barrett that he held in his hands. This had to be a coincidence. The transactions were absolutely confidential. No way either party could learn about the other.
Except as his eyes fixed on Emily Barrett’s maiden name, he suddenly saw that there was one way.
“Brad, is there something wrong? Brad?”
CHAPTER TWO
“WHY DID YOU DO IT?” Brad demanded, working hard to control the anger that seethed beneath his surface calm.
Ed Corbin looked his friend squarely in the eye, took a sip of his beer and swallowed hard. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“You damn well did have a choice.”
Brad’s raised voice turned a lot of curious heads in his direction. Ed pulled some bills out of his pocket and slapped them on the bar. “You’re pissed. I don’t blame you. Give me a chance to explain outside, where we don’t have an audience.”
Brad didn’t argue with the need for discretion. The Courage Bay Bar and Grill was the off-duty hangout for the community’s police, fire and medical personnel. Anything overheard here would be on the gossip hotline of every emergency team by morning.
He quietly followed his friend out. A cool night breeze was coming off the ocean, the air filled with one of his favorite scents—the sea. But Brad wasn’t in an appreciative mood.
“Is this why you suddenly came up with the suggestion that I donate sperm last year? So she could get it?”
“No,” Ed said. “When I told you the Crispin Fertility Clinic was willing to pay top dollar for sperm from doctors, I did it because the director asked me to pass the word, and I knew you could use the money. Those were the only reasons. I swear.”
Brad had met Detective Ed Corbin during his first year at Courage Bay Hospital. A burglar cut himself when he’d tried to escape capture by jumping through a plate-glass window. Ed brought him into the E.R. for treatment.
While a nurse was seeing to his wounds, the guy grabbed a knife and took her hostage. Brad had kept the thief’s attention by enticing him with offers of drugs he could sell on the street in exchange for letting the nurse go—giving Ed time to circle behind the man and subdue him.
They’d made a good team that day, and good friends ever since. Brad had never known Ed to lie. He didn’t believe he was doing so now.
“What happened?” Brad asked.
“I stopped by Emily’s place about three months ago and saw all these sperm-bank questionnaires spread out on her table. When I asked her what was going on, she told me she’d decided to have a kid by artificial insemination.”
“You didn’t know before that?”
Ed shook his head. “Nearly blew me away. Never occurred to me she’d do something like that. I tried my best to talk her out of it. But Emily’s unmovable when she’s made up her mind.”
“What possessed you to tell her about me?” Brad asked.
“I figured if she was stupid enough to have some stranger’s kid, she should at least be sure she was getting good sperm. I mean, what would you have done if she were your sister?”
There was a protective note in Ed’s tone Brad had never heard before. They rarely talked about the personal stuff, which was why Brad hadn’t even known the name of Ed’s sister before today. Emily was clearly very special to him.
Brad found his anger at his friend beginning to fade. “I’ve never had a sister.”
“Count your blessings. They’re a damn pain. You love them, and all you want is the best for them. But what happens when you try to help? They tell you to butt out of their business.”
“You should have listened to her this time.”
“I couldn’t. She was going to the wrong place. The Crispin Fertility Clinic is the only one that does a thorough background check on its donors to be sure that they are who they claim. I told Emily about Jill Crispin alerting us when she discovered that a guy using a phony name and profession had applied. He turned out to be an ex-con with two outstanding warrants. That con had gotten away with donating sperm to every other damn clinic around because they never checked up on his lies. Who knows how many more there are like him around?”
“Wasn’t steering her to the right fertility clinic enough?” Brad asked. “Did you have to tell her about me?”
“Yeah, I did. You should have seen the flakes she had to pick from even at Crispin. I read the questionnaires these guys filled out. Eighty percent of them were dumb college jocks, barely literate, just looking for some extra cash. The idea that Emily’s genes would be mixing with theirs made me want to puke.”
“What about the other twenty percent?”
“I suppose some of them were decent, if you could believe what they wrote. The Crispin Clinic is careful that their donors are physically healthy and legally who they say they are. But they have no way of knowing whether these guys are telling the truth when they answer questions about their goals in life and such.”
Brad had to admit that was true. He could have lied about those things when he filled out the forms, and no one would have been the wiser.
“But when I tried to impress this fact on Emily, she turned a deaf ear,” Ed continued. “Kept telling me she’d decide who was best. Said she didn’t need me to make her decisions for her.”
“Then why did she take your recommendation on me?”
“I wasn’t sure she had. She wanted the best and I wanted the best for her, so naturally I told her all about you so she’d know which one of the anonymous donor questionnaires was yours. But the only thing she said was that if she picked your sperm, I was never going to know and neither were you.”
“I know,” Brad said. “She quoted what I entered on that damn questionnaire verbatim. And when I called her on it, she did the one thing she knew would make me back off.”
“What was that?”
“She pretended to be psychic.”
“How could she know that would make you back off?”
“Because I put it on the questionnaire. When asked what was the one thing that would make me avoid otherwise nice and pleasant people, I said it would be if they turned out to be superstitious or believed in all that psychic mumbo jumbo.”
“Brad, I’m sorry about this. She warned me to say nothing to you. I admit I wanted her to select you for her sake, but I never intended for you to find out.”
“I wish to hell I hadn’t,” Brad said on a long exhale. “What does her husband think about all this?”
“Husband? Emily’s not married.”
“But she shows Barrett as her married name. I thought—”
“Oh, she was married. Just not anymore. Hell, she doesn’t even date now.”
Brad stopped walking, grabbed his friend’s arm, halting him in his stride. “Are you telling me your sister is planning to raise the baby without a father?”
“She’ll be a good mother,” Ed said. “I’m not just saying that because she’s my sister. Emily’s wanted a kid for years, but things…didn’t work out for her. She’s thrilled to be having this baby.”
Brad released his friend’s arm and sank to the edge of a nearby concrete street planter, putting his head in his hands. This was getting worse by the minute.
“What’s wrong?”
He raised his eyes at the concern in Ed’s voice. “My brother and I never had a dad. He took off when we were young, and we never saw or heard from him again. I had a great mother. The best. It’s not enough. A kid needs a father. I always swore my kid would have one.”
“Brad, legally, the child Emily’s going to have…it’s not your kid.”
He didn’t need Ed to tell him that. Brad was only too aware that he’d signed away all legal rights to his sperm.
Yes, the money he’d received had helped to pay down his school loans. But the real reason he’d involved himself in the process was because he believed he was doing the right thing helping an infertile couple conceive.
He never imagined that he’d find out who got his sperm. Or that she’d be a single woman.
“What a goddamn mess,” he muttered to the night sky.
Ed plopped down beside him. “If you want to shoot me, I’ll loan you my gun.”
His friend’s expression told Brad how badly he felt—despite the fact that he’d been trying to do the right thing for his sister.
“I’m such a lousy shot, I’d probably miss your ugly mug and hit an innocent bystander instead.”
Ed nodded. “Then you’d have to patch him up, and I’d have to run you in. See your point. Too damn much paperwork.”
They sat for a long moment in silence as cars whizzed by on the street and several pedestrians flashed them curious looks as they passed. Brad was only minimally aware of his surroundings.
He was thinking about how careful he’d been in his relationships with women. Not once had he had unprotected sex. He’d been so sure that something like this was never going to happen to him.
“I have to talk to your sister,” he said finally.
“What are you planning to say?”
“Haven’t a clue. But I have to do something. Now that I know who’s going to have my…the baby and how it’s going to be raised, I can’t just turn my back and pretend it isn’t happening. Could you?”
“No, I guess not,” Ed agreed.
“Do you know if she’s home?”
“She’s out having dinner with friends tonight. Probably won’t be back until late. But you could catch her at the Founders Day Celebration tomorrow. I’m going if you want to ride along with me.”
The Founders Day Celebration was the biggest event of the year—if not the decade—and had been hogging the local headlines for days. Everyone wanted to attend, and from what Brad had heard, if you didn’t have some pretty high-up connections, you couldn’t get in.
“You playing bodyguard to some dignitary?” he asked.
“No, strictly there as Emily’s brother. She’s been putting it together for the past few months so she’s my in.”
Brad was sure he couldn’t have heard right. “Your sister is in charge of the Founders Day Celebration?”
“I take it she didn’t tell you.”
“She told me she was a gardener.”
Ed chuckled. “A psychic and a gardener. Boy, did she have fun with you today. Emily’s the curator of the city’s Botanical Gardens and a member of the Historical Society. She also has a Ph.D. in botany and she’s written a couple of books on medicinal plants.”
“Jeez,” Brad said as his head went back in his hands.
“Yeah, I know. A damn overachiever. Sure put the pressure on me and my brother while we were growing up. Our parents were always so button-popping proud of her. Still are. I planned to push her off a cliff when I got big enough.”
“Can’t imagine what stopped you.”
“It was this annoying habit she had of always making me feel like I was the talented one. No matter what sport I played, she was in the stands cheering for me and threatening the other team’s members with the loss of various body parts if they so much as harmed a hair on my head.”
The scene materialized so clearly in Brad’s mind that it made him wish he’d had such a sister.
“My pass to the ceremonies tomorrow is for two,” Ed said. “You can be my date if you promise not to wear anything too low-cut.”
“I’ll see what I have in my wardrobe,” Brad said dryly. “If you were me, how would you approach her on this?”
“Beats me.”
“Come on. You’ve known her all your life. You must have a feel for what would work?”
“It’s precisely because I have known her all my life that I can assure you nothing will work. Emily’s made up her mind to have this kid alone and raise it by herself. And that’s what she’ll do.”
Brad looked out at the night, hoping for inspiration. But his mind was as hazy and blank as the starless sky.
Ed grabbed hold of his arm and pulled him to his feet. “Come on. We’re going back to the bar and tie one on.”
“You think getting drunk is going to help?”
“I sure hope so. Tomorrow, I have tickets to the hottest event of the year and look who I’m taking.”
THE TEMPERATURE WAS IN the seventies, the air a fragrant kiss across Emily’s cheek. In the distance, the Pacific Ocean whispered against white sands. To the north, south and east, the steep mountains circled into a soft blue sky. The gardens all around her were ablaze with sunlight and the beauty of growing things.
“You even arranged for us to have perfect weather,” Dorothy said near her ear. “I am impressed.”
Emily sent her friend a smile.
The Botanical Gardens were filled with the by-invitation-only spectators. Chief of police Max Zirinsky was among them and so were a lot of his plainclothes officers, unobtrusively milling about and keeping a watchful eye.
On a slightly raised platform sat the city council along with Phoebe Landru and Oliver Smithson, Dorothy’s fellow members of the managing board of the Historical Society. The local KSEA TV news crew had set up cameras. Ken Kerr, the society’s photographer, was busy taking pictures with his thirty-five millimeter.
“All we need now is the mayor,” Dorothy said glancing at her watch.
As though hearing his cue, the newly elected mayor, Patrick O’Shea, turned the corner. The TV crew immediately aimed their cameras at him and started to roll. Emily went over to greet him.
The mayor shook her hand warmly, wearing a genuine smile. In Emily’s experience, there were two types of people who went into politics—egoists and idealists. The preponderance of officeholders fit into the first category. Patrick O’Shea, thankfully, fit into the second.
He’d been fire chief before running for mayor, not the kind of job that most candidates for public office held. But maybe the kind that they should. O’Shea knew how to put the welfare of the people of Courage Bay first.
Emily accompanied him to the platform and showed him to his seat. Dorothy had taken her place next to the other members of the Historical Society. The clock in the Botanical Gardens’ Heritage Museum was striking the hour. Everything was in place and on time.
As Emily turned to the crowd before her, she felt proud to be a part of this historical moment for Courage Bay. Raising her hands for quiet, she caught sight of her brother at the right of the large crowd and smiled. When she saw who was standing beside him, the smile froze on her lips.
Oh, no. What in the hell was he doing here?
Emily forced herself to turn her eyes and thoughts away. She was going to let nothing and no one interfere with this momentous occasion. “Ladies and gentlemen, it is my great pleasure to welcome you to our Founders Day Celebration. And it is my deep honor to present to you the mayor of Courage Bay, Patrick O’Shea.”
Emily took her seat beside Dorothy as Mayor O’Shea approached the podium accompanied by enthusiastic applause. When it had died down, he turned to Emily and publicly thanked her for all her hard work in making the celebration a success.
Dorothy rose and began to clap. The crowd quickly joined her as the mayor, city council and other members of the Historical Society’s managing board also got to their feet and applauded. All this focused and very unexpected attention made Emily glad she wasn’t a blusher.
Once the audience had sat down again, the mayor faced forward.
“I want to tell you a story my father told me when I was no more than five,” he began. “It’s a story I’ve passed down to my children. It’s one I hope you will pass down to yours.”
The crowd listened with hushed attention.
“In January of 1848, an American ship called Ranger was caught in a terrible storm at sea and blown off course to these Southern California shores,” O’Shea said. “When the ship was struck by lightning and began to sink, its exhausted crew would certainly have drowned if not for the brave Indians of this land who risked their lives fighting the raging current to bring them safely to shore. In honor of the selfless act of their rescuers, the survivors of Ranger named this settlement Courage Bay.”
Emily knew this story well. Still, she never tired of hearing it told. These events were a proud heritage that she and all the residents of Courage Bay shared. She found herself caught up in the favorite tale.
“When the Indian chief invited the shipwrecked crew to stay, they readily agreed,” the mayor continued. “Protected by this steep mountain range rising on three sides, our quiet community of Courage Bay remained virtually isolated from the outside world until the late nineteenth century when a road was cut through from the north. Even so, it wasn’t until 1904 when the citizens filed their town map with the county recorder’s office that Courage Bay was officially founded.”
Mayor O’Shea paused as he turned toward the large stone sundial to the right of the platform.
“As a marker of that historic event, the leaders of Courage Bay buried a time capsule beneath this enormous sundial they set in the heart of their community park, a park which has grown over the years to become our beautiful Botanical Gardens.”
He faced the crowd. “Today, exactly one hundred years later, we will remove the cover and open that time capsule. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to see what our city’s founders have preserved for us.”
Emily nodded to the man sitting in the seat of the crane. He turned on the engine and swung the telescoping crane arm over the sundial.
Earlier that morning she’d supervised the operator and his rigger as they’d dug around the eight-foot-diameter stone they would have to lift. After inserting wedges in several spots, they’d slid a metal plate beneath the sundial to protect it from cracking when it was raised. Slipping three sets of straps beneath the plate, they’d tied them together above the stone.
Lifting it now was a simple task. The rigger on the ground grabbed the steel hook at the end of the crane’s telescoping arm and fixed it beneath the sturdy straps. He then signaled the crane operator to hoist the stone away.
As Emily watched the progress, she’d found herself wondering what it was the founders of Courage Bay had bequeathed them. The sundial had been chiseled when the time capsule had been buried beneath it, specifying when it was to be opened. On the Roman numerals marking the twenty-four-hour segments were the initials of the men who had been selected to set the stone in place.
But nothing on the sundial gave a hint as to what was to be found in the chamber below. If she were to bury a time capsule today, what would she put inside?
Emily’s musings came to a quick close as the stone sundial was lifted and set aside on the cushioned platform prepared for it. The TV camera crew changed position to get a better angle, shining bright lights into the dark chamber below. The big moment had arrived.
Mayor O’Shea and the city council members were the first to reach the sides of the exposed pit and look within. Emily waited in anticipation on the adjacent platform with the other members of the Historical Society.
For a long moment, no one moved or said anything. And then one of the city council members muttered an oath. Another one straightened and stepped back.
Mayor O’Shea calmly turned to face the camera lens. “Ladies and gentlemen, there seems to be a skeleton in our time capsule’s closet.”
CHIEF OF POLICE MAX ZIRINSKY stood over the pit, instructing the Historical Society’s photographer on what angles he wanted him to shoot to get the best pictures of the skeleton that was lying beside the time capsule.
Ed beckoned Brad through the milling crowd—being held back by a line of plainclothes officers—to stand beside them. After introducing Brad to the police chief, Ed got to the reason he’d summoned his friend.
“We need your expertise. If we’re at the scene of a murder, no time capsule gets opened today. All of these very important people are going to be asked to leave so a crime team can get in here.”
“You want me to take a look at this skeleton and hopefully tell you that death was by natural causes,” Brad guessed.
“Can you?”
“I’m not a forensic anthropologist.”
“But you studied to be one,” Ed persisted.
“Even so, I have to warn you the kind of evaluation you’re asking for might not be possible. And even if it is, getting an answer could take a lot of time.”
“If we had a lot of time, we’d get a real forensic anthropologist,” Max said bluntly.
“How much time do you have?”
“Fifteen minutes, tops,” Max answered. “These are not people who are used to being kept waiting.”
No, Brad supposed they weren’t. Nothing he could do but his best. “I’m going to have to get down in the pit to get a closer look. If this is a crime scene—”
“Don’t worry,” Ed said, interrupting. “We’ll take your clothes and process them along with any dirt or whatever else you may pick up if this turns out to be a murder. Here, take these gloves and put them on. I’ll hold your sport coat.”
Brad nodded as he slipped out of his jacket and snapped on the thin evidence gloves Ed had handed him. There was only a three-foot drop to the top of the time capsule. Brad carefully slid down on the side opposite both it and the skeleton.
Bright lights followed his progress, as did a TV camera. Since Max was directing the camera, Brad assumed he’d commandeered the crew for the purposes of chronicling the scene and Brad’s initial examination of it.
His first glance at the fully articulated skeleton from above had already told him something. Decomposition followed a predictable course. The body had to have been placed here soon after death to leave an anatomically correct and intact skeleton like this.
It was also obvious that the bones had been thoroughly cleaned by insects over time and a couple stained a yellowish brown—most likely by some mineral leached from the soil on which they lay.
Brad went down on a knee and bent his head to get a ventral view of the pelvis, noting the relative narrowness of its opening and that of the sciatic notch on the edge of each hip bone. That gave him a pretty good idea about the skeleton’s sex. A cursory look at the leg and arm bones revealed a coarsening, no doubt the result of temperature changes occurring over an extensive period of time.
Then a shift in the overhead light picked up a glint of something near the right pelvic bone. He gently dipped his fingers into the earth, and, to his surprise, pulled out a gold coin.
It proved to be a twenty-dollar Liberty piece bearing the date of 1900. After rooting around in the dirt some more, he came up with something even more unexpected—a mud-encrusted dagger.
Brad’s eyes traveled up the skeleton’s rib cage and vertebral column. The bright light from above revealed no obvious knife marks on the bones. When he got to the skull, there were none there, either. But there was a round hole over one of the brow ridges. He was leaning forward to study it when he saw a dark lump inside the skull. He reached in and pulled out a spent bullet.
As Brad stood, he found Ed bending toward him, holding out an evidence bag. After slipping the dagger, coin and slug inside it, Brad climbed out of the pit.
“I take it we have a homicide,” Ed said as he stared at the dagger, his expression as ill-humored as a man suffering from a toothache.
Brad nodded as he dusted off the knees of his slacks. “Judging by the angle of the entry wound, I doubt that the guy shot himself.”
“Shot? He’s got a bullet wound?”
“My degree isn’t on the forensic side. But I’ve treated enough live shooting victims to recognize one when I see it.”
Brad paused to point at the evidence bag. “Plus which I found that slug inside his skull. The hole in the bone didn’t show any signs of healing, which also leads me to the logical conclusion that the wound was inflicted at the time of death.”
“Bullet must have lodged in his brain,” Max Zirinsky said as he came to stand next to them, looking about as thrilled as Ed did at the discoveries. “Didn’t have sufficient velocity to exit the skull. I’ve seen this kind of thing before.”
Brad noticed that the Chief of Police had made sure that even the TV crew was now behind the line of plainclothes police and that his conversation with Brad and Ed was being conducted out of the earshot of everyone else.
“What can you tell us about the victim?” Max asked.
Brad tugged off the evidence gloves. “The cranial sutures are completely closed. It has prominent browridges and robust mastoid processes. The fully erupted teeth are crooked with a fierce overbite. The pelvic opening is narrow.”
“And in English that translates to?” Max prodded.
“Adult male. Twenty-five to fifty age range. Someone will have to look a lot closer at the bones to tell you more.”
“Clothing?”
“Something in the soil near the feet that could be rotted leather boots. Nothing else visible, but I wasn’t really looking. Chances are most cloth materials disintegrated over time. Roots are impinging on the sides of the pit. Insect activity has no doubt been steady over the decades. Anything not enclosed within the time capsule was either consumed as their food or broken down by soil minerals.”
“Dr. Winslow, are you telling me that this guy was buried here at the same time as the time capsule?”
Brad nodded as he gestured toward the evidence bag. “I found that 1900 gold coin beneath the body. Can’t imagine anyone today carrying it around as if it were change in his pocket. When you add that fact to the absence of orthodontic work and the mineralization of the bones, I’d say it’s a safe bet your skeleton is at least a hundred years old.”
Relief washed over Max’s face. He grabbed Brad’s hand and gave it a hearty pump. “Thank you, Dr. Winslow.”
“You’re welcome,” Brad said, surprised. “But I thought that you were hoping it wasn’t a homicide.”
“Brad, if this guy was killed a hundred years ago, his murderer’s dead, too,” Ed explained. “That closes it for us. No crime scene, no need to delay pulling up the time capsule and getting back to the celebration.”
“Let’s keep the fact that he was murdered off the news,” Max said. “No need to distract from the ceremony. I’ll let the mayor know we can proceed.”
As soon as he was gone, Ed held out Brad’s sport coat. “Buddy, you just made me look good in front of the chief. Come on. I want to be the one to break the news to Emily. If you’re still bent on talking to her, I suggest you do it after I sing your praises.”
“Sounds good to me,” Brad said as he put on his coat and started with Ed toward the crowd. “When she told you about ending up in the E.R. yesterday, she didn’t mention meeting me, did she?”
“Not a word.”
“Good. Introduce me to her as though you have no idea that we’ve met.”
“What do you have planned?” Ed asked.
“Nothing, yet. I simply want to keep my options open. And don’t let on that I know about…you know.”
Brad had refrained from being specific because they had gotten within the hearing range of others.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Ed assured. “If she learns I said anything, she’ll kill me.”
When Emily saw Ed and Brad approaching, she broke away from the people she was with and met them halfway. True to his promise, Ed introduced Brad to her as though he had no idea his sister and friend had met before.
“Dr. Winslow and I know each other,” Emily said.
Brad nodded as though he had just figured out why she looked familiar. “Yes, of course. You were in the E.R. yesterday. How are you feeling today, Mrs. Barrett?”
“Fine, thank you,” she said, but she was studying him intently.
He was studying her, as well. Yesterday, she’d been his patient, and as such he’d carefully restricted his observations to an impersonal list of vital signs.
Today, she was a tall, uncommonly lovely woman with long chestnut hair, large amber eyes and a natural warmth that had effortlessly captivated the mayor as well as the rest of the crowd.
And she was irritating him more by the minute. Why would an intelligent, attractive woman like this—who could no doubt charm most men into doing whatever she wanted—choose to have a child by artificial insemination?
It didn’t make sense. Brad needed things to make sense—and this most of all.
“I have some good news, Em,” Ed said. “Brad has saved the day. Even though your skeleton appears to have been the victim of foul play, the guy met his maker a hundred years ago. The Founders Day Celebration can go ahead as planned.”
“That is good news,” Emily agreed, looking relieved. “But you do realize that learning who this skeleton is and how he came to be buried with the time capsule could be as significant as anything else we uncover today?”
Ed shrugged. “That’s something for you historians to figure out.”
“Aren’t you going to investigate?”
“Em, it’s not a police matter.”
“But if he was murdered—”
“Look, I’d like to help you on this, but I can’t. And neither can the department. We have far too many unsolved homicides with living perps running around out there that need to be found. No one has the time to dig into old crimes where the murderers are long dead.”
Watching the disappointment marring Emily’s smooth forehead, Brad knew opportunity was knocking and quickly stepped forward to open the door. “I may be able to help you with the skeleton’s identity,” he said.
She turned toward him, her expression full of that cool, professional calm he thought he had a patent on. “How could you help?”
Before he had an opportunity to answer, a middle-aged woman approached them. Brad recognized her as the one who had sat next to Emily and led the crowd in its applause of her efforts.
Emily introduced her friend as Dr. Dorothy Mission, a member of the managing board of the Courage Bay Historical Society.
“Do you prefer doctor or Dorothy?” Brad asked as he shook the hand offered to him.
“Always depends on who’s asking,” Dorothy said. “In your case, definitely Dot.”
She was flirting with him in that totally non offensive and non serious way that a plump woman over fifty with guts and good humor could pull off. He liked her immediately. “I’m Brad.”
“Did I overhear you say something about helping out, Brad?” Dorothy asked.
“Yes, I have some knowledge of forensic anthropology,” he said. “There’s a lot that can be learned from bones. I’ll study the skeleton for you and see what I can turn up.”
“That’s a generous offer,” Emily said, in a tone that was something less than bursting with enthusiasm. “But I wouldn’t presume to—”
“I like mysteries,” he interrupted. “And you have to admit, this hundred-year-old skeleton presents an interesting one.”
“So our skeleton isn’t of recent origin,” Dorothy said. “No wonder Max Zirinsky was looking so relieved.”
“It appears to have been buried with the time capsule, Dot,” Emily explained. “And to have been murdered.”
“Murdered?” Dorothy repeated.
“Let’s keep that fact among ourselves,” Ed said quickly. “At least until Brad can examine it and give us the details.”
“We’ll be delighted to avail ourselves of your expertise,” Dorothy said.
Out of the corner of his eye, Brad could see that Emily was not quite so delighted.
He turned to Ed before she could think of any more excuses to brush him off. “Can you arrange to have the skeleton carefully removed and taken to the hospital morgue after the ceremony?”
Ed frowned as he looked over at the chief of police. Brad understood he was going to have to sell his superior on this use of the department’s resources for this non-case and clearly wasn’t looking forward to the task.
“What the hell,” Ed said. “If anybody tries to give me grief, I’ll just remind them of all the important noses that would be out of joint if you hadn’t been here today. What do you want me to do with this stuff?”
He was holding up the evidence bag with the dagger, coin and spent slug.
“Keep them with the skeleton for now. Could be important to the examination later. That is, if that’s all right with you,” Brad said as he turned to Emily.
She nodded. That told Brad what he wanted to know. She’d accepted his offer of help, despite her suspicions.
While he was doing this favor for her, he should be able to get close enough to discover what made her tick. Once he did, he could decide how best to convince her that she was wrong to try to bring up a child by herself.
That he would convince her, he had no doubt. Had she really been a superstitious person, no amount of logic could have reached her. But she was clearly intelligent and, even better, a woman of science.
She would respond to reason. He just had to find the right approach.
The mayor advanced toward the podium at that moment and took the microphone in hand.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m happy to report that thanks to Dr. Brad Winslow’s expert analysis, we know that the skeleton in our time capsule’s closet is a fascinating artifact that, no doubt, will become an interesting research project for our Historical Society. Now please take your seats, for we are about to lift the time capsule out of its resting place and take a look inside. Who knows what other surprises lie in wait?”
CHAPTER THREE
“YOU LIED TO ME, EMILY BARRETT,” Dorothy whispered in her ear when they had retaken their seats.
“About what?” Emily whispered back.
“Dr. Brad Winslow is anything but just another guy.”
“And you’re saying that because…?”
“Come on, Em. You know perfectly well that man’s the reason we women were given breasts that heave and spines that melt.”
Emily contained her smile. Dorothy had insisted Brad join them on the platform in thanks for his help with the skeleton. He sat with the city council, on the receiving end of a lot of appreciative looks from the women in the audience. There was something about the guy, all right. Not that Emily had any intention of admitting that to her friend.
“Does Ted know you lust after other men like this?” she teased.
“I’m not lusting. I’m merely observing and appreciating. But you, my friend, are in a position to lust away. In case you need reminding.”
Emily was saved from answering when the grinding gears of the crane caught everyone’s attention, and the time capsule was lifted out of the pit.
It was a rectangular, steel-riveted box, about three-by-four feet and at least three feet deep. The rigger on the ground directed the crane’s telescoping arm until the capsule was set gently on the large felt-covered pad Emily had waiting beside the podium.
As the workmen went about removing the lid, everyone on the platform circled them in anticipation.
“We’ll only be able to get a brief glimpse at what’s inside,” the mayor cautioned the crowd as he slipped on thin plastic gloves. “The Historical Society must take possession of the contents so that they can be preserved. But once cataloged, our treasure will be shared.”
When the lid came up, the mayor lifted out the item on the top—a letter wrapped in string and sealed with wax. He unfolded it very carefully and began to read.
“To the Inheritors of Courage Bay, 2004: Inside this first carton, we send you the images of the white-winged ships that sail into our bay bringing us news and goods from distant shores. There are also photographs of our dwellings made of strong wood and brick, with wisps of smoke lifting out of our chimneys from the fireplaces that keep us warm when winter comes. Rising behind our homes you’ll glimpse the steep mountains that for generations have sheltered us from the sorrow and ravages of war. Above them is the sky of pale blue that will bring out scarlet sheets to wrap our sun to sleep tonight. And lastly we send to you our faces—both young and old, fair and less favored, the lines upon all being drawn with life’s deft pen.
“What will these pictures mean to you a hundred years hence? This we cannot fathom. Nor can we know what you will find here in your time. But we can tell you what you would have found in ours.
“This is a beloved world, swept with sunshine, the breath of flowers, the song of birds, forests bounding with wildlife and a people with hearts full of gratitude. We, the guardians of Courage Bay, pledge to care for this good land and for one another. When our history is written, may it be recorded with a light and understanding hand.”
O’Shea slowly raised his head. “This letter I’ve just read to you is signed by the mayor and eleven others. They are identified at the bottom as the twelve men chosen to bury the capsule and set the sundial in place. I’m going to close the letter immediately to protect it from deteriorating. Now let’s have a quick look at those promised pictures.”
The wooden box beneath the letter held at least a hundred pristine photographs, wrapped in cloth. Phoebe Landru, the senior member of the managing board of the Historical Society, had the honor of taking out a few to show them to the crowd.
Emily got a brief glimpse at a picture of the Courage Bay Livery Stable and Feed Store. A blacksmith shop. An apothecary. Then there was a shot of the mountains, heavy with trees that had since been logged. And finally, the photo of a young woman with a lovely heart-shaped face. Phoebe flashed the image briefly to the audience and then carefully put it back in the box with the others.
The mayor pulled the next packet from the time capsule. He identified it as a duplicate of the hand-drawn map of Courage Bay that had been filed at the county courthouse.
After showing it to the crowd and making sure the TV crew got a shot, the mayor stepped aside and invited Dorothy to open the next item in the capsule. It was a box filled with copies of the Courage Bay Bulletin, a newspaper that had been defunct for nearly fifty years. One of the copies Dorothy held up for the audience to see had a banner headline announcing that the Wright Bros. Flying Machine had Conquered the Sky. Another proclaimed that the time capsule was to be buried that day.
Beneath the box of newspapers was one with a stack of separate sheets of paper on which townspeople had recorded their predictions for the future. Emily was given the fun of selecting a few and reading them to the crowd.
“This storekeeper says that the marvels of modern machinery will turn the current drudgery of jobs and housework into joyful endeavors, leaving men and women many hours to take long walks and read well-written books. Ah, if only he had been right.”
That generated a few smiles from the audience.
“According to the town’s newspaper editor, ‘Courage Bay will become a busy city where everyone will move quickly back and forth in their automobile wagons, horses having become obsolete. But the wheels of these automobile wagons will be cushioned so the city will be free from noise.’”
At that moment, a loud screeching of tires and the blast of a horn echoed from a car on an adjoining street. It was so perfectly timed, everyone laughed.
The audience was still chuckling when Emily took her seat.
Oliver Smithson was the one to remove the next box from the time capsule. A note on the top described the contents within as letters written by the surviving crew of the Ranger, each giving his individual account of the vessel’s sinking on that fateful day, as well as his rescue by the Indians.
Oliver read off the names of the authors: “Fitzwalter, Giroux, Himlot—”
“I’m his descendant,” Councilman Dean Himlot interrupted. “That letter from my ancestor belongs to me.”
Emily knew Dean Himlot as she knew most of the notables in this crowd. He could be a bit full of himself, forgetting sometimes that it was his family’s famous name that had enabled him to get elected.
Still, she’d never known him to be abrasive, especially in the company of his social peers. Just proof that lots of money and clout didn’t buy class.
“Actually, Dean,” the mayor said amicably as he took the mike from Oliver, “according to the letter that I read previously, everything in this time capsule was bequeathed to the people of Courage Bay, not any individual. However, rest assured that you will be given a copy of your ancestor’s letter as soon as—”
“Don’t open the box,” Dean said. “That letter is a family heirloom. You could ruin it by exposing it to the air.”
“Get a grip, Dean,” Gerald Fitzwalter spoke up from the spectators in a clearly annoyed manner.
Gerald was president of his family’s local bank and head of the Chamber of Commerce. He was also a descendant of a Ranger crewman. Gerald and Dean had been feuding for twenty years. It all started when they were on opposing football teams in high school competing against each other in a regional championship. A fumble on the field resulted in a fight between them and they both got kicked out of the game. Each blamed the other.
“I wasn’t going to open the box of these letters at this time,” Oliver said in the tone of a professor addressing dense pupils. “I’m perfectly aware that some of these letters could have been written a hundred and fifty years ago and may, therefore, be doubly sensitive to the elements. Now, if I may proceed?”
The mayor nodded in his direction and Oliver finished naming the surviving crewmen. Emily already knew their names, as she was certain did most of this crowd.
Oliver then put the box aside and opened the next in the capsule. The letters within were written by average citizens depicting community life.
The first one was by a farmer—who, fortunately, didn’t have any descendants in the audience—but who, unfortunately, had included more details about raising chickens than Emily ever wanted to know.
The second letter Oliver read started out to be a great deal more interesting. It was from an amateur gardener who claimed to have found a wonderful medicinal plant that had cured her of the blinding headaches she’d had since adolescence. The gardener had included a copper tin that was filled with its seeds, which she described as a soothing intoxicant.
There were two pages to her letter. But to Emily’s disappointment, Oliver read what appeared to be only half of the first before he suddenly stopped and closed it.
“We shouldn’t expose these documents to the light any longer,” he said by way of explanation.
The mayor nodded as he addressed the crowd. “The documents, artifacts and photos will be digitized and placed on the City’s Web site. Ladies and gentlemen, the founders of Courage Bay have left us a priceless piece of their history and ours. We’ll ensure that it is preserved for all to enjoy.”
When the mayor stepped away, Emily retook the podium and invited the audience to reconvene in the reception room of the Heritage Museum behind them, where drinks and hors d’oeuvres were being served.
The mayor and city council quickly joined the spectators headed toward those promised refreshments and the political shoulder-rubbing that was always the highlight of this type of social event.
Emily turned off the microphone just in time to prevent the argument that started behind her from being broadcast throughout the Botanical Gardens.
“How dare you imply that I’m too old and weak to catalog these artifacts correctly?” Phoebe asked in her seventy-three-year-old voice that was about as feeble as a two-by-four.
Oliver’s skin was turning a rosy pink beneath his full white beard. “You know damn well that’s not what I said, Phoebe. I simply pointed out that when it comes to computers, you are not up to speed.”
“Look who’s talking,” Phoebe said. “Last month, when Dorothy mentioned that we needed to update the Society’s hard drive, you were the one who got all hot and bothered because you thought that she was trying to reschedule our spring golf tournament.”
Oliver’s lips tightened. “I may not be familiar with the terminology, but need I remind you that the pharmaceutical company I ran for forty years is full of computers and competent operators?”
“We are not handing over these valuable items to some computer operator who hasn’t the faintest idea how to preserve them,” Phoebe said.
“What’s going on?” Emily whispered to Dorothy.
“Oliver just got a call from the hospital,” Dorothy whispered back. “Wayne won’t be able to take custody of the time capsule’s contents as planned. He’s had a stroke.”
“These irreplaceable items must stay in the hands of the Historical Society,” Phoebe continued. “Now, my grandniece Fiona is quite competent with computers. Together, she and I can—”
“Only last week you were complaining that Fiona was so tired chasing after her two preschoolers that she didn’t even have the energy to come see you,” Oliver interrupted.
“I’ll hire a sitter for her,” Phoebe said, undaunted.
“And how long will that take?” Oliver challenged. “You went through nearly sixty applicants and four months before you finally chose Mrs. Hanna to be the librarian. And what a choice that was.”
“Mrs. Hanna’s credentials as a historian are impeccable, not to mention the fact that she speaks five languages.”
“We didn’t need someone with impeccable credentials or who could speak five languages. We needed someone who could work the library’s computer! Now we’re paying Holly to come in and do it after school!”
“Ken, I need another picture of this imbecile,” Phoebe said, pointing to Oliver. “The last one of him I put on my dartboard is already full of holes.”
The photographer looked amused but made no effort to comply. Ken—like the rest of them—was used to Phoebe and Oliver’s verbal sparring matches. When these two crossed swords, the best thing anyone could do was stay out of the way.
“And that’s another thing,” Oliver said. “Ken’s supposed to be the Society’s photographer, but I can’t get him to do a damn thing for me. Every time I try he tells me he’ll have to clear it with you first.”
Oliver was talking about Ken as though he wasn’t there. Typical of Oliver. And typical of Ken that he showed no sign of offense.
“He has the editing and printing of the newsletter to see to,” Phoebe countered. “He’s not one of your lackeys. Speaking of which, where is this illustrious and purportedly proficient historian who was supposed to be on hand today to take custody of the time capsule contents?”
“Damn it, Phoebe, I already told you.” Oliver was shouting now. “Wayne had a stroke. Are you going to blame me for that?”
“Please, Oliver, Phoebe,” Dorothy interrupted as she stepped between her fellow board members. “I know this is disappointing. I, too, was counting on Wayne’s expert assistance. But he’s seriously ill. We should set aside concerns about the time capsule for the moment and think of him.”
“His doctor told Wayne’s wife that the stroke was minor,” Oliver said, as though Dorothy was making a big deal over nothing. “He’ll be all right.”
“That’s good to hear,” Emily said carefully. “But I believe the point that Dorothy was making is that Wayne needs to know how concerned all of us in the organization are for his welfare.”
“Thank you, Emily,” Dorothy said with emphasis.
“Oh, very well,” Phoebe said. “I’ll send him a fruit basket from the Society. And a card.”
“And now that that’s taken care of,” Oliver said, “let’s get back to the matter of what we’re going to do with the time capsule treasures.”
Dorothy and Emily looked at each other and shook their heads.
“None of us on the managing board knows enough to digitize this important information, not to mention putting it on the city’s Web site,” Dorothy said. “And, as generous as Oliver’s offer is to use personnel at the Smithson Pharmaceutical Company, Phoebe’s right. These artifacts are too valuable to let out of our hands.”
“Josh is employed part-time by the Society,” Oliver said. Scanning the now nearly deserted gardens, he called, “Josh? Damn it, where are you, boy?”
“Here,” Josh said as he scrambled up the platform steps.
Oliver grabbed his grandson’s shoulders. “You took computer courses in high school, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“So you could do whatever it takes to get images of these items into a computer and put them on the City’s Web site, right?”
Josh shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Oh, that overwhelms me with confidence,” Phoebe said.
Oliver slipped his hands from his grandson’s shoulders and let out a huff of disappointment.
When Emily saw the look that flattened Josh’s face, she immediately stepped forward. “Josh is doing a superb job for the Botanical Gardens and the Society. He’s also been a big help getting things organized for today. I don’t know what I would have done without him.”
Oliver wasn’t listening. He was too busy shaking his head like a windshield wiper on high.
“Damn kids today come out of school dumber than when they went in,” he muttered.
Josh slunk off the platform just as Holly came out of the museum. She waved in his direction, but Josh turned away and disappeared into the trees.
Emily was trying to decide whether to try to talk to Oliver or just kick him when Dorothy raised her hand to get everyone’s attention.
“As much as Emily is right about Josh’s great work in the Heritage Museum and around the Botanical Gardens, it’s not fair to ask him to take on a task of this magnitude. We need someone from the Historical Society who has both experience in document preservation techniques and computer expertise.”
Dorothy looked pointedly at Emily.
Emily felt both Phoebe and Oliver’s eyes turn toward her as though assessing her right to have the job.
“She has the gardens to see to,” Oliver said, “and her own research.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Dorothy agreed. “Which means these important artifacts will not leave this site. That’s another plus.”
“You said everything would go off today without a hitch,” Phoebe complained. “But there was that long delay when the skeleton was unearthed.”
“I’m so glad you mentioned the skeleton,” Dorothy said, ignoring Phoebe’s unfair implication that unearthing a skeleton was somehow Emily’s fault. “Isn’t it a fascinating find? Emily will be working with Dr. Winslow to identify the remains for us and the items that were found in the grave.”
“What items?” Phoebe asked.
“Detective Corbin is sending them and the skeleton to the Courage Bay Hospital morgue so that Dr. Winslow and Emily can study them,” Dorothy said. “She’ll be able to write the article on everything they discover for the newsletter.”
“Since there may be some clue as to the skeleton’s identity in the time capsule documents, it makes sense that we look them over as soon as possible,” Brad said from behind Emily.
She spun around to find him standing not five feet away, holding two glasses of champagne. He’d left with the mayor in the direction of the reception hall after the ceremony had ended. She hadn’t heard him return.
“Dr. Winslow makes an excellent point,” Dorothy agreed. “Emily’s a whiz with computers. And, since she is a member of our society, we know she will properly preserve these valuable items. I realize this is asking a lot, but will you do it for us, Emily?”
Be the first to see everything that was in the time capsule? Did Dorothy really have any doubt?
“I’ll be happy to,” Emily said in as calm a tone as she possessed.
“Well, Phoebe, Oliver?” Dorothy asked. “What do you think?”
What both Oliver and Phoebe thought was clear on their faces. Each still wanted access to the contents first. But it was hard arguing with Dorothy’s logic and persuasive techniques.
Phoebe nodded. Oliver shrugged. And that, Emily knew, was as close to a “thank you for taking on this incredibly time-consuming assignment” as she was going to get from them. But she didn’t care. She was thrilled.
After seeing that all the items had been returned to the time capsule and the lid closed, Phoebe and Oliver set off for the refreshments and the socializing they both reveled in. Ken waved goodbye to Emily and Dorothy and trotted after them.
Brad handed Dorothy one glass of champagne and held out the other to Emily.
She shook her head. “I don’t think Sprout would like it.”
“Sprout?”
She rested a hand on her stomach. “That’s its botanical name.”
He nodded as though in tardy understanding. “Of course, the baby. My apologies, Mrs. Barrett. I forgot.”
Had he? Or was this a really good act?
As he sipped the champagne he’d offered to her, she studied him. It could be a coincidence that Ed had brought him today. He certainly gave no indication that he knew she’d had artificial insemination, much less that she’d selected his sperm.
Ed had promised he’d say nothing to Brad. Maybe she’d been worrying for no reason.
“Where do you plan to go over the time capsule contents?” Brad asked.
“My office is on the second floor of the Heritage Museum,” Emily answered. “I’ll see if I can round up the crane operator and his rigger. Between the two of them, I’m hoping they’ll be able to lug it up the back stairs.”
“Why don’t I give it a try?” Brad offered.
Emily blinked at him in surprise.
“Are you sure, Brad?” Dorothy asked. “It has to weigh at least a hundred pounds.”
“Dot’s right,” Emily said. “You can’t possibly carry it over to the museum, much less up all those stairs by yourself.”
“Can’t I?”
He picked up the capsule and held it as though it weighed no more than an empty orange crate.
“Dr. Winslow, I don’t think—” Emily began.
“Light as a feather,” Brad interrupted. “Lead the way.”
Emily’s eyes traveled from the heavy time capsule to the stoic face of the man holding it with such deceptive ease.
“I’ll wait here to be sure that no one disturbs our skeleton until Ed can arrange to have it removed,” Dorothy offered. “If you need to find me later, I’ll be at the reception looking after things.”
Still Emily hesitated.
“Go on, Em. It’ll be all right.”
At her friend’s urging, Emily gave in and led the way to her office. But she did not have a good feeling about this. And she very much doubted everything would be all right.
BRAD’S ARMS WERE IN AGONY and his back was killing him. A hundred pounds. Ha! This damn time capsule weighed a ton. And he still had another eight steps to climb.
What an idiot he’d been, insisting on carrying the blasted thing. He couldn’t imagine what had possessed him.
Yes he could. Emily had looked so damn sure when she’d announced that he couldn’t possibly do it that the logical part of his brain had ceased to function.
He was determined to prove her wrong—or die trying.
The die-trying possibility was looming ever closer. He set the time capsule down on the next step and collapsed beside it, his heart pounding. Easing out of his sport coat, he let it drop to the stairs.
A bead of sweat rolled across his forehead, zigzagged between his eyebrows and dropped onto his lashes. His arms were so tired that he couldn’t even lift a hand to brush the drop away.
“I never should have agreed to let you do this,” Emily said. “I knew that container was far too heavy for you.”
She stood above him on the second-floor landing. When Brad raised his head, the sweat dropped into his eye, bringing with it the sting of salt. Even with that one eye shut, he could see the “I told you so” look on her face.
“I’m simply taking a breather.”
He’d barely had the breath to get the words out. The last thing he wanted to do was lift that damn box again. But with her standing there watching him, he knew he was going to.
Somehow he got himself back on his feet and picked up the capsule. How he managed to carry it up those last steps and into Emily’s office he had no idea.
She directed him to set it on the floor beside a walnut desk. As soon as it was in place, he staggered over to the nearest chair and collapsed. He closed his eyes and sucked in air, wondering if he was ever going to feel his arms again or be able to breathe normally.
Time passed—he had no idea how much and didn’t particularly care. He was just thankful that he wasn’t carrying that damn thing anymore. When his breath started to come in a more normal rhythm, he felt a hand on his arm and opened his eyes to find her beside him.
“I thought you might like something cold to drink.”
She was holding out a tall glass of water. Gratefully, he took it from her, and downed the contents in one long gulp. By the time he’d set the empty glass on the table next to him, she’d taken the chair behind the desk.
The small, exceptionally neat office seemed to be darker than when he’d entered. Glancing around, he noticed that she’d drawn heavy drapes across the windows. A couple of low-wattage lamps were all that now lit the room. They shone off spotless glass shelves and wooden furniture, well carved and built to last.
The room exuded a pleasing calm, not currently reflected in its owner.
“Why did you insist on doing that?” she asked.
He met her eyes. “Weight lifting should be part of everyone’s exercise routine. Builds muscle and bone. Makes you strong. Just ask your doctor.”
She shook her head. “I realize I should be thanking you for bringing the time capsule up here, but—”
“You’re welcome.”
“You could have hurt yourself.”
The worry in her voice was carefully controlled, but it wasn’t superficial.
“Nice of you to be concerned about me.”
Her chin lifted. “I was concerned about our liability insurance. Had you sustained an injury carrying these artifacts belonging to the Historical Society, we could have been held responsible.”
Her cloak of professional indifference was one he donned often enough to see through. “I wouldn’t have sued for much.”
Her head shook in frustration. “Dr. Winslow—”
“Call me Brad.”
“Are you always this stubborn?”
“Stubborn? I’m not stubborn. I’m totally pigheaded and obstinate.”
For a second, a look of overwhelming exasperation claimed her features. Then it vanished and a chuckle—warm and sweet—broke through her lips. The smile that followed was even better.
“There’s a bathroom down the hall where you can wash up,” she said.
“I look that grungy, huh?”
“Try not to break the mirror.”
He got up and headed for the soap and water. As he gazed at the reflection of his dirt-smudged face over the sink, he was grinning. Yeah, it had been really dumb insisting on carrying that damn capsule.
But he’d gotten her to smile. That was worth a few sore muscles.
CHAPTER FOUR
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.
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M.J. Rodgers
Emily Barrett wants a baby in her life–not a husband.And that's the reason she went to a sperm bank. Through some detective work she's able to work out who the donor is, but she doesn't ever plan to reveal to Dr. Brad Winslow that he's about to become a father.Yet when the two are forced to work together to solve a century-old mystery with a modern-day twist, Emily begins to wonder if she should revise her life plan.
Amazing a woman like this had gotten involved with such losers
Emily gazed out at the boats again. “The problem with my old life plan was that it required the cooperation of someone else to work. With my new life plan, I don’t need anyone else’s cooperation.”
So that’s why she’d gone the artificial insemination route. Her choice made a little more sense to Brad now. But understanding her reasons hadn’t changed his opinion of her actions.
Except the timing was lousy. He was in his final year as an E.R. resident and had those Board Certification exams to study for. Finding the hours he’d need to establish a close relationship with Emily was going to be difficult.
But his baby would be a reality in seven months’ time—a reality that couldn’t be ignored. He was going to be there to see to its emotional, physical and financial needs. That’s what a responsible father—and a real man—did.
Her initial life plan had included a father for her child. It was only the bastards she’d picked who had soured her on the idea.
He could make it sweet for her again.
Dear Reader,
Father by Choice is the first book in a new series called CODE RED. This series tells the stories of dedicated medical professionals, police and firefighters as they save lives and fall in love in the fictional community of Courage Bay, located in Southern California.
Courage Bay’s residents are proud of their long history of selfless acts of bravery. In this first story we get a glimpse into the community’s earliest history after a time capsule is dug up to reveal a hundred-year-old mystery. Solving the case will take the cooperation of two unlikely sleuths: Brad Winslow—an E.R. resident at Courage Bay Hospital and a man on the front lines of the community’s emergency teams—and Emily Barrett, the curator of the city’s botanical gardens and a member of its esteemed historical society.
As they join forces to find the answers to the mystery unearthed with the time capsule, Brad and Emily soon discover themselves confronted with a few modern-day surprises, as well. And the best of those surprises turns out to be the deep and very unexpected love that they begin to share.
I hope you enjoy Brad and Emily’s story. If you would like a personally autographed sticker for your book, send me a SASE at P.O. Box 284, Seabeck, Washington, 98380-0284.
Warmly,
M.J.
Father by Choice
M.J. Rodgers
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This book is for Frances Demoor of Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Fran is a real heroine.
Even when faced with the worst of life’s heartbreaks,
she always responds with kindness and love.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER ONE
EMILY BARRETT KNEW WHEN to stop and smell the roses. And those that opened beneath the dazzling April sunshine filling Courage Bay’s Botanical Gardens were irresistible.
She buried her nose inside the fragrant petals of “Perfect Moment,” a red-orange bloom with a center fold of pure gold and then went on to the “Chicago Peace” behind it, a lush pink that measured no less than five inches across. The bright lemon yellow of “Graceland” farther down the trellised walkway was already producing more flowers than any other bush. And then there was “Unforgettable”—so perfectly named—a robust giant with petals as soft as a baby’s cheek.
No gardener could take credit for creating a rose. But when she met their needs, Emily felt as proud as any parent could gazing into their beautiful fresh faces.
“We’re going to miss the crane guy,” Josh Smithson warned.
She looked up to see her assistant purposely eyeing his wristwatch. Nothing was as impatient as youth.
“Don’t you like flowers?” she asked as she straightened, feeling grateful for every one of her thirty-three years.
“They’re all right, I guess.”
The sweep of Emily’s hand encompassed the colorful blooms fluttering in the early afternoon breeze. “All right? What could be more impressive than this?”
“I don’t know.”
Josh’s most frequent answer to any question she asked. Either he knew very little about his own feelings or was hesitant to reveal them.
When Emily was nineteen, she knew exactly how she felt and had no problem sharing it. As her brothers used to complain, getting her to shut up was the real trick. Maybe this was a gender thing. Most of the males she knew refused to acknowledge they even had feelings, much less took the time to examine them.
“You want me to like the flowers, Dr. Barrett?”
If Josh had asked that sarcastically, she would have laughed. But the flat-open sincerity in his words bothered Emily.
“You don’t have to like them for me. Or anyone else. Like them for you or not at all.”
“You won’t be disappointed?”
“Hey, you work hard, and you’re dependable. I’ve never had a better assistant. So if flowers aren’t your thing, it’s okay.”
He greeted her assurance with a bony shoulder shrug.
“What is your thing, Josh?”
“I don’t know.”
There it was again. And the saddest thing about his words was that Emily believed them. Why did high schools require all kids learn algebra—something which most of them would never use—and yet fail to teach them how important it was to get to know themselves—something they could all use?
“Has taking this year off before going to college helped at all?” she asked.
Another shrug.
“Your folks have any suggestions?” she persisted.
“My dad and granddad want me to study science like they did and join the firm. But I suck at that stuff.”
“So outside of being a great assistant, what don’t you suck at?”
“I don’t know.”
Emily gave up. Josh was a good worker, but as a conversationalist he left a lot to be desired. Her thoughts were rudely interrupted by the sudden blast of a leaf blower. Oh, no. Not again. She whirled around, trying to determine where he was. Then the breeze blew a faint whiff of gasoline fumes in her face and she knew.
Emily charged up the path through the rose garden, past the swaying beds of fragrant lilacs, and broke into a jog around the lily pond. Turning the corner, she saw Lester inside the greenhouse. He was shuffling to the tune he heard in his headphones, the leaf blower in his hand blasting dirt and debris off the stone path.
She’d asked him repeatedly not to use that polluting piece of crap in the Botanical Gardens, especially not the greenhouse. The toxic fumes were dangerous to the more fragile plant species, not to mention human lungs.
But Lester considered sweeping with a broom to be beneath his manhood. Which was why, every time he thought she wasn’t around, he brought out the leaf blower.
Emily waved, trying to get his attention. But he wasn’t looking in her direction. She hurried up the cobblestone path toward him, feeling her nostrils burn, trying not to inhale too deeply. She called out to him, but he obviously couldn’t hear her above the noise of the leaf blower and whatever he considered music in his ears.
Her temples had begun to throb. She entered the greenhouse, knowing she’d have to grab his arm to get his attention. But before she could, the heat and exhaust hit her full blast.
And she was sinking into a spinning, blinding nothingness.
BRAD WINSLOW OFTEN THOUGHT that working in the E.R. was a lot like going to the theater. It was always high drama with life hanging in the balance. But whether he ultimately found himself part of a mystery, triumph, tragedy or farce sometimes depended less on the skill and dedication of Courage Bay’s team of medical professionals than it did on the assortment of characters coming through the door.
Today the E.R. was overflowing with crazy fools bent on tempting fate and the limits of their medical insurance.
Behind curtains one and two were a pair of middle-aged golfers with head wounds—continuing to exchange obscenities while they waited for their CT scans. They’d been so bent on ramming each other’s golf carts as they raced to the next green that they never noticed they’d taken a wrong turn.
Fortunately, the driver of the industrial-size lawn mower they’d smashed into had escaped injury. It was the two idiots who had landed on his windshield that needed their heads examined.
Then there was the guy behind curtain three who decided to sail his son’s skateboard down his daughter’s slide to see how much lift he could get. He lifted over his neighbor’s fence and landed in the swimming pool.
Lucky for him the neighbor had filled it that morning or he’d have cracked a lot more than a collarbone.
And behind curtain four was the teenage artist determined to have a butterfly tattoo on her boob no matter how much her parents objected. She’d assembled a sewing needle, candle, some food coloring and had at it—until her swallowtail turned into an infected swirl of blisters.
Sometimes the most difficult part of being an E.R. physician was maintaining the controlled detachment that was a necessity in the face of such human folly.
Brad was passing the base radio station when the paramedic line began to ring. The nurse who generally answered the calls was trying to get a naked seventy-year-old loony balancing a bedpan on his head to return to the examining room.
Yep, it was definitely the day for crazies. Brad stopped to pick up the phone.
“Courage Bay E.R. Winslow.”
“It’s Paramedic Kellison on Rescue Squad Two. How do you copy?”
“Loud and clear, Kellison.”
“We’re en route to your location with a Code Red.”
Code Red meant they were coming in with red lights and siren—the emergency team’s protocol whenever they were faced with a possible life-threatening situation.
“We’ve got a female, around thirty, fell without warning onto a cobblestone path approximately twenty minutes ago,” Kellison continued. “Unconsciousness. No observable wounds. Her pressure is ninety-five over sixty, rate about seventy. She’s somewhat pale, but nondiaphoretic at this time. ETA to ambulance bay about three minutes.”
“We’ll be expecting you,” Brad said. “CB clear.”
“Number Two clear.”
Brad signaled to a passing trauma nurse and went to put on a fresh gown and gloves. With a little luck maybe this patient wouldn’t turn out to be a loony.
EMILY WAS ENCASED in thick white mosquito nets. She was thankful. The incessant buzzing that was going on outside was getting louder. Last time she’d been bitten by one of those bloodsuckers, she’d endured a painful welt for several days. Had one of the sprinkler systems developed a leak? Was water pooling somewhere? Were they breeding within the Botanical Gardens?
She tried to respect all life. But mosquitoes were a species that stretched the limits of her tolerance. She could hear one of them now—very loud and insistent.
“Wake up, Emily. I know you can hear me.”
Not a mosquito. An urgent voice—deep and very male—from someone used to being listened to. Her eyes fluttered open to a blinding light. She grimaced and quickly shut them again.
A hand closed over her forearm—large, warm. “Emily, you lost consciousness. You’re in Courage Bay’s Emergency Room.”
She still couldn’t make sense out of the blurred words coming through the thick mosquito netting, but the deep resonance of his voice vibrated nicely in her ears.
“Emily, we’re taking good care of you. But I need you to tell me if you hurt anywhere. I’m Dr. Brad Winslow.”
Brad Winslow?
“English ancestry. Thirty-one. Six foot three. One hundred ninety pounds. Black hair. Gray eyes. Birthday, March 25. Favorite color, blue. Favorite food, cheesecake. Favorite song—”
“What?”
The sharp demand of his voice sliced through the net surrounding Emily’s woolly thoughts and brought her to a full and sudden consciousness. She opened her eyes and blinked into the blurry face of the big-shouldered man hovering over her.
“Tell me who you are,” he said.
“Emily Barrett,” she responded to the fuzzy outline. “Who are you?”
“Dr. Brad Winslow.”
She’d just been dreaming about Brad Winslow. Was she still dreaming? Slowly, her vision cleared and his features came into focus. Thick, dark hair. Straight eyebrows. A face full of strong bones and clean lines. And eyes the color of polished pewter. Wow. No, he couldn’t be. Could he?
Pulling herself into a sitting position, she looked around. She was in an E.R. examining room, all right. Fully clothed, thankfully, except for her shoes. A blood-pressure cuff circled her left arm. A nurse was pumping it up.
“What happened?” Emily asked.
“You lost consciousness,” Brad said. “The paramedics brought you in.”
The nurse released the pressure on her arm and took off the cuff. “One ten over seventy.”
“How do you feel?” Brad asked.
“Fine.” Physically, she was. But mentally and emotionally, she was still reeling from the shock of awakening to find him.
“Do you know where you are?” he asked.
“I’m in the Courage Bay E.R.”
“And why are you here?”
“You just told me it was because I lost consciousness.”
“Lucid and responsive to verbal stimuli,” he said to the nurse who nodded and made a note on the sheet attached to the clipboard she held.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” Brad asked.
“Walking into the greenhouse,” Emily said.
He shone a small flashlight in her eye. She blinked.
“Are you in pain anywhere?”
“No.”
“Do you have any medical conditions?”
“No.”
He switched the light to her other eye. “Are you on any medication?”
“No.”
“Have you had any alcohol today?”
“Of course not.”
“Drugs?”
She understood these questions probably had to be asked. But she was beginning to resent them. “Half a cup of coffee this morning,” she said. “But I’m trying to get clean.”
Not even a twitch to his lip. So much for his purported sense of humor.
“Have you had any operations?” he asked.
“No,” she responded.
He turned off the light. “How many fingers do you see?”
“One.”
And a strong-looking hand, well formed. At least the physical part of him appeared to be as advertised. When he positioned the listening end of the stethoscope in his ears, she knew what was coming. Even so, she gave a small start when he slipped the circular disk beneath the V-neck of her blouse.
Brad showed no sign that he noticed, but the nurse smiled at her in sympathy. “Cold, isn’t it?”
Thankful her response had been misinterpreted, Emily gratefully returned her smile. Before Brad could ask her to take a deep breath and hold it, she had done so.
After listening to what was going on inside her from several different spots, he checked the reflexes in her elbows and knees all the while continuing to ask questions about her medical history.
Emily was proud of her calm and cognizant answers. Especially when she considered how incredible it was meeting him this way. Or meeting him any way for that matter.
Another nurse interrupted the examination when she poked her head into the room. “Two victims of a construction accident en route. Scaffolding collapsed from beneath them when they were two stories up. They’re both critical. ETA is four minutes.”
“I’ll join you when I’m finished here,” Brad called over his shoulder before addressing the nurse beside him. “Why don’t you go help her prep. I’ll handle this.”
The nurse nodded and followed the other one out.
Brad’s hands circled to the back of Emily’s neck and felt their way into her scalp, his probing fingers firm but gentle.
“Do you feel any tenderness here?”
His expression was one of total concentration as he gazed at a blank wall to the right.
She realized she was staring at the slight cleft in his chin and averted her eyes. “Uh…no.”
“What about here?”
“No. I’m fine. Really.”
He ceased the exploration of her scalp, placed a finger on her pulse. His eyes focused on his wristwatch.
“People who are fine don’t suddenly lose consciousness for nearly thirty minutes. Have you had anything to eat or drink today?”
“Breakfast was light. Normally I have a full lunch at noon, but I had to attend to some business about that time. How did I get here?”
Brad glanced at the clipboard that the nurse had left lying on the bed table. “A Josh Smithson called the paramedics. Identified himself as your assistant.”
“Poor Josh. I must have scared him to death.”
“What is your business?”
“I take care of plants.”
“Have you been using any new pesticides or fertilizers in your duties?”
“No.”
He released her hand. “Your pulse is a little fast.”
With him taking it, she wasn’t surprised.
He picked up the chart to make a note. “Any chance you’re pregnant?”
Thank God he’d taken her pulse before asking that question. “No chance about it. I’m eight weeks pregnant.”
His eyes shot to hers. “Why didn’t you tell me that when I asked if you had any medical conditions?”
She sat up a bit straighter, annoyed at the insinuated censure of his question. “A medical condition implies something’s wrong. Nothing’s wrong with being pregnant. That’s why I fainted, isn’t it?”
“Fainting during early and middle pregnancy is a common experience. The hormone, progesterone, is at an all-time high, relaxing the walls of the blood vessels, making the blood pool in your hands and feet and away from your head. The medical term for it is postural hypotension.”
“So, it’s perfectly normal.”
“Remaining unconscious for nearly thirty minutes is not normal. Fainting is the way the body gets the head down so blood can immediately return to it. You should have come out of the faint in a minute or two. We need to find out why you didn’t.”
“The leaf blower.”
“Excuse me?”
“The exhaust from a leaf blower our maintenance man was using. The smell was bad enough out in the open air, but inside the greenhouse, the concentration was lethal. I’ve always been sensitive to fumes. When I was a kid, the buildup of carbon monoxide at the back of a school bus could put me out. And often did.”
“What’s the temperature in the greenhouse?”
“Ten to fifteen degrees warmer than the ambient outside air.”
He scribbled something on the chart. “The prolonged unconsciousness could have resulted from the combination of postural hypotension, exhaust fumes and exposure to sudden heat. Your vital signs are normal. I don’t see that you’ve suffered any ill effects. But there’s no point in taking chances. I’m going to order some blood work to make sure we’re not missing anything.”
If he ordered tests on her, there was a good chance that he’d discover her other records at this hospital. Emily couldn’t risk that.
“I appreciate the thoroughness, but that won’t be necessary. I feel fine.”
“Ms. Barrett, it’s important you have the tests. For you and your fetus.”
“I believe you. And your concern is appreciated. Really. But I have an appointment with my doctor on Monday, and I’d feel more comfortable talking things over with her, woman to woman. I’m sure you understand.”
It was the perfect out. No male doctor could argue with a woman about her preference in such a matter.
But Brad Winslow sure looked as if he wanted to. “Your doctor will want to talk to me. Give me her name so that I can note the chart. When she calls, the nurse will know to put her through.”
No way Emily was going to let her doctor call Brad Winslow—or let him know her doctor’s real name. He was waiting for an answer. She quickly searched her mind for a substitute and came up with her favorite grade-school teacher. “Landerman.”
He wrote down the name. “Is Dr. Landerman new to Courage Bay?”
“Her practice is in L.A.,” Emily lied, then realized the other questions that might raise. “She’s an old friend of the family, which is why I don’t mind driving so far to see her.”
“What’s her number?”
“I don’t have it memorized. Thanks for everything.”
Emily could see her shoes on the bottom shelf of the cart next to the bed. She scooted to the side of the examining table, intent on slipping off it and getting to them.
But before she could swing her legs over, Brad stepped forward, rested the hospital chart on the edge of the bed’s metal rim and effectively blocked her path.
“Your assistant wasn’t able to provide your home address, number and next of kin. Let’s take a moment to fill in the blanks, shall we?”
“No reason to take up your time with that,” Emily said quickly. “I’ll give my insurance information to the clerk in admissions. She’ll be able to get whatever she requires from it.”
“You sound like you know your way around this hospital.”
“I’ve visited friends here from time to time.”
She waited for him to move out of her way. He didn’t.
“All right, Ms. Barrett, how do you know about me?”
His authoritative tone had developed an even sharper edge and his eyes were chips of granite.
For a second Emily stared at him. Then it hit her. Dear heavens. Those things she’d been thinking about him before she came to. She must have said them aloud. Oh, hell.
Don’t panic, Emily. You can handle this. Remember, the best defense when cornered is to act innocent.
She squinted at him like someone who’d forgotten her glasses. “I’m sorry. I don’t seem to recognize you, Doctor. Do we know each other?”
His skeptical expression told her he wasn’t buying the act. The sound of a siren approached. Footsteps rushed past in the hallway. The injured men from the construction site were here. This was her chance to escape.
Second-best defense—run to the nearest exit.
“You have people who need you,” she said. “I’d better be on my way. Thank you for taking care of me, Dr…uh… I’m sorry. What was your name again?”
“Where did you find out those very personal things about me?” he demanded, not budging an inch.
She did her best to look confused. “What things?”
“My ethnic background, coloring, height, weight, age, favorite color, favorite—”
“I’m sorry,” she interrupted with a regretful shake of her head, “but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You expect me to believe you don’t remember what you said?”
“I have no memory of meeting you before today, Doctor. When am I supposed to have said these things?”
“You said them while lying on this bed not five minutes ago. And you know it. You’re not leaving here until you tell me exactly where you learned those personal details of my life.”
She could see he damn well meant it, too. There was only one choice left.
Third-best defense—scare the hell out of the opponent so he runs to the nearest exit.
Emily plastered a look of excitement on her face. “I told you about personal details in your life? And they were accurate? Well, well. That hasn’t happened in quite a while.”
“What hasn’t?”
“When I’ve been in semiconscious states before, I’ve shown…well, that is, people have told me I display very strong psychic powers.”
For a fraction of a second, something that looked like discomfort flashed across his stoic features.
Emily settled farther back on the bed, no longer making any attempt to leave. As a matter of fact, she was doing her best to convey the impression that she planned to stay awhile.
“Once I collapsed in a store and before I came to, I’d told the owner all about the affair he was having with his bookkeeper,” she lied blithely. “Of course, he was a little upset at me since his wife was standing right next to him at the time. But that’s one of the drawbacks of being a semiconscious psychic.”
Brad’s eyes darted toward the phone on the wall. Debating whether he should call for restraints or a psychiatric consultation?
“This is really exciting, Doctor. You don’t know how glad I am you told me. So many people are afraid of acknowledging any sense beyond the mundane five—especially people from the so-called scientific disciplines. Why most doctors wouldn’t dream of repeating what you did for fear of being ridiculed.”
His eyebrows inched so tightly together, they were about to meet.
“Please, you must give me the details of everything you said and what I told you,” she begged. “When I tell people about this, they’re going to want to be sure you didn’t give me any hints. Not that I blame them for being skeptical. There are so many fakes out there. Do you mind if I borrow some paper and a pen to take notes?”
To his credit, he didn’t so much as flinch. But he was clenching the hospital chart so hard, his knuckles were white. It took an effort of will for Emily to keep a straight face.
A nurse rapped once on the door, then stuck her head into the room. “You want the concussion or the bleeder?”
“The bleeder,” he said. “Ms. Barrett is ready to be released.”
He shoved the paperwork in the nurse’s hands and was out of the room so fast that Emily could feel the gust of air displaced in his wake.
She let out a sigh of relief. Well, she’d managed to dodge that bullet. But only just. On paper, Brad Winslow had been very impressive. In person he was one formidable son of a gun.
“ARE YOU SURE YOU’RE OKAY, EM?” Dorothy Mission asked for the umpteenth time as they worked together to prepare dinner in her kitchen.
Dumping the romaine lettuce she’d chopped into a large salad bowl, Emily sent her friend a look of exasperation. “If you don’t stop asking me if I’m okay, I’m going to throw this salad at you.”
Dorothy smiled. “Could you wait until you slice in the tomatoes? A green outfit always looks more festive with a nice splash of red.”
Emily chuckled as she went back to her task. “Truth is, I nearly had a heart attack when it dawned on me that I’d unconsciously blabbed all that stuff to Brad Winslow.”
“Imagine the jolt he must have felt hearing what you said.”
“At least he made sure I was okay and everything that was medical had been attended to before he tried to nail me to the wall on it.”
“Em, I know you said you never wanted to meet him, but now that you have, are you glad?”
She gave the question some serious thought as she chopped the carrots. “I admit it did satisfy a certain curiosity.”
“Is he everything that you…hoped?”
Emily glanced over at the speculative look on her friend’s face. “Forget it, Dot. He’s just a man like any other. And, as far as I’m concerned, good for one thing and one thing only.”
“Oh, I think they might have one or two other uses,” her friend said with a mischievous smile.
“I can open tight jars and take out the trash myself, thank you,” Emily said, knowing perfectly well that was not what Dot had been referring to.
“Come on,” Dorothy persisted. “You selected Brad Winslow out of the hundreds you could have picked. You must think he’s special. What stood out most strongly when you met him today?”
“That he’s no one to fool around with. If I hadn’t lied my head off and known what button to push, he’d have found me out, and I’d be in serious trouble now.”
“Em, I respect your wishes on this, really I do. But you’re such a nice person that… I mean even after all you’ve been through, I guess I still hope you’ll…oh, forget it. You’re right. I can’t pretend to understand what I haven’t experienced. And people who say they know how someone else feels are irritating.”
“On that we agree wholeheartedly,” Emily said.
“You two are agreeing?” Holly Mission said as she entered the room. “Oh, this can’t be good.”
Dorothy gave her daughter a hug. Holly was both smart and sweet—a seventeen-year-old version of her mom.
“So, is Lester gone?” Dorothy asked Holly.
“Yeah, Josh and I stuck around until he got his stuff together and drove off.”
“Did you get his key to the maintenance gate?”
“Oh, hell, Mom. I forgot.”
“Key?” Emily repeated.
“Lester quit,” Dorothy said. “When I went to bawl him out about the leaf blower incident sending you to the E.R. this afternoon, I found him loading sacks of organic fertilizer into his pickup.”
“He was stealing them?”
Dorothy nodded. “First story he gave me was that he was moving the sacks to the other side of the Gardens so they’d be in place when he fertilized next week. But when I pointed to some of your new rose hybrids in between the sacks of fertilizer in his pickup, he had no convenient lie ready for why they were there.”
Emily shook her head. “I’ve been wondering why so many of our supplies seemed to be missing lately.”
“His father has opened a small nursery on the outskirts of town,” Dorothy said. “No doubt Lester’s been taking the supplies from the Botanical Gardens over to him. I told him he had a choice. Either quit or I’d see to it that you fired him.”
“That must have been hard for you, Dot.”
“I never should have suggested you hire him in the first place. I love my cousin but her kid is a loser. I swear he got all of his father’s genes and not one of hers. When Lester was thirteen, I caught him stealing from her purse so he could buy marijuana from another kid pushing it at school. Supposedly, he got himself clean. But clean or not, ten years later and he’s still a thief.”
“I’m sorry about forgetting the key, Emily,” Holly said. “But I don’t think Lester will come back. I watched closely to make sure that he didn’t try to put anything that wasn’t his into his pickup. Josh was right beside me, scowling at him the whole time he was getting his stuff together. And when he started to drive away, Josh yelled at him not to come back.”
“Well, good for our Josh,” Dorothy said. “He seems to be working out okay despite his grandfather’s claim that the boy’s clueless.”
“Josh is a very good assistant,” Emily said. “He simply needs a little time to find his direction in life.”
“Speaking of time,” Holly said, “Josh asked me to remind you to meet with the crane guy today.”
“I have. The sundial has been prepped and readied for tomorrow.”
“Do you need my help on anything?” Dorothy asked.
“Thanks, but I took care of the other last-minute details before coming over. Gardens, dignitaries and media are all in line. We are good to go, Mission Control.”
Dorothy smiled as she set a plate of sliced roast beef on the kitchen table. Emily put the mixed-salad bowl between the beef and a basket of steaming baked potatoes. The fact that her friend still insisted on eating in the kitchen when Emily joined them always made her feel like one of the Mission family.
“Smartest thing I ever did was to convince my fellow board members to put you in charge of the Founders Day Celebration. It’s going to be a smashing success, Em.”
“Okay, what are all you smashing women smashing now?” Ted Mission asked with a grin as he came rustling in the back door, keys and briefcase jangling by his side.
Dorothy immediately stopped what she was doing and went to greet her husband.
Ted and Dorothy Mission had been married more than twenty-five years, were past fifty and packed a dozen extra pounds of good living around their middles. But the embrace and kiss they shared were as hot as young lovers’.
“They’re at it again,” Holly said, shaking her head, but wearing a smile.
Emily watched her friends as she always did—with undisguised envy. Dorothy and Ted had it all—rewarding careers, a long-term love match and a brainy daughter headed for Harvard in the fall.
Once Emily had dreamed of having it all. Now she knew that fulfilling work and a precious baby to love would be enough.
For men might come and go. But a child was forever.
ATTENDING PHYSICIAN Alec Giroux was going over charts when Brad walked by his office on his way out. He waved Brad over.
“You certainly had your share of crazies today,” Alec said as he gestured to the stack of charts in front of him. “Nice save on that chest wound.”
“We were lucky we didn’t lose anyone,” Brad said as he folded his arms and rested his leg against the desk.
Alec leaned back in his chair, the expression on his face conveying the fact that he knew luck had nothing to do with it. “You’re going to ace those board exams next month.”
Brad appreciated the vote of confidence. From the moment he’d begun his residency in emergency medicine at Courage Bay Hospital four years before, Alec had been far more friend and supporter than supervisor.
“You going to take Guy up on his offer of a permanent position here when the exams are over?” Alec asked.
Brad wanted to. In his first month on the job he’d learned more from Alec and his brother, Guy, their chief of emergency medicine, than he’d learned in all his years at medical school. They were the best.
But the money at the community hospital was not. He hadn’t paid off all of his eight years of staggering school loans.
“I’m giving it some thought,” he said, honestly.
Alec nodded. As a single father, he probably knew how difficult it could be to catch up on bills and make ends meet.
“I was reviewing Emily Barrett’s chart,” he said. “Surprised to see it among the bunch of wackos we had walking the halls today.”
Even hearing her name was enough to get Brad to un-cross his arms and plant both feet firmly beneath him. “You know Emily Barrett?”
“My sister, Natalie, says she’s a regular in the pediatric and geriatric wards upstairs.”
Yeah, Brad figured knowing someone at this hospital was how Emily had really learned that personal stuff about him.
“Emily brings flowers and potted plants to the patients who don’t get visitors,” Alec continued. “Nice lady.”
“Certifiable kook,” Brad said beneath his breath.
“I pulled her hospital records,” Alec went on, not having heard the comment. “I was hoping they might shed some light on her prolonged unconsciousness today, but no clues there. You were right to suggest more tests. Shame she refused them. All we can do is trust that she’ll follow up with her obstetrician.”
Brad took a step forward. “She didn’t tell me she’d been admitted to this hospital.”
“Outpatient in the OB-GYN clinic for her artificial insemination eight weeks ago,” Alec explained as he handed over the record. “Dr. Jill Crispin does all of her inseminations and deliveries here.”
Brad started, not sure he’d heard right. “Are you telling me Jill Crispin from the Crispin Fertility Clinic is Emily Barrett’s doctor?”
“You know Dr. Crispin?”
“I’ve heard of her,” Brad said as he quickly read through the hospital record of Emily Barrett that he held in his hands. This had to be a coincidence. The transactions were absolutely confidential. No way either party could learn about the other.
Except as his eyes fixed on Emily Barrett’s maiden name, he suddenly saw that there was one way.
“Brad, is there something wrong? Brad?”
CHAPTER TWO
“WHY DID YOU DO IT?” Brad demanded, working hard to control the anger that seethed beneath his surface calm.
Ed Corbin looked his friend squarely in the eye, took a sip of his beer and swallowed hard. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“You damn well did have a choice.”
Brad’s raised voice turned a lot of curious heads in his direction. Ed pulled some bills out of his pocket and slapped them on the bar. “You’re pissed. I don’t blame you. Give me a chance to explain outside, where we don’t have an audience.”
Brad didn’t argue with the need for discretion. The Courage Bay Bar and Grill was the off-duty hangout for the community’s police, fire and medical personnel. Anything overheard here would be on the gossip hotline of every emergency team by morning.
He quietly followed his friend out. A cool night breeze was coming off the ocean, the air filled with one of his favorite scents—the sea. But Brad wasn’t in an appreciative mood.
“Is this why you suddenly came up with the suggestion that I donate sperm last year? So she could get it?”
“No,” Ed said. “When I told you the Crispin Fertility Clinic was willing to pay top dollar for sperm from doctors, I did it because the director asked me to pass the word, and I knew you could use the money. Those were the only reasons. I swear.”
Brad had met Detective Ed Corbin during his first year at Courage Bay Hospital. A burglar cut himself when he’d tried to escape capture by jumping through a plate-glass window. Ed brought him into the E.R. for treatment.
While a nurse was seeing to his wounds, the guy grabbed a knife and took her hostage. Brad had kept the thief’s attention by enticing him with offers of drugs he could sell on the street in exchange for letting the nurse go—giving Ed time to circle behind the man and subdue him.
They’d made a good team that day, and good friends ever since. Brad had never known Ed to lie. He didn’t believe he was doing so now.
“What happened?” Brad asked.
“I stopped by Emily’s place about three months ago and saw all these sperm-bank questionnaires spread out on her table. When I asked her what was going on, she told me she’d decided to have a kid by artificial insemination.”
“You didn’t know before that?”
Ed shook his head. “Nearly blew me away. Never occurred to me she’d do something like that. I tried my best to talk her out of it. But Emily’s unmovable when she’s made up her mind.”
“What possessed you to tell her about me?” Brad asked.
“I figured if she was stupid enough to have some stranger’s kid, she should at least be sure she was getting good sperm. I mean, what would you have done if she were your sister?”
There was a protective note in Ed’s tone Brad had never heard before. They rarely talked about the personal stuff, which was why Brad hadn’t even known the name of Ed’s sister before today. Emily was clearly very special to him.
Brad found his anger at his friend beginning to fade. “I’ve never had a sister.”
“Count your blessings. They’re a damn pain. You love them, and all you want is the best for them. But what happens when you try to help? They tell you to butt out of their business.”
“You should have listened to her this time.”
“I couldn’t. She was going to the wrong place. The Crispin Fertility Clinic is the only one that does a thorough background check on its donors to be sure that they are who they claim. I told Emily about Jill Crispin alerting us when she discovered that a guy using a phony name and profession had applied. He turned out to be an ex-con with two outstanding warrants. That con had gotten away with donating sperm to every other damn clinic around because they never checked up on his lies. Who knows how many more there are like him around?”
“Wasn’t steering her to the right fertility clinic enough?” Brad asked. “Did you have to tell her about me?”
“Yeah, I did. You should have seen the flakes she had to pick from even at Crispin. I read the questionnaires these guys filled out. Eighty percent of them were dumb college jocks, barely literate, just looking for some extra cash. The idea that Emily’s genes would be mixing with theirs made me want to puke.”
“What about the other twenty percent?”
“I suppose some of them were decent, if you could believe what they wrote. The Crispin Clinic is careful that their donors are physically healthy and legally who they say they are. But they have no way of knowing whether these guys are telling the truth when they answer questions about their goals in life and such.”
Brad had to admit that was true. He could have lied about those things when he filled out the forms, and no one would have been the wiser.
“But when I tried to impress this fact on Emily, she turned a deaf ear,” Ed continued. “Kept telling me she’d decide who was best. Said she didn’t need me to make her decisions for her.”
“Then why did she take your recommendation on me?”
“I wasn’t sure she had. She wanted the best and I wanted the best for her, so naturally I told her all about you so she’d know which one of the anonymous donor questionnaires was yours. But the only thing she said was that if she picked your sperm, I was never going to know and neither were you.”
“I know,” Brad said. “She quoted what I entered on that damn questionnaire verbatim. And when I called her on it, she did the one thing she knew would make me back off.”
“What was that?”
“She pretended to be psychic.”
“How could she know that would make you back off?”
“Because I put it on the questionnaire. When asked what was the one thing that would make me avoid otherwise nice and pleasant people, I said it would be if they turned out to be superstitious or believed in all that psychic mumbo jumbo.”
“Brad, I’m sorry about this. She warned me to say nothing to you. I admit I wanted her to select you for her sake, but I never intended for you to find out.”
“I wish to hell I hadn’t,” Brad said on a long exhale. “What does her husband think about all this?”
“Husband? Emily’s not married.”
“But she shows Barrett as her married name. I thought—”
“Oh, she was married. Just not anymore. Hell, she doesn’t even date now.”
Brad stopped walking, grabbed his friend’s arm, halting him in his stride. “Are you telling me your sister is planning to raise the baby without a father?”
“She’ll be a good mother,” Ed said. “I’m not just saying that because she’s my sister. Emily’s wanted a kid for years, but things…didn’t work out for her. She’s thrilled to be having this baby.”
Brad released his friend’s arm and sank to the edge of a nearby concrete street planter, putting his head in his hands. This was getting worse by the minute.
“What’s wrong?”
He raised his eyes at the concern in Ed’s voice. “My brother and I never had a dad. He took off when we were young, and we never saw or heard from him again. I had a great mother. The best. It’s not enough. A kid needs a father. I always swore my kid would have one.”
“Brad, legally, the child Emily’s going to have…it’s not your kid.”
He didn’t need Ed to tell him that. Brad was only too aware that he’d signed away all legal rights to his sperm.
Yes, the money he’d received had helped to pay down his school loans. But the real reason he’d involved himself in the process was because he believed he was doing the right thing helping an infertile couple conceive.
He never imagined that he’d find out who got his sperm. Or that she’d be a single woman.
“What a goddamn mess,” he muttered to the night sky.
Ed plopped down beside him. “If you want to shoot me, I’ll loan you my gun.”
His friend’s expression told Brad how badly he felt—despite the fact that he’d been trying to do the right thing for his sister.
“I’m such a lousy shot, I’d probably miss your ugly mug and hit an innocent bystander instead.”
Ed nodded. “Then you’d have to patch him up, and I’d have to run you in. See your point. Too damn much paperwork.”
They sat for a long moment in silence as cars whizzed by on the street and several pedestrians flashed them curious looks as they passed. Brad was only minimally aware of his surroundings.
He was thinking about how careful he’d been in his relationships with women. Not once had he had unprotected sex. He’d been so sure that something like this was never going to happen to him.
“I have to talk to your sister,” he said finally.
“What are you planning to say?”
“Haven’t a clue. But I have to do something. Now that I know who’s going to have my…the baby and how it’s going to be raised, I can’t just turn my back and pretend it isn’t happening. Could you?”
“No, I guess not,” Ed agreed.
“Do you know if she’s home?”
“She’s out having dinner with friends tonight. Probably won’t be back until late. But you could catch her at the Founders Day Celebration tomorrow. I’m going if you want to ride along with me.”
The Founders Day Celebration was the biggest event of the year—if not the decade—and had been hogging the local headlines for days. Everyone wanted to attend, and from what Brad had heard, if you didn’t have some pretty high-up connections, you couldn’t get in.
“You playing bodyguard to some dignitary?” he asked.
“No, strictly there as Emily’s brother. She’s been putting it together for the past few months so she’s my in.”
Brad was sure he couldn’t have heard right. “Your sister is in charge of the Founders Day Celebration?”
“I take it she didn’t tell you.”
“She told me she was a gardener.”
Ed chuckled. “A psychic and a gardener. Boy, did she have fun with you today. Emily’s the curator of the city’s Botanical Gardens and a member of the Historical Society. She also has a Ph.D. in botany and she’s written a couple of books on medicinal plants.”
“Jeez,” Brad said as his head went back in his hands.
“Yeah, I know. A damn overachiever. Sure put the pressure on me and my brother while we were growing up. Our parents were always so button-popping proud of her. Still are. I planned to push her off a cliff when I got big enough.”
“Can’t imagine what stopped you.”
“It was this annoying habit she had of always making me feel like I was the talented one. No matter what sport I played, she was in the stands cheering for me and threatening the other team’s members with the loss of various body parts if they so much as harmed a hair on my head.”
The scene materialized so clearly in Brad’s mind that it made him wish he’d had such a sister.
“My pass to the ceremonies tomorrow is for two,” Ed said. “You can be my date if you promise not to wear anything too low-cut.”
“I’ll see what I have in my wardrobe,” Brad said dryly. “If you were me, how would you approach her on this?”
“Beats me.”
“Come on. You’ve known her all your life. You must have a feel for what would work?”
“It’s precisely because I have known her all my life that I can assure you nothing will work. Emily’s made up her mind to have this kid alone and raise it by herself. And that’s what she’ll do.”
Brad looked out at the night, hoping for inspiration. But his mind was as hazy and blank as the starless sky.
Ed grabbed hold of his arm and pulled him to his feet. “Come on. We’re going back to the bar and tie one on.”
“You think getting drunk is going to help?”
“I sure hope so. Tomorrow, I have tickets to the hottest event of the year and look who I’m taking.”
THE TEMPERATURE WAS IN the seventies, the air a fragrant kiss across Emily’s cheek. In the distance, the Pacific Ocean whispered against white sands. To the north, south and east, the steep mountains circled into a soft blue sky. The gardens all around her were ablaze with sunlight and the beauty of growing things.
“You even arranged for us to have perfect weather,” Dorothy said near her ear. “I am impressed.”
Emily sent her friend a smile.
The Botanical Gardens were filled with the by-invitation-only spectators. Chief of police Max Zirinsky was among them and so were a lot of his plainclothes officers, unobtrusively milling about and keeping a watchful eye.
On a slightly raised platform sat the city council along with Phoebe Landru and Oliver Smithson, Dorothy’s fellow members of the managing board of the Historical Society. The local KSEA TV news crew had set up cameras. Ken Kerr, the society’s photographer, was busy taking pictures with his thirty-five millimeter.
“All we need now is the mayor,” Dorothy said glancing at her watch.
As though hearing his cue, the newly elected mayor, Patrick O’Shea, turned the corner. The TV crew immediately aimed their cameras at him and started to roll. Emily went over to greet him.
The mayor shook her hand warmly, wearing a genuine smile. In Emily’s experience, there were two types of people who went into politics—egoists and idealists. The preponderance of officeholders fit into the first category. Patrick O’Shea, thankfully, fit into the second.
He’d been fire chief before running for mayor, not the kind of job that most candidates for public office held. But maybe the kind that they should. O’Shea knew how to put the welfare of the people of Courage Bay first.
Emily accompanied him to the platform and showed him to his seat. Dorothy had taken her place next to the other members of the Historical Society. The clock in the Botanical Gardens’ Heritage Museum was striking the hour. Everything was in place and on time.
As Emily turned to the crowd before her, she felt proud to be a part of this historical moment for Courage Bay. Raising her hands for quiet, she caught sight of her brother at the right of the large crowd and smiled. When she saw who was standing beside him, the smile froze on her lips.
Oh, no. What in the hell was he doing here?
Emily forced herself to turn her eyes and thoughts away. She was going to let nothing and no one interfere with this momentous occasion. “Ladies and gentlemen, it is my great pleasure to welcome you to our Founders Day Celebration. And it is my deep honor to present to you the mayor of Courage Bay, Patrick O’Shea.”
Emily took her seat beside Dorothy as Mayor O’Shea approached the podium accompanied by enthusiastic applause. When it had died down, he turned to Emily and publicly thanked her for all her hard work in making the celebration a success.
Dorothy rose and began to clap. The crowd quickly joined her as the mayor, city council and other members of the Historical Society’s managing board also got to their feet and applauded. All this focused and very unexpected attention made Emily glad she wasn’t a blusher.
Once the audience had sat down again, the mayor faced forward.
“I want to tell you a story my father told me when I was no more than five,” he began. “It’s a story I’ve passed down to my children. It’s one I hope you will pass down to yours.”
The crowd listened with hushed attention.
“In January of 1848, an American ship called Ranger was caught in a terrible storm at sea and blown off course to these Southern California shores,” O’Shea said. “When the ship was struck by lightning and began to sink, its exhausted crew would certainly have drowned if not for the brave Indians of this land who risked their lives fighting the raging current to bring them safely to shore. In honor of the selfless act of their rescuers, the survivors of Ranger named this settlement Courage Bay.”
Emily knew this story well. Still, she never tired of hearing it told. These events were a proud heritage that she and all the residents of Courage Bay shared. She found herself caught up in the favorite tale.
“When the Indian chief invited the shipwrecked crew to stay, they readily agreed,” the mayor continued. “Protected by this steep mountain range rising on three sides, our quiet community of Courage Bay remained virtually isolated from the outside world until the late nineteenth century when a road was cut through from the north. Even so, it wasn’t until 1904 when the citizens filed their town map with the county recorder’s office that Courage Bay was officially founded.”
Mayor O’Shea paused as he turned toward the large stone sundial to the right of the platform.
“As a marker of that historic event, the leaders of Courage Bay buried a time capsule beneath this enormous sundial they set in the heart of their community park, a park which has grown over the years to become our beautiful Botanical Gardens.”
He faced the crowd. “Today, exactly one hundred years later, we will remove the cover and open that time capsule. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to see what our city’s founders have preserved for us.”
Emily nodded to the man sitting in the seat of the crane. He turned on the engine and swung the telescoping crane arm over the sundial.
Earlier that morning she’d supervised the operator and his rigger as they’d dug around the eight-foot-diameter stone they would have to lift. After inserting wedges in several spots, they’d slid a metal plate beneath the sundial to protect it from cracking when it was raised. Slipping three sets of straps beneath the plate, they’d tied them together above the stone.
Lifting it now was a simple task. The rigger on the ground grabbed the steel hook at the end of the crane’s telescoping arm and fixed it beneath the sturdy straps. He then signaled the crane operator to hoist the stone away.
As Emily watched the progress, she’d found herself wondering what it was the founders of Courage Bay had bequeathed them. The sundial had been chiseled when the time capsule had been buried beneath it, specifying when it was to be opened. On the Roman numerals marking the twenty-four-hour segments were the initials of the men who had been selected to set the stone in place.
But nothing on the sundial gave a hint as to what was to be found in the chamber below. If she were to bury a time capsule today, what would she put inside?
Emily’s musings came to a quick close as the stone sundial was lifted and set aside on the cushioned platform prepared for it. The TV camera crew changed position to get a better angle, shining bright lights into the dark chamber below. The big moment had arrived.
Mayor O’Shea and the city council members were the first to reach the sides of the exposed pit and look within. Emily waited in anticipation on the adjacent platform with the other members of the Historical Society.
For a long moment, no one moved or said anything. And then one of the city council members muttered an oath. Another one straightened and stepped back.
Mayor O’Shea calmly turned to face the camera lens. “Ladies and gentlemen, there seems to be a skeleton in our time capsule’s closet.”
CHIEF OF POLICE MAX ZIRINSKY stood over the pit, instructing the Historical Society’s photographer on what angles he wanted him to shoot to get the best pictures of the skeleton that was lying beside the time capsule.
Ed beckoned Brad through the milling crowd—being held back by a line of plainclothes officers—to stand beside them. After introducing Brad to the police chief, Ed got to the reason he’d summoned his friend.
“We need your expertise. If we’re at the scene of a murder, no time capsule gets opened today. All of these very important people are going to be asked to leave so a crime team can get in here.”
“You want me to take a look at this skeleton and hopefully tell you that death was by natural causes,” Brad guessed.
“Can you?”
“I’m not a forensic anthropologist.”
“But you studied to be one,” Ed persisted.
“Even so, I have to warn you the kind of evaluation you’re asking for might not be possible. And even if it is, getting an answer could take a lot of time.”
“If we had a lot of time, we’d get a real forensic anthropologist,” Max said bluntly.
“How much time do you have?”
“Fifteen minutes, tops,” Max answered. “These are not people who are used to being kept waiting.”
No, Brad supposed they weren’t. Nothing he could do but his best. “I’m going to have to get down in the pit to get a closer look. If this is a crime scene—”
“Don’t worry,” Ed said, interrupting. “We’ll take your clothes and process them along with any dirt or whatever else you may pick up if this turns out to be a murder. Here, take these gloves and put them on. I’ll hold your sport coat.”
Brad nodded as he slipped out of his jacket and snapped on the thin evidence gloves Ed had handed him. There was only a three-foot drop to the top of the time capsule. Brad carefully slid down on the side opposite both it and the skeleton.
Bright lights followed his progress, as did a TV camera. Since Max was directing the camera, Brad assumed he’d commandeered the crew for the purposes of chronicling the scene and Brad’s initial examination of it.
His first glance at the fully articulated skeleton from above had already told him something. Decomposition followed a predictable course. The body had to have been placed here soon after death to leave an anatomically correct and intact skeleton like this.
It was also obvious that the bones had been thoroughly cleaned by insects over time and a couple stained a yellowish brown—most likely by some mineral leached from the soil on which they lay.
Brad went down on a knee and bent his head to get a ventral view of the pelvis, noting the relative narrowness of its opening and that of the sciatic notch on the edge of each hip bone. That gave him a pretty good idea about the skeleton’s sex. A cursory look at the leg and arm bones revealed a coarsening, no doubt the result of temperature changes occurring over an extensive period of time.
Then a shift in the overhead light picked up a glint of something near the right pelvic bone. He gently dipped his fingers into the earth, and, to his surprise, pulled out a gold coin.
It proved to be a twenty-dollar Liberty piece bearing the date of 1900. After rooting around in the dirt some more, he came up with something even more unexpected—a mud-encrusted dagger.
Brad’s eyes traveled up the skeleton’s rib cage and vertebral column. The bright light from above revealed no obvious knife marks on the bones. When he got to the skull, there were none there, either. But there was a round hole over one of the brow ridges. He was leaning forward to study it when he saw a dark lump inside the skull. He reached in and pulled out a spent bullet.
As Brad stood, he found Ed bending toward him, holding out an evidence bag. After slipping the dagger, coin and slug inside it, Brad climbed out of the pit.
“I take it we have a homicide,” Ed said as he stared at the dagger, his expression as ill-humored as a man suffering from a toothache.
Brad nodded as he dusted off the knees of his slacks. “Judging by the angle of the entry wound, I doubt that the guy shot himself.”
“Shot? He’s got a bullet wound?”
“My degree isn’t on the forensic side. But I’ve treated enough live shooting victims to recognize one when I see it.”
Brad paused to point at the evidence bag. “Plus which I found that slug inside his skull. The hole in the bone didn’t show any signs of healing, which also leads me to the logical conclusion that the wound was inflicted at the time of death.”
“Bullet must have lodged in his brain,” Max Zirinsky said as he came to stand next to them, looking about as thrilled as Ed did at the discoveries. “Didn’t have sufficient velocity to exit the skull. I’ve seen this kind of thing before.”
Brad noticed that the Chief of Police had made sure that even the TV crew was now behind the line of plainclothes police and that his conversation with Brad and Ed was being conducted out of the earshot of everyone else.
“What can you tell us about the victim?” Max asked.
Brad tugged off the evidence gloves. “The cranial sutures are completely closed. It has prominent browridges and robust mastoid processes. The fully erupted teeth are crooked with a fierce overbite. The pelvic opening is narrow.”
“And in English that translates to?” Max prodded.
“Adult male. Twenty-five to fifty age range. Someone will have to look a lot closer at the bones to tell you more.”
“Clothing?”
“Something in the soil near the feet that could be rotted leather boots. Nothing else visible, but I wasn’t really looking. Chances are most cloth materials disintegrated over time. Roots are impinging on the sides of the pit. Insect activity has no doubt been steady over the decades. Anything not enclosed within the time capsule was either consumed as their food or broken down by soil minerals.”
“Dr. Winslow, are you telling me that this guy was buried here at the same time as the time capsule?”
Brad nodded as he gestured toward the evidence bag. “I found that 1900 gold coin beneath the body. Can’t imagine anyone today carrying it around as if it were change in his pocket. When you add that fact to the absence of orthodontic work and the mineralization of the bones, I’d say it’s a safe bet your skeleton is at least a hundred years old.”
Relief washed over Max’s face. He grabbed Brad’s hand and gave it a hearty pump. “Thank you, Dr. Winslow.”
“You’re welcome,” Brad said, surprised. “But I thought that you were hoping it wasn’t a homicide.”
“Brad, if this guy was killed a hundred years ago, his murderer’s dead, too,” Ed explained. “That closes it for us. No crime scene, no need to delay pulling up the time capsule and getting back to the celebration.”
“Let’s keep the fact that he was murdered off the news,” Max said. “No need to distract from the ceremony. I’ll let the mayor know we can proceed.”
As soon as he was gone, Ed held out Brad’s sport coat. “Buddy, you just made me look good in front of the chief. Come on. I want to be the one to break the news to Emily. If you’re still bent on talking to her, I suggest you do it after I sing your praises.”
“Sounds good to me,” Brad said as he put on his coat and started with Ed toward the crowd. “When she told you about ending up in the E.R. yesterday, she didn’t mention meeting me, did she?”
“Not a word.”
“Good. Introduce me to her as though you have no idea that we’ve met.”
“What do you have planned?” Ed asked.
“Nothing, yet. I simply want to keep my options open. And don’t let on that I know about…you know.”
Brad had refrained from being specific because they had gotten within the hearing range of others.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Ed assured. “If she learns I said anything, she’ll kill me.”
When Emily saw Ed and Brad approaching, she broke away from the people she was with and met them halfway. True to his promise, Ed introduced Brad to her as though he had no idea his sister and friend had met before.
“Dr. Winslow and I know each other,” Emily said.
Brad nodded as though he had just figured out why she looked familiar. “Yes, of course. You were in the E.R. yesterday. How are you feeling today, Mrs. Barrett?”
“Fine, thank you,” she said, but she was studying him intently.
He was studying her, as well. Yesterday, she’d been his patient, and as such he’d carefully restricted his observations to an impersonal list of vital signs.
Today, she was a tall, uncommonly lovely woman with long chestnut hair, large amber eyes and a natural warmth that had effortlessly captivated the mayor as well as the rest of the crowd.
And she was irritating him more by the minute. Why would an intelligent, attractive woman like this—who could no doubt charm most men into doing whatever she wanted—choose to have a child by artificial insemination?
It didn’t make sense. Brad needed things to make sense—and this most of all.
“I have some good news, Em,” Ed said. “Brad has saved the day. Even though your skeleton appears to have been the victim of foul play, the guy met his maker a hundred years ago. The Founders Day Celebration can go ahead as planned.”
“That is good news,” Emily agreed, looking relieved. “But you do realize that learning who this skeleton is and how he came to be buried with the time capsule could be as significant as anything else we uncover today?”
Ed shrugged. “That’s something for you historians to figure out.”
“Aren’t you going to investigate?”
“Em, it’s not a police matter.”
“But if he was murdered—”
“Look, I’d like to help you on this, but I can’t. And neither can the department. We have far too many unsolved homicides with living perps running around out there that need to be found. No one has the time to dig into old crimes where the murderers are long dead.”
Watching the disappointment marring Emily’s smooth forehead, Brad knew opportunity was knocking and quickly stepped forward to open the door. “I may be able to help you with the skeleton’s identity,” he said.
She turned toward him, her expression full of that cool, professional calm he thought he had a patent on. “How could you help?”
Before he had an opportunity to answer, a middle-aged woman approached them. Brad recognized her as the one who had sat next to Emily and led the crowd in its applause of her efforts.
Emily introduced her friend as Dr. Dorothy Mission, a member of the managing board of the Courage Bay Historical Society.
“Do you prefer doctor or Dorothy?” Brad asked as he shook the hand offered to him.
“Always depends on who’s asking,” Dorothy said. “In your case, definitely Dot.”
She was flirting with him in that totally non offensive and non serious way that a plump woman over fifty with guts and good humor could pull off. He liked her immediately. “I’m Brad.”
“Did I overhear you say something about helping out, Brad?” Dorothy asked.
“Yes, I have some knowledge of forensic anthropology,” he said. “There’s a lot that can be learned from bones. I’ll study the skeleton for you and see what I can turn up.”
“That’s a generous offer,” Emily said, in a tone that was something less than bursting with enthusiasm. “But I wouldn’t presume to—”
“I like mysteries,” he interrupted. “And you have to admit, this hundred-year-old skeleton presents an interesting one.”
“So our skeleton isn’t of recent origin,” Dorothy said. “No wonder Max Zirinsky was looking so relieved.”
“It appears to have been buried with the time capsule, Dot,” Emily explained. “And to have been murdered.”
“Murdered?” Dorothy repeated.
“Let’s keep that fact among ourselves,” Ed said quickly. “At least until Brad can examine it and give us the details.”
“We’ll be delighted to avail ourselves of your expertise,” Dorothy said.
Out of the corner of his eye, Brad could see that Emily was not quite so delighted.
He turned to Ed before she could think of any more excuses to brush him off. “Can you arrange to have the skeleton carefully removed and taken to the hospital morgue after the ceremony?”
Ed frowned as he looked over at the chief of police. Brad understood he was going to have to sell his superior on this use of the department’s resources for this non-case and clearly wasn’t looking forward to the task.
“What the hell,” Ed said. “If anybody tries to give me grief, I’ll just remind them of all the important noses that would be out of joint if you hadn’t been here today. What do you want me to do with this stuff?”
He was holding up the evidence bag with the dagger, coin and spent slug.
“Keep them with the skeleton for now. Could be important to the examination later. That is, if that’s all right with you,” Brad said as he turned to Emily.
She nodded. That told Brad what he wanted to know. She’d accepted his offer of help, despite her suspicions.
While he was doing this favor for her, he should be able to get close enough to discover what made her tick. Once he did, he could decide how best to convince her that she was wrong to try to bring up a child by herself.
That he would convince her, he had no doubt. Had she really been a superstitious person, no amount of logic could have reached her. But she was clearly intelligent and, even better, a woman of science.
She would respond to reason. He just had to find the right approach.
The mayor advanced toward the podium at that moment and took the microphone in hand.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m happy to report that thanks to Dr. Brad Winslow’s expert analysis, we know that the skeleton in our time capsule’s closet is a fascinating artifact that, no doubt, will become an interesting research project for our Historical Society. Now please take your seats, for we are about to lift the time capsule out of its resting place and take a look inside. Who knows what other surprises lie in wait?”
CHAPTER THREE
“YOU LIED TO ME, EMILY BARRETT,” Dorothy whispered in her ear when they had retaken their seats.
“About what?” Emily whispered back.
“Dr. Brad Winslow is anything but just another guy.”
“And you’re saying that because…?”
“Come on, Em. You know perfectly well that man’s the reason we women were given breasts that heave and spines that melt.”
Emily contained her smile. Dorothy had insisted Brad join them on the platform in thanks for his help with the skeleton. He sat with the city council, on the receiving end of a lot of appreciative looks from the women in the audience. There was something about the guy, all right. Not that Emily had any intention of admitting that to her friend.
“Does Ted know you lust after other men like this?” she teased.
“I’m not lusting. I’m merely observing and appreciating. But you, my friend, are in a position to lust away. In case you need reminding.”
Emily was saved from answering when the grinding gears of the crane caught everyone’s attention, and the time capsule was lifted out of the pit.
It was a rectangular, steel-riveted box, about three-by-four feet and at least three feet deep. The rigger on the ground directed the crane’s telescoping arm until the capsule was set gently on the large felt-covered pad Emily had waiting beside the podium.
As the workmen went about removing the lid, everyone on the platform circled them in anticipation.
“We’ll only be able to get a brief glimpse at what’s inside,” the mayor cautioned the crowd as he slipped on thin plastic gloves. “The Historical Society must take possession of the contents so that they can be preserved. But once cataloged, our treasure will be shared.”
When the lid came up, the mayor lifted out the item on the top—a letter wrapped in string and sealed with wax. He unfolded it very carefully and began to read.
“To the Inheritors of Courage Bay, 2004: Inside this first carton, we send you the images of the white-winged ships that sail into our bay bringing us news and goods from distant shores. There are also photographs of our dwellings made of strong wood and brick, with wisps of smoke lifting out of our chimneys from the fireplaces that keep us warm when winter comes. Rising behind our homes you’ll glimpse the steep mountains that for generations have sheltered us from the sorrow and ravages of war. Above them is the sky of pale blue that will bring out scarlet sheets to wrap our sun to sleep tonight. And lastly we send to you our faces—both young and old, fair and less favored, the lines upon all being drawn with life’s deft pen.
“What will these pictures mean to you a hundred years hence? This we cannot fathom. Nor can we know what you will find here in your time. But we can tell you what you would have found in ours.
“This is a beloved world, swept with sunshine, the breath of flowers, the song of birds, forests bounding with wildlife and a people with hearts full of gratitude. We, the guardians of Courage Bay, pledge to care for this good land and for one another. When our history is written, may it be recorded with a light and understanding hand.”
O’Shea slowly raised his head. “This letter I’ve just read to you is signed by the mayor and eleven others. They are identified at the bottom as the twelve men chosen to bury the capsule and set the sundial in place. I’m going to close the letter immediately to protect it from deteriorating. Now let’s have a quick look at those promised pictures.”
The wooden box beneath the letter held at least a hundred pristine photographs, wrapped in cloth. Phoebe Landru, the senior member of the managing board of the Historical Society, had the honor of taking out a few to show them to the crowd.
Emily got a brief glimpse at a picture of the Courage Bay Livery Stable and Feed Store. A blacksmith shop. An apothecary. Then there was a shot of the mountains, heavy with trees that had since been logged. And finally, the photo of a young woman with a lovely heart-shaped face. Phoebe flashed the image briefly to the audience and then carefully put it back in the box with the others.
The mayor pulled the next packet from the time capsule. He identified it as a duplicate of the hand-drawn map of Courage Bay that had been filed at the county courthouse.
After showing it to the crowd and making sure the TV crew got a shot, the mayor stepped aside and invited Dorothy to open the next item in the capsule. It was a box filled with copies of the Courage Bay Bulletin, a newspaper that had been defunct for nearly fifty years. One of the copies Dorothy held up for the audience to see had a banner headline announcing that the Wright Bros. Flying Machine had Conquered the Sky. Another proclaimed that the time capsule was to be buried that day.
Beneath the box of newspapers was one with a stack of separate sheets of paper on which townspeople had recorded their predictions for the future. Emily was given the fun of selecting a few and reading them to the crowd.
“This storekeeper says that the marvels of modern machinery will turn the current drudgery of jobs and housework into joyful endeavors, leaving men and women many hours to take long walks and read well-written books. Ah, if only he had been right.”
That generated a few smiles from the audience.
“According to the town’s newspaper editor, ‘Courage Bay will become a busy city where everyone will move quickly back and forth in their automobile wagons, horses having become obsolete. But the wheels of these automobile wagons will be cushioned so the city will be free from noise.’”
At that moment, a loud screeching of tires and the blast of a horn echoed from a car on an adjoining street. It was so perfectly timed, everyone laughed.
The audience was still chuckling when Emily took her seat.
Oliver Smithson was the one to remove the next box from the time capsule. A note on the top described the contents within as letters written by the surviving crew of the Ranger, each giving his individual account of the vessel’s sinking on that fateful day, as well as his rescue by the Indians.
Oliver read off the names of the authors: “Fitzwalter, Giroux, Himlot—”
“I’m his descendant,” Councilman Dean Himlot interrupted. “That letter from my ancestor belongs to me.”
Emily knew Dean Himlot as she knew most of the notables in this crowd. He could be a bit full of himself, forgetting sometimes that it was his family’s famous name that had enabled him to get elected.
Still, she’d never known him to be abrasive, especially in the company of his social peers. Just proof that lots of money and clout didn’t buy class.
“Actually, Dean,” the mayor said amicably as he took the mike from Oliver, “according to the letter that I read previously, everything in this time capsule was bequeathed to the people of Courage Bay, not any individual. However, rest assured that you will be given a copy of your ancestor’s letter as soon as—”
“Don’t open the box,” Dean said. “That letter is a family heirloom. You could ruin it by exposing it to the air.”
“Get a grip, Dean,” Gerald Fitzwalter spoke up from the spectators in a clearly annoyed manner.
Gerald was president of his family’s local bank and head of the Chamber of Commerce. He was also a descendant of a Ranger crewman. Gerald and Dean had been feuding for twenty years. It all started when they were on opposing football teams in high school competing against each other in a regional championship. A fumble on the field resulted in a fight between them and they both got kicked out of the game. Each blamed the other.
“I wasn’t going to open the box of these letters at this time,” Oliver said in the tone of a professor addressing dense pupils. “I’m perfectly aware that some of these letters could have been written a hundred and fifty years ago and may, therefore, be doubly sensitive to the elements. Now, if I may proceed?”
The mayor nodded in his direction and Oliver finished naming the surviving crewmen. Emily already knew their names, as she was certain did most of this crowd.
Oliver then put the box aside and opened the next in the capsule. The letters within were written by average citizens depicting community life.
The first one was by a farmer—who, fortunately, didn’t have any descendants in the audience—but who, unfortunately, had included more details about raising chickens than Emily ever wanted to know.
The second letter Oliver read started out to be a great deal more interesting. It was from an amateur gardener who claimed to have found a wonderful medicinal plant that had cured her of the blinding headaches she’d had since adolescence. The gardener had included a copper tin that was filled with its seeds, which she described as a soothing intoxicant.
There were two pages to her letter. But to Emily’s disappointment, Oliver read what appeared to be only half of the first before he suddenly stopped and closed it.
“We shouldn’t expose these documents to the light any longer,” he said by way of explanation.
The mayor nodded as he addressed the crowd. “The documents, artifacts and photos will be digitized and placed on the City’s Web site. Ladies and gentlemen, the founders of Courage Bay have left us a priceless piece of their history and ours. We’ll ensure that it is preserved for all to enjoy.”
When the mayor stepped away, Emily retook the podium and invited the audience to reconvene in the reception room of the Heritage Museum behind them, where drinks and hors d’oeuvres were being served.
The mayor and city council quickly joined the spectators headed toward those promised refreshments and the political shoulder-rubbing that was always the highlight of this type of social event.
Emily turned off the microphone just in time to prevent the argument that started behind her from being broadcast throughout the Botanical Gardens.
“How dare you imply that I’m too old and weak to catalog these artifacts correctly?” Phoebe asked in her seventy-three-year-old voice that was about as feeble as a two-by-four.
Oliver’s skin was turning a rosy pink beneath his full white beard. “You know damn well that’s not what I said, Phoebe. I simply pointed out that when it comes to computers, you are not up to speed.”
“Look who’s talking,” Phoebe said. “Last month, when Dorothy mentioned that we needed to update the Society’s hard drive, you were the one who got all hot and bothered because you thought that she was trying to reschedule our spring golf tournament.”
Oliver’s lips tightened. “I may not be familiar with the terminology, but need I remind you that the pharmaceutical company I ran for forty years is full of computers and competent operators?”
“We are not handing over these valuable items to some computer operator who hasn’t the faintest idea how to preserve them,” Phoebe said.
“What’s going on?” Emily whispered to Dorothy.
“Oliver just got a call from the hospital,” Dorothy whispered back. “Wayne won’t be able to take custody of the time capsule’s contents as planned. He’s had a stroke.”
“These irreplaceable items must stay in the hands of the Historical Society,” Phoebe continued. “Now, my grandniece Fiona is quite competent with computers. Together, she and I can—”
“Only last week you were complaining that Fiona was so tired chasing after her two preschoolers that she didn’t even have the energy to come see you,” Oliver interrupted.
“I’ll hire a sitter for her,” Phoebe said, undaunted.
“And how long will that take?” Oliver challenged. “You went through nearly sixty applicants and four months before you finally chose Mrs. Hanna to be the librarian. And what a choice that was.”
“Mrs. Hanna’s credentials as a historian are impeccable, not to mention the fact that she speaks five languages.”
“We didn’t need someone with impeccable credentials or who could speak five languages. We needed someone who could work the library’s computer! Now we’re paying Holly to come in and do it after school!”
“Ken, I need another picture of this imbecile,” Phoebe said, pointing to Oliver. “The last one of him I put on my dartboard is already full of holes.”
The photographer looked amused but made no effort to comply. Ken—like the rest of them—was used to Phoebe and Oliver’s verbal sparring matches. When these two crossed swords, the best thing anyone could do was stay out of the way.
“And that’s another thing,” Oliver said. “Ken’s supposed to be the Society’s photographer, but I can’t get him to do a damn thing for me. Every time I try he tells me he’ll have to clear it with you first.”
Oliver was talking about Ken as though he wasn’t there. Typical of Oliver. And typical of Ken that he showed no sign of offense.
“He has the editing and printing of the newsletter to see to,” Phoebe countered. “He’s not one of your lackeys. Speaking of which, where is this illustrious and purportedly proficient historian who was supposed to be on hand today to take custody of the time capsule contents?”
“Damn it, Phoebe, I already told you.” Oliver was shouting now. “Wayne had a stroke. Are you going to blame me for that?”
“Please, Oliver, Phoebe,” Dorothy interrupted as she stepped between her fellow board members. “I know this is disappointing. I, too, was counting on Wayne’s expert assistance. But he’s seriously ill. We should set aside concerns about the time capsule for the moment and think of him.”
“His doctor told Wayne’s wife that the stroke was minor,” Oliver said, as though Dorothy was making a big deal over nothing. “He’ll be all right.”
“That’s good to hear,” Emily said carefully. “But I believe the point that Dorothy was making is that Wayne needs to know how concerned all of us in the organization are for his welfare.”
“Thank you, Emily,” Dorothy said with emphasis.
“Oh, very well,” Phoebe said. “I’ll send him a fruit basket from the Society. And a card.”
“And now that that’s taken care of,” Oliver said, “let’s get back to the matter of what we’re going to do with the time capsule treasures.”
Dorothy and Emily looked at each other and shook their heads.
“None of us on the managing board knows enough to digitize this important information, not to mention putting it on the city’s Web site,” Dorothy said. “And, as generous as Oliver’s offer is to use personnel at the Smithson Pharmaceutical Company, Phoebe’s right. These artifacts are too valuable to let out of our hands.”
“Josh is employed part-time by the Society,” Oliver said. Scanning the now nearly deserted gardens, he called, “Josh? Damn it, where are you, boy?”
“Here,” Josh said as he scrambled up the platform steps.
Oliver grabbed his grandson’s shoulders. “You took computer courses in high school, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“So you could do whatever it takes to get images of these items into a computer and put them on the City’s Web site, right?”
Josh shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Oh, that overwhelms me with confidence,” Phoebe said.
Oliver slipped his hands from his grandson’s shoulders and let out a huff of disappointment.
When Emily saw the look that flattened Josh’s face, she immediately stepped forward. “Josh is doing a superb job for the Botanical Gardens and the Society. He’s also been a big help getting things organized for today. I don’t know what I would have done without him.”
Oliver wasn’t listening. He was too busy shaking his head like a windshield wiper on high.
“Damn kids today come out of school dumber than when they went in,” he muttered.
Josh slunk off the platform just as Holly came out of the museum. She waved in his direction, but Josh turned away and disappeared into the trees.
Emily was trying to decide whether to try to talk to Oliver or just kick him when Dorothy raised her hand to get everyone’s attention.
“As much as Emily is right about Josh’s great work in the Heritage Museum and around the Botanical Gardens, it’s not fair to ask him to take on a task of this magnitude. We need someone from the Historical Society who has both experience in document preservation techniques and computer expertise.”
Dorothy looked pointedly at Emily.
Emily felt both Phoebe and Oliver’s eyes turn toward her as though assessing her right to have the job.
“She has the gardens to see to,” Oliver said, “and her own research.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Dorothy agreed. “Which means these important artifacts will not leave this site. That’s another plus.”
“You said everything would go off today without a hitch,” Phoebe complained. “But there was that long delay when the skeleton was unearthed.”
“I’m so glad you mentioned the skeleton,” Dorothy said, ignoring Phoebe’s unfair implication that unearthing a skeleton was somehow Emily’s fault. “Isn’t it a fascinating find? Emily will be working with Dr. Winslow to identify the remains for us and the items that were found in the grave.”
“What items?” Phoebe asked.
“Detective Corbin is sending them and the skeleton to the Courage Bay Hospital morgue so that Dr. Winslow and Emily can study them,” Dorothy said. “She’ll be able to write the article on everything they discover for the newsletter.”
“Since there may be some clue as to the skeleton’s identity in the time capsule documents, it makes sense that we look them over as soon as possible,” Brad said from behind Emily.
She spun around to find him standing not five feet away, holding two glasses of champagne. He’d left with the mayor in the direction of the reception hall after the ceremony had ended. She hadn’t heard him return.
“Dr. Winslow makes an excellent point,” Dorothy agreed. “Emily’s a whiz with computers. And, since she is a member of our society, we know she will properly preserve these valuable items. I realize this is asking a lot, but will you do it for us, Emily?”
Be the first to see everything that was in the time capsule? Did Dorothy really have any doubt?
“I’ll be happy to,” Emily said in as calm a tone as she possessed.
“Well, Phoebe, Oliver?” Dorothy asked. “What do you think?”
What both Oliver and Phoebe thought was clear on their faces. Each still wanted access to the contents first. But it was hard arguing with Dorothy’s logic and persuasive techniques.
Phoebe nodded. Oliver shrugged. And that, Emily knew, was as close to a “thank you for taking on this incredibly time-consuming assignment” as she was going to get from them. But she didn’t care. She was thrilled.
After seeing that all the items had been returned to the time capsule and the lid closed, Phoebe and Oliver set off for the refreshments and the socializing they both reveled in. Ken waved goodbye to Emily and Dorothy and trotted after them.
Brad handed Dorothy one glass of champagne and held out the other to Emily.
She shook her head. “I don’t think Sprout would like it.”
“Sprout?”
She rested a hand on her stomach. “That’s its botanical name.”
He nodded as though in tardy understanding. “Of course, the baby. My apologies, Mrs. Barrett. I forgot.”
Had he? Or was this a really good act?
As he sipped the champagne he’d offered to her, she studied him. It could be a coincidence that Ed had brought him today. He certainly gave no indication that he knew she’d had artificial insemination, much less that she’d selected his sperm.
Ed had promised he’d say nothing to Brad. Maybe she’d been worrying for no reason.
“Where do you plan to go over the time capsule contents?” Brad asked.
“My office is on the second floor of the Heritage Museum,” Emily answered. “I’ll see if I can round up the crane operator and his rigger. Between the two of them, I’m hoping they’ll be able to lug it up the back stairs.”
“Why don’t I give it a try?” Brad offered.
Emily blinked at him in surprise.
“Are you sure, Brad?” Dorothy asked. “It has to weigh at least a hundred pounds.”
“Dot’s right,” Emily said. “You can’t possibly carry it over to the museum, much less up all those stairs by yourself.”
“Can’t I?”
He picked up the capsule and held it as though it weighed no more than an empty orange crate.
“Dr. Winslow, I don’t think—” Emily began.
“Light as a feather,” Brad interrupted. “Lead the way.”
Emily’s eyes traveled from the heavy time capsule to the stoic face of the man holding it with such deceptive ease.
“I’ll wait here to be sure that no one disturbs our skeleton until Ed can arrange to have it removed,” Dorothy offered. “If you need to find me later, I’ll be at the reception looking after things.”
Still Emily hesitated.
“Go on, Em. It’ll be all right.”
At her friend’s urging, Emily gave in and led the way to her office. But she did not have a good feeling about this. And she very much doubted everything would be all right.
BRAD’S ARMS WERE IN AGONY and his back was killing him. A hundred pounds. Ha! This damn time capsule weighed a ton. And he still had another eight steps to climb.
What an idiot he’d been, insisting on carrying the blasted thing. He couldn’t imagine what had possessed him.
Yes he could. Emily had looked so damn sure when she’d announced that he couldn’t possibly do it that the logical part of his brain had ceased to function.
He was determined to prove her wrong—or die trying.
The die-trying possibility was looming ever closer. He set the time capsule down on the next step and collapsed beside it, his heart pounding. Easing out of his sport coat, he let it drop to the stairs.
A bead of sweat rolled across his forehead, zigzagged between his eyebrows and dropped onto his lashes. His arms were so tired that he couldn’t even lift a hand to brush the drop away.
“I never should have agreed to let you do this,” Emily said. “I knew that container was far too heavy for you.”
She stood above him on the second-floor landing. When Brad raised his head, the sweat dropped into his eye, bringing with it the sting of salt. Even with that one eye shut, he could see the “I told you so” look on her face.
“I’m simply taking a breather.”
He’d barely had the breath to get the words out. The last thing he wanted to do was lift that damn box again. But with her standing there watching him, he knew he was going to.
Somehow he got himself back on his feet and picked up the capsule. How he managed to carry it up those last steps and into Emily’s office he had no idea.
She directed him to set it on the floor beside a walnut desk. As soon as it was in place, he staggered over to the nearest chair and collapsed. He closed his eyes and sucked in air, wondering if he was ever going to feel his arms again or be able to breathe normally.
Time passed—he had no idea how much and didn’t particularly care. He was just thankful that he wasn’t carrying that damn thing anymore. When his breath started to come in a more normal rhythm, he felt a hand on his arm and opened his eyes to find her beside him.
“I thought you might like something cold to drink.”
She was holding out a tall glass of water. Gratefully, he took it from her, and downed the contents in one long gulp. By the time he’d set the empty glass on the table next to him, she’d taken the chair behind the desk.
The small, exceptionally neat office seemed to be darker than when he’d entered. Glancing around, he noticed that she’d drawn heavy drapes across the windows. A couple of low-wattage lamps were all that now lit the room. They shone off spotless glass shelves and wooden furniture, well carved and built to last.
The room exuded a pleasing calm, not currently reflected in its owner.
“Why did you insist on doing that?” she asked.
He met her eyes. “Weight lifting should be part of everyone’s exercise routine. Builds muscle and bone. Makes you strong. Just ask your doctor.”
She shook her head. “I realize I should be thanking you for bringing the time capsule up here, but—”
“You’re welcome.”
“You could have hurt yourself.”
The worry in her voice was carefully controlled, but it wasn’t superficial.
“Nice of you to be concerned about me.”
Her chin lifted. “I was concerned about our liability insurance. Had you sustained an injury carrying these artifacts belonging to the Historical Society, we could have been held responsible.”
Her cloak of professional indifference was one he donned often enough to see through. “I wouldn’t have sued for much.”
Her head shook in frustration. “Dr. Winslow—”
“Call me Brad.”
“Are you always this stubborn?”
“Stubborn? I’m not stubborn. I’m totally pigheaded and obstinate.”
For a second, a look of overwhelming exasperation claimed her features. Then it vanished and a chuckle—warm and sweet—broke through her lips. The smile that followed was even better.
“There’s a bathroom down the hall where you can wash up,” she said.
“I look that grungy, huh?”
“Try not to break the mirror.”
He got up and headed for the soap and water. As he gazed at the reflection of his dirt-smudged face over the sink, he was grinning. Yeah, it had been really dumb insisting on carrying that damn capsule.
But he’d gotten her to smile. That was worth a few sore muscles.
CHAPTER FOUR
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.
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M.J. Rodgers
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Emily Barrett wants a baby in her life–not a husband.And that′s the reason she went to a sperm bank. Through some detective work she′s able to work out who the donor is, but she doesn′t ever plan to reveal to Dr. Brad Winslow that he′s about to become a father.Yet when the two are forced to work together to solve a century-old mystery with a modern-day twist, Emily begins to wonder if she should revise her life plan.