Plain Refuge
Autor
Janice Kay Johnson
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18
HarlequinChapter One
“DECIDED TO BOLT with your cut of the money, did you?” asked Detective Ray Estevez, his manner as insulting as his words.
Rebecca Gregory stared in disbelief at the man she had allowed into her apartment. Had he just accused her of being complicit in a crime? Thank goodness Matthew wasn’t home! At five, her son was too young to understand the accusation, but he’d have picked up on the tone. Would Detective Estevez have bothered to restrain himself with a child in earshot?
“Or do you and Stowe plan to hook up once the investigation goes cold?” he continued, dark eyes flat and mouth curling in what she took for contempt.
Rebecca stiffened. What a creep. Steven Stowe, her former husband’s business partner, had disappeared after embezzling millions of dollars from their construction firm. Why would this detective imagine for a minute that she had conspired with Steven, or had anything but the most distant relationship with him?
“I have never so much as had lunch with Steven Stowe without Tim present,” she said icily.
“Yeah? Then why’d you leave your husband?”
Managing to meet his stare, she said, “That is between Tim and me.” And, really, her marriage was irrelevant to any investigation, even though the separation had been precipitated by the tension surrounding the embezzlement.
In retrospect, she knew their marriage had already been in trouble when, several months ago, Tim’s behavior changed. She knew now that he’d been hit by mysterious and crippling financial problems in the construction firm he had founded with Steven and another partner, Josh Griffen. Then, all she’d known was that the ridiculous hours he worked stretched even longer. He seldom bothered to spend time with his wife and son and brushed off her concern. Worried, frustrated, occasionally angry, he refused to even acknowledge there was a problem, not to her. What sex life they had left her feeling used. In fact, he’d shut her out so completely it became obvious she held no meaningful role in his life. Increasingly, she saw that he had never really talked to her, not the way her parents had to each other.
Rebecca had taken her wedding vows seriously. She had sworn to stick with him through these troubles. So she’d kept quiet and made excuses to their five-year-old son when he asked why Daddy was mad or never home.
Except then one of the three partners vanished and it came out that he’d embezzled a great deal of money. Tim’s reaction? Not grief at the betrayal committed by a friend. Oh, no. The day after the news of Steven’s disappearance hit the San Francisco Chronicle, Tim had bounded into the house in a great mood, swung her in a circle and ebulliently told her they wouldn’t have to worry about money ever again.
She had looked at him and thought, I don’t understand or know who you are, this man who is relieved, even joyous, because his partner and friend has fled with millions of dollars. As if that solved all his problems.
She could no longer love a stranger whose ethics she doubted.
But she didn’t know anything. And she couldn’t understand what had precipitated the lead investigator to grill her.
“Funny timing to leave your husband,” he shot back.
She had to say something. “Tim had been under stress for months while he and Josh and Steven tried to understand what was wrong. That...exacerbated our issues.” Wonderful. She sounded like a marriage counselor or a self-help book.
Estevez tipped the chair back, letting her know not so subtly that he had settled in and would stay as long as he felt inclined. “When did he explain the problems at work?”
“The day after Steven disappeared.”
He let out a bark of laughter. “You expect me to believe that? You were living with the guy!”
She had been, and it still hurt, remembering how unimportant she’d been to the man who was supposed to love her. Rebecca would be ashamed of herself for staying as long as she had with him, given the way he treated her, but she had been raised to believe marriage was forever. Despite the months of estrangement, if she had been sure he really loved her, she could have forgiven a lot.
Now, she raised her eyebrows. “Believe me or not, it’s the truth.”
“You’re a cool one, aren’t you?” He did not sound admiring.
Detective Estevez was of average height, but he was built like a bull, his neck thick, his shoulders powerful. He kept asking questions to which she had no answers. His temper heated. He slammed the legs of the chair back on the floor and planted his forearms on the table so he could lean forward until his sneering face filled her field of vision. He shouted. He wondered aloud what would happen to her kid when she went to prison.
But she couldn’t tell him what she didn’t know. She didn’t have the money; she had never felt close to either of Tim’s partners, even though one or the other had dined at the house every few weeks until those last months, when she scarcely saw them.
“You’re wasting your time,” she said.
He snapped, “I’ll decide that.”
When he ran out of questions, he glared at her for what had to be a full minute. Rebecca laced her trembling fingers on her lap and stared back at him with the pretense of composure.
At last he shoved himself to his feet, eyes narrowed. After flinging a business card on the table, he said, “I’ll be watching you.”
She didn’t respond—didn’t move—until she heard the apartment door close behind him.
And then she hugged herself and tried to understand why Detective Estevez had wasted time on her when Steven Stowe was the embezzler.
* * *
FOUR MONTHS LATER, Rebecca let herself into this house for what she prayed would be the last time. Their house—Tim’s house now. No, she’d be here to drop off Matthew for visits or pick him up, but that would be different.
And visits were all that Matthew’s stays with his father would be. With resolve, she buried the whiff of fear that she would lose their custody battle.
Once she closed and locked the front door behind her, the silence was so complete that her footsteps on the marble floor of the foyer seemed to echo. Something about that silence gave her goose bumps, even though she had expected the house to be empty. Housekeeping staff had always been part-time.
As Rebecca walked from room to room, she marveled that she’d ever called this place home. Tim had been so excited about building it for them that she’d had to be careful about what she said. He’d ignored her gentle suggestions. An architectural magazine had run a feature on it because the design and function were cutting-edge. Naturally, the finest materials were used. It had just never come to feel homey to her. How could it, with six bedrooms, five bathrooms? To her, it felt like living in a hotel.
Would Tim have listened if she’d spoken out more strongly from the beginning? Rebecca smiled sadly. She could only imagine his expression if she’d said, “For God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.” She had strayed so far from her roots that she couldn’t remember the whole quote, but knew there was something about clothing yourself in humility, too.
Pride, Tim understood. Humility wouldn’t be a virtue in his eyes.
There was so much she hadn’t let herself see when she’d foolishly fallen in love.
In the most recent meeting held at a law firm with both their attorneys present, Tim had told her to take anything from the house she wanted. Typical, she’d thought, feeling a mix of amusement and annoyance. He couldn’t look stingy in front of the attorneys. Once he had understood really, truly, that reconciliation wasn’t an option—something which had taken months—he’d been generous with financial settlements, as well as the small things.
His generosity had ended when it came to their son. Tim’s father, Robert Gregory, was a cold man who too often expressed astonishment that his son had made anything of himself. Whatever had happened between Tim and her, she still detested her father-in-law for what his disdain had done to his own child. Unfortunately, Robert thought Tim had done one thing right—he’d sired a handsome, smart son to carry on the family name. Divorce wasn’t a word Robert wanted to hear. He couldn’t have a dynasty if he didn’t have a firm grip on his grandson.
Rebecca had a very bad feeling that Tim’s demand for joint custody was only the beginning. Her attorney supported her decision to fight for primary custody. No reasonable person could think a five-year-old boy should live half the time with a parent who routinely worked seventy-to eighty-hour weeks and rarely took a weekend off.
Her gut feeling was that Tim agreed, but he couldn’t back down without facing his father’s contempt. And so their current standoff continued.
Temporarily blocking her worries, she focused on her current task. She was here, so she should get this over with.
She walked quickly through the ground floor, surveying the ultramodern furniture, which had never been to her taste. Even though the apartment she had rented was still scantily furnished, she didn’t want anything from here.
She did miss her exceptionally well-equipped kitchen, so she might raid the cupboards. The fine china or crystal goblets and wineglasses had mostly been given as wedding gifts, and she couldn’t imagine using any of them.
Cooking utensils were another matter. She selected a couple of favorite pans and tools and carried them to the box she had left in the foyer. She didn’t bother with Tim’s office, where she had rarely been invited. Thanks to staff, she hadn’t even entered it to clean.
A quick scan of Matthew’s bedroom assured her that she’d left only enough toys and books to allow him to feel at home during his weekends with his father. Everything important had already been packed up and brought to her new apartment.
The master bedroom was last. Rebecca was confident she had taken all her clothes and shoes. She had left behind most of the jewelry Tim had given her. She would never wear it again.
There was only one piece she would like to keep—the necklace that had been Tim’s gift their first Christmas together. The pendant was simple and lovely, an eighteen-karat gold heart studded with sapphires. They were the color of her eyes, he had told her before gently kissing her. It wouldn’t have been cheap, but neither was it extravagant and ostentatious like his later gifts. It would give her one memory to hold on to.
Tim had had a small safe built into his walk-in closet, hidden by stacked hemp storage boxes. Mostly, her jewelry had been kept in this safe rather than the larger one in his office. He’d always insisted on getting the jewelry out for her, but she had seen him dial the combination and remembered it. She doubted he would even notice that she had taken one necklace.
She moved a few boxes and dialed, and a moment later the safe door opened silently. She looked for the small blue box she kept the pendant in, but a surprising flash of red caught her eye. This was a ring, but massive and clearly masculine. Tim never wore rings. Stranger yet, a black leather wallet sat next to it.
Puzzled, she reached for the ring, lifting it out into better light.
Harvard University.
Steven Stowe, embezzler, had worn a ring just like this. An irritated Tim had claimed his partner wore it to flaunt his Ivy League education. Tim and the third partner, Josh Griffen, had graduated from a state university. She had thought they were being unfair. Steven didn’t talk about his past much, but she’d heard enough to know he had grown up in lousy circumstances. Making it to Harvard had to have been hugely symbolic to him. The sad part was that his mother had walked out when he was only a kid, and his dad had died of cirrhosis of the liver something like ten years ago. With no siblings, there wasn’t anyone left to be awed at his accomplishment.
Rebecca had wondered before whether his background explained why he’d been so desperate for wealth that he had been willing to betray his partners.
Her forehead crinkled as she set the ring back down.
What was she thinking? Of course this couldn’t be Steven’s! When he’d taken off with the money he’d stolen, he wouldn’t have left his treasured class ring behind. And they knew he wasn’t dead, because he’d been using his debit and credit cards on occasion, staying constantly on the move. Tim had told her the police hadn’t blocked his accounts so that they could trace his movements.
But dread formed anyway, making Rebecca reluctant to pick up the slim billfold. Her hands had become blocks of wood and her chest felt compressed, as if there was something wrong with the air in here. I don’t want to open this.
But the glow of the ruby was impossible to ignore. Just do it, she told herself, and flipped the wallet open.
Steven A. Stowe’s face looked at her from his driver’s license. His current driver’s license. One by one, she pulled the debit card and four credit cards from their slots. None of them had passed their expiration dates, either.
But...he was using his cards. That was how the police knew—
A whimper escaped her before she could stifle it. Steven wasn’t using them at all—Tim was. He traveled enough for business that it had never occurred to her to associate his trips with the times Steven had supposedly cropped up in Southern California. But maybe the investigators had.
Aghast, she thought about the huge risk Tim had been taking when he’d used someone else’s credit card for cash advances and large purchases. Except... She gazed at the driver’s-license photo. Tim and Steven did look a lot alike. People had always thought so. No one glancing at the awful driver’s-license photo would have questioned his identity, especially not when the man presenting it dressed well and had a smile that said he was trustworthy. And, of course, he could present other ID.
Rebecca dropped the billfold onto a shelf as if the leather had singed her fingers.
Her almost ex-husband wouldn’t have the wallet, credit cards and, most of all, that ring if Steven was still alive. So Tim knew he was dead...and had a stake in keeping the police chasing a man they believed to be alive and on the run.
And Tim was happy that Steven was dead. She couldn’t forget that.
Panting, Rebecca ran head-on into a terrible dilemma. Did she ensure Matthew’s father went to prison by giving these to that horrible detective? Tim might not have had anything to do with the death. Knowing Steven was dead wasn’t the same thing. It could have been an accident. And his first instinct would be to protect the company.
She wished as she hadn’t in years that she could talk to her mother. But she knew what Mamm would expect of her. “Pray,” she would have said. “Ask God what the right course is for you to take.”
Only, Rebecca’s faith had been worn down by life with a nonbeliever, by the modernity surrounding her. What her mother, raised Amish, really assumed was that prayer would open her heart, where God’s will would be revealed to her.
She wasn’t sure she’d recognize God’s will if it appeared in letters of fire in front of her, not anymore.
What if she pretended she had never opened the safe? Tim would never know.
Billfold still in her hand, Rebecca was already shaking her head. At least if none of the cards were ever used again, the police would start looking harder at the possibility Steven was dead, wouldn’t they? So, in a way, if she took these things she’d be doing the right thing while not betraying a man she’d once loved. Who was a good father, when he found time to spend with his son.
Heart hammering in her chest, Rebecca made her decision. She took the ring out of the safe again and replaced the hemp organizers. Then she rushed downstairs to stow the wallet and ring in her purse, and hurried for the front door.
Which opened just before she reached it.
“Shopping?” her husband said snidely.
* * *
A WEEK LATER, Tim arrived at the apartment to pick up Matthew. Playground and burgers, he’d promised.
The moment Rebecca let him in, she recoiled and took a couple of cautious steps back. He was waxen beneath his tan, his eyes wild and his forehead beaded with sweat.
“Dad!” Matthew yelled, and came galloping down the hall.
Taking a couple strides inside, Tim snarled at him. “I need to talk to your mother. Go to your room and shut the door.”
Vibrating with shock, Matthew stared at his father. Then, with a muffled sob, he whirled and ran.
“Don’t talk to him like that!”
Tim turned his turbulent glare on her. “Why did you have to go snooping?”
She opened her mouth to lie, but couldn’t. “I wanted the sapphire necklace.” Which, in the shock of what she’d found, she had forgotten to take. She no longer wanted it. Why cling to a memory of this man’s tenderness?
“You don’t understand what you stole.”
Rebecca stared at him. “Really? I’m pretty sure I do.” She searched his face. “Tim, tell me you wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
“Of course it wasn’t me!” He turned away and, with a jerky motion, swung back. “Misleading the cops a little, that’s not so awful. It was the only way to save the company. Don’t you understand?” he begged. When she didn’t respond, his face darkened. “You like your financial settlement, don’t you? What if I couldn’t keep paying child support? You might have to actually work for a living.”
The scathing tone and flushed face pushed her over the edge. “It was your pride that kept me from working during our marriage, and you know it. As it happens, I have a job.” Assisting in an elementary classroom would give her an in with the school district when she applied for a teacher’s position starting in the fall.
He rocked back. “What?”
“You heard me. And here’s something else you need to hear. I haven’t gone to Detective Estevez. I know, whatever happened, you think you’re doing the right thing. And, for better or worse, you’re Matthew’s father. I did hide the wallet and ring somewhere you’ll never find them.”
“You can’t do this to me.”
She crossed her arms. “What exactly am I doing to you?”
“You’re holding them over my head.” He shook his head, baffled. “Why? You’re the one who left me. I loved you.”
The fury she’d been suppressing swelled inside her. “So much so that I felt like a ghost in your house. One of the few times I tried to make you really see me, talk to me, you shoved me into the kitchen cabinet. I had to hide for days after that so nobody would see the bruises. But you weren’t around to notice. You were never around.”
“I told you I was sorry!” he yelled back.
“Sorry isn’t good enough!” Rebecca struggled to calm herself. She had forgiven him, hadn’t she? She wasn’t acting like it. “Tim, whatever you believe, my taking Steven’s wallet and ring had nothing to do with our history. I just...couldn’t let you keep fooling the police. It’s wrong. Whatever you did or didn’t have to do with Steven’s death—”
“I told you. I didn’t have anything to do with it. And it was an accident, anyway. We just...” He swallowed. “Him dying would have complicated everything. He took the money, he ran. That’s all anyone has to know.”
Hating what was staring her in the face, Rebecca whispered, “Why?”
“You don’t need to know. You need to quit interfering with something you don’t understand!” Teeth showing, the muscles in his shoulders bunching, he leaned in. “Give me back everything you took.”
Rebecca took a prudent step back. “No.” Groping behind herself, she found the knob and opened the front door. “You need to leave. I’ll make your excuses to Matthew.”
He didn’t move. “You’re blackmailing me.”
“No!”
“It’s the custody issue, isn’t it?” He gave an incredulous laugh. “You’ve got me over a barrel, and you know it. If I back off, you’ll give me what I need.”
The possibility had never crossed her mind. She wasn’t devious enough. But now that he’d laid it out...heaven help her, she was tempted. Her pulse raced. Matthew would stay with her, and he’d be safe from his critical, domineering grandfather.
What she was contemplating was a lousy way to protect her son, but she’d use anything or anyone for him.
“No,” she heard herself say. “I won’t give it back. But you have my promise that I’ll keep quiet. No one else will ever see what I found.”
Her pulse raced as she waited. His eyes narrowed in a way that told her he was thinking, and hard.
Finally he grunted, said a foul word and agreed.
* * *
THREE WEEKS LATER, she had her divorce and primary custody of Matthew, subject to the usual visitation schedule and swapping of holidays.
Detective Estevez might still be watching her, but, thank heavens, he hadn’t been back. She hated the idea of lying to his face.
Rebecca already felt tainted enough by a decision she knew wasn’t morally defensible. She imagined her mother shaking her head and chiding Rebecca with a gentleness that could still sting.
Yet, her mother had never shed her discomfiture regarding law enforcement. A fear of authority was bred into any Amish man’s or woman’s very bones by their bloody heritage. Throughout their history, the Amish had been driven out of one place after another by men in uniforms. Burned at the stake, tortured, imprisoned.
To go to the police about a family member’s behavior? No, Mamm would never have chosen that path. She would help that person see the error of his ways, guide him back to making godly choices. Punishing a wrongdoer wasn’t the aim of the Amish, and they never willingly went to the law.
Rebecca shook her head.
Her mother wasn’t here anymore. Rebecca was willing to live with a stain on her character if that was the only way to save Matthew from a life of being alternately shamed and molded by his grandfather.
* * *
THE DEAL HELD, although Matthew noticed the coolness between his parents. Worse, a couple of months after the divorce, he returned puffy eyed from a weekend with his father. Lower lip protruding, he stayed stiff when Tim hugged him.
Tim gave her an angry look, as if whatever had happened was her fault, then left. Rebecca followed Matthew to his bedroom and coaxed the story out of him.
Grandfather Gregory said some bad things about Mommy, and when Matthew objected, he had spanked him. Hard. And Daddy let him!
Furious, Rebecca hugged him. “Did he use his hand, or a belt, or...?”
Her little boy gaped at her. “A belt? Don’t people always spank with their hand?”
Well, that was something. “Is your bottom sore?”
He wriggled on his bed. “Uh-huh.”
She gave him another squeeze. “I’ll talk to your dad. Sometimes I think he’s a little afraid of your grandfather. He may have thought a spanking wasn’t that terrible. Especially if you were rude.”
“I wasn’t rude!” he exclaimed. “I just said my mom wasn’t a—” He sneaked a peek up at her. “He said a word you told me I can’t.”
She could imagine what Robert had called her. What she wondered was why. How much did he know about Tim’s part in Steven’s disappearance? And the leverage she held over Tim?
“Never mind,” she said. “Remember, ‘sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.’” Even so, he shouldn’t have to listen to her being vilified.
Together, she and Matthew decided the best thing was for him to say with dignity, Grandfather, I don’t want to listen when you use bad words about my mom, and then walk out of the room.
Forehead crinkling, Matthew repeated the line several times, then nodded firmly. “That’s what I’ll say.”
As far as she knew, he wasn’t spanked again. Perhaps Tim had confronted his father when Matthew wasn’t there. She wanted to think so.
Two months after her confrontation with Tim over the ring, he attended Matthew’s graduation ceremony from kindergarten. The three of them even went out afterward for pizza and had fun. At least, she thought they had, but when Tim drove them back to the apartment, he insisted on walking them up, where he asked Matthew to go to his bedroom.
He did it nicely enough, and Matthew shrugged and obeyed. Six now, he was growing like a weed and occasionally giving her glimpses of what he’d look like a few years down the road. That shrug was almost teenage. Rebecca wondered if he’d learned it from his fifteen-year-old babysitter.
She quit wondering when she glanced back at her ex-husband and saw the way his expression had tightened.
Feeling a little wary, she said, “What did you want to talk about?”
“Rebecca, you have to give me Steven’s things.” Tim kept his voice low, but urgency threaded every word. “Josh is pissed about this arrangement. He feels threatened, too.”
“Too?” she echoed.
“You don’t know what it’s like.” Hostility darkened his eyes. “Josh is after me, and Dad is angry because I gave in and let you have my kid. Sometimes I feel like that guy in the movie. I’m walking a tightrope between two skyscrapers. The only way off is to fall. That’s a shitty way to live.”
He was right. It was.
“I’d...like to think I can trust you, but I don’t trust your father,” she admitted. “Or Josh. And I’ve kept my word. I haven’t told anyone.”
“You know Josh is my best friend.”
She did know. Josh and Tim had met during orientation for their freshman year of college and had been roommates. Steven Stowe had been a much later addition, needed for his financial acumen. Because Josh had spent his summers working construction, he supervised the job sites. Tim’s gift had been convincing clients to choose G, G & S over other contractors. It was because of Tim that half the architects in the city recommended G, G & S to their clients. And when the company needed financing, Tim worked his magic on bankers.
“He’s leaning hard on me. You need to bend a little, Bec.” He hadn’t called her that in a long time. But then he said, “I don’t know how long I can keep protecting you. Be smart and think about it.”
She was speechless, and he departed without saying anything else. Rebecca almost lunged to flip the dead bolt on the door. Had he been telling her she needed to be afraid?
She tried to reason through the cloud of fear. Even if she returned the ring and the wallet and cards, she knew about them—about Steven. Even if she gave Tim the benefit of the doubt, what if Josh had killed Steven during an argument? Would he kill again to protect his secret? But there was the chance she’d given them to someone else as insurance.
Whatever he said to the contrary, keeping that proof might be the only way she could protect herself.
She put her back to the door and shuddered.
* * *
A COUPLE OF weeks later, Rebecca lay sprawled on the sidewalk, grit stinging her cheek. Dazed, she knew only that she was the near victim of a drive-by shooting, and that some man had tackled her to the pavement right after the first crack of gunfire.
I would have stood there frozen, like an idiot, she thought.
She groaned and pushed herself to a sitting position. People all around were babbling in excitement and alarm. The middle-aged man who had knocked her down was picking himself up, too. She heard an approaching siren.
Her phone rang and she groped in her handbag for it. She had to be sure someone from Matthew’s day camp wasn’t calling. Rattled, she stared at the strange number displayed on the screen. Even the area code was unfamiliar.
“Hello?”
A metallic voice said, “Call that a warning. You have something we need. Return it, or next time we won’t miss. And if you go to the cops? Your son is dead.”
Knowing the caller was gone, Rebecca began to shake.
