Elusive Echoes (26 page)

"It was Sunday night, wasn't it?" asked
Sandy. "You and Sean made love the first time after your big
argument."

Mel leaned over and knocked her head on the
desk blotter twice before she answered with a sigh. "In the cab of
his truck. We didn't—it happened very quickly and we didn't
use—protection."

"
That
. . . actually explains a lot,"
said Sandy. "He snuck in late and acted really strange Monday
morning." She chuckled. "Ry's gonna give him so much
crap."

Alarm had Mel's heart racing all over again.
"You can't tell Ryan!"

Sandy laughed again. "I won't have to. He'll
just know. It's the brother thing. So . . . what are your chances
of being pregnant?"

"A little too good." Mel picked up a red pen
and began doodling on the tablet in front of her. "I'm pathetic,
aren't I? Pregnant as a teenager, possibly pregnant right now out
of wedlock."

"You really don't think I'm going to judge
you on any of that, do you?"

Mel inhaled deeply and blew out again. "No.
No, I know you're not."

"So, a baby isn't the reason he asked you to
move the date forward?"

Mel drew another line on the paper. "That's
what he said."

"Then you should believe him. These boys
never lie."

"That's just it." Mel moved the pen and
another line appeared. "He already did." She told Sandy about the
funds for the Jeep.

"Ouch."

"Exactly. But I got over it, and even moving
the wedding up doesn't bother me. I like the idea. But Denny was
here yesterday afternoon and I didn't tell Sean about it until this
morning. He freaked out on me and now. . ." She sighed.

"Do you love him?" asked Sandy.

"You know I do."

"Don't read too much into his eagerness
then," advised her partner.

"I'm trying not to. Sandy . . . I want to
marry him. And I think—under any other circumstances I'd be really
happy if I found out I was pregnant."

Sandy chuckled. "Really. In the cab of a
pickup." The chuckle became a laugh. "You kids!"

"You know that's not how I would've wanted
it to happen. We should have time together. A baby should be
planned and wanted and . . . wanted." A tear dropped onto the
blotter in front of her.

"Mel!" Sandy's sharp exclamation drew her
away from her pity party. "It would be a baby with the man you love
and plan to marry, not the end of the world. Will you love him or
her?"

"Babies are new life . . . a gift from God.
That's what Grandma Tilly used to say." Mel sniffed and rubbed her
eyes. "Even though she was talking about the stupid old barn cats
and their kittens at the time."

"You didn't answer my question." Sandy's
voice was softer. "Will you love your child any less if he was
conceived in a reckless moment?"

Mel pressed a hand to her flat stomach. She
closed her eyes and pictured herself as she'd been years earlier, a
teenager, belly swollen, no resources, nowhere to turn for help.
She'd loved that baby before she was born. Loved her enough to make
plans to get her away from an abhorrent lifestyle.

"Yes," she whispered.
But am I trying to replace one child with
another?
She couldn't put voice to the
thought. Somehow, that would make the possibility all too
real.

"There you go. Big sister says stop
worrying." Sandy's soft chuckle was balm to Mel's frayed nerves. "I
hear Bethany stirring. But Mel . . . it'll work out. All of
it."

"I suppose it will."

She hung up the phone and tapped her chin
with the back of the pen. At least Sandy had agreed with her about
hiring two more part-timers. Mel twirled the pen between her
fingers like a baton. Then she dropped her gaze to the page in
front of her. When she saw the stick figure she'd drawn with the
huge pregnant belly and a tiny stick baby inside, a short burst of
half-hysterical laughter escaped.

Sandy was right. There was absolutely no
point in wondering or worrying about something that had already
happened or not. With a sigh, she tore off the top sheet of paper
and set it aside before beginning to draft the ad for additional
help.

Mel's eyes drifted to the wall safe across
from her. It hadn't been opened, or if it had, he'd left everything
untouched and closed it again. The desk drawer, however, had been
forced opened and left that way. Mel was certain this was Denny
messing with her. He could have easily opened the outdated safe
with their entire take from the previous evening, but had
apparently chosen to leave it alone. He also could have opened the
desk drawer without breaking the lock, but the lock had been
jimmied and was now useless.

"What are you doing, Denny?" She tapped the
pen against the top of the desk, replaying the conversation she'd
had with him the day before. Some kind of shell game, running
somewhere close by, but the money was apparently separate from the
scam itself.

What kind of scam was he involved in? The
money wasn't here. That suggested a third party. Shell game,
three-card Monty, now you see it, now you don't. Some kind of
fraud? She thought about his traffic tickets. Auto insurance fraud?
That was typically more of a big city scam. Orson's Folly was
ranching, a handful of small businesses. And Valentine's. Was he
after the bar, thinking he'd have an easy time of it because of her
partnership stake?

Mel rubbed her head.

Deputy Sherwood had been
kind and filled out the report. She had also been honest and told
Mel up front that without evidence, they could do little more than
question Denny,
if
they happened to find him. The state police had been by
checking for fingerprints, but Mel knew they wouldn't find Denny's.
He would have been careful. They did find prints on the safe, and
since it was highly likely these would turn out to be Mel's, she
had to suffer through the indignity of having her own prints
collected for comparison.

She'd spent fifteen minutes washing her
hands and cursing her half-brother, though the ink had washed down
the drain in the first two.

When her cell phone alerted her to an
incoming call, she set her pen down and checked the caller ID but
didn't recognize the number. Her heart immediately began beating
like crazy.

"Hello?"

"Is this Melanie Mitchell?" asked a deep
male voice.

"Yes, who is this, please?"

"My name is Ben Jamison. I'm a friend of Joe
Griffin."

Her eyes closed in relief and she eased out
a breath. "You're the investigator."

He chuckled. "That's one thing I do. I
needed to touch base with you, ask a couple of questions. Is this a
good time?"

"Does this call mean you'll take the case,
Mr. Jamison?"

"Call me Ben." He spoke easily and his deep
voice was soothing. "And yes, I'm going to try to help you. Let's
start with telling me your story in your own words."

In a halting fashion, Mel told Ben the same
story she'd told Joe. It never got any easier to say.

"My brother came in to the bar yesterday and
let me know he was in the area running what he's calling a shell
game. He wants me to keep quiet and pretend I don't know him if I
run into him." Mel finished speaking quickly then drew a shaky
breath. "He said if I help him, he'll give me more information
about my daughter and implied if I don't cooperate, I'll never find
her."

"Do you get the impression he's definitely
holding out on you?"

"I don't know." She weighed the question
carefully. "He's harder to read than he used to be, harder to work.
He said our fath—Nick is dead. If that's true, then Denny's on his
own. He'll have developed a style of his own depending on who he's
working with."

"You think he's working with someone?"

She thought of Denny's expensive clothing,
his cavalier manner with money. "He's not working alone."

"Interesting."

"After he left, I found a
note with the name of our father's girlfriend at the time I had the
baby. I'd forgotten her name but the name he left sounds familiar.
Vicki Forrester. She won't be in my father's life now. He
has—
had
them on a
revolving door system."

"I'm going to need a copy of that note."

"Sean McGee took it to the sheriff's office
for me, but he said he'd ask for a copy to give to Joe."

"Good." The sound of shuffling papers came
over the phone. "Were there any cities or states DeVayne stayed in
longer while you were with him, or maybe kept going back to?"

"We were in Oklahoma City for a year. That's
where I had the baby. There were a couple of places in Texas we
went back to more than once."

Her cell beeped, indicating a call was
waiting. She pulled the phone away from her ear to check the caller
ID. Sean. She'd call him back.

"Would you say you stayed in the Texas and
Oklahoma area?"

"Sometimes Arizona or New Mexico. A couple
of times when I was first with him, we went to Nevada but he stayed
away from Las Vegas. Denny told me once that they'd had trouble
there." Her headache was definitely taking hold now. "And we went
to New Orleans for Mardi Gras once, but things didn't go well for
him. We ended up leaving in the middle of the night."

"Did he ever have steady employment?"

"Never. It was always the grift and usually
things we could all run together at first. Later, he would go off
on his own for bigger things and leave us either waiting or working
a minor con."

The phone on her desk rang, but she knew it
was also ringing in the kitchen and Charlie would pick up. After
three rings, the line lit up and the ringing stopped.

"After you had the baby, what made you think
he sold her?"

Mel tapped her foot against the bottom of
the desk. "He never said anything other than adoption, but one time
his girlfriend said something about after the baby we would be on
easy street."

"Okay, just a couple more questions for now,
I promise. I know this is hard. Did it seem to get better
financially after he took your baby?"

"A little but not much, and Vicki wasn't too
happy afterwards. I remember thinking they were working a con and
she obviously expected to tap into the mother lode." Mel stood and
walked to the wall safe, studying the dial, wondering if her
brother had touched it, invaded it, the way he was invading the
rest of her life. "Right after I had the baby, she and Nick argued
all the time, and just a few days later, she was gone."

Ben was quiet for a moment but Mel could
hear the sound of computer keys being struck at lightning quick
speed.

The typing stopped. Ben returned to the
conversation. "Did any of you ever use aliases?"

Mel moaned out loud. "Oh, I can't believe I
didn't think about that. Yes, we all went by several names. I was
Monique DelRay a lot of the time. Denny was Davey DelRay. And Nick
was Ned DelRay. One time he was Devon Nichols. I don't remember all
the names he used but he stayed with his initials or his initials
in reverse." She sighed heavily. "That's going to make it harder,
isn't it?"

With a sinking heart, she heard Ben blow out
a breath. "I won't lie to you. It's definitely not going to make it
easier. But knowing his pattern of choosing names might help."

****

Sean slammed his cell phone
shut with a satisfying degree of violence and stuffed it into his
pocket. She was
busy
? Mel had never been too busy to take his calls before. Not
even when they'd barely been dating. It was just one of those
little things he'd taken for granted. When she hadn't answered her
cell, Sean had been compelled to call the bar's land line. And
Charlie had informed him that Mel was in her office and had
requested not to be disturbed.
What are
you doing, Mel?

He tried to stem his irritation but with
only marginal success. She'd been hurt by his accusations of
keeping her brother's visit a secret. He got that. It's why he
needed to talk to her, to apologize. She'd asked him to leave—told
him to go away.

I was a jerk.
Again.
Sean grimaced and
considered the benefit of kicking himself.

But he didn't think that would prevent her
from taking his call. His mind drifted to the break-in. More than
likely she was dealing with the aftermath of that. He'd seen the
look on her face. She was convinced Denny had been the intruder.
And, knowing the way her mind worked, she would take that on as her
responsibility. Sean's hands curled into fists. If he could get his
hand on that brother of hers, he'd—

"You got a late start working Devil's
Advocate this morning. For the price you're charging to fix this
blasted horse, I'd think you'd be able to pay a little more
attention to a regular schedule."

Crap in a sack!
How had Northrop managed to sneak up on him?
Pleasing visions of dragging the irritating jerk across the prairie
behind his horse rolled through Sean's mind, and his mouth pulled
up on one side. He drew in a deep breath to steady himself, wiped
his face into carefully blank features, and turned in the direction
of the voice.

"Just so we're clear,
Northrop. Again." Sean allowed some of his irritation loose when he
spoke. "The services this horse's
owners
are paying for don't come with
my punch card to your personal time clock."

"I haven't seen you do any training since
he's been here." Northrop was either stupid or spoiling for a fight
himself.

Sean tipped the brim of his
hat upward and tilted his head back, regarding the dandy boy
through hooded eyes. When he spoke, he allowed his voice to creep
along in a slow drawl. "Well, Mr. Northrop, you'd probably have an
easier time seeing me work Devil's Advocate if you stuck around to
watch."
Not that I want you here, you
pompous jerk.