Suspicions: A Twist of Fate\Tears of Pride (30 page)

Simmons was hastily scratching notes on a small white pad on the nightstand. It had been some time since he had pocketed expense money from Wilder Investments and the thought of it warmed his blood. “Is there anything special you want on this Lindstrom woman?” he asked routinely. The moment of hesitation in Noah’s response caught his attention. He had been trained to read people, be it in person, from a distance or over the phone. The slight hesitation in Noah’s response triggered Simmons’s suspicious instincts. There was more here than met the eye.

“Yes, of course,” Noah said with more determination than he felt. “Anything you might find out about Miss Lindstrom or any of the employees could be useful.”

“Right,” Simmons agreed, making a special note to himself about the manager of the winery. He hadn’t missed the interest in Noah’s voice.

“Then I’ll expect a full report in a week.”

“You’ll have it.” With his final words Anthony Simmons disconnected the call and smiled wickedly to himself. For the first time in quite a few years he smelled money—lots of money.

When Noah hung up the telephone, he had an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. Simmons had been too accommodating, too confidently obliging; so unlike the Anthony Simmons Noah had dealt with in the past. His hand hesitated over the receiver as he thought fleetingly of redialing Simmons’s number and pulling him off the case. Why did he feel that his final directive to Simmons was somehow dangerous?

Noah shook his head, walked away from the desk and finished his drink in one long swallow. He was beginning to get paranoid. Ever since he had laid eyes on Sheila Lindstrom, he had been acting irrationally. Whether she had intended it or not, Sheila Lindstrom was beginning to unbalance him. The corners of Noah’s mouth tightened, and after forcing all thoughts of the intimate evening aside, he walked out of the den and began to mount the stairs. There wasn’t much of the night left, but he had to try and get some rest; tomorrow promised to be another battle with his son. Also, Anthony Simmons had promised the preliminary report on the fire. For some reason that Noah couldn’t quite name, he felt an impending sense of dread.

* * *

Sheila drove as if the devil himself were on her tail. She had checked out of the Seattle hotel without really understanding her motives. All she knew was that she had to get away from this city, the city Noah Wilder called home. The feelings he had stirred in her had blossomed so naturally in the warm embrace of his arms. But now, as she drove through the pelting rain, a cold despair began to settle over her. Why had she fallen such an easy victim to Noah’s charm? Why did she still taste the lingering flavor of brandy on her lips where he had kissed her? Unconsciously her tongue rimmed her lips, and she could almost feel the power of his impassioned kiss.

Wrapped in her clouded thoughts, Sheila took the next corner too quickly. The tires skidded on the wet pavement and the car swung into the oncoming lane. Severe headlights bore down upon her, and she was forced to swerve back onto her side of the road. By the time the oncoming car had managed to get around her, Sheila’s heart was hammering in her ears. She had never been a careless driver, but tonight she couldn’t seem to concentrate on the rain-washed highway winding through the dark mountains. “Dear God,” she whispered in prayer as she clutched the steering wheel more tightly and realized that her palms were damp. Was it from the near collision—or the man who had played havoc with her senses?

Why did she feel as if she were walking a thin line with Noah? It was dangerous to become involved with anyone working for Wilder Investments. Jonas Fielding’s fatherly voice echoed in her mind, reissuing the warning he had given Sheila in his office: “I wouldn’t trust Ben Wilder as far as I could throw him….
I’d hate to see you fleeced by him or that son of his.
” No, she argued with herself, Noah wouldn’t cheat me…he couldn’t! But hadn’t he offered to buy out her portion of the winery, just as Jonas Fielding had warned?

The headache that had been threatening all day began to throb at the base of her skull. She attempted to concentrate on the thin white line in the center of the road, and managed to slow the pace of the car to a safer speed. It had been a long, strained day and Sheila was dog-tired by the time she crossed the Cascades.

Dawn was beginning to cast irregular purple shadows over the valley as Sheila drove down the final hills surrounding the small town of Devin. Located west of Yakima, it was hardly more than a fork in the road. Originally just a general store, the small hamlet had grown slowly and taken on the family name of the owners of the combined hardware, grocery and sporting goods store. That was years in the past, and by the 1980s, several shops lined the two streets that intersected near the original Devin store. Buildings, some eighty years old, complete with false wood facades, stood next to more recent postwar concrete structures. It wasn’t a particularly beautiful town, but it was a friendly, comfortable place to live and a welcome sight to Sheila’s weary eyes. She had only left Devin yesterday, but it seemed like a lifetime.

The outskirts of the town were beautifully tended farmlands. Softly rolling hills covered in sweet-smelling new hay gave the air a fresh, wholesome scent. Sheila rolled down the window of the car and let the wind stream past her face to revive her. Her dark hair billowed behind her, and despite the weariness of her bones, Sheila was forced to smile. With the rising sun, her problems seemed to shrink and fade.

The compact wagon rounded a final bend in the road before starting the slow, steady climb up the hill to the winery. From the gates the winery looked as proudly welcoming as ever. The main building was the most prominent, and could be seen from the drive. It had been designed with a distinctly European flair. French château architecture, two storied and elegantly grand, was complete with stucco walls painted a light dove gray. Narrow-paned windows, graced with French blue shutters, were the full two stories in height, and the broad double doors gleamed in the early morning sunshine. With the stately, snow-laden Cascade Mountains as a backdrop, the parklike grounds of the winery gave the impression of wealth and sedate charm.

If only the truth were known, Sheila thought wryly to herself as she unlocked the rear door of the wagon and extricated her suitcase. It was fortunate, for appearance’s sake, that the portion of the winery destroyed by the fire wasn’t visible from the road. Sheila placed her luggage on the front porch and strolled lazily past the rose garden to the rear of the main buildings. She picked a single peach-colored blossom and held it to her nose. How long ago had her father planted this particular rosebush? One year? Fifteen? She couldn’t remember. Each spring he had planted another variety to add to the abundance of the garden.

Sheila looked at the imposing buildings and meticulously tended grounds that supported the winery. All of the years Oliver Lindstrom had put into the operation of Cascade Valley seemed to slowly pass through her thoughts. He had worked so hard to make the Cascade Valley label nationally known and recognized. Sheila rubbed her palm over her forehead, and her shoulders slumped with a renewed sense of grief for her father. The guilt she bore took hold of her as she silently vowed to find a way for Cascade Valley once again to begin producing the finest wines in the Northwest. She couldn’t hide from the fact that it was her fault her father had taken out the loans from Ben Wilder in the first place. If she hadn’t needed money after her divorce from Jeff, maybe Oliver Lindstrom wouldn’t have needed to borrow the money, maybe he wouldn’t have felt so trapped,
maybe he would be alive today.

Don’t think that way, she chastised herself. She again smelled the brilliant peach-hued blossom and tried to shake her thoughts back to a viable solution to her problem. It was impossible; her thoughts were too dark and black, and for a fleeting moment she wondered if perhaps her father did start the fire.

She didn’t answer the question and hurried to the back of the buildings. The charred west wing of the manor house, a black skeleton of sagging timbers, was still roped off. A garish sign with bold red letters was nailed to one of the surrounding pine trees. It stated, quite unequivocally, that there was no trespassing allowed, by order of the sheriff’s department for the county.
Suspected Crime Area
the sign pronounced boldly, and Sheila’s heart cringed at the meaning of the words. The sign, an intruder on her father’s personal life, increased the fires of determination burning within Sheila’s heart. No one, including Noah Wilder, would take away her father’s dream; not if she could help it.

At the thought of Noah, Sheila felt suddenly empty and hollow. As crazy as it sounded, she felt she had left part of herself in the warm den of the stone mansion high on the shores of Lake Washington. The vague thought that she might be falling in love with Noah Wilder flitted through her mind, but she resolutely pushed it away. What she felt for the man was sexual attraction, physical chemistry, that was all. Sheila was too much of a realist to consider falling in “love at first sight.” The Cinderella story just never came true. The one love she had experienced had turned sour, and her marriage had become a dismal, humiliating sham. That feeling of love she had foolishly convinced herself she shared with Jeff Coleridge had taken months to grow. But, fortunately, not so long to die, she added ironically to herself.

She kicked a small stone on the flagstone path that led from the garden. There was no way she could be falling in love with Noah Wilder. It was ludicrous even to consider another side to the coin. She had met him only hours earlier in particularly seductive surroundings. She knew virtually nothing about him, except that he was perhaps the most magnetically powerful man she had ever laid eyes on. But what was it that made him tick? Yes, he was mysterious and alluring, but to try and call purely sexual attraction love was sheer folly, at least in Sheila’s pragmatic estimation. Too many women fell into that vicious trap.

Sheila knew herself well enough to understand her guilt. Because of her uncharacteristic display of passion in the early hours of the morning, her subconscious was trying to soothe her by substituting love for lust. But Sheila wouldn’t allow herself that leisure. To consider what had happened in the Wilder mansion an act of love was pure fantasy, and the easy way out—merely an appropriate, if false, excuse.

Sheila sighed to herself as she closed the garden gate. The problem was that there was no way she could avoid Noah Wilder or his enigmatic blue eyes. How could she hope to reopen the winery without his help? Unless his father came back to Seattle to take command of Wilder Investments, she was stuck with Noah. Just at the thought of seeing him again, her pulse began to race. Realistically she attempted to find an alternate solution to her problem, but found no way out of the inevitable conclusion: No one would lend her enough money to buy out Ben Wilder’s interest in Cascade Valley. And even if she were lucky enough to get another mortgage on the property, Wilder Investments was unlikely to sell.

Before opening the back door to the undamaged portion of the château, she took one final look at the blackened west wing. “There’s got to be a way to save it,” she muttered to herself before hurrying inside the house and letting the screen door slam behind her.

Chapter 6

The following Tuesday evening Sheila decided once again to attempt to assess the damage to the west wing of the manor building and try and come up with a temporary solution to the disrepair. She had spent the entire weekend and the last two evenings cleaning up that portion of the rubble that was not considered evidence in the ongoing police investigation. And yet, for all her efforts, the entire west wing was in shambles.

The late afternoon sun cast dark shadows on the charred walls of the château that had housed the commercial end of the winery. The living quarters, attached by a covered portico, hadn’t been severely damaged. Sheila looked at the building apprehensively. What would it take to save it? Though parts of the grayish stucco walls had blackened, the elegance of the architecture remained. Several panes from the narrow windows had shattered from the intensity of the heat and a couple of the cobalt-blue shutters hung at precarious angles from their original placement adorning the windows. But the walls of the building had remained intact, and even the gently sloping roof hadn’t sustained too much damage.

Sheila sighed deeply to herself. Daylight was fading, she had final term papers to grade, and she had to get Emily into bed. Right now she couldn’t spend any more time working on the winery.

“Emily,” she called in the direction of the duck pond, “come on, let’s get ready for bed.”

Emily emerged from a stand of trees near the edge of the pond and reluctantly obeyed her mother. When she was within shouting distance, she began to voice her disapproval. “Already? It’s not even nine o’clock.”

“I didn’t say you had to go to bed; I asked you to get ready,” Sheila pointed out.

Emily’s large green eyes brightened. “Then I can stay up?”

Sheila smiled. “For a little while. Right now, why don’t you take a shower and I’ll fix us some popcorn.”

“Let’s watch the movie,” Emily suggested.

“I don’t think so—not tonight. You still have school for another week.”

“But next week, when school’s out, I can stay up and watch the movie?”

“Why not?” Sheila agreed, fondly rumpling Emily’s dark auburn curls.

“Great.” Emily ran up the steps and flew through the front door leaving Sheila to wish that she had only half the energy of her eight-year-old daughter. From the exhausting work of the past few days, every muscle in Sheila’s body rebelled. She hadn’t realized what a soft job she had; teaching accounting to college students didn’t entail much physical exercise.

Sounds of running water greeted her when she finally got inside the house. She and Emily were “temporarily” camping out in the lower level of the house. It was the least damaged. Sheila wondered how long this temporary condition would continue. She had used some of her small savings to have the electricity reconnected and the plumbing repaired, but as to the rest of the house, she was still waiting for the insurance settlement. Fortunately she did have a few dollars left in the savings account, but she was steadfastly holding on to them. After paying the expenses of Oliver’s funeral she had less than a thousand dollars in the bank and hoped to stretch it as far as possible. With the coming of summer, she was out of a job until school started in the fall.

The interior of the château had suffered from the fire. As Sheila walked through what had been the living room toward the kitchen, she tried to ignore the smoke-laden lace draperies and the fragile linen wallpaper that had been water stained. Several of the broken windows were now boarded, and a fine, gritty layer of ash still covered all of the elegant European antiques and the expensive burgundy carpet. No amount of vacuuming seemed to lift the soot from the interior of the manor.

The kitchen was in better shape. Sheila had taken the time to scrub it down with disinfectant before painting all of the walls. Even the countertop had been repaired, as the heat of the blaze had loosened the glue and caused it to buckle. The hot corn was just beginning to pop when Emily hurried into the kitchen. She was still soaked and attempting to put her wet arms and legs through the appropriate holes in her pajamas.

“It’s easier if you dry yourself off first,” Sheila reminded her daughter.

“Aw…Mom…” Emily’s head poked through the soft flannel material, and her face, still rosy from the warm jets of shower spray, broke into a smile. “It’s just about ready, isn’t it?” she asked, running over to the popping corn.

“In a minute.”

Emily stood on first one foot and then the other, eyeballing the kernels as they exploded in the hot-air popper.

“What were you doing down at the duck pond for so long?” Sheila asked.

“Talking…. I think it’s done now.”

Sheila looked up from the pan of butter on the stove. “Talking? To whom? Did Joey come over?”

“Naw… Joey couldn’t come over…too much homework. Come on; let’s put the butter on the popcorn.”

Sheila’s dark brows came together. “If it wasn’t Joey, who were you talking to?”

Emily shrugged. “A man.”

“
A man?
What man? Was it Joey’s dad?” Sheila studied her young daughter intently, but Emily didn’t seem to notice. She was too engrossed in fixing a bowl of her favorite snack.

“If it was Joey’s dad, I would have told you…. It was just some guy.”

Sheila could feel her face drain of color. “What guy?”

“Don’t know his name.” Emily replied with all the matter-of-factness of a confident eight-year-old.

Sheila attempted to sound calm, but the thought of a stranger talking to her young daughter made her quiver inside. “Surely it was someone you know…maybe someone you met in town….”

Emily shook her dark, wet curls. “Nope.” She began to attack the bowl of popcorn without another thought to the stranger.

Sheila didn’t want to frighten her daughter. Emily had grown up in a small, Northwest town where there were few strangers and nearly everyone knew each other on a first-name basis. “What did the man want to talk about?” she asked, pretending interest in the dishes.

“Oh, you know, all about the fire…the same old thing.”

Sheila felt herself relax. “Oh, so a deputy from the sheriff’s department came by…. He should have stopped at the house first.”

“Wasn’t a policeman or a deputy.”

Once again Sheila’s nerves tightened. She turned from the sink and sat in a chair opposite Emily’s. “The man was a complete stranger, right?”

“Um-hum.”

“Not a policeman?”

“I told you that already!”

“But maybe he was a detective? They don’t always wear uniforms.”

Emily sighed, and with a concern greater than her few years, looked at her mother. “Is something wrong?”

“Probably not…I just don’t like the idea of you talking to strangers. From now on you stick a little closer to the house.”

“I don’t think he would hurt me…if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

“You don’t know that.”

“But I like to go down to the duck pond.”

“I know you do, sweetheart,” Sheila said with more confidence than she actually felt, “but from now on I want to go with you.”

“You’re afraid of something, aren’t you?” Emily charged, her innocent green eyes searching her mother’s worried face.

“Not really,” Sheila lied. It wouldn’t help matters to scare Emily, but the child had to learn to be more cautious. “But sometimes…it’s better not to talk to strangers. You know that, don’t you? From now on, if you see anyone you don’t know hanging around, you come and tell me, before you talk to them, okay? No one should be on the property while the winery’s shut down, so if someone comes, I want to know it immediately. Fair enough?”

“I guess so.”

“Then you do understand why I don’t want you to wander off too far from the house when you’re alone?”

Emily nodded gravely. Sheila’s message had gotten through.

“Good!” Sheila said, attempting to display a lighthearted enthusiasm she didn’t feel. “We’ll go feed the ducks together tomorrow. It will be lots of fun.” Somehow she managed a confident smile for her daughter.

Emily continued to nibble at the popcorn while leafing through a math textbook. Sheila got up to clear the dinner dishes and turned on the radio to cover the sudden silence. Nightfall was imminent, and the lengthening shadows made Sheila nervous. She had always loved warm summer nights in the foothills of the Cascades, but tonight was different. She felt alone and vulnerable. The nearest house was over a mile away, and for the first time in her life the remote location of the winery put her on edge. A stranger had been lurking on the property, talking to her child. Why? Who was the man and what did he want from Emily? Information on the fire? Unlikely. Sheila let her gaze wander out the window and she squinted into the dusky twilight. She attempted to tell herself that the man was probably just an interested tourist who wondered why the daily tours of the winery had been suspended. But if that were so, certainly he would have come up to the main building. The entire incident put Sheila’s nerves on edge.

That night, before going to her room, Sheila checked the bolts on all of the doors and windows of the house. When she finally got to bed, even though her tired body ached for sleep, it didn’t come. Instead she found herself staring at the luminous dial of the clock radio and listening to the soft sounds of the early summer night. Everything sounded the same. Why then was she so nervous and tense?

Lack of sleep from the previous night made Wednesday unusually tedious. The lengthy hours of teaching distracted students coupled with the forty-five minute drive from the community college seemed more tiresome than it usually was. Thank goodness there were only a few final days of the school year left. Next week was finals week, and after that Sheila could concentrate on the reopening of the winery. By the end of the summer the harvest season would be upon her.

Emily stayed with a friend after school. Since Oliver Lindstrom’s death, Sheila hadn’t allowed her daughter to stay at home after school because Emily would be alone. In light of the events the day before with the stranger, Sheila was more grateful than ever that she could trust Emily with Carol Dunbar, the mother of Emily’s best friend, Joey. Emily was waiting for her when Sheila arrived, and after a quick stop at the market, mother and daughter finally headed home.

Sheila had contemplated calling the police about the trespasser, but had decided against it. No harm had been done, and if the man was still hanging around, Sheila hadn’t seen any evidence of him. When he turned up again, then Sheila would alert the authorities, but right now, due to the unsolved arson and the suspicion cast upon her father, the last thing Sheila wanted to do was talk to someone from the local sheriff’s department.

An unfamiliar car was sitting in the driveway near the house when Sheila and Emily arrived home. Sheila’s thoughts turned back to the stranger and she felt her heart leap to her throat. Trying to appear calmer than she felt, she braked the small wagon to a halt near the garage and tried to pull together a portion of her poise. Who was he?

“That’s the man I was talking to yesterday, Mom. You know, down at the duck pond.” Emily was openly staring at the individual who was sitting, slump-shouldered, behind the wheel of an old Chevrolet.

The stranger had been waiting. At the sound of the approaching vehicle he had turned in his seat, pushed back the brim of his felt hat and blown out a final stream of smoke from his cigarette. He tossed the hat onto the front seat as he pulled himself out of the car.

“Wait here,” Sheila told Emily.

“Why?”

“Just for a minute. Stay in the car.” The authoritative ring in Sheila’s voice gave Emily no room for argument. Sheila grabbed her purse and hurried from the car, intent on meeting the man out of earshot of her young daughter. Her gray eyes were cool as she focused on the rather average-looking, slightly built visitor.

“Ms. Lindstrom?” the man in the worn suit coat asked. He strode boldly up to her and extended his hand.

Sheila nodded as she accepted the brief handshake. “I’m Sheila Lindstrom.”

“Anthony Simmons,” he retorted with a shadowy grin. He acted as if the name might mean something to her.

“Is there something I can do for you?” she asked calmly. The man looked trustworthy enough, but still she was jittery. It was his eyes, light brown and deep set over a nose that had obviously once been broken; they didn’t quite meet her steady gaze. Instead, he seemed to be studying the angle of her face.

“I hope so,” he replied, shifting from one foot to the other. His face broke slowly into a well-practiced and slightly uneven smile. “I work with Noah Wilder.”

Sheila couldn’t keep her heart from skipping a beat at the sound of Noah’s name. This man standing before her was a friend of Noah’s? Sheila doubted it.

“Mr. Wilder sent you?” she asked with a dubious and reserved smile.

“That’s right. He wants me to look into that fire you had here a while back.” Reading the skepticism on Sheila’s even features, Simmons reached into his back pocket, extracted a wallet and withdrew a white card. He offered it to Sheila. Along with his name the card was inscribed with the nationally known logo for Wilder Investments.

Sheila kept the card and began to relax. “What is it exactly you’re to do here?”

Simmons shrugged as if his job were entirely routine. “Mr. Wilder is hoping that I can speed up the investigation of the arson, help clear up the whole mess, in order for the insurance company to pay off on the policy. Didn’t he tell you that I was coming?”

Sheila hedged. “He did mention that someone might be coming.” Anthony Simmons was not what Sheila had expected.

The investigator’s smile widened. “Then we’re all set.”

“For what?”

“Well, first I thought I’d check over the burned wing of the winery. Didn’t the fire start in the aging room?”

“According to the fire department.”

“I thought so. After I’m through poking around the burned building—”

“Are you sure you should go in there? What about the warnings posted by the sheriff’s department?”

“I’ve taken care of that.”

Sheila couldn’t help but be dubious. The deputy had been adamant about the restraining orders surrounding the winery. “You have?”