Danger on Her Doorstep

His jaw tightened along with his resolve. He would keep this woman safe. He’d failed her father. He’d failed all of Holyoake County by missing the clues to his brother’s drug-making activities for so long. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he failed Maggie Arnold, too.

“Good morning,” he called out so she wouldn’t be startled by his approach. “Just thought I’d secure the perimeter before we start.”

Her tense expression relaxed slightly. “I appreciate that. You wouldn’t think less of me if I told you this place gives me the creeps?” She fell into step beside him as they made their way up the overgrown front path to the porch steps.

Gideon held the screen door open for her as she worked her key in the front-door lock. “Don’t ever be ashamed of being afraid. Sometimes fear is what keeps us alive.”

Maggie froze and looked up at him. “My father used to say that.”

“I know. He’s the one who taught it to me.” Gideon reached past Maggie, and since she had the door unlocked but couldn’t seem to get it pushed open, he placed one hand gently over hers on the knob, slammed his other open hand against the wedged wood, and the door fell back with a shudder. “I should do something about that door,” he offered.

But Maggie had stepped inside and was already looking around the great foyer that opened upward to the stud-walled second floor. “I think we’ve got plenty of other projects that are more pressing.”

“Where do you want to start?” Gideon asked.

With a long sigh, Maggie shook her head. She clearly felt overwhelmed by the immensity of the project and all that needed to be done. Not that he could blame her. He’d lain awake the night before, trying to break down the renovation process into manageable steps until he’d lost track of where he’d started. It was such a large house and needed so much work.

“This place will be spectacular once it’s finished,” he said in hopes of encouraging her.

She didn’t look encouraged. Instead, she looked as though the responsibility of transforming the house into something spectacular weighed on her even more heavily than simply making it habitable. Gideon was reminded that he didn’t know exactly what her plans were. She’d told him a few things, and he’d inferred the rest based on what he’d have done if the place were his. Those two were likely very different things.

“What are your plans for the house?”

Maggie took a gulp of air. “I want to be able to sell it. My father bought it as a foreclosure after Lorna Creel fell behind on her mortgage payments. From what I can tell, Dad’s plans were to convert it back into apartments.”

“I didn’t realize this place had ever been apartments.”

“That was before either of us was born,” Maggie explained. “I found some of the history my father had collected about the house, and Susan Isakson, the Realtor who’s representing my dad’s other properties, let me in on what she knew. This house was built in 1912 as a single-family home, but it was converted into apartments during the Depression. Then in the 1950s Len Turner bought it and turned it into a funeral home.”

“That’s how I always remembered it.” Gideon stepped into the front parlor, arguably the nicest room in the house, though the elaborate wallpaper had to have been several decades old and the wood-inlaid parlor set was worn and rickety.

“He spent his whole career here,” Maggie continued. “Somewhere along the line, he hired Lorna Creel as an assistant. She helped with the funerals and took care of the cleaning and upkeep, as well as living upstairs. When Len retired he sold the house to Lorna, who wanted to continue living here.”

“But she fell behind on her mortgage payments.” Gideon patched the story together.

“Yes. The First Bank of Holyoake held the mortgage, and from what I understand they didn’t want to foreclose on her. They gave her plenty of chances, but she refused to talk with them or refinance, so ultimately, they did what they had to do.”

“And they sold the house to your father?”

“Yes. He gutted the second floor. I found several of his drawings showing how he intended to convert the house back into apartments.”

Gideon recalled from his years working with Glen Arnold when he was younger that the man had a knack for buying up older, unwanted properties and updating them, eventually renovating them into more practical living spaces. Gideon had long been impressed with the man’s ingenuity. “And you’re planning to move forward with your father’s plans?”

Maggie looked stricken. “No.” She shook her head firmly. “It always bothered me the way he took lovely older homes and carved them up into cramped apartments. I thought we could just put it back the way it was—a gracious, single-family home.”

Gideon nodded and suppressed his smile. Something had lit up behind Maggie’s eyes as she stated her plans. Perhaps she wasn’t as afraid of the old house as he’d thought.

“And then you’re planning to sell it?”

“Yes.” Her eyes bent up at the corners. “I’m selling all my father’s properties. The hospital where I work in Kansas City is building a new addition, including an expanded pediatric unit. If I can get fair market value out of what my father left me, I can have one of the rooms of the unit named in his honor. It’s been the one thing that’s kept me going since his death.”

Gideon turned and looked at the room behind him so Maggie wouldn’t see his smile. The shy girl he’d gone to school with had grown up into a private woman, but whether she realized it or not, she’d given him a glimpse of what made her tick. Much as he appreciated Glen Arnold’s skill in converting old houses into apartments, his daughter’s approach more closely paralleled his own preferences. He’d love to see the old house as it was meant to be again.

Maggie’s voice echoed behind him. “I know it’s going to take a lot of work to bring this place up to code, but as Susan explained it, that’s the only way we’re going to see any profit.”

“She’s right,” Gideon agreed. “There are probably a dozen older homes in Holyoake that have been sitting on the market for years now, mostly because no one wants to put the money and effort into restoring them. But none of those houses has the potential of this place. It could be…” he let his eyes rove over the walls and tried to envision what it would look like with woodwork gleaming instead of caked with coats of paint “…beautiful,” he concluded, spinning around to face Maggie.

Maggie turned her face away before Gideon could see her blush. He’s not talking about you, silly. She knew he was referring to the house, but there had been a moment as he’d spoken when his eyes had landed on hers with a softness that made her heart catch. Like Gideon Bromley would ever call you beautiful.

Gideon had been far more popular than she’d been in high school. He’d graduated one year ahead of her, and while he’d been in the homecoming court and on the student council, she’d always done her best to stay invisible. After all, she knew how the Bromley family and the rest of Holyoake felt about the safety hazards her father had rented out. The people in her father’s largest rental house had often complained about strange odors that made them feel light-headed, but her father had never been able to find the source of the poisonous gases. Then, during Maggie’s freshman year of high school, several people had fallen ill from the fumes and ended up in the hospital, including Gideon’s niece, Kayla, his brother Bruce’s daughter, who had nearly died as an innocent toddler.

Pinching back the memory, Maggie turned to face Gideon with a decidedly neutral expression. “I want the house to be safe. Everything needs to be brought up to code. I won’t cut corners just to save money. This has to be a house where a person could feel comfortable turning their children loose to play without fearing something might happen to them. But at the same time—” she took in the faded elaborate furnishings, which had once been the top of the line “—I don’t want to spend any more money than I have to.”

Gideon nodded. “The profit goes to the hospital, correct?”

“That’s right.” She felt glad he’d followed what she’d said so far.

“Safety first,” Gideon echoed. “I’d like to reinforce that cellar door.”

Relief filled Maggie at his suggestion. After she’d gone back to the spare apartment where she’d been staying in town, she’d lain awake worrying that the intruder might return. “I think it needs to be barricaded,” she agreed. “Obviously the board across the door didn’t stop anyone the last time.”

“Let’s see if we can find something to park in front of it,” Gideon said as they headed to the back of the house and the interior stairway that led to the basement. “As I recall there was quite a lot of furniture in the basement.”

Maggie let Gideon take the lead on the way downstairs. Though he’d tightened the door back into place the day before, and he’d apparently already checked it from the outside that morning, she still didn’t feel certain the house was secure against intruders. But if someone was crazy enough to be lying in wait for them just around the corner in the basement, she was confident they’d get a lot more than they’d bargained for in Gideon Bromley. He didn’t appear to be armed, but between the size of his biceps and the hammer he carried, he’d still make a formidable opponent.

To her relief, they made it to the large back storage room without encountering any surprises. Gideon gave a low whistle. “I can’t believe all the junk that’s crammed back here. I wish I’d had a chance to do more than peek in this room before.”

“So you haven’t searched through this stuff?”

“No. I’d planned to. Your father said he found something suspicious in this old house, and I got the impression from what he said that it was down here in the basement somewhere. If his death was related to what he found, it might be the only clue we have to go on to lead us to his killer.”

Maggie stepped slowly around in a full circle, taking in the piles of boxes heaped upon old furniture that filled the room. “I think I’ll need to move this junk out eventually, anyway. To my understanding all of it came with the house. Lorna acquired it when she bought the place from Len Turner, and who knows where Len got it all? It may have been junk that renters left behind when they moved away over the years before Len even bought it. Some of this stuff certainly looks old enough.”

While they’d been speaking, Gideon had poked around the room and now stopped in front of a large armoire piled high with ancient catalogs and other random objects. “This wardrobe looks solid. If we could park it in front of the door it would keep out just about anyone.”

The idea sounded good to Maggie. “It looks like it will fit through the doorway. Let’s get it cleared off.” She plucked up an old paperboard globe that teetered atop a stack of books on the armoire and set it out of the way.

Gideon followed suit, hefting the entire stack of books in one armload. “Do you think you can help me carry it?” he asked from behind the dusty stack of hardcovers. “It looks heavy.”

Feeling only slightly injured by his words, Maggie defended herself. “I may be short, but I’m strong. I’m used to lifting children in the pediatric unit all the time.” Feeling the need to prove herself, she shouldered a large box, which looked only slightly heavy until she felt its full weight. About that same time she realized she wasn’t sure where to put it down.

“Got a spot for this?” she asked, her embarrassment increasing when she realized the strain carried clearly through her voice.

“Here you go.” Gideon quickly moved aside some bottles from a dresser top, revealing just enough space for the box.

Maggie staggered in that direction and felt the aging cardboard giving way.

Before she could warn him, she tipped in Gideon’s direction and felt his strong arms brush hers as he lifted the crumbling box from her shoulders, depositing it on the dresser before the cardboard gave out completely.

“Okay, so maybe not that strong,” she admitted, em barrassed.

“Actually, I’m impressed you were able to carry that thing at all. It must weigh a hundred pounds.” He peeled back a loose cardboard flap. “This is full of old window weights.”

“Not worth keeping, in my opinion,” Maggie determined, brushing the dust from her hands onto her jeans.

“Yeah, I wonder if any of this stuff has value. Some of the old furniture pieces might be antiques, but a lot of it just looks like junk.”

Maggie scrunched her nose at him. “I suppose I should sort through it as I go. Anything that appears valuable I can take to an antiques dealer, but the rest I’ll just toss. And if I find anything that looks suspicious…” Her throat tightened as she spoke the word her father had used to describe whatever he’d found in the basement—the thing that may have gotten him killed.

“I’ll help,” Gideon offered.

Though she appreciated his offer, Maggie shook her head. “I don’t want to waste your time with sorting through things. There are plenty of projects upstairs that could use your skills—” She stopped midsentence as Gideon’s hand touched her arm. In the dank chill of the basement, the brush of his fingers felt warm against her skin. She looked up to see his obsidian eyes glittering down at her.

“If it’s all right with you, I’d just like to help. Pro bono. I know Bernie closed this case, but in my mind, there’s something down here. I want to try to find it. For your dad.” Gideon’s voice grew a little deeper, a little huskier, and Maggie wondered if maybe his flint-hard exterior guarded a soft heart. “This project is for the children’s hospital, right? I can’t take money from sick kids.”

Her mouth fell open slightly, and she was distinctly aware of his hand on her arm. Still. Wishing her thoughts would catch up with his words, Maggie struggled to clarify. “You’re not going to charge me for the time we spend sorting through the stuff in this basement?”

“No.” His tone told her she’d gotten it wrong.

Had she misunderstood?

Gideon continued. “I’m not going to charge you for my time, period. Let me work on your house for free. I’m still drawing pay as sheriff. I can’t in good conscience allow you—”

“I can’t in good conscience allow you to volunteer your time and expertise,” Maggie cut him off and stepped away. She pulled her arm away from his touch, which, slight and simple as it might have been, somehow felt too intimate coming from the handsome lawman, especially when he was making such a generous offer.

But even as she stepped away from him, Gideon followed her, his broad shoulders cutting into her personal space. She wanted to take another step back, but she was hemmed in by piles of junk on three sides. Gideon looked down at her, his expression far too compassionate.

“Maggie, please. I can’t sleep at night. I messed up a lot of things. I missed the clues that should have told me my brother was running drugs. If I’d have gotten here sooner, maybe your dad wouldn’t have died. I have enough regrets in my life. Can you just let me do something that will bring me some peace?”

His powerful shoulders loomed at eye level, but what drew her gaze were his eyes that glittered with unshed tears. Maggie got the distinct sense the hardened sheriff didn’t let many people see this raw, vulnerable side of him. Something tugged at the depths of her heart.

The Bromley family had never been churchgoing folks that she’d ever known of. Was it possible that Gideon was facing all these trials without a faith in God to fall back on? She couldn’t imagine going through what he was in the midst of, let alone enduring it without God.

His voice rumbled close to her, his tone almost pleading. “If your father was murdered, then his killer is still out there. I need to catch him.”

At that reminder, Maggie glanced to the shallow window that looked out on the underside of some bushes outside. Was the killer still out there?

Gideon continued with steady words. “I don’t want to frighten you, but, Maggie, your father placed that phone call from his cell phone as he was working in the backyard of this house. In order for his killer to have overheard that conversation, he would have had to have been watching and listening very closely.”

Fear trembled through her, and Gideon’s steadying hands grasped her shoulders. This time, instead of pushing him away, she reached for him, and let her small hands settle over his shirtsleeves. Gideon Bromley had always frightened her. But her father’s killer frightened her even more.

“Do you think he’s still out there, watching and listening?” Her question came out as a hollow squeak.

As she watched, the muscles in Gideon’s stony jaw tightened and flexed. His determined eyes looked hard. “If he is, I intend to catch him before he can hurt anyone else. Will you let me help you?”

What could she say? She suspected Gideon needed her help almost as much as she needed his, if the hardened man was ever going to be at peace. So really, the decision was a simple one. “I’d be grateful if you did.”

Gideon set to work right away, methodically going through every last trinket and scrap of paper. Much of it didn’t appear to have ever been touched—which made it less likely to have been the suspicious object Glen had called him to report. To his relief, Maggie appeared to be just as organized as he was about her approach to the search.

“Do you think this has any value?” she asked, holding up a dusty green bottle.

“I doubt it.” Gideon shrugged. “Maybe if you knew what it was called.”

“Probably not worth the time it takes to sort it out.” She slid it into one of the contractor-strength trash bags they’d found upstairs. “This bag is about full. What do you think I should do with it?”

Looking around at the mountain of things they’d be throwing away, Gideon decided. “I’ll hire a roll-away Dumpster. We’ll probably generate a lot of debris through the construction process, so we might as well have one on-site.”

Once the Dumpster arrived, Gideon was surprised with how quickly they began to fill it. Though he felt encouraged by the progress they were making clearing out the basement, with every bag of trash they hefted outside, he was left with fewer possible clues. Nothing he saw seemed suspicious. He began to wonder if the killer might have had time to remove whatever it was before Gideon had arrived and discovered Glen Arnold’s body.

As Maggie toted another bag outside, Gideon’s eyes roved over the room. Nothing looked suspicious to him. Doubts taunted him. Was he pursuing an empty lead? No. Between Glen’s final words and the certainty in his gut, he knew there had to be something in that basement. And his instincts had always served him well as sheriff.

“Gideon?” The breathless way Maggie spoke his name from the doorway sent a shot of fear through him. When he wheeled around, the stark-white frightened expression on her face sent his adrenaline racing into overdrive.

“What is it?”

“I think the killer may have returned.”

FOUR

Maggie tried to remain calm as she led Gideon back outside to show him what she’d found. If whoever had killed her father really was watching them, she didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of seeing how much their actions had disturbed her.

“What is it?” Gideon asked again as they stepped outside.

“I’ve been tossing the trash into this end of the Dumpster,” Maggie explained in the calmest voice she could muster. “I’m too short to see inside it from the ground, but I was thinking after all the bags we’ve thrown in there, surely they ought to reach the top by now.”

She didn’t have to say any more. Gideon leaped up the metal-bar ladder that was welded to the side of the roll-away. His groan told her he’d seen the same thing she had.

He looked down at his hands and groaned again. “I suppose I just wiped out any fingerprints they might have left.”

“I’m sure they were all gone after I touched it.” She tried not to think about what she’d seen inside the Dumpster—the bags carefully untied, the contents sorted out, as though someone had been going through everything they’d thrown out. They may have even been inside the roll-away as she’d thrown in more bags, but she hadn’t seen them because of the high metal sides.

But what made her want to scream in fear were the words scrawled along the back inside wall of the Dumpster.

GIVE IT BACK

The jagged block letters made Maggie feel threatened.

“What do they want?” she asked.

“Something from the basement?” Gideon suggested. “It looks like they were searching through the things we threw out.”

“But don’t you think—” Maggie tried to suppress a shudder, but failed “—don’t you think it looks like some things are missing?”

To her relief, Gideon took her question seriously and looked back into the roll-away. “You’re right. That bag was full of all those broken vacuum attachments and that old wrapping paper that was falling apart, but I don’t see half the vacuum attachments anymore. And I think some bottles are missing from that bag over there.”

Maggie could picture the bag he was talking about. It had been dragged to the far end of the Dumpster and all its contents had been emptied out. She knew some of it was either missing or hidden among the other bags. Her gut instinct told her it had been taken. But why?

With a wordless prayer, she looked up to the clear-blue Iowa sky as though God might send her answers straight out of heaven. Instead she saw a broken gutter hanging down from the eaves, and felt that much more disheartened by the project she’d undertaken—which she’d never asked for in the first place. Pushing away her discouragement, she asked Gideon the question that was foremost in her mind.

“Do you think we missed it—the suspicious thing my dad told you about? Do you think his murderer took it with them?” Her voice dropped off as she returned her gaze to the roll-away Dumpster and then back to Gideon.

For a moment she thought the suspended lawman was about to agree with her. But then his features hardened and he shook his head.

“No. It has to still be inside. This only makes me all the more certain.”

“Why?”

“Because if your father’s killer had what they were looking for, they wouldn’t be asking for it back, would they?”

It took three days to empty out the room in the basement. Most of what they hauled out went straight into the roll-away Dumpster, and remained undisturbed after their discovery. Checking inside the Dumpster with every load had guaranteed that, though Gideon had hoped whoever had scrawled the message would come back so they could catch him. Not that there was much chance of that.

They both agreed that, given Bernie’s accusations about his missing Taser, they wouldn’t bother the sheriff’s office about the message, but instead took pictures as evidence.

A few things they found fell into the category of curiosities, and those Maggie took to the local antiques shop for appraisal. But nothing they found fit into the suspicious, you’re-not-going-to-believe-this-until-you-see-it category. Certainly none of it seemed like anything worth killing someone for.

After checking the Dumpster one last time and finding it clear of invaders, Gideon tossed the last contractor-strength garbage bag into the container with a mighty shove, then turned to face Maggie. “Basement—check,” he announced, feeling satisfied that they’d cleared out the debris. Only a few large furniture pieces remained, and those they’d agreed to keep with the possibility of using them to partially furnish the house.

When he met Maggie’s eyes, Gideon felt his feeling of satisfaction take a hit. That worried look was back, and she’d crossed her arms over her chest as she looked around the overgrown backyard.

He hurried to her side. “I’m sorry we didn’t find what we were looking for.”

Though Gideon knew she was disappointed, Maggie put on a brave face. “It’s okay. We tried. We still have the rest of the house to go through.”