Vanish in Plain Sight

He considered how that must have felt. “That almost sounds as if you were expecting something of the kind.”

“Of course I wasn’t.”

There was a hint of something held back in her tone that bothered him.

No getting involved. Stay out of it. But he had to ask. “Did your mother know my uncle?”

“I have no idea.” The brown eyes flashed. She clearly resented the implication.

Had he been implying anything? He just wanted to understand this, so he could put it behind him.

Marisa turned away, seeming to glance around the room almost at random, as if searching for something to take them away from an awkward place. “It looks as if you’re making good progress in here.”

“I wasn’t, but once the police got into the act, the paneling came down pretty fast.” Almost instantly he regretted the careless words, because she paled, obviously understanding why the police had gotten involved.

“We didn’t find anything.”

He rushed the words. It didn’t help. His hands curled into fists. The whole situation angered him. Talking to this woman was like walking through a minefield, where any step could end up maiming someone.

Relief flooded through him at the sound of a car. “That’ll be Adam.” He went quickly to the door.

Adam got out of the police car, alone this time, and pulled out the suitcase. So, he was going to show it to her. Well, Marisa had probably as much right to it as anyone.

“Adam.” He could only hope the relief didn’t show in his voice. “Ms. Angelo, this is Adam Byler.” He made introductions as Adam walked in. “Adam, Marisa Angelo. But I guess you’ve spoken on the phone.”

Adam nodded, shaking hands gravely before swinging the suitcase onto the worktable where it had lain the previous day. Link was glad to retreat into the background while Adam went over the circumstances of finding the case and identifying her mother from the photograph.

“Yes, Mr. Morgan told me about it.” Marisa reached toward the case, her hands hesitant. “May I see?”

“Of course. We’ve already run a few tests on it, just to be on the safe side.” Adam took a step back, as if giving her space.

Marisa opened the case. The photograph now lay on top, faceup, so that it was the first thing she saw. Link could hear the way her breath choked at the sight. His throat tightened in response.

She picked up the photograph, holding it for a long moment, her fingers caressing the pictured faces. Then she cradled it against her chest.

“This is mine.” She looked at Adam, as if expecting an argument.

“I suppose it is.” His voice was gentle. “Or maybe more accurately your father’s, but we haven’t been able to reach him.”

He knew Adam well. Maybe that was how he detected the hint of suspicion underlying the words.

Marisa didn’t seem to. “Dad won’t mind if I have the picture. I’m sorry you weren’t able to reach him, but since he retired, he takes off in that RV of his at a moment’s notice.”

“Doesn’t he have a cell phone?” Adam asked the question lightly, as if intent on not alarming her.

“He does, but half the time he doesn’t check it from one week to the next.” She didn’t seem to find that odd, which argued that father and daughter weren’t very close. “I’ve left a message for him to call me, and I’ll let you know as soon as I hear from him.”

“That’ll be fine.” Adam glanced at his watch. “It’s getting late, and I know this is a lot to take in. If you don’t mind staying over in the area tonight, maybe we can meet in my office tomorrow to talk things over.”

She looked at him, blinking a little. “Tonight? I’ll be here longer than that.”

Adam seemed taken aback. “That’s really not necessary, you know. We’ll continue to look into the situation, and we’ll let you know if and when we learn anything. I’m sure you want to get back to your own life.”

In other words, Adam didn’t want her here, dogging his every step. Link couldn’t agree more.

Marisa’s shoulders stiffened. She looked very deliberately from him to Adam. “I can see why you feel that way, but I have no intention of going anywhere. I intend to stay in Springville until I know why my mother’s suitcase was inside the wall of this house.”

CHAPTER TWO

MARISA COULD SEE HOW unwelcome that announcement was to both men. With her unfortunate knack for empathy, she could easily put herself in their places.

The police chief was simplest to figure. He clearly wanted a free hand with his investigation, and he didn’t want to tell her anything he didn’t have to. Not that he suspected her—he could hardly believe that a five-year-old child would be involved in her mother’s disappearance.

But her father was another matter. Didn’t the police automatically suspect the spouse when a woman disappeared?

Or died. She forced herself to finish that thought.

“Ms. Angelo, I hate to see you do that.” The police chief sounded as harassed at the thought of her staying as she expected him to. “You’ll just be kicking your heels around here to no purpose. It’s hardly likely that we can find anything else out about what happened after all these years.”

“You found the suitcase,” she pointed out.

“Link did.” Chief Byler shot a look at the other man. “If he hadn’t been renovating the house, we wouldn’t have known anything about it.”

“But you have to investigate.” A thought struck her with the force of a blow. “You must have investigated then. Well, I mean not you personally.” He was far too young for that, probably not much more than in his early thirties. “But the police must have.”

She’d never known. She could only wonder at herself. A child accepted what she was told by the authority figures in her life, of course. But later, when she’d wanted to understand, it hadn’t occurred to her to ask her father what the police had thought.

“True, they did.” Adam Byler leaned against the rough table, seeming to resign himself to the questions. “I’ve looked into the reports, talked to officers who were working then.”

“And what did they say?” Was she going to have to drag information from the man? Ordinarily she probably wouldn’t have had the nerve to confront him, but these weren’t ordinary circumstances.

She couldn’t read anything in his square, impassive face. She suspected he was trying to decide what and how much to tell her.

As for Link Morgan—well, he’d backed away, as if trying to disassociate himself from the whole business. He probably regretted that he hadn’t thrown the suitcase on the trash heap without opening it.

“People noticed that your mother wasn’t around any longer,” Byler said. “Your father said she’d left him. That she hadn’t been able to go on living English and she’d gone back to her people in Indiana. For the most part, the police accepted that.”

Byler’s lips clamped shut on the words. Was the implication that he wouldn’t have?

“You know that your mother was Amish?” Link Morgan asked the question with a kind of reluctant concern in his voice.

She nodded. That she did know, but only because she’d pried it out of her grandmother, who was easier to talk to than her father. “I know. And my father said she’d gone back to her family because that was what he thought she’d done.”

A shiver skittered along her nerves. She believed that. She had to.

“My grandmother said my mother had talked about going back to her family,” she went on. “Grandma said my mother found it hard to give up her people and her faith the way she had.”

But how could she leave me behind? The child who lived inside her asked the question she couldn’t.

“You might want to see what else is in the suitcase,” Link suggested.

She shot a look at him. That fine-drawn face, with the skin taut against the bones—she still had the urge to draw it every time she looked at him. What made him look that way? Illness? Grief? Guilt?

Slowly she lifted out folded clothing. Her fingers hesitated when they touched the black garment. Then she lifted it, shook it out.

“It’s the kind of apron an Amish woman wears. And there’s the prayer covering they always have on their heads.” He nodded toward the object in the bottom of the case, not moving.

She picked it up, her fingers tingling a little. White organdy, a kind of small hat with long strings. She’d seen pictures of Amish women, looking almost like nuns in their dark dresses and identical hair styles, with the white covering on their heads. She’d taken a book out of the school library, she remembered, and hidden it under the mattress so Daddy wouldn’t see.

“That would seem to confirm that she was planning to leave,” Chief Byler said. “As to how that suitcase ended up here, and where she went—we’re as much in the dark as we were twenty-three years ago.”

For her father’s sake, she had to ask the question. “Is this a criminal investigation?”

Byler’s expression didn’t change, but Link Morgan’s mouth tightened, as if in pain.

“Not at this time,” Byler said. “For all we know, your mother did disappear back into an Amish community somewhere. That’s possible, even in this age of instant communication. If so, and if she doesn’t want to be found, the Amish would never give her up.”

“I know.” Her thoughts flickered to her own futile effort to find out something from her mother’s relatives in Indiana. “So, if it’s not a criminal investigation, will you do anything?” She didn’t mean that to sound critical, but she had to understand.

“We’ll pursue the leads we have.” That sounded final, and the police chief closed the suitcase and lifted it from the table. “If you’re intent on staying, please let my office know how to reach you. We’ll contact you if we find anything.”

She nodded, watching him walk to the door. He hadn’t sounded particularly hopeful.

He turned at the door, hand on the screen. “Don’t forget, Ms. Angelo. Let us know as soon as you hear from your father. We’d like to speak with him.” He didn’t wait for a response.

Her stomach tightened in apprehension as she watched him walk toward the patrol car. The fact that the police would suspect her father hadn’t occurred to her when she’d rushed off in response to the phone call.

“He thinks my father had something to do with this, doesn’t he?” The moment she asked the question, she regretted it. Link obviously didn’t want to be involved in her troubles, and she certainly had no reason to confide in him.

“Adam is a fair-minded person. He wouldn’t jump to any conclusions.”

“But the husband is always a suspect. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”

“I’m not thinking anything.” His tone was cool and dismissive. “I’m sorry for your—” he hesitated, and she suspected he’d been about to say her loss “—your situation, but it’s nothing to do with me.”

“You found the suitcase. It’s your uncle’s house. You have a responsibility—”

“I don’t have any responsibility at all.” The words came quick and angry. “There’s nothing I can do.”

He’d walk away, she thought, except that it was his house, which meant she was the one who had to walk away. Marisa took a deep breath and realized she was trembling. Confrontation definitely wasn’t her strong suit.

“I see.” She managed to keep her voice calm. “Thank you for your trouble.”

She turned and walked to the door. She’d come here looking for answers, but it seemed all she’d found were more questions.

LINK SCOWLED AT THE high-school photos that still adorned the wall of the room that had been his as a kid and yanked open a drawer to find a clean shirt. Mom wouldn’t hear of his being on his own when they’d finally released him from the military hospital, of course, and he’d been too weak to argue the point. But looking at the remnants of the life he used to live wasn’t doing a thing for his morale.

Well, it would soon be over, and he’d move on. This business with the suitcase could have been worse. Now it was in Adam’s capable hands, and Marisa Angelo’s troubles were Adam’s concern.

He’d been telling himself that all afternoon. So why did he still feel like such a loser? He wasn’t responsible for the woman.

Trouble was, he’d always been a sucker for vulnerable brown eyes.

He pushed away the image of that heart-shaped face. Marisa wouldn’t stick this out, anyway. She’d get tired of waiting around for news that didn’t come and go back to wherever she’d come from—Baltimore, Adam had said.

Adam didn’t want the woman here. But he did want to see her father. Marisa had been right about one thing. The police did always suspect the husband when a woman disappeared.

Funny that the cops hadn’t looked into it more thoroughly at the time. He’d have thought—

No, he wasn’t going to obsess about Marisa Angelo.

He started down the stairs, running his hand along the railing that four or five generations of Morgans had touched. He never used to spare a thought for things like that. Trey was the oldest son—he’d always figured Trey was responsible for carrying on the family traditions.

But somehow the tour of duty in Afghanistan had made Link look at things differently, like this old house and the countryside that surrounded it. Morgan land, just like probably half of Spring Township was Morgan land.

We have a duty to the land, Grandpa used to say. And to the people who live here.

A stickler for duty, the old man had been, accepting no excuses for not doing what you should. Like dealing with Marisa Angelo’s problem. And Uncle Allen’s possible involvement.

But he wasn’t going to see Marisa Angelo again.

Voices came from the living room. Mom had said that Jessica Langdon, Trey’s fiancée, was coming for dinner tonight, so apparently they were gathering there. He paused for a moment and then headed toward the archway.

Not that he didn’t like Jessica—she was a smart city attorney who’d recently gone into partnership with an old friend of his father’s. But tonight he wasn’t in the mood to be sociable. Maybe he could—

He reached the living room and stopped. Jessica and Trey were there all right, talking to Mom, who was poised like a butterfly in flight, waving a tray of appetizers while she talked to the woman who sat in the Queen Anne armchair. Marisa Angelo.

“Link, there you are.” His mother spun with one of her quick moves, the sleeves of her filmy top fluttering and the tray waving.

“Here I am,” he agreed, taking the tray from her. “And these cheese puffs are about to be on the floor.”

“Nonsense. I had a firm grip on them.” She patted his cheek as if he were about four. “Now, you’ve already met Marisa, haven’t you? I stopped by Adam’s office while I was in town to see what he’d found out about that suitcase, and Marisa was there. So I just brought her along home for supper so we could all talk it over.” Mom beamed, obviously pleased with her solution.

He had to suppress a groan. Geneva Morgan was known far and wide for her warm hospitality and her habit of adopting any stray that crossed her path, but he wished for once she’d restrained herself.

He nodded to Marisa, trying to look as if he wasn’t aghast to find her in his mother’s living room. “Marisa. I didn’t realize you were headed back to the police station after you left my place.”

Her eyes said it wasn’t any of his business where she went. “I thought of a few more things I wanted to say to Chief Byler.”

Trey must have thought that sounded ominous, because he frowned. “Adam Byler’s a good man. If there’s anything to find, I’m sure he’ll find it.”

That was not exactly what worried Marisa about him, Link suspected.

“Yes, he…he seems very capable.” Marisa’s expression suggested that she didn’t want to discuss it, and probably also that she was wondering what had induced her to accept Mom’s invitation.

Plenty of people had occasion to wonder how Geneva Morgan became entangled in their affairs. Trey had had his hands full since Dad’s death. Their mother never saw a problem that she didn’t consider it her duty to resolve.

“You must have been so shocked at Adam’s call.” His mother leaned over to pat Marisa’s hand. “Poor child. And with your father out of touch, it all falls on you.”

Marisa stiffened. Mom wouldn’t understand that the subject of her father’s absence was a touchy one, of course. His mind scrambled for something to say that would divert the conversation, but he couldn’t come up with a thing.

“I understand you’ll be staying around for a few days.” Jessica broke what was becoming an uncomfortable silence. “It’s fortunate you were able to take time off work.”

Marisa turned to her gratefully, maybe glad to see someone who wasn’t a Morgan. “That wasn’t an issue. I’m a freelance illustrator, and as long as I turn projects in on time, it doesn’t matter where I do them.”

“Really? That’s fascinating. I don’t think I ever met an illustrator before. What are you working on?” Jessica leaned forward, her interest sounding genuine.

“Right now I’m doing illustrations for a children’s book. The story is set in a rural area, as a matter of fact, so these surroundings are perfect.”

The first smile Link had seen from her curved Marisa’s lips and lit her eyes. With the stress momentarily wiped from her face, she seemed to glow with enthusiasm for her work, drawing him closer. Too bad she couldn’t look like that all the time. He hadn’t given much of a thought to women since his injury, but now he felt that flicker of interest that was the first step toward attraction.

“But about this suitcase.” Mom perched on the edge of a chair, clearly not distracted. “Have you any idea how it got there? Did your father ever mention that it was missing?”

“I don’t think so.” Marisa’s lips tightened again. “Not to me, anyway. I was just five when my mother left.” She hesitated. “If she did leave.”

Trey’s hand clenched. He was probably thinking, as Link was, about the implications of Uncle Allen being involved in the woman’s disappearance. Mom had had enough grief in her life with Dad’s death. She shouldn’t have to face any more.

“Surely the fact that the suitcase was packed indicates that she at least planned to leave,” Trey said.

“That’s true, but why—?”

Mom’s question was interrupted by a movement in the archway. Katie Zeller, one of several Amish teens who helped Mom around the house, stood there, probably waiting patiently for a break in the conversation.

Mom turned. “Oh, Katie, I’m sorry. Is everything ready?”

Katie nodded. “Ja. Did you want me to dish up already?”

“Please. I’ll come and help you.” Mom rose, waving toward the dining room. “The rest of you find seats. We’ll get the food on right away. I’m sure Marisa is starved, and here we’ve been keeping her talking instead of feeding her.”

“I’m not…” Marisa began, and let the word trail off when Mom vanished toward the kitchen.

“Pretend you’re hungry,” Trey advised, taking Jessica’s hand as they moved into the dining room. “Our mother is only happy when she’s feeding people.”

“Well, now, I might resent that if it weren’t true.” Mom and her helper carried steaming bowls and platters to the table. “Katie and I made chicken pot pie for supper. I thought Marisa ought to sample some traditional Pennsylvania Dutch food while she’s here.”

Link held Marisa’s chair while she sat down. Manners might be a vanishing art some places, but not in his mother’s house. Marisa, he noticed, was staring at Katie, something almost tragic in her eyes.

Thinking about that Amish apron and kapp in her mother’s suitcase? Both looked identical to the ones Katie wore at the moment. He sat down next to Marisa, turning that over in his mind.

By the time the food platters had circled the table, Marisa had regained her poise, as far as he could tell.

His mother glanced around the table, blue eyes sparkling. “This is nice, having a full table again. And you know, I think I can answer at least one of the questions that’s perplexing Marisa.”

Marisa’s fingers tightened on her fork. “What question is that?”

“How the suitcase came to be in Allen’s house, of course.”

Link exchanged glances with Trey. What was their mother up to now?

“How would you be able to explain that?” He had a feeling he wasn’t going to like the answer.

“It’s simple, really. I thought of it last night, but then I never had a chance to tell you because you left so early this morning, Link.”

“Tell me what?” Dealing with his mother required more patience than he possessed at the moment, and Marisa’s tension seemed to vibrate through the space between them.

“Why, that Barbara Angelo was your uncle Allen’s housekeeper, of course.”

MARISA FOUND THAT Link’s hand was in her line of vision, lying on the white tablecloth next to hers. Hers was clenched around a fork. His had tightened into so hard a fist that the tendons stood out on the back of it.

Did that mean he was as shocked at Geneva’s revelation as she was? Or did it mean that he hated the fact that it had come out?

“What are you talking about, Mom?” Across the table from her, Trey had found his voice.

Marisa studied him. A year or two older than Link, maybe, but his face, while serious, didn’t carry those lines of tension which marked Link. At the moment Trey was staring at his mother in what seemed honest surprise.

“About Marisa’s mother, Barbara Angelo. She worked for your uncle for a while, taking care of the house for him. Although why he needed a housekeeper, I never understood. There he was all by himself, practically a hermit. You’d think he could easily have done for himself…”

“Give it a rest, Mom.” Trey seemed to relax during his mother’s wanderings. Maybe he was used to the track her thoughts took. “We all know you didn’t like Dad’s brother.”

Geneva straightened, her shoulders back. “Trey, that is absolutely not true. I didn’t dislike your uncle. I just said he didn’t need a housekeeper. He could easily have taken care of things himself. Why, your father—”

“Dad was a paragon,” Trey said, smiling a little. “But you know perfectly well he never washed a dish in his life. You wouldn’t let him.”

“You always thought Uncle Allen was lazy,” Link said. “Typical younger son, taking life easy while his older brother did all the work.”

That sounded like a teasing comment. Certainly the others took it that way, joining in kidding the older woman. But Marisa had heard an undercurrent in Link’s voice that made her wonder. Was that how they’d seen Allen Morgan? Or was Link feeling guilty over something he had or hadn’t done?

She expected Geneva to come back to the subject of her mother working as Allen Morgan’s housekeeper, but that didn’t happen. At first she thought Geneva didn’t care to talk about it, but as Marisa watched them, she realized that Trey and Link were steering the conversation away from that revelation.

They were protective of Geneva. Even Jessica joined in, keeping the talk light as they ate their way through the delectable chicken pot pie and a sweet and nutty squash casserole. At least, Marisa tried to eat. She ought to be hungry, but her stomach seemed tied in a permanent knot since she’d come to this place.

How normal was their protectiveness? She couldn’t really compare them with her family. With Daddy away so much working, family had usually consisted of just her and her grandmother.

Finally everyone was finished, and Geneva suggested a move back into the living room for dessert and coffee. Jessica sat down next to Marisa, while Geneva disappeared into the kitchen and the two men halted in front of the fireplace, heads down in a low-voiced conversation.

“Don’t mind them,” Jessica said, nodding toward the two men. “I try to tell Trey he shouldn’t be so protective of his mother, but everyone does it.” She smiled. “I even find myself doing it sometimes, and the truth is that she’s probably wiser than all of us put together, despite that scatterbrained façade.”

“Is it an act?” She couldn’t help voicing her doubts.