The Secrets of Bell River

“Oh, I’m always ready,” he said.

Again, she bristled at his tone. She toyed with telling him there had been an emergency. She’d have to cancel. Every instinct was warning her not to end up alone in a room with him. But how would she explain herself to the Wrights? Two days on the job, and she was turning away badly needed clients? She couldn’t. It was unprofessional, and it was unfair.

And he hadn’t actually said a single word out of line. He just wasn’t as well-to-do as most of the clients, and his tone was rough around the edges. So what? She’d been poor most of her life. She had seen her friends’ parents eyeing her cheap sneakers and secondhand clothes, assuming a low bank balance meant a poverty of morals, intelligence and breeding.

“This way.” She led him to the Blue Room and showed him where to put his clothes, made sure one more time that the towels and sheets were all folded back and ready, then left him to prepare.

She chose her lotions carefully. She wasn’t stalling. She was simply being extra careful. She’d use an herbal muscle calmer, probably. Chamomile and aloe vera, since those wiry muscles seemed to indicate he did manual labor, and probably didn’t take care to stretch or take anti-inflammatory supplements. Calm, calm, calm. That’s what she needed to be with this one. He might not be aggressive or dangerous, but he was without question oddly revved, full of some unhealthy tensions. Her instincts couldn’t be that wrong.

She decided to leave the door open and double-checked that her phone alarm was set and safely in her pocket. She added gloves to her supplies and, squaring her shoulders, headed to the Blue Room.

She knocked on the door, but just as with Jude Calhoun, she heard no response. A wriggle of discomfort made its way into her midsection. She didn’t like the unnatural quiet. Jude had been different. No way a man humming with nerves like this guy could have actually fallen asleep. She hoped to God Baker wasn’t playing games, pretending not to hear her so that he could be “caught” with his nakedness uncovered.

Suddenly, she wasn’t nervous anymore. She was annoyed. To heck with him. She wasn’t a debutante who would run shrieking at the mysterious horror of a man’s naked body. She was a professional therapist. She was also a lot tougher than she looked, and she was having a bad day. If he got cute, she’d hustle his puny self out so fast he wouldn’t know what hit him.

“Mr. Baker.” She knocked again, loudly enough to wake the dead, and then she shoved the door open, ready for anything.

To her surprise, the room appeared to be empty.

The man was nowhere in sight.

“Mr. Baker?” It was a simple room, without a lot of hidey-holes, but she checked every spot she could imagine a man’s body would fit into. Cupboards, the closet, even under the massage table, though she felt a pure fool doing so.

She straightened, her hands on her hips, and stared at the windows, which let in a soft light through their muslin shades.

Marley Baker was gone. And, now that she had a chance to think through the details, she had to wonder whether he’d ever intended to stay. The sheets on the table hadn’t been touched, hadn’t been wrinkled or shifted by a fraction of an inch.

Even more mystifying—how had he managed to leave without her realizing it? It made her skin crawl to think he might have tiptoed inches behind her as she picked out lotions and powders, and headed surreptitiously for the front door.

Her nerves prickling, she stopped by the nail tech room, where Jean was now giving a pedicure to a middle-aged woman talking volubly on her cell phone.

Tess signaled to Jean, who excused herself and came to the door.

“You didn’t happen to see a man walk by in the past few minutes, did you? Dark-haired? Kind of short and wiry?”

“No.” Jean frowned. “Is anything wrong?”

“I don’t think so.” Tess shrugged, keeping her tone light. “My client left unexpectedly. I guess he got a call or something.”

Jean’s frown deepened, but she returned to her post.

Tess did the same. The phone was ringing. Plus, she had another client coming in half an hour, and she had to change the sheets, in case Marley Baker had touched them, however briefly.

She tried not to dwell on the unpleasant morning, concentrating instead on her afternoon clients. Her massages were therapy for her, too. And, as usual, turning her attention to other people helped. By the end of the day, she was exhausted, but in a good way, and utterly relaxed.

And maybe a little proud of herself. She’d pulled off another miracle, and kept the spa humming almost single-handedly.

Marley Baker was the furthest thing from her mind. At least...until she was leaving and noticed a tiny rectangle of paper tucked inside the chic plaque that read Bell River Ranch.

Though it could have been left by anyone, for a dozen perfectly innocent reasons, she felt her hair follicles rise. With her clumsy gloved fingers, she pried the paper out and awkwardly unfolded it.

Two short words were scrawled there. Just a dozen bright red, simple block letters, more like a random shout from a passing car than a true message. But for a minute, though she stood with snow fluttering down the collar of her coat, then melting disagreeably against her neck, she couldn’t move, couldn’t take her eyes off the angry, red words.

DIRTY, it said.

And then on the next line, BITCHES.

* * *

OVER THE PAST couple of days, while Tess had been wearing blinders that prevented her from seeing anything but the spa’s most immediate needs, she’d almost forgotten about all the other holiday festivities going on elsewhere on the ranch.

The ugly note she held in her hand felt even more obscene here, as she stood at the front door of the main house, which was framed in pine-scented garland and sparkling with fairy lights. She wished she could turn around and go back to the hotel. She was extraordinarily tired, suddenly. She needed to get off her feet. She needed something to eat. She needed—

The door opened. One of the men she’d met the night they offered her the job—she thought this one was Gray, Bree’s husband—stood there, smiling.

“Hey, Tess,” he said easily, as if she’d worked there for years. If she hadn’t been paying close attention, she might have missed the subtle surprise in his eyes. “Everything okay?”

“Yes.” Too late, she wondered whether uniformed employees were supposed to use the rear entrance. “I think so,” she amended. “But there is something I should talk to Rowena about, if she’s free.”

“Well, Ro isn’t ever really free, but I think we can snag her. Come on in.” He stepped back from the door, and through the garland-swagged foyer Tess could see that the living room was in shadows. The only lights came from a twinkling Christmas tree by the windows, and a projector’s beam hitting a big screen at the front. A crowd of people perched on folding chairs, and they seemed to be watching a slide presentation.

“Oh. I’ve come at a bad time.”

“Not at all.” Gray smiled. “On Monday night, Penny shares the nature shots taken during her photography classes. Ro isn’t a part of that. She’s in the great room dealing with a totally different minicrisis. Barton has a sing-along starting in about half an hour in there, but right now we’re all trying to get Alec off the wall without breaking anything.”

Tess frowned, wondering if he was kidding. “The...the wall?”

He gave her a wry look over his shoulder. “Yeah. It’s okay, though. He can’t hold on much longer, so he’ll be down in the next couple of minutes, dead or alive.”

They had reached the entrance to the lovely great room, with its cathedral ceiling, huge fireplace trimmed in red candles and green fir, and impressive river-rock surround.

The room was full of people. In front of the fireplace, Bree, Mitch, Barton and Max, Penny’s husband, stood in a perfect square, holding the corners of a thick blanket above a layer of sofa cushions and quilts, as if they were making a safety net of sorts.

Their faces tilted toward the ceiling. Tess followed their gazes, and to her horror spotted Alec a foot or two from the upper edge of the river rock. From this distance, he looked small, skinny and awkward, his arms and legs splayed like a superhero as he tried to hold on to the lumpy rock.

Tess glanced around, wondering how everyone was maintaining such calm. Over at the end of the room near the kitchen, Dallas and a young man in a Bell River uniform were rapidly assembling an articulating ladder. An ordinary stepladder would never reach high enough.

“Where’s the damn mattress?” Dallas glanced toward the foyer doorway once, then refocused on the ladder.

“Isamar and Carrie are bringing it now,” Rowena said.

“I’ll go help.” Gray touched Tess’s arm. “Hang on. Ro will be free soon.”

Tess felt her mouth hanging open slightly. Her stupid anonymous note seemed absurdly trivial. The boy was at least twelve feet in the air. If he fell...

She shivered. He probably wouldn’t die, not with the people below, and the pillows, and the blanket. But he might miss. Even a partial miss could be catastrophic. He might well break half a dozen bones.

And he must be scared to death.

“Dang it,” the little boy said, his voice and words a touching echo of his father’s. He sounded very far away, but was full of bluster, clearly reluctant to reveal fear. “Too bad Jude’s not here. A stunt man would know what to do. My hands are getting sweaty.”

A little girl piped up from the corner. “I told you it wouldn’t be as easy to come down as it was to go up.”

Max gave the girl a hard look. “Really? You think this is the right time to say I told you so?”

She blushed and hung her head, but didn’t say another word.

Two seconds later, Gray showed up, the large, thick mattress, which must have weighed a ton, carried over his head as if it were light as a feather.

“Coming through,” he called, and plopped his burden as near the safety net as he could. Then he dropped to a squat and muscled the mattress until it lay directly under the blanket. A couple of Bell River staffers rearranged the pillows and quilts on top of the mattress with lightning speed.

“This’ll be faster than the ladder, Dallas,” Gray said, putting his hand on Dallas’s shoulder. “And just as safe. Tell him to let go.”

Dallas glanced at the pile of cushioning, the outstretched blanket and his team of helpers. He looked up at his son, then down, clearly calculating the geometry of the placement. And then he nodded.

“Keep going,” he said quietly to his assistant beside the ladder. “Just in case.”

Then he moved closer to the fireplace. “Okay, buddy. Time to give those arms a rest. We’ve got you covered. Let go, and try to fall on your rump, okay?”

The little boy was silent for a moment. He twisted his neck for one second, trying to get a look at his dad, but swiveled it back quickly, as if the motion scared him.

“Come on, Alec.” Dallas’s voice was utterly calm. “It’s all good. You’ll be fine.”

A tiny voice floated to them. “You sure?”

Tess found herself holding her breath, and the room spun a little, as if she might faint, which surprised her, because she wasn’t the fainting type.

“Yep,” Dallas said, projecting complete confidence. “I’m sure.”

“Well, then. Okay.”

As though someone had pulled a lever, the boy dropped from the wall. Tess’s knees seemed to liquefy. She touched the wall for support. As if in slow motion, the blanket dipped as his scrawny form hit it, rump first, just as his father had requested, and then bounced up.

Thank God. Alec’s smiling face emerged from over the edge of the blanket, beaming and laughing, as if it were all a grand game.

Strangers and staffers who apparently had been watching from the margins of the room broke out in scattered applause, which then tapered off as Dallas glared, obviously not wanting them to encourage the boy.

The four people who had held the blanket’s corners moved toward each other, letting their weighted cloth sag until it came to rest against the mattress. Alec bounced once on the springs, as if it were a trampoline, then rolled off and onto the carpet.

Rowena grabbed him the minute his feet hit the floor and gathered him in for a tight, half-suffocating hug.

“Idiot,” she said raggedly, burying her face in his hair. “You impossible, ridiculous, infuriating idiot.”

“Well, Ellen dared me.” He pulled free and began stuffing his shirt into his jeans. “She double-dog dared me,” he repeated, as if that were an absolute defense.

“I did not,” the little girl countered, scowling fiercely at Alec.

“Enough.” Dallas’s voice had taken on a completely different quality now, carrying the unmistakable authority of an angry dad. “Upstairs, both of you. I’ll be up later to let you know whether we’ve decided to toss you to the wolves or eat you for dinner.”

The kids scurried away. As they exited, though, they could be heard giggling, which drained the moment of its drama. A relieved chatter rose from the room’s occupants, and life seemed to resume.

Now that the commotion was over, Tess felt dizzier than ever and miserably uncomfortable. She felt out of place and conspicuous, like the interloper she was. This was obviously not the time to bring a new problem to Rowena’s door.

But to her surprise, Rowena walked calmly toward her. “Hey,” she said. “So sorry about the chaos.”

“No, no. I’m the one who is sorry, for intruding on—”

“Don’t be silly.” As Dallas walked past, Rowena squeezed his hand. “Just your average Monday night at Bell River Ranch, right, Sheriff?”

“Yep.” He shook his head, grinning. “We should have let him break something, you know. Not his neck maybe, but a finger? A toe? If he keeps escaping unscathed, he’ll never learn anything important.”

“Sure he will.” Rowena put her hand against her husband’s cheek. “He’ll learn his family is always here to catch him when he falls. What’s more important than that?”

The heat of tears stung Tess’s eyes, and, though it seemed weak, she had to look away. This moment was private, in spite of the guests and the staff and the whole circus aura of the moment. She should not be here. She should not be here.

“Anyhow, sorry to keep you waiting.” Rowena returned her attention to Tess. “Gray said you needed to talk to me?”

Suddenly drained by the whole wretched day, Tess found herself eager to get it over with. She plucked the folded note from her uniform pocket. “It’s nothing serious. I just...I found this slipped in behind the door plaque as I closed up tonight.”

Rowena frowned as soon as she saw the paper, and Tess knew instantly. This wasn’t the first anonymous note they had received.

“Oh, hell,” Rowena said under her breath. She unfolded the paper and read the red words written there. “I’m sorry. We should have warned you. We get these from time to time. There are people in Silverdell, it seems, who can’t let the past go.”

Tess wondered exactly what that meant. Who exactly were the dirty bitches? The three Wright daughters? They had told Tess the whole story the night they hired her—not realizing that, of course, she already knew it. Tess couldn’t help wondering whether they would have mentioned it, if the ghost-whisperer maid hadn’t run into Moira Wright’s ghost that night.

Maybe they would have. This didn’t seem to be a family that played things close to the vest. Perhaps years ago they’d learned that secrets were dangerous...or maybe they’d learned that it was impossible to keep secrets for long.

Either way, they’d explained the basic facts: Johnny had been convicted of deliberately pushing their mother down the staircase, and Moira had been exposed as an unfaithful wife, who had been carrying another man’s baby. But both of the principal players in the melodrama were dead now, long gone. Surely it was a little Victorian to continue to punish the daughters for the sins of the parents.

And...dirty? Odd choice of insults. Tess hadn’t met Penny yet—though she’d seen her petite, shadowy outline in the living room, standing in the projector’s beam as she pointed to something on a photo. But Rowena and Bree were about as far from dirty or bitchy as two women could get.

Rowena must have sensed Tess’s confusion. “Some people simply believe we had a bad gene pool. They keep waiting for us to turn into nymphomaniacs, or kill each other, or something.”

She laughed when she said it, but Tess heard an undercurrent of pain beneath the mirth. Rowena acted tough, but perhaps something softer lay beneath?

“Not they,” Dallas corrected gently. “It’s probably just one person. You know most of Silverdell is on our side.”

Tess could imagine how unsettling it must be to walk the streets of Silverdell, wondering whether every face might be the face of this anonymous enemy. “Do you know who it is?”

Rowena shook her head. “No. There are a few likely suspects, sourpusses and sleazeballs who haven’t gotten along with Bell River for decades. But no proof against anyone.”

Dallas put his arm around Rowena. “The department has looked into it, and continues to do so. Is it okay if I send someone to the spa tomorrow to talk to you about anything you might have seen?”

Tess nodded. She thought about mentioning the dustup with Mrs. Fillmore, and especially the odd disappearance of Marley Baker, but she was too tired to go into it now. In fact, she felt more than a little woozy. She realized she hadn’t ever stopped for a meal all day. She hadn’t eaten a single bite since last night. No wonder she felt so bad.

“Tomorrow’s fine,” she said. “I don’t think I have any clients around the lunch hour, if that would work for you.”

“Tess,” Rowena said, her voice suddenly urgent. “If you feel that...” She paused, as if searching for the right phrasing. “If it makes you so uncomfortable that you would rather not stay...I want you to know we wouldn’t hold it against you. We would provide an excellent recommendation—”

“No.” Tess appreciated the gesture, but no way was she leaving because of some snake like Marley Baker. “It doesn’t make me uncomfortable at all. This is the work of a coward who doesn’t even have the nerve to make his comments face-to-face.”

With her last ounce of energy, she turned to Dallas, trying to project the certainty he’d shown his son. “I’ll see someone from your office tomorrow, then?”

She thought she might have seen a glimmer of respect in his gaze. He nodded.

“Tess,” Rowena said, “would you like to stay to—”

Again Tess interrupted Rowena. She was giving out. Her legs had begun to feel like wobbly strings, and her stomach churned acidly. She was afraid she might pass out, or even vomit, if she didn’t get home.

Home. Well, the hotel that was passing for home right now, anyhow. The job included a cabin, but it wasn’t ready yet, though Jude Calhoun was putting the finishing touches on it. Tonight, though, where she landed didn’t matter. Anywhere with a bed and a cup of hot tea would suffice.

She mumbled something she hoped was civil and headed to the door. In an excess of courtesy, Rowena and Dallas escorted her, but if they made small talk, Tess didn’t hear it. A dull roar had started in her ears, and she couldn’t even hear herself think.

She must have said the right things, because finally the door closed behind her, and she was alone on the porch, with the lights and the scent of the garlands.

Oh, no. She put her hands against her stomach, feeling bile rise. She loved the smell of pine, and yet right now she found it the most repulsive odor in the world. Her stomach heaved, and she lost focus.

She had to get home. She pulled out her phone, but there was no one to call, was there? All she saw was the missed call log—two more from Craig, who simply would not give up. She hadn’t even felt the vibration from incoming calls. She’d been running so hard all day.

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