Man With A Miracle

He climbed into the Jeep, grateful to have wheels at all, put the coffee cup in the console, tossed the bag of doughnuts onto the passenger seat and headed for the mill.

His parking spot was around the back, where he and Cam kept an office that also served as a storage shed for tools and equipment. There was a lumpy old love seat in it that Bart and Haley had donated when they bought new furniture, and Evan wanted nothing more than to sit on it, drink his coffee and have another doughnut, before he applied the second coat of paint to the window frames and doors of the accounting office, then wallpapered the women’s bathroom.

Balancing doughnuts, coffee and the new roller handles he’d bought, he unlocked the door and pushed it open.

What he saw shocked him into stillness. He experienced a playback of that moment, a year and a half ago, when he’d opened the gym bag and found bundles of cash.

Only, this moment was potentially more dangerous. He was looking at the business end of the Louisville Slugger he kept on top of the bookshelf. Ready to swing it was a very disheveled young woman in a torn and dusty navy-blue suit and jacket and dress shoes. Dark red hair was piled in a messy bundle atop her head, and she looked pale and obviously terrified.

He assessed her calmly as his old training kicked in. She was average in height and slender, and even with a gun would have posed a negligible threat—if she’d been calm.

But she wasn’t. She looked exhausted, and her red-rimmed blue eyes said more clearly than words that she was on the brink of destruction—her own or someone else’s.

His presence seemed about to push her over the edge.

“Hi,” he said calmly, and stayed right where he was.

HI? BEAZIE DEADHAM thought hysterically. He’d killed her boss and chased her across the commonwealth of Massachusetts, and all he could say when they finally stood face-to-face, was Hi?

She was going to lose it. She could feel it happening. She was shaking so hard she could hear her own teeth chattering.

Things were beginning to reel around her. She’d been up all night with nothing to eat or drink. She’d tried to close her eyes during the four-hour drive in the back of the moving van, but each time, she’d seen her boss’s broken body crumpled on the concrete floor of the parking structure, life ebbing out of him as she ran and knelt beside him. She’d seen the red SUV with the gunman in it rev its motor.

“Beazie,” Gordon had gasped, and clutched her hand. “Evans…” Blood trickled out of the corner of his mouth. “Take it to…Evans. Maple Hill… No police.”

Barely able to hear him, she leaned over him, her ear to his lips.

“No one…else,” he said in a barely audible croak. “Evans…Maple Hill.”

It was only then that she noticed he’d pressed something into her hand: a miniature tape cassette like the kind in an answering machine.

This wasn’t happening to her, she thought in a panic now, dragging herself back to the moment and the man who stood across from her. Although her arms were aching from holding the bat, she didn’t dare lower the weapon. This guy had killed her boss, Gordon Hathaway. Gentle Gordon, the man who’d given her an advance on her paycheck when she’d hired on, because she’d explained she was really broke; who’d given her a bonus when she’d reorganized the filing system; who’d been kind and funny and more of a friend than an employer.

“Do you want to tell me what you’re doing here?” the man asked in a quiet, rumbly voice from across the room. In his large hands were two long poles, a paper bag and a cup of coffee. His white pants and sweatshirt were both covered with flecks of paint in assorted colors, and a red scarf patterned with black moose and bears was wrapped around his neck.

It encouraged her that she could see so clearly, considering the way her eyes burned. Spots had been floating in and out of her vision, but they were gone now. Still, she felt vaguely nauseated.

The man’s hair was dark blond and slightly curly, his eyes brown and calm. He apparently didn’t consider her a threat. Well, she’d show him! Nobody killed people she knew and got away with it.

But what did she do with him, now that she had him at bay? Gordon had said no police. She could only conclude that meant someone in the police department was involved in his death. But did he mean in Boston or in Maple Hill? Oh God.

“You murdered Gordon Hathaway!” she accused sternly, hoping she looked like a controlled woman with a plan, even though she didn’t have one. “Did you think you’d get away with that?”

Those calm brown eyes looked blank, then he blinked and said, “Pardon me?”

“You killed Gordon Hathaway!” she shrieked at him. The spots were back and she was starting to feel as though she was about to explode. All effort to remain calm disintegrated. “And you’ve been after me ever since!”

“Why do you think that?” he asked.

“Because I saw you! I saw your red SUV in the parking garage when that guy leaned out and shot Gordon! I saw you come into my apartment building, looking for me!”

“You didn’t see me.”

“I did! And just now, I watched you pull up here!”

“Look,” he said in that patronizing tone. “I’m just going to put this stuff down, okay?”

“Don’t think I won’t smash you.”

“It’s okay,” he said, easing the poles into the corner near the door.

She watched him as he placed the small bag and cup of coffee on the edge of the desk beside him. He looked up at her and noticed her licking her dry lips. “Are you hungry?” he asked.

He reached slowly for the bag and tossed it to the love seat near where she stood. “There’s a maple bar, a cinnamon twist and a caramel-nut roll in there. Help yourself.”

Without moving her eyes from him, she pointed the bat with one hand and unrolled the top of the bag with the other. She reached inside and withdrew the first thing her fingers touched. It was the maple bar. With a shaky hand she brought it to her mouth and took a large bite.

It tasted like ambrosia.

Fortified by that single bite, she indicated the coffee cup with the bat, which was getting heavy. “Move the coffee to the edge of the desk.”

Certain she had him at least concerned, if not intimidated, she was surprised and dismayed when he grinned.

“Sorry. That’s only my second cup this morning, and I’ve got a big day ahead of me. If you want it, you have to take it from me.”

Beazie figured she must have looked disappointed, because his grin widened and he said, “Oh, all right.” Reaching for a pottery cup on the desk, he poured half of the coffee into it, then held the paper cup out to her. “Here you go.”

She’d never wanted anything more in her life, but she didn’t trust him. Apparently aware of that, he put it on the edge of the desk nearest her and took several steps back.

She put the maple bar down, reached for the cup and took a careful swallow. The coffee was hot, rich and absolutely delicious.

“I’m driving a Jeep on loan from the garage that’s fixing my van,” he said, sitting on the desk and drinking from his pottery cup. “Not an SUV.”

As she lowered her own cup, she felt an instant’s uncertainty.

“Where did this murder take place?” he asked.

She sidled toward the window near his desk, so that she could see the parking area. “In Boston,” she replied.

“Well, I haven’t been to Boston in almost a year. In fact, I’ve hardly left Maple Hill. So you have me confused with someone else.”

Rising up on tiptoe, she spotted the top of the red car, but couldn’t see enough to be sure it was the SUV. She’d watched him pull in, she reminded herself, and she’d been sure then. Of course, she’d been dealing with those spots.

He took a cordless phone from the top of the desk and tried to hand it to her. “Call the police,” he said. “They can tell you who I am.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” she said with new resolve, polishing off the last of the coffee. “Gordon told me no police. Did you buy them off?”

He put a hand to his face and took a deep breath. “Why don’t we call you a doctor?” he asked finally, preparing to stab out a telephone number. “You look as though you’re on the verge of collapse. Sit down and I’ll—”

She made a desperate grab for the phone, thinking that he’d probably just get a doctor to sedate her or something, then they’d throw her in that beautiful lake behind the…

She couldn’t quite round out the thought.

Everything went red. Not black, but a sort of rosy red. She felt hot suddenly, as though a prickly woollen blanket were inching up her body. With a strange sort of detachment, she watched as the coffee cup fell out of her hands and the bat dangled from her fingers.

The man sprang off the desk to take the bat from her, and as she sank into a warm, fuzzy stupor, she expected him to hit her with it.

But he put it aside and reached out for her as her knees buckled. She expected a collision with the floor, but the last thing she knew was the cradle of a strong pair of arms.

CHAPTER TWO

EVAN CARRIED THE YOUNG WOMAN to the love seat, put two fingertips to her throat, and felt great relief when he sensed the tap of a steady pulse. He retrieved a ratty but clean blanket he kept in the closet. Her skin was icy to the touch. It certainly lent credence to her story that she’d been on the run all night.

Then he reached for the phone to dial 911. But remembering her fear, and her odd remark about the police being in collusion with the killer, he changed his mind.

He couldn’t imagine what had happened to her, but she seemed more genuinely fearful than crazy. Something or someone had driven her to this state. Someone with a red SUV.

He called Randy Sanford, who was an EMT and worked on Whitcomb’s Wonders’ janitorial crew in his spare time. Evan explained briefly about not wanting to call an ambulance.

“My bag’s at Medics Rescue,” Randy said. “You should call—”

“Just come!” Evan demanded. He’d pressed the speaker button so that he had his hands free to make a pot of coffee for the woman. “I don’t think it’s life or death, but please. Just get over here.”

“On my way,” Randy promised.

Once the coffee was dripping, Evan went to see what else he could do to make the woman comfortable. He noticed that her head rested at an odd angle on the pillow he’d propped under her, and tried to readjust it. Then he realized that the problem was a dirty, tattered piece of elasticized fabric wrapped around her hair. He worked gently to remove it, and combed his fingers through the dark burnished mass.

As he wrapped the blanket more tightly around her, he wondered once again what had happened to her. She had a pretty oval face, though even in her unconscious state, she frowned. Her nose was small, her chin slightly pointed, and her long eyelashes were a shade darker than her hair. If she wore makeup, it had worn off in her ordeal, and a spray of freckles stood out on the bridge of her nose and across her cheekbones.

When she stirred fitfully, he put a hand to her shoulder, telling her it was all right, she was safe.

She moaned in response, but her eyes remained closed.

BEAZIE WAS LEANING OVER Gordon in horrified disbelief as his life drained away.

She heard the door of the SUV open. The driver, a young man in a fleece-lined jacket, was about to step out, but the elevator doors parted and a throng of laughing, talking commuters spilled out. As soon as they noticed her sheltering Gordon’s supine body, they hurried toward her, one of them already on his cell phone. A young woman pushed Beazie aside, telling her she was a nurse.

The door closed on the red SUV and it sped away.

The ambulance arrived first, and the paramedics covered Gordon with a sheet. As soon as Beazie saw the police car pull up, she panicked and slipped away unnoticed in the crowd of onlookers that had gathered. Gordon had pleaded “No police!” She couldn’t risk them finding the tape on her.

Once she was out on the main street, she hailed a cab and headed straight for her apartment. Everything there was just as she’d left it that morning, and she experienced a strange feeling of unreality. She had to have imagined the murder of her boss. That kind of thing didn’t happen to a nice, middle-class girl from Buffalo.

Then she found the tape, still clutched so tightly in her hand it left marks. She walked to the window to examine it more closely and see if it was labeled.

Instead, her attention was caught by the bright red SUV parking in front of her building. Three men got out. One stayed with the car while the other two hurried inside.

Her flight-or-fight response kicked in and adrenaline raged through her body as she raced out of her apartment and scrambled down the fire escape. Once on the ground, she fled down an alley to the next block, and kept running as darkness fell.

She was cold, she was hungry. In her panic, she hadn’t thought to grab her purse. How was she going to get to Maple Hill without cash or credit cards? Then she came upon the gaping rear doors of a moving van and heard the driver and his assistant talking about their next stop in Springfield. She remembered from visiting a friend there and antiquing through the area that it was just a short distance from Maple Hill, a quaint little town at the foot of the Berkshires. Without a second’s thought, she climbed into the truck.

For several hours she huddled in the cold darkness of the moving van, wedged between a mattress and an easy chair. When at last they stopped, the assistant opened the doors, and she got ready to do some fast explaining. But the driver shouted a question and the assistant headed back to the cab.

Her body stiff with cold, Beazie struggled down from the van and headed toward the well-lit main street, wondering how on earth she would get to Maple Hill. Down a little side lane she noticed the shipping and receiving doors of a bakery wide-open, so she slipped inside, drawn by the warmth and the light. Beyond a wall of windows, big ovens were being filled with racks of something she couldn’t quite identify.

The aroma was torturous. She’d skipped breakfast, had been too busy for lunch and was now feeling weak and dizzy. Unfortunately, all of the bakery’s product seemed to be on the other side of the window.

She shrank back into the shadows as a tall boy in a white uniform and headphones came out another door carrying a large rack. He walked out in to the lane, headed for a truck with Palermo Bakery emblazoned on the side. After sliding the rack of bread in the back of the truck, he went to the driver’s door and climbed in. Taking her courage in hand, Beazie raced over and asked if he was going anywhere near Maple Hill.

He yanked off the headphones. “What’s that?”

“Are you going anywhere near Maple Hill?” she asked again.

He looked her over and smiled. “Sure am, dudette,” he said. “That’s my first stop. You need a ride?”

She nodded, grateful that he was friendly and amenable, if not the brightest light on the field. She wanted to add, Yes, and a dozen doughnuts, please, but she said instead, “I’m looking for someone named Evans there. Do you know anyone by that name?”

He nodded. “I do. Hop in, time’s a-wastin’.”

She couldn’t believe her good fortune. She closed her eyes against a thumping headache and was mercifully ignored while the young man sang loudly to the tunes from his Walkman. Within half an hour, he pulled off the road and into the parking lot of what looked like an old mill. It was now about four a.m.

“You’ll find him in that office,” he said, pointing to the far end of the building. “But probably not for a couple of hours.”

Beazie was also grateful that the driver’s youth and “duh-ness” prevented him from arguing about leaving her on what was now a dark and lonely road.

“I’ll be fine,” she assured him, and with a heartfelt “thank you” leaped out onto the parking lot and headed straight for a garden bench under a floodlight.

The sign on the building said Trent and Braga Development. Trent and Braga. Beazie turned to the truck, but the driver was already back on the road and almost out of sight.

She hoped this wasn’t simply the boy’s idea of a joke on a disheveled “dudette” and that there really was someone named Evans here.

Tired as she was, she decided to try the windows and was deliriously relieved to find one slightly open. She pushed it open even farther and climbed inside. The smell of sealant was strong, and she imagined that was why the window had been left ajar.

In the glow of the floodlight, the room appeared to be large and empty, and she made her way carefully to a door, which led to a hallway. Every other room along the hallway was also empty, except for one at the end that appeared to be a sort of office-storage area. And it had a sofa!

The room wobbled as she stumbled to the lumpy couch. She would lie down for a minute; then, as soon as the world straightened again, she’d look for something to eat. If this place was used as an office, there might be cookies or chips stashed in a drawer. She closed her eyes, quickly reviewed all the horrible things that had happened to her over the past sixteen hours, and reaffirmed her determination to grant Gordon his dying wish. He’d been a good friend to her, and she felt bound to help him in the only way she had left. She fell asleep with tears on her cheek.

THE WOMAN WAS STILL UNCONSCIOUS five minutes later when Randy arrived, ripping off his jacket. He was tall and dark-featured, with what Evan had heard the Wonders Women, his wife and his friends’ wives, refer to as heartthrob good looks. Randy never seemed to be aware of them himself.

Evan pointed him to the sofa and Randy sat on the edge of it and leaned over the woman, putting his cheek to her mouth and nose to check for breathing.

“What’s her name?” he asked Evan as he straightened up. He put his index and second fingers to the pulse at her throat.

“I don’t know,” Evan replied.

“Pulse is a little thready.” Randy shook her lightly. “Hey, pretty lady. Can you hear me?” he asked loudly. “Hello! Can you hear me? Can you talk?” He gave her another gentle shake. “What did you say happened to her?”

Evan went to the cupboard for coffee cups. “I’m not sure. She said something about seeing her boss killed, then being chased all night long. She started out in Boston.”

“How’d she get here?”

“Don’t know. I unlocked my door to find her threatening me with a bat. She looked pretty desperate.”

“No purse?”

“Uh…don’t think so.” He left the small table with the coffeepot, to check the corners of the office. He searched behind a stack of boxes, then under the love seat. Nothing. “No purse,” he confirmed.

“No coat, either?”

“No.”

The woman stirred as though uncomfortable, then moaned.

Randy lightly placed his hand above her waist. “It’s all right,” he said. “Can you hear me?”

When she didn’t respond, he took one of her hands and rubbed it. “She’s breathing a little fast, but that would be consistent with being frightened. And her pulse isn’t really strong but it’s definitely there.”

He put her hand back under the blanket and rubbed her arms through it. “She wasn’t dressed for a winter night. That coffee ready? That’ll do her the most good. She’s probably just cold and hungry. Not to mention scared and exhausted.”

The woman opened her eyes then, and at the sight of them, tried to propel herself backward on the sofa, looking desperate to escape.

“Whoa,” Randy said, catching her hands. “It’s okay. I’m an emergency medical technician.”

“He’s okay.” Evan came forward and handed her a cup of coffee. “I called him when you fainted. You’re safe. I’m driving a red Jeep, remember, not an SUV. This is Randy Sanford, a friend of mine.”

She studied Randy suspiciously, then looked up at Evan, her suspicion obviously deepening. But she took a sip of the coffee and seemed to relax a little.

“I’d like to take you to the hospital,” Randy said, “just to make sure you’re all right and that you fainted because you’re cold and hungry, not because of something more serious.”

BEAZIE MADE A QUICK DECISION. She could not go to the hospital. Someone would have to take down a lot of information, create a file that could be traced.

“No, thank you,” she said firmly. “I’m fine.”

“You fainted,” the first man reminded her. “Fine people don’t faint.”

“Hungry people do,” she replied. “You don’t have another doughnut, do you?”

He reached for the bag he’d given her earlier and offered it to her. She pulled out the cinnamon twist. “You should go to the hospital.”

She took a big bite of the doughnut, then glanced at him apologetically. “No, thank you. This will put me back on my feet.”

“What are you going to do then?” he asked. “You have no purse or coat.”

Many times during the cold night she had wished she’d handled her escape with more thought, but when she’d seen the red SUV on the street below her apartment, she’d panicked.

It didn’t matter, though. Somehow she was going to find this Evans person and give him the tape Gordon had passed to her with his last breath. He hadn’t deserved to die the way he did.

“I’ll do what I came to do,” she replied with far more conviction than she felt. “I’m looking for a man named Evans. Either of you know him?”

Randy Sanford pointed to his friend. “Your host is Evan Braga. But I don’t know anyone with the last name Evans. What’s your name, by the way?”

She hesitated a moment, then replied, “Beazie Deadham.” There was little point in withholding her name. If the men in the red SUV had been able to find out where she lived, she was sure they also knew her name.

Now that she was seeing more clearly and was more coherent, she realized Evan Braga wasn’t one of the men from the SUV. But Gordon had warned her not to trust anyone, and had directed her to give the tape to someone named Evans, not Evan. At least, she thought he had. His voice had been frail, and the sound in the underground parking lot less than ideal.

“That’s an unusual name,” Randy said.

“My grandmothers were Beatrice and Zoe,” she explained. “I’m Beatrice Zoe. Beazie.”

“Ah.” Randy stood. “I don’t think you need me anymore,” he said, patting her hand.

Evan Braga walked him across the room to the door, where they disappeared behind a stack of boxes.

“Thanks for coming so quickly,” the man named Evan said.

“Sure. Does this square us for last night’s poker game?” Randy asked.

“No, it doesn’t,” Evan replied. “You owe me thirty bucks and you damn well better pay up or I’ll sic my attorney on you.”

Randy laughed. “Bart is into me for forty bucks for hospital benefit tickets. Why don’t you just pay me ten and we’ll call it even?”

She heard a quiet groan. “Did you really think I’d fall for that?”

“It was worth a shot.”

“Randy, listen. Keep this to yourself, okay? If this woman is in danger from whoever’s following her, I don’t want anyone to know how she got here.”

“Sure. I was never here.”

“Thanks.”

Beazie thought that a surprisingly thoughtful request of her host.

There was the sound of a door closing.

When Evan returned, he went to his desk and picked up a small telephone book. “I know a Millie Evans,” he said, handing her the book, “but she’s ninety-three and in a convalescent home.”

She felt an instant’s hope. “Does she have a son? A brother-in-law?”

He shook his head. “Single lady. She used to have a little house on the lake before she had a fall and couldn’t see to herself anymore. I painted it for her.”

Hope died, but her interest in Evan Braga stirred. “You’re a housepainter?”

He nodded.

He couldn’t be the Evans she was after. Why would Gordon want her to take a tape that had cost him his life to a housepainter?