A Woman With A Mystery

She was wasting his time. It was obvious he wasn’t going to get his money—or his case files—back. Nor any explanation, let alone satisfaction, for the heartache she’d caused him. She was a nutcase. A beautiful, desirable nutcase.

She fumbled to open her purse.

The movement should have concerned him. She might be going for a weapon. As crazy as she was, she might shoot him. But the way her hands shook, she wouldn’t have been able to hit the broad side of a barn even if she pulled a howitzer from the bag.

She tugged out a tissue and wiped her eyes.

He’d heard enough, but still, he had to ask. “Why would someone want to take your baby?”

She glanced up, tears in her eyes. “I don’t know. I just have this feeling that this isn’t the first time they’ve done this. That there have been other babies they’ve stolen.”

She was worse than he’d thought.

He rubbed a hand over his face, remembering something she’d said. “During the delivery, you mentioned the doctors. You saw them then?”

She shook her head, one glistening tear making a path down her perfectly rounded cheek. “Not their faces.” She seemed to hesitate as if what she was about to say could be any worse than what she’d already told him. “They wore masks.”

“Masks? You mean surgical masks?”

“Halloween masks with hideous monster faces.” She avoided his gaze as she rooted around in her purse again. “I will pay you whatever you want to prove that I’m not crazy and to get my baby back.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath. And to think he used to fantasize about finding her. “When was this anyway?”

“Five weeks ago.”

He nodded distractedly, wondering why it had taken her five weeks.

When he opened his eyes, she had the checkbook in her hand, her expression filled with hopefulness as she looked up at him again.

Sweet heaven. He couldn’t believe that a part of him would gladly leap on his noble steed and ride off to battle evil for this damsel in distress yet again. Except that she’d punctured a hell of a hole in his armor the last time around. She’d gone straight for his heart, and he wasn’t apt to forget it, no matter how desirable, how beautiful or how crazy and in need of help she was this time around.

“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I can’t help you,” he said, getting to his feet.

Slowly, she lowered her gaze to her lap. He watched her put the checkbook back into her purse and rise from the chair.

“I’m sorry to have wasted your time,” she said without looking at him.

He watched her walk to the door and thought he should at least suggest she seek medical help. Did she know a good psychiatrist?

But he let her go. She was either a crackpot, or a con artist. Her name probably wasn’t even Holly Barrows.

He listened as her boot heels tapped down the stairs, and he waited for the sound of the door closing on the street below, before he picked up his beer bottle and went to the window again.

It had stopped snowing, the sky dark, the air cold against the glass. He watched her hurry to a newer SUV parked at the curb. Out of habit, he jotted down her license-plate number when her brake lights flashed on.

Why had she come to him with this latest ludicrous story? Hadn’t she gotten what she’d come for the last time?

She pulled out into the street, and he had to fight the urge to run after her.

As he started to turn from the window, he caught a movement on the sidewalk below and looked down. The Santa bell-ringer no longer had his pot. Or his bell. He was looking after the retreating Holly Barrows and talking hurriedly into a cell phone.

Slade felt a jolt as the Santa glanced up toward his office window. The look was brief, but enough. Slade swore and scrambled around his desk and out of the office. He launched himself down the stairs, nearly falling on the wet steps, his mind racing faster than his feet, and burst through the door to the sidewalk.

The Santa was gone—except for his red hat and white fake beard lying on the pavement.

The quiet snowy darkness settled over Slade as he stared down the now-empty street. He’d seen the Santa’s alarmed expression when he’d looked up and spotted Slade at the window, recalled the agitated way the man had been talking into the cell phone.

Worry clutched at him the way Holly Barrows had clutched at her purse. Sweet heaven, could she have been telling the truth this time? More important, had she been telling the truth a year ago when she’d thought someone was trying to kill her?

Suddenly a thought lodged like a stake in his heart. If she wasn’t crazy, if Holly Barrows really had been pregnant and had delivered a baby five weeks ago, then— If nothing else, he’d always been good at math.

He stumbled back against the side of the building as he stared down the street in the direction her car had disappeared. If there really had been a baby, there was a damned good chance it was his.

Chapter Two

“Are you all right?” Shelley asked him as she sliced a loaf of homemade cranberry bread. Her kitchen smelled the way their mother’s used to. Something was always cooking.

“Fine, why?” He leaned against the counter to watch her, trying to put on his best holiday face.

It was obvious to anyone who saw them together, that Slade and Shelley were siblings. Shelley’s hair was the same thick, dark blond as his, her eyes a little paler hazel. They’d both taken after their father’s side of the family. Like him, she had the Rawlins’ deep dimples. They were, in fact, fraternal twins.

“You think I can’t tell when something is bothering you?” she asked. “Something more than Christmas.”

Christmases were always hard on him. This one was especially tough after what he’d found in his mother’s letter, but he wasn’t going to tell her that.

“Remember that woman? The one I met last year about this time?”

She kept cutting the bread. “The one who couldn’t remember who she was. You called her Janie Doe.” She frowned. “I remember how worried you were about her when she disappeared.”

“Yeah, well, she waltzed into my office late this afternoon.”

Shelley stopped slicing to look over at him, and he wondered if she realized just how involved he’d gotten with Janie Doe. “Then she’s all right?”

He shrugged. He wouldn’t exactly say that. “The case is complicated.” That was putting it mildly. “But I can’t get it off my mind.”

“It? Or her?”

“Both,” he admitted with a sheepish grin. That seemed to satisfy her.

“Would you carry this into the living room? Norma called to say they were running a little late.”

“I hope they come,” Slade said, wondering how badly the chief didn’t want to read the letter he’d found.

“Of course they’ll come,” Shelley said in surprise. “It wouldn’t be Christmas without them. Well, Norma, anyway,” she added with a laugh. Chief Curtis seemed as fond of Christmas as Slade was.

Shelley put out a tray of snack food while Slade poured them each a glass of wine. With Christmas music playing on the stereo, he helped her decorate the tree. It had become their tradition, since being on their own, to decorate the tree on Christmas Eve, then take it down right after the new year, and always at Shelley’s.

The first Christmas after their mother’s murder had been the worst, with both parents gone. But the chief and Norma Curtis had helped them start new traditions and Slade had gone along with it for his sister. As far as he was concerned, he could skip the holiday all together and never miss it.

“This is one of my favorites,” she said, stopping to admire a small porcelain Santa. “I remember it from pictures of when we were just babies.”

Their mother had loved collecting Christmas ornaments. She could recount where she’d gotten each, many from friends or family, and what year. Each one had special meaning for her.

He watched his sister cradle the Santa in her palm and couldn’t help but think about the Santa bell-ringer below his office window earlier. It kept him from thinking about other Christmases—and his mother.

After he’d missed catching the Santa bell-ringer, he’d returned to his office and tried to call Holly Barrows in Pinedale. Of course there was no listing. Why wasn’t he surprised? She’d probably made up the name.

Not that he knew what he’d have said even if he’d found a number for her. I think Santa Claus had my building staked out and I think he was looking for you? He would sound as crazy as she had.

But he couldn’t quit worrying about her. Or worse, worrying that she might be in real trouble—and he hadn’t taken her seriously. Between that, and worrying about his mother’s letter—and the possible implications of her words, the last thing he wanted to be doing tonight was decorating a Christmas tree. He felt antsy and anxious. Both incidents had shaken him—and during a season when he didn’t feel all that grounded anyway.

He and Shelley had just finished decorating the tree when the chief and his wife arrived.

“Slade, get them some wine,” Shelley said as she took their coats and shook off the snow. “You must be freezing.”

“Nothing like a white Christmas!” Norma exclaimed and moved to the fireplace. “Oh, your tree is just lovely!”

“Want to help me with the wine?” Slade asked the police chief pointedly.

Curtis sighed but followed him into the kitchen. Chief Curtis was built like a battering ram, neckless and balding, with a florid complexion, a reputation for being outspoken to the point of being rude and as tough as a rabid pit bull off his chain. Slade knew the chief’s bark was worse than his bite, but he still had a healthy respect for the man.

He handed him the letter, then proceeded to fill two glasses with wine, knowing Shelley would get suspicious if they took too long.

“Do we have to do this now?” Curtis asked, looking down at the yellowed envelope in his hand. “Damn, Slade, it’s Christmas Eve.”

“Roy Vogel didn’t kill her. Now I know there was someone else. A man. A secret lover who wanted to remain secret. Maybe at all costs.”

Curtis shook his head. “You just aren’t going to let this go, are you?”

“No. I can’t. And considering how my parents felt about you, I wouldn’t think you could either.”

Curtis shot him a withering look, then slowly opened the flap and withdrew the handwritten pages. They crackled in his thick fingers as he unfolded them with obvious hesitancy.

“Well?” Slade demanded when Curtis had finished reading.

“It’s vague as hell,” the cop said with his usual conviction. But Slade noticed that the older man’s hands shook a little as he folded the paper, forced the pages back into the envelope and handed it to him. The letter had obviously upset him as much as it had Slade.

“She admitted she’d been secretly meeting someone she didn’t want Joe to know about, and she pleaded with Ethel not to give away her secret,” Slade said as he put the letter back into his pocket. “What’s vague about that?”

“She didn’t say she was having an affair,” Curtis pointed out, keeping his voice down so the women couldn’t hear in the next room.

“I’m going to find out who she’d been meeting,” Slade told him as he handed the chief a glass of wine. “Are you going to help me? Someone had to know. Maybe one of her friends. Or her hairdresser. Or the damned meter reader. Someone.”

“You’re going off half-cocked,” Curtis warned. “Even if there was someone, it doesn’t mean he killed her.”

“There was someone. The letter makes that clear. And if Roy Vogel didn’t kill her—”

With an oath, Curtis shook his head. “Why did he confess then?”

“Who knows? The guy was always weird and not quite right in the head. But for that very reason, Mom would never have let him into the house, let alone offered him a drink. You do remember the second, half-empty glass on the coffee table?”

“Both glasses had only your mother’s fingerprints on them,” Curtis pointed out as if he’d said it a million times to Slade. He probably had.

“So the killer wore gloves. It was December. Right before Christmas. It was cold that year. Or he never touched his drink.”

Curtis shook his head. “I should never have allowed you to have a copy of the file. What do you do, dig it out and reread it every night before bed?”

“Don’t have to. I know it by heart.” He didn’t tell the chief that he no longer had the file. It was one of the cases the mysterious Holly Barrows, if that was really her name, had stolen, along with a half dozen other older cases. There was no rhyme or reason to the ones she’d taken. None of the cases current—or interesting enough to steal. Probably because the woman was unstable.

“Your father went over that case with a fine-tooth comb. If he’d thought for a moment that Roy Vogel hadn’t been guilty—”

“What if he knew about her affair, maybe even knew who it was?” Slade interrupted. Joe Rawlins had died of a heart attack not six months after his wife’s murder. But Joe had never had a bad heart. That’s why Slade had always believed it had been heartbreak that had killed him.

Curtis let out an oath. “You think a cop like your father would let Marcella’s murderer go free?”

“Maybe there was a reason Dad didn’t go after the real killer. Or couldn’t.” All Slade had was a gut instinct, one that had told him years ago that the wrong man had died for the crime.

Curtis shook his head. “You’re opening up a can of worms here. Have you thought at all about Shelley and what this is going to do to her?”

“I always think of Shelley,” Slade snapped.

Curtis raised a brow as Shelley called from the other room.

“What’s keeping you two? No work! It’s Christmas Eve!”

Curtis reached for the glass of wine Slade had poured for Norma. “Isn’t it bad enough that your mother was murdered? You want to murder her reputation as well? And for what? Roy Vogel killed her.”

“Then you think she was having an affair,” Slade said.

Curtis swore. “If she was, I for one don’t want to know about it.”

Slade fell silent, thinking about what Curtis had said as he followed the chief back into the living room. The conversation turned to the holidays and food and parties.

He stared at the fire, the bright hot flames licking up from the logs, and tried to follow the conversation. But he couldn’t quit thinking. About his mother’s murder. About the young woman who’d come up to his office. He wondered what she was doing tonight and if she was all right. If she’d ever been all right. And if it was possible she’d given birth to his baby.

He couldn’t help but remember in detail how it had been between them and wonder…what if her memory of him were to come back—

He reminded himself that she was a thief and, more than likely, a liar. She’d stolen more than his money and his files. She’d stolen his heart.

Maybe that’s why he couldn’t get her or the Santa bell-ringer out of his head. Or completely forget about the damned letter in his pocket—and its possible ramifications.

“Don’t you think so, Slade?”

He jerked his head up. “What?”

“I asked if you thought this was our best tree yet?” Shelley turned to the others. “Slade and I went out and cut this one ourselves.”

He nodded. “The best ever.” But he could feel his sister’s worried gaze on him. She knew him too well. It would be hard to keep his concerns from her, let alone the letter. Especially once he started asking around town about their mother.

When Chief Curtis got up to clear the snack dishes, Slade offered to help, following the cop into the kitchen.

“Now what?” Curtis asked, only half as put out as he pretended, Slade suspected.

“Any chance you could get a license plate run for me tonight?”

“Tonight?” the chief asked in disbelief.

“It’s for a missing-person case I’m working on.” He gave Curtis the license number from the SUV the alleged Holly Barrows had left his office in. “I need a name and address. It’s important and I have a feeling it can’t wait until after Christmas.”

The chief grumbled but stuffed the number in his pocket. “I’ll have someone at the DMV call you. I’m trying to enjoy the holiday.” As annoyed as he sounded, the cop seemed glad that Slade had given up on his investigation into Marcella Rawlins’ possible infidelity. At least temporarily.

After all these years, Slade thought, his mother’s murder could wait another day. Maybe the woman who called herself Holly Barrows couldn’t.

Chapter Three

Christmas Day

The next morning, after opening presents and eating Shelley’s famous cranberry waffles with orange syrup, Slade followed the snowplow over the pass to Pinedale. It had snowed off and on throughout the night, leaving the sky a clear crystalline blue and everything else flocked in white with a good foot of new snow on the highway.

Pinedale was a small mountain town, forgotten by the interstate, too far from either Yellowstone or Glacier parks and not unique enough to be a true tourist trap.

He wondered what Holly Barrows was doing here—if indeed the woman he’d met yesterday in his office really was the same Holly Barrows the Department of Motor Vehicles reported lived at 413 Mountain View and drove a blue Ford Explorer.

Pinedale was smaller than Dry Creek, set against a mountainside and surrounded by dense pines. The entire town felt snowed-in and deserted, caught in another time. It had once been a mining camp, some of the scars of its past life still visible on the bluffs around it.

He found Mountain View and drove up to 413. The sign on the lower level of the building read: Impressions Art Gallery. He got out of his truck and glanced in the gallery window, not surprised to see a typical Montana gallery with bronze cowboys and horses, oils and acrylics of Native Americans, and watercolor scenics. He spotted a nice acrylic of a sunny summer scene along a riverbank. The name in the right-hand corner was H. Barrows.

Off to the left of the gallery was an old garage and tracks in the snow where a vehicle had been driven in within the past twenty-four hours.

He stepped back to look up at what he assumed was an apartment on the second floor. The sun glinted on the large upstairs window but not before he’d glimpsed the dark image of a woman there, not before he’d felt a chill.

Rounding the corner of the building, he found a stairway that led up to the apartment. He stopped at the foot of the stairs and glanced around the neighborhood. A handful of kids were dragging shiny new sleds up the side of the mountain a few doors down. A dog barked incessantly at one of the boys. A mother called from a doorway to either the dog or the boy, Slade couldn’t tell which. Neither paid any attention.

He didn’t see a Santa bell-ringer, but then he hadn’t expected to. He figured the man in the Santa suit already knew where to find Holly Barrows. The Santa had been waiting for Holly to show up at Rawlins Investigations as if he’d either feared she would—or had been expecting her. Why was that?

He realized as he glanced up the stairs, that he had more questions than answers. And one big question he needed answered above all the rest. Had Holly given birth to a baby—his baby?

He noticed fresh footprints in the snow on the steps to the apartment. The boot print looked small, like a woman’s, and since this was the address Holly Barrows had given as her home on her car registration, he figured the tracks were probably hers and was relieved to see that there was only one set of prints and they ended at the bottom of the stairs.

Someone had come down, it appeared, to get the newspaper and had then gone back up. The newspaper box was empty, the snow on top dislodged. With any luck, Santa hadn’t been here and Holly Barrows was home. But was the person he’d glimpsed in the window the woman he was looking for?

He climbed the stairs, finding himself watching the street. The dog was still barking. One of the kids squealed as he and his bright-colored sled careened down the hill and into the street. Kids.

Slade knocked at the door at the top of the stairs and waited, more anxious and apprehensive than he wanted to admit. He expected a complete stranger to open the door, figuring the woman in his office yesterday had lied about everything, although he had no idea why. Maybe she’d borrowed the car. Or even stolen it.

So, when she opened the door, it took him a moment. He stared at her in surprise. And only a little relief. She hadn’t lied about her name. Or her occupation. But did that mean she hadn’t lied about the rest of it either?

She stood in the doorway, a paintbrush in her hand and a variety of acrylic colors on her denim smock. She wore a sweatshirt and jeans under the smock, but she looked as good in them as she had in the skirt and blouse last night.

“You’re the last person I expected to see,” she said, not sounding all that enthused about the prospect.

“Yeah.” He glanced to the street again, then back at her. “Mind if I come in?”

She opened the door farther, motioning him inside. The place was small, but tastefully furnished, the colors warm and bright, the furniture comfortable-looking. Homey. Except there was no tree. No sign at all that it was Christmas Day.

“Don’t you celebrate Christmas?” he asked, curious.

“Not this year.”

He followed her through the living area to her studio on the north side of the building. The room, bathed in light, was neat and orderly. He watched her, wondering if the woman he’d come to know this time last year was the true Holly Barrows or if this woman, who seemed to be as dazed as a sleepwalker, was the real one.

She moved around an easel in front of a huge picture window and stopped, seeming startled by what she’d painted.

Not half as startled as he was as he stepped around the easel and saw what she’d been working on. He’d expected something like the idyllic summer scene he’d seen in the gallery downstairs. The two paintings were so different no one would have believed they were done by the same artist.

He stared at the disturbing scene on the canvas, feeling ice-cold inside. He didn’t need to ask what the painting depicted. It could have been the birth of Satan, it was so foreboding and sinister. Three horrible creatures with misshapen grotesque faces and dark gowns huddled at the end of a bed waiting expectantly for the birth.

While he couldn’t see the patient’s face in the painting, he could feel her pain and confusion—and fear in the angle of her body, the disarray of her wild dark curly hair and the grasping fingers of the one hand reaching toward the ghouls at the end of the bed, toward her baby.

The painting was powerful and compelling, and seized at something deep inside him. Sweet heaven.

“We need to talk,” he said, even more convinced of that after seeing what she’d been painting.

She nodded and washed her paintbrush, the liquid in the jar turning dark and murky as she worked. He watched her methodically put the brush away, wipe her hands on the smock, then take it off.

“Why did you wait so long to start looking for your baby?” he asked.

She looked up, her eyes the same color as the Montana winter sky behind her. “Mr. Rawlins—”

“Slade.”

“Slade.” She seemed to savor his name in her mouth for a moment as if she’d tasted it before, then, frowning, continued as she led him into the living room. “I believed that my baby had been stillborn. I had no reason not to.” She waited for him to sit, then perched on the edge of a chair, her hands in her lap. “I woke in a hospital. The nurse told me. I thought at first that my belief that the stillborn wasn’t my baby was nothing more than denial. It wasn’t until I started having these memories—if that’s really what they are—” She shook her head. “Before that, I just assumed my sister-in-law was right. That my grief over losing the baby was causing my…confusion about the birth.”

Sister-in-law? “You’re married?” he asked, unable to hide his surprise—or dismay.