Back Against The Wall

What she doesn’t know could cost her her life...

It’s upsetting enough to find a body walled up in the garage of her childhood home...but then Detective Tony Navarro suggests the remains might belong to her mother! Beth Marshall and her siblings thought their mom had abandoned the family years ago. If she hadn’t... If she was murdered... And now the sexy police detective believes their father is the killer. He enlists Beth to help him find clues he suspects are in her father’s garage. What neither of them realize is that the clues are really in Beth’s subconscious. They’re juggling family, loss and their growing attraction—but everything loses its importance when the killer gets Beth alone...

“I won’t hang around while you look through the garage. Unless you want me to, Ms. Marshall?”

She would have laughed, if her mood had been better. “You’d be here for the next two weeks.”

“Call if you need me,” the man said, then shook hands with Tony Navarro and strode to his car, undoubtedly relieved to have escaped.

Tony didn’t move. He wasn’t watching the attorney’s departure; he was looking at her.

“Do you need the key for the side door?” she asked. “Let me get my purse and I’ll give you mine.”

“No.” A hand on her arm stopped her. “Actually, yes, thank you, but there’s something else I’m hoping you’ll do for me.”

“That I’ll do for you?”

He rubbed his jaw. “Is there any chance you could take more time off work? I could use some help going through the stuff in the garage, and on the lawn.” When she gaped, he grimaced. “The truth is, you’d recognize something that doesn’t belong, or should be there and isn’t.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “I’m supposed to use up my vacation days to help you go after my father?”

He cocked an eyebrow. “You’ll have a chance to point out evidence leading to someone else.”

And he was right—this offer would make her part of the investigation. What could she do but accept?

Dear Reader,

Writing a novel has a lot in common with putting a jigsaw puzzle together. Bits and pieces that have been floating unconnected in my brain suddenly fit. That’s never been truer than for this book.

I read a long time ago about a man who just wanted the neighbors to leave him alone, so they did. Years passed, and vines grew over the house. I suppose the neighbors assumed he’d moved. Eventually a kid decided to sneak into the house...and found the man, whose remains had mummified, sitting in his chair watching a TV that had presumably died many years before. Bet that poor kid never got over it!

I write often about family ties, and have pondered the difference between the increasingly modern American family, with kids who have moved far away from parents and see them only occasionally, and the extended families once more common, where lives are tangled, sometimes annoyingly, but no one in need goes without help. In this story, both hero and heroine are part of the second kind, for completely different reasons. Both love the closeness even as they chafe at the demands of their families.

Add in another theme that has always drawn me: what happens to the family and friends left behind when someone vanishes. The effect is more profound than if that same person had died, allowing everyone to grieve. What’s left behind instead is anger, grief, of course, fear and a lot of questions.

I had a moment of complete satisfaction when these and other pieces clicked together in my head and, hallelujah, there it was: a story.

Good reading,

Janice

Back Against the Wall

Janice Kay Johnson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

An author of more than ninety books for children and adults (more than seventy-five for Harlequin), JANICE KAY JOHNSON writes about love and family—about the way generations connect and the power our earliest experiences have on us throughout life. A USA TODAY bestselling author and an eight-time finalist for a Romance Writers of America RITA® Award, she won a RITA® Award in 2008 for her Harlequin Superromance novel Snowbound. A former librarian, Janice raised two daughters in a small town north of Seattle, Washington.

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Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

FLANKED BY HER brother and sister, Beth Marshall stared at the pile of boxes blocking the side door into the detached garage. She hadn’t a clue whether she was looking at some of the oldest stuff jammed in here or the most recent. If there was such a thing as logical layering, say from front to back.

She almost snorted. This is Dad, she reminded herself. There would be no logic in how he stored anything.

Beside her, Matt groaned. “‘Give me a weekend,’ you said. This could take weeks.” He sounded so appalled, she was reminded that neither he nor Emily had so much as glanced inside the garage in, well, years. Beth had tried to prepare them, but obviously hadn’t succeeded.

Matt was not an enthusiastic volunteer. Or a volunteer at all, really. He might still love their father—she wasn’t sure—but Matt harbored a lot of anger, too. He made no effort to see Dad except for holidays, which he and his wife, Ashley, apparently considered obligatory. Or, at least, she did and had her ways of persuading him to show up and behave himself.

“Quit whining,” Beth ordered, refusing to let herself be annoyed by his attitude. So what if he hadn’t wanted to help? He was here. He’d contribute some muscle she felt sure they’d need.

“Do you promise Dad won’t come out?”

She rolled her eyes. “Can you imagine it crossing Dad’s mind that maybe he should help?”

He sighed heavily. “No. Okay. Why didn’t I see a Dumpster?”

“Because I wasn’t sure we’d need one. I’m hoping most of what’s in here is good for a thrift store, at the very least.”

He gave her a look she recognized from their childhoods.

Ten or fifteen feet separated the detached garage from the house where they’d all grown up. It would be way more practical to raise the street-facing garage door and gain a wash of daylight instead of depending on the two sixty-watt bulbs high on the ceiling, but none of them wanted neighbors to see the disaster inside. They’d debated parking their vehicles to block the sight line—but what was to stop a neighbor from strolling up the driveway to investigate what they were doing? Fortunately, a wood fence and gate that ran between the house and garage kept anyone from seeing what they were up to.

The truth was John Marshall had become a pack rat. Her word. Her brother called him a hoarder. Beth’s younger sister, Emily, just looked anxious.

The garage was only the beginning, although it was the most jam-packed space in the house. What Dad used to call his den was piled with things he didn’t know what to do with as well. The other rooms were just...cluttered.

“It’s not like it’s going to rain. I’ll order a Dumpster if we need one. What I was thinking was that we could hold a garage sale, too,” Beth said, trying for an upbeat note.

“We?” Matt leveled a look at her.

Of course, she would be the one borrowing tables, pricing and arranging. She could probably persuade Emily and some friends to help on the actual sale days.

“Let’s just get on with it,” she suggested.

They all went back to staring at the piles that nearly blocked the doorway.

“I guess we have to carry the boxes outside,” Emily said.

Like there was a choice. But Beth steered clear of sarcasm.

“Sure. I already labeled the empty ones I brought.” A blind person could see them—Keep, Thrift, Garage Sale?? Toss—but she hadn’t given up on the aren’t-we-going-to-have-fun vibe. Although, truthfully, even she felt daunted by the sheer quantity of stuff in the garage.

This being her idea, she stepped forward and grabbed a rubber tote, carrying it the few feet into the backyard, where they could make piles that wouldn’t get in the way. Her brother and sister followed suit. Beth had already peeled the lid off her tote. “Huh,” she said.

In the act of opening a cardboard box, Matt glanced over. “What?”

Beth wrinkled her nose. “I think these are student papers Dad graded. But wouldn’t he have handed them back?”

Silly question. Maybe, admiring the literary excellence, he’d asked the students to return them to him. So he could store them in his garage.

She almost wondered aloud whether they should consult Dad about something like this, until she saw the date on one of the papers on top. 1987. She dug through, finding graded tests, multiple copies of articles he must have photocopied for student use and either never handed out or requested back so he could use them again. It didn’t surprise her at all that he hadn’t remembered he had them. He could easily have photocopied the same article a year later with no memory of having done so before.

Yes, that was her father. Super smart, and completely vague. He’d been teaching philosophy at the community college for thirty-something years. He either had no ambition to teach at a four-year university, or he couldn’t take the possibility he would be rejected if he applied or... Yet another unanswerable question where Dad was concerned. He had this weird disconnect.

Beth sighed, hefted the box again and carried it around the corner of the garage to the recycling container parked in the narrow space between the wall and the six-foot fence. There was a thump as the heaps of paper hit the bottom.

One box down.

* * *

THEY HADN’T BEEN at it an hour when the first quarrel erupted. Beth didn’t count the usual low-level bickering.

“Ooh!” Emily breathed. “Christmas ornaments. Remember? We never found the ones—”

“Give me those.” Matt grabbed the box from her, stared into it with his face flushed dark, then carried it to where the garbage and garbage containers were parked. Both of his sisters raced after him.

“Don’t do that!” Emily cried.

“Matt, stop,” Beth snapped. “Just because you—”

He nudged the lid of the garbage can off with his elbow and turned the white cardboard box upside down before she could finish her sentence. Glass shattered.

Mouth open in outrage, Emily rushed forward to stare into the can. “I wanted those!” Swinging around, she punched Matt. Ineffectually, but still.

He only stared at his sister. “Why would you want anything that was hers?”

Then he stormed toward the backyard.

Emily’s big blue eyes filled with tears. “That was mean!”

Yes, it was. Frustrated with Matt, Beth nevertheless understood how he felt. Their mother had walked out on them, not even bothering to stay in touch. Beth had been fifteen years old, Matt seventeen, Emily only twelve. Beth understood why Mom had left Dad. It was a miracle she hadn’t years sooner. She must have thought she was marrying a gentle, sensitive man, who instead was both helpless where daily life was concerned and weirdly oblivious to the real people who also lived in the house. Even Beth sometimes felt like his mother. Witness today. What was she doing but rescuing Dad again? Imagine being married to a man you started seeing that way?

But Emily had been especially close to their mother, and was still childish in many ways. Would it have been so bad to let her have the Christmas ornaments Mom had hung on the tree every year? The ones they’d later replaced with standard-issue red and gold balls?

Emily raced after Matt to yell at him. Beth peered into the garbage can, thinking she might be able to rescue a few ornaments, but eew. Dad had dumped some disgusting leftovers straight into the can without bagging them first.

She backed away, then made herself pick up the lid and put it on.

She marched up to Matt, poked him in the chest with her index finger and said, “That was not your decision. Nobody asked you to take those ornaments home and treasure them forever. If they meant something to Emily, she had the right to keep them. Smashing them in front of her was cruel.”

“I told you!” Emily cried.

His mouth tightened, and he glowered at Beth but after a minute nodded stiffly.

Are we having fun yet?

Behind her brother, the French door to the dining room opened, and Dad stepped out onto the patio, looking surprised to see them.

“Did I know you were going to be here today?”

Matt snarled and retreated out of sight.

“Yes, Dad.” Beth made herself smile, go to her father and kiss his cheek. “I told you we were going to unbury the garage. Just think, you might be able to park inside it.”

His forehead pleated, giving his narrow face a concerned look. “You won’t throw away anything important, will you?”

“Of course not.” She hugged him. “Anyway, how important can it be if you haven’t seen it in ten years or more?”

“Well...” A bright and charming smile grew on his face. “You have a point.” He greeted Emily absently, gazed at the open door and the shadow of his son inside with apparent perplexity, then said, “I’m working on something. If you need me...” He was already fading away. Beth had no doubt that five minutes from now, he’d have forgotten his children were here. If their voices caught his attention again, he’d probably remember, puzzle over why they’d want to waste time on such a tedious task and go back to his reading.

“Is he gone?” Matt hissed.

“It’s safe.”

Emily smirked. “Olly olly oxen free.”

Cautiously reappearing, Matt said, “Brat.”

“Jerk.”

Peace restored. Temporarily.

* * *

SUNDAY MORNING, Beth ripped tape off the top of a big cardboard box she’d dragged from beneath the long-forgotten workbench and folded back the flaps to see clothes inside. This wasn’t the first—they’d found countless boxes of children’s clothes, neatly folded and presumably saved by Mom for the next baby. Beth was beginning to think Mom had saved every scrap Matt had ever worn, certain she’d have another boy. There were girl clothes, too, but they’d been handed down once, and Emily had worn some of them out. Why hadn’t Mom realized at some point that, nope, she wasn’t having another kid, period, and maybe she ought to get rid of all the tough-boy toddler-size overalls and sweaters with tractors and rocket ships decorating the front?

Huh. Maybe this disaster wasn’t totally Dad’s fault. Maybe Mom had had her own pack rat tendencies. Beth remembered stories about how poor her mother’s family had been when she was growing up. Maybe that kind of upbringing ingrained in a person the belief that it was best to hold on to anything that might conceivably be useful later.

This box, though... The clothes had just been dumped in it. Beth poked a little and realized that not only were these adult-size but each garment was still hooked on a clothes hanger. She reached in and lifted out a blouse. Pale pink with subtle white stripes. Mom had loved pink. She wore a lot of it. Petite, blonde and blue-eyed, like Emily, Christine Marshall had embodied femininity.

Beth was vaguely aware that Matt was slowly turning to her. “I remember this blouse,” she whispered.

He swore and took a couple of steps to look into the box. He started to reach for a dress but pulled his hand back. “It’s the clothes she didn’t take. Dad must have wanted them out of sight.”

Beth’s stomach tightened. Even her father had emerged from his alternate world briefly when his wife disappeared. She’d left Word open on the computer with a note explaining that she was leaving him and she’d be in touch when she was settled. After that...nothing.

Dad had called the police, who hadn’t been interested. Christine had taken her purse, her birth control pills out of the medicine cabinet, some of her makeup and jewelry. Obviously, she’d left voluntarily.

Beth, Matt and Emily had refused to believe she would do that. Leave Dad, sure. She’d taken to yelling at him a lot. But she wouldn’t have abandoned her children. She, of all people, had known how inadequate he was as a parent. For a long time Beth, at least, had held on to the belief that Mom would fight for custody once she had a new job and someplace to live.

“She loved this blouse.” Beth could hardly take her eyes off it. “Why didn’t she take more of her clothes?”

“Because she left in a hurry?” Matt suggested, old anger roughening his voice. “Maybe she thought she’d try a new style for a new man.”

“Maybe.” Seeing her sister’s distress, she shook herself. “Well. This is sort of creepy, but I can see why Dad didn’t want to get rid of everything.”

“I’ll bet I’m the same size she was.” Emily stepped forward. “There might be clothes I’d like.”

Not even thinking it through, Beth dropped the blouse back into the box and slapped the flaps closed. “No.”

Looking indignant, her sister said, “What do you mean, no?”

Matt turned on her. “Don’t you speak English? She means no. N.O.”

“Don’t talk to me that way.”

Beth shut her eyes and sought her equilibrium. A couple deep breaths, and she was back. “Emily, I hate the idea of seeing you in some shirt I associate with her, and obviously Matt feels the same.”

“Dumpster,” he said, sounding hard.

Beth shook her head. “Can we just set this aside? Keep it for now?”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I just...don’t want to make that decision yet. Anyway...” She hesitated. “Her clothes were nice. When we do get rid of them, they should go to a thrift store or maybe a women’s shelter.” She didn’t include garage sale. What if she breathed in the faint scent of her mother while she was handling her mother’s clothes. Attaching little price tags. The idea made her shiver.

He frowned at her but gave an abrupt nod. “Up to you.” Matt went back to the box of books he’d been looking at one by one.

Logically enough—if anything about this was logical—Beth found half a dozen more boxes filled with her mother’s stuff in the same vicinity. Shoes, too, of course, but mostly clothes, including one that had lingerie on top. She closed that box really fast. Even the thrift store wouldn’t want old, used panties and bras. She was tempted to write Toss in big black letters on the side but knew she ought to dig deeper in the box before she did that.

Matt and even Emily stayed away from the section of the garage where Beth was working. Emily kept stealing wary glances at her, and no wonder. She was used to a calm, competent, I-can-solve-all-problems sister, not one who freaked at the sight of a pink blouse.

Beth uncovered Mom’s jewelry box and couldn’t resist peeking inside. Tangled chains were jumbled with earrings and bracelets. Mom had obviously taken some of her nicer pieces, except...was that a real diamond in a stud earring? Beth didn’t remember her mother wearing those. After a moment, she put the box back, setting it on top. She’d want to go through this later. Eventually. There might be something in here that Emily would like as a keepsake. The rest...well, anything that wasn’t too familiar or particularly valuable could go to the thrift store.

A wave of exhaustion and discouragement hit her. After a full day yesterday, her muscles ached, too. Her back to Matt and Emily, Beth leaned against the workbench. What happened to her plan to go through everything, make brisk decisions, be done with it?

Speed bump, she told herself. They’d been moving along pretty well. She’d been right that most of what they’d found would be useful to someone. Matt had agreed to ask his wife if she’d like to go through the boxes of children’s clothes before they passed them on. She was pregnant with their first baby.

The next box held things Beth didn’t really recognize but guessed to have been from Mom and Dad’s bedroom. She opened a stiff portfolio to find unframed art prints. Worth looking at later.

Finally, she shoved all the remaining boxes associated with Mom back under and on top of the built-in workbench, which her father would never use. Home repair was not on his list of skills. She’d left the window above the workbench unblocked, making a mental note to come back with some glass cleaner. Even so, the light falling through the window helped.

Pulling herself together, she decided to tackle the things piled against the wall beside the workbench next. An ancient Weedwacker. Could it have come with the house? Several fans on stands, wrapped in white plastic trash bags, must have been out here forever. A folded stepladder. More boxes.

Beth sighed.

Wallboard had covered the garage walls as long as she could remember, which meant it was discolored and battered. Nobody had ever taped or spackled or painted out here. She could just see wall-hung shelves on the other side of the garage. Probably that was where the oldest stuff was. Anybody would fill shelves before starting to pile junk on the floor, right?

Strange, though—the one sheet of wallboard in front of her looked a little different from the rest. Not really clean, but cleaner, except for some gross but long-dry stains at the bottom. None of the dings, either. Maybe Mom and Dad had had it replaced at some point. If so, it had to have been put up shortly before the piles grew in front of it, protecting it. Except for a big hole bashed into it six or seven feet up. Something had probably smacked it. The extension ladder lying on a sheet of plywood suspended from the ceiling in the middle of the garage, right above the tracks and motor for the automatic garage door opener? Maybe. It would have been awkward to maneuver.

She doubted her father even knew he owned a tall ladder. He certainly wouldn’t have any use for it. Once upon a time, Mom had nagged him into occasional tasks like painting. Later, if something obviously needed doing, he hired someone. Well, Beth hired someone. He’d look surprised but pay the bill without complaining.

Back to work.

Fans—thrift store. Or garage sale, if she had one. Stepladder—who didn’t need one? If Dad didn’t want it, she’d take it. The Weedwacker? It could probably be recycled, even rusty.

For some reason, the gaping hole kept drawing her gaze. Matt and Emily had moved their squabbling outside. They wouldn’t see her give in to an inexplicable compulsion. She unfolded the stepladder and climbed up on it.