Wedding gems, p.6
Wedding Gems, page 6
He and Sam never argued. He never wanted to argue again, but he had to accept that the first flush of romance would eventually wear off. She was right. They needed to learn to communicate. His late wife used to talk incessantly in her manic phases, so he’d learned to tune her out. Speaking to her when she was depressed had been like sinking stones in an ocean, pointless. He’d been treating Sam the way he’d once treated Tess—a very bad sign.
Needing to work off his irritation, Walker hiked the lane into town and then down the main highway to the Newton house. If it had been a weekend, he’d be taking his life in his hands walking this narrow, dark highway with the drunken drivers and lost tourists. But business was near negligible midweek, and he needed the exercise. It wasn’t as if Hillvale came equipped with any gym except the exercise room at the lodge. The Kennedys allowed him to use the machines, but they weren’t exactly professional equipment.
Maybe he should start making lists of reasons he shouldn’t stay. He didn’t often get angry, but he was building up steam.
There were lights on at the house he’d visited earlier, so someone must be home. He knocked, and Dylan answered. The kid’s eyes grew wide, but Walker stuck his foot in the door.
“You said you wouldn’t tell,” Dylan whispered.
“I said I’d let you off with reparations. Pasquale said you did a good job. I still need to speak with your mother. That’s my job.”
“Dylan, who’s there? You promised to read to your sister.” A woman’s tired voice carried from down a hall.
The boy gazed longingly at the exit, but Walker blocked it. Fatalistically, the kid shrugged and strutted down the hall toward the back of the house.
Had he ever been that young? Probably, and with an even worse attitude after his father’s disappearance.
A woman with an unlined face and youthful dark hair patted the kid on the shoulder as he passed by. Her appearance was that of someone in her thirties, but her eyes held the weariness of the ancient. “May I help you?”
“Mrs. Naomi Newton?” At her nod, Walker offered his badge and ID. “Chief Walker, Hillvale police, sorry to bother you. This is mostly a welfare check. Dylan was running loose earlier, and I couldn’t find anyone home to claim him. I wanted to be certain there was someone to look after him.”
She looked even more tired, if that was possible. “I’m sorry, officer. Did he cause any damage? I’ll pay for it. He promised to stay home and watch TV, and I didn’t have the heart to make him sit in any more doctor offices.”
“He did a good job making reparations for his little episode. He’s a good kid, who simply needs supervision, like any other. I take it his sister is ill? He may be worried and acting out a bit.” He wanted to say he knew how boys are, but did he really know about ten-year-olds? Davie had only been five when he died.
Naomi Newton collapsed on the vinyl sofa and buried her face in her hands. “Oh, God, I don’t know how I’ll keep an eye on him while taking care of Tracy. She’s just six. I left her sister with my mother, but I couldn’t ask Mom to look after Dylan. He’s too active. I’d send him to his father, but his father is the reason Tracy is ill. She came down with a fever, and he didn’t call the doctor.” Anger poured through her words.
“It turned out to be strep,” she continued, visibly reining in her emotion. “It went into rheumatic fever before my mother saw her and hauled her in. And now Tracy has heart problems, and she’s allergic to the penicillin, and I’m a horrible, horrible mother for not being there when my daughter needed me. I don’t know how other mothers do it.”
Walker fought the urge to flee. This was why he’d worked in an office all his life—he couldn’t handle people and their emotional turmoil. If he stayed in Hillvale, he not only had to deal with hysterical Lucys and their ghosts, but tourists and locals and everyone in between.
Which was unfortunate, because he was inherently unable to walk away from anyone in distress. Torn in two, recalling his own mother’s grief, he offered what little he could. “Other parents ask for help. It’s the only way.”
Which was how Hai and her mother had come into their lives. They’d been neighbors who helped after his father disappeared, when he’d been not much older than Dylan.
“There is some truth that it takes a village to raise a child, but even more so when there’s illness in the house,” he continued. “Hillvale has an excellent nurse practitioner. I’ll ask her to stop by. Dylan did a good job working for Pasquale. I know there are child labor laws, but I don’t think it will hurt if he does odd jobs around town to keep busy, in exchange for candy and milkshakes. You just need to let someone know when you need a break.”
She sent him what might have been a pretty smile if tears hadn’t been running down her cheeks. “It was like that way back when I was a kid, and we stayed up here in the summers. We’d run back and forth between our house and my aunt’s. I’d hoped to find those days again, but there’s nothing here anymore, is there?”
“Not at the moment, but the town is turning around. I take it your aunt isn’t here any longer either?”
“No, she died of breast cancer a few years back,” she said sadly. “Anyway, the kids are supposed to start school in a few weeks. I took a sabbatical for the summer thinking Tracy would be better by now. . .” She gestured helplessly. “My mother used to look after them in summer, but she’s not as strong as she likes to believe. She deserves her rest. It’s kind of you to offer, Chief Walker, but we’re on our own.”
“It won’t hurt to meet Nurse Brenda. Maybe next summer will be a happier time.” Hearing the child crying what sounded like Help Me in the back room, Walker said his farewells and made his escape. The cry made the hair stand up on the back of his neck.
Only as he walked back toward town did he realize why the child’s cry tickled a memory. Unnerved by the woman’s tears, he headed for his office instead of going straight home. How would Sam deal with a job that might take him out at all hours? He had to be thinking about these things.
Tullah from the thrift store stopped him before he reached City Hall. Solemnly, she handed him a wild-haired blond Barbie doll wearing what appeared to be a safari outfit. “You will need this.”
Tullah was nearly six feet of grace, dignity, and undeniable authority. Walker didn’t argue, but he did question. “I don’t suppose you can give me a hint?”
“The spirits speak in their own time.” She drifted off, presumably to the café, since that was her direction.
Damn, now he was a doll collector. People would be dumping all their unloved toys on him if word got around. But the glimmer of an idea kept him trudging up the stairs to his office computer.
He set the Barbie on his desk, deciding it looked a bit like Sam with all that wild champagne hair and the tall, slim figure. Opening the computer, he called up the genealogy chart he and his assistant were putting together. And just like that, two and two and two started coming together.
He reached for the landline, crossed his fingers, and punched in the numbers.
Seven
Sister Golden Hair was crying relentlessly. Nothing Sam did could make the doll stop.
She bounced it on her shoulder, walked the floor with it, even debated offering it milk, which was ridiculous, she knew. She was just that desperate.
And anxious. Walker never stayed out for hours after dinner. She shouldn’t be worried. It wasn’t even nine. But they’d never argued before, and she didn’t know what to expect. Would he go up to the lodge bar and get drunk? Find another woman? Sleep in his office?
She understood why brides had nervous fits. There was so much she didn’t know! Maybe they should just live together for a few years. That was making more and more sense every day.
But she craved the loving home she’d lost when her adopted parents died. Walker might not be ready to make a home now, but she was. And she wanted babies. She lived to nurture, whether it was plants, animals, or children.
Walker, on the other hand, was meant to protect. She took a deep breath and let that thought wash over her. Walker could not be destructive if he tried. He was just that good. He might not accept that about himself, but she knew it deep in her heart, had known it since she met him.
So if he loved her, he would do whatever he thought best for her. Not exactly a relief, but a warm fuzzy rationalization.
Sam swung around as the front door opened and Walker entered. She froze, not knowing whether to fling her arms around his neck or pack her bags. It was mostly his money paying the rent, after all, until she signed the grant contract, anyway.
To her amazement, he took the weeping doll from her arms. Even the doll stopped crying in surprise. He almost grinned at his success, then oddly, tucked a much smaller doll into Sister Golden-Hair’s arms. He set both dolls down on the recliner.
Still stunned, Sam didn’t move—until Walker tugged her into his arms and stroked her hair. “That Barbie looks just like you.”
“That Barbie looks malnourished,” she grumbled into his shoulder. But she loved being held by him and didn’t really argue or even demand to know where he’d been. He’d tell her, when he was ready.
She had to give him space, just as he did for her.
“You look perfect, and Sister Golden Hair thinks you’re her doll friend,” he said, inexplicably.
Sam reared back and regarded him with suspicion. “Have you been drinking?”
He chuckled and held up a sheaf of papers he’d been carrying. “Just good old detective footwork. Or phone work, as the case might be. With the help of a few of your Lucys, I now have my very own paranormal detective agency.”
“That’s just as ridiculous.” She took the papers and flipped through them, elated that he was talking to her. “Explain?”
“I’m not one-hundred per-cent for certain until I take the dolls to the Newton house, but I’ve talked to Grandmother Newton. She’s down in the city with Dylan’s sister.”
“The boy you caught stealing candy? Did his mother come home?”
Walker explained the family circumstances. Sam wanted to call Brenda instantly and send her over there. Brenda had healing qualities Walker didn’t fully understand— But Walker had said Lucys had helped him. She bit her tongue and listened.
“What does any of this have to do with dolls?” She studied the pictures, names, and dates on the papers but couldn’t work it out.
Walker patiently pulled out a picture of an older woman looking much like the ghost Sam had once seen. “Gladys Matthews, who used to live here, was sister to. . .” He produced another image of a taller, stouter woman. “Margaret Newton. Those are their married names, of course. The papers give the family tree. Both women had houses on this lane. But what matters is that Naomi Newton—that’s her professional name, not her married name—is the daughter of Margaret, our ghost’s sister. Dylan’s name is really Dylan Newton-Goldrich, but there’s been a divorce, and he’s mad at his dad right now, I imagine.”
Sam grabbed the papers and studied them again. “So my ghostly gardener Gladys is Dylan’s great-aunt? Am I following that right?”
“You are, but that’s not the important point. That’s just me showing off my good detective work. The important point is that I just talked to Margaret, Dylan’s grandmother. She likes going to auctions, picking up little things and selling them on eBay. And she’s taking care of Teresa, one of Dylan’s little sisters, while her daughter is here, nursing Teresa’s twin back to health.”
“Auctions?” Sam asked in disbelief, glancing at the dolls. “How. . . ?”
“I have no idea how much Lucy magic is involved and how much is just sheer small town luck,” he warned. “Teresa goes with her grandmother to the auction houses and estate sales. According to Grandma Newton, Teresa has been carrying around a much-loved antique doll that’s been in the family for generations. She’s allowed it because Teresa is missing her twin.”
“Aaron bought that trunk at an auction in the city. . .” Sam stared at the papers Walker had given her, but nothing could explain the insanity of what he was telling her. She didn’t believe in coincidence.
She had been holding a doll that cried and laughed without any mechanical parts. Who was she to scorn coincidence?
“We can’t know for certain what actually happened,” Walker reminded her, as if reading her mind. “Grandmother Newton is getting on in years and is a bit forgetful. She hadn’t even realized the doll was missing. Maybe Teresa heard the trunk was going to Hillvale and decided the doll wanted to visit her sister. Kids pull stunts like that.”
Sam checked his face, but he didn’t seem to be suffering from this memory of his son. “Or maybe the doll cried and told her she wanted to visit Tracy,” Sam said for him, because Walker would never admit to the supernatural. “The sister placing the doll in the trunk might sort of explain how Aaron got it. The crying and talking, though, are as inexplicable as it moving around the house without help.”
“We have no evidence that it didn’t have help,” he reminded her. “Just because no one saw anything. . .”
Sam almost laughed that they’d taken their usual sides on the paranormal argument. “That doll walked out of our house without anyone seeing it—and it didn’t go to Tracy.”
“I have a thought about that, but we need to take both dolls to the Newtons before we know more.” He waited expectantly.
“May I go with you? Could we go tonight? Do you think they’re still up?” If Sam would miss the beautiful doll, she could just imagine how a sick little girl felt.
Her all-masculine, non-sentimental fiancé swept her up in his arms and showed her his answer.
Walker carried the big doll up the sidewalk to the cabin as if it were a real child. Allowing even this small emotional connection to a child facsimile felt as if he’d hurdled a barricade, giving him hope that he had overcome his guilt enough to be the person Sam thought him.
Sam held the Barbie. Walker didn’t think she quite got why she was carrying it, but he could clearly see the connection—if he wanted to believe a doll could see and talk. That was crazy-making, but Hillvale forced him to keep an open mind. Mad Mariah claimed all living things were made of essence that connected them to the spirits of those who had gone before. He might almost believe in a haunted doll holding the essence of love in that case.
Might he believe that his son was still out there, part of the air he breathed, part of the spirit carried on to future generations—to another child?
Holding the life-like doll, he could almost make that leap of faith, almost believe that life went on, and he should move forward with it.
The lights were still on, so Sam knocked for him. Dylan almost immediately answered. His eyes widened to huge circles, and he backed away, letting them in.
“How did you find her?” he asked in awe. “I went back to get her, and she was gone.”
Well, there was part of one question answered. “Then you know this suspect?” Walker asked in his sternest voice.
Dylan looked from him to Sam carrying the Barbie and nodded uncertainly. “It’s Goldie. She belongs to my sisters. And that’s Belle.” He nodded at the Barbie, then looked up at Sam. “She looks just like you!”
“Dylan, who’s there?” Naomi called from the back.
“Just me, ma’am, Chief Walker, and a friend bearing a surprise. Is Tracy awake?”
“They’ve got Goldie,” Dylan shouted with excitement.
Naomi Newton appeared in the doorway. At sight of company, she smoothed down her wrinkled shorts and ran her hand through her tangled dark hair. She stared at the doll in what appeared to be shock. “Goldie? How did you find Goldie? Mother said she was lost.”
“Goldie?” A childish voice asked excitedly from the bedroom. “Is Teresa here too?”
“No, but Belle is,” Sam called to her. “I think they’ve been having adventures together.”
Chances were good that Tullah simply bought the doll on eBay, and it wasn’t the original, but Walker was relieved to have Sam break the ice with the child. He didn’t know what to say to an ill little girl.
They might have a girl someday—one like Sam. The world needed girls like Sam.
He needed to think in terms of the future instead of his dark past—Sam’s positivity brightened the prospect in ways he couldn’t describe.
Naomi gestured for them to follow her down the hall. Walker stopped to speak to Dylan first. “Did you take the doll from my house?”
“It’s Aunt Gladys’s house,” he said defiantly. “And that old witch living there stole her. I tried to take her to grandma’s house, but someone chased me, and I dropped her.”
Naomi followed their conversation with a puzzled frown. “Grandma and Aunt Gladys don’t live here anymore, Dylan, you know that.”
“Aunt Gladys does, too,” he said rebelliously. “I saw her. She gave me Goldie and told me to take her home. I thought maybe she meant Grandma’s house.”
Sam sent Walker a triumphant look and whispered, “Goldie had ghostly help.”
Walker wasn’t about to explain their friendly gardener ghost to this tired mother. But Amber’s hint that the doll was connected to their house had helped him link their cottage and the recently vacated Newton place where he’d found the doll. It had been a leap of illogical faith to call and ask Margaret Newton about Goldie.
“Dylan, you shouldn’t lie,” Naomi admonished. “You can’t use Aunt Gladys as an excuse for your behavior.”
To Walker’s relief, Sam stepped in. She crouched down and held out the Barbie doll. “He’s not lying. I’ve seen Gladys too. And we have a guest who leaves the front door open. I won’t try to explain how spirits happen in Hillvale, but they do. So let’s just believe Aunt Gladys wanted Tracy to have her doll.”
Naomi looked to Walker with disbelief. He shrugged. “The rest of the story makes a little more sense. I just had a talk with your mother. She’ll explain.”
“Mama, I want to see Goldie! Teresa said she’d send her,” an impatient voice called from the bedroom.
