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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?
“The man who dropped me here said you owned a development company.”
He nodded. “I do, in partnership with a friend. I used to sell real estate, too, but gave that up when this turned out to be more fun. There’s one more doughnut, and you can have a refill on the coffee.”
“No doughnut, thank you. But the coffee would be nice.”
“This mill is our first project,” he explained as he poured her another cup. “We both work for a business called Whitcomb’s Wonders. It’s a sort of temp agency, but for craftsmen who can’t work full-time because they have other things going in their lives. My friend’s a plumber and getting an MBA from Amherst in his spare time. I paint and wallpaper.”
“And what do you do in your spare time?”
“I’m getting my life together.”
She wondered what that meant. Why wouldn’t a man who appeared to be in his late thirties have his life together? A broken marriage? A financial loss?
As a rule, she found people endlessly fascinating, but she didn’t have time right now for anything more than her own pressing problems.
She flipped open the book and found the E’s. Eaton, Eckert, Egan, Emanuel, Evans… Her heart gave one eager thump, then she read, “Evans, Millie—221 Lake Front Road.”
She closed the book in exasperation. Evan topped up his own cup, then sat on the edge of his desk. “You said someone dropped you here?” he asked.
With a sigh she sank into a corner of the couch and took a sip of the fresh brew. He did make good coffee. “I got a ride on a bakery truck in Springfield,” she explained. “I told the driver I was looking for someone named Evans in Maple Hill.” She smiled wryly. “Apparently, he doesn’t know Millie. He drove me here on his way into town.”
“And why do you want this Evans?”
“I have something for him.” Still uncertain of everyone and everything, she thought it best to keep the tape she’d hidden in her bra a secret.
He looked her over from head to toe. “What would that be?” he asked. “You don’t even have a purse.”
“It’s…a message.”
There’d been something about the once-over he’d given her that was…professional. She didn’t know how else to express it. The same thought had struck her earlier when she’d watched him move around the small office with a curious tension about him, a sharpness in his eyes, a quickness in his tall, powerful body that suggested formal training.
Just so he wouldn’t have the upper hand in this odd encounter, she had to let him know that she had powers of perception, too. Putting down the phone book on the seat beside her, she looked up and met his eyes. She remembered gazing into their soft brown depths as she was passing out.
“Before you were a housepainter,” she said, “you were a soldier.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Close. I was a cop.”
She might have felt apprehensive over that. Gordon had warned her away from the police. But this Braga wasn’t a cop now.
He must have noted her wary expression.
“You asked me not to call the police,” he said. “Are you afraid of them for some reason? Had a bad experience?”
“Gordon told me not to trust them,” she replied. “I can only guess it’s because there’s one involved in his murder.”
“Well, you can relax,” he said. “It wasn’t me.”
She might be naive to believe him, but there was something solid and comforting about him, despite those watchful eyes.
As she studied them now, she thought she saw a sadness behind the vigilance. She was good at reading people. What, she wondered idly, could happen to a cop to make him give up the work for house painting? And had Gordon said Evan, not Evans?
It might take a little time to determine whether this really was the man Gordon meant. And how could she do so, with no place to stay and no money to find one?
“Were you a cop in Maple Hill?” she asked.
He shook his head. “You broke into my place,” he reminded her. “I’m the one with the right to ask questions.”
She had to give him that. “I’m sorry.” But there was a limit to what she could tell him, when she wasn’t sure he was the Evans she was looking for, and she wasn’t entirely sure what had happened herself. Or, at least, what it all meant.
“Someone’s chasing you,” he prodded, when she took a moment to organize her thoughts.
“Yes,” she admitted.
“The person who killed your boss.”
She didn’t quite remember having told him that. She remembered the spots and the way the room had undulated when she wielded her bat at him. “Yes.”
“You know who it is? I mean, by name?”
She shook her head. “There was more than one. I can identify faces, but I don’t know their names.”
“And this happened in Boston.”
“Yes.”
He frowned over that. “How’d you get away?”
She touched briefly on her escape from her apartment and the long, cold night in the back of the moving van.
For the first time, she noticed the condition of her clothes, and could only imagine what her face and hair looked like. She sagged a little into her corner. Things would certainly be simplified for her if he was the Evans she was looking for. Then she could turn over the tape and go back to Boston.
No, she couldn’t go back. Gordon had owned the insurance franchise. A sickening thought struck her. She had been a witness to Gordon’s murder. Until his killers were behind bars, it wouldn’t be safe to return home.
“Now that I’ve answered your questions,” she said, leaning slightly toward him, “can I ask again where you served as a policeman?”
He considered her, evidently as suspicious of her as she was of him. “Boston,” he replied.
She straightened. Could there be some connection between him and Gordon? “Did you know…Gordon Hathaway?”
He frowned again. “I ran across a lot of people, perps and victims, in twelve years. But that name doesn’t mean anything special.”
She sagged against the couch again, suddenly very aware of her exhaustion. But where could she go? All she could think to ask was, “Is there a homeless shelter in town?”
“There’s a new one opening December twenty-third,” he said, putting his cup aside.
A familiar bleak despair threatened to overwhelm her. That always happened when something reminded her of how absolutely alone she was in this world. “But…none now?”
“There are some homeless families staying on cots in the basement of the Catholic church.”
She angled her chin and asked, “Would you take me there?”
He studied her, those eyes roving her completely disreputable appearance, then lingering on her face. It was impossible to tell what he thought, until he leaned forward to take her cup from her and drop it with a bang on his desk.
“No,” he said simply.
EVAN LOOKED into a pair of blue eyes rimmed with exhaustion, and suspected he would hate himself later, but he couldn’t take her to the basement of the church and still live with himself.
He knew many homeless people had once lived productive lives and were victims of fate and circumstance, but there were always those few among them who preyed upon each other and anyone else small or weak enough to be vulnerable.
“I live in a cottage on the other side of town.” He reached toward a wooden coat rack in the corner and grabbed an old down jacket he wore when working outside. It was smeared with paint, but warm. “It has a spare bedroom and a reliable furnace.” He held the jacket out to her. “You can stay with me until you find this Evans guy.”
She stared at him, evaluating the offer. She was desperate for shelter, but not sure she could trust him.
“I have no money,” she said finally, and took the jacket.
“The offer doesn’t require money.”
There was a moment’s silence. Then she asked quietly, carefully, “What does it require?”
He understood her reluctance, but gave her a scolding look, anyway. “Trust,” he replied. “And I can use another hand on a paint roller.”
Her eyes widened slightly, and he guessed he’d surprised her. “Never painted anything?” he asked.
She smiled for the first time since he’d opened the door and found her wielding a bat at him. “My bedroom, a couple of times when I was a teenager, and my friend Horie’s first apartment. Does that count?”
He ignored her question. “Horie?”
She smiled again. It made her even prettier, despite her disheveled appearance. Her teeth were square and very white, the top right one overlapping the front tooth slightly.
“Horatia Metcalf. Her father teaches Greek in a divinity school, hence her name. She’s a little off-the-wall herself. We painted every room a different bright color.”
“Did you do a good job?”
“We thought so. Her landlord wasn’t quite as pleased.”
“Then, you’re hired,” he said. “But I’ll take you home. You can have a couple of days to catch up on your sleep before I put you to work. I, however, have to get with it.”
The suggestion that she was holding up his working day galvanized her into action. She got to her feet and let him help her into the jacket.
As she snapped it closed, he remembered the watch cap in the side pocket and reached in to hand it to her. She pulled it on and stuffed her hair into it.
He looked down worriedly at her holey stockings and low-heeled dress shoes. “Wish I had a spare pair of socks, but I’ll get you some at home.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said, then wrapped her arms around herself and closed her eyes. “I can’t tell you how nice it is to be warm.”
He stood the collar up for her. “The lesson to be learned here is, never run away in December without your coat.”
She nodded wryly. “Or your purse.” She smiled again as he pulled the door open for her. “Of course, that lesson doesn’t apply to you, does it?”
He concentrated on locking the door behind him, afraid of getting hooked on that smile. “No,” he said, pretending to be serious. “It’s hard to decide what color purse to wear with coveralls.”
She laughed as he pointed toward the Jeep. Her smile…with sound. Intriguing. “It’s easy. Just remember that they should match your shoes.”
By the time they reached his cottage on the other side of Maple Hill, he was grateful that he had to leave her for the day. It was as though something had turned her on and she’d acquired a sparkle he hadn’t noticed when they’d interrogated each other over coffee.
A long, tree-lined drive led to his cottage. Snow covered the trees and crunched under the tires as he drove up to the porch. He parked and came around to help her out, sure that the height of the van and dress shoes would make it difficult for her to get down onto the packed and slippery snow.
She’d swung her legs over the side and appeared to be considering how best to approach the leap, when he bracketed her waist and lifted her to the ground. He felt the smallness of her waist even under the thickness of his jacket, and wondered why that should impress itself upon him. He’d known small-waisted women before.
Of course, they weren’t coming to live with him.
“Thank you,” she said cheerfully. “What a pretty place. What grows on that arbor by the garden?” She pointed to a square-topped pergola at the side of the house.
“Clematis,” he replied.
“Pink?”
“Purple.”
“Ah.” She sighed, smiling as though she could envision it. “I love purple. We painted Horie’s kitchen a sort of pale grape color.”
He wondered what that did for guests’ digestion, as he led the way up the porch steps and unlocked the door.
THE FIRST THING Evan did was crank up the thermostat.
Beazie listened attentively as he showed her how to turn it up or down, explaining that he usually lowered it when he left for work.
“I don’t want to waste your oil,” she protested, trying to think about the numbers rather than the herbal fragrance of his cologne. “The thermostat says sixty-two, but that’s still warmer than the back of the moving truck.”
He ignored her and bumped it up to seventy.
“Kitchen’s in here.”
She followed as he led the way through the soft, coffee-with-cream color of the living room and its dark blue and red furniture to an old-fashioned kitchen painted yellow. The appliances were old, but new butcher-block counters had been installed, and a small nook that looked out onto the front of the house had yellow-and-blue curtains patterned with teapots and cups.
“I’ve been slowly buffing up the house,” he said with a disparaging wave at the curtains, “but I haven’t gotten to this room yet. I don’t eat at home that much, so I’ve left it to last.”
She nodded affably, but was secretly happy he hadn’t taken down the curtains. They reminded her of those cozy fifties commercials where women cooked in shirtwaists, high heels and jewelry, while an adoring family awaited mother’s masterpiece.
