Wrong Face in the Mirror: A Time Travel Romance (Medicine Stick Series) (5 page)

She gave him a slice of banana brea
d hot from the oven and generously studded with pecans, just the way he liked it, and a tall glass of iced tea. Similarly provided, she sat down across the table from him, sipping at her tea while he sampled the bread.

“You made some of this last Christmas,” he said, “also apricot bread. Can’t decide which is my favorite.”

Blue eyes met his, stirring his senses in an uncomfortable way. He had to admit that her company was risky, at least to him. He never wanted to chance being hurt again the way Hart had hurt him.

“Were we married then?”

It was almost funny, but he decided to play along. “We were just getting acquainted. You hadn’t been back in town long.”

“When did we get married?”

She seemed perfectly sincere.

“February. On Valentine’s day.”

“We were getting acquainted at Christmas and married at Valentine’s? That’s rather fast.”

“I fell hard.” He drank some tea, willing his heart to be stone-cold unresponsive, reminding himself of what she’d done and said. “Thought you had too.”

“And we lived together here in this apartment?”

He shook his head. “At my house, the one my
folks gave me out in the country. You said you loved it there.”

“What happened?”

What kind of game was she playing? Maybe she just wanted to see him wriggle like a worm on a hook. Well, he wouldn’t.

He kept his voice cold and without emotion though he seethed inside. “You came home one day and said you were very sorry but you loved another man,
that he was first in your life and always would be.”

“After I married you?”

“We’d been living out at the farm in a fool’s paradise for nearly two months. As you can imagine, it came as quite a shock to me.”

She nodded slightly. “It isn’t how I think of myself,” she said and might have been talking about a friend whose behavior had proved disappointing.

Delicious as the mouthful of her freshly baked bread had tasted a moment before, it now was sawdust and ashes. He washed it down with iced tea and got to his feet.

“I’d better be going. I parked your car outside.” He reached into his pocket and brought out her keys, handing them to her.

“But wait,” she said and for an instant his heart jolted almost as though she would say something that explained everything and would make it all right again.

Instead she said, “What about the dead girl?”

“We don’t know the skeleton was of a girl, though it was small for a man, more like that of a young woman or even an older child. Anyway we’ve called in the OSBI .  . .

She frowned.

“Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. They’ll send out a forensic specialist and hopefully we’ll get some explanations.”

She seemed to move away, almost as though she were entranced. “They killed her and left her, so that when the water was released it poured over and covered her body.”

This was so wild he couldn’t help staring. “Hart, that lake was built in the forties. The skeleton would have surely dissolved in the water over the years. It has to be more recent.”

She shook her head. “She was waiting there for me. She wanted me to find her.”

Now he was getting scared. This wasn’t the level-headed rather serious young woman he knew. “Hart!” he said firmly.

She looked up, the blue eyes bewildered. Obviously she had no idea what she’d just said.

“Hart, I believe I should take you to your brother’s house. You shouldn’t be alone right now.”

She opened her mouth to argue, th
an closed it again. She wrapped the bread in aluminum foil to take with her, put the pitcher of tea in the refrigerator and went with him, locking the door after they stepped outside. She drove her own car, but he followed her to Tommy’s house, watched while she went inside, then drove slowly back out to the lake.

Crime scene tape marked the point on the shore where they’d gone out to the now exposed ruins of the town and
a deputy sat as watchman in a county car. Alistair only nodded at him, than sat in watchful silence, trying hard to make sense of something that didn’t seem to have any sense at all.

This had started out to be such a good day, Hart thought as she stepped into her brother’s home, and it had turned into a blur of awfulness. She’d heard herself back at the apartment saying those things to Sheriff Redhawk, but she didn’t know where those words or the thoughts behind them had come from.

The minute she walked in she knew she was in the middle of a noisy argument between Tommy and Nikki.

“I’m not her mother,” Nikki yelled. “I have two daughters of my own and I’m not looking for a job seeing after your crazy sister!”

The sound came from back in the kitchen, but her two little nieces were huddled in the entry hall. Christy had her hands over her ears while older sister
Mandy stood listening, frightened tears sliding silently down her face.

She gave each of them a hug and whispered to them to go play in the yard. “It’ll be all right. I’ll talk to them.”

To her surprise they accepted her reassurance, escaping gladly out the front door just as their dad began to yell at his wife, “All I asked was if you’d checked when she didn’t come home on time. Is that too much when my sister has been sick and . . .”

“I’m home,” Hart called as cheerfully as though she hadn’t heard any of the quarrel. “And I’ve got good news.”

The sounds from the kitchen ceased abruptly and she went on in to find Nikki taking roast and vegetables from the slow cooker while Tommy loaded the day’s quota of dirty dishes into the dishwasher. Nikki’s rounded cheeks were flushed pink and her eyes bright with anger while Tommy cast his gaze downward, avoiding her eyes.

Hart pretended not to know she’d walked into an argument. “Sorry to be late,” she said, “but I went for a drive out by the lake and they’d just discovered a dead person there and somehow I got delayed.” She thought that would be sensational enough to derail their conversation and get their attention.

Saying it out loud, however, made the vision of the dead girl on the sands alive once again and stirred the nausea in her middle.

“Someone drowned?” Nikki jumped to the logical conclusion.

Hart shook her head. “An old body found inside a building from the Medicine Stick town.”

“Medicine Stick,” Tommy commented. “But that town’s under the lake, has been for years.”

“Since 1947,” Nikki added. “I wrote a paper on it when I was in college.”

“
Drowned?” Tommy questioned.

“The sheriff was there and some other people. Nothing left but bones, but
they seem to think she’d been shot.”

“Good luck to Alistair at solving that one,” Tommy said with a snort of laughter. “Everybody involved must be dead by now. Bet he wishes all his cases were that easy.”

“They’re bringing in the state police,” Hart added, “so I guess they’re hoping to figure out something.”

“DNA.” Tommy nodded as though he were knowledgeable about such things.

“You could have called,” Nikki went back to the original subject. “Then your brother wouldn’t have wasted his time worrying.”

Hart didn’t bother explaining that she’d been too busy flipping out over what she saw at the lake to even think about Tommy’s worries. Instead she said, “But now for the good news. I’ve rented my old apartment downtown and will be moving in tonight. So Christy can have her room back.”

They seemed more surprised at this than at the news of the murder. Nikki’s eyes widened in a look of relief while Tommy scowled at her.

Nikki recovered first. “You don’t have to do that,” she protested unconvincingly. “We’re glad to have you here.”

“You can’t do that!” Tommy bellowed. “You’re sick and besides you were scared down there. You told me so. It’s not even safe for you to be down there by yourself at night with not a soul around once things have closed down.”

It was new information that she’d been scared living alone. Maybe that was why she’d married Sheriff Redhawk, for company. No, that was hardly likely. She’d supposedly been in her right mind back then.”

“I’ll get a cat,” she said, turning around to go to the room she’d borrowed to pack what few belongings she had. She stopped at the doorway to add, “The girls ran outside as I came in. They looked as if they were upset about something so you might see if they are all right.”

Nikki muttered a smothered exclamation and rushed past Hart to head for the front door, but Tommy after a moment’s hesitation, followed her to the bedroom.

“Hart, you can’t do this. I absolutely positively refuse to let you move out and go live by yourself until I’m sure you’re better.”

She braced herself for the debate.

Alistair Redhawk sat in front of his computer screen at his
rural home, munching on a turkey and bacon sandwich he’d made himself, and researched the now defunct town of Medicine Stick, Oklahoma.

Founded in 1901 when Oklahoma was still a territory, it had mostly been
established by pioneers from Texas who had come up looking for free or cheap land. Settlement had been thin, even in its heyday the town had never numbered over a thousand residents and by the time it was submerged after the war when the new lake was built on that site, less than two hundred individuals had lived there.

Prominent among the local residents had been the Hartleys, owners of the largest ranch in the area, also named for the town, or vice versa, Medicine Stick Ranch. He was surprised
. He’d known Hart had been left a tidy sum by her mother’s family and her first name had been in their honor, but he hadn’t know that the famed old ranch, no longer intact, had belonged to her family. Hart’s parents had died relatively young and she never talked about them much. He’d always wondered if Tommy had felt left out, his mom had not been a Hartley and so he’d not come in for a share of that family’s largess as had his half-sister.

He tried goggling the Hartleys but didn’t come up with much. Apparently they’d been a rather private family, at one time settled behind the barbed wire fences of their large ranch, but the property had been sold
late in the fifties and Madge Hartley, who must have been Hart’s great grandmother had died in her home in San Francisco, leaving the bulk of her not insubstantial estate to her son, who would have been Hart’s grandfather.

Grandpapa married a woman named
Henrietta Todd from an old New England family, a joining of family fortunes, and that was the money that had come down to Hart.

He and Hart had never talked about her money. He’d not been particularly interested and she’d seemed somehow a little embarrassed.

They’d lived in his house and on his salary for those few weeks they’d been together and, being admittedly somewhat old fashioned, he’d been proud of those facts.

Taking another bite from his sandwich and chewing thoughtfully, Alistair reminded himself that this research wasn’t supposed to be about Hart and her family, but beginning to seek resolution into an old, old murder. That person who had spent years lying under the lake water deserved some answers to her death.

Or his. He reminded himself that Hart’s insistence that the bones were those of a girl were not proof. And as for evidence, how likely was it that what she’d said about the body being left to be covered over as water filled into the newly built lake was preposterous.

He looked up information on the forming of the lake. Built by the Corps of Engineers, it was designed for both recreation and water storage and
it was true that the water had rushed in fairly abruptly. An old dam up river had been torn down to allow water to pour into the larger lake bed with its newly built dam. Within hours the lake had been nearly full and the little town of Medicine Stick erased from sight.

That had happened in 1947, only
a couple of years after the war ended, long before either he or Hart was born. Maybe that grandmother of hers had made up stories and told them to the little girl so that they lingered in her memory. Perhaps she imagined someone trapped in the little town as the water poured in.

It was the way a child would think.

He continued his research without learning anything of significance until long past bedtime, then went finally to bed and dreams of Hart that would linger painfully into his waking hours.

Hart kissed her nieces goodbye, handing them the loaf of banana bread she’d baked earlier as she got into the car, and then waving as she drove away.

Tommy and Nikki were still in conversation inside, but their voices were no longer raised so loud they scared their small daughters. Hart grinned, thinking that she’d never have gotten away with moving if Nikki hadn’t taken her side. She’d told her husband he was being overprotective, that his sister was an adult and certainly capable of making her own living arrangements. After all, she’d said, she’s only halfway across a very small town, she has a cell phone and you can be there within five minutes if she needs help.

Nobody had suggested that Nikki was pushing her own agenda to get her sister-in-law out of the house and Hart could hardly blame her for wanting her own family in her own house back to their former level of independence.

That was what she wanted also. Freedom to make her own life.

By the time she got back downtown, it was beginning to near evening and only Pizza
Plus had a few cars parked outside. She knew the little café closed at eight and supposed that after that Mountainside’s business district would be hers almost exclusively.

She told herself that the idea of being downtown alone at night didn’t
make her the least bit nervous, but she was glad it was still daylight when she went inside the antiques shop. From now on she would leave a little light on downstairs so that she could find her way up after dark.

The old furniture and collectibles seemed lost and abandoned down here as she edged her way past them and she determined that as soon as she had time she would begin the laborious task of dusting and sweeping down here. This might not be part of her apartment, but it was in
a way front yard.

She heard or imagined faint scurrying sounds in the far corner
s of the shop and was glad when she could step into her apartment and close the door behind her.

She had cornflakes with the one leftover banana sliced on top for her supper, then indulged in a long hot bath. She hadn’t thought she would want television, but now
decided she might look into purchasing one just for the sound it would bring to this too quiet world.

It grew even quieter as the evening darkened and she curled up on her bed with one of the books she’d found on the shelves in the living room. She supposed the books were her own, though she didn’t remember having read this one before. It was an old Mary Roberts Rinehart called
The Red Lamp,
a spooky old fashioned ghost story that might not have disturbed her consciousness on a sunny day in the company of others. But here with only the glow of her little reading lamp around her and darkness behind the glass of her windows, silence deep on the streets outside, she began to feel so on edge that she started to imagine something would jump out at her at any minute.

Realizing that her choice of reading material was creating the problem, she lay the book down and picked up her old favorite. Unfortunately she opened the book to the scene where the twins . . .”

She closed its faded covers. She was not in the mood for tragedy tonight.

It was early to be going to bed, but she took off her fluffy ro
be and tossed it to a nearby chair, crawled between sweet smelling sheets and turned off the lamp, then lay with her eyes wide open, thinking that she’d had a long and trying day and should go immediately to sleep.

The events of the day began to parade themselves through her mind beginning with old Mr. Jeffers, the ancient prisoner who was her most ardent reader at the library. She didn’t know of what crime he’d been convicted, but she was sure the harmless old guy should have been released years ago.

He seemed gentle and thoughtful and the books she helped him choose made up his whole world. Today she’d helped him pick out the latest Clive Cussler novel, feeling he would enjoy a little vicarious adventure.

The poor man had spent most of his life locked up, or so she understood. Virtually his only experience of normal life was through the books he read.

When she’d left work she’d felt good, though a little worried about how she was going to break the news to her brother that she was moving out. The drive through the park had been sheer procrastination, putting off the confrontation and look how that turned out.

Her mind tried to veer and avoid that moment at lakeside when she saw Stacia’s body lying on the ground. But who was Stacia and how could she feel such horror at seeing her limp and dead when she didn’t even know who she was?

She saw the wavering light spark on her left, caught only in her peripheral vision and her mouth went dry. She closed her eyes, covering them with her hands to block out any possible seepage and somehow that only make it worse so that her heart started to pound.

She sat very still, telling herself things like this didn’t happen and tried to focus on something mundane and every
day. It was funny, she decided, how she didn’t look anything like Tommy or his daughters. They were all so fair that they freckled, their hair cotton blond, almost white, while she had darker skin that didn’t seem to burn and hair such a deep black that it glinted with tones of blue in the sun.

Of course they’d told her she and Tommy had different mothers. Probably she took after her mother and the genetics he and the girls displayed came from his maternal side.

Finally convinced that she’d anchored her mind firmly in reality, she dared open her eyes again and found the light still there. It was, in fact, growing closer and brighter turning into twin lights drawing up on her like an approaching automobile, though she heard no sound.

Breathing quickly, she slammed her eyes closed once again, but still felt that approaching menace. Someone was trying to run her down, trying to kill her!

Her lashes flew up and she turned to face the lights that were now flooding the bed around her and, of course, saw only darkness.

Quickly she switched on her bedside lamp and got up, shaking and sick, to spend the rest of the night on the sofa, only falling asleep a couple of hours before she had to get up and go to work.

Alistair Redhawk ended the connection with the OSBI investigator rather thoughtfully, considering whether or not to call Hart with the news. He shook his head, decided it would be better to tell her in person and then before he could decide for sure what to do about her, he was summoned to the scene of an accident just outside town and from then on put in a busy day of work before having his mind focus again on Hart.

Almost without further thought, he found himself driving toward Mountainside. It had been easier when he’d had his mind resolutely set against her, telling himself that she’d not only betrayed him by falling in love with someone else after having married him, but that in a way it had been her fault that he’d spent days under suspicion of having murdered her with all his friends and neighbors looking at him in a way he’d never seen before. A solid, responsible kid who had grown into a man widely trusted, he’d had a new view of life as the man who just might have killed his wife.

He hadn’t liked it much.

Her dark blue Nissan was parked in front of the defunct antique shop so he supposed she was at home and got out to knock loudly at the door, hoping she would hear him up in the apartment.

After a few minutes he heard approaching footsteps and saw
through the glass in the top of the door that she was coming. She gave him a shaky smile, than unlocked the door. She looked tired and ill, her face pale and her eyes darkly shadowed. “You all right?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said unconvincingly. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“Well, thanks a lot.”

“No, I mean . . .”

She dismissed the apology with a wave of her hand and led the way toward the stairs. “I just didn’t sleep well last night.”

“Finding a skeleton can do that to you,” he tried to quip.

The attempt at humor fell flat. She turned to scowl at him
. “While you’re used to finding dead people.”

He nodded. “Though usually they’re not quite that dead.” When she didn’t smile, he went on hastily. “Just thought I would stop by and share the pr
eliminary report from the OSBI.”

“Already?”

She stopped on the stairs, turning to face him.

“They say it looks like the bones have been in the lake a long time. Maybe as long as the lake has been there. The body
confined by the walls of the building and submerged in mud which possible accounts for their preservation. Now that they’re exposed, they’d in danger of crumbling quickly.”

She nodded as though this was simply what she’d expected.

“Of course, this is only an off the top observation. It’ll be weeks, more likely months, before they’ve finished their analysis.”

Wordlessly she led the way up the stairs and into her living room. A blanket and pillow lay on her big sofa and he wondered if she’d spent a restless night there.

He waited while she brought him tea and then sat down to sip at her own. The little apartment was not air conditioned and this late in the afternoon it felt stuffy with enclosed heat.

“There’s something else.” Unconsciously he leaned toward her. “
They found a spent bullet shell inside the skull.”

She didn’t seem surprised. “So she wasn’t left to drown when the water poured into the
town.” She drew in a deep breath. “I’m glad of that.”

Hart insisted on saying ‘she,’ he noticed again. He tried to count the years from 1947 until now. Going on
six decades and she was only twenty six. It was laughable to think she could know anything about that long ago murder.

He drank his tea and sweltered in the heat. How did she stand it? Finally he got up and went over and opened one of   the windows in the back. The resultant breeze was a warm one, but at least it stirred the air in the room.

“I see things,” she said out-of-the-blue.

It was difficult to know how to respond. “What kind of things?” he asked cautiously.

“Last night it was a light that turned into two lights. I saw the headlights of a car trying to run me down.”

Shocked, he questioned, “Did you call the Highway Patrol
? Did you get a description of the car? Are you hurt?”

He didn’t realize he’d reached over to grab her arm until she shook him free. “You don’t understand. I was right in there in my bed.” She pointed. “There was no car.”

Now he really didn’t know what to say. “Maybe it was the head injury,” he finally mumbled rather apologetically.

“Nobody’s ever said I hurt my head. All they told me is they found me lying in the street in Oklahoma City, not a mark on my body, but so deeply unconscious that I didn’t wake for several weeks. No sign, either, that I’d been drugged.”

He nodded. “That’s why they let me go. Because there was no evidence of trauma and everybody knew I was in Mountainside the night you disappeared. I guess they thought until then that I’d buried your body in my backyard.”

She finally managed a crooked little grin. “I think we can be fairly sure that didn’t happen.”

They ate a supper of bacon, scrambled eggs and toast together and he found himself lingering with her until he reminded himself that things hadn’t worked out and they were no longer together. That had been by her choice, not his.

Darkness came on earlier now that the season was moving toward fall. Hopefully the days would soon turn cooler. He got to his feet. “I’d better go.”

She nodded, not trying to detain him. “I think I’ll get a television,” she said irrelevantly.

After he left, she stood in the cool air blowing in through the screened window. She supposed she was actually lonely because she’d liked having him around. At least he no longer glared at her with such venom.

They must have once liked each other to have married. She couldn’t quite bring herself to use the word ‘love’ in talking about this man who was still a stranger to her.

He’d helped her wash and dry the few dishes they’d used for their meal and she’d put them away. She hadn’t much to do now but get ready for the next day. Then she remembered that it would be Sunday and another day off from work.

Perhaps she would travel to the nearest town of any size and buy
a television set. Maybe she’d buy a computer too. Everybody seemed to use them these days. Surely she could learn.

She hadn’t been paid for her job
but Tommy had said there was enough already in her account to cover the checks she’d written for rent, food and other necessary purchases. She needed to make a raid on a real grocery store as well. Here in Mountainside her only shopping choice was the convenience store on the highway south of town.

But what were her resources
? She went to dig into the box that Tommy had given her that contained documents such as her birth certificate and checkbook. Her brother had told her she had enough money to get by, that her maternal grandparents had left her some. Cully at Pizza Plus had indicated the same.

She found her latest bank statement in the box as well and glanced at the figures displayed there, then looked a second time.