Beyond Innocence Page 13

  Elsie did some quick mental calculations. “A little over six years, I think. I know that because I was dating Sam that last year when he was in the Academy. He didn’t see as much of Tate as he would have liked because he was so busy with school…and me,” she added quietly.

  “What was Tate up to then? Was he already making his living off the streets?”

  She shook her head. “No. He was working at carpentry and construction. He was determined to make enough to go to college. He was interested in psychology or maybe sociology, if you can believe it.”

  Pete had sat down and was in the midst of taking a hefty sip when she dropped that little bomb. He barely restrained himself from spewing the contents of his mouth all over Kyle. “What the hell happened, then?”

  Elsie twirled a few strands of hair around her finger. “That’s the big mystery. That’s why Sam stayed so furious at Tate for so long. Tate had big dreams and he abandoned them, it seemed like overnight.” Before Pete could distract her from her train of thought she plunged on. “One of Sam’s last fond memories of Tate is of the night Sam graduated from the Academy. They went on a drinking binge that lasted into the wee hours.” She smiled fondly. “He had a killer hangover the next day and woke up with that dove tattoo. Tate has a matching one, you know. At least it was a little bit original.”

  Pete grimaced. “Yeah. He tried to persuade me to get one, too, but I never got drunk enough. Thank God.”

  “Well, it was a few months after that, when things went to hell. Sam had been busy with his new beat, we got engaged and other things had happened at home that kept him from calling on Tate like usual. Then, suddenly, when he did start to look him up, Tate wouldn’t answer his calls, and when Sam did manage to catch him on the phone he was openly belligerent and insulting.”

  She reached for a tissue on the counter behind her. “That was rough on Sam. He couldn’t understand what had happened, but I’m afraid it only got worse from there.”

  Pete tapped the table again. “Didn’t he call the cops on Jeremiah or something?”

  “Not exactly. It had been almost two weeks of that crap when he finally decided it was time to confront Tate face-to-face and sort out whatever the problem was.” She looked up at Pete’s intent green eyes. “And that was the day he saved Tate’s life.”

  “Huh?”

  “When he got there, the Barton house was practically shaking from the brawl that was going on inside. Tate and his father were screaming at each other and having a knock-down, drag-out fight like Sam had never seen before.”

  “How could Tate stand up to Jeremiah? He wouldn’t last five minutes against that hulk.”

  “Oh, he lasted more than five minutes, but you’re right. He wouldn’t have survived if Sam hadn’t gone in there and pulled a gun on Jeremiah to keep him from killing his son.”

  Pete let out a long, slow breath and pushed his mug away.

  Elsie continued, “Tate was in rough shape—cracked ribs, bruised kidneys, you name it. I think Sam said he even had a pretty severe concussion. Sam figured another five minutes and that would’ve been it. He called the ambulance, booked Jeremiah on assault and then went to see Tate after he got cleaned up.”

  “But?”

  “But Tate didn’t want to see him. He wasn’t exactly grateful for Sam’s efforts. He told Sam he didn’t want anything to do with him. He said he had made new plans for his future and Sam didn’t have a place in them. They argued until the nurse made Sam leave because she was afraid Tate would bust his stitches.”

  “I guess he was devastated,” observed Pete.

  “To put it mildly. I had a zombie for a fiancé for weeks. He had lost his best friend and he had no idea why.”

  “And then Tate started up the bars.”

  “Yes. He took the money he had been saving for college and bought The Pit. Then, when Sam gradually realized what Tate was turning the bar into…well, that was when the rage kicked in. Tate had betrayed their friendship and everything that Sam stood for and believed in.”

  “Hence the obsession to see Tate put away.” Pete’s eyes were luminous with the new understanding for a man he thought he had known so well for so many years. “He wanted revenge for the betrayal.”

  She nodded. “But I sometimes wonder if mixed in with the need for revenge was the hope that if Tate had to do time, that maybe he’d turn it around. Maybe Sam could get through to him.”

  “Idle dreams,” muttered Pete.

  “I’d have to agree.”

  “Where is Tate’s mother in all this?” asked Kyle, his voice hesitant, as though uncertain of his place in this intimate circle of old friends.

  “Sam never met her. She died before he met Tate, and Tate never talked about her.”

  “And Sam’s parents? Are they still alive?”

  “His mother died years ago as well, shortly before we were married. His father is still kicking, working himself to an early grave managing those restaurants.”

  “He calls pretty regular,” added Pete, “asking if we’ve made any progress in our search for Sam. But I think he throws himself into his work so he won’t have to think about it.”

  “He sees Scott two or three times a year at the most,” said Elsie bitterly. “He’s not exactly the ideal grandfather. Thank God for my parents.”

  The room was silent. All they could hear was the distant murmur of Pikachu as he fought yet another digital demon for his Pokemon Master. The clock on the wall ticked a steady beat, relentlessly marking the seconds that Sam’s fate remained uncertain and Elsie’s heart was held captive. Maybe she couldn’t live with Sam anymore, but that didn’t mean she could live without him.

  “Do you have any pictures of him?” Kyle’s voice startled her and she almost dropped her empty mug.

  “Who?”

  “Tate. I’ve seen pictures of Sam down at the station, what with him being on the Missing List. But I’ve never seen this Tate character.”

  Elsie considered. “Sam had a bunch of photos that he couldn’t seem to bring himself to throw out, even after the scene at the hospital. I think he took most of them with him when he moved out.”

  “Oh.” Kyle shrugged. “I can always check out his mug shot.”

  Pete chuckled. “I’m afraid that’s a dead end. Tate’s too smart for that. He’s never even been booked on a misdemeanor. We’ve never fingerprinted the bastard.”

  Kyle’s pale eyebrows arched toward his hairline, but before he could comment Elsie stood. “Hang on. I do have one.”

  Before the men could question her she was striding from the kitchen, heading for her son’s bedroom. She found what she was looking for on top of his dresser, hidden amidst Pokemon trading cards, sparkling rocks and Hot Wheels cars. It was small and Sam had never cared for the shot, but it had fascinated Scott when he spotted it in an album; and after endless nagging from his son Sam had relented and agreed to let Scott have it.

  She carried the small silver frame into the kitchen and handed it to Pete, who leaned over and shared it with Kyle.

  Kyle chuckled. “Showing off the tattoos, huh?”

  “God, they look young,” said Pete. His voice was heavy and his shoulders drooped with the weight of the years.

  “Yeah,” she said quietly. “So young and so happy. I think the guy at the tattoo parlor took that for them. Sam didn’t even remember smiling for it.” But there he was, his arm around his best buddy, their sleeves rolled up, grinning for the camera and each sporting a brand new tattoo of a dove in flight. He had often talked of having it removed, but somehow he had never gotten around to it. It didn’t take a genius to figure out why.

  Kyle took the photo from Pete and studied it intently. He frowned and looked up at Elsie, and then at Pete. He returned his gaze to the photo and said with a puzzled expression, “You guys are kidding, right?”

  “What?” Pete peered over his shoulder to see if there was something he was missing. “Kidding about what?”

  “Don’t you see i
t?”

  “Spit it out, kid! What the hell are you talking about?”

  Kyle set down the picture and shook his head in wonder. “I guess you two are too close to them to see it. You know, can’t see the forest for the trees?” He tapped the picture. “Look at them. I mean really look at them. What do you see?”

  Pete picked up the frame and stared. He frowned in concentration but finally shook his head, completely baffled.

  “God! Don’t you see the resemblance? If I had seen them walking down the street together I’d have sworn they were brothers!” Elsie and Pete looked at Kyle like he had sprouted horns. “Jesus! Tate even looks a little bit like your son, Elsie.”

  “That’s—that’s crazy,” sputtered Pete. But he picked up the picture and studied it again, and Elsie could see the awareness spreading over his face. She plucked the frame out of his fingers and perused the grainy photo with a new, critical eye. They had the same dusky blue eyes and the same build. But other than that… Well, okay, so the hair was the same color. It was brown. But half the city had brown hair.

  She swallowed against a lump that was forming in her throat. But half the city didn’t have nutmeg-brown hair with reddish highlights and a distinctive cowlick in the center of the forehead. And half the men in the city didn’t have that wide smile that could still make Elsie’s heart melt. And that she saw every day on her son.

  She felt her palms go clammy as she moaned under her breath. “Oh, God, Sam. Oh, God.”

  Kyle just shrugged. “Maybe it is crazy. But it’s also damn suspicious.”

  Elsie still didn’t want to face such an outrageous possibility. It skewed her reality. It turned her world upside down. “It doesn’t make sense! Sam would have told me. We may have had our problems but he never lied to me. We were always honest with each other. It’s got to be a coincidence. They came from different worlds. They both had parents. They both—”

  “What if Sam didn’t know?” suggested Kyle.

  She stopped and willed her heart to stop beating against her ribs.

  “Or what if Tate didn’t know and for some reason Sam was compelled to keep silent?”

  “Or what if neither of them knew?” murmured Elsie.

  Kyle shrugged. “I guess anything’s possible, but that’s a hell of a coincidence. Either way, I’d be curious to see if one of these two esteemed cohorts happens to be adopted. Or if maybe somebody’s daddy slept with someone he shouldn’t have. I’d bet my badge that if we do a little digging we’ll find a few secrets in one of their closets.”

  Pete met Elsie’s gaze, his eyes wary and his voice low. “You may be right, Kyle. You just may be right. But the question is—whose closet?”

  Chapter Ten

  Calgary, Alberta

  Rich. Sweet. Bitter. Smooth. Sinful.

  The adjectives tumbled around in Luke’s brain in a futile attempt to keep up with the sensations rolling around on his tongue. Cold. Luscious. Refreshing. Decadent. Satisfying.

  “Luke?”

  He opened his eyes, startled to realize they had been closed. He had been so completely engrossed in the experience.

  The bustling crowd, the wide, bright windows that were allowing sunlight to stream into the little restaurant with the polished chrome and the red vinyl benches—all that was but a blur behind the woman seated across from him.

  Marnie’s eyes were smiling at him. God, he loved her smile. It was so completely unguarded and genuine, so completely free of sarcasm or malice. It filled him with contentment and made him think he could just sit there and stare at her all day, drinking her in as surely as he was inhaling the delicacy before him.

  She chuckled and licked her spoon clean. “It seemed like maybe you were enjoying yourself, but I just wanted to be sure. You were so quiet it was hard to tell.”

  “You’re teasing me again.”

  Her smile changed ever so slightly. “Yeah, I am.”

  He dug his spoon in and brought it up heaped and dripping with chocolate raspberry truffle ice cream and hot fudge sauce.

  Marnie’s spoon hovered in midair. “Should I ask if they have shovels? It might speed things up.”

  He grinned at her over his triple-decker, belly-busting, super-duper sundae. “Well…maybe a small one.” Another spoonful, this time laden with pralines and cream and butterscotch sauce, made its way past eager lips.

  Marnie set down her spoon and watched him. After three more bites he became uncomfortable. “Aren’t you going to finish yours?”

  “Nah. I can never finish a whole banana split.”

  “Can I have the rest?”

  She stared at him dumbly. And then laughed out loud. “Are you kidding? You must have a whole pound of ice cream there, and you want more?”

  He shrugged. “Can I?”

  She pushed her bowl across the white Formica table and he eyed it as he polished off the remainder of his treat.

  “I thought you said you remembered ice cream,” she said as he ladled up the last of her French vanilla and pineapple sauce. “But you tried almost every flavor and you ate like a starving man.”

  “I did remember it,” he mumbled around a mouthful, “but not like this.” He didn’t remember anything like this. “And it’s been almost two hours since lunch.”

  “Oh yeah, right,” she said with a grand nod of her head. “I forgot. Women hate guys like you, you know.”

  The spoon froze halfway to his mouth. He frowned. “They do?”

  “Uh-huh. Guys who eat like that and look like you make women like me want to just throw in the towel, and either pig out on cake and nachos or slit our wrists and be done with it.”

  He knew she was kidding. He knew it. But on some deeper level that he couldn’t understand those words hit him hard. They congealed in his stomach and left no room for anything but uncertainty and confusion. He pushed the bowl away.

  “What’s wrong?” Marnie sounded concerned.

  “Why would you say that? I don’t get it.”

  She reached for his hand and, like he always did when he was uncertain about a new experience, he latched onto it like an anchor.

  “I just meant that it’s a struggle for most women to not put on weight, and seeing guys like you pack away the calories and never put on an ounce is frustrating.”

  Relief washed through him, but then he let his eyes rove over Marnie. He even ducked down to evaluate her waist and legs beneath the table. “You’re not fat,” he said with conviction as he straightened up and focused on her smile once more. “You’re perfect.”

  “Thanks. But I wasn’t always this slim. It took a lot of years of watching my diet and hearing my mother nag about my figure before I finally got down to a size five.” She looked down at their hands and he felt a surge of warmth when she laced her fingers through his. “Only now I’m too skinny. I could never get anything exactly right for her.” She blew out a long breath that Luke suddenly found himself wishing he could catch a taste of on his lips. He had a feeling it would be sweeter than ice cream. “Or for my father, either,” she added absently.

  He was gradually learning to read the moods of people around him. It had been a struggle at first. Sometimes the expressions had been so ambiguous—a smile that was sad or a raised eyebrow that was critical—it had all seemed like some secret code that he had yet to decipher. But gradually, with a little experience and a little help from Marnie, he was sorting it all out. And who better to teach him? Marnie’s facial expressions and the nuances of her voice held a special fascination and could rivet his attention like nothing else. There was no one that he wished to know better.

  And right now Marnie wasn’t happy. He already knew from experience that when she wasn’t happy usually the best way to make her happy again was to get her to talk about whatever had made her sad.

  “Your parents don’t approve of you?” Even as he said it the notion hit him as ludicrous.

  “I wouldn’t exactly say they didn’t approve of me, but I was never exactly what
they had hoped I would be.”

  “What did they want you to be?”

  She glanced uncomfortably around the room. A crush of people waited at the counter, anxious to order their dairy treats or spicy hot dogs. Most of the booths were occupied, and exuberant children with sticky smiles and chocolate-smudged fingers were squealing in delight as they chased each other around the tables to work off their sugar high.

  “Uh…” she hedged. “Can we talk about this outside? It’s a gorgeous afternoon. Let’s take a walk. There’s something I’d like to show you.”

  Luke had ditched the cane, and his leg felt particularly strong and limber that day. He was eager to put it through its paces. “Okay.”

  He allowed her to lead him outside into the bright sunshine and the frisky breeze that danced Marnie’s full skirt about her calves and swirled her hair about her face. He was grateful she had left it down that day. On an impulse he caressed the velvety tresses, skimming his hand down her neck and allowing it to rest on her shoulder with his arm draped lazily around her as if he had done it a thousand times.

  To his relief she didn’t protest. In fact, she allowed him to draw her closer so that as they walked he could feel the movement of her hip and thigh against his own. He breathed in her scent, which was as fresh as he imagined the mountains to be, with just a hint of oranges and spice.

  “So?” he prompted at last, when she offered nothing further.

  “First I want to remind you that my father died five years ago.”

  He nodded. “Right. I think you mentioned that when you told me your niece was coming tomorrow.” They walked on a few steps in silence. “But your mother’s still alive. I talked to her on the phone a little.” He shrugged one shoulder. “She seemed nice enough.”

  “Oh, she’s a lovely lady, as refined and poised and cultured a woman as you’re likely to find in the whole city of Calgary. But that’s just the trouble.”

  Luke frowned as he puzzled over the comment. “I don’t get it.”

  “That’s what she wanted me to be. That’s what they both wanted me to be. They wanted me to fit into their image of womanhood, from the lacy, frilly clothes right down to the insipid, unassuming demeanor of the ideal wife and mother. But that wasn’t me, and no matter how hard I tried to fit into their mold it didn’t work.”