Chapter One

“Where is she, Goodrich?” Harry Troutman pushed through the front door of his uncle’s ancestral home as the butler, a man he’d known since he was a child, answered.

“Sir? How? Where?” The older man blinked rapidly then composed himself. “I assume you’re looking for Miss Ryan?”

“I don’t care what her name is.” Harry paced to the grand staircase and back to the front door. “How could you let this happen?”

“Me, sir?’ Goodrich cleared his throat. “I do believe the lawyers looked for you for the last eight months.”

“I was undercover. It’s not like no one knew that. They could have contacted my superiors.” He’d finished up a major case and had debated taking on another, but needed to settle things in his personal life. He’d avoided it for too long. “I don’t understand…”

“Goodrich? What’s going on?”

A pixie of a woman, who walked with a pronounced limp, came from the back of the house. Harry eyed the cleaning supplies in the green bucket she carried. What happened to the previous housekeeper?

“Ruth-Ann, I told you to let me do that.” Goodrich led her over to the base of the staircase, sat her down and took the bucket from her hand.

Woman? She might be a teenager. Dressed in a tatty, worn tee, cut-off shorts and a baseball cap with reddish-blondish hair tucked underneath, he couldn’t tell.

She sniffed. Dark circles sat under her eyes. Her skin was a little waxen.

“I only have the top floor left.” Ruth-Ann pulled a tissue from her pocket and sneezed four times in rapid succession.

“That’s no excuse.” Goodrich lifted the back of his hand to her forehead. “You go on up to bed right now.”

“Can’t. Those people are coming later today.”

“Ruth-Ann, I can handle it.”

“But if I don’t, and this place isn’t perfect when they show up… No, I have to…” She stood, sucked in a breath, and her eyes slid shut.

Harry barely made it to her side before she passed out cold. He scooped Ruth-Ann up into his arms. “What kind of boss would make this poor girl work so hard when it’s obvious how sick she is?”

“Well, sir…”

“Which room is she staying in?” Harry shifted her. The cap fell off, and a riot of short, strawberry-blonde curls tumbled around her head.

“The guest bedroom at the end of the hall.”

The smallest of all the bedrooms. “Figures.” Harry took the stairs with little more effort than normal. The girl couldn’t weigh much over a hundred pounds.

When he pushed the door to the bedroom open, he couldn’t believe how old and dilapidated all the furniture looked. The curtains, the same from when he’d left fifteen years before, had several holes and worn patches in them. A musty smell warred with the sweet floral scent that radiated from Ruth-Ann.

He laid her gently on the bed and lifted his own hand to her pinkened cheeks. “She’s burning up, Goodrich. You need to call a doctor.”

“Right away.” Goodrich crossed the room and picked up the phone.

Harry lifted her head and eased a second pillow underneath when she moaned. “Shh, you’re going to be fine.” Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a movement. A young woman with similar hair and eyes as Ruth-Ann caught his gaze and darted into the hall. He didn’t have time to worry about her as he looked in the bathroom for a washcloth.

Back at the bed, he draped the wet cloth on Ruth-Ann’s forehead.

“The doctor is on his way, sir.” Goodrich sat on the opposite side of the bed and slid Ruth-Ann’s sneakers off. “She’s been working too hard. I have told her and told her she needs to slow down. But she won’t. No one listens to me anymore. ‘I have to fix this, Goodrich.’ ‘I have to fix that, Goodrich.’ Work, work, work. Well, now look what you’ve done to yourself.”

Harry paused as he pulled the quilt up under the woman’s chin. He’d never heard Goodrich say so many words at one time. He wasn’t sure he’d ever heard him say that many in one day before. This woman must mean an awful lot to him for him to work himself up to that degree.

Harry’s irritation with Miss Ryan escalated. First, she conned his uncle into leaving his entire estate to her, and then she mistreated the staff. Good thing he hadn’t come much later. “Goodrich, can you get the cook to fix something for Ruth-Ann to drink?”

Harry’s words seemed to snap Goodrich back into awareness.

He stood away from the bed, and his spine straightened. “I’m sorry, sir. The cook had to be let go three months ago.”

“What? Why?” Harry shook his head. “Let me guess—Ruth-Ann,” he motioned to the young woman, “has taken over kitchen duties, too.”

With a quick nod of his head, Goodrich said, “Yes.”

“When did Ruth-Ann replace the maid?”

“Five months ago.”

“Damn Miss Ryan.”

The butler’s eyes narrowed. “Miss Ryan has done what she could. But circumstances…”

“You mean she’s run through all of Uncle Virgil’s money. She’s had to let people go and pay young girls to do the work of a staff of?” He looked to Goodrich for the answer.

“All the staff has been let go but myself, sir.”

“Six people?” Harry tucked a stray curl behind Ruth-Ann’s ear. When he realized what he’d done, he moved over to where Goodrich stood. “This house is too big for one person to handle.” He motioned to the bed and shoved his hands in his pockets. “How old is she—seventeen, eighteen? She can’t do this all alone.”

“She’s thirty-one, sir. Had a birthday last month, in fact.”

“Well, I’ll be…”

“You seem to be under the wrong impression, sir.”

“Will you quit with all this ‘sir’ crap. You’ve know me since I was four years old.”

“Yes, and your manners have deteriorated steadily since.”

Harry raked his hand over his face. “I’m sorry.” He slumped in the club chair in the corner and rested his elbows on his knees. “I didn’t know about Uncle Virgil’s death until three weeks ago.”

“It was tragic.”

“Can you tell me what exactly happened? What the hell was he doing in that part of town?”

Goodrich looked to the bed, to Harry and back, then sat beside Ruth-Ann after he plumped her pillow. “That is where he lived after college.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“It wasn’t so bad years ago. Just the last few…” He shook his head. “He had a fondness for a particular diner and would go every once and a while. About six years ago, a new waitress started working there.”

“Miss Ryan.” Harry tried to keep the hatred out of his voice. Reasonable or not, he blamed her for the death of his uncle.

“Yes. She was a wounded soul, he’d said. I remember him telling me after the first time she’d waited on him. She fascinated him.”

“I’ll bet.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

Harry gave a short bark of laughter. “Really? Then why’d he leave her everything?”

“Do you want to hear this or not? Your belligerence is beyond the—”

“Sorry. Go on.”

“Suffice it to say he made regular trips to the diner. He’d tried to hire Miss Ryan away, but she didn’t want to impose on the friendship they’d struck up.” Goodrich looked at Harry as if to see if he’d comment. “The night your uncle—” his voice caught, “—died, he’d stayed late again to try and convince her to come to work for him when three young men came in, guns brandished. Being the way he is, your uncle shoved her under a counter and put up a valiant fight.”

“And they shot a defenseless old man.”

Goodrich tsked. “Your uncle was hardly defenseless. He knocked one of the young men unconscious before the other two shot him.”

“He did?”

“The man practiced Ti Chi and Yoga religiously. And boxed a few times a month with an old friend from the Army.”

Harry had forgotten his uncle boxed in his younger days. He’d been the welterweight champ back then. Harry’s father’s older brother by seventeen years, Virgil Troutman had amazed him. To a young, impressionable boy, there was nothing the man couldn’t do. Except stand up to three assailants with guns.

“He wasn’t as frail as you might think. He’d almost subdued the second thug when he was shot. He fought so valiantly.” Goodrich shook his head. “They turned the gun on Miss Ryan then as well.”

Harry’s eyes widened. “She was shot?” He hadn’t heard that.

“Yes. Apparently, they didn’t want to take any chances of her causing them any trouble. They shot her still hunched under the counter where your uncle tried to protect her.”

For the first time since he’d learned of the circumstances, pangs of sympathy for a woman he’d come to hate flooded through Harry.

“All three escaped before the police arrived.  Miss Ryan worked with the sketch artist, but nothing came of it. She had lost a lot of blood and didn’t remember much. She spent three weeks in the hospital.” Again, Goodrich glanced at Ruth-Ann.

Harry’s anger returned. Yes, the new Mistress of the Troutman estate had suffered, but that was no excuse to decimate the funds of his legacy. Not to mention release a staff that had been with his uncle for many years. “She didn’t waste any time running through her new inheritance.”

“Again, sir, uh, Harry, you misunderstand. Your uncle was broke.”

“There’s no way.” Harry stood, fisted his hands at his sides. “How is that possible?”

“Bad investments, poor money management skills. There were many contributing factors.”

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

“You were hardly reachable for day-to-day problems.” Goodrich straightened Ruth-Ann’s quilt. “Miss Ryan poured her own funds into the estate, tried to keep staff on as long as she could, but it became too much. She had no choice but to let them go. She took over most of the daily chores.”

“But I thought Ruth-Ann did most of that.”

Goodrich clutched the young woman’s hand in his own, nodded his head in her direction. “Harry, let me introduce you to Ruth-Ann Ryan.”

* * * * *

“Nicole?” Ruth-Ann’s dry throat rasped.

“Shh, now.” Goodrich cooed in her ear. “How are you feeling?”

“Feeling?” Ruth-Ann pried her eyes opened. Her bedroom, at the Troutman estate. For a moment, she thought back to a night six years earlier, when her sister, Nicole, was still alive. “What happened?”

“You worked yourself sick. Just as I told you you would.” Goodrich’s constant scolding should set her teeth on edge, but he was only trying to look out for her. Just as Virgil Troutman had. She tried not to remember the horrible events that brought her here, but for some odd reason, they were as fresh on her mind as her sister.

Goodrich helped prop her up on the worn pillows and held a cup of hot tea to her lips. She sipped the warm liquid and let her eyes slide back closed. But only for a moment. She still had work to do.

“The doctor should be here any moment. I sent Harry—”

“No doctor.” Ruth-Ann opened her eyes and tried to get up. “I’m fine. Move, Goodrich.”

“Why does everyone keep interrupting me today?” Goodrich pushed her back down. “Manners are just not maintained nowadays.”

“You’re not making any sense. Let me go. I still have to finish the top floor. And we can’t afford for the doctor to come.”

“The doctor is here.”

The deep voice paused Ruth-Ann in her struggle with Goodrich. A man blocked almost the entire door with his broad shoulders and massive height. Light brown hair almost as curly as her own unmanageable mane hung over his forehead. From across the room, there was an air of familiarity. Where did she recognize him from? Before she could think on it further, he moved aside to let Dr. O’Donnell in. He was a long time friend of Virgil’s, and she’d gotten to know the man well over the last eight months.

“It wasn’t necessary for you to come all the way out here.” The Troutman estate sat on twenty-six acres just north of Fort Worth, Texas. The gas alone to get into town was more than she could afford at the moment. Exchange that for the exorbitant fee for a home visit. “I’m fine.” As if to mock the self-pity she was trying to tamp down, she sneezed several times, then coughed so hard she got a stitch in her side and had to lie back to catch her breath.

Dr. O’Donnell held a thermometer up to her, frowning until she opened her mouth. “Humor me.” He poked and prodded and took her vitals.

All the while, she shot furtive glances to the man who stood in the corner and spoke in low, whispered words with Goodrich. Who was he?

“Rest. Lots of fluids. But most importantly rest.”

“You said that already.” Ruth-Ann smiled at the doctor despite her eagerness to disregard his order. She’d get the top floor done in a couple of hours if her strength held up.

“Ruth-Ann, I know what you’re thinking. As soon as I leave, you’re going to try and get up out of bed. You have a nasty cold, and it’ll go away in a couple of days if you take care of yourself. You don’t want it to get worse. You of all people should know better than to push yourself so hard.”

“I’ll take care of myself, tomorrow.”

“Young lady, you will do as the doctor tells you.” Goodrich joined Dr. O’Donnell at the side of the bed. “I will clean out the top floor.”

Before she could say another word, more sneezes and more coughing engulfed her. She wanted to argue her point but couldn’t catch her breath long enough to get a sentence out.  She was licked. She couldn’t do it right this minute. Give her a little rest and she could finish before the Historical people showed up. But to appease the multiple frowns, she said, “Okay. I’ll rest. I promise.” With a unified shake of their heads, the three men went into the hall outside her room.

“What happened?”

Ruth-Ann sat up and looked at her sister. “Get out of here.” She darted her gaze to the door. “They might see you.”

Nicole rolled her eyes. “No one has noticed me since Virgil died.” She glided across the room to her sister’s side. It unnerved Ruth-Ann when Nicole hovered. Thankfully, she sat on the bed. “What happened?”

Ruth-Ann sank back to the pillows. “I passed out.”

“Good going, Dr. Ruth.”

“Would you quit calling me that?” She took another sip of the tea, now tepid but still just as refreshing on her sore throat. “It’s not like I did it on purpose.”

“I would have if it meant getting carried up here by that hunk of a man.”

“He did?” For some inexplicable reason, her cheeks heated. “Who is he?”

“Beats me. Goodrich called him Harry.”

The teacup shook in Ruth-Ann’s hand. “Are you sure?”

“Pretty.” Nicole nodded. “Why?”

Forgetting herself for a moment, Ruth-Ann reached for her sister’s hand. When she got nothing more than air, she took a deep breath and finished speaking. “Harry is Virgil’s nephew.”

“Damn.”

“No kidding.”

“Maybe not. What are the chances that…” Nicole shrugged.

“What are the chances another Harry shows up yelling like a crazy man? Damn. He couldn’t have shown up at a worse time.”

“Worse time? Are you kidding me? This is perfect. Maybe he’ll contest the will.”

“Nicole.”

“No, seriously. Let him have this monstrosity of wood and glass and you can get back to a normal life, rather than playing Cinderella without the fairy godmother. His house, his problems. You can walk away free and clear.”

“But Virgil—”

“Oops, gotta go.” Just like that, Nicole vanished.

“What? Why?” Ruth-Ann shivered. She loved her sister, but that…that was just freaky.

Goodrich and “Harry” came back in. “The doctor gave you strict orders. Rest,” Goodrich said. “And drink this.” He handed her another warm cup of tea.

Ruth-Ann downed the welcomed drink, let the warmth combat the chills shaking her. “I’m feeling better already.”

“I’ll just bet you are.” Goodrich smiled as he shook his head. Then he volleyed his gaze between Ruth-Ann and “Harry.”

Goodrich, nervous? That was a first for Ruth-Ann. She decided to put him out of his misery.

“Are you going to introduce us?” She sat up further on the bed. “Harry Troutman, I presume. I’d shake your hand, but…” She shrugged, and sneezed. Feeling weaker than she cared to admit, she took a moment before she spoke again. “I guess I should thank you for carrying me up the stairs.”

The man cocked an eyebrow and studied her. “How’d you know I carried you up the stairs? You were out cold.”

“I, um…” Damn Nicole and her big mouth, but she could have figured it out for herself. “Goodrich could hardly do that.”

Harry snorted. “You weigh less than I did at fifteen, and he carried my snockered ass up the stairs more than once.”

“Drinking at fifteen, huh?” Her words slurred, her lids grew heavy. “’Splains a lot, I think.”

“Why, you little—”

“Children.” Goodrich’s voice rose above Harry’s. He leaned in and patted Ruth-Ann’s shoulder. “You rest. We’ll, I mean I’ll, be back later.”

“Can’t.” She wanted to get up. Thought about getting up, but her body wouldn’t cooperate. Her vision blurred. “They’re coming tonight. At eight.”

“Who’s coming?” Mr. Snotty-pants asked.

“My head feels funny.” Eyelids long since shut, she forced one open and glared at Goodrich. “What did you put in that tea?”

He had the decency to blush. “Something to make you rest.”

Aw, man. “But…”

“No ‘buts.’ Harry and I will handle them.”

“Who are ‘they’?” Harry’s gruff voice grated on her ears, and she winced.

Could you get snottier than snotty pants? She wasn’t sure, but he seemed to be working on it. “People from the hastical, histical—” What was she trying to say? She couldn’t quite remember. She rubbed her temple. “You know, old stuff people.”

“The Historical Society,” Goodrich supplied.

“Yep. That’s who.” The two men shuffled around the room, probably waiting for her to succumb to whatever potent prescription the good doctor had Goodrich slip her, but she didn’t care anymore. “They are gonna let me keep my house.” She had to keep it. She couldn’t let Virgil down. Not after he died trying to protect her. She’d let too many people down in her life. “Gotta protect the house.”

“Goodrich, can you explain that?” Harry’s hollow voice floated around her head.

“If Ruth-Ann can get the house listed with the Historical Society, she can keep it from falling under eminent domain and risk losing it.”

“S’what I said.” Ruth-Ann pulled the blanket around her shoulders and snuggled into the pillow. “Sheesh.”

“Is that an issue right now? Is someone trying to take the house?”

Does the man ever stop demanding answers? “Snotty,” she mumbled.

“Pardon?” Harry’s voice rose an octave.

“It appears,” Goodrich hurried on, “a developer is thinking of moving one of his offices to this area and fancies this plot of land.” Goodrich had said many more un-Goodrich words when they’d first heard the news.

“If you two are gonna keep chatting, can you do it somewhere else?” She yawned, which turned into a coughing fit.

A hand, large and gentle, covered her forehead. A musky tang tickled her nose. Was Snot-head being kind to her? Couldn’t be. Must be the effects of the drug. Surely she couldn’t have clear enough senses to smell anything, but then he—whoever—stroked her hair. A comfort she hadn’t felt since she was a child, and rarely then. Her mother hadn’t been the most nurturing soul.

A tear slid out. She hadn’t let anyone be kind to her. She didn’t deserve it. Virgil had just broken through the surface when he died. But she shunned kindness. For so many years. Ever since she’d killed her sister.

Close Window

  Copyright © 2009 | Cobblestone Press, LLC™