to start Cavanaugh Catering, nothing had gone right. True, her first catered party had ended with a woman being poisoned to death—not Laci’s fault, though.
Since then, she hadn’t had any business and was starting to wonder if her sister had been right about it being a mistake to run a catering business here in the middle of nowhere.
Laci spooned some of the golden batter into a sizzling-hot skillet. The smell alone made her feel better.
“Spencer is really something, huh?” McKenna said.
Laci shot a look over her shoulder at McKenna. “He’s handsome enough,” she said noncommittally.
McKenna laughed. “Arlene Evans is positive she’s seen him in one of her movie magazines.” She lowered her voice. “But you should have heard what Harvey Alderson said.”
Laci could well imagine, knowing Harvey.
“He said the guy looked like a porn star to him,” McKenna said and laughed again. “Makes you wonder what Harvey knows about porn stars, doesn’t it?”
Laci laughed and turned back to her cooking. The pancakes had bubbled up nicely. She flipped each one, then brought out the apple-cinnamon syrup and fresh creamery butter and put them on the counter in front of McKenna, happy her friend had stopped by. She wished McKenna was home for more than the weekend.
“The thing about men as good-looking as Spencer Donovan—you’d have to keep him corralled at home,” McKenna said, only half joking. “Every woman in the county would be after him. Speaking of men…I did something really stupid last night.”
Laci couldn’t imagine McKenna Bailey doing anything stupid in her life. She hadn’t even had that much to drink last night. “What?”
“I signed up on Arlene Evans’s rural dating Internet site,” McKenna said and grimaced. “I’m never going to find my handsome cowboy helping Eve with the ranch. Or at vet school. I figured, what would it hurt, you know?”
“I know,” Laci said with a laugh as she slid a plateful of silver-dollar pancakes in front of McKenna and watched her slather them with butter before making another skilletful for herself.
Was that all it had been last night? A splash of champagne and a shot of envy, stirred not shaken, with a healthy dose of vivid imagination? She sure hoped so because she really didn’t want her friend to be in trouble. She glanced at the kitchen clock over the stove as she sat down, not even hungry for her favorite pancakes. Alyson would be in Honolulu soon.
“Laci, these pancakes are to die for,” McKenna said between bites. And the conversation turned to Laci’s catering business—and lack of clients. And for a while Laci stopped worrying about Alyson and worried instead about how to get Cavanaugh Catering cooking.
BRIDGER DUVALL SNAPPED on his flashlight as he descended the rickety basement stairs of Dr. Holloway’s former house. It was dusty and dark down here, the overhead light dim. The place, he’d learned, had been sitting empty for years. He doubted anyone had been down here in all that time.
“Can’t be much of interest down there, but you’re welcome to look, I guess,” the elderly neighbor said from the top of the stairs.
“Thanks,” Bridger called over his shoulder as he descended deeper. He’d managed to talk the neighbor into letting him into the house after discovering it was empty, and the man thought he knew where there might be a key.
In a town like Whitehorse, neighbors were often given a spare key to the house next door. Bridger loved that about this part of Montana. As it turned out, the door hadn’t even been locked.
A house that the doc owned—but apparently had never lived in—seemed like the perfect place to store records you didn’t want anyone to ever see.
The basement smelled of dampness and mildew. He stopped on the bottom stair. He heard something scurry across one dark corner and shot his flashlight beam in that direction quick enough to catch the shape of a mouse before it disappeared into a hole in the concrete.
Great. Who knew what else lived down here.
Bridger shone the flashlight around the small, damp basement. It was little more than a root cellar. He brushed aside the cobwebs to peer into a hole that ran back under the house. There was a lot of junk down here, most of it looking as if it had been there since the house was originally built a hundred years before.
One box held what appeared to be women’s clothing. He held up one of the dresses. Dated. Had the clothes belonged to the doctor’s wife before her death? Or had the doctor had a mistress who’d lived here?
Bridger dug through several of the boxes, finding more old clothing but no files. No records.
He couldn’t help his disappointment. He’d hit one dead end after another. In the last box he opened he found an old photo album. He flipped it open. Most of the pages were empty except for a few colored photographs of two little girls. Children who’d been part of the adoption ring?
Tucking the album under his jacket, Bridger climbed up out of the basement, anxious for some fresh air.
The helpful neighbor was waiting in the living room. “Find anything?” he asked.
“Nothing much.” He’d told the old man that he was looking for his mother’s medical records. No lie there. He feared the man wouldn’t let him take the photo album if he told him about it, so he kept it hidden under his jacket.
Bridger handed him back the key, thanked him and took one last look at the inside of the house, wondering why Dr. Holloway had kept it and whose clothing that was downstairs. The dresses had been in different sizes, so that seemed to rule out a mistress.
A thought struck him, giving him a chill. Was it possible the birth mothers had stayed here in this house until they’d given birth? Maybe even Bridger’s own mother?
The used furniture appeared to be a good thirty years old and was now covered in dust. If his mother had stayed here, there was no sign of her after all this time.
He followed the old man out the front door, glancing back only once. For just a split second he imagined a woman standing at the front window, her belly swollen with the fraternal twins she carried, her face lost behind the dirty window.
TO KEEP FROM CALLING Alyson and ruining her honeymoon, Laci tried to stay busy. She cooked everything she could think to make, then had to find a home for all the food.
She dropped off a week’s meals at her grandfather Titus’s apartment—the one he’d taken in town so he could spend more time at his wife’s bedside at the nursing home.
Gramma Pearl’s condition hadn’t changed since her stroke. Her eyes were open, but she wasn’t able to respond, even though Laci liked to believe she knew her and understood what Laci said to her. Once, Laci would have sworn her grandmother squeezed her hand. Laney said it must have been her imagination.
Laci’s imagination was legendary.
The treats Laci had baked she took to the staff at the rest home when she went to visit her grandmother. They all seemed to love her cookies and cakes.
As she came out of the nursing home, Laci was debating what to do with the batch of her
