More Than a Hero

She tilted her head to one side to look up at him, and Jake forgot his question. She was so damn pretty—delicate in a strong sort of way. Her brown eyes were flecked with bits of gold, and she smelled of spices with just a hint of sweetness. If he’d met her at any other time in any other place…

She would still be Senator Riordan’s daughter. He would still be the enemy.

Sunlight glinted off the diamond studs in her lobes as she returned her gaze to the sidewalk ahead. She wore heels again today, but there was nothing low or sensible about them. They brought the top of her head close to his, close enough that if they stopped walking and he turned her to face him, it would take only an inch or two for his mouth to reach hers.

Prove it, one part of him challenged.

Don’t be a fool, another advised.

“The trial transcript was checked out by Judge Markham,” she said.

Jake knew it must have been one of the four. “He’s retired. Why is he still allowed to check out files?” He would have been allowed to look at it there in the court clerk’s office or to have a copy made, but he wouldn’t have been able to take it from the room. Lawyers could take them out, Martha had explained to him before she’d known which file in particular he wanted, but only for a few days.

“As long as his law license is active, he still has that privilege. As the senator’s assistant, I occasionally check out records for him. We can take them for forty-eight hours.”

“And Judge Markham’s had this file for…?”

She sighed. “It was due back last Friday.”

Jake’s smile was thin. He’d tried to set up an interview with the judge the previous Wednesday. The old goat had turned him down, then gotten possession of the transcript. And it was the only copy the court had. Martha had told him that, too.

“Maybe he wanted to refresh his memory before he talked to you. Surely you want to interview him as well as the senator.”

“Maybe. Except that he turned me down when I called him last week. Said he had nothing to say on the matter and hung up on me.”

“So that’s why you just showed up at the senator’s office,” Kylie murmured.

Jake kicked an acorn and sent it tumbling into the yellowing grass alongside the sidewalk. “Do you ever call him Dad?”

Kylie blinked.

“Most people call their fathers Dad or Pop or Father or even by their first names. What do you call yours besides ‘the senator’?”

“Sir,” she answered.

He would have laughed if she hadn’t been serious. That was some kind of warm, loving relationship they shared. What inspired her loyalty to him? It had to be more than just a paycheck.

“So…if I want to see the transcript, I’ve got to get it from Markham.”

She cleared her throat delicately. “It might be best if you let me get it.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because it’s a matter of public record. He doesn’t have the right to—to hide it.” She swallowed hard, obviously aware that she was implying wrongdoing on the judge’s behalf and not liking it.

And what if Markham was hiding the transcript on her father’s say-so? Riordan might be out of town, but he was obviously in touch. Someone was keeping him informed…and, possibly, taking orders from him.

“I’ll stop by Judge Markham’s house later today,” she went on. “I’ll—I’ll let you know if I get it.”

They came to a stop at an intersection. They’d left the businesses behind and were in a neighborhood of moderately priced houses. Most of them were old, a few with their original wood siding, the rest updated to aluminum. The yards were roomy, the trees mature, their leaves turning shades of yellow, red and purple. The best friend he’d had in his months there had lived in the middle of the block. Back then, Jake had envied his house, his bike, his roots…but now he couldn’t even remember his name.

“Does it bother you that everyone says this is an open-and-shut case,” he began conversationally, “and yet no one wants to talk about it?”

“A lot people believe the past belongs in the past.” Kylie started across the street to their left, and he followed. On the other side, she turned back in the direction they’d just come.

“Especially people running for governor.”

She gave him a sharp look but didn’t comment. “Just because you’re interested in what happened to Charley Baker doesn’t mean anyone else is.”

“My agent is. My editor. My publisher. I’m already under contract. I’m going to write the book regardless of what your father and his cronies want.”

“What about Therese Franklin? Doesn’t what she wants count?”

He called to mind Therese’s image as she’d been that September—three years old, a girlie girl, looking like an angel with silky brown curls, huge blue eyes, a Cupid’s-bow mouth. She’d been left alone with her parents’ lifeless bodies for at least twelve hours. When they were discovered the next morning, she was sitting next to her mother, blood staining her white nightgown, eyes red from crying.

Did she remember anything from that night? Probably not. Three was mercifully young. But it had changed her life forever. He knew her grandfather had died, knew the grandmother—the last family she had left in the world—had Alzheimer’s and was also dying. This wasn’t the best time to bring her parents’ murders back into the limelight…but there was no best time to relive something like that.

“I haven’t spoken to Therese yet,” he replied. “I don’t know what she wants.”

“The senator has. She doesn’t want you dredging all this up again. She pleaded with him to stop you.”

Guilt niggled down his spine. “I may not need to interview her. She was so young.”

“She’s still so young.”

“She’s twenty-five.”

“The youngest twenty-five you’ll ever meet. The best thing you could do for her is forget this and go away.”

Forget it. As if it could ever be that simple. From the time he’d started his first book, he’d wanted to write about Charley’s case, though he’d found reasons to put it off. He was already contracted for a different book. He was too close to the story. He needed more experience to do it justice. And the worst reason: he hadn’t been sure he could handle what he found out. But then the last book had come out, and the guy had gotten a new trial. Charley had pleaded with him, and he’d known it was time.

He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I can’t do that. I told you—I’m already under contract. Besides, I made a promise to Charley.”

“And you’d put a convicted murderer ahead of his only surviving victim?”

“You’re very good at thinking the worst of me, you know.”

A flush tinged her cheeks, but she said nothing.

“What if Charley’s telling the truth? What if he’s spent twenty-two years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit? If the real killer is walking around free, still living here in Riverview, still pretending to be an upstanding citizen?”

She shook her head, her diamond stud creating small sun flashes. “There was no other suspect.”

“Because they didn’t look for one.”

“They had no reason to.”

“They had no reason to suspect Charley except that he was convenient. He lived next door. Didn’t have any ties to the town. Didn’t have money for a lawyer. Didn’t have anyone who cared whether he was railroaded into prison.”

“What about his wife? The senator said she believed he was guilty.”

Jake scuffed his boots along the pavement. It was hard to say whether Angela Baker had really believed Charley was guilty. She’d been unhappy for a time before the killings. She’d wanted a different life, a better life, for herself and their son. She’d seen his arrest as the perfect opportunity to move away, change her name and start building that life.

But at one time she’d loved Charley. They’d been married fourteen years—had shared a lot. Today, on the rare occasion she talked about him, all she would say was, I don’t know. Mostly she liked to forget that he existed. Who she was at this moment in time—that was her only reality.

“Back then, she just wanted out,” Jake said. “Now she has doubts. For what it’s worth, his son never doubted him.”

“Children generally don’t doubt their parents.” Her voice was soft, her expression distant. Was she wondering if she was safe in blind loyalty to her father? Did she have even the slightest fear that Jake might uncover evidence that Riordan wasn’t the man she believed him to be?

Would she hate Jake if he did find such proof?

“I’d better get back to work.”

He glanced around and realized they were back where they’d started. The courthouse, tall and imposing, was across the street, the senator’s office a few doors down. The cop she’d called Derek was sitting in the shade near his patrol car, authoritatively watching everyone’s comings and goings. He perked up when he saw them.

“Will you have lunch with me?” Jake asked, turning his back on the cop.

“No. I can’t.”

“Come on. I don’t like eating alone, and you’re the only person I’ve met who doesn’t look at me like I have two heads.”

That earned him a hint of a smile. “Your book places us in an adversarial position, Mr. Norris. I think it’s best if we act as such.”

“The senator’s orders?” he asked while imagining a few other positions he’d rather be in with her.

“I prefer to think of it as advice—good advice.”

“You know I’m attracted to you.”

His candor surprised her. Given that she worked in politics, she probably wasn’t used to blunt honesty. On the heels of the surprise came a rosy flush that tinted her cheeks. “I—I—” She backed away a few steps. “I really need to get back to work.”

He chuckled as she closed the few yards to the office door. As she reached for the handle, he called, “See you around.”

This time, instead of a muttered Not if I see you first, her only response was a slight wave before she disappeared inside the building.

He went to his truck, tossed his backpack inside, then called, “Hey, Derek. You ready to go?”

Harold Markham was in his midseventies, round about the middle and white-haired. Through his religious pursuit of such activities as golf and fishing he maintained a year-round tan that made his eyes a more startling blue in comparison. Startling and suspicious as they fixed on Kylie’s face. “What do you mean you’re here for the transcript?”

Odd. She thought the request was self-explanatory. She’d debated how to approach Judge Markham—whether to be up front and tell him she was returning the file to the court clerk’s office so Norris could check it out, or to blur the truth a little. I told Martha I’d pick up the file and save you both a trip. Or even outright lie: The senator asked me to get the file from you for safekeeping. She’d settled on simply asking for it.

“You do have it, don’t you? Martha told me you checked it out last week. She said you should have brought it back last Friday.” She forced a friendly smile. “You know how she is with her records.”

The judge didn’t smile in return. He simply watched her stonily.

She sighed. Though it was only four o’clock, she’d had a long day filled with distractions. Correction: filled with one big distraction. If she wasn’t catching glimpses of Jake Norris as he drove by the square, she was thinking about him. About his book. The threat the senator presumed him to be. The questions he’d raised. That last comment he’d made.

You know I’m attracted to you. She’d heard a few clever lines and a lot that weren’t, but none had had the power of that simple statement. It had sent an icy shiver down her spine at the same time heat had curled through her belly. She’d wanted to admit that she felt the same, had wanted to agree to lunch, dinner, breakfast and anything—everything—in between. She’d wanted to be wild and wicked and wanton…. But in the end she’d simply been herself.

Kylie Riordan, living a very dull life.

It was for the best. He was a very determined man, and so was her father. Between them was no place to be stuck.

“Missy?”

She refocused on Judge Markham. When she was little, he’d called her Miss Kylie and treated her like a princess. Somewhere along the way he’d dropped the Kylie and switched to Missy, and what had begun as affection had come to feel like condescension. She used the annoyance it stirred to shield her from the guilt as she prepared to lie. “I’m sorry, Judge. The senator called this morning and mentioned the transcript. His message was, naturally, a little vague.”

Judge Markham nodded as if the senator being vague in a private phone call with his daughter made perfect sense.

“He mentioned you and the transcript. I thought he wanted me to take it for safekeeping.”

“What time this morning?”

“Shortly after I arrived at the office.”

He nodded as if that meant something. “Well, he called me this afternoon and told me to destroy it, and that’s what I did. Clearly he recognized the wisdom of my method of safekeeping.” Rising from his chair, he patted her shoulder on his way to the door. He didn’t seem to notice that, despite his clear invitation to leave, she was frozen in her seat.

Destroying court records—that was a felony. Her father couldn’t possibly have suggested…Judge Markham surely must have misunderstood…the senator never would have condoned…

Acid bubbled in her stomach, and her limbs were rigidly locked in place. When her brain finally gave the command to rise, she had to push to her feet, forcibly straightening her knees, mechanically lifting one foot, then the other, to walk across the judge’s library and into the marbled foyer.

“You forgot your bag, Missy.”

It took a moment for the words to clear the buzzing in her ears, for her mind to make sense of them. “My…bag?”

The judge disappeared into the library, then returned holding her purse at arm’s length as if carrying it properly might bring his manhood into question. He offered it to her, then, when she made no effort to take it, impatiently slid the strap over her limp arm to her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

She gave herself a mental shake. “Y-yes. Just a…a headache.”

“Nothing a shot of good whiskey wouldn’t cure, I bet.” In his world, there was nothing a shot of good whiskey couldn’t cure.

She smiled, hoping it looked halfway genuine. “I believe I’ll settle for aspirin. I’m sorry to have disturbed you, Judge.” She opened the door, gazed out at her car parked in the circular drive out front, then turned back. “I would appreciate it, sir, if you didn’t tell the senator about this. I would hate for him to think that I misunderstood his instructions.”

“Tell him about what?” Judge Markham grinned and winked as he lifted his own glass of whiskey in a salute. “Don’t you worry, Missy. It’s our secret.”

Our secret. She’d never kept secrets from her father, and wasn’t sure why she’d decided to start now. Because if he knew she knew the transcript had been destroyed, he might confess that he’d given the order?

No. She didn’t believe that—couldn’t believe it. Her father had devoted his entire life to public service. He was an honest, upright, moral person. He hadn’t told Judge Markham to destroy those records. He would be horrified when he found out what the judge had done.

But Judge Markham had devoted his entire life to public service, as well, a small voice that sounded a lot like Jake Norris whispered slyly. He was also an honest, upright, moral person…who hadn’t hesitated a moment before breaking the law.

You know nothing of the facts, she’d told Norris the evening before. She was beginning to fear that she was the one who needed an education.

She stopped at the street. If she turned right, she could be home in a matter of seconds…to do what? Fret? If she turned left, she could return to the office, where she could at least fret in an environment more conducive to work.

She chose left, driving the short distance downtown. She parked near the office but didn’t go inside. Instead, impulsively, she crossed the square to the redbrick building on the far side that housed the Joshua Colby Memorial Library. After climbing the broad granite steps, she went through the double doors and headed to the reference section.

The Riverview Journal had been online for five years. Any article from that time could be found in their online archives, along with anything from their first twenty years in business. The rest was being added slowly but was accessible in the meantime on microfilm.

Usually.

The microfilm inside the box labeled September from the year of the trial was blank. So were the films for August and October. Kylie took the boxes to the desk. After exchanging pleasantries with the librarian, she said, “There’s a problem with these films, Mary Anne. They’re blank.”

Mary Anne’s gaze flickered to the worn storage boxes before returning to the books she was sorting. “Really? Isn’t that odd?”

“Have they always been blank?”

“I wouldn’t know, Kylie.”

“Has anyone else looked at them lately?”

“I can’t say. They’re on the shelves. Anyone can use them. We don’t keep track.”

Kylie wanted to grab her, to make her stop what she was doing and look at her, but kept her hands at her sides. “Do you have a copy?”

“No. Afraid not. Sorry.” With an apologetic smile aimed in Kylie’s general direction the woman walked away from the counter, taking refuge in the small office behind her.

Puzzled, Kylie left the library. She’d known Mary Anne since first grade and she’d never seen her act quite so cavalierly. Mary Anne was generally as protective of her library materials as Martha was of her court records. Neither woman’s behavior that day had been typical. Nor had Judge Markham’s or the Senator’s.

And the one common denominator was the Baker case.

Grimly Kylie walked the block and a half to the Journal’s office. Does it bother you, Norris had asked, that everyone says this is an open-and-shut case, and yet no one wants to talk about it?

More and more every minute.

The newspaper office was small and dusty, but the staff put out a good paper given their resources. Words were usually spelled correctly, sentences usually punctuated properly. Dale Bayouth, the owner, publisher and Web master, was sitting at his desk, tinkering with the Web site, when she walked in. He greeted her with an easy smile. “Kylie. What can I do for you?”

She explained about the microfilm at the library, then asked, “Can I see your copies from that time period?”

He began shaking his head before she finished. “Sorry. They’re not available. I sent everything to my son down in Houston. He’s working on the website archives.”

How convenient. Frustration made her teeth grind, but she forced a smile. “It was worth a try. Thanks anyway.”

She left before she could find the courage to ask when he had sent the archives to his son and at whose suggestion. She doubted he would tell her, and if he would, she wasn’t sure she really wanted to know.

The answer might be more than she could bear.

Chapter 3

After striking out at the courthouse, the library and the newspaper—and with Kylie—Jake wasn’t in the best of moods. The only thing he could think of doing at the moment was the one he really didn’t want to do: visiting the scene of the crime.

The Bakers and the Franklins had lived three miles outside Riverview, at the end of a dirt road that forked to lead to each house. They’d been fairly close neighbors for the country, with no more than a third of a mile between their houses, but in every other way they’d been miles apart.

Bert Franklin had been president of the First National Bank of Riverview. Charley Baker had worked at the glass plant north of town. The Franklin home had looked like something out of Gone with the Wind, with columns and verandas and a vast expanse of lush green lawn, while the Bakers’ rental had been small, dark and one good wind away from collapse. Jillian Franklin had spent her days lunching, shopping and planning events, and Angela Baker had waited tables at the truck stop outside town. The Franklins had been among the town’s social elite. Riverview hadn’t known the Bakers existed.

In the end, though, the Bakers and the Franklins had shared one thing in common: their lives had been destroyed that September night.

Wishing for any excuse not to go, Jake headed west out of town. With each tenth of a mile the odometer ticked off his fingers tightened around the steering wheel. When the sign for Woodlawn Memorial Gardens appeared ahead, he grabbed at the chance to delay the trip out of town at least a little longer.

He drove through a stone arch, then turned onto the first narrow road. There was an office to the right, but it was locked up tight. In an alcove near the door, though, he found a grave locator. He looked up the Franklins, then returned to the truck and drove slowly along the lane. Section six was at the far end of the second row of plots. It was also where the only other vehicle on the grounds was parked. A slender figure, a young woman, knelt in front of a double marker, tending the flowers planted there.

He considered driving on and returning after she was gone, but then she looked straight at him and smiled—really smiled. No one had directed a smile like that at him since he’d arrived in town.

She got to her feet and lifted one hand to stop him. He braked, then rolled down his window as she took a few steps toward him.

“You’re Jake Norris,” she said. “I was hoping to meet you. I’m—”

The angel. Silky brown curls, huge blue eyes, Cupid’s bow mouth. “Therese Franklin.” All those years ago, he’d thought she was of no consequence—too young, too girlie, too spoiled. He would have been much happier if the Franklins had had a son or even a dog.

Except that one morning when he’d found her sitting next to her dead mother. When he’d grabbed her up, held her tightly and run from the house with her, yelling for his father at the top of his lungs.

She looked pleased that he’d recognized her. According to Kylie, she’d pleaded with the senator to stop Jake from researching this case. Kylie’s lie? Or Riordan’s?

He preferred to think Riordan’s.

He parked in front of her car, then got out and joined her in the drab green grass. She was of average height and so slender that a stiff breeze could blow her away—quite possibly the most delicate creature he’d ever seen. Even her voice, light and airy, sounded as if it belonged in another world.

“I assumed I would be getting a visit from you sooner or later,” she remarked in that ethereal voice as they walked back to her parents’ graves. On the other side, another double marker bore her grandparents’ names, along with the dates of their births and his death.

Jake thought it ghoulish to have your name on a grave marker while you were still alive.

“Actually, I hadn’t decided whether I would try to interview you,” he admitted. “You were very young at the time, and I’d been warned this is a bad time for you.”

Her gaze shifted to her grandfather’s grave, and sadness dimmed her eyes. But when she looked back at him, she was smiling again, albeit faintly. “I doubt I’d be able to contribute much, if anything. But there’s a lot I’d like to know. My grandparents didn’t talk about my parents. It was too painful for them. I thought they had died in an accident until I was in high school, when I found out they’d been murdered.”

“That must have been tough.”

She shrugged.

“So you don’t object to my writing a book about this.”

Bending, she tugged a stubborn weed from the base of the monument, then straightened again. “Truthfully…you’re right. I was very young. I don’t remember my parents. I don’t feel a connection to them. They’re symbols rather than people to me. Maybe through your book I can get to know them.”

Abruptly she smiled and looked more like fifteen than twenty-five. “I’m reading your last book. I feel I know those people. That’s what I’m hoping for with this one.”