Winning Amelia. Ingrid Weaver
it was perfectly true. To be exact though, since he was self-employed, all the work he did was on his own time. “I’m helping out the Goodfellows as a favor,” he added. “I’m an old friend of the family.” Which was sort of the truth, too, since they’d been friendly enough to him fifteen years ago.
“So there’s no reward?”
“I wish there was. It would make my job easier.”
“I don’t know. Seems a lot of trouble to go to for something that’s not worth anything....” Les snapped his fingers. “The redhead who came around here must have been Goodfellow’s sister, right? The one who stole all that money!”
Ruth responded first. “It was her husband who stole the money,” she corrected.
“Same thing.”
“It is not the same thing, Les. A wife isn’t responsible for her husband’s behavior.”
“Sure, I’ll remind you of that next time I’m driving. I could do without the speedometer readings every ten seconds.”
“Well, I feel sorry for her. That man ruined her life.”
“Hardly. She let her husband take the blame and got off scot-free.”
Hank cleared his throat. “Excuse me? I think something’s burning.”
Les glanced at the barbecue. Smoke billowed from the hamburger patties. He swore as he scraped them off the grill.
“I can see you folks are busy,” Hank continued, “so I’ll make this quick. Did any of you go to the Goodfellows’ yard sale?”
Ruth seemed about to say something but as had happened before, it was Les who replied. “No way. We’ve got enough junk in our house as it is.”
Hank kept his gaze on the woman as he drew a business card from his shirt pocket and held it out. “If you remember anything later, I’d appreciate it if you give me a call.”
“Sorry, we can’t help you,” Les said. “Got better things to do than worry about that spoiled rich girl’s painting. If you ask me, she shouldn’t be showing her face in public anyway. It was because of her all those reporters camped out in front of her brother’s place last year. It was a disgrace for the neighborhood, brought everyone’s property values down. Next thing you know we’ll have a Hells Angels clubhouse at the end of the block.”
Hank concentrated on not crushing the card. It wouldn’t do Amelia any good if he lost his temper. If this was a sample of the kind of attitude she had to contend with in her own neighborhood, it was little wonder she’d seemed so tense when he’d seen her.
Ruth got up from the table and came over to take the card. She hesitated momentarily, then unlatched the gate and stepped through. “I’ll walk you out, Mr. Jones.”
“Burgers are ready, Ruth,” Les called.
“I’ll be right back.” She led Hank to the front of the house and stopped beside the bed of petunias. Her gaze darted to the neighboring houses. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about my husband. He has a low blood sugar condition and isn’t himself when he’s hungry.”
He suspected that apologizing for her husband was another well-established pattern of conversation for this woman. “No problem.”
“And we all think the Goodfellows are decent people. We feel sorry for Will’s sister. It’s nice you’re helping them out.”
“I’m doing my best, but so far I haven’t had much luck.” He lowered his voice confidentially. “They’ve had their share of troubles, and with Jenny expecting again, I’d hate to let the family down,” he finished. Then he waited. He could tell she had something else to say.
“I didn’t go to the Goodfellows’ yard sale.”
He nodded encouragingly.
She leaned closer and spoke in a rush. “But I happened to be weeding my flowers on Sunday morning while that sale was going on, and I remember seeing a man putting something flat in his car trunk.”
All right! “Could it have been a painting?”
“Possibly. It looked like a big, folded blanket, but it could have been wrapping something. Now that I think about it, it must have been the painting.”
“How large was it?”
She held her hands about a yard apart. “It was around this long, maybe bigger. I don’t normally pay attention to what my neighbors do, of course, but I couldn’t help noticing that.”
“Because of the size of the bundle?”
“No, it was the car that caught my eye. It was bright yellow. I suppose you could call it canary yellow.”
“Do you remember the make or model?”
“I wouldn’t know the difference. It was old.”
“Was it rusted? Patched? Dented?”
“Oh, no. I didn’t mean old that way. I meant it must have been from the fifties. It was one of those big, bulky sedans, like the kind that used to be used for taxis.”
That certainly narrowed things down. The lead might not pan out, but at least it gave him a starting point. Hank smiled. “Thank you, ma’am. You’ve been a lot of help. If you remember anything else, please give me a call.”
She put her hand on his arm. “Well, actually, there is something else I noticed after lunch that same day, while I was trimming the hedge....”
* * *
HALF AN HOUR later, Hank was climbing the steps to the Goodfellows’ house when he had a flash of déjà vu. The porch light was shaped like a lantern, a popular design, and the screen door was plain, white-enameled aluminum, variations of which he’d already seen in this neighborhood. The inside door was varnished wood and had been left open to allow the evening breeze to help cool the interior, which wasn’t unusual since most people around here would prefer to save the cost of running an air conditioner and let nature do the work. Yet the feeling of familiarity he was experiencing didn’t arise from what he saw, it came from what he felt.
He’d undergone the same swooping sensation in his stomach when he’d been a teenager and had called on Amelia at her parents’ house. Their front door had been painted forest-green, and the screen door had been a relic from the sixties, decorated with the silhouette of a flamingo. Rather than a square, cement stoop like the one he stood on here, their house had had a veranda along the front that had been large enough for a swing. Their porch light had been a high-wattage bulb in a glass globe, which had illuminated that swing—and anyone on it—like a spotlight, much to the disappointment of a teenage boy hoping to steal a few extra good-night kisses.
That place had been several miles from here, on the east side of the Ganaraska River that bisected the town. The neighborhood was much older than this one and had developed naturally, with no subdivision master plan. As a result, modest clapboard houses like the one where Amelia’s family had lived were mixed in haphazardly with stately, three-story, brick century homes like his father’s. It had taken Hank less than ten minutes to walk to Amelia’s. Sometimes he would take the junker he’d fixed up in shop class. Amelia had claimed she’d been able to hear it coming a block away, so she’d often be halfway down the walk by the time he’d pulled up. It wouldn’t have occurred to her to hide her eagerness to see him any more than he would have tried to hide his own.
But that was then, and this was now. He took a few deep breaths to calm his pulse, then pressed the doorbell.
Chimes sounded inside the house, followed by high-pitched yapping and the scrabbling of nails on hardwood. A small black mop of a dog skidded to a halt at the screen door. Barred from going farther, it spun in place and yapped faster.
Amelia appeared behind it, carrying a toddler on one hip. The boy was dressed in short pajamas and clutched a tattered yellow