Claire Ballard stared at the envelope in her lap and touched the crisp edges that had yellowed with age. Even the rough handwriting that spelled her name had faded to a milky blue. When had her father written it? Probably not long after he abandoned their family in Scotland for the United States fifteen years ago. For a treasure hunt of all things. And now he was dead.

In the Oregon hotel lobby, the lawyer sitting in the armchair opposite hers waved a hand at the envelope he’d traveled halfway across the U.S. to deliver. “Why don't you open it?” Peabody Henry asked. “Your father thought it important for you to know—“

“I don’t care what my father thought,” Claire said, her gaze still glued to the letter. His words would just be lies anyway.

Mr. Henry lifted a burly grey eyebrow and nodded. “Sure. No problem.” But he didn’t look like he meant it. He scowled and heaved a sigh that would have cracked the rib of a smaller man. The guy was tall and broad-shouldered, his face weathered like a map of more years on the road than she’d lived her entire life. “You take your time, dear,” he said. “I’m in no hurry.”

She flapped the letter against her palm. Damn her curiosity, but she had to ask. “What does it say?”

The lawyer shifted in his chair, causing the naugahyde to creak. He leaned forward, thick elbows on even thicker knees, and pinned her with a serious stare. “It’s okay to ask me questions about your father.”

Claire pushed her back against the cushion behind her, increasing the distance between them. She glanced down at his over-sized feet and noticed one of his laces was untied. “Thanks, but I don’t have any questions.” Or she wished she didn't. Barely twelve years old when he left, she'd never stopped wondering what had become of him. And whether or not he was okay.

“I was more than your dad’s lawyer, you know,” Henry confided. “I was his best friend.”

She nodded. It was easy to see how this gentle giant might befriend almost anyone, even her deadbeat dad. Henry spoke soft and deep, his kind eyes turning up at the corners when he smiled. Dressed in wrinkled khaki pants, an untucked flannel shirt and wearing an old pair of suede hiking boots, the guy looked more like a homeless transient than a lawyer. At least he was clean. He smelled like juniper trees.

He cleared his throat and slid a manila folder from a scuffed leather portfolio. “I have papers for you to sign.”

She frowned. “Dad's life insurance papers?”

“Mm. I’ve already transferred the funds to your Bank of the Cascades account, but you’ll want to move them into something more high yield. That’s far too much money to keep in a checking account.”

Staring at his untied shoe, she said, “The money should have gone to my mother.”

Henry slipped a pen from his breast pocket and offered it to her. “Your father knew you’d take care of her. And your sister.”

Claire tightened her grip on the letter and felt the paper tear. “A bit late for that.”

“Neither of us knew about the accident.”

She shrugged. “Nothing can be done for Celeste, but my mom’s still breathing.” Not that breathing always meant living, at least not in her mother’s case. After the car hit the median and rolled, her mother’s injuries had left her in a coma and left her sister without a pulse. The pickled state of Mom’s inebriated brain might have been the reason for the wreck in the first place. Or the leaky brake lines. Whichever, the result was the same, and two months later nothing had changed.

Why the hell wouldn’t he tie his shoe? She gestured toward his feet. “Mr. Henry, your
shoe –“

“I told you to call me Peabody.” He smiled that kind-uncle smile again and didn’t even look at his shoe. “She’s comfortable? Your mother?”

“As comfortable as anyone unconscious could be. She’s in a nursing home.”
“The money from Ian's policy should take care of all her medical needs from now on.”

Claire didn’t hide her sigh of relief. She’d taken out a loan with the trailer as collateral to help pay for her mother’s care. Selling it was the next step, but then where would she live?

Henry noticed the change in her expression and his smile turned rueful.
“Money doesn’t solve everything,” she said, her tone biting, but she didn’t care. Peabody Henry wasn’t her friend. He was some vagabond lawyer who’d taken up with her dad fifteen years earlier to traipse across the U.S. in search of some stupid family treasure. Jewelry. Some kind of pin. Whatever it was, it didn't mean crap to her. Tears burned her eyes as she glared at Mr. Henry, and he jumped when she launched herself from her chair to crouch at his feet.

“What are you doing?”

“Hold still.” She grabbed the ends of his shoelaces. “This is driving me nuts.” Once his shoes were tied, the knots so tight he’d need scissors to get them undone, Claire returned to her chair. “I signed your papers. Are we done?”
He sighed again, but this time he sounded more relieved than sympathetic. She heard the jingle of his hotel key as he checked his watch. “One last thing. I have a package for you.”

For Pete’s sake. Now there were gifts? Anything to ease Dad’s guilt. Whatever it was would go in the Deschutes River the moment she got close enough to toss it in.

Mr. Henry withdrew a box wrapped in plain brown paper and handed it to her. “I’d really like to see you open this one,” he said. “It’s what your father came all the way from Scotland to find.”

Her face felt suddenly hot. This was it. She shook the box. “Is it that pin thing?”
“That pin thing may have cost your father his life.” Mr. Henry’s eyebrows bunched in a scowl. “He went to the hospital with food poisoning the same night he told me to give you this.”

“Food poisoning isn’t criminal, it’s accidental.

“I’m not so sure it was an accident."

“Are you saying–-?“

“Claire,” he said, reaching out to take her hand. “Since the first day I met your father, he told me that when I saw you I was to warn you about the Coynes.”
“He wanted you to warn me about money?”

Henry shook his head. “No. The name Coyne, as in the family you knew while growing up in Selkirk.”

Claire still wasn't over being homesick for Scotland. She’d loved living there as a child. But Mom was from Oregon, which is why they had moved here after her father ran off. As for the Coynes, there had been several of the brats in her Selkirk neighborhood, all boys and none of them very nice. Well, one wasn’t too awful. Tall and clumsy, orange hair, scary pale, bad skin, and about five years older than she. Leland? Latham? Damn, she couldn’t remember.

“According to your father, those people are bad news.”

“That was a long time ago, Mr. Henry. They were neighborhood bullies, for heaven's sake. My village was loaded with them, and so is every town here in the U.S. Bullies are just cowards in wolf's clothing."

He shook his head. “Stubborn. Just like your old man told me you’d be. And he was just as bad.”

It irked her to think she was anything at all like her father. She was nothing like him. For one thing, she would never abandon her family to go hunt down some enigmatic piece of jewelry in America. It was absurd. And probably a lie. She knew the real reason her father had left was because of Claire's handicap and she’d never forgive him for turning his back on his Down's Syndrome child.
Henry’s eyes pleaded with her. “If you won't open his letter, at least open the box.”

She blew air through her nostrils. “Fine. But only because you’ve been so nice. I have to tell you, though, that I don't care much for jewelry. Whatever's in here means nothing to me.”

His gaze shifted as he took in her drab sweater and faded blue jeans. She wore no rings, no bracelet, no necklace, not even a watch. Her cell phone worked well enough to tell time. As for make-up, what was the point? That liquid foundation stuff suffocated her skin. She had no opinion about her hair. It just was. Long and red as mahogany, she always kept it in a single French braid that followed the line of her spine to her tailbone. She was plain and she knew it.

She tore the brown wrapper from the box. “You think I’m homely.”


continued . . .