Jill Elizabeth Nelson Read Online Free Page A

figure caught her eye, and she stared. A person, yes, but limp and still on a bench. The head hung low, face covered by what looked like a dark shroud. The figure’s shoulders drooped, arms flopped to the sides, as if some life-size rag doll had been flung onto the bench.
    Swallowing a sour taste, Nicole eased out of her car and shut the door. The sound drew no movement from the hunched form on the bench. Was the person all right? Didthey need help? Nicole’s legs carried her without conscious command toward the garden. Breath labored in and out of tight lungs. She prayed she wasn’t about to discover another dead body.
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    Rich held his expression deadpan. “Do you recall what your boy was wearing when he disappeared?”
    A blank stare answered him. “Can’t say that I do.” Simon pursed his lips.
    Rich nodded and made a notation. Of course, a guy not remembering what someone was wearing didn’t strike him as too surprising.
    â€œHow about if any object went missing with him?” Rich held his pen poised.
    The man’s forehead wound into a knot of wrinkles. “I seem to remember something about an item, but can’t recall what it was.” He polished off his drink then surged to his feet and stalked toward the wet bar. “Can I get you anything?”
    â€œSorry. I’m on duty.”
    Simon snickered. “You wouldn’t drink with me anyway.”
    Rich let silence speak for him.
    Simon lifted a decanter and brown liquid glugged into the snifter. “We paid the ransom, and do you know what we got in return?” A muscle twitched in his cheek. “Bubkes!” Simon charged toward the desk, flesh a mottled red. “When a man sinks his whole world into an heir, he ought to get him back, don’t you think?”
    Rich held himself motionless as Simon ground to a halt inches from his position. The man was almost as tall as Rich, but all bone and sinew, as if his almost eighty years of life had drained the juices from him.
    â€œAn heir to carry on the name may not mean much to most people.”
    Rich’s skin tightened. Simon may as well have said peons instead of people. No wonder this whole family set his teeth on edge.
    â€œBut the Ellings must have a namesake!” Simon’s hiss blew a waft of booze-breath, and Rich took a step back.
    The words sounded like a litany Simon rehearsed often in his head, probably passed down from male heir to male heir. Rich made a note on his pad. He hated to break it to the guy, but there weren’t any namesakes running around this mausoleum. Nicole Keller may have unearthed the last of the line in her grandparents’ backyard.
    Who put the child there—and why—was Rich’s business to find out, and Simon’s reaction sounded…off. He didn’t hear fatherly grief in this man’s tone. More like an investor’s outrage at a swindle. He’d known Simon was a hard man, but this hard?
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    Nicole’s steps slowed as she neared the hunched figure who sat on a wooden bench beneath the shade of a maple tree. Nicole stopped on the weed-grown remnants of a stone path a few feet away and held her breath. The ample figure indicated that the person was female. She wore a vintage 1950s dress with a wide Peter Pan collar and a full, swing skirt. Nicole wouldn’t be surprised if there was a crinoline beneath it. Only one person in town dressed as if they’d never left the era of saddle shoes—Hannah Breyer, Fern Elling’s sister. And thank goodness, the woman’s chest moved up and down with even breaths. Hannah was asleep, not dead, and the shroud over her face was merely a dark scarf flopped forward in her sleep.
    Nicole slowly exhaled. She’d leave Hannah to her nap.Pivoting, Nicole’s shoes scraped against the dirt coating the paving stones, and a breath stuttered behind her.
    â€œWhat?… Oh, my. Who are you?”
    Heart sinking, Nicole