Chapter Eighteen
Own Recognizance
Even though every step added more cement to her legs and more molasses to the front walk, it only made sense for Brooke to go and question Ames.
Tuesday was coming soon, and if Dane had actually walloped the guy there was no chance Ames would view him as anything but hostile.
Hostility had definitely been coming off Dane in waves, but there was no way Ames had planted that fake bomb last night. Nuh-uh. But he had been closer to old LaBarge than anyone else Brooke knew, and Ames might know something.
Much as her stomach was not up for the acrobatics of visiting a guy with whom her last conversation had been about spending the rest of forever together, Tuesday’s hearing required it.
Clearly, Ames’s reappearance had been the bit of information Dane had been harboring. He’d tried to tell her in the truck last night, but he probably hadn’t known how to drop the bomb. Speaking of bombs.
But also speaking of bombs, Ames did not leave that one in her house.
Without any other leads, she first tried the brick townhouse Ames rented when he’d lived in Maddox the year before.
Irritation with Dane cropped up over and over, though, as she kept putting one sandal in front of the other up the petunia-lined walk. How could he think Ames planted a fake bomb in her house? That he was there as some kind of spy for the baseball case on Sarge LaBarge’s behalf?
Come on.
Dane had to be wrong. Right?
She raised her hand to ring the bell. It hovered a moment as the hot summer air clogged her lungs. What exactly was she going to say to him?
Before she could come up with all the awkward options, the door swung open behind the screen door. “Oh.” Brilliant opening, Brooke.
Here came the internal gymnastics— mostly tying all her intestines in a complete knot, intertwined with her aorta and her windpipe.
“Brooke? I was just going to the police station to see if they had found you, and whether you were okay.” In the daylight Ames looked older, but the first year as a doctor would do that to anyone— the way hospitals ran them ragged, exhausting them to within an inch of their lives. It probably gave the doctors empathy for the nearly dead people they were treating.
Otherwise he looked the same. Same golden Ames.
“Uh, I’m fine.” Other than her knees turning to liquid and her throat closing over. Totally fine.
Ames’s shoulders drooped. “Whew. I mean, bomb threats! What’s going on?”
So he didn’t know? That fact dislodged some of the knotting inside her. She had a job to do, and she could pursue the fact that the bomb seemed to surprise him.
“I’m not sure. It seems like someone doesn’t want Left Field to open.” Brooke watched closely to gauge his reaction, but it seemed so open and sincere.
“I saw your aunt Ruth. She’s excited about the place. She should be. It’s great. And you can show off your grandfather’s baseball collection. I mean, if he hadn’t chartered the first official Little League program in Maddox, my life as a kid would have stunk. I lived for that stuff, you know?” He was talking like things hadn’t altered between them, like she had no reason to wish he would spontaneously combust.
“What are you doing here, Ames?” It came blurting out before she could soften it.
“At my house?”
“You know what I mean. In Maddox. Lurking at my apartment near midnight. Reinserting yourself into my world. You have a wife. You married into the wealthiest, most powerful family in the Chesapeake Bay region. Quit messing with that. Go away.”
Ames’s face fell. “You want me to leave?” He drew back into the house a little.
Brooke didn’t know. “I’m going to trial against your father-in-law in three days.” It was Saturday today, if she could keep these days straight, considering the craziness of them.
“He’s not my father-in-law.”
“You married his daughter. That’s how those things work.”
Ames shook his head. “It ended. A year to the day. That was the deal.”
“Deal?” If only she could have given him some sort of emotional MRI to see what he truly meant. “What are you talking about?”
Ames opened his mouth to answer.
Brooke cut him off. “Never mind. I need to focus right now.” She shifted gears, away from potential personal anguish and back to the pressure of her current reality.
“There’s a trial that can make or break my future. I put everything I have into Left Field— even the life insurance money from my parents’ accident. It’s all tied up in this museum.” Her voice got a hitch in it when she realized she still had to pay back Mr. Earnshaw and that this thing was a doomed venture. “If the judge doesn’t rule in my favor on Tuesday, my dear sweet aunt, who took me in after my parents died, will have no future. She’s put everything into this museum, too. I have everything to lose.”
She hadn’t meant to be so candid, or so dramatic. But seeing him had triggered a waterfall of words.
Ames stared at the cement stoop. “You don’t have to tell me about Sarge LaBarge or his ruthlessness.”
Brooke’s head popped up. She blinked a few times.
Ames came out onto the step beside her, standing far too close. Brooke should have stepped back, put a healthier distance between them.
“What do you know about him?” Brooke crossed her arms.
Ames pushed around her, went down the steps and then turned. Instead of walking off, he took a seat on the top step of his small porch. Potted geraniums flanked the front door, and the powdery floral scent wafted on a breeze.
He took out a tin of mints from his shirt pocket. He offered her one. She refused.
“Faro LaBarge.” He shook his head slowly. “Piece of work.” He patted the step beside him. There wasn’t really room for her to sit, but it seemed like he was insisting, so she perched on the corner of the stoop. The cold of the concrete seeped through her jeans into her skin.
Her arsenal of probing questions was small. “I was thinking of something that rhymes with work.”
“Yeah, jerk. For sure.” Ames put his mints away. “But I know stuff. For one, he’s never been sergeant of anything— except at military school, where he got sent for being a belligerent teenager.” Ames scoffed. “Drill sergeant for a day. The nickname stuck because of the rhyme.” He made eye contact with her and said, “Speaking of rhymes.”
She broke the eye contact, which was prickly, not warm. Dane might be right about him. She couldn’t tell. Ames definitely had a motive, but whether it was to harm her or to harm LaBarge, she couldn’t tell.
“Why is he doing this to Aunt Ruth?” Or to Brooke, for that matter? “Are you here so you can warn me?”
He looked down at her. “I’m here for a lot of reasons, Brooke.”
When his eyes fell on hers this time, they snagged against something deep inside her. A barb. “I only want to hear the reasons relevant to Tuesday for now.” Where had for now come from?
Ames frowned. “Right. Well, maybe I ought to talk with your lawyer, then. Because I have a lot of information relevant to your Tuesday.”
__________
“But Dane,” Brooke said, her eyes pleading with him, “I honestly think it’s worth the risk.” She’d told him about LaBarge’s false identity as a sergeant. “He says he knows more, but he wants to tell my lawyer.”
The last person Dane Rockwell wanted to depend on for information to win Brooke’s court case was Ames Crosby. Especially when Dane himself was abandoning her at the last second.
He should tell her. He had to tell her. Soon.
“You’re not seeing how unwise this is,” he said instead.
“You’re not seeing how little time we have.”
Oh, yeah, he was. From inside his brain came the constant ticking of two separate doomsday timers set a half-hour apart.
“Look, let’s hear him out.” She looked up into his eyes, and his will softened. As always. “If it’s a dead end, that’s all we can do. But just because he’s Ames Crosby doesn’t mean we should write him off as a potential testimony against LaBarge.”
Even though Dane would rather have had mushy apples lobbed at his head, he tucked in his shirttail and headed over to the coffee shop a few doors down from Left Field, where Brooke insisted he come and meet up with Crosby.
The three of them sat at a table near the window.
“So?” Dane planned on monosyllabic communication with Dr. Jackwagon as much as possible. He resisted the urge to ask, What’s in it for you, bucko?
“So,” Ames said, shifting in his seat. “So I recognize you. We’ve met.” Ames rubbed his jaw. Yeah, his jaw would remember. Ames released a heavy sigh that said he still knew he deserved the left hook.
“Tuesday is court.” Dane gave a curt nod to signal Ames to spill it. They didn’t have all day.
“He knows something about Faro LaBarge. How he operates. How he thinks.” Brooke gave an encouraging nod to both of them.
A psych eval? That wasn’t what Dane expected. He’d thought this would be some kind of he-yells-at-his-kids tell-all. Maybe not.
To Dane, Brooke cast her pleading eyes. How could he refuse that?
“Go on.” Dane nodded, not ready to start taking notes yet. Crosby’d better say something worth hearing first.
Crosby looked over at Brooke. His eyes lingered on her too long, and the old itch to punch the guy came bubbling back up in Dane’s gut. He tamped it down.
“He’s got a pattern,” Crosby began. “It’s his usual method of operation. Four things.”
“Four, huh?” Dane still didn’t get out his pen.
“First, character assassination. Simultaneously he pulls out the physical harm card. Meanwhile, he’ll work up a feasible lie. And finally, he’ll finagle a way to get exactly what he wants, even if it’s incrementally. He doesn’t stop. He doesn’t care who he hurts. He gets what he wants. Period.” The doctor spat the last word.
Dane processed Crosby’s list of four. Some of them lined up with what they’d already seen: the threat of physical harm— assuming LaBarge was behind the bomb threat. Then there was the other threat, when LaBarge came drunk to Brooke’s door last week. That had been a different type of threat. What had he said? He knew she was a forger and intended to prove it? That gelled with Crosby’s theory about character assassination.
As for finagling a way to get what he wanted, LaBarge didn’t have physical custody of the Called Shot Ball yet, but he’d already wrenched it out of Brooke’s hands. So, yeah. Incremental steps toward getting his way.
That left the feasible lie.
Dane’s throat got tight. If LaBarge brought lies to court about Brooke, he’d—
“That’s his MO.” Ames pushed his coffee cup aside. “Been there, been the victim of that.”
“Save it.” Dane refused to let any Ames Crosby sob story sidetrack him, even for a second. “Right now it’s Brooke we’re discussing.”
Ames frowned, but assented.
“So.” Dane ticked off the pieces of Crosby’s theory. “Slander, with a threat of physical harm. A twisted truth about the situation, and then steamroller toward his goal. Got it.” Dane’s gut twisted. If LaBarge really showed up Tuesday with this pickup-load of manure to dump on the court, Brooke could get seriously hurt. He had to stop this guy. Cold.
“You were in the guy’s family for a year.” Dane tried to keep the scoffing out of his voice, but he didn’t succeed. He needed to play nice, though. Crosby would have inside information beyond just the ways LaBarge went on the attack. “You lived there, right? Did LaBarge have any baseball collecting habits?”
Crosby rolled his eyes. “Have you ever heard the definition of ‘obsession?’” Before he could grace them with the Merriam-Webster treatment on that word, his phone went off. An alarm.
“I’m getting called in.” He looked at the screen, and then stood to go. “They still have me on rotations at Naughton until my clinic opens.” Crosby turned and met Brooke’s eyes. “I’m going to need nurses on my staff at the urgent care. I know it’s not the same as a hospital, but the hours will be good, and—”
Disgust roiled inside Dane’s gut. “You’ve got a patient in need.” How dare he offer Brooke a job— after all that had happened?
Ames smirked, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and turned to leave.
“Wait up a second, Crosby.” Dane had to know one more thing. “All this information you’re splashing out at us. Are you willing to testify to it? In court?”
Ames blinked a few times. “I’m thinking of this as deep background you’d need. You can find others to corroborate it.” Crosby left.
Dane watched Brooke watch Ames leave, but her face was a stone. Did she still care about him? He couldn’t read anything there.
Worse, if Brooke somehow convinced Crosby to testify on the stand, his testimony could be key. And he’d be the hero of the court case, while Dane was downstairs getting disbarred.
He had to tell her. He had to tell her now about the scheduling conflict.
“What else did Crosby know about LaBarge and baseball?” Brooke said as her phone rang, cutting through the thick air. “He had something else. Maybe something big.”
Yeah, like a lie. Or a free pass to the primrose path, just for Brooke.
She answered her phone. It wasn’t on speaker, but Dane sat close enough to hear the woman’s voice on the other end.
“Is this Brooke? Brooke Chadwick?”
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“Oh, good. We met last week, and you were as sweet as honey, but I somehow didn’t catch your name, and in fact, I didn’t realize until I saw your picture on the news that it was really you, Nurse Brooke.”
Dane finally put it together. It was that neighbor lady of Harvey Jarman’s. The one with no handwriting samples.
“You might not remember me, but this is Twyla Tyler. I’d like to speak to you, if you have time. Can you come today? I mean, right now?”
__________
Brooke’s knee bounced the whole way to Naughton. And Dane was even more taciturn toward her than he’d even been when he’d been talking to Ames, which might have felt like swimming in a lake of acid, if she had to come up with a simile. Something must have happened last night when he left to go see Tweed, but he wasn’t telling her, and now didn’t seem like the moment to ask.
A gap widened between them, even greater than when she’d told him they couldn’t kiss anymore until after this court case ended.
Bringing Ames in might have been a mistake. She hated that she’d had to. But what other character witness did they have? Not that he was willing to testify, but it did give them something to go on. Dane would figure that out, right?
Thank goodness he was going to be at her side on Tuesday. She’d never make it through without him. Even if he wasn’t her official lawyer, he’d be in the courtroom, and she could benefit from his calm reassurance during the hearing.
Or he might just throw caution to the wind and represent her. When she’d begged him to think of his career, he’d acted like he’d handle things, and for her not to be concerned.
But she was. She really owed him for what he was putting on the line for her, even by driving to see Mrs. Tyler.
How she could repay him, she didn’t know. The thing she’d like most to offer— her love— she still didn’t know if he’d want. Not long term. Not like she wanted.
A sidelong glance at him showed his dimple had flattened. If only she could kiss it back into existence. The no-kissing mandate was making this whole thing worse.
This whole thing was tying her in knots again.
For all the reasons, Tuesday afternoon couldn’t come soon enough.
Twenty minutes later, they pulled up in front of Mrs. Tyler’s house. It had an elaborate flower garden, and every inch of it bloomed with spring color. What Harvey’s yard had lacked, Mrs. Tyler’s had in abundance.
“Yes. I’m glad I found you.” Mrs. Tyler removed her gardening gloves and shook Brooke’s hand with a rough, work-worn hand. “I don’t know why I didn’t recognize you when you came before. It seems like my soul should have known yours instinctively. It wasn’t until I saw the news story last night that the light bulb came on. And I mean light bulb like the stadium kind— big halogens you need sunglasses to glance at.”
Brooke wasn’t grasping her meaning, but Mrs. Tyler led them around the back of her house to a gazebo draped with climbing clematis vines and dotted with purple and white striped flowers. Brooke and Dane took a seat on the deck chairs as Mrs. Tyler directed.
“News story?” Brooke asked.
“Oh, you know. About the bomb threat at your house, museum, whatever. I was so worried once I realized it was you.” Twyla Tyler waved a hand at her. “But you. You’re Brooke Chadwick.”
With a nervous grin, Brooke glanced at Dane, who gave a shrug of confusion. “I didn’t realize there had been a story about the bomb threat. No harm was done.”
“Well, that’s a massive relief. If you’d exploded I wouldn’t have been able to thank you.”
Now Brooke was really lost. Mrs. Tyler could see this, so she passed over a tall glass of lemonade and said, “It was the baseball museum that finally tipped me off. And your name. You didn’t introduce yourself when you came before. But I saw your photo in the news story and I put it together.”
“Put what together?”
“That you’re Nurse Brooke. You took care of Little O. You’re the one who told him the baseball stories, the one who made him love the Called Shot story.”
“Little O?” Brooke racked her brain to remember a specific child.
“Oscar. Oscar Rutledge.”
“Oscar!” Brooke caught her breath. “You’re his grandmother?” Her heart flooded with memories and warmth and sadness all at once. “I loved him. What a special kid.” Oscar was not a kid she’d ever forget. In fact, she liked one of her current patients, Presley, just because he reminded Brooke of Oscar Rutledge.
“Darn straight. That kid won everybody’s hearts. Even Harvey Jarman’s— but not until he was here visiting us between some of his rounds of treatments and he told Mr. Jarman about the Called Shot.” Mrs. Tyler smiled, her eyes glossing up with nostalgia. “Oscar gave a play-by-play of the legendary moment so vivid it was almost like he’d been there himself. The story forged a bond between the two of them.”
Brooke’s eyes tingled with tears. She had to sniff a little. “Good stories can erase the years between people.”
“Exactly.” Mrs. Tyler reached over and rested a hand on Brooke’s on the table. “You gave them that. You’re the nurse, the Nurse Brooke, who told Oscar that story.”
All she could do was nod.
Dane cleared his throat. “We’d wondered how Brooke was possibly connected to Harvey Jarman. She’d never heard of him before the reading of the will.”
“Oh, the will.” Mrs. Tyler pulled back. “Jarman didn’t have children, but he loved Oscar. When Little O looked like he might get better, Mr. Jarman confided in me his intention to write Oscar into his will as recipient of the Called Shot Ball. Up to then, I had no idea Harvey even had it. He kept it a big secret, didn’t want reporters snooping around or museums or collectors hounding him. He’d gotten enough of that a few years back. A relative leaked that the ball existed, and suddenly Jarman was getting pressured by a local shyster to leave it to him.”
“Shyster?”
“You know, that politician. The one with the fat red lip.” Mrs. Tyler’s own lip curled in disgust.
LaBarge. No question. Brooke soured at the thought of LaBarge harassing Jarman. Even if she’d never met the guy, she felt protective over him. Nobody should be stuck in LaBarge’s crosshairs.
“So he kept its existence under wraps,” Dane said.
“He learned his lesson— the hard way, by getting cajoled into doing something distasteful.” Mrs. Tyler looked like she genuinely pitied his situation, and Brooke knew how LaBarge could pressure someone. He wasn’t afraid to put the screws to people.
“Like leaving the ball to, er, a politician?” Brooke asked.
“Exactly. But it never set well with him that the ball would go to someone like that, and when Jarman took ill, he asked me if I knew where Little O had heard the story. Little O was gone by then, but I knew it was Nurse Brooke. He had me call up the Maddox General hospital and find out your full name, which was no small task, considering privacy laws and such. Believe me.”
Blinking, Brooke finally spoke. “So it was you. You gave my name to Jarman.”
“Because you were the reason Jarman loved Little O. It only seemed fitting that he leave the ball to someone who loved the Called Shot story enough to teach it to a young boy.”
Dane tugged on Brooke’s sleeve. He leaned in, and his hot breath caressed her ear. It sent a shiver up her neck. “We need her. This is your best shot at a disinterested character witness.”
Someone not related to her, right. She gave Dane a nod of the go-ahead.
At this, Dane sat forward. “Mrs. Tyler, what are you doing Tuesday at four o’clock?”