CHAPTER ONE
Jake Conway stepped out of Rick's Bakery and nearly dropped his French vanilla cappuccino on his new cross-trainers. He squeezed the donut in the waxed paper bag in his other hand, felt the chocolate cream gush, and didn't care.
Mouth dropping open, he watched the girl strolling down the sidewalk toward him. She wore a simple, flowery dress and needed a straw hat with a wide, floppy brim and long, trailing ribbons. Her smile made the cloudless Sunday morning even brighter. Tangled, blue-black curls hung around her oval face, nearly to her waist. Her dark brown eyes gleamed and flicked in his direction before turning to the bakery door.
"Good morning." Her voice was little more than a whisper.
Jake nodded, struck dumb, and watched her pull the door open. He followed her without thinking as she sauntered up to the counter.
"Denny?" she called, and leaned against the half-empty display cabinet.
"Hi, Bailey," the tiny, round, red-faced counter woman growled. Her smile made the menacing sound friendly. The first time he heard that voice, Jake thought of the Three Bears. That was only two days ago, when he arrived in Tabor to start his new job. Denny came out of the back room carrying four large cake boxes, all taped closed and held together with cotton string.
"Got anything good for us today?" Bailey asked. Her laughter sounded like a fountain, as she reached over the counter to take the boxes.
"You know all this dough and sugar and fat isn't good for the kiddies." Denny winked at her.
"They run it off in no time." She turned away from the counter. "Besides, Mr. Rick wouldn't use anything--" She yelped as she knocked the paper cup of hot coffee from Jake's hand.
The boxes almost followed, but Jake sacrificed his squashed donut to catch the boxes. They were heavy.
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Bailey yanked a handful from the napkin dispenser and dropped to her knees to mop up the steaming brown puddle from the green tile floor.
"It's okay." He slid the heavy boxes onto the counter and went to his knees facing her. He almost knelt in the puddle in his effort to snatch some of the napkins and help her. "I shouldn't have been stalking you."
That stopped her. She stared, her eyes wide. Then she blushed and a bubbling chuckle escaped her. She let him take some napkins.
"If you don't stop making goo-goo eyes at that boy, Bailey Malone, you're going to be late," Denny announced. She waddled out from behind the counter with a mop in one hand, dragging a little wheeled bucket behind her.
"I'm not late. Not by a long shot." Bailey gave the floor one more swipe and leaped to her feet. Jake loved the way her curls bounced and her dress swirled around her knees. "Don't tell me you're starting to believe all the stories Jayne is telling about me," she added, sticking her tongue out at Denny.
"Anybody who'd believe a word that comes out of her mouth ... ah, forget it. Get yourself going before you're late," Denny growled, and ruined the effect by laughing.
"Let me help with that." Jake jumped up, reaching for the boxes. His head hit Bailey's shoulder, knocking her backwards so she almost tripped over the bucket.
Bailey sputtered laughter and staggered sideways to come to rest against the counter. Denny shook her head, with her mouth a flat line of disapproval, but laughter in her eyes. Jake decided to make Rick's Bakery a regular stop every morning, just because of Denny. She reminded him of his grandmother and Aunt Ruth.
"Maybe I should get out of your way." He stepped back and grinned, not caring that he just wasted three dollars and would have to re-order his breakfast.
"Thanks. Denny, put Mr.--" Bailey scooped up the boxes and gave him an inquiring look.
"Jake. Jake Conway."
"Put Mr. Conway's coffee on my tab."
"You don't have to do that."
"Oh, yes I do." She winked at him and stepped around the bucket to hurry to the door. She turned, bumped it open with her hip and slid outside. "See you tomorrow, Denny! Nice bumping into you, Mr. Conway," she added with a chuckle as the door jangled closed, brass cowbells drowning out the last of his name. A moment later, she scurried past the window on the left, heading up Center Street.
"Wow," he breathed.
"That girl should be skinnier than a blade of grass with all the running around she does," Denny commented as she plumped the replacement donut down on the counter. "Hey, where are you going?"
"Later." He yanked the door open and darted out onto the deserted sidewalk, then turned left to look up the incline of Center Street. Rick's Bakery sat on the corner of Main and Center.
A flash of blue caught his eye. He broke into a run, up the block to the curve in the road where the Tabor Post Office sat like a lighthouse on a hill. The flicker of Bailey's blue dress vanished before he was halfway up and she turned left. Jake puffed as he reached the Post Office and promised himself he would wear his cross-trainers the entire time he was in Tabor. Especially if he had to run to keep up with chance-met, pretty young women with delightful laughs.
Where had Bailey gone? He hurried down the street and looked to the right and left every time he came to a driveway. She couldn't have gone far on foot. Although Tabor was the kind of small, cozy, safe college town where people could navigate on foot, he couldn't imagine everyone did. Mayberry didn't exist anymore. Especially not thirty miles from Downtown Cleveland. It was just too much to hope for. Jake had given up on miracles four years ago, when Gram and Aunt Ruth died in that stupid accident.
There! Jake grinned, turned his steps down the blacktop driveway and kept his eye on the doorway where he had seen Bailey's blue dress vanish. Then he glanced at the sprawling building surrounded by cars, with playground equipment tucked in one corner of the lot.
A church.
Tabor Christian Church, according to the brick-encased, lighted sign.
No one in the world smiled like Bailey Malone if they were headed to church. It violated all the laws of nature.
Without intending to, Jake wandered down the driveway between the sprawling sandstone church and the age-blackened, ivy-wreathed building next to it. He found himself in a long parking lot, staring at the church. The different colors of brick and sandstone, the differing styles of construction, gave evidence of several building programs that had expanded the church over the years.
Churches didn't grow. They didn't need room, because the younger generations stopped attending when their parents or grandparents died. Churches stayed small and eventually fall apart due to neglect. Or tore themselves apart with schisms and lawsuits.
Jake permitted a frosty smile at that thought, even as a twist of guilt in his gut made him wish he had taken a bite of his abandoned donut.
He saw green-painted wooden benches in a long row between the parking lot and the landscaping ringing the church. Maybe he could just sit here to wait and Bailey would magically appear without him looking suspicious?
Then he felt like someone had hit him right under his ribs, knocking the air from his lungs. Had that woman at Rick's Bakery called her Bailey Malone? As in, the co-owner of SafetyNet? As in, one of the suspects in the investigation that had brought him to Tabor?
Something inside him cried out in protest. The fresh, light-hearted girl who had nearly knocked him off his feet couldn't be a liar and cheat. Could she? But she had disappeared into this church, and Jake had bitter personal experience that churches held the cruelest people of all. People who would lie and murder for the sake of money.
"Jake?" The half-familiar voice came from his right, just as Jake settled down for some serious thinking. "Why didn't you tell me you were looking for a church?"
The blood fled Jake's face, and he suspected it fled his brain, too, as he stood to face Carl Avallone, owner of Manchester Industrial, his new employer. The man who had hired him to investigate Bailey Malone and Jayne Carpenter, the owners of SafetyNet, among the five or six suspects responsible for the missing money and supplies. Jake liked the big, graying Italian man who looked like he should be flipping pizzas instead of running an electronic engineering firm. Jake had come to Manchester as a consultant. He was a troubleshooter, finding problems in businesses before they bled dry.
"Honey, this is Jake Conway. He started working for me on Friday," Avallone continued as a tiny, platinum blonde girl joined them on the sidewalk. "Jake, this is my daughter, Gina. You'll be spending a lot of time with her. She knows more about what's going on in the company than I do. Oversees Accounting, works with Chandra in Human Resources, a dozen other jobs that keep the company running smoothly."
Jake nodded and shook hands. He wondered just how much friction he would encounter with Gina when he started digging into what went on in the shadows at Manchester. That would depend on whether Gina even knew her father had hired a troubleshooter.
Right now, Jake knew how a deer felt, trapped in the headlights of an oncoming car, when he let the Avallones herd him up the steps to the back door of the church. Dozens of people milled up and down the long main hallway. At least half of them smiled.
Well, maybe this was a social club for them? Or maybe there was special music at the service this morning? Famous speaker?
To his relief, he noticed a number of people dressed even more casually than he was. Sandals, shorts, blue jeans, T-shirts. Jake relaxed a little when Avallone herded him through the door at the back of the vaulted sanctuary and the usher smiled and welcomed him without flinching.
Maybe this wouldn't be so bad. If he could get hold of some paper, maybe he could make notes during the service about what to do first thing Monday morning. Manchester Industrial wanted to expand, but Avallone had detected discrepancies in inventory and billing, and unexplainable transfers of materials. He wanted the problems uncovered and the possible suspects caught and exposed before he expanded his operations. Jake was good at rooting out suspected problems and uncovering others that no one had detected yet. He had accessed computerized records and had conferred with Avallone on the most likely areas for records to be tampered with. They had come up with a list of names, and now Jake had come to town for more intensive investigating.
Why did Bailey Malone have to be one of those names?
Jake settled down to endure the service. He didn't know whether to pray that there were two Bailey Malones in a town this small, or that he wouldn't run into Bailey again before he left the premises. Or should he ask God that he could meet her again, and prove she was innocent?
It didn't matter what he prayed, if he did, which he didn't anymore. He had proof that prayers did no good.
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