An Honorable Man

So she’d gone for a brisk early-morning walk instead of popping in her customary exercise DVD and skipped her cereal for the specialty omelet at Jimmy’s Diner. She’d even dug through a closet containing mostly pastels and neutral colors and pulled out her lone red top, which she’d paired with a flirty navy skirt a few inches shorter than the ones she usually wore.

“Well, I sure am glad you decided to stop in this morning,” the waitress said. “I’d love to see you here more often.”

“Thanks, Ms. Mar…” Sierra stopped herself, remembering her vow to loosen up. This was someone she’d known for years. “I mean, Ellie.”

“No need to thank me for speaking the truth,” Ellie said. “It does a body good to work less and the soul to eat out more, ’cept next time you should eat at the counter.”

She’d make a note of that, Sierra thought as Ellie went off to wait on another customer. The other solo diners had opted to sit where they could interact. Sierra knew a fair number of the customers, although none of them well, including the tall brunette who reached the exit at the same time she did. Sierra held the door open.

“Thanks.” Sara Brenneman held a foam cup of take-out coffee in each hand. A lawyer who lived and worked in the block adjacent to Sierra’s town house, Sara was dressed in jeans and a windbreaker instead of the smart, stylish business clothes she favored. Her windbreaker, however, was hot-pink. “I was just talking about you this morning.”

Sierra felt her cheeks grow warm despite a temperature that probably hadn’t yet hit sixty. Had Sara been at the Blue Haven last night? Had she seen Sierra leave the bar with Ben Nash? Had she witnessed the kiss?

“I called Annie this morning about festival business and she said you might take her place on the committee,” Sara explained.

Sierra relaxed. “I’m thinking about it.”

“Think fast because we need the help, not to mention Annie says you’d be great at it.” Sara walked quickly and purposefully down the sidewalk even though they were heading more than slightly uphill, past shops and restaurants not yet open for business. On a Saturday morning, the town was slow to wake up. “If you decide to fill in, the meeting’s tomorrow at Quincy Coleman’s house.”

“Really? Quincy Coleman?” Sierra wondered if Annie had purposely neglected to mention who was hosting the meeting. Surely she was aware that the retired banker’s one-sided feud with her late father hadn’t endeared him to the rest of the Whitmore family.

“I was surprised when I found out he was on the committee, too,” Sara said. “He’s been unexpectedly easy to deal with. He seems to be trying to make amends for the past.”

Coleman’s most egregious offense was unfairly holding Michael Donahue, Sara’s fiancé, responsible for the death of his daughter. Taking potshots at Sierra’s father whenever the opportunity presented itself paled in comparison.

“Anyway, I hope to see you at the meeting,” she said. “Oh. And I almost forgot. Annie says you have a friend in Harrisburg who owns a bridal shop. I’d love her business card, if you have one.”

“Does that mean you and Michael have set a date?”

Sara beamed, her entire face lighting up even though the sun was rising at her back. “The last Saturday in June.”

“And you don’t have your dress yet?”

“Now you sound just like Annie,” Sara said in a long-suffering voice. “Two months is plenty of time.”

Not if the dress needed alterations, it wasn’t.

“I’ll be sure to get you that card,” Sierra said.

“Great.” The lawyer left Sierra with a smile, then immediately picked up her pace, no doubt eager to rejoin her fiancé. Sierra wondered if Sara served Michael Donahue coffee in bed and had a pang that she’d passed up the chance to do the same for Ben Nash.

Ben Nash, who was passing through town and who she’d probably never see again.

Before regret could take hold, she focused on the morning ahead. Unlike many other family physicians, she and Ryan didn’t start the morning with hospital rounds. Because of time and distance constraints, it made more sense to use hospitalists—specialists who provided care to patients while they were in the hospital. She let herself into the medical practice through the back entrance and was shrugging into her lab coat when Missy Cromartie rushed down the hall.

“Dr. Sierra, am I glad you’re here!” Missy was short and slight with large eyes that nearly overwhelmed her pretty, elfin face. Her dramatic coloring, black hair and blue eyes set in pale skin, suited her personality. “When I got to work ten minutes ago, a man was waiting outside to see Dr. Ryan. I told him to come back at nine when we opened, but he wanted to come in and wait.”

“You did fine, Missy.” Sierra gentled her voice to calm the excitable receptionist. “It’s okay if he waits inside.”

“You don’t understand.” If possible, Missy’s light-colored eyes grew larger and rounder. Her shoulder-length hair shook along with her head. “He doesn’t have an appointment.”

“I’m sure you can squeeze him in.”

“But he’s not sick! I tried telling him how busy it gets on Saturdays, but he said he’ll wait as long as it takes. I don’t know what to do with him.”

Sierra started to tell Missy to handle the problem the best she could, then thought better of it. That’s what the old Sierra would say. The new Sierra met challenges head-on…if she didn’t count her reluctance to join the festival committee.

“Would you like me to talk to him?” Sierra asked.

“That’d be great!” Missy’s relief was out of proportion to the offer. “Just great!”

Sierra plastered on a professional smile, walked purposefully toward the waiting room and froze. Her heart did a leap worthy of the basketball players she liked to watch on television. The man sitting in the middle of a bank of chairs against the serene backdrop of a blue wall wasn’t just any man.

It was Ben Nash.

“Ben!” she cried.

His eyes lifted from the pages of Newsweek, his face reflecting none of the surprise she felt certain was on her own. Her mind darted in a dozen directions while her heart pounded. She shouldn’t be happy to see him, not when he was nothing more than a passing distraction. Yet she was.

He stood up. “Hello, Sierra.”

He was even better-looking this morning, the cream color of his long-sleeve shirt contrasting with his olive skin, his eyes clear. She’d found out last night they were brown, to match his hair. It still appeared as though he hadn’t shaved in three days, which must be his usual look. She’d never been partial to facial hair on men, but his stubble added to his rugged good looks.

She advanced, trying to slow down her steps. Missy must have heard him wrong. Ben Nash wasn’t waiting to see Sierra’s brother: he was here to see her. She felt her smile break free.

“This is a surprise.” She stemmed the desire to walk into his arms and stopped a few feet shy of him. “I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

“I’m sorry I gave you that impression.”

That was a strange thing to say. Did he honestly believe she’d hold it against him that he’d been secretly planning to seek her out? But how had he found her? “I know I didn’t tell you I was a doctor.”

“You didn’t have to,” he said. “In a town this small, people talk.”

For one of the first times in her life, she was glad gossip was a favorite pastime among the locals in Indigo Springs. Otherwise, she might not have had the pleasure of seeing Ben again. Or the chance to find out where what they’d started last night would lead.

“I won’t get off work until about one o’clock.” She couldn’t ask Ryan to take her patient load. They were far too busy on Saturday mornings for one doctor. “Then I’m completely free for the rest of the day.”

“I might not be. I’m here on business,” he said, something else that didn’t make sense.

“Business?” She cocked her head, regarding him quizzically. “What kind of business?”

“I’m a reporter for the Pittsburgh Tribune.” He cleared his throat, the strong column contracting. “I have reason to believe Dr. Ryan Whitmore can help me with a story.”

Missy hadn’t misunderstood why Ben had showed up in the office this morning.

Sierra had.

The knowledge slammed into her at the same time the front door swung open to admit her brother, who almost never used the back entrance. He stopped his tuneless whistling, ran a hand through his fair head of wind-tousled hair and gave them an eye-crinkling smile. Since Ryan had married Annie in February, he did a lot of smiling.

“Good morning, sis.” A born extrovert, he strode across the room, stretching out a hand to Ben. “Ryan Whitmore. I don’t believe we’ve met.”

Sierra heard Ben’s quick intake of breath before he stood and shook her brother’s hand. “Ben Nash from the Pittsburgh Tribune.”

Sierra choked back her disappointment. “Ben’s here to talk to you.”

“I’m not so sure about that.” Ben was gazing at Ryan with open skepticism. “I was expecting Ryan Whitmore to be a much older man.”

“I was named after our father,” Ryan said. “He died two years ago.”

Ben rubbed the back of his neck as Sierra tried to figure out what was going on. Why had a Pittsburgh reporter come to Indigo Springs to talk to a dead man? And why hadn’t he told her who he was last night?

“What is this about?” Ryan asked before she could form the question.

“I’m following up on a lead that your father might have information about a woman who died in Indigo Springs,” he said.

Yet Ben had failed to tell her any of this the night before. Their “chance” meeting and his invitation to get together suddenly didn’t seem accidental. She crossed her arms over her heaving stomach.

The door swung open again. Art Czerbiak, who always insisted on the first appointment of the morning, shuffled through. What was left of the elderly man’s gray hair was in disarray from the April wind. He muttered a gruff good-morning and took a seat at the far end of the room, then regarded them with interest. Missy was also watching them closely, not even trying to disguise her stares.

“The waiting room isn’t the best place to have this conversation,” Ben said quietly.

“No.” Sierra directed her comment to Ben in an equally soft voice. “The best time would have been last night when you were trying to pull one over on me.”

“That’s not what I did,” Ben protested.

Ryan looked from Sierra to Ben, a puzzled expression on his face, then placed a hand at the small of Sierra’s back. She wondered if he could feel her shaking.

“Ben’s right,” Ryan said. “We should take this to my office.”

Sierra pivoted and led the way, determinedly keeping her head high and her chin up, the pleasure leaking out of a morning that had started with such promise.

This was exactly why she took so few chances.

The ones she did take tended to backfire.

THE WHITMORE SIBLINGS regarded Ben with widely different expressions after the three of them retreated to a generic room at the end of a long hall. Curiosity emanated from Ryan while Sierra’s lips had flatlined and her eyes had gone steely. Her brother leaned against the edge of a sleek, black desk, his legs crossed at the ankles. Sierra remained standing.

“Now tell us what this is all about,” she demanded. The hair she’d worn long and loose the night before was tied back from her face. A shapeless white lab coat covered her clothes. It was as though the soft, vulnerable woman he’d kissed had never existed.

He blamed himself for that.

He’d gone about the early part of his investigation all wrong, rushing off to Indigo Springs before conducting any of the background work that was usually the foundation of his reporting.

“Yesterday morning I received an e-mail suggesting your father might know something about the death of Allison Blaine,” he said.

“Allison Blaine,” Ryan repeated, then shook his head. “The name doesn’t ring a bell.”

“She died quite a while ago.” Ben struggled to keep his voice free of the emotion that threatened to clog his throat. “In a fall from a cliff.”

“I remember something like that.” Sierra’s brows drew together. “She was a tourist, right? It seems like the town organized a search. Didn’t a fisherman find her body?”

“That’s about the extent of it,” Ben said.

“But wasn’t that, like, twenty years ago?” Sierra asked.

The date of the day that had forever altered his life was carved into Ben’s mind like an engraving. The anniversary of his mother’s death would be in three months. “Nineteen.”

“I don’t understand.” Sierra shook her head. “Why are you looking into this now, after all this time? And what does our father have to do with it?”

Ben moistened his lips. “I already told you about the e-mail.”

“You haven’t told us what was in it,” Ryan pointed out.

Do you know what really happened to your mother?

Ben didn’t repeat the question aloud. His personal involvement had already clouded his usually clear judgment. If he could treat this like any other story, he’d have a much better chance of uncovering the truth. That meant not telling the Whitmores or anyone else in town he was Allison Blaine’s son.

“The e-mail asked why Dr. Ryan Whitmore wasn’t questioned about her death.” He relayed the substance of the message, substituting “questioned” for “investigated.”

“What!” Sierra cried. “Why would he be? Wasn’t her death an accident?”

“It was ruled an accident,” Ben clarified. “The e-mail casts doubt on that.”

“Who sent this e-mail?” Sierra asked sharply.

“I don’t know yet. The only fact I have is that it originated from Indigo Springs.” Ben explained how the newspaper’s IT department had tracked the e-mail to one of the public-access computers at the library.

“Let me get this straight,” Sierra said tightly, her posture as rigid as her words. She moved closer to her silent brother, as though to demonstrate they were a united front. “You came here today to accuse our father of God only knows what because of some anonymous e-mail.”

“I’m following a lead,” he said. “I’m not accusing your father of anything.”

“Before you cast stones, you should know he was a very good man with a spotless reputation.” Color infused Sierra’s cheeks even though she didn’t raise her voice. “You know the festival the town is holding next weekend? He’ll be honored for his civic work. The town is renaming the park Whitmore Memorial Park.”

Yet another fact Ben had failed to discover before rushing to Indigo Springs.

“Why are you doing this story at all?” Ryan broke his silence, his tone far less volatile than his sister’s. “Why would a Pittsburgh newspaper be interested in something that happened in Indigo Springs almost twenty years ago?”

“Allison Blaine was from Pittsburgh.” Ben ignored the second, more piercing question. “Look. I didn’t come here to upset anyone. Like I said, I’m exploring a tip. It’s probable your father knew her. Maybe she was one of his patients.”

“That’s unlikely,” Sierra said. “She didn’t live here.”

“It’s still possible. She could have needed a doctor while she was in town,” Ben said. “There’s one way to find out. You could check your records.”

“Why would we do that?” Sierra asked. “What possible benefit could it have for us?”

“It could show Mr. Nash here he’s barking up the wrong tree.” Ryan directed his comment to his sister. He straightened from the desk, laying a hand on her arm. He switched his attention to Ben. “Our records weren’t computerized twenty years ago, but it’ll only take a minute to look through our hard files and tell you if Allison Blaine was ever a patient.”

Ben had been a reporter long enough not to blindly believe the Whitmores would freely share information that didn’t clear their father of suspicion.

“Mind if I come along?” Ben asked in as offhand a manner as he could muster. Sierra seemed about to protest, so he added, “There are a number of ways to spell Blaine.”

“I don’t mind at all.” Ryan let his sister precede him out the door. They followed her down the narrow hall, with Ryan talking as they went. “I need you to understand we can only confirm whether she was a patient. Even the dead are protected by doctor/patient privilege.”

The narrow hall led to a small room with banks of file cabinets lining one wall. Ryan went directly to the first file cabinet and carefully flipped through the manila folders, then shrugged. “Nope. No Allison Blaine.”

Ben wasn’t ready to give up. “She was visiting her parents so it’s possible she came into the office with one of them. Their names were Barbara and Leonard Blaine.”

Ryan turned back to the files. “I don’t see their files, either. Did they live in town long?”

“Not even six months, I think,” Ben said.

“Must have been a healthy six months,” Ryan quipped.

Even if it meant revealing his relationship to Allison Blaine, Ben couldn’t ignore the third possibility. His mother could have brought one of his brothers to see a doctor.

“Is this where you keep the records for pediatric patients?” Ben asked, preparing to request the files be searched for the last name Nash.

“All those records are computerized,” Ryan answered. “We became a family practice when Sierra started working here two years ago. She and I are family physicians. Our father was an internist who treated patients eighteen and over.”

“Allison Blaine wasn’t treated here.” Sierra didn’t seem the least bit curious as to why he’d asked about pediatric patients. “Your lead is a dead end.”

“Not necessarily,” Ben said slowly. “He might have known her personally.”

“There’s no way to confirm that.” Ryan shut the file cabinet, almost as a signal that to the Whitmore siblings the case was closed.

“There could be.” Ben was trained to recognize other avenues that might yield results. “Your mother might know whether your father was acquainted with Allison Blaine. Is she alive?”

“Alive and well,” Ryan said.

“Mind telling me how I can get in touch with her?”

“Yes,” Sierra retorted sharply.

At the same time, her brother answered, “She moved into a retirement community after Dad died.”

“What’s the name of the place?” Ben asked.

“Hold on,” Sierra said before Ryan could supply the information. She moved closer to her brother so their shoulders were almost touching. “I don’t think we should tell him, Ryan.”

“If you don’t, I’ll find out from somebody else.” That was the absolute truth. A good reporter could always locate somebody who was eager to talk, no matter what the subject. “Why not tell me? What are you afraid of?”

Sierra stiffened. “I’m afraid you’ll upset her.”

“Then come with me,” he offered.

“Excuse me?”

“If you’re along,” Ben said, “you can make sure I’m on my best behavior.”

Ben would also increase his chances of getting Sierra to listen to the apology he’d been forming since her attitude toward him had gone from hot to cold.

“What do you say?” He recognized that she’d seen the wisdom in his reply and pressed his advantage. “When you finish up here, will you take me to her?”

She chewed on her lower lip, then glanced at her brother, who gave an almost imperceptible nod. Her eyes once again fastened on Ben.

“I’ll meet you in the office around two,” she said.

MISSING TOURIST FOUND DEAD.

Sierra edged forward in the stiff-backed chair, getting closer to the grainy type displayed on the screen of the microfiche machine in the back corner of the public library. The smell of new carpeting mingled with the slightly musty smell of the old books shelved in the nearby reference section.

She’d come straight from her last patient of the day, determined to equip herself with as much information as possible about Allison Blaine before setting off for her mother’s retirement community with Ben Nash.

She read on.

A local businessman found the body of missing tourist Allison Blaine on the banks of the Lehigh River during the early-morning hours yesterday.

Frank Sublinski, the owner of Indigo River Rafters, had hiked downriver to try out a new fly-fishing spot when he stumbled across the body sprawled amid the rocks at the edge of the river.

Police Chief Alex Rawlings said Blaine did not appear to have drowned and that her injuries were consistent with a fall. “It’s pretty obvious she got too close to the edge and took a tumble,” Rawlings said.

The Riverview Overlook, which provides scenic views of the Lehigh River, is located on a cliff above the section of the river where the tourist’s body was discovered. Local residents have complained in recent months about the lack of a guide rail at the site, especially after the heavy spring rains eroded part of the cliff.

Blaine, a thirty-year-old Pittsburgh resident, had been visiting her parents since last week. Leonard and Barbara Blaine reported their daughter missing twenty-four hours before her body was discovered, spawning a massive search.

A camera was found near Blaine’s body. Rawlings said foul play is not suspected.

Sierra hadn’t remembered that Annie’s father had been the one to find the tourist’s body, but the rest of the article contained no surprises.

“Open and shut,” Sierra whispered aloud. It was easy to imagine Allison Blaine losing her footing on the eroded cliff and falling as she pointed her camera. “So what is Ben Nash doing here?”

She hadn’t found a story leading up to the incident, probably because the Indigo Springs Gazette was a weekly newspaper that went to press on Thursdays. By the time the paper could report that Allison Blaine was missing, her body would have been found.

She quickly scrolled through the rest of the roll of microfilm, locating only a brief item about the bouquets of flowers people had left in memoriam at the overlook. The article mentioned that Allison Blaine’s parents had recently moved to town. She already knew from Ben that they hadn’t stayed long.

Sierra pressed the print button on the machine, then hit Rewind. She was due to meet Ben in ten minutes. If she didn’t hurry, she wouldn’t put it past him to leave without her. After placing the microfilm back in the plastic container, she headed to the research desk.

The young female librarian who’d helped her access the back issues of the Gazette was gone, replaced by an Indigo Springs institution. Louise Wiesneski had once directed Sierra to source material for her high school research papers. More recently, the librarian checked out books Sierra used to fuel her reading habit.

“What brings you here today?” Mrs. Wiesneski asked in an authoritative voice that had the unfortunate tendency to carry. A large woman, she even looked tall sitting down. “The latest mystery? Or one of those sports biographies you’re always reading?”

“Nothing that exciting.” Sierra set the microfilm on the counter and devised a noncommittal answer that would satisfy the nosy librarian. “I was just using the microfiche machine.”

Mrs. Wiesneski picked up the container and checked the label. “Hmm. Nobody’s looked at a back issue of the Gazette in months, yet you’re the second person today who requested this same roll of film.”

“This other person,” Sierra asked. “Was his name Ben Nash?”

“It most certainly was. Said he was a reporter for some newspaper in Pittsburgh. Do you know him?”

“Sort of,” Sierra said absently while she prepared to go against her instincts. The other times she’d been in the library, she’d kept her conversations with Mrs. Wiesneski brief to avoid gossiping. “Did he ask you any questions?”

“As a matter of fact, he did.” Mrs. Wiesneski lowered her too-loud voice, eager to share her information. “He wanted to know if I had a record of everyone who signed on to the Internet Friday morning. Well, you know how busy we get in here come tourist season. People are waiting to use the computers when we open at nine. Even if we did keep a record, which we don’t, I wouldn’t have told him, being as that’s privileged information.”