Muriel Jensen - Man With A Miracle

Evan Braga walked him across the room to the door, where they disappeared behind a stack of boxes.

“Thanks for coming so quickly,” the man named Evan said.

“Sure. Does this square us for last night’s poker game?” Randy asked.

“No, it doesn’t,” Evan replied. “You owe me thirty bucks and you damn well better pay up or I’ll sic my attorney on you.”

Randy laughed. “Bart is into me for forty bucks for hospital benefit tickets. Why don’t you just pay me ten and we’ll call it even?”

She heard a quiet groan. “Did you really think I’d fall for that?”

“It was worth a shot.”

“Randy, listen. Keep this to yourself, okay? If this woman is in danger from whoever’s following her, I don’t want anyone to know how she got here.”

“Sure. I was never here.”

“Thanks.”

Beazie thought that a surprisingly thoughtful request of her host.

There was the sound of a door closing.

When Evan returned, he went to his desk and picked up a small telephone book. “I know a Millie Evans,” he said, handing her the book, “but she’s ninety-three and in a convalescent home.”

She felt an instant’s hope. “Does she have a son? A brother-in-law?”

He shook his head. “Single lady. She used to have a little house on the lake before she had a fall and couldn’t see to herself anymore. I painted it for her.”

Hope died, but her interest in Evan Braga stirred. “You’re a housepainter?”

He nodded.

He couldn’t be the Evans she was after. Why would Gordon want her to take a tape that had cost him his life to a housepainter?

“The man who dropped me here said you owned a development company.”

He nodded. “I do, in partnership with a friend. I used to sell real estate, too, but gave that up when this turned out to be more fun. There’s one more doughnut, and you can have a refill on the coffee.”

“No doughnut, thank you. But the coffee would be nice.”

“This mill is our first project,” he explained as he poured her another cup. “We both work for a business called Whitcomb’s Wonders. It’s a sort of temp agency, but for craftsmen who can’t work full-time because they have other things going in their lives. My friend’s a plumber and getting an MBA from Amherst in his spare time. I paint and wallpaper.”

“And what do you do in your spare time?”

“I’m getting my life together.”

She wondered what that meant. Why wouldn’t a man who appeared to be in his late thirties have his life together? A broken marriage? A financial loss?

As a rule, she found people endlessly fascinating, but she didn’t have time right now for anything more than her own pressing problems.

She flipped open the book and found the E’s. Eaton, Eckert, Egan, Emanuel, Evans… Her heart gave one eager thump, then she read, “Evans, Millie—221 Lake Front Road.”

She closed the book in exasperation. Evan topped up his own cup, then sat on the edge of his desk. “You said someone dropped you here?” he asked.

With a sigh she sank into a corner of the couch and took a sip of the fresh brew. He did make good coffee. “I got a ride on a bakery truck in Springfield,” she explained. “I told the driver I was looking for someone named Evans in Maple Hill.” She smiled wryly. “Apparently, he doesn’t know Millie. He drove me here on his way into town.”

“And why do you want this Evans?”

“I have something for him.” Still uncertain of everyone and everything, she thought it best to keep the tape she’d hidden in her bra a secret.

He looked her over from head to toe. “What would that be?” he asked. “You don’t even have a purse.”

“It’s…a message.”

There’d been something about the once-over he’d given her that was…professional. She didn’t know how else to express it. The same thought had struck her earlier when she’d watched him move around the small office with a curious tension about him, a sharpness in his eyes, a quickness in his tall, powerful body that suggested formal training.

Just so he wouldn’t have the upper hand in this odd encounter, she had to let him know that she had powers of perception, too. Putting down the phone book on the seat beside her, she looked up and met his eyes. She remembered gazing into their soft brown depths as she was passing out.

“Before you were a housepainter,” she said, “you were a soldier.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Close. I was a cop.”

She might have felt apprehensive over that. Gordon had warned her away from the police. But this Braga wasn’t a cop now.

He must have noted her wary expression.

“You asked me not to call the police,” he said. “Are you afraid of them for some reason? Had a bad experience?”

“Gordon told me not to trust them,” she replied. “I can only guess it’s because there’s one involved in his murder.”

“Well, you can relax,” he said. “It wasn’t me.”

She might be naive to believe him, but there was something solid and comforting about him, despite those watchful eyes.

As she studied them now, she thought she saw a sadness behind the vigilance. She was good at reading people. What, she wondered idly, could happen to a cop to make him give up the work for house painting? And had Gordon said Evan, not Evans?

It might take a little time to determine whether this really was the man Gordon meant. And how could she do so, with no place to stay and no money to find one?

“Were you a cop in Maple Hill?” she asked.

He shook his head. “You broke into my place,” he reminded her. “I’m the one with the right to ask questions.”

She had to give him that. “I’m sorry.” But there was a limit to what she could tell him, when she wasn’t sure he was the Evans she was looking for, and she wasn’t entirely sure what had happened herself. Or, at least, what it all meant.

“Someone’s chasing you,” he prodded, when she took a moment to organize her thoughts.

“Yes,” she admitted.

“The person who killed your boss.”

She didn’t quite remember having told him that. She remembered the spots and the way the room had undulated when she wielded her bat at him. “Yes.”

“You know who it is? I mean, by name?”

She shook her head. “There was more than one. I can identify faces, but I don’t know their names.”

“And this happened in Boston.”

“Yes.”

He frowned over that. “How’d you get away?”

She touched briefly on her escape from her apartment and the long, cold night in the back of the moving van.

For the first time, she noticed the condition of her clothes, and could only imagine what her face and hair looked like. She sagged a little into her corner. Things would certainly be simplified for her if he was the Evans she was looking for. Then she could turn over the tape and go back to Boston.

No, she couldn’t go back. Gordon had owned the insurance franchise. A sickening thought struck her. She had been a witness to Gordon’s murder. Until his killers were behind bars, it wouldn’t be safe to return home.

“Now that I’ve answered your questions,” she said, leaning slightly toward him, “can I ask again where you served as a policeman?”

He considered her, evidently as suspicious of her as she was of him. “Boston,” he replied.

She straightened. Could there be some connection between him and Gordon? “Did you know…Gordon Hathaway?”

He frowned again. “I ran across a lot of people, perps and victims, in twelve years. But that name doesn’t mean anything special.”

She sagged against the couch again, suddenly very aware of her exhaustion. But where could she go? All she could think to ask was, “Is there a homeless shelter in town?”