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  Praise for Uncertain Past

  Roz Denny Fox excels at putting lovable characters in great peril. “Uncertain Past” is storytelling at its best!

  —NYT Bestseller Vicki Lewis Thompson.

  “It’s unusual for the middle book of a trilogy to not only bridge the gap between debut & conclusion with satisfying ease, but to also provide a completely enjoyable story on its own. Emmy’s and Riley’s struggles with their (intriguingly opposite) family issues kept me engaged even while the mystery continued unfolding, and his adorable daughter is the frosting on the cake.”

  —Laurie Schnebly Campbell

  The Return to Caddo Lake Series

  Uncertain Fate by Ken Casper (October 2012)

  Uncertain Past by Roz Denny Fox (November 2012)

  Uncertain Future by Eve Gaddy (December 2012)

  Uncertain Past

  by

  Roz Denny Fox

  Bell Bridge Books

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or locations is entirely coincidental.

  Bell Bridge Books

  PO BOX 300921

  Memphis, TN 38130

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61194-233-0

  Print ISBN: 978-1-61194-218-7

  Bell Bridge Books is an Imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.

  Copyright © 2001 by Roz Denny Fox

  Uncertain Future (excerpt) copyright © 2001 by Eve Gaddy.

  Originally published by Harlequin as A Man of His Word.Printed and bound in the United States of America.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  A mass market edition of this book was originally published by

  Harlequin in 2001 as Who Is Emerald Monday.

  We at BelleBooks enjoy hearing from readers.

  Visit our websites – www.BelleBooks.com and www.BellBridgeBooks.com.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Cover design: Debra Dixon

  Interior design: Hank Smith

  Photo credits:

  Landscape (manipulated) © Damus | Dreamstime.com

  Woman (manipulated) © Jose Antonio Sánchez Reyes | Dreamstime.com

  :Epu:01:

  Dedication

  For Ken and Eve. Our research trip to East Texas was fun, as was brainstorming our three stories together. Thanks for your continuing friendships.

  —Roz

  Chapter One

  Emmy Monday leafed through a three-week-old Shreveport newspaper in search of the classified ad section. Steam curled from her coffee mug, dampening the lower edges of the paper as she considered whether to stay in Louisiana or not. Fortunately, she was resilient. When it came to school, jobs, men, you name it—she had long ago developed the ability to shrug off disappointment and move on. And May, according to her horoscope, was a season of renewal.

  Where were those ads?

  Depending on what jobs were available, she’d have to revise a résumé that was already eclectic by most employment standards. During her thirty-two years, she’d dabbled at a variety of jobs. She’d waited tables, cleaned houses, traveled with a circus, worked as a gardener, a camp counselor and most recently, dealt blackjack, a job she had a knack for and enjoyed while it lasted.

  Letting the paper slip, Emmy scooped four heaping spoonfuls of sugar into her thick black coffee. As she stirred, she mulled over the past day’s events. Richard Parrish had knocked on her door at 2:00 a.m. Not late for him. He owned the casino where she worked, and for three years they’d dated at odd hours. The loose arrangement suited them both, she’d thought, even if Richard had broached the subject of marriage now and again. Emmy had never taken his proposals seriously.

  Her mistake, he’d said. A point he made just before he announced his intention of marrying Melanie Fletcher, Emmy’s co-worker. A croupier. A woman Emmy had considered her friend.

  Right!

  Emmy could have—would have—accepted the marriage. She didn’t love Richard. In fact, she tended to scoff at love and happily-ever-after, which had been another of Richard’s observations. Last night he’d felt compelled to list what he deemed her shortcomings. She didn’t let anyone get close. She’d fenced off sections of her heart. She was afraid of commitment.

  Finally, he said none too gently, “Emmy, you’ve gotta find out who the hell you are and exorcize all that nonsense about how there might be evil lurking in your genes. Because,” he’d added, “If you don’t lay those ghosts to rest, you’ll never find happiness. And it’s not fair to any man who really falls for you.”

  Then he’d fired her! Oh, he couched the dismissal in sympathetic terms by handing over a severance check that was unprecedented in the field. Or so he’d said. Emmy saw right through him—the weasel. What it boiled down to was that his soon-to-be-wife viewed Emmy as a threat. Melanie had delivered an ultimatum. “Get rid of Emmy.” Which Richard had done, just like that. Emmy snapped her fingers.

  The sweet coffee helped cover the bad taste lingering in her mouth. But it did nothing to silence Richard’s accusations. They ran rampant through her head.

  Who is Emerald Monday? Who is she, really?

  The cup wobbled, sloshing sugary brew all over the paper. As she leaped up and tore a paper towel off the dispenser to blot up the spill, headlines on a wet article jumped out at her, putting a stranglehold on her heart.

  Mystery Bones Discovered Near East Texas Lake

  Below the headline a town was named. Uncertain, Texas. Emmy’s breath came out in short gasps. Her heart hammered erratically. Were her eyes playing tricks because Richard had probed deep into old wounds? She dropped the soggy paper towel, grabbed the newspaper and quickly read the entire article.

  “Uncertain, Texas. The mystery of Frannie Granger’s disappearance may finally be solved. The forty-seven-year-old Harrison County woman vanished nineteen years ago this spring. Her remains were recently found close to an Indian burial ground near Caddo Lake. She is believed to have been murdered.”

  A cry burst explosively from Emmy’s tightly compressed lips. She forced herself to continue reading, even though her hands shook so hard she had to lay the paper flat on the table to steady the print.

  On March 28th of this year, upon the discovery of human remains obviously not those of a Caddo Indian of the early nineteenth century, archaeologist Tessa Lang turned the skeleton over to the authorities for identification. This week, comparison with local dental records proved the bones to be those of Frannie Granger, a widow who was a housekeeper for various local residents and who provided foster care for unadoptable children in her own home in Uncertain. Granger was well-liked in the community, and her sudden disappearance caused quite a stir. Sheriff Logan Fielder could not be reached for comment. The question remains, who murdered Frannie Granger, and why?

  Emmy reread the coffee-marked column, stopping to haul in a deep sob at the part about Frannie taking in unadoptable children. Emerald Monday had been one of those children. The first of three. It’d been a while since she’d allowed intrusive thoughts of her foster siblings, Jed and Will. Or of Mom Fran, for that matter. Emmy had, in fact, worked hard to wall off that portion of her life. Because recalling how it had once been—well, it was just too painful.

  Until this moment, she’d never known for sure why
Social Services had abruptly jerked her out of the only home she’d ever known to dump her with strangers in Houston. A family whose two natural daughters hated having a new kid in their lives even more than Emmy hated being there.

  Mom Fran had left for work one day and didn’t come home. By noon the following day, a woman from the agency had collected Emmy from school. They hadn’t let her say goodbye to Jed Louis or Will McClain, her foster brothers. Until now, Emmy hadn’t known that Mom Fran had never returned home. After her bitter experience with the system, Emmy had judged Fran Granger just another copout. Now she felt guilty for those thoughts.

  But good grief! She’d tried hard to learn the truth. Twice she’d run away and been caught hitchhiking back to Uncertain. Three times the state had shifted her into new homes, each a bigger disaster than the previous one. Finally they’d parked her in a group facility in Corpus Christi, and that was the last straw. The fight had gone out of her, leaving only underlying anger. She’d given up on Jed or Will or Frannie ever finding her. Assuming anyone had looked. That, she saw, was at the core of her restlessness.

  It was clearer now. Each move she’d made after her mad flight from the group home the day she’d reached legal age had brought her closer to her beginnings. Her roots, murky as they were, lay hidden across the border in Texas.

  Emmy hadn’t cried in years. And she didn’t now, because she’d dealt with the grief of losing Mom Fran long ago. But there remained a need to possess the facts. Facts about her past that might come to light if the local sheriff dug for clues to Fran Granger’s murder.

  Two days slipped by before she managed to sort things out in her mind. She supposed she owed Richard Parrish—or more likely, Melanie Fletcher—for unwittingly providing her with the time and the resources to go back. Back to a town whose very name described her life—Uncertain.

  It took her five days in all to pack and leave Shreveport. Even then, all her worldly possessions fit in a dozen cartons stacked in the back of her aging Ford Ranger pickup. But hadn’t she always traveled light? Anyone who’d bounced around the foster care system for long knew it was asking for heartbreak to get attached to . . . things. All Emmy had of her past was a single item the caseworkers had inadvertently allowed her to keep. The social worker who’d yanked her out of school and packed her stuff at Mom Fran’s had thrown Emmy’s clothes into what she assumed was a laundry basket. A deep, oval basket in which Emmy had been found as an infant. If she had any link to her past, it was that. She’d clung to it stubbornly—to the point of bloodying one foster brother’s nose when he tried to carry some stupid project to school in her basket.

  Emmy smiled at the memory while checking in the rearview mirror to make certain the box containing her treasure was still wedged against the tailgate.

  It was.

  Her gaze swerved to watch Shreveport, her home for the past few years, recede into the distance. A car horn honked, reclaiming Emmy’s attention. She realized her knuckles were white from gripping the steering wheel so tightly. Part of her wanted to stop, turn back and hide out in her old apartment. Ahead lay unknown risks. It had been infinitely easier to think of Mom Fran as endlessly missing.

  But murdered . . . Emmy shivered. It hurt to think that someone she’d once cared for deeply had been reduced to a pile of bones, her remains unceremoniously dumped in an old Indian burial mound. Who was Tessa Lang, and why did she have to expose a private person like Fran to the prying eyes of the world?

  Murder, a little voice nagged. Don’t you want the person responsible to be found? She did; Emmy wanted the person who’d killed her foster mother and shattered her own idyllic childhood to pay and pay big-time.

  Jed and Will would want that, too.

  Heaven only knew where they were. So many nights she’d waited, expecting one or the other to find her and take her back to Mom Fran’s, where they’d be together again. Jed had assumed the position of man of the family from the moment he’d arrived to live with them at age six. He was solid, reliable. Emmy had liked that about him. Will, a surly thirteen when he came, at first hated everything and everyone in town. He’d pretty much considered Emmy a pest until the three foster kids had forged an us-against-them bond. Will became Emmy’s fierce protector if anyone at school picked on her. The summer before life fell apart, the three had made a pact to stick together no matter what. So why hadn’t Jed or Will come for her, or called, or written?

  And what about Riley Gray Wolf? Emmy’s heart skipped a beat even now as she conjured up images of Riley. His family was descended from the Caddo Indians for whom the lake bordering the town was named. Lord, but she’d had the worst crush on Riley. Literally from the age of nine, when she’d seen him at school defending a handicapped kid. Riley hadn’t noticed Emmy nearly as soon, but to her great delight, he’d begun hanging out with Will and Jed. For years, Emmy had tagged along.

  Almost overnight, her relationship with Riley had changed. If she let her mind drift, she could still feel the first time he’d kissed her. A kiss that had started out tentative, but quickly became more. She’d been thirteen.

  Mom Fran was forever scolding Emmy about sneaking off alone with Riley. A few nights before she’d disappeared, Fran had run Riley off the property, ordering him to stay away from Emmy—who never saw Riley again. But for a long time she’d expected him to turn up like a white knight to save her from a terrifying situation. Jed, Will and Riley had all let her down. Counselors had repeatedly told Emmy to forget the boys. In time, she’d managed to stuff memories of them behind a barrier. It hadn’t been easy then. Or now, as the images crowded back.

  Richard obviously didn’t know how painful it would be for her to go rooting around in her past or he wouldn’t have so blithely suggested it. Not that he was the first to recommend she get off her duff and research her background. A professor in a college sociology course had said it was simple these days, with the aid of computers, to find someone who’d put up a child for adoption. He’d offered to help her—said if she found the answers she needed, she might lose her attitude. She’d declined, displaying a lot of the attitude he’d been talking about.

  Emmy hadn’t been adopted out. She’d been left in a basket at First Monday Trade Days in Canton, Texas. Left like some garage sale item to be sold or traded. That was what people did at Trade Days, billed as the largest flea market in the world. So no, Emmy hadn’t been quick to search for the woman who’d abandoned her. In fact, she’d quit the stupid class and dropped out of college. That was her second and last attempt at getting a degree.

  Maybe she’d mosey over to Dallas now and enroll in classes. Thirtyish wasn’t too old to graduate in something worthwhile.

  It surely wasn’t. But instead of keeping on toward Dallas, Emmy slowed her pickup on the outskirts of Marshall and made the turn that led straight to Uncertain.

  When she reached her destination, the town seemed little changed from what she remembered. An unexpected wave of nostalgia hit her. Her throat clogged and she blinked rapidly as her eyes stung. Tears? Impossible. The Emmy Monday she’d become had shed her last tear the day the state removed her from private foster care. That was when she had left foolish, girlish tears behind. And dreams.

  Apparently leaving here a girl and returning a woman had triggered a battery of strong emotions. But she could handle this. In a life filled with ups, downs and doubts, this homecoming could be either a ripple or a wave. Emmy hauled in a deep breath and forced an iron grip on unguarded feelings.

  She couldn’t decide what to do first. Find a place to rent, pay a visit to the sheriff—a duty call Emmy didn’t find particularly appealing—or buy herself lunch. It was past noon. Maybe the knot in her stomach simply meant she was hungry.

  Before doing anything, though, she wanted to drive past Mom Fran’s old house—if it was still there.

  It was. Just seeing the little house looking homey with lacy curtains—s
omeone else’s curtains—caused a surge of darker sentiment. She didn’t know why it hurt to see a new roof and freshly painted clapboard siding. Emmy’s fingers flexed on her steering wheel. Several moments passed before she realized there was a For Rent sign in the front window. On legs not quite steady, she climbed from her pickup and followed a winding flagstone path to the porch. She copied down the telephone number of a rental agent—or maybe the owner. The sign didn’t specify.

  The house was larger than Emmy would need. There were three bedrooms. Jed and Will had shared the largest. The boys were of such different temperaments that Fran had felt each needed his own space. She’d hired a contractor to close in the porch for Will. Not at first, because Will had a tendency to sneak out at night. But later he’d earned Frannie’s trust. Emmy and Jed had both been envious over that remodeling job. Had it ever been completed? She decided to find out.

  She picked her way to the backyard through overgrown shrubs. From there, she could smell the swampy odor of decay. Part of the property sloped to marshy Caddo Lake and part climbed to a vacant lot next door. Only the lot wasn’t vacant anymore. A redbrick house sat smack in the middle with a chain-link fence surrounding its immaculate lawn. As she stared at this unexpected sight, a stem-faced woman pulled a curtain aside and stared right back. Emmy gulped and waved, garnering no response.

  The last thing she wanted was for someone to call the sheriff and accuse her of trespassing. Anyway, she’d satisfied her curiosity. The porch room had been completed. It held a white wicker settee and a profusion of plants. “Good,” she mumbled aloud, hurrying back to her pickup. “The place seems to come furnished. Now, if only the rent is reasonable . . .”

  After pulling out her cell phone, she felt her stomach churn. Sweat popped out on her forehead even before she’d punched in one number. A hypoglycemia attack, she figured, pocketing her phone again. She’d skipped breakfast to load the last of her belongings and it was well past lunch. Surely there wasn’t such a huge demand for rentals here that she couldn’t grab a bite before she made the call.