Wisconsin Wedding (Welcome To Tyler, No. 3) by Carla Neggers Read Free Book Online Page B

refreshing.
    Inside the library, which was old-fashioned and in desperate need of renovation, he tried not to draw attention to himself as he made his way to a stack of recent copies of the Tyler Citizen. He sat at an oak table in a poorly lit corner. Deliberately and patiently, he skimmed each edition of the daily paper, backtracking several weeks until he found the front-page article announcing the discovery of a skeleton at Judson Ingall’s Timberlake Lodge. The grisly discovery had been made when local construction chief Joe Santori and his crew struck the body with a backhoe while doing some excavation work; Cliff Forrester, the lodge caretaker, was called onto the scene. Apparently Liza Baron, Judson’s granddaughter, was also up at the lodge atthe time. According to the paper, Judson himself hadn’t stepped foot on the property since his wife left him more than forty years ago.
    Liza Baron.
    Byron rolled the name around on his tongue and tried to remember. But no, he didn’t recall a Liza Baron from his first visit to Tyler. He remembered Judson Ingalls, though. A taciturn, hardworking man, he was one of Tyler’s leading citizens, owner of Ingalls Farm and Machinery. As Byron recalled, Judson’s wife had been a Chicago socialite, unhappy in a small Wisconsin town.
    Now why had he remembered that little tidbit of Tyler lore?
    “Aunt Ellie,” he whispered to himself.
    In their long talks on her front porch, Ellie Gates had told Byron countless tales of the legions of friends she’d had over her long, full life. She’d mentioned Judson Ingalls’s wife. “Margaret was a fish out of water here in Tyler, but we became friends, although she was somewhat younger than I. I’m afraid she didn’t have too many friends here in town. A pity. She was such a lively woman. Of course, some of that was her own doing—but it wasn’t all her own doing. In a small town, it’s easy for people to develop a wariness of strangers, of outsiders.” And she’d paused to give him a pointed look, as if she knew he was another outsider who’d fallen for a Tyler resident. “It’s also easy for out-of-towners to act on their prejudices and figure a small town has nothing to offer, including friends.”
    Ellie Gates had believed in tolerance. She’d been an opinionated woman herself and forthright in stating her views, but she appreciated fresh thinking, a good argument and people’s right, as she liked to put it, “to be wrong.”
    Her grandniece and sole heir was a good deal more stiffnecked. Nora Gates much preferred to deal with people who agreed with her.
    Flipping back through the newspapers, Byron caught up with all the current Tyler news, as well as fresh developments regarding the body. He gathered that its presence at Timberlake Lodge had fueled much speculation in town. Without directly stating as much, the paper gave the clear impression that some townspeople believed the body was that of Margaret Alyssa Lindstrom Ingalls herself. Now all the authorities had to do was get busy and confirm that fact, and prove how she’d ended up buried at her husband’s lodge.
    So for the past five years, Byron thought, his one and only brother had been living right on top of Tyler’s greatest unsolved mystery. Given all the horrors Cliff had witnessed in Southeast Asia, how had he reacted to finding a dead body under his feet? He’d come to Tyler to escape death and destruction.
    He’d fallen in love, was what he’d done.
    Byron shrugged. There was a certain logic in that, he supposed.
    At one point, the Citizen had printed a grainy picture of Liza Baron, for no solid reason Byron could figure out except that she was Judson Ingall’s granddaughter and had finally come home. So this was the woman his brother planned to marry. She was attractive in a dramatic, grab-you-by-the-short-hairs way. Byron guessed that she would be bold and direct with her loves and hates.
    A few days later, the paper had dredged up an old photograph