Twice Kissed (20 page)

Climbing to her feet she ignored the jab of pain she always felt when she thought of those dark days following Mitch’s death and Thane’s betrayal. It was better to put the past behind her once and for all. Right now she only had to deal with what had happened to her sister. She glanced out the window and watched as Thane struggled through the snow, then, throwing his weight behind his shoulder, forced open the door to the barn.

Maggie’s throat closed and she remembered the times they had been alone in another barn, the way his mouth felt on hers, the feel of his work-roughened fingers as they caressed her skin. “Damn it,” she growled, and tossed her dirty dish into the sink. She walked back to the den and, ignoring the flashing light on the recorder, punched out the number for her sister-in-law in California. Tapping her fingers impatiently, she waited until a groggy Becca answered.

“Hi, honey,” she said.

“Hi.” Becca wasn’t known to arise sunny-side up.

“How’re things goin’?”

“Okay,” Becca mumbled. “It’s early.”

“I know, but I wanted to talk to you.”
More than you’ll ever know, kiddo.
“So is the ankle okay? Does it hurt you?”

“It’s fine, Mom. Really.” There was a hint of distrust in her daughter’s voice—the innuendo that Maggie was intruding.

“I’m in Wyoming,” Maggie said, and explained about the snowstorm, though she knew Becca wasn’t listening, was just ticking off the seconds, doing time as part of her daughter-duty. When questioned about what she was doing, she was evasive but insisted that all her homework was caught up and that she was having a “super” time, “the best.” When Maggie said she loved her, Becca mumbled a “love you, too,” by rote that meant nothing other than she didn’t want to make her mother mad.

Sighing, Maggie hung up feeling uneasy and out of sorts. She needed to be with her daughter, hated the separation, even though she felt it might be best for their relationship to have a few days apart from each other.

Disturbed, she walked through the spartan house again. Hardwood floors covered with a few rugs, not a plant in sight, no photographs or mementos of any kind. A chipped hurricane lantern rested on the mantel in the living room where a timeworn rocker, end table, television, and battle-scarred camel-backed couch took up residence around a washed-out braided rug and river-rock fireplace.

She hauled her bag upstairs and found the second bedroom, where a twin bed was pushed into the corner and a simple bureau that had once been painted white stood in the corner. The bare wood floors needed refinishing, and the only picture on the wall was a framed ink drawing of a rifle. The glass was cracked in one corner.

“Home sweet home,” she muttered under her breath and twisted open the blinds. Ice had collected on the exterior of the windows, and snow blew in wild gusts. Past the flurries she watched Thane shut the door of the barn and plow his way through the path he’d broken earlier.

Her heart did a stupid little thump, and she berated herself for being a fool where he was concerned. She always had been, though. There seemed to be no changing that. Disgusted with herself, she closed the blinds, cleaned up in the bathroom, and flopped onto the bed. She heard Thane come in, listened as he made a couple of calls—she couldn’t make out the words—then closed her eyes. A small headache that began at the base of her skull and crawled upward nagged at her, and she silently prayed for her sister. Through all the pain and tears, all the feelings of betrayal years ago, she had loved her twin, felt close to her. “Please, M.T., be safe.”

She heard the sound of Thane’s footsteps as he climbed the stairs, held her breath as he walked past her door. He didn’t slow a bit, and she told herself that she didn’t want him to look in on her, that had he opened the door it would have been an invasion of her privacy, that she needed her space to think this all through. And yet a small and very feminine part of her was disappointed that he hadn’t stopped or rapped softly and tried the door.

Furious with her thoughts, she pounded on her pillow, twisted the comforter over her, and squeezed her eyes shut. She needed to sleep, to clear her mind, to wake up refreshed so that she could face the police in Denver and find out what the devil was going on.

Reed Henderson was on his second cup of coffee. Thankfully the caffeine was beginning to surge through his bloodstream and take hold. He’d already ducked a bevy of reporters, ignored calls from the local news stations, and even evaded the DA, who was demanding answers.

About Marquise.

A fading local star who was starting to become a cult figure. Or so it seemed. She’d never even been that famous in life, but now, with her disappearance, hers was very much the name on everyone’s lips. He doubted that anyone else cared much. She wasn’t exactly a national obsession; a couple of bit parts in B-movies in her early twenties, a stint as a weathergirl before she ended up as a news reporter for a small station in Sacramento. Then she landed the job in Denver. She’d been an anchor for one news team before jumping to a rival station as a talk-show host of a daily morning program that, according to the demographics, appealed to housewives in their mid-thirties with two years of college and pre-school-aged children.

Marquise wasn’t exactly high-profile as far as the rest of the country was concerned, but the local press and viewers had loved her. Until recently. In the past year
Denver AM
had fallen off in the ratings; there was talk of replacing Marquise with a younger, fresher, more with-it face or canceling the show altogether.

So much for her professional life.

However, it was better than her personal one: two husbands, a string of lovers, and a nearly estranged sister. Everyone else who had been close to her was dead. Both parents gone and even the brother—well, if he could be called that—had committed suicide. Maybe it ran in the family—though Mitchell Reilly had been only a first cousin, the son of Frank’s deceased sister who had been unmarried at the time of her son’s birth. No one had known who the kid’s father was, and when Carol had died of a genetic heart defect not long after Mitch had come into the world, Frank Reilly had stepped up to the plate and not only adopted the kid but raised Mitch as if he were his son.

Henderson frowned to himself. Marquise’s friends were an odd mix and he was still working on those.

Hannah poked her head into the open door. Behind her, phones rang incessantly over the buzz of conversation, jangle of keys, and hum of computer monitors. Every once in a while laughter erupted, or someone shouted over the din, but the small cubicles and open desks created a sense of barely organized mayhem.

A slow-spreading smile slipped across Hannah’s pointed chin, and beneath a fringe of blond bangs her eyes danced. “Guess what? The elusive ex-husband called last night.”

His head snapped up. “Walker?”

“One and the same. Called from his ranch in Cheyenne. He’s on his way here. With the sister.”

Reed’s gut told him something was wrong. “Isn’t she from a small town in Idaho?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why would they be together?” he wondered aloud. “I thought the divorce between Walker and Marquise was kinda messy—no love lost—that sort of thing. So why would the twin sister be arriving with him?” Scowling to himself, he spun the seat of the chair and stared out the window for a few long seconds, but he didn’t see the face of the building across the street, nor the few pedestrians bundled in ski jackets or long wool coats, wool hats, boots, and scarves huddled against the wind as they made their way along the sidewalk. Now, his vision was turned inward to the case—the damned case.

“Beats me. Something to ask.”

“Are they bringing the niece—what was her name?” He spun the chair again, glanced down at the notes on his cluttered desk, thought about a cigarette, and found a stick of gum in his top drawer. “Rebecca?”

“Don’t know.” Hannah leaned against the doorjamb to his office, her favorite position when they hashed things out. “Why?”

“Marquise had a lot of pictures of the kid. Almost as many as she kept on herself.” He opened the stick of nicotine-laced gum and plopped it into his mouth as he surveyed the woman who had worked with him for over three years. Attractive, smart as a whip, in good shape and, he suspected, in love with him. A mistake. They both knew it, but didn’t ever broach the subject. It was a line he never intended to cross. Too sticky. Affairs had a way of ending and ending badly. He liked this woman too much to mess things up.

And then there was Karen to consider. They were divorced, had been for years, but…he still kept her picture in the top drawer with his forty-five and empty flask that still reeked of scotch.

“We’ll see if they bring the daughter when they get here.” Folding her arms over her chest and pulling at her right earring, the way she always did when she was thinking hard, Hannah said, “You know, a lot of people close to Marquise are dead.”

“I thought about that.”

“Good. Don’t know if it has any bearing, but it’s odd, I think.” She started clicking the deceased off, lifting fingers as she counted. “First, the stepbrother dies in the ocean, suspected suicide; then the parents split up over his death, try to reconcile, and the mother ends up falling while supposedly cooking dinner in the kitchen, hits her head, and dies with a blood-alcohol level in the stratosphere.

“Next the father, Frank, bereft and broken, has himself a massive heart attack, and the two girls, barely in their twenties, are on their own. They’ve only got each other and a couple of husbands, right? Except that Mary Theresa marries quickly and divorces even faster and the other one, Maggie, she hangs in there, has a kid, then when things get rocky, separates, and the guy has a car accident, ends up in a coma, takes a while to die. According to the hospital records, Dean McCrae’s bloodstream was pure whiskey—kinda like the mom—when he was life-flighted in.” She wiggled her fingers. “That’s a lot of dead bodies for a small family. Now the centerpiece, the golden girl, is missing, probably dead somewhere.”

He reached for his baseball. Gave it a toss. “So what’re you saying?”

“Just that it gives one pause. Nothing more than that.”

“You think there was foul play involved?” The stitched ball landed softly in Henderson’s waiting fingers with Koufax’s signature rolled toward the ceiling. He flung it toward the fluorescent lights again.

Shrugging, pink lips protruding thoughtfully, she turned her palms toward the ceiling. “Probably not. Maybe just a coincidence, but any way you look at it, it’s a helluva string of bad luck.”

The ball landed in his waiting palm. “But these things happen. The brother was a screwup, the mother a drunk, the father a type A who lost it when things got out of control. As for the brother-in-law, he’s just another statistic, someone who had a few too many, got behind the wheel, and ended up in the morgue.”

“Jesus, listen to you.”

“It’s all true.”

She let out a small cynical laugh. “That’s what I love about you, Henderson. You’re so damned sensitive and empathetic.”

He ignored the jab. “Goes with the job.” He glanced at his watch. “When are they showing up?”

“Sometime this afternoon according to the message.”

“Good.” He placed the baseball in the chipped replica of the mitt, then opened the thick file on Marquise, and sifted through some of his notes until he found a copy of Marquise’s last will and testament. The document was surprisingly simple for such a complex woman. The only beneficiaries were Margaret Elizabeth Reilly McCrae and her daughter, Rebecca Anne McCrae.

Henderson couldn’t wait to talk to the ex-husband again. And the twin sister. She should be interesting.

Hannah walked into the room and rested a hip against his desk. Reaching forward, she tapped the polished nail of a long finger on the copy of Marquise’s will. “Where’d you get this?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it does; we both know it. But, well, forget the legalities of it. Right now this document doesn’t mean diddly-squat. No one’s recovered a body. The woman might not be dead.”

“Then where is she?” Reed asked, because the thought that he’d been set up, that he might possibly be a pawn in Mary Theresa Reilly Walker Gillette’s scheme stuck in his craw.

“That’s a good question, Detective,” Hannah said, as the phone jangled, catching Henderson’s attention. “A damned good question.”

Somewhere a door slammed. Maggie’s eyes flew open, and she focused on an unfamiliar room. Where was Becca? Her heart galumphed in a few unsteady beats before she remembered that she was at Thane’s ranch, and they were on their way to Denver. To find Mary Theresa.

She threw off the comforter and marched to the bathroom, where she splashed water on her face, finger-combed the tangles from her hair, and glared at her reflection. She managed to wipe away the smudges of mascara from under her eyes, dab on some lipstick, and toss an if-this-isn’t-good-enough-it’s-too-damned-bad look at her reflection before grabbing her things and hurrying down the stairs. She dropped her bag and purse on the floor near the front door.

Thane was in the den on the telephone. “…yeah, I know. There’re just some things I gotta take care of…we’ve been over this before, Carrie.” A pause. He turned and saw Maggie standing in the doorway. For a split second their gazes collided, skated apart, then hit again.