Twice Kissed (25 page)

Maggie’s heart beat a painful tattoo. She avoided the detective’s probing gaze. “That’s right.”

“You went to the University of California, Davis.”

“Yes.” She nodded. “Eventually, after two years at a junior college. I studied literature and journalism.”

“And met the man who would become your husband…Dean McCrae?”

“Yes—I met Dean at junior college and we both transferred.” Why this embarrassed her, she didn’t understand, so she looked up and sighed. “I finished my B.A., Dean went on to law school, and I worked with a private investigator for a while.”

“Before writing true-crime stories?”

“Yes.”

“One child?”

Maggie nodded and wondered what Becca was doing now. “A daughter. Rebecca Anne. She was born in April of 1985.” Maggie gave the information out by rote, knowing that it was probably all in the files on the computer as well as buried somewhere in the mess of papers and folders on Henderson’s desk.

Henderson checked his notes. “Your husband died in a car accident about nine months ago?”

She nodded, her heart growing heavy. “Yes.”

“Single car? He swerved to miss a dog, ran off the road, and down a hillside, where the car hit a culvert.”

Maggie felt her skin crawl at the memory. A sheen of nervous sweat broke out on her back. She couldn’t stand to think about the dark days surrounding Dean’s death or the guilt that nagged at her when she considered it. “Yes.”

“You were living in Southern California at the time.”

“Laguna Nigel, yes,” she admitted, clearing her throat. “We moved there right after Dean got out of law school.”

“I don’t see what this has to do with anything,” Thane finally cut in. Tiny brackets surrounded his mouth and he couldn’t hide his irritation and impatience.

Henderson ignored him. “You visited a psychiatrist after your husband’s death?”

“Yes,” she admitted, suddenly more nervous than she had been. Though it had been only natural to visit a grief counselor and psychiatrist, Dean’s family had disapproved. Connie had pointed out that Maggie had visited the doctor
before
Dean’s death—that she’d been battling depression for months, perhaps years, and that there might be something deeper, a more insidious form of mental illness. Jim had been outwardly suspicious of Maggie’s fortitude as well as her morals—what woman, after all, would be insane enough not to want to be married to Dean, no matter what his faults? They hadn’t said too much but had quietly disapproved, silently insinuating that Maggie might not be a stable influence for her daughter, which was downright ridiculous. Maggie suspected that their concern for Becca was rooted in a deeper worry about her inheritance, the trust fund that sat gathering interest in Becca’s name.

“So you have a history of…”

“I had a case of slight depression, that’s all.”

“That’s all?” Henderson asked, clearly skeptical.

“Wait a minute. What is this?” Thane’s boots hit the floor, his pretense of disinterest falling away as quickly as if it had been stripped.

“Just trying to get the whole picture.”

“What does Maggie’s marriage have to do with anything?” Nerves strung tight, Thane stood slowly, placed his hands on Henderson’s desk, and leaned forward, thrusting his face so close to the detective’s that there was hardly any space of daylight between them. “Listen, Detective, Mary Theresa is missing. We came here to give you information. About her. To help you find her. Maggie doesn’t need her life ripped apart in the process.”

Henderson’s smile held zero warmth. “Sit down, Walker.”

Thane hesitated, ground his teeth, and slowly returned to his seat. Eyes narrowed on Henderson, his lips blade-thin, his manner was silently combative.

“I’ve got a job to do here.” Henderson riffled through his papers. “But don’t worry. We’re gonna find your ex-wife. Did you have any contact with your sister recently?”

The muscles in the back of Maggie’s neck tightened.

“Not for a few weeks. Five or six,” she said, refusing to think of that one silent cry for help only she could hear.

“Did she mention anything that was out of the ordinary?”

“She was always a little out of the ordinary,” Maggie said. “That’s why she was Marquise.”

“But more than usual? Was she depressed or angry or worried about anything?”

“Just the ratings of her show, I think. We mainly talked about my daughter. Mary Theresa and she were—are—very close.”

“When was the last time she saw your daughter?”

Maggie thought for just a second. “Last summer. Beginning of July. That’s the only time she came up to our place in Idaho.”

“Why?”

“Look, Detective, if you know anything about my sister, you know that a cabin in the woods in the panhandle of Idaho isn’t exactly her style. Mary Theresa was never one for…roughing it. She’s a city girl.”

“But she was married to you?” His gaze swung to Thane, and Maggie sensed the wheels of curiosity were cranking overtime in the detective’s mind. Cowboy boots, battle-scarred rawhide jacket, jeans, and a work shirt—Thane wasn’t the kind of man Marquise would deign to marry.

“We were young,” Thane explained.

“Opposites attracted?”

“Something like that.”

Maggie felt her cheeks flame. She bit her tongue. There was no reason to discuss what had happened so long ago. It was over. Ancient history. Or was it? Why had Mary Theresa kept in contact with her ex-husband if there was nothing between them? Why had they fought? And why did Thane seem like he was hiding something, a secret that he couldn’t confide in her? Somehow she knew that Detective Henderson would ferret it out, one way or another. Though she knew she wasn’t under suspicion—well, at least she thought she wasn’t—the conversation seemed like an interrogation. Henderson wasn’t convinced either she or Thane was telling the truth.

“When was the last time you saw Marquise—er, Mary Theresa?” He glanced at Thane as he rummaged in the top drawer of his desk.

“We discussed this the last time I was here.” Thane’s eyes were thunderous.

“I know about the fight at her house,” Henderson said. “We’ll get to that in a minute. But she’d come to see you before then, hadn’t she?”

A muscle worked in the corner of Thane’s jaw. “About three or four weeks ago. She’d come up to my ranch in Wyoming.”

“Not far from Cheyenne?”

“Yep.”

Maggie’s spine stiffened.

“Any particular reason?” Henderson asked, retrieving a pack of gum and shaking out a stick.

Thane hesitated and rubbed his chin. “It was unusual, even for her. I think I told you that she sometimes went to my spread in California, but this time she came up to see me. She was having trouble with her job. Ratings and arguments with the guy she worked with.”

“Craig Beaumont?”

“Right.”

“Anything else?” Henderson unwrapped the gum and plopped it into his mouth.

“Nope,” Thane said, and again Maggie felt as if he was hiding something from her. From the detective. Something vital. She couldn’t imagine what it was, but she was determined to find out.

“So,” Henderson said, wiggling his pencil and frowning, “the last time your ex-wife came to visit you, how long did she stay?”

Thane’s nostrils flared. “A while.”

“How long of a while?”

Maggie sensed something was going on here, something important.

Thane rubbed the back of his neck. “Three days,” he said, his face dead serious. “She stayed three days.”

Three days?

Thane and Mary Theresa had been alone in his house for three days less than a month ago?

Maggie’s heart began to ache, though she didn’t understand why. It was as if she’d been lied to, betrayed, all over again. She couldn’t help swing her incredulous gaze in Thane’s direction. Mary Theresa had been in Cheyenne—in that stark house, sleeping in the small bed in the second bedroom? Or…had she been with Thane?

“Were you lovers?” Henderson asked.

“A long time ago.” Thane didn’t miss a beat.

“But not recently?”

“No.”

“Yet she came to see you?” Clearly the detective was suspicious. He exchanged a glance with his partner, who scratched another note on her pad.

“Sometimes.”

Henderson reached for his baseball as if he didn’t know he was doing it. “Who else did she go to?” He gave the ball a toss.

“Beats me.”

“Oh, she must’ve told you something.” Catching the ball, he frowned and set it back in the scratched holder that was molded in the shape of a tiny mitt.

“Nothing that you haven’t read in the papers.”

“And you have no idea what happened to her?”

Thane’s gaze was rock steady. “None.”

Henderson said to Maggie, “I assume you’ll be staying in town for a while.”

“Yes. I haven’t booked a hotel yet, but when I do I’ll call. I want to know what’s going on.”

“Then we’ll talk again.”

“Wait a minute.” Maggie wasn’t through. She hadn’t shipped her injured, estranged daughter to Dean’s relatives in California, spent the last few days driving through a near blizzard, dealt with the one man who had nearly ruined her life, worried herself sick with her stomach in knots, her life out of kilter, only to show up here without getting a few answers of her own. “So what’re you going to do about finding my sister?”

“Continue the investigation.”

“How?” she demanded. From the corner of her eye she thought she caught the ghost of a smile whisper across Thane’s mouth.

“Through diligence, resources, leads…it’s what we do here, Mrs. McCrae.”

“Diligence?” she said. “You’re checking her credit-card receipts—right? The phone, and bank cards and gas cards? And you’ve got an APB out for her Jeep as well as her? You’ve let the radio and television stations know that she’s missing and have asked for their help?”

“She works for KRKY. Believe me, the media is informed. They called us when she didn’t show up for work and they couldn’t get through to her.”

“Are you watching her house? And she has a place…near Aspen, where she goes to ski.”

“It’s covered, Mrs. McCrae.”

“How about her psychiatrist? She was seeing someone—a woman, I think. Kelly…”

“Dr. Michelle Kelly.”

“She might have some idea what was going on in Mary Theresa’s mind.”

Henderson stood. “Trust me, we’re doing everything possible to find your sister. Talking to anyone who knew her. We’ll find her. The last person to see her that we know of was Mr. Walker here. She had a blowup after taping her program on Thursday, went toe-to-toe with her cohost, then blew off a meeting with her agent, who had flown here from L.A. just to talk to her. Even so, because she’s flighty and has a history of being a hothead and a flake, the station wasn’t in an out-and-out panic, but they were concerned, sent a news crew out to knock on her door to find her, then started digging. That’s when we were contacted. By this time KRKY was all over the story, and the other stations picked up on it. I’m surprised they or Marquise’s secretary didn’t call you.” He glanced at Thane. “Ms. Lawrence contacted you, right?”

Thane nodded.

“And the newspeople?”

“They had just started nosin’ around when I met with you and decided someone should inform Maggie, face-to-face.”

Henderson motioned to Maggie. “No one called you but me?”

“No,” Maggie shook her head. “I don’t think so. I was away for the weekend, shopping with my daughter, and my answering machine wasn’t hooked up.”

Henderson’s eyebrows beetled, as if he didn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “Well, the upshot is that after the station manager, Ron Bishop, down at KRKY got worried and couldn’t find her, he and the executive producer for
Denver AM
called down here; we asked him to come in and file a missing-person report and have been investigating ever since.” He riffled through his notes. “The last person who thinks she recognized your sister was the cashier at a convenience store/gas station where she bought a tank of supreme, a bag of Doritos, and a Diet Coke—all bought with cash from a woman who resembled Marquise. The clerk doesn’t remember for certain, thinks there might have been two people in the car—a man and a woman—and she
thinks
it headed west out of town. And there’s nothing to prove it. Someone bought those items, but the receipt doesn’t show who it was and the clerk might just be jerking our chain, trying to get some publicity or advertising for the mini-mart. There are all kinds of nuts out there. In my opinion, it just doesn’t mean a helluva lot. The clerk could be mistaken, or your sister could have pulled a U-turn at the next block, but we’re checking every lead.”

“Good.”

“So far we’re treating your sister as a missing person, nothing more.”

“You’re not concerned with the possibility of foul play?” Thane asked.

“We’re concerned, but don’t have enough evidence to prove it.” Henderson’s serious mask didn’t crack. “We haven’t ruled out homicide or even suicide—”

“Suicide?” Maggie said. “Mary Theresa would never take her own life. What is this?”

“How well did you know your sister?” Henderson asked, and for the first time in her life Maggie didn’t know how to respond.

She and Mary Theresa had grown up so close, but even then they’d been on different paths, and as they’d become adults they’d drifted further and further apart. There were so many secrets, so many lies, so many betrayals. The truth of the matter was that she didn’t know Mary Theresa very well. Marquise even less.

“I just don’t believe that she would take her own life. Why would you even think such a thing?” She turned worried eyes to Thane.

“She tried once before,” Hannah Wilkins said. “A year and a half ago.”

“No…I don’t believe it.”

Henderson lifted a shoulder. “Her stomach was pumped at Pinehurst Memorial.” He shuffled through the papers on his desk. “She had enough sleeping pills and antidepressants in her to do the job. But she called nine-one-one in time.”

“Oh, God,” Maggie whispered, then eyed Thane. “Did you know about this?”

“After the fact.”

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” She was horrified. This was her twin sister; aside from Becca, her only living relative.

“She wanted it kept a secret. From everyone. Somehow she pulled it off. Hard to do when you’re a quasi celeb.” He glanced at Hannah. “Must have paid off people at the hospital to keep it quiet.”

Maggie shivered. It seemed that almost everyone she held dear to her was gone. Mitch, her parents, and her husband were all dead. Her sister and daughter were both somewhat estranged from her and as for Thane Walker…well, he too was lost. Rubbing her arms, she pulled herself together. Right now she had to find Mary Theresa. If she was alive, then they could begin to mend their emotional fences.
If.

“As I said, your sister wasn’t the most stable person around,” Henderson reiterated, and stared at her long enough for Maggie to suspect that he was considering the fact that she, too, had been under psychiatric care at one time. Not that it was a crime or rare. Unless your name was McCrae. “Then there was the note.”

Cold dread grasped Maggie’s heart in icy fingers. “What note?”

“We found it in the wastebasket by her computer.” Henderson produced a scribbled piece of paper, sheathed in plastic, and Maggie recognized her sister’s backhanded loopy style.

I can’t take this any longer. No one understands me. No one cares. I should just end it all.

Maggie nearly dropped her half-empty cup of coffee. She couldn’t believe it, not Mary Theresa. Never. She was too full of life, too full of herself. “Anyone could have written that,” Maggie whispered, her voice husky as she stared at the damning note.

“It looks like her handwriting, though.”

Maggie nodded, stunned. Was it possible? She glanced over at Thane, saw denial in his eyes, and remembered her sister’s desperate plea. She’d heard it when she’d been alone in the barn. Or had she? Her head began to pound, and she was suddenly exhausted.

Henderson rounded the desk and she thought he was about to escort her out the door; but he paused, swung a leg over the corner of the littered surface, and looked her squarely in the eye. “This wouldn’t be some kind of sick publicity stunt of your sister’s, would it? You know the kind, to stir up some interest for her failing show, get her some national media attention, maybe help revive her career?”

The question once would have stunned her, but no longer. An hour ago she would have denied the accusation vehemently, but an hour ago she didn’t know nearly what she now did about her sister. Mary Theresa Reilly. Marquise. Thane Walker’s ex-wife. Once-upon-a-time Hollywood hopeful. Doting aunt. Twice-married has-been talk-show host who had previously attempted to end her own life. “I—I don’t know,” Maggie answered honestly.

“She has a history of storming off sets, of riling up the public, and pulling this kind of disappearing stunt.”

“I know, but she’s always come back.”

“Just before the police were called in, usually.” Henderson flipped open the file and ran his fingers down a typed list. “When she was acting, she held up production of one of the movies she made by pouting and locking herself in her dressing room, all over a minor scene being cut.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“It cost her a contract.”

“I know.”

“So she took some courses, became a weathergirl, managed to work her way up on the local television-news circuit, then took a job here. Since she’s been in Denver she’s failed to show up for work on two separate occasions, both times claiming health problems, though the consensus was she was in some kind of contractual dispute and was holding out for more money.”

“I don’t know about those.”

Henderson glanced at Thane, who gave a grudging nod.

“She also has a history of drug use.”

“What?” Maggie was out of her chair. Shaking, her head thundering with all this new painful knowledge, she said, “I don’t believe it.”

“Prescription medications. A painkiller for her back, a series of different antidepressants, and something to help her sleep. The same ones she used in the suicide attempt.”

“Dear God.”

He flipped the file closed and tossed it back on the pile covering his desk. “As I said, your sister has more than her share of problems.”

“We all do,” Maggie said, refusing to be intimidated. “And Marquise is an actress, a—”

“I don’t buy into the sensitive artiste bullshit, Mrs. McCrae. The way it looks to me, Marquise is a spoiled brat. A beautiful, pampered, emotional basket case.”

Maggie bit back a hot retort. She wanted to argue and shout, to call the detective an ignoramus and an insensitive lout, but she didn’t want to aggravate him. Truth to tell, in light of what she’d learned, his description of Mary Theresa wasn’t too far off base. “Do you need anything more from me?”

“That’s about it for now.” Henderson focused on Thane for a second, then managed a professional grin that held no warmth whatsoever as he stood and offered Maggie his hand. “But I might want to talk to you again.”

“Good. Because I’ll want to talk to you, too. I expect you to keep me abreast of the situation.”

“Wouldn’t dream of anything else. Let me know where you’re staying.”

“I will,” she said brusquely, then realized that she was on the defensive though she had no reason to be. Slightly galled, she shook his hand. “Thanks.”

“You, too.”

Instantly on his feet, Thane squared his hat on his head and gave a curt nod to each of the detectives.

Maggie was out the door in a flash, zipping up her jacket and yanking on her gloves. Thane was right behind her. She walked through the maze of desks and general hubbub of people, officers in uniform, plainclothes detectives, office personnel, and lay people as they found their way to the main lobby and walked outside where the air was cold, the sky a brilliant blue, the sunlight dazzling.

Three reporters hung out on the steps, smoking cigarettes and talking, their breath fogging in the air.

One woman glanced at them. “Hey—isn’t that Marquise?” she heard one whisper to another. Maggie’s heart leaped and she turned, looking over her shoulder, hoping to spy her sister when she realized the reporter was staring directly at her. “Marquise? Where have you been?” A petite Asian woman, bundled in a heavy wool coat, gloves, and a scarf, thrust a microphone in Maggie’s face. The cameraman was right behind her, balancing a huge camera on one shoulder and pointing it in her direction.