Secrets and Lies (23 page)

Then there was Carl Bancoft, local fire fighter, and the ultimate poker player. They would all swear Carl had worked the professional poker circuit before settling down in Boston—even though he vehemently denied their jokes. He had a wife and two kids. He was the only one in the group that was married with a family. Denison had sworn off marriage. His job was too dangerous, he had said. He needed full focus and he couldn’t split that focus between saving a life and thinking about a woman. Of course he hadn’t let his no marriage rule stop him from sleeping with half the women in Boston and beyond. The ladies loved him. Denison could walk into a bar alone and walk out with a beautiful woman for the night.

The last man rounding out their game was Shawn, a detective Thomas met while working SWAT. Shawn was twenty-eight, the youngest man at the table, in age only. He seemed older, felt older. His maturity, his fast rise in the ranks on the force, and his strong nature made him appear much older.

“Just this once,” Thomas assured him. “Somebody very special could die if I don’t get this information.”

Denison laughed. “I thought we had a no excuses rule,” he shook his head. “And Thomas over there is turning into a drama king just to make one.”

“It’s not drama,” Shawn said. “He’s made it through three hands, but I don’t think he’s going to be much good in the game until he hears what I have to say.”

Thomas wasn’t sure he would be much good in the game after he heard the information either. It was a good thing they didn’t play for real money, otherwise he would have lost a mint already.

Denison waved them away. “I’ll just get another beer,” he stood. “You want one, Carl?”

“One’s my limit,” he assured him. Carl never had more than one beer during game night. Thomas couldn’t honestly say he had ever seen him have more than one beer anywhere else either. Even when he took a beer he nursed it more than he drank it.

“Anybody else want a beer?”

“I’m not drinking tonight,” Thomas didn’t want to have to leave in a hurry and be worried about driving after having a drink. He didn’t get drunk off one beer, but one thing he and the others knew, one drink could impair judgment, even if just a little. Sometimes a little impairment was all it took to cause an accident that claimed a life, or seriously injured somebody. Usually the game went on for hours, which made having a drink with a sandwich an okay idea for him, but not tonight. Tonight he was going to leave the alcohol in the ‘fridge.

“I’m your designated driver,” Shawn reminded Carl.

“More for me then,” he grinned as he walked toward the kitchen.

Thomas turned his attention back to Shawn. “So?”

“It’s all true,” he reached over to his jacket that had been draped over the arm of the black leather sofa and pulled out a notepad. “Kyle was arrested. In the report it would seem that Sandra Laramie, a.k.a. Sandy, first noticed small problems a week after she and Kyle broke up. She came out from the grocery store and her tire was flat. The guy who helped her change it noticed it was slashed and told her to report it, but she didn’t. Then a couple days later somebody broke into her house, pillaged through her underwear and took a few pieces. The perp also left a sticky white substance on the panties he left on the bed—not seamen, it was some type of construction glue and solvent mix. That’s when they first suspected Kyle.” He flipped a page before continuing. Sandy had spent three weeks going through hell, thinking somebody was following her, having her home broken into—even with the alarm she had had installed, and then somebody decapitated her cat and left the head and the body in her bed.

“They couldn’t make the charges stick. While they thought it was Kyle, they really didn’t have anything conclusive to say that it was. There were no prints, no hairs, no fibers, nothing. The guy was good…in a bad way.”

Thomas nodded. “But they thought it was him…they just couldn’t make it stick.”

“You and I both know that just because we think it’s true, doesn’t mean it is.”

“But?” He heard the unspoken words in his friend’s voice.

“But,” he closed his notebook. “There weren’t any other suspects. Kyle didn’t have an alibi for any of the times when these things happened, and the case…well, if it could have gone to trial the DA would have taken it. It didn’t help that Sandy up and vanished in the middle of the investigation.”

“Vanished?”

“She disappeared for three weeks, but the detective on the case got a letter from some place out west telling him that she was sorry, but she just couldn’t risk staying in Boston any longer. Apparently, somebody tried to grab her and stuff her in the trunk of a car two days before she cleared out. The only thing that saved her was that another employee was leaving work at the time and saw what was going on. When he yelled at the guy…well, you know the rest.”

Thomas cursed as he shoved his hand through his hair. Somebody had tried to grab Thena too. “Did anybody check to make sure that letter really came from Sandy?”

Shawn shrugged. “When I talked to Detective Bowers he said once they got the letter they filed the case. If the victim wasn’t going to stick around to press charges they had other cases to work. You know how that goes.”

Thomas had worked SWAT, not investigations, but he had been around enough detectives to know that their caseload mandated they work the pressing cases. Sandy skipping town, not sticking around to see the case through, and the district attorney not pushing the police to provide more evidence pretty much ensured the case would get filed away. “She could be dead in a ditch somewhere for all we know,” he growled. He wouldn’t see the same fate befall Thena. He wouldn’t see her dead, or run off into hiding. If Kyle thought he could do to Thena what he did to Sandy, then he had a hard lesson coming his way.

Thomas didn’t underestimate people based on size; if he did there were a great many times he could have found himself dead. But he knew his own skills. He didn’t make captain of the wrestling team based on his looks. He sure as hell didn’t get through boot camp and serve in the Marines without learning how to kill, if need be.

“Breaks over you two. I need to win my dignity back from Carl,” Denison plunked down in his chair with a heavy thud as he took another swig of his beer.

“Like that’s going to happen,” Carl laughed. “You suck at poker Denison. Gavin was the only guy who could out bluff me. Thomas runs a close second. And Shawn…hell, even he’s better than you, Denison and we just taught him how to play the game.”

“Meg, thanks for letting me hang out here until Thomas finishes with the boys.” She didn’t tell Meg the full version of what was going on, but she did give her the Cliff Notes version. She told her about finding her mom. She told her that Thomas felt as if she might be in some danger, but she didn’t tell her about the attempts on her life. She didn’t feel the need to tell her about that. She didn’t know why. She and Meg had known each other since high school. If she were going to tell anybody about the crap she had been going through since finding her mother then it should have been Meg—but it wasn’t. She hadn’t even told Kyle everything. She did tell Deanne. Why she wasn’t sure. She had just met the woman and she had already told her more than she had told the two people who were closest to her in her life. She knew she hadn’t told Kyle everything because Kyle would worry. He would go into overprotective mode and smother her with it. He knew about the shooting at her place because he had driven by to see her and saw the damage. He had called franticly looking for her and she assured him she was okay. She hadn’t been able to get off the phone without telling him the details of what happened, so she told him the brief version of the story. Of course she left out the details of what was happening before the shot. He offered to fix the window for her, and he had. He fixed it quickly, and didn’t ask for payment. She did plan to pay him for his work and for the materials. She wouldn’t abuse their friendship. Materials and labor weren’t cheap or free, and she didn’t expect him to do the work and not get paid for it.

She figured she had probably told Deanne more information than the others because of the circumstances of their meeting. They were both sitting in a holding cell, and while Deanne had been there before, Thena hadn’t. She was scared, and trying not to show it. Talking to Deanne had helped, and for some reason it felt natural, as if they were old friends sharing girl talk over a cup of tea—but they weren’t old friends and they weren’t sharing girl talk, and the situation was certainly not a tea drinking occasion.

“So, what do you think of the design? I tried to keep it basic to keep cost down, while still giving you stylish function.” She was good at creating beautiful designs on any budget—well, almost any budget. She couldn’t exactly create a design on the budget of free. There was just no way any place could be built that way. When she was considering the clinic she figured she would get investors lined up, try to hold a charity benefit, approach the community and see about getting funding that way. She certainly didn’t want to take on a loan to build it, and since she didn’t have the time to go fundraise for the construction, she hadn’t done anything with the land.

She didn’t mind donating the land to Twist of Fate, but she couldn’t donate the time and services of her crew. She couldn’t ask them to do that, and she wouldn’t ask them to do it.

“The problem is I’ll need to pay for materials.”

“Yes,” she agreed. Of course she would have to pay for the materials. They weren’t just going to fall out the sky into her lap. She nearly laughed at her own thinking. If materials did fall out the sky, Meg’s lap wouldn’t be the only place they would land.

“Then there’s the cost for labor.”

“Meg, nothing in life is free. Somebody has to pay for it. Take out a loan.”

“I really don’t want to do that. I don’t want the debt for this.”

“Then do some fundraising. Twist of Fate is great for the community. There must be somebody who will be willing to put up some money to expand.”

“Well I’m not really good at fundraising either.”

Thena looked at her recently gone blond friend and wondered if she had rinsed her brains out along with the hair color chemicals. “Meg, you were the captain of the cheer squad. You’re the most bubbly, outgoing, vivacious person I know. You can work a room, a party, any event. I know you can pull this together for Twist of Fate.”

Meg sat down in the chair across the table. Her big green eyes wide with wonderment. “You mean you won’t consider taking this on for free?”

Why did she have to ask her that? Thena was a good business woman; she knew how to say no—most of the time. With friends the lines blurred sometimes and she so desperately wanted to help them. “I can’t,” she made sure she had conviction in her tone. “There’s no way I can get this work done without hiring help, and they don’t work for free. Not to mention materials. If you can get the backing, come up with the money, I’ll be happy to let you use the land, but I can’t do this project for free. This isn’t a remodel, Meg; it’s a new build.” Meg expected her to work for free, and perhaps that had been mostly her fault. She had undercharged her when she helped her get the first Twist of Fate building together. She had charged her for materials and for the labor of those who helped. Kyle had come in and helped for free, and with the work she put in, the price came in well under where it would have if she had treated her like any other client. She couldn’t do that this time.

“I thought we were friends,” she pouted. Her porcelain skin and pouty red lips looked flawless, except for the scowl growing in intensity on her face.

“We are.” Friends didn’t use friends, and if Meg really thought about it she would realize that using her is exactly what she was trying to do. Thena pushed friendship to the back burner and brought out her business persona. When she was in business mode her price was her price. If Meg wanted this done she was going to pay for it. She would still try to discount the service as much as she could; this was for a good cause after all, but she wasn’t going to sell her skills, or her workers skills, for free.

“Well then if that’s that…”

“It is,” she nodded.

“Then I think you should go.”

She was putting her out? It was pitch black outside and she was going to make her leave? Thena stood, rolled her sketches back to fit in the cylinder she had brought them in, grabbed her purse and pushed her hair behind her ears. “If you decide you’re ready and willing to put the effort into this build, you have my number.” Although she doubted Meg would put the money into it. It wasn’t as if she were broke. She had money she could invest. This was her project, her “baby,” as she had called it, and she should be willing to put in the work to make it a success.

“I won’t be calling you.”

Thena shrugged. It didn’t matter. She had bigger problems to worry about and she couldn’t let this be one of them. If Meg decided to pull her head out of her behind then she would be there for her; if not, well then that was her choice to make. Thena wasn’t going to lose sleep over it.

Thena walked to the edge of the driveway and checked her surroundings. She could call Thomas, but he was busy with his friends and she didn’t want to bother him. Plus, it would take much longer for him to get there. Kyle was only about five minutes driving time away from her. She decided to call Kyle first. She could call Thomas later to let him know not to bother picking her up from Meg’s place. He could just pick her up from her house. She wasn’t going to make Kyle drive all the way back into the city just to drop her off.