Twice Kissed (36 page)

Jenny’s clock was a wooden Elvis, painted to look like the King. The face of the clock was inserted into Elvis’s torso, but his hips swung free, keeping time to the seconds that were ticking away. Right now, the clock didn’t seem quite so whimsical and cool, but it did tell Becca that it was nearly midnight. Uncle Jim, a businessman who woke up at 5
A.M
. so that he could jog five miles before driving to work, had been in bed since ten. Aunt Connie had rattled around the kitchen and had been on the phone until nearly eleven, then she, too, had turned in. No doubt they were both sawing logs, but Becca didn’t want to be left holding the bag if they woke up. “Let me come with you,” she suggested.

“Oh, yeah, right!” Jenny rolled her expressive eyes. Along with the black turtleneck sweater, she was dressed in tight black jeans. A huge belt with a gold buckle accentuated her tiny waist. She straightened the buckle, then reached into her top drawer and pulled out a few bills from a jewelry case she kept beneath her bras. Her secret stash of money—over two hundred dollars that she’d saved from her allowance. Tucking the bills into a pocket, she said, “Haven’t you ever heard the expression ‘three’s a crowd’? Kevin and I don’t need a baby-sitter, if ya know what I mean.”

Becca got it all right. But it bugged her. “So what am I supposed to say if your mom comes in?”

“I don’t know. That…that I got restless and went out to take a walk, or to get something to eat, or something. Anything but that I’m with Kevin, okay? Mom would probably have a coronary, right here in the middle of the room. She thinks Kevin is a…wait a minute, I think the direct quote is, ‘a low-life punk who’s probably on drugs and will never get anywhere.’”

Jenny wrinkled her nose and pursed her lips in an impression of her mother’s persnickety expression that was dead on. Becca couldn’t help but giggle.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Okay?”

It wasn’t, but Becca muttered, “I guess.”

“Good. Tomorrow we’ll go to the mall, I promise.”

Becca hated the mall.

Biting her lip nervously, Jenny carried her black shoes in her hands, and Becca slid lower in the bed. “Here.” Jenny picked up the remote control that had been left between the brushes and CDs on her dresser, then tossed it to Becca. “You can watch Letterman.” Opening the door a crack, she gnawed on her lip and scouted the hallway; then, with one final glance at her cousin, she slipped through the opening, closed the door softly behind her, and slid noiselessly down the hall.

Becca was sweating. She strained to hear any sound through the open window. A cat mewed quietly from a hiding spot in the backyard, a few cars passed on the road in front of the house, and far away a horn honked. Then she heard it, the sound of an engine turning over as Jenny, who always parked her Jetta on the street, started the car and, without the tiniest squeak of tires, took off.

Becca ran to the window and peered through the slats of the blinds in time to see the red taillights of the Jetta disappear around the corner. The night was eerie, blue light from the streetlamps glowing through the palm-tree fronds and branches of the grapefruit trees that shaded the garage. Becca’s heart was thudding, pounding so loudly she was certain Aunt Connie, three doors down, could hear it.

Swallowing hard, Becca wondered why she’d ever wanted to come here. At this moment she hated L.A. and couldn’t help but feel alone, betrayed, and abandoned. Jenny was a turd, and Aunt Connie and Uncle Jim acted funny, always asking her questions about her life in Idaho, about her mother, about how she
felt
about living so far away, about how her mother spent their money. There had been a few quiet inquiries into her mother’s health and job, and Becca got the feeling something was up—something she might not like. When she’d asked Jenny about it, her cousin had just shrugged.

“They’re always uptight, and with Grandpa in the nursing home, it’s been worse. They’re gonna drag you to see him, you know, because he’s about a goner and they’re all worried about his will. Something about trust funds, I don’t really get it.” She’d rolled her eyes and gone back to filing her nails.

Now, Jenny and her Jetta were long gone, and Becca turned away from the window to flop down on the bed and fight the stupid feeling that she was going to cry. Here in L.A., where she was supposed to be having so much fun, she felt miserably alone. And scared. If Aunt Connie found out that Jenny’d taken off, she’d have a stroke. And probably blame Becca somehow. In the few days she’d been here, Becca had already sensed that she was not just a guest, but kind of a burden. Aunt Connie not only resented her, but was blaming her for any kind of trouble that happened.

The seconds ticked by, and Becca’s heartbeat finally slowed. The house remained still. Throat dry, Becca finally let out her breath, clicked on the television, the volume muted and low. As she switched through a billion stations, she caught a glimpse of her mother’s face—no, wait, it was Aunt Marquise. She stopped channel-surfing and caught the news out of Denver, that her aunt was still missing, and the police were beginning to suspect foul play.

What? Foul play?

Her heart hammered. What exactly did that mean? Foul play? Murder? Oh, man, she hoped not. Kidnapping? Rape? All those horrible things that she saw on the news or in those police-drama shows? Geez, not Marquise. No way. Anxiously, Becca listened to the report, learned nothing new, and was suddenly worried sick. Something big was going on, more than she had ever imagined. She snapped off the set and pulled the covers over her head. Where was Marquise? Nobody could really hurt her, could they? Hadn’t Aunt Connie said that Becca’s mother had called earlier, when she and Jenny had been at a movie? Had she been calling about Aunt Marquise? Oh, man, oh, man, this was bad.

It was just a dumb news report. She couldn’t let herself get freaked out by it.

And yet she started to shake. She thought about her favorite beautiful but wild aunt, who looked so much like her mother but was ten times cooler.

Becca blinked against a sudden, stupid wash of tears. Swallowing hard and feeling a thick lump clog her throat, she realized how badly she missed her mom and her dad. Tears threatened her eyes, and she set her jaw to combat them. Why had her mom decided to divorce her dad? She’d never really gotten a straight answer on that one. And, crap, why had he ended up dead? That old dull ache, the one that throbbed in her chest for months after her father’s accident, started up again, and she hugged her pillow close to her body. She missed him. So much. And now she missed her mother. Something she’d have sworn was never possible.

Sniffing loudly, she thought of the last few months when they had been living in Idaho. Maggie had wanted to get away from L.A. and “all the memories, all the pain.” Becca had fought the move tooth and nail, had refused to speak to Maggie, had even wished she could die, and hadn’t been afraid to tell her mother just how she felt.

Now, Becca cringed at the thought. At the time, Maggie had been seeing a shrink and had insisted that Becca visit him, too. Maggie McCrae had been a basket case—well, they both had been. Thinking back on that painful scene, Becca was embarrassed that she’d laid so much guilt on her mother and, though she hated to admit it, she had decided that living in Settler’s Ridge wasn’t all bad. In fact, some of it she actually liked.

Like riding Jasper through the woods at night with that stupid, ugly, Barkley loping on three legs behind the horse. That one-eared dog had turned out to be her best friend in the world. Barkley slept on the end of her bed and followed her everywhere she went, just like he would have if she’d raised him from a pup. Yeah, he was dumb.

Then there were the kids in school. Lots of ’em were geeks—country bumpkins who didn’t know anything about L.A. or surfing or beach volleyball or anything other than what they saw on MTV, but some of the girls seemed okay, and there was one boy in her class, Austin Peters, who was pretty cool. He had shaggy blond hair, cut kinda long, and he was on the shy side; but he smiled at Becca sometimes, and when he did her heart went ker-thunk. Austin Peters had the greatest blue eyes she’d ever seen.

Oh, man, why was she thinking of Austin now, when she was a million miles away from him, her mom was in Denver, and her aunt Marquise was possibly the victim of “foul play”? Becca cleared her throat, sniffed back her tears, and told herself not to worry about Marquise. Hadn’t her mother always said Mary Theresa always landed on her feet? So nothing could possibly be wrong. Nothing. The news had just screwed something up. That was possible, wasn’t it?

She squeezed her eyes shut and, for the first time since the day of her father’s funeral, Becca McCrae prayed.

Brring! The phone jangled, jarring Maggie from a fitful sleep. Where was she and who—oh, God, she was with Thane in the hotel room and she’d just…

Again the phone blasted.

Becca. Or Mary Theresa.

Still half-asleep, she scrabbled for the receiver of the telephone, her heart hammering as if she expected bad news. It was morning, sunlight seeping through the cracks of the curtains, the noise of traffic from the street and water running in nearby rooms sifting through the walls.

“Hello?” she called into the mouthpiece as she sat up and scooted to the head of the bed, where her pillow was pressed to her back. Thane propped himself up on an elbow, his naked skin gleaming in the morning light, his mouth set in a hard, worried line.

“Ms. McCrae?” a male voice she recognized asked.

“Yes.”

“This is Detective Henderson.”

Her heart nearly stopped. The man’s voice was toneless. “Yes?”

“Listen, you’d better sit down. Your sister’s Jeep’s been located. Off the highway near Turkey Canyon. Single-car accident.”

“What?” Tears sprang to her eyes. Denial screamed through her brain. “I—I don’t believe it.” She was shaking violently.

“Maggie, let me—” Thane reached for the receiver, but she wouldn’t let go, held on to the damned phone as if it were a lifeline to Mary Theresa.

“Are you still there?” Henderson asked.

“Yes,” she said, her voice the barest of whispers. She began to shiver as the words sank in. “But I don’t believe…I can’t believe that my sister…” Her voice failed her altogether.

Thane’s eyebrows slammed together, and he stared at her hard, his naked body close, his eyes filled with questions.

“I’m sorry, Ms. McCrae, but there’s no doubt about it. The license plate and description of the Wrangler match,” Henderson said. “It’s hard to miss your sister’s vanity plate. It reads ‘Marquise.’”

“Oh, God,” she whispered, her fingers holding the receiver in a death grip. A million images of her sister swirled in a blurred kaleidoscope through her mind. Mary Theresa as a blond tot, as a preteen hiding under the covers and reading her brother’s
Playboy
magazine, as an adolescent smoking and sneaking out of the house, as a young woman pregnant with Thane’s child and scared to death…Maggie swallowed hard, had trouble finding her voice. “Mary Theresa. Is she—? Is she alive?”

Thane reached for the phone again, but Maggie shook her head, pushed him away.

“We don’t know yet. A state trooper found the rig as the snow began to melt. The Wrangler’s pinned beneath the top of a pine tree that must’ve split on impact and there’s nearly a foot of snow on top of that.”

“Sweet Jesus,” she whispered, her throat catching, tears drizzling from her eyes.

“The trooper called in for backup, and a team’s dug deep enough to see someone—a woman—in the front seat, but it’ll be some time before they can get her out and look for identification.”

She let out a little squeak of protest. Her stomach clenched, but she couldn’t let the fear get the better of her. “I’ll—we’ll—be at the station in twenty minutes,” she said into the phone, her blood turning to ice, her heart cold as death. She was shaking so violently she could barely hang up the phone.

“That was the police.”

“I gathered that much. Are you okay?” Concern darkened his eyes.

“Yes…no…yes, I will be.” She tried to pull herself together. “They…they think they found her,” she said in a voice that sounded distant and distraught, not at all like her own. “And…and there was some kind of accident.” She blinked and drew in a quivering breath. “Detective Henderson didn’t say it, but I could hear it in his voice. He thinks Mary Theresa is dead. Dead! Oh, God, Thane she can’t be, she just…can’t be.”

“Wait a minute, slow down.” He tried to hold her, but she edged away.

“Don’t you understand?” she whispered, her voice dry, her soul black as the darkest corner of hell. “They found her car and a body, a woman’s body. It—it could be her, Thane.”

Reaching forward, he dragged her into his arms and, despite her protests, held her close. Tears rained from her eyes and she wanted to fall into a million pieces. Pain and desperation clawed at her heart, ripped through her soul. It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t. Mary Theresa was still alive. She had to be. And yet Maggie was sobbing, clinging to Thane, her fingers curled into fists.

“Shh,” he whispered. “Maggie, darlin’, it’ll be all right.”

“No! No! Oh, God, no!” she wailed. “It’ll never be all right.”

His fingers twined in her hair, and he rocked her gently, pressing her head into his shoulder as his other arm held fast to her waist. “Slow down, Maggie. Tell me what Henderson said.”

She tried. Through the blinding pain, she managed to repeat most of the conversation.

“We don’t know anything yet, then. Nothing’s certain.” But his voice was dead, as if he were lying. “Come on, let’s get a move on.”

“I can’t believe it,” she whispered over and over as she dressed as quickly as she could, throwing on jeans and a sweatshirt, not bothering with makeup or jewelry, just barely able to slip into running shoes.

Thane, too, yanked on his jeans and wrinkled shirt before finding both their jackets.

They were on the road in five minutes.

The police station was a madhouse, as the press had already gotten wind of Marquise’s accident. “I’ve got to call Connie and warn her before Becca turns on the television and sees this,” Maggie said, horrified at the swarm of reporters who were collecting at the station. She didn’t ask, just reached for Thane’s cell phone, gave her sister-in-law a quick rundown of what was happening, then spoke briefly to Becca.

“Hi, honey.”

“Have they found Aunt Marquise?” Becca demanded. “I saw something on the news last night.”

“All I know for certain is that they’ve located her car,” Maggie hedged, upset that Becca was getting information from other sources. She had to level with her daughter and give her straight facts—just as soon as she had them herself. Fingers tightening around the phone, she said, “But we’re at the police station and going to talk to the detective in charge of finding Mary Theresa. The minute I know anything I’ll call.”

“Promise?” Becca, the tough kid, sounded scared.

“Scout’s honor. I already told Aunt Connie the same thing. Now try not to worry.”

There was a hesitation, and Maggie’s heart broke. “Okay,” Becca finally said, her voice breathless as if she was fighting a losing battle with tears. Maggie felt horrible. She wanted her daughter with her, should never have let her go to California. “Look, honey, I’ll call you back once I get to the hotel. Do you have the number?”

“Yeah.”

Maggie’s heart tore. Becca was too far away. Mary Theresa was missing. She’d made love to Thane and her entire world was tilting badly, her life falling apart. “Love ya.”

“Me too.” Becca said meekly and hung up, leaving Maggie holding the receiver and wishing she could reach through the wires and hug her daughter. Becca was usually a pretty strong kid, but all the worries about Marquise seemed to be getting to her as well.

“Let’s go,” she said, clearing her throat as she handed Thane the phone and reached for the handle of the door.

Together they walked toward the front of the police station, where the crowd of reporters swarmed. At the sight of Maggie there was a stir. Several cameramen advanced toward her.

“Hang in, this might be rough,” Thane said. One arm surrounded her shoulders as he hustled her up the steps. Three microphone-wielding reporters accosted them, shouting questions, following them up the few concrete stairs to the double doors of the station.

“Marquise? Is that Marquise or her double?”

“Please, just one word.”

“It’s the sister—”

Maggie ducked her head. Thane was more forceful, helping her up the steps and shouting, “No comment, we don’t know anything yet,” over his shoulder.

“This is a nightmare,” he whispered once they were on the second floor and were being ushered into Henderson’s office. Upon spying them through his open door, the beleaguered detective waved them in. “What the hell’s going on?” Thane demanded.

“As I told Ms. McCrae, we found Marquise’s Jeep. Sit down,” he invited, waving them to the worn plastic chairs in which they’d sat on their earlier visit. He ordered coffee, but Maggie couldn’t take a swallow from her Styrofoam cup. Her stomach was churning; her intestines felt as if they were waterlogged.

“What about Mary Theresa?” Maggie asked, dreading the answer.

“Not sure yet.”

Thane drank his coffee and looked as if he’d rather be any other place in the world. Even through the closed door, the buzz and excitement of the other offices seeped in. Henderson’s phone rang twice, and he had short, terse conversations with whoever was on the other end.

Hannah Wilkins rapped on the door, then slipped into the tight little room. “The ME is allowing them to remove the body soon,” she reported, and Maggie’s heart shredded. “To the morgue. And the press is all over this. We’ve already had calls from all the stations and papers.” She handed a list to Henderson. “So far the official word is ‘no comment.’”

“Good.”

Maggie didn’t think it was good. Not good at all.

“And we’ve been getting calls from everyone who knew her.” She handed Henderson a list.

“Pomeranian, King, Gillette…” Henderson nodded. “We’ll call them back.”

“Wade Pomeranian is demanding answers.”

Henderson’s expression didn’t change. “So are we.” He swung his gaze back to Maggie. “I’m sorry for the wait—”

A uniformed officer poked his head into the room. “The fax you were waiting for came in,” he explained.

Henderson waved him in and accepted a couple of pieces of paper that Maggie was certain would change the course of her life forever.

Henderson scanned the pages as the officer left the room. Maggie’s brain was screaming with dread, her pulse thudding. She felt sick and silently sent up prayer after prayer for her sister while Thane didn’t say a word, just sat grim-faced, his eyes trained on the detective.

Henderson’s hound-dog face drooped even farther as he scanned the fax. Maggie’s heart plummeted. She gripped the edge of her chair and felt her head pounding.

“No positive ID yet,” Henderson said quietly, “but your sister’s purse was in the Jeep and—”

Maggie thought she might be sick.

“—the woman in the driver’s seat is about the right size.” His voice was toneless, his gaze on the damning sheets of paper. “The victim’s pretty mangled up. Lacerations, contusions, broken teeth, as she wasn’t wearing her seat belt and was thrown into the windshield.”

Bile screamed up Maggie’s throat, and she had no choice but to scramble to the wastebasket and retch.

“Ms. McCrae—” Henderson was on his feet.

“Leave her alone,” Thane ordered. “Maggie—” He was beside her in an instant.

“Don’t—” Maggie lifted a hand, afraid someone would try to touch her, comfort her. She didn’t want anyone, not even Thane, to offer any consolation. Not yet. “If…if I could just have a few minutes in the rest room.”

“I’ll take her.” Detective Wilkins helped Maggie to her feet, and together they made their way through the maze of offices to a women’s room with pale green walls and a tile floor layered in years of built-up wax. The urge to vomit had passed and Maggie huddled over a sink, where she washed her mouth and splashed water on her face.

Get a grip,
she told herself as she eyed her sorry-looking reflection in the mirror. She was pale as death, her eyes sunken and shadowed, her lips bloodless, her unbrushed hair falling lankly around her face.
You can’t lose it; not now. Not until you find out the truth and then, damn it, not even then.

“Better?” Hannah asked.

“Marginally.”

“Can I get you anything? Coffee or a glass of water or…a cigarette, maybe?”

“No.” Maggie yanked out a paper towel and wiped her hands, then her lips. “I’ll be fine. This is all so scary, all…just a shock.”

“I know.” Hannah offered her a thin, patient smile. “You and your sister were very close.”

“Are,” Maggie corrected. “We
are
close.” She tossed the paper towel into the waste barrel and, with as much dignity as she could muster, made her way through the hallways and large rooms crammed with desks to Henderson’s office.

“…so until we make a positive ID, I’m not sure how we’re gonna handle this.” Henderson was chewing gum to beat the band, and his eyes were mere slits as they narrowed on Thane. He looked up as Maggie entered. “The body’s been transferred to the morgue. Are you up for an identification?”

“You don’t have to do this,” Thane said. “I’ll handle it.”

“No.” Maggie was firm. “She’s my sister.” Dry-eyed, she nodded at Henderson. “I’ll do it.”

Thane looked as if he was about to argue but didn’t. For the first time in his life that Maggie knew of, he did as he was told, following Henderson’s instructions to the letter. Numb, her heart as cold as the bottom of the ocean, her mind screaming all kinds of denials, Maggie, too, took the detective’s lead. Within minutes they were in the morgue, standing behind a large window, watching as a man in a lab coat lifted the sheet from a naked body.