Secret Sisters (21 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Madeline ate the last bite of asparagus and put down her fork with a deep sense of satisfaction.

“That was the best meal I've had in a very long time,” she said. “Possibly in forever.”

“Fantastic,” Daphne declared. “Absolutely incredible. I want the hollandaise recipe.”

Jack's face was as unreadable as ever, but Madeline was pretty sure she detected a flicker of something that might have been gratification in his usually enigmatic eyes.

Abe looked at Daphne. “Just to be clear, I did the roasted asparagus.”

“Really?” Daphne looked impressed. “I'd love to have that recipe, too.”

Abe beamed. “I'll email it to you.”

Jack got to his feet. “Let's clear the table. We need to talk about a few things.”

“What about dessert?” Abe asked, suddenly anxious.

“It can wait a bit,” Jack said.

Abe was clearly downcast by that news, but he did not argue. He rose and picked up Daphne's plate.

The dishes disappeared from the table. The men disappeared into the kitchen.

Daphne looked at Madeline across the width of the table.

“I could get used to this kind of service,” she whispered.

“You and me both,” Madeline said.

Jack and Abe emerged from the kitchen a short time later. Jack wiped his hands on a dish towel, sat down, and took out his notebook.

Abe pulled out his phone and glanced at the screen. “Huh.”

“What?” Jack asked.

“Got a hit on that alert you had me set up,” Abe said. “The one about recent deaths within twenty miles of the ferry dock over on the mainland. There was a murder in the parking lot of an all-night diner eight miles from the dock. A woman was shot in the head. Looks like a drug deal gone bad.”

Madeline got a chill on the back of her neck. When she looked at Jack she saw that he was sitting very, very still.

“Did they ID the victim?” he asked.

“She was carrying a driver's license issued to an Anna Stokes,” Abe said. “Age thirty-two. Seattle address. Hang on, there's a picture.” He whistled softly. “Say hello to Ramona Owens.”

Abe put his phone down on the table so that they could all see the image on the screen.

“That's her,” Madeline said. “That's the woman who claimed to be Tom's granddaughter. The one who suckered us into going inside the maintenance building just before the explosion.”

“You were right, boss.” Abe picked up his phone. “She was probably hired talent. Someone used her and, when she was no longer needed, got rid of her.”

The chill that Madeline had sensed on the nape of her neck was
now affecting the whole room. She was amazed that there were no icicles dripping from the tabletop.

The atmosphere around Jack was the coldest place of all.

“Find out everything you can about her,” Jack said. His tone lacked any vestige of emotion. He got to his feet and headed for the kitchen. “I'll make some coffee. We're going to be up late tonight.”

He disappeared through the kitchen doorway. A moment later Madeline heard water running in the sink.

A peculiar silence descended on the table. Daphne watched the empty doorway.

“Is he okay?” she whispered.

Abe frowned, glanced toward the doorway, and then leaned toward Madeline and lowered his voice.

“He gets like that sometimes,” Abe said. “It just means he's thinking about some aspect of the case that isn't coming together the way he thinks it should.”

Jack was certainly deep into his own thoughts, Madeline mused. But she was not at all certain that he was assessing facts and running scenarios—not just then, at any rate.

She crumpled her napkin on the table, got to her feet, and went into the kitchen. Jack was at the sink, filling the glass coffeepot. He spoke to her without turning around.

“The coffee will be ready in a few minutes,” he said.

“Ramona, or whatever her name was, helped someone try to kill us,” Madeline said. “She may have been the person who killed Tom Lomax.”

Jack poured water into the reservoir of the coffeemaker and stuck the empty pot on the hot plate. He pressed the on button.

“It's possible, but I doubt it,” he said. “I think we're going to find out that the fake Ramona Owens was a low-level con artist who got in over her head.”

“What does that tell us?”

Jack turned around and lounged against the edge of the old tile counter. He folded his arms. “I don't know yet, but this may be the break I've been looking for. The killer made a huge mistake.”

“Why do you say that? It seems to me that whoever killed Ramona went out of their way to be careful. After all, she wasn't murdered on the island. She was killed several miles inland in a scenario that made the cops think it was a drug deal gone bad. Furthermore, it sounds like she wasn't carrying any Ramona Owens ID.”

“The killer would have made sure of that,” Jack said. “But the problem for whoever is behind this is that you and I can identify the dead woman as the fake Ramona Owens. And now we find out that she was killed way too close to the epicenter of this thing. It was a mistake.”

“Why?”

“Because it spells out in a very large, very bold font that there has to be a connection between the woman who posed as Lomax's granddaughter and someone on this island.”

Madeline thought about that. “Xavier Webster?”

“That would fit. Beautiful con artist gets manipulated by charismatic sociopath who is an even more talented con. Definitely one possible scenario. But I've made mistakes in the past when I've tried to narrow down the list of scenarios before I've had enough information.”

“Abe will get more information. Daphne says he's an artist with a computer.”

Jack's mouth twitched at the corner. “An artist, huh? Wonder how he feels about that. His goal is to be the white-hat, hard-core code writer who cracks the cold cases with his brilliant gaming programs.”

Madeline thought about the way Abe's eyes got a little warmer and a lot more intense when he looked at Daphne.

“I think Abe's okay with being called an artist,” she said.

Jack turned and looked out over the top of the yellowed kitchen curtains and contemplated the night as though surprised to see that darkness had fallen hours earlier.

“I'm going to get a little fresh air,” he said. “I'll be back in a few minutes.”

He turned away from the window, opened the door, and went outside into the shadows of the wraparound porch. Chilled currents of night air whispered into the room.

Madeline watched through the window for a while, unsure of her next move. She was still struggling to categorize her relationship with Jack. For all that they had been through together in recent days, she was well aware that there was an invisible wall between them.

Jack walked around the corner of the porch and was lost in the shadows.

She wondered when he had become a loner. He evidently had a family that cared about him, but it was clear that Abe and the others had not been able to reach through the crystalline barrier that separated Jack from the rest of the world.

Maybe the real problem was that Jack did not want to be rescued.

She went to the arched doorway that separated the kitchen from the dining room. Abe and Daphne were sitting close together at the big table, studying whatever was on the screen of Abe's laptop.

They both looked up when she appeared in the opening. She knew they had heard the kitchen door open and close. Abe glanced behind her into the empty kitchen. His jaw tightened a little. He turned back to the computer.

Daphne's eyes filled with sympathy, but she asked no questions.

Madeline made up her mind.

“I'll be right back,” she said.

She turned around, crossed the kitchen, and opened the back door.
Closing it quietly, she wrapped her arms around herself to ward off the chill and made her way to the far end of the porch.

Jack was braced against the darkness, his big hands gripping the railing. He did not turn around.

She stopped about a yard away from him.

“You knew that the woman calling herself Ramona Owens would probably wind up dead, didn't you?” she asked.

For a time she wasn't sure that he would answer. She told herself that she probably should have stayed inside and let him deal with his own demons in his own way. But they had shared too much. There was a bond of some kind between them. She could not leave him to battle on alone, not tonight. So she waited, aware that she was trying to coerce an answer out of him with the unsubtle tactic of silence.

“It seemed like the most likely scenario,” Jack said. “Her role as Lomax's granddaughter had all the hallmarks of a carefully scripted, professional con. She was no amateur. She was hired to do a job. But she wasn't the one behind this thing, so yeah, once her role was finished, her services were no longer required.”

“I'm going to take a flying leap here,” Madeline said. “It occurs to me that predicting someone's death—knowing there was nothing you could do to prevent it—would give a person a very cold feeling.”

Jack looked at her for the first time. He did not speak.

“I should have said that it would give any
decent
person that kind of feeling,” Madeline added. “It might make such a person wonder if the ability to put yourself in the mind of a killer means you might be capable of the act. Maybe it even makes you wonder if you're somehow not the person you believed yourself to be.”

He didn't say anything. He just looked at her.

“Is this the kind of work you did when you consulted for the FBI? Profile killers and make terrible predictions about who might be the next victim to die a violent death?”

“It gets old,” Jack said. He sounded unutterably weary. “Very, very old.”

“No shit.”

Jack said nothing.

“I'm so very sorry that I dragged you back into a world that you tried to leave behind,” she whispered.

“No.” He moved abruptly, crossed the small distance between them, and wrapped his arms around her. “That's not the problem, Madeline. The problem is that I'm terrified that this time I might screw up.”

“Just remember that you're not alone in this.”

She hugged him very close and very tight. After a while some of the cold seeped out of him.

“Madeline,” he said.

That was all he said, but he said it very quietly, as if it were all that needed saying in that moment.

They stood together in the shadows for a very long time.

CHAPTER FORTY

Daphne glanced uneasily toward the kitchen doorway. “They've been out there quite a while.”

“I know.” Abe did not look up from the screen of his computer. “You know, I'm starting to think that she's good for Jack. He's different when he's with her.”

“Is that so?”

“I told you, the family has been worried about him for a while now.”

“Because of his problems with relationships?” she asked.

“It's partly that. All he cares about these days is his business. Like I said, Mom is afraid he's given up on marriage.”

Daphne looked at the kitchen doorway again. “What's your theory of why Jack never married?”

Abe hesitated. She got the feeling that he was reminding himself that he needed to be a little more cautious now.

“He's been busy building Rayner Risk Management,” Abe said. “Takes energy to get a business off the ground, especially when you're starting over from scratch.”

“That's what Jack had to do?”

“His first company, the one he co-founded with a friend from his FBI days, went bust after the friend was killed in a diving accident. So yes, it's been a lot of hard work getting RRM up and running.”

“What about you?” she said. “Think you'll remarry someday?”

Abe went very still. He did not take his eyes off the screen. “Probably. It's what we do in our family.”

“Get married?”

“Yeah.”

“But next time you'll be more careful, right?”

“I'll try to be more careful. But let's face it, there are no guarantees when it comes to marriage. I messed up the first time. I'd just as soon not make the same mistake again.”

She shuddered. “I know where you're coming from. I feel the same way.”

“You're still grieving,” Abe said, very serious now. “You need to give yourself time.”

“I stopped grieving the day I found out that Brandon was having an affair with another woman throughout most of our marriage.”

“Oh, shit.” Abe sat back in his chair and exhaled heavily. “Sorry. Didn't realize.”

She looked at him for a few seconds, and then she smiled. “Just to be clear, I've been really pissed off this past year. Not grief stricken.”

He pondered that for a moment. “So the reason you haven't been eating well isn't because you're in mourning?”

“I just lost my appetite somewhere along the line. Maybe it was a form of depression or something.”

“You looked like you enjoyed dinner tonight.”

“I did.” She paused. “Especially the asparagus.”

Abe looked pleased. “You're feeling better, then?”

“Much better. Talking to Maddie about Brandon was very . . . therapeutic.”

“What did she tell you?”

“She reminded me that I outlived the bastard and that, as revenge scenarios go, it doesn't get any better.”

Abe whistled appreciatively. “Cold.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I like it. No wonder Madeline and Jack get along together. They have a lot in common. Both of them get to the bottom line in a hurry. So how's that revenge scenario working out for you?”

“Very well, thank you. It was just a matter of changing my perspective.”

“Good. That's great.” Abe cleared his throat. “So if you're no longer in mourning and your appetite has returned, does that mean you're ready to move on?”

Daphne smiled. “I believe it does.”