The Lake House Secret, A Romantic Suspense Novel (A Jenessa Jones Mystery) (19 page)

“Okay, but what if he finds out he doesn’t like me after all?”

“Oh, sweetie, just be yourself and you’ll be fine.” Jenessa took her by the shoulders. “Listen, you’re funny and sweet and very intelligent. Your blue eyes sparkle and your smile lights up a room. If he can’t see all that, then he doesn’t deserve you.”

When Jenessa released her hold, Ramey spun around to face a full-length mirror. She took in her image for a moment then pushed out her chest, held her head high, and smiled at her reflection. “You’re right. I
am
a great catch and any man would be lucky to have me.”

“That’s more like it, Ramey,” Jenessa assured her. “Confidence is a beautiful thing.”

The two busted out laughing and gave each other a quick hug. Telling Ramey about her father at this point would only spoil her wonderful date with Charles—Jenessa couldn’t bring herself to do it.

“Now, let’s get busy,” Jenessa ordered with determination. “We’ve got a date to get ready for.”

Jenessa took the curling iron and styled Ramey’s hair into softer, looser curls before applying her makeup, giving her smoky eyes, luscious lashes, and rosy lips. Then it was time to choose something to wear. After trying on six different outfits, she finally settled on a sleeveless summer dress with azure blue flowers on a crisp white background, which set off her eyes and her head of red waves.

Ramey stood before the full-length mirror again and admired Jenessa’s handiwork. “I don’t think I’ve looked this good in a long time—not since I was a teenager.”

“Oh, it hasn’t been that long.” With Jenessa gone from Hidden Valley for so many years, it didn’t seem so long ago that Ramey had blossomed into a beautiful slim eighteen-year-old. But something had changed in her life and she stopped paying much attention to her looks. Was it when her mother left her? Or was it all the hours and hard work she put into the bakery?

“Oh, I’m afraid it has been.” Ramey turned away from the mirror and faced Jenessa. The expression on her face grew serious. “There’s something I should tell you, something that happened a long time ago.”

Jenessa steadied herself for what sounded like bad news. Did she already know about her father?

“When I was nineteen, I went out with Logan…a couple of times. It was the summer after my mother left.”

“With Logan?” Jenessa’s cheeks burned and her breath caught in her throat. It felt like Ramey had slapped her across the face. First she finds out her little sister used to date her ex—and is still in love with him—and now she finds out her best friend dated him too.

Jenessa dropped down onto the side of the bed. She raised her eyes to Ramey, her bottom lip quivering slightly. “I don’t know what to say.”

Chapter 26

Logan and Ramey?

Here, Jenessa had not wanted to drop a bombshell on Ramey, yet she got blasted herself.

Ramey settled beside her on the bed. “I wanted to tell you at the time, but you were so angry at him that you didn’t even want his name spoken in your presence. That’s what you said, remember?”

“I’m shocked.” Jenessa gave her head a shake, trying to rid herself of that feeling.

“I ran into him one day at that cute little shop The Mercantile. I was shopping for a gift for your mother’s birthday and he was shopping for something for his stepmother. We got talking and he asked for my help. We chatted and we laughed about stuff—one thing led to another and he asked me out. We went to a movie and had dessert at Latiff’s after that. He even kissed me good night.”

“You don’t need to give me the details.”

“But I want you to know. The second date, he made reservations for dinner at Antonio’s. After he picked me up, though, he realized he had forgotten his wallet and we stopped by his house. Logan introduced me to his father, who seemed really uneasy. It was weird.”

Of course he did, he knew Logan was dating his own sister.
Should she tell her now? Instead, Jenessa bit her tongue and listened.

“Grey asked if he could have a word alone with Logan and they went off into another room. When he came back, Logan wasn’t the same.”

“What do you mean?”

“He seemed, I don’t know, aloof. Before his little talk with his father, we’d been getting along so well, conversation was easy. We laughed a lot and had fun together. But all through dinner he didn’t seem to have much to say. He took me home and didn’t even try to kiss me good night.”

Jenessa knew why, and now she knew exactly when Logan had discovered the truth. This was the perfect time to tell her that Logan was her brother, that Grey Alexander was her father.

“Ramey, I have—”

The doorbell rang and the girls looked at each other.

“Oh, I can’t go on a date now. I’m a nervous wreck,” Ramey said, grimacing.

“You’re not a wreck. You look beautiful. Just take a few deep breaths. I’ll go answer the door while you collect yourself.” Jenessa stood and started out of the bedroom door, then stopped and turned back to her friend. Telling her about the possibility Grey was her father would have to wait for another day. “Charles is a lucky man.”

~*~

Charles and Ramey left on their date, and Jenessa drove home. Her conversation with Ramey played over in her mind. She could hardly believe that when Ramey was nineteen—the summer after her mother left—she’d dated Logan.

Was that the summer Lucy died?

Logan had just learned of his father’s affair and that Ramey was his sister. Could he have somehow lured Lucy back to Hidden Valley? To the lake house? He would have known Ramey had no idea she was his sister, or she never would have agreed to go out with him.

This new piece of the puzzle only strengthened Jenessa’s suspicion that Logan might have killed Lucy to keep her from telling Ramey who her father was. Maybe he didn’t mean to hurt Lucy, only scare her into keeping quiet, but then things went terribly wrong, as they often do in situations like these.

Once she arrived home and settled in, Jenessa phoned Detective Provenza.

“Hey, George, this is Jenessa again.”

“Please, call me Detective,” he grumbled. “What is it now?”

“I know you don’t have confirmation of the identity of the body yet, but I’m absolutely certain it’s Lucy St. John.”

“Yeah, I got that last time you called. Just so you know, I did a bit of checking, trying to track down Lucy St. John, but I’m not finding anything current on her. The trail goes cold about ten or eleven years ago.”

“And I swear to you the locket found on her body has Ramey’s childhood picture in it.”

“It likely may be the St. John woman’s body, but I’m still waiting for the lab results. I expect to have them tomorrow. I already told you that,” the detective said. “So, why the call tonight?”

“I got confirmation that Logan Alexander discovered that his father had an affair with Lucy, and I think it was the summer she died.”

“Grey Alexander had an affair with Lucy the summer she died?”

“No. He had the affair thirty years ago. But I have reason to believe that Logan found out about it the summer she died.”

“How do you know that?”

“Ramey St. John told me.”

“How does she know?” the detective asked.

“I can’t tell you, but it turns out she’s Grey Alexander’s daughter.”

“She is?”

“Yes, and Logan found out Ramey was his half sister, which means that now he’ll have to split his inheritance with her. Only Ramey doesn’t know yet, so please don’t spread that around.”

“You think he’d kill Lucy over money? To keep her quiet?” George asked.

“People have killed for a lot less.”

“Yeah, I have seen that.”

“Maybe he didn’t mean to kill her, you know? Maybe it was an accident.” Jenessa couldn’t help but give Logan the benefit of the doubt. “I think you should take a forensic team up to the Alexanders’ lake house and scour it for clues.”

“After all these years…are you looking for something in particular?”

“Lucy’s blood, maybe?”

“This is Grey Alexander’s place you’re talking about. I’d need a really good reason to ask a judge for a search warrant.”

“We have evidence that Grey had been paying Lucy five thousand a month since she had the baby.”

“That doesn’t prove anything.”

“Oh, come on, George. There weren’t that many houses near the lake around the time Lucy disappeared. With her body being found in the woods not that far from the Alexander house, don’t you think it’s worth a search?”

“Someone could have killed her somewhere else and buried the body there in the woods because it was remote, like that Tony Hamilton character. Likely no one would have ever found it if someone hadn’t decided to build a cabin on that spot.”

“I guess that’s one possibility,” Jenessa said. She hoped the killer was Tony Hamilton, rather than Logan.

“Miss Jones, I need a lot more than conjecture before I go to a judge and ask for a search warrant—especially for the most powerful man in this town. You bring me something concrete, and I’ll see what I can do.”

~*~

It was after eleven o’clock and Jenessa was crawling into bed when her phone rang. It was Ramey, home from her date with Charles.

“It was the most wonderful evening I’ve ever had,” she gushed.

“Tell me about it.”

He had taken her to dinner at a nice steakhouse and their conversation had been effortless. He told stories about his childhood, which had made her laugh. He talked about losing his wife, which brought tears to her eyes.

“I always wondered what people meant when they said they found their soul mate. Now I think I understand,” Ramey said. “He’s interesting and funny, and he wanted to know what I thought about things. He listened when I talked—can you believe that?”

“That’s how it should be.”

“And I felt a spark when he held my hand.”

“Did he kiss you good night?” Jenessa asked.

“He did.” Ramey giggled. “I don’t have a lot of experience with that, as you well know, but I can’t imagine anyone doing it better. I just wanted to melt into a puddle right there at his feet.”

Jenessa could tell her about Grey now, but why ruin things? She let Ramey enjoy the night and dream about Charles’s kiss.

~*~

Early Monday morning, Jenessa’s phone rang, as it often seemed to do. It was Charles McAllister, asking her to meet him at the paper at ten o’clock.

“Got a good story for me to cover?” she asked.

“Not exactly. I’ll tell you when you get here.”

Before Jenessa left the house, Detective Provenza phoned her and told her that the CSI team estimated the woman had been dead for ten or eleven years based on the carbon dating test that the forensic anthropologist administered to the bones. They couldn’t get any closer than that.

“So it could have happened any time between when Lucy left Hidden Valley and up to a year or so later,” Jenessa mused, which would include the next summer after Ramey had graduated, the summer Logan learned the truth.

“Sounds about right. We’ll have to search for a way to pin the timeline down a little tighter,” he said. “I’ll go back and try to pinpoint when the last call came in on her cell phone, if the phone company still has those records.”

“Or they’re still in business.”

“True.”

“And don’t forget about her banking information. When’s the last time she wrote a check or took a cash withdrawal from the ATM?” Jenessa asked.

“I’ve already boarded that train of thought,” the detective said. “You know, Miss Jones, I appreciate your willingness to help me out, so I’ll share with you what I can, but I need you to keep what I tell you under your hat.”

“I understand, and don’t worry, I never reveal my sources.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about not printing anything I tell you until we’ve got a suspect under arrest and I give you the all clear.”

“Got it,” she agreed. “Any luck hunting down her old boyfriend, Tony Hamilton?”

“Not yet, but we’ll keep searching. He very well could be the one who killed her and buried her body,” George speculated. “Probably fought over drugs or something.”

“So then it’s possible she never made it out of the valley at all, that she was murdered by Tony right after she told Ramey good-bye.” That would clear Logan, wouldn’t it?

~*~

Jenessa strolled into the Hidden Valley Herald and greeted the elderly receptionist. “Beautiful morning, isn’t it, Alice?”

The woman pointed her bony wrinkled finger toward Charles’s office. “Somebody’s in trouble,” she sang. “They’re expecting you.”

They?

Chapter 27

Jenessa knocked lightly on the door to Charles McAllister’s office before pushing it open. “You want to see me, boss?”

“Yes, come in and take a seat.” He gestured toward the closer of two club chairs opposite his desk. The farthest one was already occupied.

“You know Grey Alexander, don’t you?” Charles asked, nodding in the man’s direction.

Jenessa’s back stiffened and her legs felt like rubber. She hadn’t had a chance to brace herself for this encounter, but then, that was Grey Alexander’s style—ambush his enemies before they have time to prepare a defense.

She drew in a deep, silent breath to steady herself and mustered her strength, focusing her gaze on the chair. “Yes, of course.”

It was critical that she make it to the seat and claim it before Grey began his attack. She willed herself to the chair and sank down in it.

Head up and shoulders back. Don’t let him see fear.

Charles leaned his elbows on the desk and steepled his fingers. “It seems we have a little problem, Jenessa.”

“What problem?” she asked in her most innocent voice, keeping her eyes on Charles.

“Mr. Alexander says you’ve been harassing his family and he wants it to stop.”

Jenessa forced herself to turn in Grey’s direction and look him in the eye, doing her best to mask any sign of trepidation. She thought of her words to Ramey the night before about exuding confidence, and right now she needed to borrow some of it. She was not going to let Grey Alexander reduce her to a scared little rabbit again.
Grow a backbone, Jenessa!

“What seems to be the issue, Mr. Alexander?” She willed her gaze to meet his angry eyes.