Twice Kissed (24 page)

Never,
Maggie thought, flushing the toilet as her stomach, emptied of dinner, heaved again. This time nothing but bile spewed from her throat.

“Go away!” she cried.

Thane and her sister. Oh, Jesus.

I’m sorry. I don’t even love him,
Mary Theresa cried, and for the first time Maggie heard the difference between the words that passed over her lips and tongue to the “voice” that only she could hear.
Maggie, please. I love you. Oh, God, I’m so sorry, I love you!
Sobbing erupted from the other side of the door, and the pounding became more feeble.

Maggie curled into a fetal position on the cold tile of the floor, closed her eyes and her ears. The world spun, and the words of an old Beatles’ song, “Yesterday,” reeled through her mind.

That was the last time Maggie had seen Thane for a long while. He and Mary Theresa had married the day after she and Maggie had turned eighteen and the ceremony had been private, just the two of them, in Reno, Nevada.

Now, so many years later as they wound through the heart of the city of Denver, Maggie thought it strange that she and Thane were together again, looking for the woman whom they had both once loved, the very woman who had torn them apart.

“Mary Theresa made it sound like you and she never saw each other again.”

“We do. Just not a lot. In fact the last time wasn’t all that pleasant.” His lips compressed as he drove around a car that was attempting to park on Larimer Square where redbrick warehouses and buildings built before the turn of the century had been incorporated into shops, galleries, and restaurants. Maggie barely noticed.

“Why not?”

“We had a fight.”

“About?” she asked, incredulous.

“Money, for the most part. The argument got out of hand. We were at her house and a neighbor overheard it. That’s why the cops think I have something to do with her disappearance.”

“Did—did you threaten her?” Maggie asked, still disbelieving.

“I might have.”

“Might have? Are you crazy?
Might
have?” She shook her head. “Listen, Thane, you’ve got to be straight with me. What the devil was this about?”

He hesitated a split second as he edged his truck around a minivan that had decided to stop in a loading zone. “Mary Theresa wanted to borrow money from me. It’s not important.”

“If the police think you’re a suspect, I’d say it was damned important.”

“Didn’t you ever fight with your husband?” he asked suddenly. “You were separated, gonna get a divorce, right?” She nodded, some of the wind stolen from her sails. “That’s the way it was between Mary Theresa and me.”

“But you kept seeing her.”

“Not like you’d think. It usually was a case of Mary Theresa just showing up. No notice, no phone call beforehand. She just appears. Most of the time at the ranch in California when she needs to get away. Sometimes I’m there. Once in a while she comes up to Cheyenne, but not often.” He glanced at her and added, “It’s never been romantic between Mary Theresa and me, Maggie. Never. Even when we were married. There was lust at first, yes. Lust and guilt, but once the lust wore off, it was just regret. We didn’t have much in common. Still don’t.”

“But she’s still in contact with you. I don’t understand.”

One side of his mouth lifted in a cynical smile. His eyes darkened a shade. “That makes two of us. Your sister is a complicated and screwed-up woman, Mag. She…” He shook his head. “She always plays both ends against the middle.” He hesitated, as if searching his own dark soul. “It’s hard to explain, but there are times when she needs something—a place to hide, I guess. Sometimes she’s just broken up with a boyfriend, or there are problems at work or whatever. She just has to get away.”

“So she runs to you?” Maggie asked, incredulous. Could she have been fooled for so long? True, Mary Theresa was an actress, but why would she keep Maggie in the dark?

“Not to me. Usually to the ranch outside of Sonoma.” He lifted a shoulder. “For some reason she thinks of it as kind of a sanctuary.”

“I didn’t know.” But there was so much she didn’t understand about her twin, so much she never would.

“She has a room there,” he admitted. “It’s the same one she had when we were married.”

“When you were married?” she repeated and wondered why he was trying to con her. Her temper, always at ready, kicked in. “Do you expect me to believe that you didn’t sleep with your wife?”

“Not after she lost the baby. We were still renting the place then, before I scraped together enough money for a down payment. Mary Theresa moved out of our bedroom and usually locked the door. Sometimes…she’d change her mind, for whatever reason, probably to keep me on a short leash. Hell, who knows with that woman, but then she’d come knockin’ on my bedroom door, and I always opened it.” His jaw tightened, and his eyes narrowed a fraction, as if he was disgusted at his own particular brand of weakness. “Intimacy, if you could call it that with your sister, was always on her terms.” He lifted an eyebrow. “I take it she didn’t tell you.”

“No.”
But then I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know anything about your life with her.
Folding her arms over her chest, Maggie glared out the window and refused to be saddened by something that had happened years ago.

“Believe me, there’s a lot she probably didn’t let you know about her life and you might not like it. She had a dark side, Maggie.”

“Don’t we all?” she tossed back, unable to stop herself.

“Not like her. Brace yourself. You might be about to find out things about your sister you didn’t want to know.”

“I think I already have.”

The police station loomed before them, and Thane, his countenance grim, his expression harsh and unforgiving, parked the truck in a parking lot that had been cleared of snow. With a glance at her, he reached for his hat. “It’s now or never.”

“Let’s go.” She didn’t want to waste another second.

They walked together along the snow-crusted street, past people dressed in anything from business suits to Western jeans and denim jackets to ski coats and stocking caps. A television van was pulling up as they climbed a few steps. Thane held the door to the station open for her, and, within minutes, they were ushered upstairs to Detective Reed Henderson’s office, two Styrofoam cups of coffee warming their hands, the detective himself seated behind a battered metal desk overflowing with files, notes, and scattered papers. If there was any rhyme or reason to his method of doing business, Maggie couldn’t figure it out.

He’d been gentleman enough to introduce himself, shake her hand, offer her a chair, and order coffee from an underling, but the eyes in his hound-dog of a face didn’t show the slightest bit of warmth.

“So you still haven’t heard from your sister?” he said as Maggie, cradling her cup in fingers that were still cold, noticed a picture of Mary Theresa on the bulletin board behind him. Her throat constricted. Despite all the pain, they were still blood kin—twins. So where was her sister? What had happened to the flamboyant and wild Marquise?

She licked suddenly dry lips. “No. Not a word.” Well, aside from that one desperate nonvocal plea for help. But she didn’t mention that. Wouldn’t. If she did, Henderson would probably have her evaluated by some kind of criminal psychologist on the force. Avoiding the detective’s eyes, she took a sip from the weak coffee in her cup.

“And you?” He lifted one eyebrow in Thane’s direction.

“Nope. Stopped by the ranch on the way here. No messages.”

Nodding as if he expected no more, Henderson tented his hands and looked over the tops of squared-off fingers. “So you went all the way to Idaho to pick up your ex-sister-in-law.”

“Yep.” Thane lifted a shoulder. “Didn’t want her to have to face you alone.”

“Any other reason?”

“Nope,” he drawled. “Just here for moral support.”

“So you’re a do-gooder, Walker?” Henderson said skeptically, his expression doubtful.

“Nah.”

“Didn’t think so.”

Maggie felt the tension in the air, the antagonism between the two men. Obviously neither trusted the other. Nor, come to think of it, did she.

“So I take it you don’t know any more than when you called me,” Maggie said, her spirits sinking. She hadn’t realized until this moment that she was expecting good news upon her arrival in Denver, had hoped that Mary Theresa would have shown up, flustered, tired from a hastily planned trip to who-knew-where, but pleased and amused that she’d caused a stir.

No such luck.

“Nothing more,” the detective admitted. “She’s still missing, as is one of her cars—a Jeep Wrangler, so we think she went somewhere. This could all be a mistake, I suppose, but the fact that she didn’t show up for the taping of her talk show; stood up Ambrose King, her agent, who had flown here from L.A. to talk to her about her career; and has been incommunicado since last Friday, suggests that something might have gone wrong.”

“What?” she asked, her temper flaring again. She was tired, hungry, and angry that there wasn’t any more information than before.

“That’s what we intend to find out.”

“Have you talked to all her friends? Her…her boyfriend? Her boss? Her hairdresser, her personal trainer, her…” She let her words fall away.

“Everyone we know of. I was hoping you could come up with some other people she might have contacted.” He glanced over Maggie’s shoulder and, using two fingers, motioned to someone hovering on the other side of the door to come in. Maggie glanced behind her as a petite woman with platinum-blond hair and an upturned nose sauntered into the room. “This is my partner, Hannah Wilkins. Maggie McCrae. I think you and Mr. Walker have already met.”

Thane tilted his head and started to climb to his feet, but Hannah waved him back into his chair. Her eyes hadn’t left Maggie. “So you’re the twin sister. I guessed as much.” Hannah shook Maggie’s hand, glanced at the picture on Henderson’s bulletin board, and shook her head. “You’re a dead ringer for her.”

“Not quite,” Maggie replied, a little uneasy at the woman’s intense scrutiny.

“I doubt that many people can tell you apart.”

Not even the man I loved.
Maggie sensed Thane’s gaze touch hers for a heartbeat, before he took a swallow from his cup.

“Let’s bring in another chair,” Henderson suggested, but Hannah shook her head.

“I’m fine. Been sitting all morning.” As if she anticipated Thane offering her his chair, she sent him a steely glance. “Really. Thanks.” She leaned against the filing cabinet. “This is perfect.”

“Whatever.” Henderson shuffled through some of the mess of papers on his desk. “We were hoping you could fill in some blanks for us, Ms. McCrae.”

Maggie leaned back in her uncomfortable chair. “Sure…I mean, whatever…” There was no reason to fight these people, at least not yet. Though Henderson might not care as much as she for Mary Theresa’s safety, he appeared thorough, earnest, and though probably overworked and cynical, had a wealth of information, manpower and technology at his fingertips. So what did it matter if his desk looked like a three-year-old had done his filing?

“Good. Now tell me about your sister and your relationship with her.” The most gossamer of smiles touched his lips. “I think we’ve already established the fact that you’re twins.”

She glanced at the picture of Mary Theresa pinned to the bulletin board. Yes, they were twins, but she was a pale, washed-out version of the vibrant woman smiling in the slick publicity shot. Maggie’s head pounded; she was tired and worried sick. “Yes, we’re twins. Identical, but mirror image. Mary Theresa—well, Marquise—is left-handed and I’m right. There are other characteristics as well, nothing quite as obvious. Anyway, she and I lived with our parents in Rio Verde, California; that’s about an hour or so north of San Francisco, not too far from Sonoma.” Maggie explained about growing up in their family, about her parents’ and Mitch’s deaths. Once in a while Detective Henderson broke in with a question or comment and even more rarely Detective Wilkins did the same, clarifying a point here and there.

They didn’t ask about her affair with Thane. She didn’t mention it. There didn’t seem to be any reason to bring up the painful topic, and she never said a word about her means of silent communication with her sister. Henderson and Wilkins wouldn’t believe her if she did, and anything she might confide in them would be taken with a very jaded grain of salt.

Henderson listened, eyed them both, and once in a while reached for a baseball buried under a manila envelope on his desk, only to ignore it. Hannah Wilkins scratched a few notes on a pad she’d taken from her pocket and small dents appeared between neatly plucked eyebrows as she concentrated. Once in a while she tugged at an earring. All the while Thane didn’t offer a word, just sat in his chair, one booted foot propped on the opposing jeans-clad knee, his rawhide jacket open, his arms crossed over his chest, his hat resting on the floor. His face was a mask of patient disinterest, but the flicker of anger in his gaze belied him. Thane Walker was doing a slow, steady burn, one that would eventually ignite like a powder keg.

“So after Mary Theresa married Mr. Walker, here, you and she went your separate ways?”