Twice Kissed

  “Not a bad place to live,” she said, her breath fogging in air that chilled her hands and cheeks.

  “If this is what you like.” Thane squinted into the sun.

  “Did she?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “Who knows with her?”

  “No one.” Together they walked back inside, and Maggie locked the door behind them.

  “Nothing simple for Marquise,” Thane observed, running a finger along the back of a leather couch.

  “Mary Theresa,” Maggie said automatically as she eyed the kitchen. She’d always hated her sister’s stage name; thought it sounded so uppity. One name for God’s sake. “But, yeah, this is overkill for one person.” She walked into the dining room, where a table with twelve chairs stretched beneath a chandelier resplendent with fragrant, half-burned candles rather than electric lights.

  In the living room a concert grand piano gleamed ebony and reflected the sunlight from a bank of windows overlooking the lake.

  “Why would she leave this place?” Maggie wondered aloud, and started up a curved staircase to the second floor.

  Mary Theresa’s bedroom was a study in femininity. Decorated in varying hues of rose and pink, it housed a king-size bed covered in shimmering white silk, a grouping of tables and chairs, and an armoire that hid a large television and stereo system. On the walls were professional photographs of the woman who had evolved from Mary Theresa Reilly into Marquise. In subtle black-and-white or startling color, Maggie’s twin was visible from every possible angle. There were a few pictures of Maggie and more of Becca, her school and sports pictures propped on the night table and bureau top. Exotic stuffed animals from a life-sized llama to a coiled snake occupied the corners and crannies of the suite. Silk flowers offered color.

  And yet the room seemed empty. Barren.

  Thane glanced at the pictures without comment and Maggie wondered how often he’d seen them before, how many times he’d visited Mary Theresa’s bedroom.

  She closed her mind to those thoughts and stepped into the bathroom, where a sunken marble tub was framed by huge windows screened by flowering orchids. Mirrors covered the walls and ran along a marble counter, where bottles of perfume, cologne, and cosmetics were strewn in haphazard fashion. Candles and potpourri scented the air.

  Maggie picked up a bottle of cologne and wondered again where Mary Theresa was, what had happened to her. “Do you think she would try to take her own life?” Maggie asked as she replaced the bottle, picked up an atomizer, and smelled the tip, only to be reminded of her sister.

  “Nope.” He met her gaze in the mirror and loosened the buttons of his jacket. “The woman I knew was too selfish to end it all. Too vain.”

  “So you think she was kidnapped?”

  “Nah.” He shook his head. “Ransom demands would have been made by now. It’s been over a week since she stormed off the set.”

  Maggie opened the closet door and stepped into an expansive cedar-lined closet, where hundreds of pairs of shoes were kept neatly in their boxes, and dresses, skirts, evening gowns, blouses, and slacks, encased in plastic, hung perfectly. Sweaters were folded in drawers; T-shirts, shorts, and jeans were folded and tucked onto shelves.

  “So what happened to her?” Running her fingers over a soft green angora sweater, Maggie tried to imagine what Mary Theresa had been thinking, where she could have gone. “And why do the police think you’re involved? Don’t try to deny it; you said yourself that Henderson considers you a ‘person of interest’ in the investigation, and I saw the way he looked at you today.”

  “Like I was a criminal.”

  Maggie inclined her head.

  “It’s probably because we were married, divorced, but still saw each other once in a while,” he admitted as they walked down a hallway. “And the fight.”

  “You said it was about money?”

  “Mostly it was about lies. Mary Theresa was jerking my chain. I’d caught her in a lie.”

  “About?”

  “Something that happened a long time ago.”

  She let it drop. Sooner or later he’d confide in her.

  They opened the doors of the first of two guest rooms, an exercise room, and two more bathrooms that completed the second floor. The closet was filled with men’s clothes—suits, slacks, silk shirts, and several pairs of shoes. “Looks like Marquise’s boyfriend stayed over a lot,” Thane said.

  “Boyfriend?”

  “With an emphasis on the boy part. Wade Pomeranian. Her latest.” Thane scanned the contents of the closet with a jaundiced eye.

  Mary Theresa had mentioned him in passing during their last phone call. He was younger, a model, Maggie thought. “You don’t like him?” she asked.

  “The feeling is mutual.” Thane shut the closet door and walked into an adjoining bath, where shaving paraphernalia and men’s toiletries were arranged perfectly on the tile counter. Thane sneered at the half-filled bottles. “For the record, I think Pomeranian’s a snot-nosed kid who doesn’t give a damn about her but is hanging on because she has connections in the entertainment industry. He’s self-serving, vain, and a royal pain in the ass, but other than that a helluva guy.”

  “Oh, come on, Walker, don’t hold back, what do you really think?” she teased.

  “That she’d be better off without that leech. But, as she was fond of telling me whenever I offered her advice, it was her life.”

  “Is her life,” Maggie clarified. “Is.” A long, sable-colored robe with a hood hung on the back of the door. Matching slippers were tucked by a scale positioned near the shower. Maggie fingered the robe’s belt. “Looks like something a monk might wear.”

  Thane snorted. “Don’t look for a rosary tucked in the pocket, okay? Pomeranian isn’t exactly a saint.”

  “No one is,” she observed, as they made their way up another set of stairs.

  On the third floor, the attic had been converted to a dance studio, complete with sound system, ballet barre, and shining hardwood floors. Mirrors covered the walls, and the sloped ceiling was broken up by dormer alcoves.

  “Any other reason you and Mary Theresa don’t get along?” Maggie asked, sensing something more, as if Thane had never quite disconnected from his ex-wife, as if there were ties that bound them together, ties Maggie had never known existed.

  His jaw slid to the side. “You mean other than that she tricked me into marrying her, we got a divorce, and she’s been a pain ever since?”

  “Yeah,” she prodded.

  “She does owe me money,” he admitted.

  “Ahh…,” Maggie said. “How much?”

  “Enough.”

  “This is no time to be coy, Walker,” she said, pointing a finger at his chest as they walked down the stairs to the main level again.

  “Okay. She owes me two hundred thousand dollars, plus interest. All told, it’s closer to two hundred and fifty.”

  Maggie stopped dead in her tracks at the base of the stairs. “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope.”

  “Why?”

  “She needed it.”

  “I question that,” she said, eyeing the foyer with its marble floor, polished cherrywood staircase, and chandelier. The flapper and medieval knight stood guard. The piano was visible behind French doors that closed off the living room. “For what?”

  “Taxes. Your sister forgot to pay for a few years, and the IRS doesn’t like that much.”

  “So you bailed her out?”

  “I loaned her some money.”

  “A lot of money.” She walked into the den and sat down in Mary Theresa’s chair, as her legs were a little less steady than they had been. Picking up a pencil, she tapped it nervously against the edge of the desk as Thane stood near the window, staring out at the expanse of snow-covered lawn. The sun was lowering in the western sky, the November night fast approaching. “You haven’t been leveling with me,” Maggie finally ventured.

  “How’s that?”

  “You didn’t tell me about seein
g Mary Theresa fairly regularly, and my guess is you knew that I didn’t think you two had any contact.”

  “I only saw her when she was in trouble.”

  “You should have told me,” she insisted, more than a little hurt. An old sense of wariness stole into her heart.

  “I did. When you asked.”

  “Give me a break.”

  “Maggie—”

  “And you didn’t mention the loan,” she pointed out, her blood starting to boil. Who was he to keep things from her? Weren’t they in this together?

  “It wasn’t the issue.”

  “Good Lord, Thane, are you crazy?” she snapped. “Don’t you know what’s going on here?” She pushed back the chair, shot to her feet, and crossed the distance between them. “Weren’t you in the police station with me today? Detective Henderson thinks that either Mary Theresa is pulling some elaborate publicity stunt, or that she might have holed up and killed herself, or that you were somehow involved in a kidnapping or worse! That fight you had put you right up at the top of the suspect list!” Exasperated, Maggie threw her hands up in the air. “I mean, I thought you came to my place to drag me back here because you wanted my help. That…that you thought that we, together, could find Mary, that…I don’t know, that we could help the police clear this up.”

  He stared at her long and hard, the way he had years before, and she swallowed with sudden difficulty, her anger evaporating a bit as she sensed a shift in the atmosphere in the room.

  “Did it ever occur to you that I might have used all this as an excuse to see you again?”

  Oh, sweet Jesus. His words rippled over her heart like a brook over stones, smoothing out the rough, painful edges.

  “I don’t think so, Thane,” she said, refusing to be seduced by words she’d wanted to hear so many years ago. “I think you showed up because you needed my help. Period.” She walked back to the desk and plopped down in the chair, then caught sight of Mary Theresa’s Rolodex. “Who did the detective say was the last person to see Mary Theresa?”

  “A cashier at a gas station. But that doesn’t seem to have panned out. Anyway, Henderson also said something about the guy making a mistake and being someone always on the lookout for cheap publicity. There were some time discrepancies as well.”

  “Whether the clerk saw Mary Theresa or not, the last person to really talk with her was you, right?”

  “That we know about,” he allowed.

  She stared hard at him. “And, before she met with you, she saw the people she worked with, right? Craig Beaumont and the other people at the station. Maybe her secretary.”

  “As I remember it.”

  “Me, too.” She flipped through the well-used cards and as she did, the names she’d heard from Mary Theresa jumped out at her: Craig Beaumont, Syd Gillette, Robert Inman, Dr. Michelle Kelly, Maggie and Becca McCrae, Wade Pomeranian, Thane Walker…along with names she didn’t recognize at all.

  Eyeing the telephone and answering machine, she pushed the play button and listened to several hang-ups as well as calls from the television station; her agent, Ambrose King; Eve Lawrence; Detective Henderson; and the first of her own desperate telephone messages. “Mary Theresa, this is Maggie. If you’re there please pick up…Mary Theresa?…Oh, okay, Marquise, are you there?” A pause. “Look, I, um, I got a message from you—you know the kind you used to send—well, at least I think I did, and I need to talk to you, so please call me back. I’m still at the ranch in Idaho…”

  “What kind of a message?” Thane asked as the recorder clicked off and Maggie felt like a fool.

  “Nothing.” She shook her head.

  “No, you said that you received a message.” He crossed the room to the desk and pushed the play button again. To Maggie’s mortification, they heard her desperate plea all over again. “What did you mean?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Like hell, lady. I think you just made the point that we were in this together and we shouldn’t keep secrets, so what kind of message?”

  “Let it go. You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”

  She tried to breeze past him, but his fingers locked around her wrist and he spun her to face him. “Try me,” he suggested, his face so close to hers she could feel his heat, smell that same particular scent that was uniquely his.

  “Drop it, Thane.”

  “Not on your life.” His eyes held hers—steely blue and calculating. The fingers around her wrist tightened.

  “All right,” she said, ignoring the fact that her breath seemed to disappear deep in the back of her throat. She hesitated, but her heart was pumping, adrenaline surging through her blood. “Try this on for size, cowboy. Every so often—well, more like once in a blue moon—Mary Theresa and I…we communicate, I guess that’s the only way to say it, but we do it without speaking.”

  “Without speaking?” His eyes narrowed as if to see deeper into her mind and find out if she was lying to him. He was studying her so closely she wanted to move out of his line of vision, but she was trapped, her arm held fast.

  “That’s right. And I’m not talking about letters or e-mail or sign language, Walker. This is mental telepathy.”

  “Bull.”

  She raised a knowing eyebrow. “You asked.”

  “Yeah, well, try again.”

  “It doesn’t work often and it only works one way.”

  “How’s that?” he said, skepticism deepening the craggy lines at the corners of his eyes.

  “Mary Theresa can throw some kind of inner voice and I…I can hear it.”

  “Just you?”

  “Just me.”

  He snorted in derision.

  “It doesn’t matter how many miles we’re apart, I can still hear her.”

  “Sure.”

  “You asked,” she reminded him.

  His smile was cold as deepest winter. “So what have you been ‘hearing’ from her lately?”

  “Not enough.”

  “But something.”

  She licked her lips nervously and his gaze skated to her mouth before returning to her eyes.

  “Tell me, Mag Pie.”

  She swallowed hard. “Okay. I heard from her about an hour before you showed up at the ranch in Idaho.”

  “Convenient.”

  “The truth, damn it!” She yanked hard on her arm, but his fingers surrounding her wrist only tightened their manacle-like grip.

  “Since then?”

  “Nothing…well, I did hear from her when I was sleeping but…” She shook her head. “But I’m pretty sure that was just a dream.”

  “Jesus H. Christ.”

  “It’s true, damn it. Believe it or not.”

  “Okay,” he drawled, “just for the sake of argument, let’s say I believe you, then what about before? When did you hear or whatever you want to call it…uh, receive messages from her?”

  She took in a long breath and wished she could call back all the words. No doubt he’d think she was a looney. But it was too late. “The first time it happened was the night Mitch…Mitch and Mary Theresa were drunk, um, in the hot tub and then again the night he died. Another time was when you came to the house and announced that you and she were going to get married, and, then, the last time, after years of silence, believe it or not, I heard her again. Just a little while before you showed up at the cabin. She was desperate and scared and pleaded with me to help her.” She tilted back her head, lifting her chin in challenge, blatantly defying him. “Go ahead, tell me I’m lying or that I’m crazy.”

  “Either you’re lying or you’re crazy.”

  “Wrong. It’s what happened,” she insisted, finally able to pull away from him and rub her wrist. Oh, God, this sounded so lame, so damned lame. “But the last time…the last time she threw her voice at me and…and it had to have been after she was already missing, after the police found the suicide note, after her disappearance, so you see, she isn’t dead. Couldn’t be. Or else she couldn’t have sent the message!” br />
  “If she did.”

  “Why would I make this up?”

  “I don’t know.” He stared at her as if he thought she was insane, as if she didn’t have a rational thought in her head.

  “And what did she say in this message?” he asked.

  “Just that she needed help,” she lied, unable to accuse him of a crime she didn’t understand.

  His jaw clenched. A muscle worked near his temple. Disbelief registered in his eyes.

  “Say it, Walker.”

  “You’re making this up.”

  “Why?”

  That was a damned good question. Thane didn’t want to trust her, had learned long ago never to believe a woman, any woman; but with Maggie it had always been different. As it was today. “Because it doesn’t make sense.”

  “Does anything”—she made a wide, sweeping gesture with her arm, encompassing the entire house in that one motion—“anything about this make sense? You know, Walker, if you want me to trust you, you’d damned well better trust me!”

  Her green eyes snapped with fire, her cheeks were flushed a bright, indignant hue, and the corners of her mouth drew down into a small pout that he found fascinating. “Do you, Maggie?” he asked, trying to ignore the fact that she still got to him. As no other woman ever had. “Do you trust me?”

  “No.” The answer was quick. Emphatic. Cut like a knife. “But I’m trying, damn it. I don’t know about you, but I’m not gonna sit around and let the police do this in their own sweet time.”

  He felt the first warning of a new kind of trouble. “What do you mean?”

  “I worked for a private investigator for a few years, learned the ropes, and I think it’s time I figured out what happened to my sister. Whether you believe me or not, she called out to me, Thane, and it was after she was supposed to be missing.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “So I’ve been told. The police, if they dig deep enough, are going to find out that I saw a psychiatrist, not once, but twice. The first time was years ago, after Mitch died and you and Mary Theresa got married; I went to college, but was treated for depression.”

  He was surprised. Maggie was one of the sanest, most down-to-earth people he’d ever met in his life.

  “And the second time was about a year ago; my marriage was failing, my daughter was becoming estranged, and I felt like I’d fallen into a deep, black hole. The harder I tried to climb out, the farther down I seemed to sink. I clawed until my fingers bled, but I just couldn’t get to the top, wasn’t able to smell fresh air or able to reach the light at the top, so I had to go under a doctor’s care.” She hesitated and he saw a fresh, desolate pain in her eyes.