Paradise Valley Mystery 02-The Heart of Lies

by Debra Burroughs

  Maggie taught an aerobics class at the Y on Monday evenings, so she’d never suspect Lucas would be with anyone else. Emily shook her head, trying to focus. Maybe it was all these wayward men she’d been tailing that made her hypersensitive to the situation.

  Checking her watch again, she decided she’d left the man upstairs long enough—it was time to pay him a visit. She went to the front desk.

  “Room three-ten,” Trudi muttered, looking around as she discreetly handed the hotel jacket to Emily.

  “Did you see anyone come in who may have gone up to his room? A woman perhaps?” Emily asked, keeping her voice down.

  “No, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t have let someone in through the side door,” Trudi uttered lowly.

  “All right. Thanks.” Emily turned toward the elevator.

  “Go get him, girl.”

  “Will do.” Emily smiled, grateful for the help, and moved to the elevator, waiting until she was inside to put the coat on.

  Stepping off the elevator, dressed in the dark green hotel worker’s jacket, she walked down the hallway, the camera in her hand, reading the room numbers as she went. Emily noticed a room service tray outside of one of the other rooms with an empty champagne bottle and two glass flutes. She picked them up as a prop to get the perp to open his door.

  Emily knocked on the door and called out, “Room service.”

  She put her eye up to the peephole and saw the man walking toward her. She stepped back and gasped, trying to stifle a giggle. Oh, my gosh, what is going on in there?

  “Room service already delivered,” the man shouted back.

  “This is champagne—on the house,” Emily replied, holding the full tray close up to the peephole where the man could only read the label.

  Emily heard the door unlock, so she rushed to set the tray down on the floor. She whipped the camera out of her pocket and hit the On button. He opened the door a crack, which gave Emily the opportunity to shoulder it open all the way. He stumbled back a couple of steps.

  There stood Harry Wykoski, attorney-at-law, father of six, married to the same woman for twenty years, wearing a sheer red negligee and matching high-heeled slippers with little fuzzy pom-poms on them.

  Emily took the shot, the light flashing in his eyes, capturing his look of shock and terror. She struggled to contain the laughter that was bubbling up inside her.

  “Are you alone in there, Harry?” She looked past him but didn’t see any movement.

  “Who are you?” he demanded, as he snatched a white hotel robe from the back of a chair. “Why are you taking my picture? Gimme that.” He lunged forward and reached out to grab for her camera, but she stepped back and slipped it into the waistband of her jeans. She felt safe in assuming he wouldn’t come out into the hall after her.

  “Uh-uh, Harry.” Emily chuckled and shook her head. “Your wife hired me to find out what you were doing at this hotel every Monday night. She thought you were having an affair. She’ll be happy to learn that isn’t the case.” Emily chuckled again.

  “Please, lady, don’t show that to her,” he hollered.

  “Look, Harry, your wife already paid me for this job—I have to. How about you come clean with her tonight? Before I give her the picture. Believe me, she’ll be thrilled you weren’t with another woman—you just like wearing women’s clothing.”

  “I can’t do that, she won’t understand.”

  “Enough of the lies, Harry. Don’t keep secrets—they’ll eat you up. Trust me, I know.”

  “Please…” he begged.

  “Do you love her, Harry?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then be honest with her. Tell her you love her, but tell her why you do this.” Emily gestured toward his outfit. “Work it out, because you can’t keep doing this and trying to hide it from her. The lies will destroy your family.”

  Emily turned and ambled down the hallway. “I’ll give you forty-eight hours before I give her the photo,” she said over her shoulder.

  CHAPTER 6

  On the drive home from the Hilton, Emily phoned Isabel, describing what she’d witnessed in the hotel bar and her concerns for Maggie.

  “I’m definitely going to do a background check first thing tomorrow,” Isabel asserted. “Just something in my gut tells me this guy is not what he seems.”

  “You might be right. Let me know what you dig up. Until then, not a peep to Maggie.”

  “Better not mention it to Camille either,” Isabel warned. “That resort presentation tomorrow night will give us an opportunity to watch him and Fiona in action.”

  “Hey, were you able to talk your husband into going?”

  “Alex actually was happy to go—said some of the partners at his firm were excited about going. He even suggested maybe we should buy one of the condos for ourselves, as a nice weekend retreat.”

  “It would be nice for you two to be able to get away from your work once in a while. Perhaps you could even loan it out to a friend now and then,” Emily hinted.

  “As much as I don’t trust Lucas,” Isabel said, “the thought of a weekend retreat does sound enticing.”

  “It does, doesn’t it? Skiing and snowboarding in the winter, sipping hot cocoa by the big stone fireplace in the Lodge. Golf, tennis, swimming and boating the rest of the year,” Emily suggested.

  “And don’t forget the hiking, biking, and picnics. Oh, and the upscale restaurant they’re planning to build up there,” Isabel added.

  “Listen to us! We sound like we’re making a commercial to promote this resort,” Emily chided.

  “I can see why this project could be a huge hit around here. There are a lot of people with money in this town just burning a hole in their pockets. No doubt they’ll be lining up to plunk down their twenty-five percent for a piece of that mountain, just as fast as Lucas can rake it in.”

  “We’ll see tomorrow night, won’t we?”

  “Say, how did your stakeout go tonight?”

  Emily giggled.

  “What happened?”

  Just then Emily noticed another call coming in on her cell phone. “Hey, Colin’s calling me. Can I get back to you later?”

  “No fair, you can’t leave me hanging like that!”

  ~*~

  “Hello, Colin,” Emily answered, the lilt in her voice giving away how happy she was to hear from him.

  “Hello, my hot lady PI.”

  Colin’s deep, sexy voice always made Emily sigh. “What happened to smokin’ hot?” she joked.

  Colin’s police detective buddy in New York City had dubbed her the smokin’ hot lady PI when they had flown there to interrogate a suspect a few months before. Somehow the nickname stuck for a while, until Colin’s departure to San Francisco.

  “Well, I didn’t want to go overboard, give you a big head or anything,” Colin replied.

  “I’m hurt.”

  “I bet you’re pouting, aren’t you?”

  She giggled.

  “Doesn’t mean I don’t still think of you as smokin’ hot, Emily.” He laughed, then his voice turned sensually serious. “If I was there with you, you couldn’t stop me from showing you how hot I think you are. I ache for you, woman.”

  “Okay, okay. You’re making me blush.”

  “Glad to know I can do that even from a long distance. All joking aside…I do ache for you, Emily. I’m hoping I’ll be able to come and visit before too long.”

  “I would love that. This long-distance relationship is excruciating.”

  “Agreed. I’ll let you know when I can work things out. But until then, tell me how your gig went tonight?”

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

  “Try me.”

  She explained the case of the suspected philanderer and how she discovered the truth, including her disguise. Between laughs and giggles, she did her best to describe the man’s red negligee and slippers, as well as the advice she gave him to come clean with his wife.

  Colin laughed
deeply as she painted the visual image—the kind of thoroughly satisfying belly laugh that gave Emily pleasure just hearing it.

  Then their conversation took a serious turn. Emily explained to Colin what she had observed in the hotel bar between Maggie’s new man and his assistant, and how it seemed suspicious to her, even though it might have been completely innocent.

  “I have a bad feeling about it,” she said, pulling her car into her driveway. “Isabel is going to do a background check in the morning, see if we can dig anything up on him.”

  “I hope for Maggie’s sake she doesn’t find anything,” Colin replied. “From what you’ve told me, she’s been waiting for a good man for a long time.”

  “She has. Maggs raised Josh alone and now he’s off to the Navy. Even though she’s late for just about everything and she doesn’t know how to keep a secret, she is one of the sweetest, kindest people I know. She’d do absolutely anything for a friend.” Emily turned the engine off, set her Bluetooth in the console, and raised the phone to her ear.

  “She’s lucky to have you, Emily.”

  Emily climbed out of her car. “Not just me, Isabel and Camille, too.”

  With the wide front porch illuminated by the lamplights on either side of the front door, Emily stuck her key in the lock and went inside her bungalow.

  “They were all there for me when Evan died, and we’ll all be there for Maggie—however this thing turns out.” She flipped on the inside foyer light and kicked her shoes off as she went to the kitchen.

  “If there’s anything I can do to help, just ask,” Colin offered.

  Emily turned on the kitchen light and pulled the wig and glasses off with her free hand. As she laid them on the breakfast bar, she noticed the back door was unlocked and partly open. Her heart began to beat hard at the realization.

  “Colin, I think someone’s been in my house.” She closed and locked the door, then pulled her gun out of the back of her waistband.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “The back door was ajar. I’m sure I locked it before I left. I always lock it. I’m going to set the phone down and check the house. Stay on the line.”

  “Wait!” She heard Colin holler into the phone, but she had already set it on the counter.

  Emily drew her gun and crept from room to room, peeking around corners, behind shower curtains, and into closets. After a thorough search, she felt confident whoever had been there was gone.

  She picked up the phone. “All’s clear.”

  “Emily! You should have stepped outside and called the police to come and search the house. The perp could still have been in the house and you’d be dead.”

  “You forget, Colin, I’m not just any helpless woman. Please don’t treat me like I am.” Emily knew Colin was just being protective, but she didn’t appreciate it.

  Even though he had lost a fiancée to gunshot wounds, and she had lost her husband to a bullet, Colin needed to remember that she was a gun-carrying private investigator who’d decided a long time ago not to shrink from danger.

  Emily had read his over-the-top protectiveness early on in their relationship as a lack of respect. She had suggested to him that maybe they should both date other people—people with safe, boring jobs.

  His response was to grab her and kiss her so deeply that her body melted against him and he had to support her as her knees went weak.

  Even though they had both been in dangerous situations since that pivotal kiss, with him as a police detective and her as a private eye, they had never discussed fears about each other’s safety again—until now. Perhaps it was the distance that made Colin feel so out of control, of no help to her at all.

  Emily padded to the living room and sunk down the sofa. She laid her gun down on the coffee table before drawing her feet up under her.

  “I know you’re not just any woman—you’re lovely and sweet and kind—but you’re also stubborn and pigheaded and ugh! I care for you, Emily. I—”

  “Hold that thought.”

  The photo of Evan and the mystery woman was missing from the coffee table. She glanced around the floor. Had it fallen? No.

  She remembered clearing the food and drinks after her guests left. The photo was the only thing she purposely had not cleared away.

  “It’s gone!”

  “What’s gone?”

  “The photo.”

  ~*~

  Distraught over the missing photo, Emily phoned Isabel once she’d hung up with Colin. Apologizing for the lateness of the hour, she told her friend about the break-in and the stolen photo.

  “Oh, Emily! Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “Yes. I called Colin’s friend, Ernie, after I checked to see if anything else was missing. Seems like the photo was all they took. I told Ernie just to file a report, no need to come over.”

  “I wonder why someone would want that old photo.”

  “Do you know if anyone besides Jethro knows about it?”

  “Maybe he made a few calls or sent some emails about it already, trying to find something out for you,” Isabel guessed.

  “Yeah, maybe. Can you check with him? Because if that’s the case, then someone he told didn’t want me to have it.”

  “Perhaps they don’t want you snooping around, uncovering their real identities. Do you want to spend the night here?” Isabel offered.

  “No. I think they already got what they came for.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Seven o’clock was approaching, and Emily arrived to see Lucas and his team busy setting up the large conference room at the Paradise Valley Hilton Hotel, preparing for the first of several sales presentations for the new Whitetail Ski and Golf Resort.

  Fiona was busy setting out stacks of brochures and financing flyers on one of the green-skirted rectangular tables that sat at the front of the room.

  Emily looked around for her friends, but they had not arrived yet. A few people were already milling around, though, talking in small groups, or watching the presentation being set up.

  Lucas and the three real estate agents he had contracted with were setting up the renderings. They were positioning them across the front of the room on gleaming brass easels. The massive main lodge, the lush green golf course, and the breathtaking lake dotted with boats and swimmers was showcased alongside the snow-covered mountain, depicting skiers and snowboarders, and the tennis courts with families in white tennis outfits pictured on the courts. There were also drawings of the charming rustic condos with vignettes of the luxurious amenities inside.

  Maggie walked in a side door, handed Lucas a red tie and helped him put it on. Emily watched her friend interact with Lucas. She hadn’t seen Maggie this happy since—well, never. Lucas seemed to dote on Maggie, as well.

  Emily peered over at Fiona and noticed her glancing at the happy couple from time to time, looking none too pleased. Was that jealously she saw in Fiona’s eyes? She wasn’t sure, but it was something unsettling.

  Emily took a seat on one of the back rows, saving a couple for Isabel and Alex. Camille had told her they might come, if Jonathan was back in town, but not to hold any seats for them.

  Then Maggie left through the side door she had entered from. She must not have noticed Emily in the audience.

  Sully Sullivan came in, shaking hands with everyone as he made his way to the front. Then he shook hands with Lucas and they spoke to each other, leaning in conspiratorially. What was that about?

  “Hey, Emily.”

  Emily jumped, startled out of her conjecturing.

  Camille greeted her, bending down to give her a hug. “Jonathan is stuck in Seattle, so I decided to come by myself. Are Isabel and Alex on their way?”

  “Yes, but here, let me move over a couple of seats and we can leave the two on the end for them.”

  “You’re a doll,” Camille said as she squeezed past Emily, taking the next chair over. “This is so exciting, i
sn’t it?”

  “What do you mean? The new resort?”

  “No, silly, Maggie and Lucas—I think she’s in love.”

  “Did she tell you that?”

  “Well, I don’t know if she wants me spreading it around, so keep this between you and me—and Isabel, of course—but Maggie thinks Lucas is going to pop the question pretty soon.” Camille grinned, digging around in her purse and pulling out a mirrored compact and a tube of lipstick. “I think she’s finally snagged the handsome rich husband she’s been dreaming about her whole life.”

  “Knowing what humble beginnings she came from…”

  “Dirt poor,” Camille added as she applied the color, snapping the compact shut. “Mayor Sully, too. I guess because he’s older than Maggie, he escaped that life first and has done pretty well for himself.”

  “Yes, he has.” Emily glanced around the room again, which was filling up fast, trying to catch a glimpse of her friends. She saw Alex first and waved them over. Isabel filed in and Alex took the seat on the aisle.

  “Did we miss anything?” Isabel asked her friends.

  “No, but I think they’re about to begin,” Camille answered, fidgeting with excitement.

  Emily leaned toward Isabel and asked if she’d had any word from Jethro. Isabel looked her friend in the eyes, pursing her lips, and shook her head no. Grimacing, Emily sat up straight in her chair and turned her attention to Mayor Sullivan as he took the microphone.

  The mayor gave a few words of greeting and told how thrilled he and the other council members were to have such a spectacular resort being built so close to their community.

  As Sully was speaking, Maggie returned and took a seat on the front row, looking lovely in a chic electric-blue designer dress and heels, wearing a look of sheer bliss on her face. Emily assumed Lucas must have bought the dress for her, because it looked far more expensive than anything she’d ever seen Maggie wear.

  Sully finished his short speech and turned the microphone over to Lucas to tell about this extensive new project. Lucas strode up to the microphone, looking dashing and powerful, his smile dripping with sincerity. He offered a few words of introduction, then he asked Maggie to join him. He held his hand out to her, and every eye in the room was instantly riveted on the handsome couple.