Love Inspired Suspense May 2015 - Box Set 1 of 2: Trail of EvidenceGone MissingLethal Exposure

by Lynette Eason

Clay scratched the back of his head. “I have to admit, I was really mean. I was at some party with her, and I went to where she was talking to the artist. I told him an embarrassing story about when she was in kindergarten that involved feathers, glitter and pink panties. She didn’t speak to me for a week, but she didn’t talk to the artist again, so it was a win for me.”

  Joslyn and Ruby laughed. “She actually told me that story,” Ruby told him, “so she must have gotten over it.”

  “No artists here that she’s currently in love with?” Clay said.

  Ruby winced. “Well, there is one Native American artist who’s tall, dark and swarthy—he looks like a pirate. All the girls on staff here think he’s incredibly handsome. Fiona’s friendly with him, but then again, she’s just as friendly with Rufus, one of the guards.”

  Clay cleared his throat. “How often is the, uh, artist here?”

  Ruby giggled. “Not very often. Don’t worry.”

  “When’s the last time you talked to Fiona?” Joslyn asked.

  Ruby sobered. “It’s been several weeks. Rufus and I are a little worried. I even called her house a few times, but she didn’t answer.”

  “Why do you think she’d stop coming to the museum?” Clay asked.

  “Rufus thinks it’s because of that man who came a few weeks ago.”

  “What man?”

  “Some older man talked to her in the ancient Chinese art room. You should talk to Rufus about it. He was on duty that day and saw them.”

  “Fiona didn’t say anything about what was wrong?” Joslyn asked.

  Ruby shook her head. “But I didn’t see her the last day she was here. I had taken a sick day.”

  “Is Rufus here today?”

  “He’s wandering around, just keeping an eye on things. Tall, lanky African-American man.” Ruby reached out to grab Joslyn’s hand. “Please find out what happened to Fiona. I hope it’s nothing serious.”

  “We’ll find her,” Joslyn said. Fiona had left a hole in Joslyn’s life when she left Los Angeles. Joslyn didn’t have many women friends, and she always wondered if she might not have dated her abusive ex, Tomas, if Fiona had still been there with her frank opinions and logical insights. The least she could do was find out what happened to her friend now that it looked as if she’d gotten into something dangerous after she’d left the master’s program in LA.

  They had to circle almost the entire museum before they found Rufus, an older man so slender that his guard uniform hung loosely on him. He had a short, gray beard and almost completely bald head with his curly, gray hair cut short. As they approached him, he frowned at them as if he were trying to look menacing. “Something I can help you folks with?”

  Then his eye fell on Clay, and his brows rose halfway up his forehead. “Well, I’ll be. You look just like Fiona. You must be that brother she told me about.”

  Clay grinned and shook the man’s hand. “Anything she told you about me, it wasn’t true.”

  Rufus guffawed. “She said you’d say something like that.” He nodded to Joslyn. “This your missus?”

  Joslyn felt as if her head was in a furnace, and Clay turned redder than a beet. “I’m Joslyn. I’m an old college friend of Fiona’s.”

  His handshake was firm, his fingertips calloused. “So you went to school with her in LA?”

  “Yes, sir. She and I had most of the same classes.”

  “We’re here looking for her,” Clay said. “We hear she hasn’t been around for a few weeks.”

  Rufus sighed heavily. “Don’t know what’s happened to her. I’m worried. It didn’t seem like she was into anything shady, but that man she met with the last time she was here seemed awful slick, if you know what I mean.”

  “Who was he?” Joslyn asked.

  “This older guy, although not quite as old as me. Seems like nobody’s quite as old as me, these days.” He flashed a grin, his smile bright in his dark face. “He was sitting and chatting with Fiona, and she looked pretty shaken.”

  “You didn’t hear what they talked about?” Joslyn asked.

  “Naw, I was standing by the door. There were some high school boys in the next room making fun of the abstract art, so I was keeping an eye on them in case they got rowdy.”

  “Maybe she and the guy were friends,” Joslyn said.

  “No, she didn’t come in with him. She was alone when I saw her enter the front door—she gave me a smile and a wave—and this guy came and met her in the antique Chinese art room only half an hour later. She seemed surprised to see him, so I don’t think she was intending to meet him here. They only talked five or ten minutes, but it was enough to make Fiona look upset and leave the museum early.”

  “Did he leave with her?”

  “Nope. He sat in the Chinese room for another few minutes—looked sorta down, if you ask me—and then he left.”

  “Anyone with him?” Clay asked.

  “Nope. But he was wearing some fancy suit, like those rich guys. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a driver waiting outside.”

  “I wonder why she was upset,” Joslyn said. “Did Fiona say anything to you before she left?”

  “No, she just smiled and waved, but she looked kinda distracted,” Rufus said. “Sometimes she chats with me, sometimes not. But that was the last time I saw her. No police have been by, so I wondered if maybe she was on vacation or something. But I think she’d’ve told me if that was the case. It must have been that guy.”

  “You said he was slick.”

  “Dressed real smart, navy suit—even in this heat—and big silver cufflinks on his sleeves.”

  Clay had suddenly stilled. “What did he look like?”

  “Oh, roundish face. Black hair, but receding like there was no tomorrow.”

  “Kind of heavy-lidded eyes?”

  Rufus’s eyebrows rose again. “Yeah.”

  If Clay knew who the man was, Joslyn would have expected him to be more triumphant. Instead, he seemed even more perplexed. “Do you know him?” she asked.

  Clay was frowning at the floor. “I think so, but it doesn’t make sense.”

  “Why not?”

  He looked up at her, and his eyes had turned a stormy gray. “I think that was Martin Crowley—her father, and my stepfather.”

  THREE

  Why would Fiona disappear after talking to Martin? As far as Clay knew, they were still on comfortable terms. Maybe not chummy, but not at odds with each other. And Martin wouldn’t do anything to hurt Fiona, no matter what he’d done to Clay.

  The memories, more bitter than medicine, burned his tongue and throat, and he swallowed to get them out of his system. Even after all these years, it still made him react as if his stepfather’s utter rejection of him had happened yesterday.

  “Her father?” Rufus said. Clay had forgotten he was still there. “Now that’s interesting. Fiona never seemed happy when she talked about her daddy. And she certainly wasn’t happy that man had come to talk to her that day.”

  Joslyn had been shocked when Clay had said the man was Martin, but now she looked thoughtful. “Can you remember anything else?” she asked Rufus.

  He pursed his mouth, but then shook his head. “Sorry, I didn’t hear anything that they said, and that’s about all I saw.”

  Joslyn handed him her business card. “If you remember anything else, give us a call.”

  “Sure thing.”

  As they headed out of the museum, Clay said, “You didn’t seem surprised that Fiona and Martin hadn’t seemed very friendly that day. Fiona had always been pretty close to him.”

  Joslyn tilted her head. “Well, she was closer to Martin when I first knew her, but, especially just before she left Los Angeles, he seemed to annoy her or upset her more often. She never wanted to talk about him. I guess in the past two years, they never healed the breach.”

  “He must have said something to her to make her upset. But he can’t possibly have anything to do with her disappearance. He wouldn’t hurt her.�
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  “But the fact is that sometime after he spoke to her, she went missing.”

  “If she were in danger from Martin, he’d have taken her at the museum, and he wouldn’t have bothered to speak to her first.” Clay sighed. “Plus I have a hard time believing Fiona would be involved in anything shady that Martin might be doing.” He remembered his last big argument with Fiona in Chicago, and the reason she’d moved away from him.

  “He might have helped her leave. If she was in trouble and he could help, she’d accept it.”

  He remembered Fiona’s thready voice during their phone conversation. “The thing is, if she were safe with Martin, she wouldn’t have asked us for help. My phone call and your postcard happened after she disappeared.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t her?”

  “It sure sounded like her. I knew her voice immediately.”

  Joslyn blew out a breath. “And the handwriting on that postcard was pretty close to hers. I recognized it.”

  Clay rubbed his forehead. He knew what he had to do, but didn’t like being forced to approach Martin again, like a servant asking for a favor. “I have Martin’s extension at his office. I’ll give him a call and ask about Fiona.”

  The look Joslyn gave him implied that she understood what he hadn’t said, saw the emotions churning in his gut whenever he thought of Martin. But she also understood, as much as he did, that Fiona came first.

  There was a small hallway off the front foyer of the museum that offered them some privacy, so he headed there and pulled out his cell phone. He found Martin’s phone number and dialed.

  He tasted acid at the back of his throat as the phone rang. When a man’s voice answered, he almost couldn’t speak and had to swallow before he said, “Martin? This is Clay.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Crowley’s not available at this time. This is his assistant. May I help you?”

  Clay felt both relief and frustration. “Please ask him to call his stepson as soon as possible. It’s about Fiona.” He gave his phone number, but he had a feeling Martin wouldn’t call him back. Not to be dramatic, but simply because to Martin, Clay didn’t matter.

  When he hung up, Joslyn asked, “He wasn’t in?”

  “I left a message, but Martin doesn’t always return my calls.” Actually, Martin almost never returned his calls.

  “He might since this is about Fiona.”

  “But if he’s involved in all this, he’s not going to want to talk to us.”

  She sighed. “I’m afraid you’re right.”

  They exited the front double doors of the museum into the bright sunlight, and the heat slapped him like a ten-foot wave. Clay had to pause to adjust to the change in temperature. That’s when he saw it.

  Just a slight movement from the farthest end of the parking lot stretched out in front of them. Clay squinted in that direction, but didn’t see the movement again.

  He’d lost the men following them, hadn’t he?

  “What is it?” Joslyn’s voice was low but sharp. Her eyes also scanned the parking lot.

  “I thought I saw…I don’t know what I saw.”

  “How could they have found us?” Deep in thought, she began lightly rubbing a strange-shaped scar above her left eye. It seemed she wasn’t aware she was doing it. “Maybe your rental car…I’ll have to check it.”

  “Check what?”

  “Maybe they put a tracker on your car or mine when we were at Fiona’s office.”

  “That’s kind of high-tech. Then again, if they’re the same guys who rigged Fiona’s house, I guess I believe they could do it.” Clay kept sweeping his gaze over the parking lot even as they headed to his car.

  “Don’t unlock it just yet.” Joslyn began circling the car, checking the rims, finally dropping onto the sizzling asphalt to check the underside of the vehicle. “I don’t see anything.”

  Clay hadn’t stopped looking around, but they were the only ones moving around out here. The other cars in the lot seemed empty, and he couldn’t see the white Taurus, although many of the cars were white. He’d noticed that about Phoenix—lots of white and light-colored cars, probably to combat the heat. “Let’s get out of here.”

  The inside of the car was a furnace and he cranked up the air-conditioning.

  “Even if we don’t know for sure that they followed us here, we should take precautions,” she said.

  “Like what?”

  “Maybe there’s a tracker on our clothes. Or maybe they found a way to clone one of our cell phones, and that’s how they’re trailing us.”

  “People can do that?”

  “It takes special equipment, but yeah.”

  And men who had access to explosives might have access to that kind of equipment. “Okay, so where to?” He backed out of the parking stall.

  “The nearest mall.”

  Clay kept an eye out behind them as they drove, but he couldn’t spot a tail if there was one. He had done his fair share of tailing people back in his mob henchman days, but even then, he hadn’t been great at noticing them following him. How ironic that he could have used some of his criminal skills now. Still, he didn’t regret getting out of that life, paying his dues. He just wished he could feel as though he had finally settled that debt.

  There was a mall a few miles away that looked rather new, with a cluster of golden-red buildings rising up at the side of a freeway, surrounded by empty lots of stone and dirt. “Is this good?” he asked.

  “Yes. We don’t want anything too upscale. They may not have the burner phones we need.”

  They walked through the outdoor mall until they found a phone kiosk, and Joslyn bought several burner cell phones.

  “We need that many?” Clay asked.

  “You never know.” After Joslyn had paid using cash, they walked away and she said, “Plus, I noticed the kiosk didn’t seem to keep good records. If anyone knows we went here, they might have a hard time figuring out which phones we bought, and their numbers.”

  “That’s good thinking.” He’d had to find people for his bosses every so often, but it had never been an intricate business like this, and he’d never had to try not to be found.

  The next stop was clothes shopping, so they could replace the ones they were wearing, just in case they were being tracked that way. There wasn’t an all-in-one clothing shop at this mall, so they went to a men’s store first. “I can’t just get athletic shorts and a T-shirt?” he asked her.

  “If we need to talk to people, they’ll respond better if you’re better-clothed.”

  “I don’t need a suit, do I?” Clay inwardly groaned. He wasn’t uncomfortable wearing a suit, but in this heat, it would be torture, even though all of the places had air-conditioning.

  Joslyn’s eyes twinkled like chips of amber, as if she could guess what he was thinking. “No. Just something that doesn’t look like you just played basketball with the fellas.”

  He found some khaki shorts and a short-sleeved polo shirt, which he wore out of the store, and carried his old clothes in a bag. He caught Joslyn looking at him appreciatively as he stood in line to pay. When she saw he had noticed, she blushed and turned away.

  Other women had given him double takes often enough for him not to be embarrassed by it, especially since he’d grown stronger and dropped some of his body fat through his training at his local mixed martial arts gym. But Joslyn’s glances somehow made him stand a little taller.

  They headed to a women’s clothing store next. Clay scanned the faces in the crowd, and because of his height, he could see over most heads, but he didn’t notice anyone who looked like the men in the white Taurus. It was hard to tell if anyone was following them in the crowd since most people were going from store to store, like they were, so he saw several people more than once.

  Clay was used to women who browsed slowly along the clothing racks, but Joslyn surprised him by glancing quickly over the clothes and grabbing an outfit similar to what she was wearing—khaki pants and a navy blue polo shirt.
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  He didn’t know why he did it, but his hand closed over hers as she lifted the hanger off the rack. “Wait. You’re not getting that, are you?”

  She frowned at him. “Of course I am.”

  “Look, I’m no fashion expert, but how about we get you something that matches what I’ve got?”

  “It matches. Polo shirt, khakis.”

  “Not for a girl. It makes you look like a sales clerk.”

  “But it’s what you’re wearing.”

  He couldn’t quite explain it, and he was muddling things up by trying, so he looked around, and then grabbed a sundress in light blue and brown. “How about this?”

  She looked at him as if he’d grown two heads. “I don’t…wear dresses.”

  He stared at her. “Ever?”

  “Well, I’ve worn dresses, of course, but usually…” She looked flustered. “I don’t know, it’s just kind of…girly.”

  “But you’re a girl.”

  “I know that.” She glared at him.

  He tried another tactic. “You said it yourself—if we talk to other people, they respond better if we’re better clothed. It’s less intimidating if we look like a couple. And we’d look more like a couple if you wear a dress rather than pants and a polo shirt.”

  She knit her brows as if she wasn’t sure she quite believed him, but she took the dress and put it back. He was about to argue when she said, “It’s the wrong size.” She grabbed another one and headed to the changing rooms.

  Clay blew out a breath. She was nothing like the other women he’d known. Joslyn seemed more masculine in some ways, carrying herself as if unaware of her body, and yet she was so beautiful.

  She stepped out of the changing room, and despite the scowl on her face, the image of her in the sundress made his heart stop for a moment. Her collarbones rose above the modest neckline and her arms were bare, showing off her delicate bone structure. The skirt swirling above her knees floated around the curves of her figure.

  “What is it?” She looked faintly alarmed.

  “Nothing,” he said quickly. “You’re just…you look captivating.” The word was more romantic than he’d intended, but it just popped out, and it described exactly what she was.