Vulnerable (Morgans of Nashville)

by Mary Burton

  Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Wednesday, October 11, 8:00 A.M.

  Jake didn’t expect this morning. Loved it. Would not trade it. And was already wondering where this would take him.

  She kissed him good-bye in the car and he cupped his hand behind her head, holding her close for an extra beat. Unspoken words danced between them but when he started to speak, she broke in.

  “Don’t say anything to my brothers.”

  His fingers brushed a curl from her face. Kissed her on the lips, wishing he could be inside her again. “So you gonna keep me a secret?”

  “Not forever.” She shook her head. “Better it came from me. I tell my brothers so they don’t kill you.”

  He twisted the soft curl between his fingers and playfully said, “Your brothers don’t scare me.”

  “Really?” She rolled her eyes. “When I think of all the potential boyfriends they’ve chased off.”

  “Sounds like they did me a favor.”

  “You might change that tune once you really get to know me.”

  He kissed her on the lips. “What are you going to say?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “If you need backup, just call.”

  “They can be tough, but so am I.” She kissed him quickly and reached for the door handle.

  He grabbed her hand in his. “I don’t like secrets, Georgia.”

  “Who does?” she asked.

  Before he could argue, she leaned forward and kissed him on the lips, allowing her touch to linger. He reached for her arm, but she moved just out of reach, made a quick excuse about work, and slid out of the car. She left him sitting and watching as she got into her car. He remained where he was until her tail lights vanished around the corner.

  Tapping his finger on the steering wheel, he drove to the office and picked up Rick. His partner slid into the passenger seat, a cup of coffee in hand.

  Jake started driving. “You called ahead to the Reeds’ house?”

  “I did. I spoke to Emma Reed and she said Amber is up and dressed. She’s expecting us.”

  “Great.”

  Rick tossed him a sideways glance. “You look different.”

  “Good night’s sleep, I guess.”

  A grin crept along his lips. “Jenna and I had a good night’s rest as well. What’s this one’s name?”

  “You know I don’t share.” Jake kept his gaze on the road, his last few words with Georgia turning over and over.

  “Right.”

  Fifteen minutes later they parked at the top of a circular driveway in front of the Reeds’ home. Two story, the house had a wide front porch that stretched the length of the house, solid square columns supporting a second-floor balcony, and a gray slate roof. A well-manicured lawn surrounded the five thousand square foot home that had a European flair.

  They climbed the long curved front steps and rang the bell. Seconds later, footsteps sounded in the hallway and the door opened to Mrs. Reed. She was dressed in crisp slacks, a white sweater top, and her hair was pulled into a low ponytail. A gold cross dangled around her neck.

  “Officers. Please come in. Amber is on the sunporch.”

  Jake stepped inside, allowing his attention to roam into a side parlor where a painting of Bethany hung above the fireplace. In the portrait, she was about sixteen and wore a white dress. Her hands were folded in her lap and around her neck hung the same gold pendant found at the crime scene.

  “We had that picture done when she just started St. Vincent. We were so proud of her.”

  “I’ve heard only good things about her,” he said.

  Her smile was a mixture of pride and pain. “Thank you for that. I know she wasn’t popular at school, but I always believed she would grow out of all that and blossom into a beautiful young woman.”

  “I’ve no doubt she did just that.”

  Mrs. Reed’s breath caught and without another word she moved down the carpeted hallway. The detectives followed.

  Amber sat on the sunporch in a beam of sunshine. Her blond hair flowed around her shoulders and her small pale face was tipped toward the sun. She wore upscale yoga pants and a sweatshirt that he knew put someone back a couple of hundred dollars. On her feet were top of the line flip-flops. She had a pedicure to match the manicure. She was dressed in black at the funeral and had looked sleek and sexy. But here, she looked smaller, more passive, and even vulnerable.

  “Amber, you remember Detectives Bishop and Morgan,” Mrs. Reed said.

  She rose, smiled like the perfect lady of the house. “Of course.”

  “How’s your head?” Jake asked.

  She raised fingertips to her forehead. “Much better. Stitches come out in a couple of days, but I’ve been getting headaches.”

  “Poor thing has had to rest,” Mrs. Reed said. “I’ve been trying to get her to go back to the doctor but she won’t listen to me.”

  “I’m fine,” Amber said.

  “I asked the duty sergeant about any leads on your attacker, but so far, nothing.”

  “He came, struck, and was gone before I could really react.”

  Mrs. Reed laid a hand on Amber’s shoulder. “I’ve told her she needs to be more careful. It’s not wise for her to always be out alone, especially at night.”

  Amber laid her hand over Mrs. Reed’s and smiled.

  To look at the two, it was a mother and daughter moment.

  While Rick stood, Jake sat across from Amber on a blue-and-white flowered couch. His tendency was to lean forward and hold constant eye contact but keep his body at ease.

  “I put Bethany’s and Elisa Spence’s cases into ViCAP. It popped on a similar case in Austin, Texas. A convenience store security camera picked up a person of interest who looks like the same man who trailed Elisa. Do you recognize him?” He removed the photo from his pocket and handed it to Mrs. Reed.

  She accepted it and, for a moment, held it without studying it. Then, she pulled in a deep breath, dropped her gaze to the picture. For a long time she did not say anything and then she shook her head very slowly. “I don’t know him, at least I don’t think I do.”

  “Do you think he killed this Elisa Spence girl?” Amber asked.

  “I don’t have any forensic data to tie him to the case right now, but he is a person of interest.”

  Amber took the photo from Mrs. Reed and studied it again. “He’s attractive. Makes sense a girl would be attracted to him.”

  “As soon as we find him and get him to talk, we’ll figure it all out.”

  “You’re different from the other detectives I dealt with,” Amber said, fingering the edges of her sweatshirt. “Not all police can see through the killer’s eyes like you.”

  “Don’t know about that,” Jake said with a grin. “But I’m very stubborn and don’t give up easily.”

  She folded long lean hands and settled them on her lap. “I wonder if he was some kind of stalker. I was in the paper so much five years ago. Maybe he followed me to Texas.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  She moved back toward her chair and carefully sat down. “The texts and Georgia brought me back to Nashville. And now this guy that was in Texas like me is here. Circumstances just don’t line up like that.”

  “They usually don’t.” Jake shifted, tugging his jacket forward. “Tell me about your relationship with Mike.”

  The shift in conversation caused her to pause and shift gears. She rubbed her temple. “Mrs. Reed, would you get me a glass of water and an aspirin.”

  “Of course, dear. I’ll be right back.”

  When she was gone from the room, Amber said, “Mike was my friend. We hung out a lot. It started with me helping him with school. He was a great athlete, but he wasn’t book smart. I helped.” She sighed. “I even did some of his work for him. I wrote several of his college application essays as well. Honestly, he’d have not gotten as far as he had if not for me.”

  “His
father knew about this?”

  “He turned a blind eye. A couple of times he even slipped me a couple of hundred bucks. I tried to give it back, but he refused it. Told me to keep his boy on the straight and narrow.”

  “Dalton admitted to sleeping with you when you were very young,” Rick said.

  The color drained from her face and she glanced back to see if Mrs. Reed had heard. “He told you that?”

  “He admitted to a sexual relationship.”

  Tears moistened her eyes. “I was barely sixteen. He told me if I wanted the scholarship to the school that a smart girl like me would know the cost.”

  “He held the scholarship for sex.”

  A tear fell and she swiped it away. “I didn’t want to do it, but I needed a school like St. Vincent to get me out of my life. I was headed down my mom’s path and that scared me to death.”

  Dalton and Amber had both confessed to a sexual relationship. She’d definitely been underage and now there was a question of coercion. “Did you tell your mother?”

  “God, no. I didn’t tell anyone for a long time. I was so ashamed. Eventually, Mike and I became close at school and I told him. Which I regretted almost immediately. Dalton and Mike had a strained relationship, but after that it was openly aggressive.”

  “Which explains why he doesn’t like you?”

  “Yes. He would hate for anyone to know he seduced an underage girl multiple times.”

  Her explanation didn’t jibe with Marlowe’s reaction to the affair. His body language had exhibited deep shame, not anger. “How long did the affair last?”

  She glanced over her shoulder to make sure Mrs. Reed was still out of earshot. “It was just a few times.”

  “How long are you planning to stay in Nashville?”

  “Not much longer. Mrs. Reed is great, but I can’t keep living here. It’s not fair to her. And I’ve got my job and apartment back in Dallas.”

  “And you’ll put all this behind you again?”

  “I came back to get answers. And now it looks like we have them. You have Bethany and Mike. And soon, the killer.”

  “We don’t have him yet.”

  Her eyes sharpened. “I have confidence in you, detective. You won’t need me to find the man in the photograph. It sounds like he’s your killer.”

  “It does sound like that,” Jake said.

  Mrs. Reed entered the room with a glass of water and a couple of aspirins. She gave both to Amber, smiling as the young woman swallowed the pills and chased them with a gulp of water.

  A sigh shuddered over her lips. “Thank you, detective.”

  “For what?”

  “For working this case. For five years Mrs. Reed, Mr. Marlowe and I have suffered. And now we have answers.”

  Her expressions were flawless. Nothing raised red flags. Nothing. “Have you had any more of your memory return?”

  Her brow wrinkled. “The nurse in the hospital said I was having a dream. That I mentioned Mike. But I don’t remember anything.”

  “A dream?”

  She raised her gaze to his and smiled. “Just a dream of Mike running in the woods.”

  “He say anything?”

  “Nothing. I’ve struggled to remember, but the more I reach for it the faster it fades.”

  Jake imagined her dropping a thin trail of bread crumbs hoping he’d follow. As much as she smiled, as much as she said the right things, he tried to picture her losing her temper.

  * * *

  Jake waited on the line as the secretary connected him to the CEO of Davis Marketing, where Amber Ryder worked in Dallas. He pulled onto I-40 and was headed east back toward Nashville. “Harvey Davis.”

  “This is Detective Jake Bishop. I’m with the Nashville Police Department.”

  “Yes, sir. What can I do for you?”

  “I’m calling about an employee of yours. Amber Ryder.”

  Silence crackled for a second. “She’s on leave right now. Had a family emergency.”

  “Yes, sir. She’s here in Nashville.”

  “Is she in some kind of trouble?”

  “Why would she be in trouble?”

  Another pause. “No reason. Why the call?”

  “Tell me what you know about Amber.”

  He cleared his throat. “What do you want to know?”

  “She’s tied to an old case. Just doing my due diligence. What can you tell me about her?”

  Silence crackled. “Smart as a whip. We hired her part time in our accounting department while she was in college. We offered her a full-time job a couple of months ago.”

  “What does she do?”

  “She works closely with our accounting director and assists with the company books.”

  Jake had the sense the man was guarding his words closely. “She’s just out of college and it sounds like she has a lot of responsibility.”

  “Like I said, she’s smart. She’s saved us thousands of dollars. She has taken very aggressive postures that she’s certain she can defend against an IRS audit. Nothing intimidates her.”

  “She gets along well with everyone?”

  A pause. “For the most part. She’s tough. Doesn’t mince words. That doesn’t always sit well with everyone.” A subtle tension vibrated around the words.

  He sensed more below the surface. “She’s not been in any kind of trouble?”

  Hesitation. “None. Detective, why are you calling?”

  “She’s a material witness in a cold case.”

  “I heard she got mixed up in something in high school.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “Two kids vanished. One was her friend and the other her boyfriend. She was found badly injured.”

  He wrote the word boyfriend on a clean page in a small notebook he carried. The teacher at the high school suggested Amber and Mike were dating, yet Amber had denied it. “She ever talk about it?”

  “No. It came up when we did the background check during the interview process. I did ask her about it, but she only answered with a yes or no. I got the sense it was still a sensitive topic for her.”

  “Anything else you can tell me about her?”

  “I’m only qualified to talk about her as an employee. I’m unfamiliar with her private life.”

  Jake tapped the tip of his pen on the paper. “Well, sir, thank you for your time.”

  “Sure thing. Did Amber say if she’s coming back to Dallas?”

  “She gave me the impression she was returning.”

  A long pause. “Great.”

  He placed the phone in its case on his hip. “Interesting.”

  “How so?” Rick asked.

  “Can’t put my finger on it. Based on what he said, he liked her and her work.” He leaned back in his chair. “It’s the unspoken between-the-lines message that always catch my ear.”

  “And that would be?”

  “Don’t quite know yet.” He had run a police background check on her to see if anything popped. Nothing had.

  So what was bothering him about her?

  * * *

  Amber paced the bright sunporch, her nerves drawn tight. She picked up her cell phone and redialed the number she’d already called five times.

  Mrs. Reed had left the house shortly after the cops to run errands. There was a maid floating around the Reed house somewhere so she was mindful as the phone on the other end of the line rang five and then six times and kicked into voice mail.

  “Where the hell are you?” she whispered into the receiver. Frustrated, she tapped the phone gently against her thigh as she paced. Tim promised to answer the phone whenever she called, but he let the last two calls go to voice mail.

  She raised the phone, preparing to redial. “Don’t do this to me. Us. You said you’d be there. You promised you wouldn’t let me down.”

  She dialed the number again and listened as it rang and rang. No answer this time sent her temper rising and her thoughts in a different direction. If she could not rely on Tim, she
could always find another man. She was good at finding men.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Wednesday, October 11, 3:00 P.M.

  Searching surveillance footage was meticulous and mind numbing but a necessary task that couldn’t be overlooked. Jake had amassed footage from ten different cameras lined up along the coffee shop’s street, as well as a couple of side and back streets. Each picked up a different angle and provided a piece of the puzzle that made up Elisa’s last days.

  A dry cleaners shop down the street had a camera that faced east away from the shop. He didn’t expect to see much, but on the day Elisa vanished, the camera picked up a partial shot of a red truck headed toward the shop. The truck stopped at a traffic light before moving along with traffic. He backed up the tape and froze the screen at the moment when the camera caught the best view of the driver. The footage was grainy but he could make out that the driver was a bearded male with dark hair and a muscular build. Just like Scott. And the man in Austin.

  Jake checked the date stamp. This was ten minutes before Elisa had left the shop for the last time. He printed off the picture.

  He continued to move through the footage frame by frame searching for glimpses of Scott Murphy as well as the man from Austin. There was a thin woman with long black hair who stood across the street. She wore large dark sunglasses and a big coat that covered her frame. She stood at the dress shop window across the street seemingly staring into the store. He froze the frame and realized her head was tilted up, almost as if she was studying the reflection in the glass. He watched the woman linger and then move down the street out of the frame.

  He reviewed the tape again, but the woman never approached Elisa, nor did she speak to the man.

  The next few hours were spent reviewing more footage with no hits. His neck and back ached and he needed a shot of caffeine as he popped in the next DVD from a women’s dress shop.

  He fast-forwarded to the time he knew Elisa was on the street and slowly scrolled through the footage. Twenty-nine seconds into the section he spotted Elisa moving down the street, coffee in hand. Fifteen seconds after her, the woman appeared and then, seconds later, the bearded man.