Whose Lie Is It Anyway?

by Abby Gaines

  He picked up the phone, then put it down again.

  Before he spoke to Maggie he had to decide once and for all whether he suspected her of any involvement in the crime.

  He kicked his chair back from the desk and swiveled away from the phone. Across the open-plan office he saw Slater talking to Pierce. They looked cozy. He ignored his resentment. It didn’t matter.

  I don’t believe Maggie is involved. Huh. He really didn’t think she was involved.

  Now he had to decide whether the fact that he’d become friendly with the mother of a suspect was interfering with his judgment. Because when he saw her again, he’d be tempted to become even friendlier.

  About fifteen years ago, when the son of good friends of his and Sally’s had gotten into trouble, Crook had been assigned the case. He’d talked to his boss—not Pierce back then—and they’d agreed he could be trusted to pull out if he felt his integrity might be compromised. Crook had told his friends he would never mention the case to them. That had worked for the three months the investigation dragged out. Until Crook arrested their son, and the kid went to jail for a year. After that, the friendship hadn’t been quite the same.

  Crook grimaced. At least he knew he could do his job without compromise. So what was the difference between that situation and this one?

  Back then, he’d cleared his involvement with his boss.

  Crook scanned the office again. Pierce and Slater were still chatting. He sighed, got to his feet. Might as well give them something to chuckle about.

  IT TOOK SEVERAL MINUTES for the trailer park owner to bring Maggie to the phone. Minutes during which Crook rephrased what he was about to say several times. When she finally came on the line, he said, “Maggie, it’s—” he remembered he was meant to be anonymous “—me.”

  “Adam,” she said warmly.

  It took Simon a moment to realize that she knew exactly who he was and that her enthusiasm was intended for him. That put a smile on his face, until he remembered the reason for his call. “It’s about Holly,” he said. “She flew to New Zealand yesterday with Jared Harding.”

  “Jared Harding?”

  “Her boss.”

  “Oh, yes, the guy at the courthouse. Why did she do that?”

  “She thinks Dave Fletcher is there. I thought maybe she’d told you her plans?”

  “No.” He could almost hear Maggie’s mind working. “Why would she go after Dave herself? Why wouldn’t she tell you where he was?”

  This was the part Simon wasn’t looking forward to. “Uh, she did say there’d been a sighting of a man who might be Fletcher. But we just flew a body back from Mexico that we’re pretty sure is him. We’re working to ID it now. I told Holly that Slater would follow up on the New Zealand thing.”

  “And did he?”

  Crook had learned the dislike between Slater and Maggie went both ways. Right now, he didn’t much like Slater himself. “Not as far as I know.”

  “Obviously, Holly didn’t trust the FBI to follow up so she’s doing the job herself,” Maggie said proudly, as if her daughter’s refusal to trust the authorities was proof of some mother-daughter bond.

  Crook sighed. “I’m going to have to search her condo again, see if we can find anything that might tell us where she’s gone.”

  “I need to be there,” Maggie said. “Someone must represent Holly’s interests.”

  “Not legally, they don’t have to. I’ll get a warrant.”

  “I’m not talking about legally. Please, Crook, I want to find Holly as much as you do, and I know there’s an innocent explanation. If I get a bus this afternoon, I’ll be in Seattle tonight and you can do the search in the morning.”

  “The bus takes the interstate,” he reminded her.

  “I know,” she said quietly.

  Simon took a deep breath. He might have just talked to Pierce and got his boss’s reluctant concession, but this was still a step he couldn’t take lightly, for reasons entirely unrelated to his professional integrity. “I’ll come fetch you. I can be there by lunchtime and we’ll be in Seattle by late afternoon. I want to do that search today.”

  There was a long silence. At last, in a strangled voice, Maggie said, “Thank you.”

  AT FOUR O’CLOCK Crook opened the door of Holly’s condo, using the key the FBI had commandeered from her, and stepped inside, Maggie close behind. When she hesitated in the small foyer and looked around her, Simon realized she’d never been here before.

  He got straight to work, his anger toward Holly driving him to comb her possessions with new energy.

  Maggie watched him for a few minutes, then said, “Can I help?”

  He shook his head. “I have to do it.” Though already he had a feeling he was wasting his time. An hour later, he was certain of it. The only link between Holly and New Zealand was the World Atlas he found in her bookcase.

  “What now?” Maggie asked.

  “It’s still a possibility that Holly and Fletcher were in this together. He double-crossed her, and now she’s returning the favor. She may still know where the money is.” He grimaced. “I’m going to have to put out an alert for them, get the New Zealand police looking for—”

  “No! Think about it. If Holly was up to no good she’d be a lot more secretive about it. You’d have no idea where she is. Listen to your instincts.”

  If only he could. Simon sighed. “Maggie, I’m sorry, I don’t work that way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He sat on Holly’s couch—rather more luxuriously stuffed than her mother’s—and Maggie sat next to him, facing him. “When Sally died, it really shook me up. Not just because I missed her, but because I’d been so convinced she’d survive.”

  “That was hope,” Maggie said. “You wanted her to live.”

  “Maybe.” He spread his hands in front of him and for the first time he could remember didn’t think his left hand looked odd without the gold band he’d removed five years ago. “But one of the things that made me a good agent when I started out was my strong instincts. And they got better as time went on. I could trust them even when the evidence pointed in the opposite direction.

  “After Sal’s death, it wasn’t just that I didn’t trust my instincts—I didn’t have any instincts anymore. If it wasn’t in front of me in black and white, I couldn’t see it. I had to give up undercover work. I’d lost the knack.” He took Maggie’s hands in his, caressed them with his thumbs. “So when you tell me to trust my instincts about Holly…” To his surprise, Maggie was smiling.

  She squeezed his hands. “What do you call this, then, Special Agent Crook? You and me?”

  He looked down at her long fingers, knew he wanted to feel them all over his body. “I call it madness.”

  “Uh-uh.” Maggie shook her head. “You’re not crazy. I might be, but you’re definitely sane. What you’ve got going here is a full-blown case of gut instinct. All the evidence suggests you and I would have nothing in common, that we wouldn’t even like each other. But your intuition tells you to like me.”

  Simon wasn’t sure his randy hormones counted as intuition. But he liked the thought of it. “Your logic is totally screwed up,” he said. “I told my boss today that my relationship with you has gone beyond professional.”

  She stilled. “What did he say?”

  Crook rubbed his chin. “The word idiot came up, along with crazy. But I told him this wasn’t open to negotiation. That if he didn’t trust me to identify a conflict of interest, I’d quit now.”

  “Wow.”

  He shrugged. “It wasn’t that impressive. Pierce has been involved in a couple of unfair dismissal cases. He didn’t want me complaining to HR.” Besides, Pierce was a pragmatist. He was probably still thinking Crook might find some kind of evidence against Holly if he hung around Maggie.

  Simon tugged her an inch or two closer across the couch. In an instant, he was painfully aware of the firm, soft flesh beneath his fingers, the laughter and concern in her green e
yes, the intake of breath that caused her breasts to swell against him. He couldn’t live another instant without kissing her.

  He pulled her against him and captured her lips with his, kissing her hard. Her “oomph” told him she hadn’t expected such a bold approach. The excitement went straight to his head and he plunged in, kissing her harder, until he realized she was twisting her head.

  He stopped instantly, mortified, dragged his mouth from hers. “I’m sorry,” he blurted. “I should never have—”

  “Easy, boy.” Her voice was gentle, and she touched a hand to his cheek. A chuckle escaped her. “Where’s the fire?”

  “I don’t know, I…” Simon stuttered to a stop.

  “I’m out of practice with this stuff. Let’s go a little slower.” As if to spell it out to him, she put her arms around his neck and oh-so-slowly pulled his head down to hers. He was too surprised to move, which made it easy for her lips to brush against his in a gentle caress. She kissed the corner of his mouth, then moved to the center. Gradually, the pressure of her mouth increased as he responded, and at last he felt the tip of her tongue flirting against his lower lip.

  Cautiously, he parted his lips. The subsequent melding of their mouths was nothing like his frenzied attack—a small part of his brain told him he was going to feel like a complete jerk later. Her curious, teasing exploration had him more aroused than he could ever remember being.

  Crook realized he’d been holding his breath, and he expelled it in a groan. He released his too-tight grip on Maggie’s upper arms and did what he’d been longing to since the moment he’d first seen her—buried his hands in that magnificent hair. She squirmed closer to him and leaned back until they were practically lying on the couch, and her kiss deepened.

  It seemed an eternity before they finally surfaced.

  Maggie shook her head briskly. “Wow, Ernest,” she said, “that was quite a surprise.”

  “It was a good surprise,” he said. “For me. A very good one. Now that we’ve, uh, done that, I think you should know my name. It’s—”

  “Don’t tell me.”

  He looked at her helplessly. “Maggie, this is crazy.”

  “It’s not crazy.” She wriggled from his embrace, sat up straight. “You know the old fairy story Rumpelstiltskin?”

  He strained to recall it. “Some woman has to guess this weird little guy’s name.”

  She pulled a plump cushion into her lap, and fingered its piped edges. “Or he’ll take her baby away. Like you want to take Holly.”

  “I’m not going to drop the charges against her if you guess my name right.”

  She clucked as if he was the weird one here. “There’s nothing I can do to help Holly. Do you know how hard that is for a mother?”

  He shook his head. He and Sally had tried for a baby, but it had never happened for them.

  “Sometimes I tell myself that if I paint a certain picture, someone will buy it,” Maggie explained. “If I drink three cups of peppermint tea, Summer will pass her driving test. If I guess your name—”

  “Holly will be okay,” he finished for her. “You do know there’s no logic to this.”

  Her hands gripped the cushion. “Please, John, allow me the illusion of some control.”

  “John,” he protested.

  “As in John Wayne. A fine man.”

  Simon harrumphed. “A bit old, isn’t he?”

  “Actually, he’s dead,” Maggie said apologetically.

  Crook rolled his eyes. Still, why not let her have her way? However uncomfortable he might be making out with a woman who didn’t know his name.

  “Please, Crook,” Maggie said, serious again. “Listen to your instincts about Holly. I know you have them. What do they tell you?”

  They told him Holly was innocent.

  Well, he would think that, wouldn’t he? He wanted Maggie, so he wanted things to work out for her daughter.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “You’re not sure Holly’s guilty?”

  “I guess.”

  “Then give her the benefit of the doubt,” Maggie said. “She may even be helping you.”

  “The FBI doesn’t like people interfering with an investigation.”

  “Please, Crook. I know I’m right.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll go with my gut, and leave her be for now. But I can’t speak for Slater, or anyone else on the case.”

  “Thank you.” Maggie kissed him on the cheek. “Crook, will you drive me back to Marionville and stay the night?”

  He tamped down a wild hope. “You mean, in the kids’ room, right?”

  Her grin was sheepish. “Yeah. I like you, but it’s been a long time since I trusted a man with more than a kiss.”

  They stood, and Crook straightened the cushions, bringing the couch back into line with the rest of Holly’s immaculate living room. He’d progressed from flirting with a suspect’s mother to making out with her on the suspect’s couch. Man, he was in deep. Suddenly reckless, he said, “Maybe I could hang around at your place all day tomorrow. It’ll give us some more time together.”

  She nodded. “Can you get a day off at such short notice?”

  Crook was absurdly pleased she hadn’t suggested he fake an illness. “No problem. My boss is begging me to use up some of my leave. But, Maggie, I’m only driving you back on one condition.”

  “What’s that?” She preceded him out the door, waiting while he locked up.

  “From now on we don’t talk about Holly. Ever. Whatever I do about tracking her down in New Zealand will be nothing to do with you.” In fact, he’d already made up his mind to wait and see awhile, but that could change any time. “You need to accept that I might put out an alert for her, and that if I decide she’s guilty I’ll do my best to put her away.”

  Her expression was somber. “I know.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  WHEN THEY LANDED IN Auckland, Jared phoned Colonel Briggs, who was still staking out Dave’s current location, to get the address. Holly wanted to go directly there. Even with the Colonel watching, she didn’t want to risk that Dave might move on when they were so close. Jared agreed, though it meant adding car sickness fueled by the cigarette-smoke-infested taxi to his woes.

  Holly’s several attempts to pronounce their destination—Karangahape Road—were mercifully foreshortened when the taxi driver told her the locals called it K Road. The hotels and department stores at the start of K Road gave way to strip clubs and sex shops as they progressed its length. The taxi stopped outside a travel agency offering tours to Bangkok that obviously focused more on the attractions of very young Thai women than on the culture. The travel agency was closed.

  “This is the place,” the man said cheerfully. “You might want to try upstairs.”

  Jared paid him while Holly clambered from the car. She steadied herself with a hand on the trunk, her knees suddenly weak. Then Jared was beside her, warily, scanning their surroundings. “Time for action.”

  Holly looked dubiously at the scarred red door, which presumably led to an apartment above the travel agency. “I appreciate you giving me a chance to do this my way.”

  “I was too sick to argue with you,” he pointed out. “Asking Fletcher nicely to give the money back is the dumbest idea I ever heard.”

  “Dave did something stupid, but he’s not a bad guy at heart.”

  Jared lost his patience. “We’ll soon find out. Why don’t you go on in? Unless you’re afraid?”

  She stiffened. “Of course not.” Having Jared along would have made it a lot easier, but they’d agreed his presence should remain a secret for now, an ace up their sleeve. And hadn’t he made it plain on the flight that Holly would have to get used to being on her own again? She lifted her chin. “If I’m not out in an hour, come find me.”

  Jared leaned against the window of a strip club, where he was sure he wouldn’t be visible to anyone upstairs. Holly walked to the door. Her sister’s skimpy clothes, unsuited to t
his winter’s day, were no more outrageous than what some of the other women wore on this seedy street. Holly pressed the bell, and Jared held his breath.

  The door opened, but he couldn’t see if it was Fletcher himself in the doorway. There was a brief tussle as the occupant obviously tried to shut the door again, then Holly hurled herself inside and the door closed.

  “HOW COULD YOU DO THIS to our business?” Holly shrieked the words as she raced up the narrow internal staircase on Dave’s heels. So much for the reasonable approach she’d intended.

  Dave, his hair dyed a startling gray, reached the landing and turned around so abruptly that she bumped into him. “I don’t have to talk to you. Get out.”

  Holly pushed him into the living room, whose pollution-grimed windows admitted a dull winter light, illuminating the stains on the shabby carpet. There was no sign of the millions Dave had stolen. “I’m not leaving without the money.”

  He pulled a cigarette pack from his shirt pocket. He scowled at her as he lit up. “You’ll be here a long time then. How did you find me?”

  “What does it matter? I’m here now and I want that money back.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Dave, you’ve committed a serious felony.” At last, she found sweet reason. “You can make things better by paying the money back. Maybe they won’t send you to prison.”

  “They won’t send me to prison because they don’t know where I am.” He held up a hand to forestall her. “You haven’t told them, or they’d be here. I’m all set up to move on fast—as soon as you’re out of here, so am I. They won’t find me.”

  She looked around. Apart from the cell phone on top of the newspaper that was spread across the coffee table, he had little in the way of personal possessions. She saw a tattered maroon sofa and a dark-stained bookcase with rows of old hardcovers that looked as if they hadn’t been read in decades.

  Through an open doorway Holly glimpsed a dated kitchen, cabinets painted a dull orange. A lone upturned mug drained on the counter. “Is this why you did it? So you could live in a dump in a red-light district at the end of the earth? I hope it was worth it.”